What's the connection between the Clinton Global Initiative and the NGOs who continue pushing for a "humanitarian" war on Syria? What's the truth behind new claims of Assad's chemical attacks? What about the "White Helmets"? Are they selfless heroes or al-Qaeda PR agents? Veteran journalist Vanessa Beeley joins today's Liberty Report to break down the latest round of war propaganda... read on...
Countering Russia has become a lucrative industry in Washington. In recent years, the think tank business has exploded. But who funds these organizations, who works for them and what are the real agendas at play?
From the start, let’s be clear, the term "think tank" essentially amounts to a more polite way of saying "lobby group." Bar a few exceptions, they exist to serve – and promote – the agendas of their funders.
However, particularly in the United States, the field has become increasingly shady and disingenuous, with lobbyists being given faux academic titles like "Senior Non-Resident Fellow" and "Junior Adjunct Fellow" and the like. And this smokescreen usually serves to cloud the real goals of these operations.
Think tanks actually originate from the Europe of the Dark Ages. That's 9th-century France, to be precise. But the modern American movement is modeled on British organizations from around a millennium later, many of which, such as "RUSI (1831)," still exist today. The concept was possibly brought to America by the Scottish-born Andrew Carnegie. And his "Carnegie Endowment for International Peace" (1910) is still going strong.
Yet, the real boom in the "think tank" industry came with the era of globalization. With a 200-percent rise in numbers since 1970. And in recent years, they’ve become more transnational, with foreign states and individuals sponsoring them in order to gain curry favor in Washington. read on...
Responses to the recently-released House Intelligence Committee memo are framed by the mainstream media according to whether viewers are on "Team Democrat" or "Team Republican." You are supposed to think either that Rep. Nunes is a hero or that the Republicans are trying to destroy everything that is holy and good about the FBI and intelligence community. But what about those of us on "Team Liberty"? We look at the FISA memo and see another in a long line of abuses of our liberties by the National Security State. Author and journalist Jim Bovard joins today's Liberty Report to give us the real historical context for recent revelations... read on...
Tehran has begun highlighting in loud decibel its hitherto-low key voice of disquiet that the United States is transferring the Islamic State* fighters from Syria and Iraq, where they have been defeated, to Afghanistan.
On January 30, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei said: "The US goal of transferring the ISIL terrorists to Afghanistan is aimed at creating the justification for its continued deployment in the region and for buttressing the security of the Zionist regime." Indeed, any statement at the level of the Supreme Leader invariably draws attention as signaling an authoritative policy directive based on careful decision taken in the light of relevant intelligence inputs.
The point is, three days before Khamenei spoke, Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) had an encounter with ISIS terrorists infiltrating Iran’s western province of Kermanshah from Iraq. By all accounts, it was a major encounter in which three IRGC personnel were killed, including an officer of the rank of major. According to the commander of the IRGC’s ground forces, Gen. Mohammad Pakpour, as many as sixteen ISIS terrorists were captured. Incidents of this nature are happening with increasing frequency along Iran’s borders and Iranian security agencies are busting large caches of explosives and arms smuggled across the border, but this is the first time such a big encounter took place.
Significantly, the senior foreign policy advisor to the parliament speaker, Hossein Amir Abdollahian, who is an influential voice in the Iranian diplomatic circuit, raised the issue of the US’ covert transfer of ISIS fighters to “northern Afghanistan” at a meeting with Jan Kubis, chairman of the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq on January 28. read on...
Americans like to think of their country as different from those run by military regimes. They are only fooling themselves. Ever since the federal government was converted into a national-security state after World War II (without a constitutional amendment authorizing the conversion), it has been the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA that have run the government, just like in countries governed by military dictatorships.
Oh sure, the façade is maintained — the façade that is ingrained in all of us in civics or government classes in high school and college: that the federal government is composed of three co-equal, independent branches that are in charge of the government.
But just a façade. It’s fake. It’s a lie.
It’s true that the federal government used to consist of three branches. But that quaint notion disintegrated when the federal government was converted to what is known as a “national-security state” after World War II. Even though it was done without a constitutional amendment, that conversion effectively added a fourth branch of government to the federal government — the national-security branch, which consists of the NSA, the CIA, and the Pentagon.
