11/28 -- Palestine: More hostages to be exchanged as Gaza ceasefire extended; Julian Assange Still Deserves a Medal of Freedom
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Thomas L. Knapp
Nov 28, 2023, 6:33:47 AM11/28/23
to Freedom News Daily
Freedom News Daily, 11/28/23
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Today's Freedom News:
0) Help! Help! (End the Unbearable Tedium of Year-End Fundraising)
1) Palestine: More hostages to be exchanged as Gaza ceasefire extended
2) Biden plans to invoke war communism law in supposed attempt to lower US prices
3) Ukrainian drone strikes aircraft factory 200 miles behind Russian lines
4) North Korea: Regime redeploys troops to surveillance posts along DMZ after withdrawing from military agreement with South Korea
5) Myanmar: Anti-junta forces claim new ground in north as Chinese troops hold border exercises
6) Sweden: Court sides with Tesla over blocked licence plates
7) New Zealand smoking ban: Health experts criticise new government’s reversal
8) Trump hints at expanded domestic role for the military
9) France: Six teens go on trial for beheading of teacher
10) Scotland: Grand Ole Opry in Glasgow to vote over use of Confederate flag
11) White House: Biden won’t attend COP28 climate conference
12) North Korean, US envoys engage in rare, public sparring match at UN
13) Madagascar: Opposition candidate files lawsuit claiming fraud in presidential election
14) NC: UNC shooting suspect found unfit for trial, sent to mental health facility
15) Musk visits Israel amid discussions on Starlink service in Gaza
16) UK: Activists Glue Shut Barclays Across Kingdom for Financing “Climate Breakdown”
17) NYC: Two arrested in attack on Jewish woman who confronted them for tearing down hostage posters
18) VT: Police arrest suspect in “hate-motivated” shooting of students
19) Brazil: Lula picks his justice minister for supreme court slot
20) Netherlands: Wilders’s coalition scout resigns over fraud scandal
Today's Freedom Commentary:
21) Julian Assange Still Deserves a Medal of Freedom
22) Counterrevolution by education
23) New Zealand’s “Generational” Smoking Ban Repeal: Finally, Taxes Do Some Good
24) From the Osage Native Americans to Britney Spears, the US’s Guardianship System Is Corrupt and Abusive
25) When It Comes to Prescription Drugs, the Washington Post Can’t Even Conceive of Free Trade
26) Hamas Isn’t The Target, It’s The Excuse
27) An Ode to Infrastructure
28) The Case That Could Destroy the Government
29) Can children really lead the way?
30) The Perfect Time to Speak Your Mind
31) NewsGuard Is Selling Its Government-Funded Censorship Tool To Private Companies
32) Night Raids, Tear Gas, and Captivity
33) Don’t Mess with Our Roots
34) A Slow-Motion Gaza, Or How to Carbonize Planet Earth
35) Is the CIA Still Secretly Capturing Americans’ Communications?
36) Apocalypse Trump
37) Want Freedom to Criticize China, Palestine, Mexico, etc.? Protect Criticism of Israel
38) The Right to Self-Defense Has Never Been More Important
39) Quantum Vibe, 11/27/23
40) US troops in Iraq and Syria aren’t “keeping the peace”
41) The New Normal?
42) Team Biden Goes From Denial to Panic
43) Our culture isn’t safe in the hands of the streaming giants
44) From Stonewall to Gaza: What it Means to be a Queer for Palestine
45) Interview: Former Trump Economist Breaks Down the Biden Economy
46) The Probability of Despotism Is Not Zero
47) Trenchard and Gordon: Forgotten Influences on the Founders
48) Revisiting the Argument that Government is Too Small
49) Labor Movement History of Backing Israel, and the Changing Climate Amid the War on Gaza
50) The Economics of Vice and Virtue
Today's Freedom Podcast and Video:
51) Reason Roundtable, 11/27/23
52) Trita Parsi on The Scott Horton Show
53) EconTalk, 11/27/23
54) Ron Paul Liberty Report, 11/27/23
55) Conflicts of Interest, episode 505
56) The Bookmonger, episode 484
57) Stay Free with Russell Brand, episode 254
58) Finding Freedom, episode 413
59) Antiwar News with Dave DeCamp, 11/27/23
60) Free Talk Live, 11/26/23
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0) Help! Help! (End the Unbearable Tedium of Year-End Fundraising)
THANK YOU to long-time supporter / subscribing contributor T, whose $5 payment yesterday kept us from having a “zero-dollar day” and brought our year-end fundraiser total to $1,672.50 (as of 5:30am Eastern on Tuesday)!
https://news.rationalreview.com/support-rrnd
WE’RE ONLY $902.50 AWAY FROM ENDING THIS THING!!! AND ALL OF A SUDDEN I’M IN ALL-CAPS / RED TEXT / PASTING THE SUPPORT URL EVERYWHERE / MULTIPLE EXCLAMATION MARKS MODE!!!
Why? Because the sooner we reach our goal ($5,150, half of which will be covered by supporter GL’s “matching funds” offer once we’ve raised the first $2,575), the sooner I get to almost entirely STFU about money until next October.
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Yours in liberty,
Thomas L. Knapp
Publisher
Rational Review News Digest / Freedom News Daily
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1) Palestine: More hostages to be exchanged as Gaza ceasefire extended
Source: NBC News
“The temporary truce between Israel and Hamas has entered a fifth day after the two sides agreed to extend the pause in fighting to allow for the release of more Israeli hostages and Palestinian [hostages]. Aid trucks have continued to flow into the besieged Gaza Strip under protection of the cease-fire, including much-needed fuel. The humanitarian aid brings relief for civilians who have been suffering for weeks as supplies of food, water and medicine run low amid Israeli bombardment. But the humanitarian situation in the Palestinian enclave ‘remains catastrophic,’ a senior United Nations official has warned.” (11/28/23)
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/live-blog/israel-hamas-war-live-updates-rcna126940
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2) Biden plans to invoke war communism law in supposed attempt to lower US prices
Source: The Guardian [UK]
“The White House has announced it plans to use a cold-war era law to ease supply chain issues that the administrations argues are contributing to higher inflation – a key electoral challenge to Joe Biden’s re-election chances next year as polling consistently suggests voters are not buying his Bidenomics pitch. In a statement, the White House said Biden will use the Defense Production Act to improve the domestic manufacturing of medicines deemed crucial for national security and will convene the first meeting of the president’s supply chain resilience council to announce other measures tied to the production and shipment of goods.” (11/27/23)
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/nov/27/biden-inflation-prices-defense-production-act
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3) Ukrainian drone strikes aircraft factory 200 miles behind Russian lines
Source: The Telegraph [UK]
"A Ukrainian drone has struck a Russian aircraft factory more than 200 miles behind enemy lines. Ukraine’s military intelligence agency (HUR) claimed responsibility for the explosion at the Smolensk Aviation Factory. Footage of the blast showed plumes of black smoke billowing up from the plant, which also produces Kh-59 cruise missiles. Baza, a Russian Telegram channel with links to the military, said two drones were downed over the factory, one of which crashed into the roof and exploded. It said there were no casualties. It is the second time Ukraine has sent drones to attack the factory. A previous raid in October caused widespread damage to production lines." (11/28/23)
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/11/28/russia-ukraine-war-latest-black-sea-fleet-crimea-missiles/
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4) North Korea: Regime redeploys troops to surveillance posts along DMZ after withdrawing from military agreement with South Korea
Source: ABC News
“North Korea has redeployed troops and equipment at the front-line guard posts within the Demilitarized Zone after withdrawing from a military agreement with South Korea last week. The North Korean military has been spotted re-installing surveillance posts, according to surveillance footage provided by the South Korean military Monday. Photos taken by the South Korean Defense Ministry show temporary structures made of wood in eleven locations where they had blown up along the border in accordance with the inter-Korean military agreement signed on September 19, 2018.” (11/27/23)
https://abcnews.go.com/International/north-korea-redeploys-troops-surveillance-posts-dmz-after/story?id=105173788
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5) Myanmar: Anti-junta forces claim new ground in north as Chinese troops hold border exercises
Source: France 24 [French state media]
“Ethnic minority rebels fighting Myanmar’s military junta said they had seized a key trading post on the northern frontier, across the border from where China’s military was conducting exercises to improve combat readiness and emergency response. A month of intense fighting between Myanmar’s ruling military and an alliance of ethnic minority insurgents has displaced tens of thousands of people in the border region, according to the United Nations, with concern growing in Beijing about instability and an influx of refugees. The rebellion has presented the biggest battlefield challenge to Myanmar’s well-equipped military since it seized power in a coup in 2021. Emboldened by the northern offensive, pro-democracy militias increase attacks on security forces elsewhere in the country.” (11/27/23)
https://www.france24.com/en/asia-pacific/20231127-myanmar-rebels-claim-new-ground-in-north-as-chinese-troops-hold-border-exercises
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6) Sweden: Court sides with Tesla over blocked licence plates
Source: Reuters
“A court in Sweden ruled on Monday the country’s transport authority must find a way to get licence plates to Tesla that are being blocked by postal workers, the Aftonbladet newspaper reported. The decision comes hours after the U.S. electric car maker sued the agency and state-run PostNord because postal workers had stopped delivering plates for its new cars. PostNord workers on Nov. 20 joined industrial action aimed at forcing Tesla to sign a collective bargain agreement for mechanics in Sweden, and the transport agency refused to deliver the plates by other means, saying it was contractually bound to use PostNord. However, Norrkoping district court ruled the agency must get the plates to Tesla within seven days or pay a fine of 1 million Swedish crowns ($95,000).” (11/27/23)
https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/tesla-sues-sweden-over-blocked-license-plates-business-daily-di-reports-2023-11-27/
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7) New Zealand smoking ban: Health experts criticise new government’s reversal
Source: BBC News [UK state media]
“New Zealand’s new government says it plans to scrap the nation’s world-leading smoking ban to fund tax cuts. The legislation, introduced under the previous Jacinda Ardern-led government, would have banned cigarette sales next year to anyone born after 2008. Smoking is the leading cause of preventable deaths in New Zealand, and the policy had aimed to stop young generations from picking up the habit. Health experts have strongly criticised the sudden reversal. ‘We are appalled and disgusted … this is an incredibly retrograde step on world-leading, absolutely excellent health measures,’ said Prof Richard Edwards, a tobacco control researcher and public health expert at the University of Otago. Most health groups in New Zealand are appalled by what the government’s done and are calling on them to backtrack,’ he told the BBC.” (11/27/23)
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-67540190
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8) Trump hints at expanded domestic role for the military
Source: SFGate
“Campaigning in Iowa this year, Donald Trump said he was prevented during his presidency from using the military to quell violence in primarily Democratic cities and states. Calling New York City and Chicago ‘crime dens’, the front-runner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination told his audience, ‘The next time, I’m not waiting. One of the things I did was let them run it and we’re going to show how bad a job they do,’ he said. ‘Well, we did that. We don’t have to wait any longer.’ Trump has not spelled out precisely how he might use the military during a second term …. While deploying the military regularly within the country’s borders would be a departure from tradition, the former president already has signaled an aggressive agenda if he wins, from mass deportations to travel bans imposed on certain Muslim-majority countries.” (11/27/23)
https://www.sfgate.com/news/politics/article/trump-hints-at-expanded-role-for-the-military-18516371.php
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9) France: Six teens go on trial for beheading of teacher
Source: Yahoo! News
“Six teenagers go on trial Monday in Paris for their alleged roles in the beheading of a teacher who showed caricatures of the prophet of Islam to his class …. Samuel Paty, a history and geography teacher, was killed on Oct. 16, 2020, near his school in a northwest Paris suburb …. The attacker was in turn shot dead by police. … a teenage girl, who was 13 at the time, is accused of making false allegations for wrongly saying that Paty had asked Muslim students to raise their hands and leave the classroom before he showed the cartoons. … Five other students of Paty’s school, then 14 and 15, are facing charges of criminal conspiracy with the aim of preparing aggravated violence to be committed. They are accused of having waited for Paty for several hours until he left the school and of having identified him to the killer in exchange for promises of payments of 300-350 euros ($348-$406).” (11/27/23)
https://news.yahoo.com/6-teenagers-trial-alleged-role-071809218.html
