Day: October 2, 2020

by James Bovard “People want to be safe,” Joe Biden repeatedly declared in Tuesday night’s debate. The 2020 presidential race could turn into a referendum on whether vastly increasing government power can provide “freedom from fear.” This has been a recurring theme in recent American history that consistently brings out the worst in both politicians and voters.  The 2020 presidential campaign thus far has plenty of unpleasant parallels to 9/11 and the 2004 election. The terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 were the biggest intelligence failure by US government agencies since Pearl Harbor. The Central Intelligence Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation ignored bushels of evidence of an international conspiracy and a bucket of warnings that Arabs with te...

by Dave DeCamp Last week, the House Foreign Affairs Committee grilled Michael Pack, who President Trump recently appointed to head the US government’s state propaganda arm, the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM). Pack was appointed in June and started a big shakeup at the US state media outlets run by the USAGM, like Voice of America and Radio Free Asia. Pack fired senior staffers, pushed out management, and froze funding. During last week’s hearing, Democrats and Republicans on the committee teamed up to attack Pack for his purges. But what seemed more important to Congress and former USAGM officials was Pack’s move to freeze funds to the Open Technology Fund (OTF). The OTF was formed in 2012 and operated as part of Radio Free Asia for seven years. In 2019, the OTF became a...