Category: News

Reprinted from The Library of Economics and Liberty:

The National Commission on Military, National, and Public Service issued a report in March recommending that Congress “eliminate male-only registration and expand draft eligibility to all individuals of the appropriate age cohort,” because “expanding draft eligibility to women will enable the military to access the most qualified individuals, regardless of sex.” Women have been eligible to occupy all combat roles since 2015.

This is from Ella Lubell, “Senate Considers Requiring Women to Register for the Draft,” Reason Hit and Run, July 22, 2021.

Lubell also points out the ACLU’s disappointing stance:

“Like many laws that appear to benefit women, men-only registration actually impedes women’s full participation in civic life,” says the ACLU on its website. “Limiting registration to men sends a message that women are unqualified to serve in the military, regardless of individual capabilities and preferences. It reflects an outmoded view that, in the event of a draft, women’s primary duty would be to the home front – and, on the flip side, that men are unqualified to be caregivers.”

This is appalling, especially coming from the ACLU, one of whose founding members, Roger Baldwin, went to prison for refusing to be drafted during World War I. Notice that the ACLU doesn’t mention rights but, instead, wants equal oppression. What would send a message to women that they are unqualified to serve would be a policy by the U.S. military that they can’t serve. But they can. The actual message that the US government is sending to women by not forcing them to register for a draft is that the government respects women’s rights. The government should also start respecting men’s rights.

Continue reading “What’s Wrong with Registering Women for the Draft?”

The Israeli government’s panicked reaction to the announcement that Ben & Jerry’s would no longer sell its products in the occupied Palestinian territories has been amusing to watch, but it is part of a chilling campaign to stifle free speech here in the US and to delegitimize all protest of Israel’s illegal occupation. Senior government officials have labeled the decision to respect international law and not sell in the occupied territories as anti-Semitism and terrorism, and they have called on almost three dozen American state governors to enforce their blatantly unconstitutional anti-BDS laws against the company. On one level, this is absurd and the Israeli government is making a mockery of itself, but this is no laughing matter.

When you watch the Israeli government denounce an ice cream company for recognizing the distinction between Israel’s illegal settlements and Israel itself, it is important to remember that the same government wants to erase that distinction. The government would not be reacting so furiously if it were otherwise. When the Israeli government launches an all-out assault on a company for boycotting illegal settlements in illegally occupied territories as an attack on Israel, it is because they see those settlements as an integral part of Israel and they mean to keep expanding them. While they pursue their creeping annexation, they want to intimidate foreign companies from protesting against it. The government wants to make an example of Ben & Jerry’s because they fear that more companies will follow suit unless the costs of doing so are deemed to be prohibitive.

Read the rest of the article at SubStack

Daniel Larison is a weekly columnist for Antiwar.com and maintains his own site at Eunomia. He is former senior editor at The American Conservative. He has been published in the New York Times Book Review, Dallas Morning News, World Politics Review, Politico Magazine, Orthodox Life, Front Porch Republic, The American Scene, and Culture11, and was a columnist for The Week. He holds a PhD in history from the University of Chicago, and resides in Lancaster, PA. Follow him on Twitter.

This week on Talk World Radio: Why won’t disproven Russiagate ever go away? Our guest Ray McGovern was an infantry/intelligence officer in the early Sixties, and became a CIA analyst. His duties eventually included chairing National Intelligence Estimates and preparing The President’s Daily Brief. He conducted the one-on-one morning briefings of President Reagan’s five most senior national security officials, including VP Bush, from 1981 to 1985. In retirement Ray co-founded Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) — an attempt by intelligence veterans to hold former colleagues to account for “fixing” intelligence to “justify” wars like Iraq. His website is https://RayMcGovern.com.

Ray’s recent article for Antiwar.com: “The Guardian: Regurgitating the Russia-Gate Canard.”

On COI #138, Kyle breaks down several important news stories from around the world. The US Department of Justice announced new rules that prevent federal prosecutors from seeking the records of journalists that publish leaked information. However, Attorney General Merrick Garland left open massive loopholes to snoop on reporters if they are suspected of being “terrorists” or “foreign agents.” Kyle also discusses a significant probe into Pegasus, a spyware program developed by Israeli firm NSO Group.

Subscribe on YouTube and audio only.

Interfax-Ukraine reported that the Danish ambassador to Ukraine paid a two-day visit to the front line of his host country’s war in the Donbass region. The press report phrased its account of the event like this: “On July 19-20, a delegation of the Kingdom of Denmark, led by Ambassador Ole Egberg Mikkelsen, visited the area of the Joint Forces Operation (JFO), and also met with representatives of Luhansk Regional Military-Civil Administration.” On the latter score, that is the part of Lugansk still under control of the Ukrainian government.

The Danish delegation, for all the world as though its members were military attachés, or military advisors, met with Deputy Commander of the Joint Forces Eduard Moskaliov and toured an observation post of a Ukrainian armed forces unit that is assigned to the Joint Forces Operation, until recently the Anti-Terrorist Operation. (National Anti-Terrorist Operation would have provided a more accurate acronym.)

Continue reading “Ukrainian Conscripts Kill Kin To Preserve Monarchy in Europe”

On COI #137, Kyle and Will break down the new US Marine deployment to guard the American Embassy in Haiti, which comes amid instability after the assassination of the country’s leader. While President Biden insists there will be no larger stabilization mission, that’s not so clear, as the Marine contingent comes after the White House had already ruled out sending any troops.

Governments worldwide are stepping up their censorship demands on social media platforms, with Twitter seeing a record surge in such requests in 2020. The Biden administration also recently admitted to pressuring Facebook to scrub so-called vaccine disinformation from the site, literally “flagging problematic posts” for deletion.

As anti-government protests erupt in Cuba, the corporate media has spread confusion with several erroneously captioned photos. One image from the Associated Press labeled a large pro-government demonstration as an opposition rally, an error quickly replicated by countless other news outlets. CNN, meanwhile, falsely portrayed a protest in Miami, Florida as taking place in Cuba.

Subscribe on YouTube and audio only.