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10) Scotland: Grand Ole Opry in Glasgow to vote over use of Confederate flag
Source: BBC News [UK state media]
“A showdown is due at Scotland’s most famous country music club over its controversial use of the American Confederate flag. Officials at Glasgow’s Grand Ole Opry banned the flag last month, but members are now voting on its reinstatement. The flag dates to the Civil War era of the 1860s when it was used by slave-owning states in the South. Many Americans now view it as a racist symbol although others defend it as an emblem of southern heritage. The Confederate flag had been the centrepiece of a flag-folding ceremony held at the end of each night at the venue. … A decision to remove the flag had been made by club officials on 9 October — a move that led to the club’s president resigning.” (11/27/23)
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-67546238
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11) White House: Biden won’t attend COP28 climate conference
Source: United Press International
“The White House announced Monday that President Joe Biden will not attend the United Nations Climate Change Conference, COP28, this year, including the world leaders’ summit on Friday and Saturday in Dubai. While the United States will send climate envoy John Kerry and other top officials, Biden’s absence is expected to stand out among the 70,000 delegates who plan to attend. Biden had participated in the last two summits.” (11/27/23)
https://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2023/11/27/joe-biden-skips-cop28-climate/4761701098668/
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12) North Korean, US envoys engage in rare, public sparring match at UN
Source: Reuters
“The United Nations ambassadors of the United States and North Korea sparred at the Security Council on Monday over Pyongyang’s first spy satellite launch and the reasons for growing tensions in a rare, direct, public exchange between the adversaries. After a nearly six-year absence, North Korea again started sending its U.N. envoy to Security Council meetings on its nuclear and ballistic missile programs in July. The 15-member body met on Monday over the Nov. 21 spy satellite launch. At the end of the meeting, U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield and North Korean Ambassador Kim Song made unplanned remarks, engaging in dueling rights-of-reply across the council table, each arguing that their countries are acting defensively.” (11/27/23)
https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/north-korea-us-envoys-engage-rare-public-sparring-match-un-2023-11-27/
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13) Madagascar: Opposition candidate files lawsuit claiming fraud in presidential election
Source: ABC News
“The main opposition candidate in Madagascar said Monday he has filed lawsuits with the country’s highest court seeking to have the results of this month’s national election canceled and incumbent President Andry Rajoelina’s victory declared invalid, claiming fraud. Rajoelina, 49, was announced Saturday as the winner of the Nov. 16 election with 58.95% of the votes, giving him a third term as leader of the Indian Ocean island. Rajoelina’s victory was announced by the national electoral commission but needs to be ratified within nine days by the High Constitutional Court. The runup to the vote saw protests led by a coalition of opposition candidates and the burning of some ballot stations on the eve of election day. Ten of the 12 opposition candidates called for a boycott of the vote, although their names appeared on ballot papers.” (11/27/23)
https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/madagascars-main-opposition-candidate-files-lawsuit-claiming-fraud-105183393
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14) NC: UNC shooting suspect found unfit for trial, sent to mental health facility
Source: SFGate
“The University of North Carolina graduate student charged with fatally shooting his faculty adviser has been found unfit for trial after two mental evaluations, a judge ruled Monday. Tailei Qi, 34, is accused of killing associate professor Zijie Yan in a science building at the state’s flagship public university on Aug. 28. He is being held without bond on charges of first-degree murder and misdemeanor possession of a firearm on educational property. Orange County Superior Court Judge Alyson Grine said Monday that two separate mental evaluations found Qi likely suffers from untreated schizophrenia. ‘Qi demonstrated delusional thinking, experienced auditory hallucinations, engaged in self-harm in the detention center, showed fragmented thought processes that impeded his communication,’ she said.” (11/27/23)
https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/university-of-north-carolina-shooting-suspect-18517755.php
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15) Musk visits Israel amid discussions on Starlink service in Gaza
Source: CBS News
“Elon Musk arrived in Israel on Monday, as Israel announced an agreement that Starlink would only operate in Israel and Gaza with the Israeli government’s approval. Israel’s Minister of Communications Shlomo Karhi announced the agreement on X, the social media platform that Musk owns. ‘Elon Musk, I congratulate you for reaching a principle understanding with the Ministry of Communications under my leadership,’ Karhi wrote. ‘As a result of this significant agreement, Starlink satellite units can only be operated in Israel with the approval of the Israeli Ministry of Communications, including the Gaza Strip.'” [editor’s note: Israel does not “include” the Gaza Strip – TLK] (11/27/23)
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/elon-musk-israel-starlink-internet-gaza-agreement/
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16) UK: Activists Glue Shut Barclays Across Kingdom for Financing “Climate Breakdown”
Source: Common Dreams
“‘We have closed this bank today.’ That’s the opening line on an explanatory poster, plastered on dozens of Barclays branches across the United Kingdom on Monday. ‘Barclays has been on the wrong side of history for centuries,’ the poster continues. ‘Financing the Atlantic slave trade, apartheid in South Africa, weapons, and fossil fuels. $190 billion in finance for fossil fuels since 2015. Time to change. Barclays are choosing short-term profits over a livable future and a lot of us are sick of the measly progress they’re making.’ The posters were left overnight by activists with Extinction Rebellion (XR), sister organization Money Rebellion, and allied groups, who superglued the doors shut at nearly 50 branches, inspired by a 2020 Greenpeace action targeting the bank.” (11/27/23)
https://www.commondreams.org/news/barclays-funding-fossil-fuels
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17) NYC: Two arrested in attack on Jewish woman who confronted them for tearing down hostage posters
Source: New York Post
“Two women have been slapped with hate crime charges for allegedly attacking a Jewish person who confronted them on the Upper West Side for tearing down posters of Israelis kidnapped by Hamas, cops said Monday. Mehwish Omer, 26, surrendered to police Monday morning and was charged with assault and criminal mischief — both as hate crimes …. Her alleged accomplice, Stephanie Gonzalez, 25, was cuffed a week earlier and also faces a hate crime assault rap, as well as an attempted robbery charge, cops said. The duo allegedly assaulted the victim — ripping off her Star of David necklace and knocking a cellphone out of her hand — after she challenged them for ripping the ‘Missing Persons’ posters from a light pole at the intersection, according to police.” (11/27/23)
https://nypost.com/2023/11/27/metro/2-women-arrested-in-nyc-hate-crime-attack-on-jewish-victim/
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18) VT: Police arrest suspect in “hate-motivated” shooting of students
Source: Al Jazeera [Qatari state media]
“A suspect has been arrested in what police have called the ‘hate-motivated’ shooting of three college students of Palestinian descent in the US state of Vermont. Police in the city of Burlington arrested the 48-year-old suspect, identified as Jason J Eaton, on Sunday afternoon, according to US news reports. The three victims, Hisham Awartani, Kinnan Abdalhamid and Tahseen Ahmed, were shot on Saturday evening near the University of Vermont’s campus. The students, who attend different universities in the US, remain hospitalised with gunshot wounds. The students, two of whom are American citizens and the third a legal resident, were visiting Burlington to celebrate the Thanksgiving holiday with families.” (11/27/23)
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/11/27/suspect-apprehended-in-us-shooting-of-3-palestinian-students?traffic_source=rss
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19) Brazil: Lula picks his justice minister for supreme court slot
Source: SFGate
“President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva of Brazil said Monday that he chose Justice Minister Flavio Dino to fill an empty seat on the country’s top court. Many allies of the leftist leader hoped he would pick another woman to replace Minister Rosa Maria Weber, who stepped down in September after turning 75, the age limit for the nation’s Supreme Federal Court justices. Weber’s departure as chief justice left one remaining female jurist on the 11-person court. The Brazilian Senate is expected to vote before the end of the year on Dino’s nomination, which requires a simple majority for confirmation. Dino, 55, governed the impoverished state of Maranhao between 2015 and 2023 before becoming Lula’s justice minister. He is a former federal judge and was seen for many years as one of the most vocal adversaries of former President Jair Bolsonaro.” (11/27/23)
https://www.sfgate.com/news/world/article/brazil-s-lula-picks-his-justice-minister-for-18517841.php
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20) Netherlands: Wilders’s coalition scout resigns over fraud scandal
Source: Politico
“Dutch Senator Gom van Strien on Monday resigned from his role seeking to identify potential coalition partners for far-right election-winner Geert Wilders, after accusations of fraud resurfaced in Dutch media. … Van Strien was supposed to begin talks on Monday with Wilders, as well as Frans Timmermans of the Social Democratic Party PVDA and the Dutch Green Left, Dilan Yesilgoz of the People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD), and Rob Jetten of D66. But before talks could start, a report in NRC over the weekend triggered a backlash over Wilders’ choice. According to the report, van Strien’s previous employer Utrecht Holdings — a subsidiary of Utrecht University and the UMC Utrecht hospital — had filed charges of fraud and bribery against the politician, who was a director of the company until 2009.” (11/27/23)
https://www.politico.eu/article/geert-wilders-coalition-scout-gom-van-strien-resign-fraud-scandal/
_____ Today's Freedom Commentary _____
21) Julian Assange Still Deserves a Medal of Freedom
Source: Libertarian Institute
by Jim Bovard
“Five years ago, USA Today published my piece, ‘Julian Assange deserves a Medal of Freedom, not a secret indictment.’ Assange has been persecuted because he and Wikileaks exposed war crimes by the U.S. government and its allies. But he still deserves a Medal of Freedom for his heroic efforts to save democracy from Leviathan. The Joe Biden administration’s pursuit of Assange has been as shameless as the Donald Trump administration’s indictment. Assange is locked away in one of Britain’s most repressive prisons while the Biden administration is seeking to extradite Assange to the United States for a kangaroo trial that will sentence him to life in prison. Happily, there are many groups and individuals fighting valiantly to block Assange’s legal destruction.” (11/27/23)
https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/julian-assange-still-deserves-a-medal-of-freedom/
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22) Counterrevolution by education
Source: Intercollegiate Studies Institute
by Lee Edwards
“Frank Chodorov tilted against windmills all his life. As a student at Columbia University in the early 1900s, he fought the socialists, arguing that ‘man’s management of man is presumptuous and fraught with danger.’ He voted in 1912 for the independent Theodore Roosevelt rather than the Democrat Woodrow Wilson or the Republican William Howard Taft. He never voted again, declaring that politics was the problem, not the solution. … Chodorov took aim at one of the most powerful institutions in the country, the academy, believing that it was largely responsible for the shift from ‘individualism’ to socialism. In 1950, most of the levers of higher education were in the hands of an informal but self-cognizant coalition of progressives, pragmatists, and socialists. Resisting them were a small congeries of private colleges, a handful of classical liberal academics, and conservative parents shocked at what their children were learning, and not learning, in class.” (11/27/23)
https://isi.org/modern-age/counterrevolution-by-education/
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23) New Zealand’s “Generational” Smoking Ban Repeal: Finally, Taxes Do Some Good
Source: Garrison Center
by Thomas L Knapp
“As part of its deal to put together a majority coalition (and therefore a government), The Guardian reports, New Zealand’s National Party has agreed to … repeal of the country’s ‘generational’ tobacco ban, due to come into force in 2024. The ban … would have forbidden anyone born after 2009 from buying cigarettes. Ever. For life. The excuse offered by the incoming government is that it needs tobacco tax revenues to ‘pay for’ tax cuts elsewhere. On one hand, I don’t buy that excuse. … On the other hand, the smoking ban was a no good, very bad, evil, and stupid idea in the first place. Repeat after me: Prohibition of substances never works, at least if the goal is to decrease or eliminate the sale, purchase, possession, or use of those substances.” (11/27/23)
