President Trump has sent Secretary of State Pompeo urgently to Saudi Arabia this morning, hoping to get to the bottom of what happened to Saudi exile journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Trump has promised "severe punishment" to the Saudis if they are involved in killing the journalist, but the government funded Arabiya newspaper threatens strong retaliation if the US dares strike out against Riyadh. Is a major geopolitical shift brewing? Who killed the journalist? What about the Turk role? We try to untangle this complicated issue in today's Liberty Report... read on...
We have been following the increasing violence seen on college campuses, particularly directed against conservative and pro-life speakers. The latest incident occurred at Ryerson University in Ontario where a video captured Ryerson Student Gabriela “Gabby” Skwarko attacking two members of Toronto Against Abortion (TAA). Skwarko works for the school’s Office of Social Innovation. The video below shows a violent and unprovoked attack to stop an act of free speech on campus.
Skwarko, a member of the Ryerson Reproductive Justice Collective, kicked the displays and physically attacked the pro-life activists as well as taking property and throwing it about.
Strangely, Skwardo is temporarily forbidden from contacting fellow student Blaise Alleyne, president and founder of TAA, but there is no indication that she was banned immediately from campus. Indeed, the university did not respond to media inquiries.
We have been discussing the enculturation of anti-free speech values in college students across the country. One recent incident occurred at the California State University where assistant professor of public health professor Greg Thatcher is shown on a videotape wiping out the pro-life statements written in chalk by members of Fresno State Students for Life. The university is now being sued over the incident. read on...
September marked a decade since the bursting of the housing bubble, which was followed by the stock market meltdown and the government bailout of the big banks and Wall Street. Last week’s frantic stock market sell-off indicates the failure to learn the lesson of 2008 makes another meltdown inevitable. read on...
This week, the alternative media purge was boldly advanced in a coordinated effort to silence people who dissent from establishment views.
It’s just one more step toward a monopoly on information by those who hate freedom. At this rate, they’ll soon have unquestioned access to the minds of more than 2 billion people. And this should terrify everyone who wants to be free to question the status quo and to seek a wide range of information.
Hundreds of alternative media site administrators logged onto Facebook to discover that their accounts had been removed. Soon after, many of these sites and their writers found that their Twitter accounts had also been suspended.
Popular pages like The AntiMedia (2.1 million fans), The Free Thought Project (3.1 million fans), Press for Truth (350K fans), Police the Police (1.9 million fans), Cop Block (1.7 million fans), and Punk Rock Libertarians (125K fans) are just a few of the ones which were unpublished. read on...
The “special relationship” between the United States and the United Kingdom is often assumed to be one where the once-great, sophisticated Brits are subordinate to the upstart, uncouth Yanks.
Iconic of this assumption is the mocking of former prime minister Tony Blair as George W. Bush’s “poodle” for his riding shotgun on the ill-advised American stagecoach blundering into Iraq in 2003. Blair was in good practice, having served as Bill Clinton’s dogsbody in the no less criminal NATO aggression against Serbia over Kosovo in 1999.
On the surface, the UK may seem just one more vassal state on par with Germany, Japan, South Korea, and so many other useless so-called allies. We control their intelligence services, their military commands, their think tanks, and much of their media. We can sink their financial systems and economies at will. Emblematic is German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s impotent ire at discovering the Obama administration had listened in on her cell phone, about which she – did precisely nothing. Global hegemony means never having to say you’re sorry. read on...
The NATO-led Trident Juncture 2018 (TRJE18) exercise that is to be held in October and November is the largest massive and coordinated show of force since the Cold War. It will primarily be hosted by Norway. The training event will largely take place in the central and eastern parts of this Nordic country that neighbors Russia, as well as over the skies and in the seas of Sweden and Finland. The maritime component will be conducted in the surrounding areas of the North Atlantic and in the Baltic Sea. TRJE18-related activities will take place as far away as Iceland. Russia has been invited to send observers to watch the exercise. read on...
