Afghanistan - the "good war" that never ends. Just when it seemed the US was making progress toward ending the longest war in its history, a new bad guy has emerged that, we are told, is far more threatening than the guys we've been fighting for 20 years. Forget the Taliban! We have to stay in Afghanistan to fight ISIS! Meanwhile, Trump has dropped more bombs on Afghanistan this year alone than Obama's average over five years. War is good for business. Tune in to today's Liberty Report... read on...
Washington is in a constant state of war frenzy. The question of how to manage global challenges seems to be always met with the same answer: threaten sanctions and move military assets. Thus, the US sends carrier strike groups toward Iran, into the Black Sea, into the South China Sea, and elsewhere to make it clear that force is the only language spoken by the United States government and its national security apparatus. read on...
Six years ago undercover CIA officer and NSA contractor Edward Snowden came out from the shadows to reveal that he was responsible for the greatest leak of secret government information in US history. Americans learned that the government was not spying on terrorists to keep us safe, but was actually much more interested in spying on us. The revelations led to "reform" in the form of the "FREEDOM Act." But have we recovered any of our privacy protections...or are we worse off...? Tune in to today's Liberty Report... read on...
World War I is the gift that just keeps on giving. Although the US government’s intervention into this senseless, immoral, and destructive war occurred 100 years ago, the adverse effects of the war continue to besiege our nation. Among the most notable examples is the Espionage Act, a tyrannical law that was enacted two months after the US entered the war and which, unfortunately, remained on the books after the war came to an end. In fact, it is that World War I relic that US officials are now relying on to secure the criminal indictment of Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks head who released a mountain of evidence disclosing the inner workings and grave wrongdoing on the part of the US national-security establishment, especially with respect to the manner in which it has waged it undeclared forever wars in the Middle East and Afghanistan.
Some news media commentators are finally coming to the realization that if the Espionage Act can be enforced against Assange for what he did, it can be enforced against anyone in the press for revealing damaging inside information about the national-security establishment — i.e., the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA. Therefore, they are calling on the Justice Department to cease and desist from its prosecution of Assange.
Of course, they are right, but the problem is that they don’t go far enough. Their mindsets reflect the customary acceptance of the status quo. The mindset is that we Americans simply have to accept the way things are and plead with the government to go easy on us. read on...
Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA) found himself in hot water recently over comments he made in defense of Navy SEAL Edward Gallagher, who faces war crimes charges over his alleged conduct while serving in combat overseas. Gallagher is charged with stabbing a 15 year old ISIS member while in custody, of taking photos posing with the corpse of the teen, and with killing several civilians. read on...
RPI Director Daniel McAdams opens the Ron Paul Institute's "Winning the War on the War on Drugs" conference last month with a short discussion of how the "regime changers" use the drug war to drum up support for interventionist US policies abroad. Mark your calendars for August 24th, when the next RPI conference will be held in Washington, DC. Tickets on sale soon! read on...
Recent storylines from the Western press on the “Idlib” narrative, particularly the extraordinary spate of “on-the-ground” reports from Sky News reporter Alex Crawford, have failed to paint an accurate picture of the reality faced by Syrian civilians.
Brett McGurk – the US government’s Special Presidential Envoy for the Global Coalition to Counter ISIL — described Idlib as “the largest Al Qaeda safe haven since 9/11,” adding that the presence of Al Qaeda in Idlib was a “huge problem” and had been so “for some time.” Mint Press journalist Whitney Webb covered McGurk’s statements and US policy in Idlib in late 2018.
McGurk’s statement seems to have been forgotten by both corporate media and “human rights” commentators alike since the Syrian Army’s military campaign to liberate areas of Idlib began in earnest a few weeks ago. In fact, there seems to be an ongoing campaign by the Western press to normalize militant groups affiliated with Al Qaeda.
On May 27, 2019 a headline in a Reuters article read “Idlib government chief urges defense against Assad attack” (emphasis added). The “head” of the Idlib “Salvation Government,” Fawaz Hilal, was calling upon Turkey to intervene on their behalf to protect them from SAA military advances. read on...
Rep. Mark Meadows confirmed what many have suspected about the Trump-Russia for a long time; the FBI knew early on that the foundation of its counterintelligence investigation against the Trump campaign was built on 'a foundation of sand,' reports the Daily Caller's Chuck Ross. read on...
After the failure of Newsguard — the news rating system backed by a cadre of prominent neoconservative personalities — to gain traction among American tech and social media companies, another organization has quietly stepped in to direct the news algorithms of tech giants such as Google, Facebook, and Microsoft.
Though different from Newsguard, this group, known as “The Trust Project,” has a similar goal of restoring “trust” in corporate, mainstream media outlets, relative to independent alternatives, by applying “trust indicators” to social-media news algorithms in a decidedly untransparent way. The funding of “The Trust Project” — coming largely from big tech companies like Google; government-connected tech oligarchs like Pierre Omidyar; and the Knight Foundation, a key Newsguard investor — suggests that an ulterior motive in its tireless promotion of “traditional” mainstream media outlets is to limit the success of dissenting alternatives.
Of particular importance is the fact that the Trust Project’s “trust indicators” are already being used to control what news is promoted and suppressed by top search engines like Google and Bing and massive social-media networks like Facebook. Though the descriptions of these “trust indicators” — eight of which are currently in use — are publicly available, the way they are being used by major tech and social media companies is not. read on...
A Ukrainian businessman painted in the Mueller report as a sinister link to Russia was actually a "sensitive" intelligence source for the US State Department who informed on Ukrainian and Russian issues - and passed messages between the Washington and Kiev, according to The Hill's John Solomon. read on...