https://thegarrisoncenter.org/archives/18150
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24) From the Osage Native Americans to Britney Spears, the US’s Guardianship System Is Corrupt and Abusive
Source: The Daily Beast
by Dian Dimond
“The state-controlled system, originally designed to protect the most vulnerable citizens, has morphed into a predatory program that routinely allows bad actors to prey on an ever increasing victim pool. Judges could stop them but they don’t. They are almost always immediately declared incapacitated, stripped of their civil rights, all their assets are seized and put into the name of whoever is appointed guardian. Astonishingly, state courts seize a collective $50 billion of ward’s assets every year. The newly minted ‘protected person’ no longer has the right to hire their own attorney to fight for them. They cannot vote, sign a contract, marry, decide what doctors they will see, or where they will live. They are not allowed to drive, spend their own money, use a credit card or have a passport. If their family member complains about a court appointee’s actions, they can be banned from visiting the ward — permanently.” (11/27/23)
https://www.thedailybeast.com/from-the-osage-to-britney-spears-guardianship-is-corrupt-and-abusive
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25) When It Comes to Prescription Drugs, the Washington Post Can’t Even Conceive of Free Trade
Source: Beat the Press
by Dean Baker
“Like many self-imagined ‘free-traders,’ the Washington Post editorial board cannot even conceive of free trade when it comes to prescription drugs. They demonstrated this fact yet again in discussing ways to deal with the high price of effective weight-loss drugs like Wegovy. These drugs carry price tags of more than $1,000 a month, making them costly for insurers, governments, or individuals who have to pick up the tab themselves. The Post throws out a couple of ideas that could allow for a lower price, but never considers the fact that these drugs would be cheap without the government-granted patent monopolies that prevent generic manufacturers from entering the market.” (11/27/23)
https://cepr.net/when-it-comes-to-prescription-drugs-the-washington-post-cant-even-conceive-of-free-trade/
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26) Hamas Isn’t The Target, It’s The Excuse
Source: Caitlin Johnstone, Rogue Journalist
by Caitlin Johnstone
“If you’re just tuning in, Israeli intelligence ignored mountains of information that the October 7 attack was coming and left Israelis completely undefended, then the IDF killed significant numbers of Israelis with indiscriminate fire and pinned the blame for 100% of Israeli deaths on Hamas, and all those deaths are now being used as justification to push Gazans off their land to the south and shoot them if they try to return while Israeli officials keep talking about how great it would be to get all Palestinians out of all of Gaza. … This isn’t a war against Hamas. It’s not a war at all. It’s a military operation to facilitate an ethnic cleansing. Hamas isn’t the target, it’s the excuse.” (11/27/23)
https://caitlinjohnstone.com.au/2023/11/27/hamas-isnt-the-target-its-the-excuse/
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27) An Ode to Infrastructure
Source: Law & Liberty
by Jacob Bruggeman
“Conversations about where, when, and how public infrastructure fails are necessary. But we can more productively frame them when we zoom out and provide a full portrait: of failures, yes, but also everyday, mundane successes across the sweep of a city’s history. Almost all human settlements demonstrate infrastructure resilience and examining our largest and tallest cities clarifies the scale of their functionality. A city like New York provides a case study like no other.” (11/27/23)
https://lawliberty.org/an-ode-to-infrastructure/
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28) The Case That Could Destroy the Government
Source: The Atlantic
by Noah Rosenblum
“This Wednesday, the Supreme Court will hear a case that poses the most direct challenge yet to the legitimacy of the modern federal government. The right-wing legal movement’s target is the ‘administrative state’ — the agencies and institutions that set standards for safety in the workplace, limit environmental hazards and damage, and impose rules on financial markets to ensure their stability and basic fairness, among many other important things. The case, Securities and Exchange Commission v. Jarkesy, threatens all of that. Terrifyingly, this gambit might succeed.” [editor’s note: He says all that like it’s a bad thing! – TLK] (11/27/23)
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/11/securities-and-exchange-commission-v-jarkesy-supreme-court/676059/
-----
29) Can children really lead the way?
Source: Christian Science Monitor
by Noelle Swan
“This week’s cover story, Part 4 in our seven-part series on the Climate Generation, focuses on a groundbreaking legal victory for a set of 16 plaintiffs, ages 5 to 22. These ‘climate kids,’ as the popular press has dubbed them, sued their home state of Montana for neglecting their constitutional rights by not factoring climate change into policies around fossil fuel development. Their victory this summer was hailed as a breakthrough moment for climate change action and more broadly for children’s rights. You wouldn’t be alone if you read about this case with a certain degree of skepticism. Were children really behind this lawsuit – or their parents? In its defense, the state argued that the children named in the suit were being used by outside interest groups to grab headlines. After all, when the suit was filed, the youngest plaintiff was just 2 years old.” (11/27/23)
https://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/From-the-Editors/2023/1127/Can-children-really-lead-the-way
-----
30) The Perfect Time to Speak Your Mind
Source: Bet On It
by Bryan Caplan
“Over the last decade or so, wokeness largely conquered U.S. higher ed. Things were never good in the Ivory Tower; left-wing bias was already intense in the 1980s. But starting circa 2010, the situation on-campus proverbially went from bad to worse. Two of the most glaring changes: 1. Classic support for free speech eroded. Professors and students really did start to get punished by their own schools for speaking and writing un-woke things. … 2. Top university administrators started taking official positions on current events and policy issues …. Since the October 7 Hamas attacks, though, many prominent U.S. universities have suddenly embraced free speech and even political neutrality.” (11/27/23)
https://betonit.substack.com/p/the-perfect-time-to-speak-your-mind
-----
31) NewsGuard Is Selling Its Government-Funded Censorship Tool To Private Companies
Source: The Federalist
by Margot Cleveland
“The for-profit censorship giant NewsGuard is now selling its ‘Misinformation Fingerprints’ technology to private companies to silence Americans’ speech — technology the federal government helped NewsGuard develop to the tune of nearly $750,000 in taxpayer funding. So while NewsGuard is now making headlines for trying to take down Elon Musk’s X, the bigger story concerns the federal government’s funding of the censorship-industrial complex. NewsGuard launched a Thanksgiving-week attack on the social media company former known as Twitter, claiming some 200 ads from prominent advertisers appeared on feeds of users spreading lies about the Israel-Hamas war. Elon Musk returned fire, calling NewsGuard ‘a propaganda shop’ that ‘uses these reports to pressure companies to buy their ‘fact-checking’ services. … It’s a profit over any principle model.'” (11/27/23)
https://thefederalist.com/2023/11/27/newsguard-is-selling-its-government-funded-censorship-tool-to-private-companies/
-----
32) Night Raids, Tear Gas, and Captivity
Source: Antiwar.com
by Matthew Hoh
“Since 2000, the Israeli military and border police have abducted more than 500 Palestinian children a year. These arrests are almost always arbitrary, with night raids on a home and the child taken from bed. A day or two or three in custody, with little information provided to the family, during which the child is interrogated, treated roughly and abused, put in solitary confinement or not allowed sleep, and often forced to sign a confession in Hebrew, which they cannot read. Sometimes that confession is just nonsense; other times, it serves as a mark against the child, and, many times, chillingly, it implicates family members. Most children are released in 24-72 hours, but some are not.” (11/27/23)
https://original.antiwar.com/matthew_hoh/2023/11/26/night-raids-tear-gas-and-captivity/
-----
33) Don’t Mess with Our Roots
Source: Underthrow
by Max Borders
“It is fashionable to cut away the values in which humanity is rooted. We should not cut away our roots, but transcend and include them in healthy ways. Liberalism is the master doctrine for this.” (11/27/23)
https://underthrow.substack.com/p/dont-mess-with-our-roots
-----
34) A Slow-Motion Gaza, Or How to Carbonize Planet Earth
Source: TomDispatch
by Tom Engelhardt
“Imagine this: humanity in its time on Earth has already come up with two distinct ways of destroying this planet and everything on it. The first is, of course, nuclear weapons, which once again surfaced in the ongoing nightmare in the Middle East. (An Israeli minister recently threatened to nuke Gaza.) The second, you won’t be surprised to learn, is what we’ve come to call ‘climate change’ (fka ‘global warming’): the burning, that is, of fossil fuels to desperately overheat our already flaming world. In its own fashion, that could be considered a slow-motion version of the nuking of the planet. Put another way, in some grim sense, all of us now live in Gaza. (Most of us just don’t know it yet.)” (11/26/23)
https://tomdispatch.com/a-slow-motion-gaza/
-----
35) Is the CIA Still Secretly Capturing Americans’ Communications?
Source: Cato Institute
by Patrick G Eddington
“When it comes to surveillance reform, House and Senate members need to stop focusing on tinkering with one authority, no matter how important, and embrace an approach that brings all dubious or blatantly unconstitutional surveillance programs under scrutiny … and end those found to be at odds with the Bill of Rights.” (11/26/23)
https://www.cato.org/commentary/cia-still-secretly-capturing-americans-communications
-----
36) Apocalypse Trump
Source: The American Conservative
by Peter Van Buren
“What to expect in the second term, per the fourth estate.” (11/27/23)
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/apocalypse-trump/
-----
37) Want Freedom to Criticize China, Palestine, Mexico, etc.? Protect Criticism of Israel
Source: The Volokh Conspiracy
by Eugene Volokh
“After the Oct. 7 murders, the first attempts to punish speakers focused on those who defended Hamas’s murders. But, unsurprisingly, things have turned to trying to suppress criticism of Israel more broadly, including criticism of Israel’s attacks on Gaza. … These attempts to suppress criticism of Israel — through proposed campus speech codes, threat of firing, and the like — strike me as dangerous both to American freedom and to American security. I generally support Israel, and think it’s quite legitimate (indeed, necessary) for it to destroy Hamas, even if that means the deaths of the people whom Hamas uses as human shields …. But I think it’s vital for Americans to be able to freely discuss the actions of foreign governments (as well as, of course, of our own) and decide whom indeed they should side with.” (11/27/23)
https://reason.com/volokh/2023/11/27/want-freedom-to-criticize-china-palestine-mexico-etc-protect-criticism-of-israel/
-----
38) The Right to Self-Defense Has Never Been More Important
Source: Town Hall
by Katie Pointer Baney
“The world is a dangerous place. Even in America, where we’re blessed to live in relative peace compared to many other regions of the world, there are always threats to our safety and well-being. It’s a reality that we must all accept and prepare for. One place to start is to be equipped and trained as a responsible gun owner to protect ourselves and our families. Many anti-gun politicians in Washington would prefer to ignore the data, but the reality is that millions of Americans who are seeing violence unfold around the world or in their own neighborhoods are stepping up and becoming responsibly armed citizens. In the last two years, the United States has consistently witnessed over 1 million monthly firearms sales, as evidenced by the 1.3 million federal background checks conducted in October.” (11/27/23)
https://townhall.com/columnists/katie-pointer-baney/2023/11/27/the-right-to-self-defense-has-never-been-more-important-n2631658
-----
39) Quantum Vibe, 11/27/23
Source: Big Head Press
by Scott Bieser
Cartoon. (11/27/23)
https://quantumvibe.com/strip?page=2454
-----
40) US troops in Iraq and Syria aren’t “keeping the peace”
Source: Responsible Statecraft
by Jason Brownlee
“The regional reverberations of the Israel-Gaza war demonstrate why the White House should scrap, not reinforce, America’s outdated and unnecessarily provocative troop presence in Syria and Iraq. President Joe Biden should redeploy these forces to a safer position offshore and leave it to self-interested Syrians and Iraqis to prevent ISIS from reemerging. As Biden’s own policy on Afghanistan demonstrated — and as I observed on the ground earlier this fall — withdrawing U.S. soldiers and Marines can bolster American security by turning the fight against Islamic State over to well-motivated local belligerents while freeing up U.S. personnel to serve in more vital areas. Likewise, pivoting out of Syria and Iraq will not make Americans any less safe, but it will deny local militias, and their presumptive patrons in Iran, the chance to use unneeded outposts for leverage over our national strategy.” (11/27/23)
https://responsiblestatecraft.org/us-troops-in-iraq-and-syria/
-----
41) The New Normal?