The addition of that fourth branch fundamentally altered the original three-branch concept, especially because the fourth branch quickly became the most powerful branch. The reason is because ultimately government is force, and the fourth branch is where the most force was concentrated within the new, altered governmental structure. read on...
The release of the House Intelligence Committee’s memo on the FBI’s abuse of the FISA process set off a partisan firestorm. The Democrats warned us beforehand that declassifying the memo would be the end the world as we know it. It was reckless to allow Americans to see this classified material, they said. Agents in the field could be harmed, sources and methods would be compromised, they claimed. read on...
The Second Amendment (Amendment II) to the United States Constitution protects the right of the people to keep and bear arms... and, as The Duran's Alex Christoforou writes, according to California Congressman Adam Schiff, those pesky Russians are using bots to promote the second amendment with an ultimate goal of having Americans"‘kill each other."
Once again, another brilliant plan hatched by Putin... good thing Schiff caught on to it and can now begin seizing American’s guns so as to thwart Russia’s evil plan.
On Thursday Democrat Schiff spoke to a crowd at the University of Pennsylvania, where the TDS – "Russia hysteria virus" infected Schiff told the crowd Russian ads promoted the Second Amendment during the 2016 election “so we will kill each other.”
Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) said Thursday that Russia promoted content that supported the Second Amendment on social media during the 2016 election because they wanted Americans to kill one another. read on...
Last summer, I was positioned just across the border from the Syrian town of Afrin around which Turkish and Kurdish and, possibly, American forces, are now poised for a head-on clash. It seems crazy to me that anyone would want to fight over this one-donkey farm town. We were there on a mission to rescue wild animals trapped in a zoo in war-torn Aleppo, Syria. read on...
"I don’t have the evidence,” Mattis said. “What I am saying is that other groups on the ground - NGOs, fighters on the ground - have said that sarin has been used, so we are looking for evidence.”
This week the American public was once again bombarded by fresh headlines alleging the Syrian government under President Bashar al-Assad gassed its own people. And in predictable fashion the usual threat of US military force soon followed.
Except of course rather than "alleging" a chemical incident, all the usual suspects from CNN pundits to State Department bureaucrats to Pentagon officials in typical fashion are opting for the simpler "Assad did it" narrative. State Department spokesperson Heather Nauertstated Thursday, "Russia is making the wrong choice by not exercising its unique influence. To allow the Syria regime to use chemical weapons against its own people is unconscionable. We will pursue accountability."
Nauert's statement was a repeat of talking points from last week's chemical attack claims, wherein both she and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson ultimately blamed Russia. But like with other recent chemical attack allegations, the claims couldn't be more vague or poorly sourced, yet was still enough for U.S. officials to issue more direct threats of US military action against Assad. read on...
At a time of heightened tensions in the Middle East, U.S. forces have been deployed in Israel ahead of a large-scale joint Israel-U.S. military exercise set to start next week, the Times of Israel reports.
According to the Times, the drill will simulate a major conflict in which Israel is attacked with thousands of missiles. Known as the biennial Juniper Cobra military exercise and in its ninth installment, the simulation is clearly aimed at confronting Hezbollah’s alleged arsenal of between 100,000 and 150,000 missiles.
Approximately 3,200 soldiers from the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) and the U.S. European Command (EUCOM) took part in the February 2016 drill of the same name.
Despite the fact that the Israeli air force routinely strikes Hezbollah targets in Syria, it seems likely that these drills are intended to target Hezbollah in Lebanon, instead. On Wednesday, Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman said that if war were to erupt again, Beirut would “pay the full price” for Iran’s presence in the country.
“Lebanon’s army and Hezbollah are the same — they will all pay the full price in the event of an escalation,” Lieberman also said. “If a conflict does break out in the north, ‘boots on the ground’ remains an option. We won’t allow scenes like in 2006, where we saw citizens of Beirut on the beach while Israelis in Tel Aviv sat in shelters… If people in Tel Aviv will be in bomb shelters, all of Beirut will be in bomb shelters.” read on...
