Curiously Curated Conspiracies, Cover Ups and Corruption. All content is 'for your consideration' only. "The Truth, when you finally chase it down, is almost always far worse than your darkest visions and fears." ~ Hunter S. Thompson
Journalists aren’t always consistent fans of liberty; over a century ago, The New York Timeseditorializedagainst self-defense rights—a tradition it continues today. Still, in the past when there was more ideological variety among elite media than now (a flaw alternative outlets seek to address), reporters from all sorts of publications generally favored free speech, opposed broad surveillance, and supported restrictions on search and seizure. If nothing else, they knew they were high on the list of targets for abusive officials. But that was then; now, elite media love Big Brother.
On Independence Day, U.S. District Court Judge Terry Doughty issued a powerful First Amendment decision in an ongoing case brought by the attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana. “If the allegations made by Plaintiffs are true, the present case arguably involves the most massive attack against free speech in United States’ history” he said of government pressure on social media companies to suppress speech at odds with official messaging. The judge barred further arm-twisting, though with significant exceptions. It was a clear win for free speech, which you would expect to be applauded by people who make their living from speaking and writing. That’s not what happened.
A federal investigation determined South Carolina violates the rights of mentally ill adults by placing them in overly restrictive group homes.
Some 2,000 people with serious mental illness were institutionalized in community residential care facilities, or what a report Thursday from the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice calls adult care homes.
The facilities have violated the rights of people with disabilities by limiting their choice and independence while offering few opportunities to engage in the community, the report states.
South Carolina failed to provide community-based services to all residents to divert them from adult care homes, investigators determined. Once a resident is placed in a facility, the state has denied them the resources they need to return to the community.
Some mentally ill residents have remained in the facilities for up to 35 years, the report states. The average resident spends five years in an adult care home.
Kimberly Tissot, president and CEO for Able SC, applauded the Justice Department for investigating what has been a longtime problem.
“We are hopeful this will bring true changes to people with psychiatric disabilities and other disabilities in South Carolina,” Tissot said in an email. “The unjustified segregation the disability community continues to experience in South Carolina must end today.”
Of the more than 400 adult care homes in the state that Tissot said she has evaluated, she found fewer than 15 were “somewhat decent and didn’t violate any rights.”
“CRCF’s conditions are appalling and make things more difficult for someone’s well-being,” Tissot added, using an abbreviation for community residential care facilities.
A spokesman for Governor Henry McMaster did not respond to a request for comment.
The Department of Justice said it launched the probe over a year ago after receiving a complaint. Investigators reviewed documents and conducted dozens of interviews with staff, state officials and residents.
In 1999, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Olmstead v. L.C. that the Americans with Disabilities Act requires that people with disabilities be provided community-based services in the “least restrictive setting” possible. Unnecessary segregation created the assumption that disabled people were “incapable or unworthy of participating in community life,” Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote in the majority opinion.
By housing residents in adult care homes rather than less restrictive settings, investigators determined, South Carolina violated the ADA’s requirements.
Illinois has passed a law requiring landlords to open their doors to illegal immigrants.
As housing costs spiral out of control, particularly in large metropolitan areas such as Chicago, this new mandate is set to potentially increase the pool of renters by tens of thousands.
On June 30, Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker signed SB 1817 into law, amending the Illinois Human Rights Act to include “immigration status” as a protected class, Breitbart reported.
This legislation makes it a civil rights violation in the state of Illinois to ‘discriminate’ against a person based on their immigration status in a wide range of real estate transactions. Key areas covered by the law include:
Refusal to engage in a real estate transaction, including sale, rental, or lease, based on a person’s immigration status.
Altering the terms, conditions, or privileges of a real estate transaction due to a person’s immigration status.
Refusing to receive or transmit a bona fide offer from a person based on their immigration status.
Misrepresenting property availability or refusing to allow a person to inspect property due to their immigration status.
Creating or distributing any communication that expresses a preference, limitation, or discrimination based on immigration status related to real estate transactions.
