In a very special Liberty Report, today we speak with Benjamin Ahdoot, an Iranian-American of Jewish heritage who just spent three months in Iran. Are the neocons telling us the truth about Iran? Benjamin sets them straight! Don't miss this interview! read on...
PRN was a contractor working directly with the Clinton staff in the handling of the email material and has been the subject of long controversy over its lack of security to handle the classified information that was found on the emails.
The date line is troubling. In February, 2013, Clinton resigned as Secretary of State after making the decision to use the personal server for all of her email communications. Throughout 2014, Clinton staff order PRN to make a series of transfers and to wipe clean computers with emails. read on...
The United States over the weekend denied travel to a former British ambassador, Craig Murray, who was also a British diplomat for some 30 years, and is the author of several books.
Murray has stood twice for election to the House of Commons. He was “honored” by being thrown out of Uzbekistan by its repressive government after risking his life to expose appalling human rights abuses there. He is not a terrorist and is not a social media jihadi. He has no criminal record, no connection to drug smuggling, and does have a return ticket, a hotel reservation and ample funds to cover his expenses.
He is however seen as a threat to the United States.
Ambassador Murray was headed to the US this week to be Master of Ceremonies at an award ceremony honoring John Kiriakou, the CIA torture whistleblower. Kiriakou was the only US government official to go to jail in connection with the torture program, and all he did was help expose it to the media. The event is sponsored by Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence (of which I am a member.) read on...
Why should American citizens subsidize the R&D and manufacture of military materials only to have them sold overseas to the profit of the arms manufacturers? And why on earth would we send more weapons to Saudi Arabia with its abysmal human rights record and brutal war on Yemen? Very special guest Senator Rand Paul joins today's Liberty Report to let us know what he's doing to stop the arms floodgate... read on...
The humanoid collective is in an unforgiving snit over the refusal of NFL quarterback, Colin Kaepernick, to stand for the playing of the national anthem. For a society that was once grounded in a greater tolerance for individual values and preferences, this reaction is another symptom of a system that no longer serves – much less tolerates – the diverse nature of human life.
Why would an intelligent person in any country want to stand for and sing a “national anthem?” How would such an act contribute to the well-being of someone who engaged in it? Let me state, at the outset, that in all matters relating to my conduct, I am a firm agnostic when it comes to evaluating the conduct others expect me to follow. Consensus-based definitions of reality or propriety do not impress me.
My mind will always insist upon asking my favorite word in the English language – the word that children ask of the adults in their lives until they are forced to abandon its use – “why?” If you would like me to follow a prescribed course of behavior, please inform me how my doing so would benefit me. read on...
The media would do us all a service if they didn’t cover terrorism so much, because then people “wouldn’t know what’s going on.” That little bit of wisdom comes courtesy of US Secretary of State John Kerry.
Kerry’s offhand remark was made during a visit to Bangladesh last week, prompting immediate criticism and even subsequent clarification from State Department spokesperson John Kirby.
The secretary of state’s suggestion that simply ignoring terrorism might help it go away and that an ignorant public is somehow desirable is ludicrous – but maybe it just came out wrong.
Let’s give him the benefit of the doubt on that. Let’s assume what Kerry meant to say is that if the media didn’t make ‘insta-celebrities’ out of terrorists and play wall-to-wall coverage of major terrorist events, it would inspire fewer copycats and lone wolf attackers of the kind we’ve seen in recent months. If that’s what Kerry meant to say, he’d have a fairly reasonable point. read on...
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s recent speech on immigration really missed the point. I understand Trump’s frustration over the US government’s inability to control the US borders and keep out those who would come to this country illegally. Trump was right that the media ignore legitimate questions we have on our immigration policy and he is right that special interests have a great interest in maintaining the status quo.
However when it comes to really solving the immigration problem he gets it all wrong. And instead of making us more free and prosperous, his solutions will accelerate our downward slide toward authoritarianism. read on...
The U.S. government is placing pressure on major banks to keep their distance from "illicit" Venezuelan financial flows, specifically identifying Petroleos de Venezuela as a problem area.
This has resulted in Citibank announcing that it will stop processing debt payments to Petroleos de Venezuela's bondholders. The bank has cited "a periodic risk-management review."
The bank told bondholders that it would end its role as Petroleos de Venezuela's principal pay agent and suspend its processing of at least seven debt bonds, including $5 billion in debt payments due in October and November of this year.
If Petroleos de Venezuela can not find another major bank processor, the state oil firm will not be able to make its payments and all hell could break lose. read on...
What a mess! In the crazy Syrian war, US-backed and armed groups are fighting other US-backed rebel groups. How can this be?
It is so because the Obama White House had stirred up the war in Syria but then lost control of the process. When the US has a strong president, he can usually keep the military and intelligence agencies on a tight leash.
But the Obama administration has had a weak secretary of defense and a bunch of lady strategists who are the worst military commanders since Louis XV, who put his mistress, Madame de Pompadour, in charge of French military forces during the Seven Year’s War. The French were routed by the Prussians. France’s foe, Frederick the Great of Prussia, named one of his dogs, "la Pompadour."
As a result, the two arms of offensive US strategic power, the Pentagon, and CIA, went separate ways in Syria. Growing competition between the US military and militarized CIA broke into the open in Syria. read on...
Just a few short years ago, Yemen was judged to be among the poorest countries in the world, ranking 154th out of the 187 nations on the U.N.’s Human Development Index. One in every five Yemenis went hungry. Almost one in three was unemployed. Every year, 40,000 children died before their fifth birthday, and experts predicted the country would soon run out of water.
Such was the dire condition of the country before Saudi Arabia unleashed a bombing campaign in March 2015, which has destroyed warehouses, factories, power plants, ports, hospitals, water tanks, gas stations, and bridges, along with miscellaneous targets ranging from donkey carts to wedding parties to archaeological monuments. Thousands of civilians — no one knows how many — have been killed or wounded. Along with the bombing, the Saudis have enforced a blockade, cutting off supplies of food, fuel, and medicine. A year and a half into the war, the health system has largely broken down, and much of the country is on the brink of starvation.
This rain of destruction was made possible by the material and moral support of the United States, which supplied most of the bombers, bombs, and missiles required for the aerial onslaught. (Admittedly, the United Kingdom, France, and other NATO arms exporters eagerly did their bit.) US Navy ships aided the blockade. read on...