Source: Quillette
by John Lloyd
“The New Right comes in two by two. In September last year, elections in Sweden and Italy delivered New Right parties into power. Jimmy Akesson’s Sweden Democrats became very influential on the centre-Right-led governing coalition in Stockholm, and Giorgia Meloni’s Fratelli d’Italia were placed unambiguously in charge in Rome. … Earlier this week, another sharply diverse pair joined the steadily growing ranks of the New Right. In the Netherlands, the Freedom Party (Partij voor de Vrijheid) led for the past quarter-century by Geert Wilders, won 37 seats, thereby doubling its pre-election total and placing it 12 seats ahead of Labour and the Green Left. Nearly 7,500 miles to the south-west and four hours behind, Javier Milei, an economist and popular talk-show host, won the presidency in Argentina by a considerable margin.” (11/27/23)
https://quillette.com/2023/11/27/the-new-normal/
-----
42) Team Biden Goes From Denial to Panic
Source: Common Dreams
by Norman Solomon & Jeff Cohen
“Over the weekend, Politico published the latest in a tidal wave of stories about President Biden’s dwindling prospects for re-election. Under the headline ‘The Polls Keep Getting Worse for Biden,’ the article pointed out that Biden is trailing the presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump in a large majority of the latest polling. The trend is dire, Politico reports: ‘The president’s standing in head-to-head matchups with Trump is falling: Among the latest surveys this month from 13 separate pollsters, Biden’s position is worse than their previous polls in all but two of them.’ He continues to slip in key swing states. The outlook is now grimmer than ever, but the big divide between Biden’s low popularity and public support for the Democratic Party overall was clear a year ago, despite the hype giving Biden credit for midterm election results in November 2022.” (11/27/23)
https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/joe-biden-polls-2024
-----
43) Our culture isn’t safe in the hands of the streaming giants
Source: spiked
by Angie Speaks
“Still shopping for physical media like CDs or DVDs? Well, you might not be able to do so for much longer. Last month, Best Buy, the American retail giant, made headlines by announcing it was to stop selling DVDs and Blu-ray discs at the start of 2024, citing a massive drop in demand. This news arrived on the back of British retailer Tesco’s decision to stop offering physical media last year – a move, like Best Buy’s, driven by sluggish sales. … there is little doubt that the digitisation of music, movies and books has brought huge benefits to consumers. But at a time when so much of our culture is being re-written, re-edited and redacted to satisfy woke sensibilities, retaining access to physical media is important. Indeed, it could soon be our only means of accessing films and TV shows in their original, uncensored form.” (11/27/23)
https://www.spiked-online.com/2023/11/27/our-culture-isnt-safe-in-the-hands-of-the-streaming-giants/
-----
44) From Stonewall to Gaza: What it Means to be a Queer for Palestine
Source: exile in happy valley
by Nicky Reid
“When you are granted the awkward misfortune of being raised in the wrong gender in a conservative small town you get used to being the butt of every limp-dick breeder’s stupid fucking jokes. I’ve heard them all before and they ceased being funny sometime between the pedophile priests and the exorcists. With that being said, in order to survive and organize as a radical Queer anarcho-populist amongst the rural poor in MAGA country, I have had little choice but to grow a thicker skin than most, even going so far as to take vulgar insults in stride and repurpose them as weapons of radical pride.” (11/26/23)
https://exileinhappyvalley.blogspot.com/2023/11/from-stonewall-to-gaza-what-it-means-to.html
-----
45) Interview: Former Trump Economist Breaks Down the Biden Economy
Source: Association of Mature American Citizens
by Aaron Flanigan
“Despite Joe Biden, the mainstream media, and their Democrat allies sparing no effort to sell the supposed successes of ‘Bidenomics,’ an overwhelming majority of Americans still believe the economy is doing poorly. AMAC Newsline spoke with Casey Mulligan, a professor of Economics at the University of Chicago and the former chief economist for the Council of Economic Advisers in the Trump White House, to find out the truth about how the economy is doing and why most Americans don’t share the White House’s cheery outlook. Though Biden administration officials generally point to metrics like the unemployment rate and GDP growth as proof that the economy is doing well, Mulligan said it remains understandable why ‘people aren’t buying that.'” (11/27/23)
https://amac.us/newsline/economy/former-trump-economist-breaks-down-the-biden-economy/
-----
46) The Probability of Despotism Is Not Zero
Source: EconLog
by Pierre Lemieux
“A disquieting Wall Street Journal column reminds us of what classical liberals and libertarians have been repeating: the state, however useful it may be, is very dangerous. With hindsight, it is surprising how so few people have taken these voices seriously, perhaps because the lobster has been boiled quite slowly. The problem is not unique to the United States but may be especially dangerous here given the enormous extent of the president’s power. Congress can be happily gridlocked; the president will not be (except possibly in his own mind, which doesn’t reduce the danger).” (11/26/23)
https://www.econlib.org/the-probability-of-despotism-is-not-zero/
-----
47) Trenchard and Gordon: Forgotten Influences on the Founders
Source: Tenth Amendment Center
by Joe Wolverton, II
“Do you recognize the names John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon? If not, I recommend you read this article and then immediately go to this link and begin reading the essays they wrote. You will thank me for it. Written under the pseudonym ‘Cato’ (in honor of the Roman hero and champion of liberty and republican virtue, Cato the Younger), Trenchard and Gordon wrote some 144 of these letters, ranging in topics from tyranny, to the dangers of a central bank, to the threat to liberty posed by political parties, to freedom of the press and speech, and everything in between. They are classics in the corpus of republican political philosophy. But they are much more than that to Americans.” (11/26/23)
https://tenthamendmentcenter.com/2023/11/26/trenchard-and-gordon-forgotten-influences-on-the-founders/
-----
48) Revisiting the Argument that Government is Too Small
Source: American Institute for Economic Research
by Gary M Galles
“Once upon a time, academics argued over whether the government was too large or too small. I haven’t seen much of such conversations lately, even as government has blown far past its previous levels of magnitude and power. Perhaps that means it is worth reconsidering the major competing claims in the earlier discussion about the size of government, especially since recent changes have made the ‘government is too large’ argument much more convincing.” (11/26/23)
https://www.aier.org/article/revisiting-the-argument-that-government-is-too-small/
-----
49) Labor Movement History of Backing Israel, and the Changing Climate Amid the War on Gaza
Source: In These Times
by Jeff Schuhrke
“As the Israeli government carries out what experts describe as a potential genocide in Gaza — with full political, financial, and military backing from the United States — millions of people around the world are mobilizing to demand an immediate cease-fire and a free Palestine. Workers in the United States, including numerous rank-and-file unionists and local union representatives, are similarly speaking out against the ongoing siege and bombardment of Gaza and pledging their solidarity with Palestinian trade unions, which have called on organized labor to refuse to manufacture or transport weapons destined for Israel. Labor leaders in various countries have joined in these calls, but top US labor officials — especially those in the AFL-CIO, the country’s top labor federation — have mostly refrained from supporting a cease-fire, with a few making tepid statements about the ‘humanitarian crisis’ in Gaza.” (11/27/23)
https://inthesetimes.com/article/palestine-gaza-labor-unions-israel
-----
50) The Economics of Vice and Virtue
Source: David Friedman’s Substack
by David Friedman
“You are big, tough, and, like most people, fond of having your own way. You make it clear to all and sundry that you don’t like people disrespecting you and will respond by beating them up. You gradually expand your definition of ‘disrespecting’ to include flirting with any woman you are interested in or failing to show proper respect for your opinions. Actually beating people up can be risky but most of the time you don’t have to, because other people take care not to offend you. A psychologist might describe it as an aggressive personality. To an economist it is a commitment strategy — one that usually works. One problem is that you may not be the only one following it.” (11/26/23)
https://daviddfriedman.substack.com/p/the-economics-of-vice-and-virtue
_____ Today's Freedom Podcast and Video _____
51) Reason Roundtable, 11/27/23
Source: Reason
“Matt Welch, Katherine Mangu-Ward, Nick Gillespie, and Peter Suderman compare and contrast Florida and California politics ahead of this week’s debate between Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and California Gov. Gavin Newsom.” (11/27/23)
https://reason.com/podcast/2023/11/27/florida-vs-california/
-----
52) Trita Parsi on The Scott Horton Show
Source: The Scott Horton Show
"Scott is joined by Trita Parsi to discuss the horrific situation playing out in Gaza." (11/27/23)
https://scotthorton.org/interviews/11-22-23-trita-parsi-on-the-humanitarian-crisis-in-gaza/
-----
53) EconTalk, 11/27/23
Source: EconTalk
“Tyler Cowen on the GOAT of Economics.” (11/27/23)
https://www.econtalk.org/tyler-cowen-on-the-goat-of-economics/
-----
54) Ron Paul Liberty Report, 11/27/23
Source: Ron Paul Liberty Report
“Free Speech: The Great Enemy of The Empire of Lies.” (11/27/23)
https://rumble.com/v3y66sm-free-speech-the-great-enemy-of-the-empire-of-lies.html
-----
55) Conflicts of Interest, episode 505
Source: Libertarian Institute
“Israel Is Killing Palestinian Civilians at a Historic Pace.” (11/27/23)
https://libertarianinstitute.org/kyle/coi-505-israel-is-killing-palestinian-civilians-at-a-historic-pace/
-----
56) The Bookmonger, episode 484
Source: National Review
“The New Deal’s War on the Bill of Rights by David T. Beito.” (11/27/23)
https://www.nationalreview.com/podcasts/the-bookmonger/episode-484-the-new-deals-war-on-the-bill-of-rights-by-david-t-beito/
-----
57) Stay Free with Russell Brand, episode 254
Source: Stay Free with Russell Brand
“Oh Sh*t, Pentagon’s New Nuclear Bomb 24x MORE POWERFUL Than in WW2!!” (11/27/23)
https://rumble.com/v3y5u2g-oh-sht-pentagons-new-nuclear-bomb-24x-more-powerful-than-in-ww2-stay-free-2.html
-----
58) Finding Freedom, episode 413
Source: Lions of Liberty
“What has the Government Done to Our Food with Folic Acid Fortification?” (11/27/23)
https://www.lionsofliberty.com/episodes/what-has-the-government-done-to-our-food-with-folic-acid-fortification
-----
59) Antiwar News with Dave DeCamp, 11/27/23
Source: Antiwar.com
“Hamas Wants to Extend Hostage Deal Truce, Ukraine Confirms Early Peace Deal Was Possible, and More.” (11/27/23)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J62tUyj6Fi0
-----
60) Free Talk Live, 11/26/23
Source: Free Talk Live
“New Hampshire Smartest State :: What the FCC is going on?? :: Jello with shredded carrots :: Do you prefer your pretzels soft or hard? :: Businessman dumps poop on steps of City and County Building :: Raunchy, alcohol-fueled Taco Bell party included open sex :: What do teens want to be when they grow up :: Satan club in CT :: 2023-11-26 Hosts: Captain Kickass, Steve Classic, Nikki.” (11/26/23)
https://soundcloud.com/freetalklive/free-talk-live-2023-11-26
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Today's Freedom News:
0) Help! Help! (End the Unbearable Tedium of Year-End Fundraising)
1) Palestine: More hostages to be exchanged as Gaza ceasefire extended
2) Biden plans to invoke war communism law in supposed attempt to lower US prices
3) Ukrainian drone strikes aircraft factory 200 miles behind Russian lines
4) North Korea: Regime redeploys troops to surveillance posts along DMZ after withdrawing from military agreement with South Korea
5) Myanmar: Anti-junta forces claim new ground in north as Chinese troops hold border exercises
6) Sweden: Court sides with Tesla over blocked licence plates
7) New Zealand smoking ban: Health experts criticise new government’s reversal
8) Trump hints at expanded domestic role for the military
9) France: Six teens go on trial for beheading of teacher
10) Scotland: Grand Ole Opry in Glasgow to vote over use of Confederate flag
11) White House: Biden won’t attend COP28 climate conference
12) North Korean, US envoys engage in rare, public sparring match at UN
13) Madagascar: Opposition candidate files lawsuit claiming fraud in presidential election
14) NC: UNC shooting suspect found unfit for trial, sent to mental health facility
15) Musk visits Israel amid discussions on Starlink service in Gaza
16) UK: Activists Glue Shut Barclays Across Kingdom for Financing “Climate Breakdown”
17) NYC: Two arrested in attack on Jewish woman who confronted them for tearing down hostage posters
18) VT: Police arrest suspect in “hate-motivated” shooting of students
19) Brazil: Lula picks his justice minister for supreme court slot
20) Netherlands: Wilders’s coalition scout resigns over fraud scandal
Today's Freedom Commentary:
21) Julian Assange Still Deserves a Medal of Freedom
22) Counterrevolution by education
23) New Zealand’s “Generational” Smoking Ban Repeal: Finally, Taxes Do Some Good
24) From the Osage Native Americans to Britney Spears, the US’s Guardianship System Is Corrupt and Abusive
25) When It Comes to Prescription Drugs, the Washington Post Can’t Even Conceive of Free Trade
26) Hamas Isn’t The Target, It’s The Excuse
27) An Ode to Infrastructure
28) The Case That Could Destroy the Government
29) Can children really lead the way?