Refusing to engage in loan modification services based on a person’s immigration status or discriminating in making such services available.
Encouraging the sale, lease, or listing of property based on the notion that the value of the property has or will decrease due to the immigration status of people living in the vicinity.
Intentionally causing alarm to induce property sale or lease based on the immigration status of persons entering the vicinity of the property.
“This law sets clear boundaries, protecting the rights of immigrants and ensuring that financial institutions and service providers cannot engage in discriminatory practices,” said Gillespie (D-Arlington Heights). “Putting these protections in place will promote fairness to ensure people are not unjustly denied housing.”
A longtime Capitol Police (USCP) officer has been charged with possession of child sexual abuse material and suspended from duty, according to the law enforcement agency.
Maryland State Police on Monday arrested Capitol Police officer Jared M. Lemon, 42, outside his home in the state and charged him with five counts of possession of child pornography, according to a release.
Lemon, who has been with the Capitol Police for nearly two decades, is suspended pending the outcome of the criminal case.
Fort Benning, the infamous Georgia U.S. military base, is once again in the news, changing its name to Fort Moore, thereby ditching its Confederate name. Yet none of the media covering the rebranding – not The New York Times, the Associated Press, CNN, ABC, CBS News, USA Today nor The Hill – mentioned the most controversial aspect of the institution.
Across Latin America, the very name of Fort Benning is enough to strike terror into the hearts of millions, bringing back visions of massacres and genocides. This is because the fort is home to the School of the Americas (now known as Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation or WHINSEC), a shadowy academy where around 84,000 Latin American soldiers and police officers have been taught on the U.S. dime on how to kill, torture and how to stamp out political activists.
Thus, these units effectively serve as shock troops for the U.S. Empire, making their country safe for American multinationals to pillage. MintPress has found that no fewer than 16 School of the Americas graduates would go on to become heads of state in their country.
“The school is controversial partly because of its role in promoting US hegemony in Latin America, which undermines the sovereignty and independence of other countries,” James Jordan, national co-coordinator at Alliance for Global Justice, told MintPress, adding,
But even worse, it is how the school has promoted this: teaching methods of torture – even publishing torture manuals, counterintelligence, psyops, repression of political voices that don’t meet the approval of Washington DC. If one looks at cases of human rights abuses by the military throughout Latin America, the number of those responsible who were trained at the School of the Americas is simply staggering.”
The Scottish government wants to legalise drug possession for personal use and potentially the entire drug market as part of a massive change in the way addiction is tackled.
Scottish ministers want to reform drug laws to enable people with drug problems to be better supported instead of being criminalised. They want to address record drug death rates in the country, which are 15 times more likely to affect the poorest 20 percent, and are the highest in Europe.
Currently the Scottish government, led by the Scottish National Party with the Scottish Greens, has no power to change the laws in this way. VICE News has contacted the UK Home Office for a response to the proposals.
In 2021 the crisis prompted a £250m investment by the Scottish government into the country’s addiction services, with former First Minister Nicola Sturgeon admitting her government had “failed” every person who had died as a result of drug addiction.
A policy paper outlining the plans published Friday, entitled A Caring, Compassionate and Human Rights Informed Drug Policy for Scotland, called for the decriminalisation of personal drug possession, the expansion of harm reduction tools such as heroin assisted treatment, supervised drug consumption facilities and drug checking, and a roadmap to explore legal regulation of drugs.
“We want to create a society where problematic drug use is treated as a health, not a criminal matter, reducing stigma and discrimination and enabling the person to recover and contribute positively to society,” said Scotland’s drugs policy minister Elena Whitham.
She said that as a strategy to reduce drug use, “the global war on drugs has failed in its objectives”.
“To improve and save lives, we must be innovative, bold and radical. We are clear that nothing should be considered off the table. We must start by recognising that no country, anywhere in the world, has succeeded in eliminating drug use. A fairer, safer and healthier country must care about all its citizens and be inclusive of those with health conditions such as drug dependence.”
