Obama, Intelligence Community Continue Crack Down on Transparency
April 21, 2014
According to Stephen Aftergood at Secrecy News, a new intelligence directive forbids any official from talking with the media and threatens “termination of employment” or “criminal prosecution” for any violators. The Director of National Intelligence has forbidden most intelligence community employees from discussing “intelligence-related information” with a reporter unless they have specific authorization to do […]
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Despite End to Afghan War and (Maybe) the AUMF, Obama Upholds Indefinite Detention
April 21, 2014
Spencer Ackerman has a great piece up at the Guardian exploring what is likely to happen to the government’s legal justification for holding people under indefinite detention at Guantanamo Bay once the U.S.’s combat operations in Afghanistan are over in December. The detention system exercised by the Bush and Obama administration, according to Ackerman, “may […]
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Ron Paul: The Nevada Range War
April 18, 2014
Charles Goyette talks with Ron Paul on their weekly podcast about cattle rustlers, cowboys on horseback, and the Nevada showdown with the BLM. Violence has been averted… for now. But what happens next? And a special conversation with Pat Buchanan who has long been warning about the dangers of expanding NATO to Moscow’s’ front door. […]
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‘Why Should the State Have the Right To Determine Unilaterally Who Is A Terrorist?’
April 17, 2014
The people being targeted in the Obama administration’s drone war are “suspects” who deserve due process, renowned linguist and political radical Noam Chomsky said during a talk at Google this month. There’s a debate in the United States, Chomsky said, about the legitimacy of President Obama unilaterally targeting American citizens, like Anwar al-Awlaki, for assassination […]
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Mythical “Jew Registration” in East Ukraine a Media Sensation
April 17, 2014
Determined not to let a good piece of rhetoric go to waste just because it was untrue and discredited nearly 24 hours ago, Western media outlets are running frenzied stories about Jews in the protester-held Eastern Ukraine cities being forced to register, providing a new chance to make World War 2 comparisons, and advancing the […]
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Condemning ‘The Aggression We Ourselves Will Not Practice’
April 17, 2014
Whenever the U.S. gets outraged by the actions of another state, be prepared for elaborate displays of self-deception and hypocrisy. This has surely been on display in the case of the latest outrage in Russia’s annexation of Crimea and meddling in Ukraine. At the Cato Institute’s blog yesterday, Ted Galen Carpenter reiterated a point I’ve […]
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Most Reported Deaths in Syria Have Not Been Committed By Assad Regime
April 16, 2014
The one idea interventionists have to solve the Syrian conflict is to eliminate the Assad regime. Regime change is the solution to the humanitarian calamity, they reason, because the Assad is the one doing all the killing. As Sen. John McCain has repeatedly yelped, “The fact is Bashar Assad has massacred 100,000 people.” Actually, he hasn’t. According […]
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Discredited Conservatives Attack Rand Paul’s Foreign Policy as Naive
April 15, 2014
When faced with ideas of non-intervention in foreign policy, the most common refrain among hawkish Republicans is that such notions are naive, immature, unrealistic, and “wacko.” In reality, it is the foreign policy worldview of the Republican establishment that has been thoroughly discredited as naive and unrealistic. What is most odd is that the right-wingers […]
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The Pulitzer Prize Win for NSA Reporting Vindicates Snowden
April 15, 2014
In a powerful testament to the value of Edward Snowden’s decision to leak, the Pulitzer Prize for journalism was awarded to the Guardian and the Washington Post. This came just days after the lead reporters on Snowden’s NSA stories – Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras, Barton Gellman, and Ewan MacAskill – received the Polk Award for their […]
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