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Biden Taps Veteran Interventionist Samantha Power to Head USAID

Thursday January 14, 2021

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On Wednesday, Joe Biden announced that he will nominate Samantha Powerto head the US Agency for International Development (USAID).

Power served as ambassador to the UN for President Obama from 2013 to 2017. Before that, she worked on Obama’s National Security Council, where she played an instrumental role in pushing for US intervention in Libya in 2011.

Power argued in favor of US intervention in Libya under the guise of protecting human rights and preventing genocide. She was joined in her crusade by then-Secretary of State Hilary Clinton and Susan Rice, who served as the UN ambassador at the time.

Reports from 2011 say the pressure from Power, Rice, and Clinton is what led Obama to intervene militarily in Libya, even though his other top advisors were against it. Then-Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates would later say that in a “51 to 49” decision, Obama decided to bomb Libya.
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How Silicon Valley, in a Show of Monopolistic Force, Destroyed Parler

Thursday January 14, 2021

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Critics of Silicon Valley censorship for years heard the same refrain: tech platforms like Facebook, Google and Twitter are private corporations and can host or ban whoever they want. If you don’t like what they are doing, the solution is not to complain or to regulate them. Instead, go create your own social media platform that operates the way you think it should.

The founders of Parler heard that suggestion and tried. In August, 2018, they created a social media platform similar to Twitter but which promised far greater privacy protections, including a refusal to aggregate user data in order to monetize them to advertisers or algorithmically evaluate their interests in order to promote content or products to them. They also promised far greater free speech rights, rejecting the increasingly repressive content policing of Silicon Valley giants.

Over the last year, Parler encountered immense success. Millions of people who objected to increasing repression of speech on the largest platforms or who had themselves been banned signed up for the new social media company.
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The Pentagon Speaks

Thursday January 14, 2021

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The Joint Chiefs of Staff have spoken. Issuing a remarkable memorandum to all members of the Armed Forces, the JCS have declared that Joe Biden will be the new president of the United States. The memo may have been not only one to military personnel but also to President Trump: No matter how convinced you are that the election was stolen from you, don’t even think about remaining in power because we will ensure your forcible exit from the White House.
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Trump Impeachment 2.0: Necessity Or Farce?

Wednesday January 13, 2021

After the January 6th mob ruckus inside the US Capitol building, the US House, led by Speaker Nancy Pelosi, rushed to put together articles of impeachment (again) for President Trump. Trump, they claim, led an insurrection on that day and must be held accountable. Constitutional law professor Jonathan Turley recently wrote in The Hill of the dangers of lowering the bar for impeachment. Do the House Democrats have a point that Trump must be removed from office days before he is removed from office, or is Impeachment 2.0 as much of a farce as Impeachment 1.0? Watch today's Liberty Report...
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Here Comes the Post- 'Invasion' Crackdown

Wednesday January 13, 2021

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Just as thunder follows lightning, you can rest assured that Democrats, the Deep State, and the mainstream press are going to use recent events at the Capitol to crack down on civil liberties. Why let a good opportunity to expand governmental power go to waste?

Why, some of these people are even alluding to such things as a “fascist” attempt to take over the government, a “putsch,” and the “Reichstag Fire.” And why not? They know that Hitler was able to use the terrorist firebombing of the Reichstag to get the Enabling Act passed, which gave him “temporary,” emergency, omnipotent, and tyrannical powers to enable him to protect “national security.”

That’s what Democrats and liberals are now doing. They are setting the stage for another civil-liberties crackdown, just like the one that they and Republicans and conservatives engaged in after the 9/11 attacks. That’s when we got the so-called USA PATRIOT Act, the illegal telecom scandal, the massive secret surveillance schemes, assassinations of “terrorists,” indefinite detention, kangaroo military tribunals, Gitmo, secret prisons, denial of due process, denial of speedy trial, torture, and much more — all to protect us and keep us safe from the “terrorists” and the Muslims.

Democrats and liberals, as well as the mainstream press, are referring to the event at the Capitol as an “invasion.” But that’s patently ridiculous. An invasion is what the US government did to Iraq. Troops shooting people. Planes dropping bombs on people and buildings. Torture of people at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere. Indefinite detention. POWs. Massive death, suffering, and destruction.
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Can Burns Change the CIA?

Wednesday January 13, 2021

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In nominating former Deputy Secretary of State William Burns to be CIA director, President-elect Joe Biden has chosen a highly experienced diplomat to lead a hydra-headed agency.

But, if past is precedent, the highest hydras who head calcified fiefdoms at CIA can be expected to resist any real control from the top. They are more likely to try to co-opt top management or make end runs around it. This is not new.

Most senior CIA operations officers, in particular, have never been comfortable with meaningful supervision, lest it lead to reining them in or impinging on their ample budgets. With secrecy always in play (including strict application of the “need-to-know” principle), Burns will need a good deputy — preferably a strong outsider — to avoid being blind-sided — or diddled.

Burns lacks proven experience managing organizations as large and variegated as the agency, so the jury is out on whether he will be able to do it.

One endemic challenge is to ensure that substantive intelligence analysis is not tainted by CIA’s operations. In recent years, analysts have been thrown together with operations officers, making it very difficult for analysts to maintain the distance needed to evaluate objectively the efficacy of policies and actions in which operations colleagues close by are fully engaged.
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Ron Paul Speaks Out On Social Media Dominance

Tuesday January 12, 2021

The ongoing purges and restrictions of social media accounts by Big Tech are continuing, with Ron Paul's own main social media outlet having been restricted yesterday for a vague charge of "violation of community standards." In today's Liberty Report Ron Paul reflects on the dominance of social media and Big Tech in our daily discourse and how we can still promote peace, prosperity, and liberty. Watch today's Liberty Report...
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Ron Paul Posts Criticism of Censorship on Social Media Shortly Before Facebook Blocks

Tuesday January 12, 2021

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We have been discussing the chilling crackdown on free speech that has been building for years in the United States. This effort has accelerated in the aftermath of the Capitol riot including the shutdown sites like Parler. Now former Texas congressman Ron Paul, 85, has been blocked from using his Facebook page for unspecified violations of “community standards.” Paul’s last posting was linked to an article on the “shocking” increase of censorship on social media. Facebook then proceeded to block him under the same undefined “community standards” policy.

Paul, a libertarian leader and former presidential candidate, has been an outspoken critics of foreign wars and an advocate for civil liberties for decades. He wrote:
“With no explanation other than ‘repeatedly going against our community standards,’ @Facebook has blocked me from managing my page. Never have we received notice of violating community standards in the past and nowhere is the offending post identified.” 
His son is Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) tweeted, “Facebook now considers advocating for liberty to be sedition. Where will it end?”

Even before the riot, Democrats were calling for blacklists and retaliation against anyone deemed to be “complicit” with the Trump Administration. We have been discussing the rising threats against Trump supporters, lawyers, and officials in recent weeks from Democratic members are calling for blacklists to the Lincoln Project leading a a national effort to harass and abuse any lawyers representing the Republican party or President Trump.
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