RPI Director Daniel McAdams joins RT America's InQuestion program to discuss the recent purge of more than 800 Facebook pages over accused "inauthentic behavior." What do many of these pages have in common, he asks? Well many are critical of the global US military empire, of the growing police state in the US, and of the failed US drug war. Is there a pattern? Facebook is working with the US government-funded Atlantic Council to decide which pages should be deleted. Might that explain some of it? Watch the panel discussion on the topic... read on...
Judicial Watch today released 49 pages of new documents obtained from the US Department of State about US Agency for International Development (USAID) funding for George Soros’s left-wing nonprofit organizations in Albania. The documents deal primarily with the activities of Soros’ top operative in Albania, Andri Dobrushi, the director of Open Society Foundation-Albania, who was actively engaged in channeling funding to what Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban calls Soros’ “mercenary army.” The documents show US grant money flowing through non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that profess to promote “civil society,” while in fact attacking traditional, pro-American groups, governments and policies.
The records reveal that Soros operative Dobrushi was the first person on a list of invitees by then US Ambassador to Albania Donald Lu to attend an “election rollout event” held at the US Embassy on April 27, 2015. The event was intended to “launch US assistance for the June local elections,” being held in Tirana, Albania. As Judicial Watch previously reported in an April 4, 2018, press release, Ambassador Lu has been closely associated with Soros and the socialist government in Albania, which he assisted by denying US visas to conservative jurists from the conservative party in Albania. Lu has since been nominated by the Trump administration to become US Ambassador to Kyrgyzstan. read on...
There were two simultaneous Brett Kavanaugh stories. Together, as part of the confirmation process regarding his nomination as Supreme Court Justice, they revealed how political discourse in the United States has reached a new low, with debate over the man’s possible predilection to make judgments based on his own preferences rather than the US Constitution being ignored in favor of the politically motivated kabuki theater that was deliberately arranged to avoid that issue and instead go after his character.
Consider first of all, his flaws as a candidate. He was regularly framed as a “conservative,” but what did that mean in the context of his career? Some of the critics are referring to his time spent as a government lawyer, specifically for the George W. Bush Administration, where he was a supporter of wide executive authority in the context of the war against terror while others point to his decisions and writings during his time as a US Circuit judge from 2006 until the present. That meant essentially that Kavanaugh then supported and apparently continues to support what is now referred to as the John Yoo doctrine, named after the Department of Justice lawyer who penned the memo that made the case for the president to act unilaterally to do whatever is required in national security cases even if there be no direct or immediate threat. Yoo specifically argued that the president, by virtue of his office, is not bound by the War Crimes Act. This theory of government, also more broadly dubbed the unitary executive, was popularized by Yoo, fellow government lawyer Jay Bybee and Eric Posner of the University of Chicago.
For those who find Kavanaugh unacceptable in terms of his judicial philosophy, this repudiation of the constitutional principle of three branches of government that check each other was enough to disqualify him from a position on the Supreme Court, principally as it impacts on both the first and second articles of the constitution by granting to the president the authority to both begin and continue a war on his own recognizance. It also means that the president on his own authority can suspend first and fourth amendment rights to freedom of speech and association as well as freedom from illegal search. He supported, for example, the government’s “right” to conduct mass searches of private data such as was conducted by the NSA. Kavanaugh supports government authority to legitimize incarceration without trial and to order assassinations and torture. Kavanaugh is also on record as favoring limiting the public’s right to use the courts to redress government overreach. read on...
Sudden concern in Washington over Saudi behavior is puzzling. But the disappearance of a Washington Post writer and the suspicion that the Saudi government is involved has led Washington and particularly the Senate and House to demand some answers. They didn't care much about Saudi involvement with terrorists in Syria or the evil Saudi war on Yemen. Should we break with the Saudis? Yes. Why? Tune in to today's Liberty Report... read on...