In order to achieve these objectives, which Witham said were supported by the public, the UK government needed to change its half a century old drug laws to enable Scotland “to appropriately tailor policy decisions to our unique challenges”.
The paper said decriminalising small amounts of drugs for personal use “could provide a framework within which we can better pursue our existing policies to help, treat and support people rather than criminalise, stigmatise and fail them”.
Last week, Florida legislators passed a law that will narrow the state’s medical marijuana eligibility. While the change might seem marginal, it’s a step in the wrong direction.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a leading contender in the 2024 Republican presidential primary, signed S.B. 210 into law. The bill pertains to substance abuse treatment programs licensed by the state, like rehabs or sober living residences. It adds language to Florida law that beginning in 2024, licensed treatment facilities must enforce “a prohibition on the premises against alcohol, marijuana, illegal drugs,” and prescription medications not prescribed to the person taking them. The text further clarifies that it “includes marijuana that has been certified by a qualified physician for medical use.”
Medical marijuana use in an addiction treatment or sober living facility is controversial. Cleveland House, a South Florida sober house, states on its website that if one resident is smoking pot, it could negatively impact another resident’s recovery. But studiesincreasinglysuggest that marijuana can help alleviate symptoms of opioid addiction. Men’s Tribal House, a sober living facility in Utah, actively incorporates medical marijuana use into the recovery plans of half its residents.
In 2016, more than 70 percent of Florida’s voters chose to expand the state’s medical marijuana program. Under previous state law, only patients with “cancer or a physical medical condition that chronically produces seizures or severe and persistent muscle spasms” qualified, and only for doses low in THC, the principal psychoactive component in cannabis. The 2016 ballot measure, later passed into law as S.B. 8, expanded eligibility to include a variety of conditions like Crohn’s disease, post-traumatic stress disorder, and anything that caused “chronic nonmalignant pain.”
“COCAINE UNIQUELY FITS THE FAST-PACED AMERICAN LIFESTYLE,” reads a caption for an exhibit at the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) Museum in Arlington, Virginia. “The Federal Bureau of Narcotics considered cocaine a nearly defeated drug,” it continues. “However, cocaine use rebounded, reaching its highest use level ever at the end of the 20th century.” It’s an oddly candid observation to find in a place you’d expect to celebrate the federal agency whose mission is to “enforce the controlled substances laws and regulations of the United States.”
The DEA is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, marking half a century of abject mission failure. During five decades as a bottomless money pit that has destroyed countless lives while targeting Americans for personal choices and peaceful transactions, the agency’s annual budget has ballooned from $75 million to $3.2 billion. The DEA currently operates 90 foreign offices in 67 countries. It has seized billions of dollars in drugs, cash, vehicles, and real property. Since 1986, it has arrested more than 1 million people for manufacturing, distributing, or possessing illegal drugs. Yet in 2021, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) counted more than 107,600 drug-related deaths—an all-time high. The DEA’s own data show a steady, gradual decline in price and rise in purity for most street drugs since the 1980s. The DEA’s 2020 National Drug Threat Assessment notes that methamphetamine “purity and potency remain high while prices remain relatively low,” and cocaine availability remains steady.
While there are some reasons to believe Americans may finally have tired of the DEA’s oversized role in their lives, the agency remains a powerful force. To understand what went wrong—and why it will keep going wrong—you have to go back to the agency’s origins.
The idea of “secret projects” such as MKUltra were once considered complete fiction and nothing but conspiracy theories. As were secret projects to influence the weather or the use of remote viewers by such intelligence agencies as the CIA. However, we now know that these efforts existed, at least on an initial research and experimental level.
If these top secret and once-denied projects were more factual than authorities would have originally had us believe, then what should we make of some of the other, albeit bizarre, allegations of top secret projects and programs that operate in the shadows of governments, funded by the “black budget?” Here are ten such programs. Some are more believable than others, no doubt, but all are intriguing to the max.
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