While Americans were obsessing about tomorrow's election, the Obama Administration launched a serious military escalation in Syria. US Special Forces on the ground and jet fighters in the air are deployed in an operation to take Raqqa from ISIS control. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Dunford announced over the weekend that the US and Turkey agreed on a long-term plan for "seizing, holding and governing" the Syrian city. Is this the beginning of a US-recognized rival Syrian government, as Benghazi was in Libya? We discuss in today's Liberty Report... read on...
I have said throughout this presidential campaign that it doesn’t matter much which candidate wins. Both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are authoritarians and neither can be expected to roll back the leviathan state that destroys our civil liberties at home while destroying our economy and security with endless wars overseas. Candidates do not matter all that much, despite what the media would have us believe. Ideas do matter, however. And regardless of which of these candidates is elected, the battle of ideas now becomes critical. read on...
The Russian-Syrian bombing campaign in eastern Aleppo, which has ended at least for the time being, has been described in press reports and op-eds as though it were unique in modern military history in its indiscriminateness. In an usual move for a senior US official, Secretary of State John Kerry called for an investigation of war crimes in Aleppo.
The discussion has been lacking in historical context, however. Certainly the civilian death toll from the bombing and shelling in Aleppo has been high, but many of the strikes may not be all that dissimilar from the major US bombing campaign in Iraq in 2003, nor as indiscriminate as Israel’s recent campaigns in densely populated cities.
The impression that the bombing in Aleppo was uniquely indiscriminate was a result of news reporting and commentary suggesting, by implication, that there are no real military targets in east Aleppo.
But in fact, al-Nusra Front turned Aleppo into the central hub of a massive system of conventional warfare in Aleppo province in late January 2016 when it sent an enormous convoy of at least 200 vehicles with troops and weaponry into eastern Aleppo. A dramatic three-minute al-Nusra video shows what appears to be hundreds of vehicles full of troops and trucks with weapons mounted on them. read on...
As US officials continue to accuse Russia of meddling with the US presidential election, an accusation that they have provided no evidence whatsoever to support, let’s review some of the US government’s history of meddling with elections in others countries.
1. In 1951, the democratically elected parliament of Iran elected a man named Mohammad Mossadegh to be Iran’s prime minister. Mossadegh angered British Empire officials by nationalizing British oil interests in the country.
British officials then turned to the CIA for assistance. In 1953, the CIA secretly fomented a violent coup in Iran, which succeeded in ousting Mossadegh from power and making the Shah of Iran the supreme unelected dictator of the country.
To fortify the Shah’s dictatorial hold on power, the CIA helped organize and train the his domestic police force, the Savak, which was essentially a combination of the CIA, the NSA, and the military. Part of the CIA’s training involved teaching Savak agents the art of torture.
For the next 26 years, the Iranian people suffered under one of the most brutal and tyrannical dictatorships in the world, one that US officials fully supported and called an ally and friend of the United States. read on...
The venerable New York Times ran a story saying Donald Trump lies about the height of his buildings.
For no apparent reason, the Times resurrected some information from 1979 saying Trump insisted on counting the basement levels of his signature Trump Tower in the overall count of how many floors the building has. The Times compares this lie to “reports” that Trump adds an inch to his actual body height in his bio materials, and also repeated the gag line that he boasted about how long his penis is (no word on whether it is or is not actually longer than expected.)
You have to wade down to paragraph 12 to learn other New York developers use the same count-the-basements levels gimmick to be able to advertise their buildings as taller. There is absolutely no news. read on...
The 2016 election campaign is mortifying millions of Americans in part because the presidency has become far more dangerous in recent times. Since Sept. 11, 2001, we have lived in a perpetual emergency, which supposedly justifies routinely ignoring the law and Constitution. And both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton have signaled that power grabs will proliferate in the next four years.
Politicians talk as if voting magically protects the rights of everyone within a 50-mile radius of the polling booth. But the ballots Americans have cast in presidential elections since 2000 did nothing to constrain the commander in chief.
President George W. Bush’s declaration in 2000 that America needed a more “humble” foreign policy did not deter him from vowing to “rid the world of evil” and launching the most catastrophic war in American history. Eight years later, Barack Obama campaigned as the candidate of peace and promised “a new birth of freedom.” But that did not stop him from bombing seven nations, claiming a right to assassinate American citizens, and championing Orwellian total surveillance. read on...
The Pentagon’s five year plan has been planted (or in Pentagon-speak, “front loaded”) with the seed money for a top-to-bottom modernization of our nuclear forces — a new bomber, new inter-continental ballistic missiles (ICBM) (even though the Minutemen III has just been completely modernized and is essentially a new missile), new nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines (SSBM), upgraded (read “new”) submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBM), a new cruise missile, and big upgrade (read “new”) to the B-61 dial-a-yield nuclear bomb (including precision guidance which implies going back to the looney tit-for-tat nuclear war-fighting doctrines of late 1970s), a new nuclear-hardened satellite based command and control system to manage all these goodies in a nuclear war, even more money for the strategic defense initiative (SDI) (the shield to protect the aforementioned swords), and a rebuilding of the nuclear lab infrastructure. read on...
If ISIS is such a mortal threat to the United States, why has US military action in Iraq and Syria been proceeding at such a leisurely pace? Is it possible that ISIS and al-Qaeda in Syria are being used -- or even supported -- by the US and its allies as a "regime change" weapon against Syria's Assad government? The US pursued this policy before, when it used Saudi-trained radicals to fight a Soviet-backed government in Afghanistan. Those radicals became al-Qaeda... read on...
It is common in presidential campaigns for surrogates to speak at events or take part in media interviews where they vouch for a presidential candidate. Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton has many such surrogates, including her former presidential primary opponent Bernie Sanders, her husband and former United States President Bill Clinton, and First Lady Michelle Obama. Hillary Clinton’s campaign, as is typical of presidential campaigns, also uses Clinton’s vice presidential running mate Tim Kaine as a surrogate. What is unusual is that Bill Weld, the vice presidential nominee of the Libertarian Party, has also joined the ranks of Clinton surrogates.
Weld, interviewed Tuesday at MSNBC by Rachel Maddow, said that he was on her show “to vouch for Hillary Clinton.” And vouch for Clinton he did throughout the interview.
Asked by Maddow if people should vote for the Libertarian presidential ticket in states where there appears to be a close race between Clinton and Republican nominee Donald Trump, Weld answered that Weld fears “for the country” if Trump is elected, that Trump is “stirring up envy and resentment and even hatred,” and that Trump threatens US foreign policy and the nation’s “position in the world at large.” Weld did not say “vote for Clinton,” but it is easy for viewers of the interview to fill in those blanks. read on...
Mandatory vaccinations are about to open up a new frontier for government control. Through the war on drugs, bureaucrats arbitrarily dictate what people can and can’t put into their bodies, but that violation pales in comparison to forcibly medicating millions against their will. Voluntary and informed consent are essential in securing individual rights, and without it, self-ownership will never be respected.
The liberal stronghold of California is trailblazing the encroaching new practice and recently passed laws mandating that children and adults must have certain immunizations before being able to attend schools or work in certain professions. The longstanding religious and philosophical exemptions that protect freedom of choice have been systematically crushed by the state.
California’s Senate Bill 277 went into effect on July 1st, 2016, and marked the most rigid requirements ever instituted for vaccinations. The law forces students to endure a total of 40 doses to complete the 10 federally recommended vaccines while allowing more to be added at any time. Any family that doesn’t go along will have their child barred from attending licensed day care facilities, in-home daycares, public or private schools, and even after school programs. read on...
