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A Million Iraqis Asked Us to Leave. We Should Listen.

Monday January 27, 2020

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You wouldn’t know it from US mainstream media reporting, but on Friday an estimated million Iraqis took to the streets to protest the continued US military presence in their country. What little mainstream media coverage the protest received all reported the number of protesters as far less than actually turned out. The Beltway elites are determined that Americans not know or understand just how much our presence in Iraq is not wanted.
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The Unbearable Hypocrisy of US Sanctions on Iran

Sunday January 26, 2020

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On November 22nd of last year, the US government announced it would impose sanctions on Iran's information minister for his alleged role in limiting domestic Internet access while protests raged in that country over increases in gas prices. 

At the time, US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin condemned the Iranian government for censuring information that Iranian citizens could view online, stating that, "Iran’s leaders know that a free and open internet exposes their illegitimacy, so they seek to censor internet access to quell anti-regime protests."

The Iranians were evil, said the US government official in charge of economic sanctions, because it restricted what its citizens could read in the international press.

Our government would never do that...right?

Wrong. Yesterday, the US government knocked Iran's state news agency, FARS, off of the Internet entirely, citing US sanctions against the country.
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'No One Has Suggested My Son Did Anything Wrong': Joe Biden Doubles Down On Denial

Saturday January 25, 2020

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We have previously discussed the denials of former Vice President Joe Biden that his son did anything wrong in Ukraine. As I have written, not only did Hunter Biden clearly enter into a corrupt (but arguably lawful) contract but Joe Biden did not do enough to confirm that his son was not engaging in influence peddling. Nevertheless, this week, Joe Biden continued this indefensible position and declared bizarrely that “no one has suggested my son did anything wrong.”

According to the Washington Post, Joe Biden declared on the campaign trail that “There’s nobody that’s indicated there’s a single solitary thing that he did that was inappropriate, wrong … or anything other than the appearance. It looked bad that he was there.” He then curiously added “He acknowledges that he in fact made a mistake going on the board.” So, in other words, he did nothing wrong but he apologized for it.

Joe Biden continues to maintain that “no one” has accused his son of wrongdoing when there is a chorus of such allegations. He seems to be drawing a distinction between what is criminal and what is not — as if the criminal code is the only measure of wrongdoing or unethical conduct.

Hunter Biden not only clearly engaged in influence peddling but he is clearly a relevant witness.
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Our American Ancestors Didn’t Trust the Federal Government

Friday January 24, 2020

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The US Constitution brought into existence a federal government whose powers were limited to those enumerated in the Constitution itself. If a power wasn’t enumerated, it simply could not be exercised.

That’s because our American ancestors didn’t trust governmental power. They clearly understood, based on both historical knowledge and life experience, that the greatest threat to their freedom and well-being lay with their very own federal government.

That’s why there was such a deep antipathy toward a type of government that had an enormous and permanent military-intelligence establishment. Our American ancestors knew that a government of that nature would wield the power to destroy their liberty and well-being.

Even though the American people ended up accepting the Constitution and its concept of limited power, there were still very leery of the new federal government. For more than 10 years before they accepted the Constitution, they had operated under a type of governmental system called the Articles of Confederation, under which the powers of the federal government were so weak that it wasn’t even given the power to tax.
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US Torture Policy: Part Of 'American Exceptionalism'?

Thursday January 23, 2020

One of the architects of the CIA's post-9/11 torture program was in court this week to testify in the pre-trial proceedings of several Guantanamo detainees. His justification for designing and practicing some of the most inhuman practices on earth should give pause to Americans with a conscience. Do we really reject torture? Tune in to today's Liberty Report...
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Trade Sanctions Are Both Immoral and Ineffective

Thursday January 23, 2020

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On January 10, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Secretary of the Treasury Steve Mnuchin announced new economic sanctions imposed on Iran in response to its missile strikes against US forces in Iraq. The sanctions target enterprises operating in the manufacturing, textile, construction, and mining sectors. President Trump said that “These punishing sanctions will remain until the Iranian regime changes its behavior.”

The Iranian strikes were in retaliation to the US drone attack that killed Qasseim Soleimani, the powerful Iranian general and leader of the Quds Force. Thankfully, President Trump has chosen not to respond with any military action so as to avoid a full-blown war.

Nevertheless, new sanctions on Iran probably won’t change much. A long history of failed sanctions, which weren’t able to change the opposing regimes, can attest to that.

The Unintended Economic Consequences of Trade Sanctions

Almost ten years ago, Jonathan Catalán wrote an article on this same issue for the Mises Wire. Things haven’t changed since then. Governments continue to enforce trade restrictions on rival nations. Catalán explained that...
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How The Military-Industrial Complex Gets Away With Murder in Contract After Contract

Thursday January 23, 2020

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Call it a colossal victory for a Pentagon that hasn't won a war in this century, but not for the rest of us. Congress only recently passed and the president approved one of the largest Pentagon budgets ever. It will surpass spending at the peaks of both the Korean and Vietnam wars. As last year ended, as if to highlight the strangeness of all this, the Washington Post broke a story about a “confidential trove of government documents” -- interviews with key figures involved in the Afghan War by the Office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction -- revealing the degree to which senior Pentagon leaders and military commanders understood that the war was failing.
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Truth Comes Out: New Evidence Syria Gas Attack Report Falsified

Wednesday January 22, 2020

Former OPCW inspector Ian Henderson testified to the UN Security Council this week that his team's report on the April 2018 alleged gas attack in Douma, Syria, had been falsified at the orders of senior management and perhaps under pressure from the US government. The US mainstream media is silent. Watch today's Liberty Report...
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The Many Matryoska Dolls to America’s Way of Imagining Iran

Wednesday January 22, 2020

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On the 17 September 1656, Oliver Cromwell, a Protestant Puritan, who had won a civil war, and had the English king beheaded in public, railed against England’s enemies. There was, he told Parliament that day, an axis of evil abroad in the world. And this axis – led by Catholic Spain – was, at root, the problem of a people that had placed themselves at the service of “evil”. This “evil”, and the servitude that it beget, was the evil of a religion – Catholicism – that refused the English peoples’ desire for simple liberties: “… [an evil] that put men under restraint … under which there was no freedom … and under which, there could be ‘no liberty of individual consciousness’”.
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