Politics

Efforts by Madrid to stop a Catalonia independence vote, currently slated for October 1st, seem to be growing more hostile by the day.  Earlier this week Spanish police seized control of Catalonia’s finances, seeking to ensure that separatist politicians could not spend further public funds on the referendum, and conducted raids across Catalonia to confiscate ballots and campaign materials from printing shops and delivery companies.

Update: According to Bloomberg, Trump won't be declaring war (yet), and instead the announcement is sanctions related.

• TRUMP'S N. KOREA ANNOUNCEMENT TO BE SANCTIONS-RELATED: OFFICIAL
• TRUMP SAYS `WE WILL BE PUTTING MORE SANCTIONS ON NORTH KOREA"

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The Independent reports Spanish police storm Catalan government buildings to stop independence referendum.

As MishTalk's Mike Shedlock details, the Catalan president described the raids as a “co-ordinated police assault” and a “de facto state of emergency”.

Spanish national police have stormed ministries and buildings belonging to Catalonia’s regional government to put a stop to the region’s independence referendum.

 

Twitter has evolved to become an important outlet for political discussion, debate and commentary. The platform was notably put to use to successfully organize anti-government protests on numerous occasions, and as Statista's Niall McCarthy notes, this put some world leaders on edge, unsurprisingly leading to some countries clamping down on the network's content.

Twitter's latest transparency report shows the number of content removal requests made by different countries as well as the share that were granted.

Authored by Andrei Akulov via The Strategic Culture Foundation,