Category: News

While the US government continues to face – and vigorously deny – charges that it secretly helps ISIS and other extremists in Syria to keep alive Obama’s regime-change policy for Assad, Washington’s closest ally in the region makes little pretense that it is at war with al-Qaeda and other extremists.

In fact, Israel is openly coming to the rescue of al-Qaeda’s Jabhat al-Nusra just beyond the border of Israel-occupied Golan Heights.

Not only is Israel making no secret of its assistance to the same group responsible for the 9/11 attacks against the United States, Tel Aviv is inviting western media to “embed” with Israeli troops as they embark upon dangerous rescue missions into Syria. Friday’s Daily Mail ran an article complete with photos and “IDF Footage” of the Israeli army crossing into Syria to rescue members of al-Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria after they were wounded by Syrian government forces fighting back the al-Qaeda/ISIS-led insurgency.

This is not just a one-off emergency aid mission. According to the article, Israel has been running a three-year medical assistance program for al-Qaeda fighters in southern Syria. The article estimates that Israel has patched up at least 1,600 Islamist extremists and sent many back to battle the secular Syrian government. The missions have been undertaken at great danger to the Israeli soldiers involved and at significant expense for a small country: more than $13 million dollars spend thus far.

Continue reading “Israel’s al-Qaeda Rescue Program”

Awesome interview on the Tom Woods Show.

The just-war tradition is a much-heralded aspect of moral reflection in the Western world. But does this series of criteria for the acceptability of particular wars really serve the purpose of limiting war? It’s a question I’ve changed my mind on in recent years, and Laurie Calhoun helps me to work through the issue in today’s episode.

Listen to audio only here.

When Edward Snowden in early June 2013 began to reveal classified data showing criminal collect-it-all surveillance programs operated by the U.S. government’s National Security Agency, former NSA professionals became freer to spell out the liberties taken with the Bill of Rights, as well as the feckless, counterproductive nature of bulk electronic data collection.

On Jan. 7, 2014, four senior retired specialists with a cumulative total of 144 years of work with NSA – William Binney, Thomas Drake, Edward Loomis, and Kirk Wiebe – prepared a Memorandum for the President providing a comprehensive account of the problems at NSA, together with suggestions as to how they might be best addressed.

The purpose was to inform President Obama as fully as possible, as he prepared to take action in light of Snowden’s revelations.

On Jan. 23, 2015 in Berlin, Binney was honored with the annual Sam Adams Award for Integrity in Intelligence. Ed Snowden was live-streamed-in for the occasion, and said, “Without Bill Binney there would be no Ed Snowden.” (Binney had been among the first to speak out publicly about NSA abuses; apparently that emboldened Snowden to do what he did.)

Continue reading “Ray McGovern on the Courage From Whistleblowing”

The US-led war on Afghanistan has lasted some 15 years and cost well over a trillion dollars. Yet Afghanistan is in arguably worse shape than when the US set out to “liberate” it from the Taliban. In fact, the Taliban are conducting ever bolder strikes against targets of psychological significance such as the airport in Kandahar this week. The US war in Afghanistan is lost, but no one in Washington will admit it because it is too profitable to the military-industrial complex, and the admission would reveal the bankruptcy of the “regime change” and “nation-build” that is at the center of US foreign policy. Instead they will press on, taking with them the lives of many more war victims and untold resources. Today’s Liberty Report takes a look at the US slow-motion defeat in Afghanistan:

Reprinted from The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity.

For us old-timers, memories of those post-9/11 days persist like that rotting squirrel stuck somewhere under your back porch.

One of the features of those dirty days was the panic index, actually called the terrorism alert system, created by the then-new Department of Homeland Security. The system featured a five-step, color-coded “alert level” ranging from black (normal) to red (attack imminent.) The system was criticized for doing little more than promoting a constant background hum of anxiety when it basically got stuck at “elevated risk” for nearly eight years.

The Obama administration, in 2010, replaced the old five step system with a new two step one: imminent and elevated. It too got stuck in elevated mode and faded into obscurity. Most people today don’t even know it exists.

That is now over. Following the events of San Bernardino, the Department of Homeland Security announced this week that a new level will be added to cover less serious threats, though officials declined to say what it will be called. “It wouldn’t be specifics like time and place,” one of the officials said. “It would be along the lines of terrorists have expressed interest in attacking this type of target.”

Continue reading “Everyone Panic, Now! US Will Add a Third Level to Terror Warnings”

Just like their Sugar Daddy America bombed a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan “by accident,” the Saudis bombed for the second time this year a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Yemen.

But it’s OK – just like the U.S., the Saudis will conduct an investigation of themselves, no doubt leading to the conclusion that as in Afghanistan, it was all a mistake.

Under any variant of the rules of war, international law and just plain humanity, it is illegal, wrong and immoral to bomb a medical facility. Doctors Without Borders, an international nongovernmental organization, is however an attractive target in modern war, because they treat all people who need medical care equally. That means they may be bandaging up a civilian child in one bed while working on a “rebel” fighter in the next bed. They believe strongly in helping those who require help.

Continue reading “Saudis Bomb Doctors Without Borders Hospital in Yemen”