Lost In Guantánamo: The Faisalabad 16 by Andy Worthington December 8, 2008 On the evening of March 28, 2002, an armed group of FBI agents and Pakistani commandos, accompanied by a hundred local police, stormed Shabaz Cottage, an apartment in a quiet neighborhood in the city of Faisalabad, Pakistan. Their target, who had been tracked by the careless use of a satellite phone, was Zayn al-Abidin Muhammad Husayn, more commonly ...
The Socialist Bailout of Wall Street, Part 1 by Jacob G. Hornberger December 1, 2008 Part 1 | Part 2 The massive federal bailout of U.S. financial firms reflects everything that’s wrong with the economic system of welfare and interventionism under which the United States has operated since at least the 1930s. There are critically important lessons in the bailout that the American people ignore at their peril. While most politicians and mainstream pundits ...
Torture, Preventive Detention and the Terror Trials at Guantánamo by Andy Worthington December 1, 2008 In the real world outside the U.S. Naval Base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, Barack Obama’s pledge to close Guantánamo and scrap the military commissions (the system of trials for “terror suspects” that was established in the wake of the 9/11 attacks) has provoked a rare outburst of frenzied media coverage. With no concrete plans announced by the President-elect’s transition team, ...
Government Failure by Sheldon Richman December 1, 2008 To hear the media pundits and presidential candidates tell it, you’d think Adam Smith had been president for the last eight years and, with a Congress full of free-market advocates, had enacted an agenda of full-blown laissez faire. Had that been the case, we would not be in the mess we are in economically. Alas, it has not been the ...
How Abu Ghraib Was Politically Defused, Part 2 by James Bovard December 1, 2008 Part 1 | Part 2 From the first days of the torture scandal, the Bush administration followed a “deny everything and praise American values” strategy to defuse the controversy over Abu Ghraib. In a May 28, 2004, interview, a French journalist mentioned Abu Ghraib and asked President Bush, “Do you feel responsible in any way for this moral failure in ...
Regime Change: Promise and Peril, Part 1 by Stephen Kinzer December 1, 2008 Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 This article is a transcript of Stephen Kinzer’s speech given on June 6, 2008, at The Future of Freedom Foundation’s conference “Restoring the Republic 2008: Foreign Policy and Civil Liberties.” Thomas Jefferson is the author of the phrase that I take as my guiding principle, and it’s the principle that ...
When Government Replaces God and Family by Christine Smith December 1, 2008 Freedom is the emancipation from the arbitrary rule of other men. — Mortimer Adler It is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent. It knows best what we need and what must be done. We must trust in its absolute power, knowledge, and presence in all areas of our lives. For this overseer is ...
The Crusade Against Population by George Leef December 1, 2008 Population Control: Real Costs, Illusory Benefits by Steven W. Mosher (Transaction Publishers, 2008); 300 pages. You have probably never heard of Dr. Reimert Ravenholt, but he was one of the most influential people of the 20th century. More than anyone else, Ravenholt was responsible for putting together the worldwide network ...
The Rapid Decline of Transparency and Privacy in America (video) by Jonathan Turley November 28, 2008 On June 7, 2008, Jonathan Turley gave the following Speech at FFF’s conference Restoring the Republic 2008: Foreign Policy and Civil Liberties. The speech can viewed below in its entirety.
After 7 Years, Judge Orders Release of Guantánamo Kidnap Victims by Andy Worthington November 24, 2008 On Thursday, in the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., Judge Richard Leon, an appointee of President George W. Bush, delivered a major blow to the outgoing administration’s “war on terror” detention policies by ordering the immediate release of five Algerian-born Bosnian prisoners at Guantánamo, after concluding that the government had provided no credible evidence that, as was alleged, ...