30) The Perfect Time to Speak Your Mind
31) NewsGuard Is Selling Its Government-Funded Censorship Tool To Private Companies
32) Night Raids, Tear Gas, and Captivity
33) Don’t Mess with Our Roots
34) A Slow-Motion Gaza, Or How to Carbonize Planet Earth
35) Is the CIA Still Secretly Capturing Americans’ Communications?
36) Apocalypse Trump
37) Want Freedom to Criticize China, Palestine, Mexico, etc.? Protect Criticism of Israel
38) The Right to Self-Defense Has Never Been More Important
39) Quantum Vibe, 11/27/23
40) US troops in Iraq and Syria aren’t “keeping the peace”
41) The New Normal?
42) Team Biden Goes From Denial to Panic
43) Our culture isn’t safe in the hands of the streaming giants
44) From Stonewall to Gaza: What it Means to be a Queer for Palestine
45) Interview: Former Trump Economist Breaks Down the Biden Economy
46) The Probability of Despotism Is Not Zero
47) Trenchard and Gordon: Forgotten Influences on the Founders
48) Revisiting the Argument that Government is Too Small
49) Labor Movement History of Backing Israel, and the Changing Climate Amid the War on Gaza
50) The Economics of Vice and Virtue
Today's Freedom Podcast and Video:
51) Reason Roundtable, 11/27/23
52) Trita Parsi on The Scott Horton Show
53) EconTalk, 11/27/23
54) Ron Paul Liberty Report, 11/27/23
55) Conflicts of Interest, episode 505
56) The Bookmonger, episode 484
57) Stay Free with Russell Brand, episode 254
58) Finding Freedom, episode 413
59) Antiwar News with Dave DeCamp, 11/27/23
60) Free Talk Live, 11/26/23
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0) Help! Help! (End the Unbearable Tedium of Year-End Fundraising)
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1) Palestine: More hostages to be exchanged as Gaza ceasefire extended
Source: NBC News
“The temporary truce between Israel and Hamas has entered a fifth day after the two sides agreed to extend the pause in fighting to allow for the release of more Israeli hostages and Palestinian [hostages]. Aid trucks have continued to flow into the besieged Gaza Strip under protection of the cease-fire, including much-needed fuel. The humanitarian aid brings relief for civilians who have been suffering for weeks as supplies of food, water and medicine run low amid Israeli bombardment. But the humanitarian situation in the Palestinian enclave ‘remains catastrophic,’ a senior United Nations official has warned.” (11/28/23)
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/live-blog/israel-hamas-war-live-updates-rcna126940
-----
2) Biden plans to invoke war communism law in supposed attempt to lower US prices
Source: The Guardian [UK]
“The White House has announced it plans to use a cold-war era law to ease supply chain issues that the administrations argues are contributing to higher inflation – a key electoral challenge to Joe Biden’s re-election chances next year as polling consistently suggests voters are not buying his Bidenomics pitch. In a statement, the White House said Biden will use the Defense Production Act to improve the domestic manufacturing of medicines deemed crucial for national security and will convene the first meeting of the president’s supply chain resilience council to announce other measures tied to the production and shipment of goods.” (11/27/23)
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/nov/27/biden-inflation-prices-defense-production-act
-----
3) Ukrainian drone strikes aircraft factory 200 miles behind Russian lines
Source: The Telegraph [UK]
"A Ukrainian drone has struck a Russian aircraft factory more than 200 miles behind enemy lines. Ukraine’s military intelligence agency (HUR) claimed responsibility for the explosion at the Smolensk Aviation Factory. Footage of the blast showed plumes of black smoke billowing up from the plant, which also produces Kh-59 cruise missiles. Baza, a Russian Telegram channel with links to the military, said two drones were downed over the factory, one of which crashed into the roof and exploded. It said there were no casualties. It is the second time Ukraine has sent drones to attack the factory. A previous raid in October caused widespread damage to production lines." (11/28/23)
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/11/28/russia-ukraine-war-latest-black-sea-fleet-crimea-missiles/
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4) North Korea: Regime redeploys troops to surveillance posts along DMZ after withdrawing from military agreement with South Korea
Source: ABC News
“North Korea has redeployed troops and equipment at the front-line guard posts within the Demilitarized Zone after withdrawing from a military agreement with South Korea last week. The North Korean military has been spotted re-installing surveillance posts, according to surveillance footage provided by the South Korean military Monday. Photos taken by the South Korean Defense Ministry show temporary structures made of wood in eleven locations where they had blown up along the border in accordance with the inter-Korean military agreement signed on September 19, 2018.” (11/27/23)
https://abcnews.go.com/International/north-korea-redeploys-troops-surveillance-posts-dmz-after/story?id=105173788
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5) Myanmar: Anti-junta forces claim new ground in north as Chinese troops hold border exercises
Source: France 24 [French state media]
“Ethnic minority rebels fighting Myanmar’s military junta said they had seized a key trading post on the northern frontier, across the border from where China’s military was conducting exercises to improve combat readiness and emergency response. A month of intense fighting between Myanmar’s ruling military and an alliance of ethnic minority insurgents has displaced tens of thousands of people in the border region, according to the United Nations, with concern growing in Beijing about instability and an influx of refugees. The rebellion has presented the biggest battlefield challenge to Myanmar’s well-equipped military since it seized power in a coup in 2021. Emboldened by the northern offensive, pro-democracy militias increase attacks on security forces elsewhere in the country.” (11/27/23)
https://www.france24.com/en/asia-pacific/20231127-myanmar-rebels-claim-new-ground-in-north-as-chinese-troops-hold-border-exercises
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6) Sweden: Court sides with Tesla over blocked licence plates
Source: Reuters
“A court in Sweden ruled on Monday the country’s transport authority must find a way to get licence plates to Tesla that are being blocked by postal workers, the Aftonbladet newspaper reported. The decision comes hours after the U.S. electric car maker sued the agency and state-run PostNord because postal workers had stopped delivering plates for its new cars. PostNord workers on Nov. 20 joined industrial action aimed at forcing Tesla to sign a collective bargain agreement for mechanics in Sweden, and the transport agency refused to deliver the plates by other means, saying it was contractually bound to use PostNord. However, Norrkoping district court ruled the agency must get the plates to Tesla within seven days or pay a fine of 1 million Swedish crowns ($95,000).” (11/27/23)
https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/tesla-sues-sweden-over-blocked-license-plates-business-daily-di-reports-2023-11-27/
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7) New Zealand smoking ban: Health experts criticise new government’s reversal
Source: BBC News [UK state media]
“New Zealand’s new government says it plans to scrap the nation’s world-leading smoking ban to fund tax cuts. The legislation, introduced under the previous Jacinda Ardern-led government, would have banned cigarette sales next year to anyone born after 2008. Smoking is the leading cause of preventable deaths in New Zealand, and the policy had aimed to stop young generations from picking up the habit. Health experts have strongly criticised the sudden reversal. ‘We are appalled and disgusted … this is an incredibly retrograde step on world-leading, absolutely excellent health measures,’ said Prof Richard Edwards, a tobacco control researcher and public health expert at the University of Otago. Most health groups in New Zealand are appalled by what the government’s done and are calling on them to backtrack,’ he told the BBC.” (11/27/23)
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-67540190
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8) Trump hints at expanded domestic role for the military
Source: SFGate
“Campaigning in Iowa this year, Donald Trump said he was prevented during his presidency from using the military to quell violence in primarily Democratic cities and states. Calling New York City and Chicago ‘crime dens’, the front-runner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination told his audience, ‘The next time, I’m not waiting. One of the things I did was let them run it and we’re going to show how bad a job they do,’ he said. ‘Well, we did that. We don’t have to wait any longer.’ Trump has not spelled out precisely how he might use the military during a second term …. While deploying the military regularly within the country’s borders would be a departure from tradition, the former president already has signaled an aggressive agenda if he wins, from mass deportations to travel bans imposed on certain Muslim-majority countries.” (11/27/23)
https://www.sfgate.com/news/politics/article/trump-hints-at-expanded-role-for-the-military-18516371.php
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9) France: Six teens go on trial for beheading of teacher
Source: Yahoo! News
“Six teenagers go on trial Monday in Paris for their alleged roles in the beheading of a teacher who showed caricatures of the prophet of Islam to his class …. Samuel Paty, a history and geography teacher, was killed on Oct. 16, 2020, near his school in a northwest Paris suburb …. The attacker was in turn shot dead by police. … a teenage girl, who was 13 at the time, is accused of making false allegations for wrongly saying that Paty had asked Muslim students to raise their hands and leave the classroom before he showed the cartoons. … Five other students of Paty’s school, then 14 and 15, are facing charges of criminal conspiracy with the aim of preparing aggravated violence to be committed. They are accused of having waited for Paty for several hours until he left the school and of having identified him to the killer in exchange for promises of payments of 300-350 euros ($348-$406).” (11/27/23)
https://news.yahoo.com/6-teenagers-trial-alleged-role-071809218.html
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10) Scotland: Grand Ole Opry in Glasgow to vote over use of Confederate flag
Source: BBC News [UK state media]
“A showdown is due at Scotland’s most famous country music club over its controversial use of the American Confederate flag. Officials at Glasgow’s Grand Ole Opry banned the flag last month, but members are now voting on its reinstatement. The flag dates to the Civil War era of the 1860s when it was used by slave-owning states in the South. Many Americans now view it as a racist symbol although others defend it as an emblem of southern heritage. The Confederate flag had been the centrepiece of a flag-folding ceremony held at the end of each night at the venue. … A decision to remove the flag had been made by club officials on 9 October — a move that led to the club’s president resigning.” (11/27/23)
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-67546238
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11) White House: Biden won’t attend COP28 climate conference
Source: United Press International
“The White House announced Monday that President Joe Biden will not attend the United Nations Climate Change Conference, COP28, this year, including the world leaders’ summit on Friday and Saturday in Dubai. While the United States will send climate envoy John Kerry and other top officials, Biden’s absence is expected to stand out among the 70,000 delegates who plan to attend. Biden had participated in the last two summits.” (11/27/23)
https://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2023/11/27/joe-biden-skips-cop28-climate/4761701098668/
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12) North Korean, US envoys engage in rare, public sparring match at UN
Source: Reuters
“The United Nations ambassadors of the United States and North Korea sparred at the Security Council on Monday over Pyongyang’s first spy satellite launch and the reasons for growing tensions in a rare, direct, public exchange between the adversaries. After a nearly six-year absence, North Korea again started sending its U.N. envoy to Security Council meetings on its nuclear and ballistic missile programs in July. The 15-member body met on Monday over the Nov. 21 spy satellite launch. At the end of the meeting, U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield and North Korean Ambassador Kim Song made unplanned remarks, engaging in dueling rights-of-reply across the council table, each arguing that their countries are acting defensively.” (11/27/23)
