Governments worldwide try to cast themselves as the voice of the people. They may publicly extol the virtues of democracy even as they do everything in their power to undermine and thwart the will of people to be free.
Governments secretly (and sometimes openly) spend vast portions of their treasuries to propagandize, brag, and publish false claims of their benevolence–even as they seek to ban “money in politics” by the private sector.
Governments hunt, stalk, threaten, and sometimes cage or kill opposition politicians or libertarian statesmen or spokespeople.
Now, the Spanish government has sent thousands of armed troops to Catalonia (a wealthy region of northwestern Spain) to crush today’s vote on Catalonian independence.
Thousands of Catalonians have been injured in brutal government violence. Spanish secret police have surveilled and infiltrated independence groups and shut down dozens of polling stations. See here.
