On COI #733, Kyle Anzalone breaks down the latest news from China, Ukraine, and the Middle East.
Subscribe on YouTube and audio-only.
Panama and Trump’s Throwback Imperialism
Trump threatened to steal another country’s land again:
Trump reiterated his intentions to take back the Panama Canal, after threatening he would in a Truth Social post on Saturday. Trump said that the United States is being “ripped off” at the Panama Canal and has insinuated that China is gaining influence over the waterway. “We’re being ripped off at the Panama Canal like we’re being ripped off everywhere else,” Trump said Sunday.
The fearmongering about China is a reminder of how pernicious defining U.S. foreign policy around great power rivalry can be. The threats against Panama show how Trump’s crude imperialism and the pursuit of rivalry with China reinforce each other. Trump assumes that the U.S. is always being “ripped off,” and he believes that the answer to this is to steal from other countries. If he thinks another country is getting too close to a rival, he wants the U.S. to “solve” that by threatening to steal some of their territory. Trump sees weaker countries in our hemisphere that he wants to dictate terms to, and rivalry with China provides him with the excuse for threatening them. He has probably been encouraged in this by his National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, who has been inflating the Chinese “threat” in Panama for years.
Conflicts of Interest: Netanyahu Attempts to Kill Another Hostage Deal
On COI #732, Kyle Anzalone discusses the latest news from Ukraine and the Middle East.
Subscribe on YouTube and audio-only.
Veteran Calls Out House Committee for Supporting Genocide
Washington, DC – On Wednesday, 17-year veteran and intelligence officer Josephine Guilbeau disrupted the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs to call out the billions of dollars Congress sends to fund genocide in Gaza while neglecting veterans at home. Here is what she had to say:
“US Congress is complicit in the genocide in Gaza! You keep sending billions of dollars to Israel meanwhile veterans are homeless and committing suicide with more budget cuts on the way. As a 17-year veteran and intelligence officer, I am watching you destroy American values and jeopardize our national security.
Israel is burning children alive! Israel is burning children alive!
Continue reading “Veteran Calls Out House Committee for Supporting Genocide”
The Ongoing Horrors in Gaza
Another State Department official quit in frustration over the Biden administration’s Gaza policy:
Casey resigned from the state department in July after four years at the job, discreetly leaving the post unlike other recent high-profile government departures. Now seated at his kitchen table in the quiet suburbs of northern Michigan, Casey reflected on how, as one of only two people in the entire US government explicitly focused on Gaza, he became an unwilling chronicler of a humanitarian catastrophe.
“I got so tired of writing about dead kids,” he said. “Just constantly having to prove to Washington that these children actually died and then watching nothing happen.”
Netanyahu’s Seizure of Syrian Land
The recent seizure of Syrian land on the Golan Heights by Israel is an ominous example of expansionism at its worst, in complete violation of property rights, if not a total human rights violation as well. The claim of Benjamin Netanyahu that the Golan will “forever be an inseparable part” of Israel shows utter disregard for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Syria. Netanyahu flippantly defied earlier treaties with Damascus using the dissolution of Syria’s internationally-recognized government after Assad’s departure as an excuse, claiming such treaties are no longer binding.
Libertarians understand that political borders are a human construct and that the individual has a natural right to self and property. The notion of national borders is an institutional contrivance, and the proper role of the state is the protection of individual rights, rather than the extension of territorial claims via aggression.