https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/north-korea-us-envoys-engage-rare-public-sparring-match-un-2023-11-27/
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13) Madagascar: Opposition candidate files lawsuit claiming fraud in presidential election
Source: ABC News
“The main opposition candidate in Madagascar said Monday he has filed lawsuits with the country’s highest court seeking to have the results of this month’s national election canceled and incumbent President Andry Rajoelina’s victory declared invalid, claiming fraud. Rajoelina, 49, was announced Saturday as the winner of the Nov. 16 election with 58.95% of the votes, giving him a third term as leader of the Indian Ocean island. Rajoelina’s victory was announced by the national electoral commission but needs to be ratified within nine days by the High Constitutional Court. The runup to the vote saw protests led by a coalition of opposition candidates and the burning of some ballot stations on the eve of election day. Ten of the 12 opposition candidates called for a boycott of the vote, although their names appeared on ballot papers.” (11/27/23)
https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/madagascars-main-opposition-candidate-files-lawsuit-claiming-fraud-105183393
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14) NC: UNC shooting suspect found unfit for trial, sent to mental health facility
Source: SFGate
“The University of North Carolina graduate student charged with fatally shooting his faculty adviser has been found unfit for trial after two mental evaluations, a judge ruled Monday. Tailei Qi, 34, is accused of killing associate professor Zijie Yan in a science building at the state’s flagship public university on Aug. 28. He is being held without bond on charges of first-degree murder and misdemeanor possession of a firearm on educational property. Orange County Superior Court Judge Alyson Grine said Monday that two separate mental evaluations found Qi likely suffers from untreated schizophrenia. ‘Qi demonstrated delusional thinking, experienced auditory hallucinations, engaged in self-harm in the detention center, showed fragmented thought processes that impeded his communication,’ she said.” (11/27/23)
https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/university-of-north-carolina-shooting-suspect-18517755.php
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15) Musk visits Israel amid discussions on Starlink service in Gaza
Source: CBS News
“Elon Musk arrived in Israel on Monday, as Israel announced an agreement that Starlink would only operate in Israel and Gaza with the Israeli government’s approval. Israel’s Minister of Communications Shlomo Karhi announced the agreement on X, the social media platform that Musk owns. ‘Elon Musk, I congratulate you for reaching a principle understanding with the Ministry of Communications under my leadership,’ Karhi wrote. ‘As a result of this significant agreement, Starlink satellite units can only be operated in Israel with the approval of the Israeli Ministry of Communications, including the Gaza Strip.'” [editor’s note: Israel does not “include” the Gaza Strip – TLK] (11/27/23)
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/elon-musk-israel-starlink-internet-gaza-agreement/
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16) UK: Activists Glue Shut Barclays Across Kingdom for Financing “Climate Breakdown”
Source: Common Dreams
“‘We have closed this bank today.’ That’s the opening line on an explanatory poster, plastered on dozens of Barclays branches across the United Kingdom on Monday. ‘Barclays has been on the wrong side of history for centuries,’ the poster continues. ‘Financing the Atlantic slave trade, apartheid in South Africa, weapons, and fossil fuels. $190 billion in finance for fossil fuels since 2015. Time to change. Barclays are choosing short-term profits over a livable future and a lot of us are sick of the measly progress they’re making.’ The posters were left overnight by activists with Extinction Rebellion (XR), sister organization Money Rebellion, and allied groups, who superglued the doors shut at nearly 50 branches, inspired by a 2020 Greenpeace action targeting the bank.” (11/27/23)
https://www.commondreams.org/news/barclays-funding-fossil-fuels
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17) NYC: Two arrested in attack on Jewish woman who confronted them for tearing down hostage posters
Source: New York Post
“Two women have been slapped with hate crime charges for allegedly attacking a Jewish person who confronted them on the Upper West Side for tearing down posters of Israelis kidnapped by Hamas, cops said Monday. Mehwish Omer, 26, surrendered to police Monday morning and was charged with assault and criminal mischief — both as hate crimes …. Her alleged accomplice, Stephanie Gonzalez, 25, was cuffed a week earlier and also faces a hate crime assault rap, as well as an attempted robbery charge, cops said. The duo allegedly assaulted the victim — ripping off her Star of David necklace and knocking a cellphone out of her hand — after she challenged them for ripping the ‘Missing Persons’ posters from a light pole at the intersection, according to police.” (11/27/23)
https://nypost.com/2023/11/27/metro/2-women-arrested-in-nyc-hate-crime-attack-on-jewish-victim/
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18) VT: Police arrest suspect in “hate-motivated” shooting of students
Source: Al Jazeera [Qatari state media]
“A suspect has been arrested in what police have called the ‘hate-motivated’ shooting of three college students of Palestinian descent in the US state of Vermont. Police in the city of Burlington arrested the 48-year-old suspect, identified as Jason J Eaton, on Sunday afternoon, according to US news reports. The three victims, Hisham Awartani, Kinnan Abdalhamid and Tahseen Ahmed, were shot on Saturday evening near the University of Vermont’s campus. The students, who attend different universities in the US, remain hospitalised with gunshot wounds. The students, two of whom are American citizens and the third a legal resident, were visiting Burlington to celebrate the Thanksgiving holiday with families.” (11/27/23)
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/11/27/suspect-apprehended-in-us-shooting-of-3-palestinian-students?traffic_source=rss
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19) Brazil: Lula picks his justice minister for supreme court slot
Source: SFGate
“President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva of Brazil said Monday that he chose Justice Minister Flavio Dino to fill an empty seat on the country’s top court. Many allies of the leftist leader hoped he would pick another woman to replace Minister Rosa Maria Weber, who stepped down in September after turning 75, the age limit for the nation’s Supreme Federal Court justices. Weber’s departure as chief justice left one remaining female jurist on the 11-person court. The Brazilian Senate is expected to vote before the end of the year on Dino’s nomination, which requires a simple majority for confirmation. Dino, 55, governed the impoverished state of Maranhao between 2015 and 2023 before becoming Lula’s justice minister. He is a former federal judge and was seen for many years as one of the most vocal adversaries of former President Jair Bolsonaro.” (11/27/23)
https://www.sfgate.com/news/world/article/brazil-s-lula-picks-his-justice-minister-for-18517841.php
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20) Netherlands: Wilders’s coalition scout resigns over fraud scandal
Source: Politico
“Dutch Senator Gom van Strien on Monday resigned from his role seeking to identify potential coalition partners for far-right election-winner Geert Wilders, after accusations of fraud resurfaced in Dutch media. … Van Strien was supposed to begin talks on Monday with Wilders, as well as Frans Timmermans of the Social Democratic Party PVDA and the Dutch Green Left, Dilan Yesilgoz of the People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD), and Rob Jetten of D66. But before talks could start, a report in NRC over the weekend triggered a backlash over Wilders’ choice. According to the report, van Strien’s previous employer Utrecht Holdings — a subsidiary of Utrecht University and the UMC Utrecht hospital — had filed charges of fraud and bribery against the politician, who was a director of the company until 2009.” (11/27/23)
https://www.politico.eu/article/geert-wilders-coalition-scout-gom-van-strien-resign-fraud-scandal/
_____ Today's Freedom Commentary _____
21) Julian Assange Still Deserves a Medal of Freedom
Source: Libertarian Institute
by Jim Bovard
“Five years ago, USA Today published my piece, ‘Julian Assange deserves a Medal of Freedom, not a secret indictment.’ Assange has been persecuted because he and Wikileaks exposed war crimes by the U.S. government and its allies. But he still deserves a Medal of Freedom for his heroic efforts to save democracy from Leviathan. The Joe Biden administration’s pursuit of Assange has been as shameless as the Donald Trump administration’s indictment. Assange is locked away in one of Britain’s most repressive prisons while the Biden administration is seeking to extradite Assange to the United States for a kangaroo trial that will sentence him to life in prison. Happily, there are many groups and individuals fighting valiantly to block Assange’s legal destruction.” (11/27/23)
https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/julian-assange-still-deserves-a-medal-of-freedom/
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22) Counterrevolution by education
Source: Intercollegiate Studies Institute
by Lee Edwards
“Frank Chodorov tilted against windmills all his life. As a student at Columbia University in the early 1900s, he fought the socialists, arguing that ‘man’s management of man is presumptuous and fraught with danger.’ He voted in 1912 for the independent Theodore Roosevelt rather than the Democrat Woodrow Wilson or the Republican William Howard Taft. He never voted again, declaring that politics was the problem, not the solution. … Chodorov took aim at one of the most powerful institutions in the country, the academy, believing that it was largely responsible for the shift from ‘individualism’ to socialism. In 1950, most of the levers of higher education were in the hands of an informal but self-cognizant coalition of progressives, pragmatists, and socialists. Resisting them were a small congeries of private colleges, a handful of classical liberal academics, and conservative parents shocked at what their children were learning, and not learning, in class.” (11/27/23)
https://isi.org/modern-age/counterrevolution-by-education/
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23) New Zealand’s “Generational” Smoking Ban Repeal: Finally, Taxes Do Some Good
Source: Garrison Center
by Thomas L Knapp
“As part of its deal to put together a majority coalition (and therefore a government), The Guardian reports, New Zealand’s National Party has agreed to … repeal of the country’s ‘generational’ tobacco ban, due to come into force in 2024. The ban … would have forbidden anyone born after 2009 from buying cigarettes. Ever. For life. The excuse offered by the incoming government is that it needs tobacco tax revenues to ‘pay for’ tax cuts elsewhere. On one hand, I don’t buy that excuse. … On the other hand, the smoking ban was a no good, very bad, evil, and stupid idea in the first place. Repeat after me: Prohibition of substances never works, at least if the goal is to decrease or eliminate the sale, purchase, possession, or use of those substances.” (11/27/23)
https://thegarrisoncenter.org/archives/18150
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24) From the Osage Native Americans to Britney Spears, the US’s Guardianship System Is Corrupt and Abusive
Source: The Daily Beast
by Dian Dimond
“The state-controlled system, originally designed to protect the most vulnerable citizens, has morphed into a predatory program that routinely allows bad actors to prey on an ever increasing victim pool. Judges could stop them but they don’t. They are almost always immediately declared incapacitated, stripped of their civil rights, all their assets are seized and put into the name of whoever is appointed guardian. Astonishingly, state courts seize a collective $50 billion of ward’s assets every year. The newly minted ‘protected person’ no longer has the right to hire their own attorney to fight for them. They cannot vote, sign a contract, marry, decide what doctors they will see, or where they will live. They are not allowed to drive, spend their own money, use a credit card or have a passport. If their family member complains about a court appointee’s actions, they can be banned from visiting the ward — permanently.” (11/27/23)
https://www.thedailybeast.com/from-the-osage-to-britney-spears-guardianship-is-corrupt-and-abusive
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25) When It Comes to Prescription Drugs, the Washington Post Can’t Even Conceive of Free Trade
Source: Beat the Press
by Dean Baker
“Like many self-imagined ‘free-traders,’ the Washington Post editorial board cannot even conceive of free trade when it comes to prescription drugs. They demonstrated this fact yet again in discussing ways to deal with the high price of effective weight-loss drugs like Wegovy. These drugs carry price tags of more than $1,000 a month, making them costly for insurers, governments, or individuals who have to pick up the tab themselves. The Post throws out a couple of ideas that could allow for a lower price, but never considers the fact that these drugs would be cheap without the government-granted patent monopolies that prevent generic manufacturers from entering the market.” (11/27/23)
https://cepr.net/when-it-comes-to-prescription-drugs-the-washington-post-cant-even-conceive-of-free-trade/
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26) Hamas Isn’t The Target, It’s The Excuse
Source: Caitlin Johnstone, Rogue Journalist
by Caitlin Johnstone
“If you’re just tuning in, Israeli intelligence ignored mountains of information that the October 7 attack was coming and left Israelis completely undefended, then the IDF killed significant numbers of Israelis with indiscriminate fire and pinned the blame for 100% of Israeli deaths on Hamas, and all those deaths are now being used as justification to push Gazans off their land to the south and shoot them if they try to return while Israeli officials keep talking about how great it would be to get all Palestinians out of all of Gaza. … This isn’t a war against Hamas. It’s not a war at all. It’s a military operation to facilitate an ethnic cleansing. Hamas isn’t the target, it’s the excuse.” (11/27/23)
https://caitlinjohnstone.com.au/2023/11/27/hamas-isnt-the-target-its-the-excuse/
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27) An Ode to Infrastructure
Source: Law & Liberty
by Jacob Bruggeman
“Conversations about where, when, and how public infrastructure fails are necessary. But we can more productively frame them when we zoom out and provide a full portrait: of failures, yes, but also everyday, mundane successes across the sweep of a city’s history. Almost all human settlements demonstrate infrastructure resilience and examining our largest and tallest cities clarifies the scale of their functionality. A city like New York provides a case study like no other.” (11/27/23)
https://lawliberty.org/an-ode-to-infrastructure/
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28) The Case That Could Destroy the Government
Source: The Atlantic
by Noah Rosenblum
“This Wednesday, the Supreme Court will hear a case that poses the most direct challenge yet to the legitimacy of the modern federal government. The right-wing legal movement’s target is the ‘administrative state’ — the agencies and institutions that set standards for safety in the workplace, limit environmental hazards and damage, and impose rules on financial markets to ensure their stability and basic fairness, among many other important things. The case, Securities and Exchange Commission v. Jarkesy, threatens all of that. Terrifyingly, this gambit might succeed.” [editor’s note: He says all that like it’s a bad thing! – TLK] (11/27/23)
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/11/securities-and-exchange-commission-v-jarkesy-supreme-court/676059/
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29) Can children really lead the way?
Source: Christian Science Monitor
by Noelle Swan
“This week’s cover story, Part 4 in our seven-part series on the Climate Generation, focuses on a groundbreaking legal victory for a set of 16 plaintiffs, ages 5 to 22. These ‘climate kids,’ as the popular press has dubbed them, sued their home state of Montana for neglecting their constitutional rights by not factoring climate change into policies around fossil fuel development. Their victory this summer was hailed as a breakthrough moment for climate change action and more broadly for children’s rights. You wouldn’t be alone if you read about this case with a certain degree of skepticism. Were children really behind this lawsuit – or their parents? In its defense, the state argued that the children named in the suit were being used by outside interest groups to grab headlines. After all, when the suit was filed, the youngest plaintiff was just 2 years old.” (11/27/23)
https://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/From-the-Editors/2023/1127/Can-children-really-lead-the-way
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30) The Perfect Time to Speak Your Mind
Source: Bet On It
by Bryan Caplan
“Over the last decade or so, wokeness largely conquered U.S. higher ed. Things were never good in the Ivory Tower; left-wing bias was already intense in the 1980s. But starting circa 2010, the situation on-campus proverbially went from bad to worse. Two of the most glaring changes: 1. Classic support for free speech eroded. Professors and students really did start to get punished by their own schools for speaking and writing un-woke things. … 2. Top university administrators started taking official positions on current events and policy issues …. Since the October 7 Hamas attacks, though, many prominent U.S. universities have suddenly embraced free speech and even political neutrality.” (11/27/23)
https://betonit.substack.com/p/the-perfect-time-to-speak-your-mind
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31) NewsGuard Is Selling Its Government-Funded Censorship Tool To Private Companies
Source: The Federalist
by Margot Cleveland
“The for-profit censorship giant NewsGuard is now selling its ‘Misinformation Fingerprints’ technology to private companies to silence Americans’ speech — technology the federal government helped NewsGuard develop to the tune of nearly $750,000 in taxpayer funding. So while NewsGuard is now making headlines for trying to take down Elon Musk’s X, the bigger story concerns the federal government’s funding of the censorship-industrial complex. NewsGuard launched a Thanksgiving-week attack on the social media company former known as Twitter, claiming some 200 ads from prominent advertisers appeared on feeds of users spreading lies about the Israel-Hamas war. Elon Musk returned fire, calling NewsGuard ‘a propaganda shop’ that ‘uses these reports to pressure companies to buy their ‘fact-checking’ services. … It’s a profit over any principle model.'” (11/27/23)
https://thefederalist.com/2023/11/27/newsguard-is-selling-its-government-funded-censorship-tool-to-private-companies/
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32) Night Raids, Tear Gas, and Captivity
Source: Antiwar.com
by Matthew Hoh
“Since 2000, the Israeli military and border police have abducted more than 500 Palestinian children a year. These arrests are almost always arbitrary, with night raids on a home and the child taken from bed. A day or two or three in custody, with little information provided to the family, during which the child is interrogated, treated roughly and abused, put in solitary confinement or not allowed sleep, and often forced to sign a confession in Hebrew, which they cannot read. Sometimes that confession is just nonsense; other times, it serves as a mark against the child, and, many times, chillingly, it implicates family members. Most children are released in 24-72 hours, but some are not.” (11/27/23)
https://original.antiwar.com/matthew_hoh/2023/11/26/night-raids-tear-gas-and-captivity/
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33) Don’t Mess with Our Roots
Source: Underthrow
by Max Borders
“It is fashionable to cut away the values in which humanity is rooted. We should not cut away our roots, but transcend and include them in healthy ways. Liberalism is the master doctrine for this.” (11/27/23)
https://underthrow.substack.com/p/dont-mess-with-our-roots
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34) A Slow-Motion Gaza, Or How to Carbonize Planet Earth
Source: TomDispatch
by Tom Engelhardt
“Imagine this: humanity in its time on Earth has already come up with two distinct ways of destroying this planet and everything on it. The first is, of course, nuclear weapons, which once again surfaced in the ongoing nightmare in the Middle East. (An Israeli minister recently threatened to nuke Gaza.) The second, you won’t be surprised to learn, is what we’ve come to call ‘climate change’ (fka ‘global warming’): the burning, that is, of fossil fuels to desperately overheat our already flaming world. In its own fashion, that could be considered a slow-motion version of the nuking of the planet. Put another way, in some grim sense, all of us now live in Gaza. (Most of us just don’t know it yet.)” (11/26/23)
https://tomdispatch.com/a-slow-motion-gaza/
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35) Is the CIA Still Secretly Capturing Americans’ Communications?
Source: Cato Institute
by Patrick G Eddington
“When it comes to surveillance reform, House and Senate members need to stop focusing on tinkering with one authority, no matter how important, and embrace an approach that brings all dubious or blatantly unconstitutional surveillance programs under scrutiny … and end those found to be at odds with the Bill of Rights.” (11/26/23)
https://www.cato.org/commentary/cia-still-secretly-capturing-americans-communications
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36) Apocalypse Trump
Source: The American Conservative
by Peter Van Buren
“What to expect in the second term, per the fourth estate.” (11/27/23)
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/apocalypse-trump/
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37) Want Freedom to Criticize China, Palestine, Mexico, etc.? Protect Criticism of Israel
Source: The Volokh Conspiracy
by Eugene Volokh
“After the Oct. 7 murders, the first attempts to punish speakers focused on those who defended Hamas’s murders. But, unsurprisingly, things have turned to trying to suppress criticism of Israel more broadly, including criticism of Israel’s attacks on Gaza. … These attempts to suppress criticism of Israel — through proposed campus speech codes, threat of firing, and the like — strike me as dangerous both to American freedom and to American security. I generally support Israel, and think it’s quite legitimate (indeed, necessary) for it to destroy Hamas, even if that means the deaths of the people whom Hamas uses as human shields …. But I think it’s vital for Americans to be able to freely discuss the actions of foreign governments (as well as, of course, of our own) and decide whom indeed they should side with.” (11/27/23)
https://reason.com/volokh/2023/11/27/want-freedom-to-criticize-china-palestine-mexico-etc-protect-criticism-of-israel/
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38) The Right to Self-Defense Has Never Been More Important
Source: Town Hall
by Katie Pointer Baney
“The world is a dangerous place. Even in America, where we’re blessed to live in relative peace compared to many other regions of the world, there are always threats to our safety and well-being. It’s a reality that we must all accept and prepare for. One place to start is to be equipped and trained as a responsible gun owner to protect ourselves and our families. Many anti-gun politicians in Washington would prefer to ignore the data, but the reality is that millions of Americans who are seeing violence unfold around the world or in their own neighborhoods are stepping up and becoming responsibly armed citizens. In the last two years, the United States has consistently witnessed over 1 million monthly firearms sales, as evidenced by the 1.3 million federal background checks conducted in October.” (11/27/23)
https://townhall.com/columnists/katie-pointer-baney/2023/11/27/the-right-to-self-defense-has-never-been-more-important-n2631658
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39) Quantum Vibe, 11/27/23
Source: Big Head Press
by Scott Bieser
Cartoon. (11/27/23)
https://quantumvibe.com/strip?page=2454
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40) US troops in Iraq and Syria aren’t “keeping the peace”
Source: Responsible Statecraft
by Jason Brownlee
“The regional reverberations of the Israel-Gaza war demonstrate why the White House should scrap, not reinforce, America’s outdated and unnecessarily provocative troop presence in Syria and Iraq. President Joe Biden should redeploy these forces to a safer position offshore and leave it to self-interested Syrians and Iraqis to prevent ISIS from reemerging. As Biden’s own policy on Afghanistan demonstrated — and as I observed on the ground earlier this fall — withdrawing U.S. soldiers and Marines can bolster American security by turning the fight against Islamic State over to well-motivated local belligerents while freeing up U.S. personnel to serve in more vital areas. Likewise, pivoting out of Syria and Iraq will not make Americans any less safe, but it will deny local militias, and their presumptive patrons in Iran, the chance to use unneeded outposts for leverage over our national strategy.” (11/27/23)
https://responsiblestatecraft.org/us-troops-in-iraq-and-syria/
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41) The New Normal?
Source: Quillette
by John Lloyd
“The New Right comes in two by two. In September last year, elections in Sweden and Italy delivered New Right parties into power. Jimmy Akesson’s Sweden Democrats became very influential on the centre-Right-led governing coalition in Stockholm, and Giorgia Meloni’s Fratelli d’Italia were placed unambiguously in charge in Rome. … Earlier this week, another sharply diverse pair joined the steadily growing ranks of the New Right. In the Netherlands, the Freedom Party (Partij voor de Vrijheid) led for the past quarter-century by Geert Wilders, won 37 seats, thereby doubling its pre-election total and placing it 12 seats ahead of Labour and the Green Left. Nearly 7,500 miles to the south-west and four hours behind, Javier Milei, an economist and popular talk-show host, won the presidency in Argentina by a considerable margin.” (11/27/23)
https://quillette.com/2023/11/27/the-new-normal/
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42) Team Biden Goes From Denial to Panic
Source: Common Dreams
by Norman Solomon & Jeff Cohen
“Over the weekend, Politico published the latest in a tidal wave of stories about President Biden’s dwindling prospects for re-election. Under the headline ‘The Polls Keep Getting Worse for Biden,’ the article pointed out that Biden is trailing the presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump in a large majority of the latest polling. The trend is dire, Politico reports: ‘The president’s standing in head-to-head matchups with Trump is falling: Among the latest surveys this month from 13 separate pollsters, Biden’s position is worse than their previous polls in all but two of them.’ He continues to slip in key swing states. The outlook is now grimmer than ever, but the big divide between Biden’s low popularity and public support for the Democratic Party overall was clear a year ago, despite the hype giving Biden credit for midterm election results in November 2022.” (11/27/23)
https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/joe-biden-polls-2024
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43) Our culture isn’t safe in the hands of the streaming giants
Source: spiked
by Angie Speaks
“Still shopping for physical media like CDs or DVDs? Well, you might not be able to do so for much longer. Last month, Best Buy, the American retail giant, made headlines by announcing it was to stop selling DVDs and Blu-ray discs at the start of 2024, citing a massive drop in demand. This news arrived on the back of British retailer Tesco’s decision to stop offering physical media last year – a move, like Best Buy’s, driven by sluggish sales. … there is little doubt that the digitisation of music, movies and books has brought huge benefits to consumers. But at a time when so much of our culture is being re-written, re-edited and redacted to satisfy woke sensibilities, retaining access to physical media is important. Indeed, it could soon be our only means of accessing films and TV shows in their original, uncensored form.” (11/27/23)
https://www.spiked-online.com/2023/11/27/our-culture-isnt-safe-in-the-hands-of-the-streaming-giants/
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44) From Stonewall to Gaza: What it Means to be a Queer for Palestine
Source: exile in happy valley
by Nicky Reid
“When you are granted the awkward misfortune of being raised in the wrong gender in a conservative small town you get used to being the butt of every limp-dick breeder’s stupid fucking jokes. I’ve heard them all before and they ceased being funny sometime between the pedophile priests and the exorcists. With that being said, in order to survive and organize as a radical Queer anarcho-populist amongst the rural poor in MAGA country, I have had little choice but to grow a thicker skin than most, even going so far as to take vulgar insults in stride and repurpose them as weapons of radical pride.” (11/26/23)
https://exileinhappyvalley.blogspot.com/2023/11/from-stonewall-to-gaza-what-it-means-to.html
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45) Interview: Former Trump Economist Breaks Down the Biden Economy
Source: Association of Mature American Citizens
by Aaron Flanigan
“Despite Joe Biden, the mainstream media, and their Democrat allies sparing no effort to sell the supposed successes of ‘Bidenomics,’ an overwhelming majority of Americans still believe the economy is doing poorly. AMAC Newsline spoke with Casey Mulligan, a professor of Economics at the University of Chicago and the former chief economist for the Council of Economic Advisers in the Trump White House, to find out the truth about how the economy is doing and why most Americans don’t share the White House’s cheery outlook. Though Biden administration officials generally point to metrics like the unemployment rate and GDP growth as proof that the economy is doing well, Mulligan said it remains understandable why ‘people aren’t buying that.'” (11/27/23)
https://amac.us/newsline/economy/former-trump-economist-breaks-down-the-biden-economy/
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46) The Probability of Despotism Is Not Zero
Source: EconLog
by Pierre Lemieux
“A disquieting Wall Street Journal column reminds us of what classical liberals and libertarians have been repeating: the state, however useful it may be, is very dangerous. With hindsight, it is surprising how so few people have taken these voices seriously, perhaps because the lobster has been boiled quite slowly. The problem is not unique to the United States but may be especially dangerous here given the enormous extent of the president’s power. Congress can be happily gridlocked; the president will not be (except possibly in his own mind, which doesn’t reduce the danger).” (11/26/23)
https://www.econlib.org/the-probability-of-despotism-is-not-zero/
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47) Trenchard and Gordon: Forgotten Influences on the Founders
Source: Tenth Amendment Center
by Joe Wolverton, II
“Do you recognize the names John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon? If not, I recommend you read this article and then immediately go to this link and begin reading the essays they wrote. You will thank me for it. Written under the pseudonym ‘Cato’ (in honor of the Roman hero and champion of liberty and republican virtue, Cato the Younger), Trenchard and Gordon wrote some 144 of these letters, ranging in topics from tyranny, to the dangers of a central bank, to the threat to liberty posed by political parties, to freedom of the press and speech, and everything in between. They are classics in the corpus of republican political philosophy. But they are much more than that to Americans.” (11/26/23)
https://tenthamendmentcenter.com/2023/11/26/trenchard-and-gordon-forgotten-influences-on-the-founders/
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48) Revisiting the Argument that Government is Too Small
Source: American Institute for Economic Research
by Gary M Galles
“Once upon a time, academics argued over whether the government was too large or too small. I haven’t seen much of such conversations lately, even as government has blown far past its previous levels of magnitude and power. Perhaps that means it is worth reconsidering the major competing claims in the earlier discussion about the size of government, especially since recent changes have made the ‘government is too large’ argument much more convincing.” (11/26/23)
https://www.aier.org/article/revisiting-the-argument-that-government-is-too-small/
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49) Labor Movement History of Backing Israel, and the Changing Climate Amid the War on Gaza
Source: In These Times
by Jeff Schuhrke
“As the Israeli government carries out what experts describe as a potential genocide in Gaza — with full political, financial, and military backing from the United States — millions of people around the world are mobilizing to demand an immediate cease-fire and a free Palestine. Workers in the United States, including numerous rank-and-file unionists and local union representatives, are similarly speaking out against the ongoing siege and bombardment of Gaza and pledging their solidarity with Palestinian trade unions, which have called on organized labor to refuse to manufacture or transport weapons destined for Israel. Labor leaders in various countries have joined in these calls, but top US labor officials — especially those in the AFL-CIO, the country’s top labor federation — have mostly refrained from supporting a cease-fire, with a few making tepid statements about the ‘humanitarian crisis’ in Gaza.” (11/27/23)
https://inthesetimes.com/article/palestine-gaza-labor-unions-israel
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50) The Economics of Vice and Virtue
Source: David Friedman’s Substack
by David Friedman
“You are big, tough, and, like most people, fond of having your own way. You make it clear to all and sundry that you don’t like people disrespecting you and will respond by beating them up. You gradually expand your definition of ‘disrespecting’ to include flirting with any woman you are interested in or failing to show proper respect for your opinions. Actually beating people up can be risky but most of the time you don’t have to, because other people take care not to offend you. A psychologist might describe it as an aggressive personality. To an economist it is a commitment strategy — one that usually works. One problem is that you may not be the only one following it.” (11/26/23)
https://daviddfriedman.substack.com/p/the-economics-of-vice-and-virtue
_____ Today's Freedom Podcast and Video _____
51) Reason Roundtable, 11/27/23
Source: Reason
“Matt Welch, Katherine Mangu-Ward, Nick Gillespie, and Peter Suderman compare and contrast Florida and California politics ahead of this week’s debate between Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and California Gov. Gavin Newsom.” (11/27/23)
https://reason.com/podcast/2023/11/27/florida-vs-california/
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52) Trita Parsi on The Scott Horton Show
Source: The Scott Horton Show
"Scott is joined by Trita Parsi to discuss the horrific situation playing out in Gaza." (11/27/23)
https://scotthorton.org/interviews/11-22-23-trita-parsi-on-the-humanitarian-crisis-in-gaza/
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53) EconTalk, 11/27/23
Source: EconTalk
“Tyler Cowen on the GOAT of Economics.” (11/27/23)
https://www.econtalk.org/tyler-cowen-on-the-goat-of-economics/
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54) Ron Paul Liberty Report, 11/27/23
Source: Ron Paul Liberty Report
“Free Speech: The Great Enemy of The Empire of Lies.” (11/27/23)
https://rumble.com/v3y66sm-free-speech-the-great-enemy-of-the-empire-of-lies.html
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55) Conflicts of Interest, episode 505
Source: Libertarian Institute
“Israel Is Killing Palestinian Civilians at a Historic Pace.” (11/27/23)
https://libertarianinstitute.org/kyle/coi-505-israel-is-killing-palestinian-civilians-at-a-historic-pace/
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56) The Bookmonger, episode 484
Source: National Review
“The New Deal’s War on the Bill of Rights by David T. Beito.” (11/27/23)
https://www.nationalreview.com/podcasts/the-bookmonger/episode-484-the-new-deals-war-on-the-bill-of-rights-by-david-t-beito/
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57) Stay Free with Russell Brand, episode 254
Source: Stay Free with Russell Brand
“Oh Sh*t, Pentagon’s New Nuclear Bomb 24x MORE POWERFUL Than in WW2!!” (11/27/23)
https://rumble.com/v3y5u2g-oh-sht-pentagons-new-nuclear-bomb-24x-more-powerful-than-in-ww2-stay-free-2.html
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58) Finding Freedom, episode 413
Source: Lions of Liberty
“What has the Government Done to Our Food with Folic Acid Fortification?” (11/27/23)
https://www.lionsofliberty.com/episodes/what-has-the-government-done-to-our-food-with-folic-acid-fortification
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59) Antiwar News with Dave DeCamp, 11/27/23
Source: Antiwar.com
“Hamas Wants to Extend Hostage Deal Truce, Ukraine Confirms Early Peace Deal Was Possible, and More.” (11/27/23)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J62tUyj6Fi0
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60) Free Talk Live, 11/26/23
Source: Free Talk Live
“New Hampshire Smartest State :: What the FCC is going on?? :: Jello with shredded carrots :: Do you prefer your pretzels soft or hard? :: Businessman dumps poop on steps of City and County Building :: Raunchy, alcohol-fueled Taco Bell party included open sex :: What do teens want to be when they grow up :: Satan club in CT :: 2023-11-26 Hosts: Captain Kickass, Steve Classic, Nikki.” (11/26/23)
https://soundcloud.com/freetalklive/free-talk-live-2023-11-26
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