Brief fundraiser update …
Thanks to subscribing contributor DT and to long-time support JR, whose respective $2.50 monthly payment and $150 contribution put us over our weekend “mini-goal” of hitting the $500 mark by today! We’re now past 10% of our year-end fundraiser goal of $5,000!
We love our long-time supporters and our monthly subscribing contributors, and yes, we’ll take more of your money if want to send it. But our fundraising pleas are REALLY aimed at the vast majority of readers who’ve never returned value to the freedom movement’s daily newspaper for the value they seem to perceive themselves as getting out of it (or else they wouldn’t remain subscribers year after year).
Between our web, email, and social media editions, my rough guess of our daily readership is about 5,000. If each one of those readers found RRND/FND worth a measly $1 a month (3.3 cents per day!) and chose to pay that, we’d never have to run another high-pressure/long-term fundraiser again.
If you’ve never supported us before, please consider doing so now at …
http://rationalreview.com/support-rrnd
Yours in liberty,
Tom Knapp
Publisher
Rational Review News Digest / Freedom News Daily
“Intense effort” didn’t seal UK-EU Brexit deal
Source: San Francisco Chronicle
“The European Union’s top Brexit negotiator says urgent talks with Britain’s point person did not result in their reaching agreement on outstanding issues. EU negotiator Michel Barnier said: ‘Despite intense efforts, some key issues are still open’ in the divorce talks between the European Union and Britain. Barnier and his British counterpart, Dominic Raab, met in Brussels for surprise talks on Sunday. The discussion prompted rumors that a full agreement might be imminent, but Barnier says the future of the border on the island of Ireland remain a serious obstacle. He says the need ‘to avoid a hard border’ between Ireland and the U.K’s Northern Ireland is among the unsettled issues. An EU official says no further negotiations are planned before an EU leaders summit on Wednesday.” (10/14/18)
https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/The-Latest-EU-ambassadors-gather-amid-Brexit-13306151.php
Facebook Meddles in the 2018 Midterm Elections
Source: Garrison Center
by Thomas L Knapp
“Facebook’s administrators are meddling in politics — including the 2018 US midterm elections — in the name of preventing meddling in politics. Who benefits from the meddling? It doesn’t seem to fall along ‘left/right’ lines in particular. The victims come from across the political spectrum — from Reverb Press on the left, to Right Wing News on the right, to the libertarian Free Thought Project — some with millions of Facebook followers. The primary thread connecting victims of the purge seems to be that they are critics and/or opponents of the American political ‘mainstream’ or ‘establishment.’ In a sense, this is nothing new.” (10/14/18)
Saudi Arabia: Regime says it will retaliate against any sanctions over Khashoggi case
Source: Japan Today [Japan]
“Saudi Arabia on Sunday warned against threats to punish it over last week’s disappearance of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, as European and U.S. allies piled on pressure. Khashoggi, a U.S. resident and Washington Post columnist critical of Riyadh’s policies, disappeared on Oct 2 after entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. Turkey believes he was murdered and his body removed. Saudi Arabia has denied that. U.S. President Donald Trump has threatened ‘severe punishment’ if it turns out Khashoggi was killed in the consulate, though he said Washington would be “punishing” itself if it halted military sales to Riyadh.” (10/14/18)
Are taxes a democratic alternative to charity?
Source: Libertarianism.org
by David S D’Amato
“Today’s political left — e.g., progressives, ‘liberals,’ socialists, social democrats — reliably advances the idea that free people, left to their own devices, will do the wrong thing, their actions producing aggregate social results that most of us find quite undesirable. They won’t, for example, donate to charities in sufficiently high amounts, so they must be taxed by the state; they won’t provide adequate funding to the arts, so, again, they must be forced to do so, etc. Their ultimate claim, then, seems to be that an ordering of society premised on nonviolence and the assumption of equality in authority between individuals produces bad outcomes, that fairness requires, in a fundamental way, some people (those who hold political power) to use violence against others.” (10/12/18)
https://www.libertarianism.org/columns/are-taxes-democratic-alternative-to-charity
Freed US pastor leaves Turkey, meets Trump
Source: ABC 11 Eyewitness News
“An American pastor originally from North Carolina is back in the United States, after he was detained for nearly two years in Turkey. … [Andrew] Brunson, along with his family, met with the President, various US officials, and Senators Tom Thillis and Richard Burr of North Carolina, amongst others. A Turkish court on Friday convicted Brunson of terror charges but released him from house arrest and allowed him to leave Turkey, a move that’s likely to ease the tensions between Turkey and the United States.” (10/13/18)
Internet censorship just took an unprecedented leap forward, and hardly anyone noticed
Source: Caitlin Johnstone Blog
by Caitlin Johnstone
“While most indie media was focused on debating the way people talk about Kanye West and the disappearance of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, an unprecedented escalation in internet censorship took place which threatens everything we all care about. It received frighteningly little attention. After a massive purge of hundreds of politically oriented pages and personal accounts for ‘inauthentic behavior,’ Facebook rightly received a fair amount of criticism for the nebulous and hotly disputed basis for that action. What received relatively little attention was the far more ominous step which was taken next: within hours of being purged from Facebook, multiple anti-establishment alternative media sites had their accounts completely removed from Twitter as well. As of this writing I am aware of three large alternative media outlets which were expelled from both platforms at almost the same time: Anti-Media, the Free Thought Project, and Police the Police, all of whom had millions of followers on Facebook. Both the Editor-in-Chief of Anti-Media and its Chief Creative Officer were also banned by Twitter, and are being kept from having any new accounts on that site as well.” (10/13/18)
Clinton’s security clearance withdrawn at her request
Source: CNN
“Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s security clearance was withdrawn in August at her request, the State Department confirmed in a letter to Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley, which his office released to the public Friday. Clinton’s request came after retired Navy Adm. William McRaven, the man who oversaw the 2011 Navy SEAL raid that killed Osama bin Laden, wrote an op-ed in The Washington Post issuing a stunning rebuke of President Donald Trump’s decision to revoke the security clearance of former CIA Director John Brennan, Clinton’s spokesperson tweeted Friday night. … Clinton’s attorney, David E. Kendall, submitted a letter to the State Department on August 30 that reads, ‘(Clinton) has no desire to have her clearance become part of an unprecedented partisan controversy over the clearance process, for the reasons eloquently stated by Admiral William McRaven. Accordingly, she requests that you withdraw her clearance immediately.'” [editor’s note: Her clearance should have been withdrawn as soon as she left her last government position, especially after her grossly negligent handling of classified information came to light – TLK] (10/13/18)
https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/13/politics/hillary-clinton-security-clearance-withdrawn/index.html
Yes, inequality is a problem — when caused by the government
Source: Ludwig von Mises Institute
by Ryan McMaken
“When the topic of inequality comes up, some libertarians and conservatives tend to approach the issues as something that doesn’t matter at all. ‘I don’t care about inequality,’ they say. ‘Inequality occurs naturally, and its just an obsession of leftists … if anything it’s a good thing.’ … But rising inequality isn’t necessarily the doing of the marketplace. In a world of ‘third-way’ regimes, government intervention is a cause of inequality at least as much as is the market. There are a number of ways that governments increase inequality, primarily through government regulations and through monetary policy.” (10/12/18)
https://mises.org/wire/yes-inequality-problem-%E2%80%94-when-caused-government
Trump: Defense Secretary Mattis is “sort of a Democrat” and may leave
Source: USA Today
“President Donald Trump described his defense secretary as ‘sort of a Democrat’ and said he may leave the administration after the midterm elections, in an interview airing on ’60 Minutes’ Sunday. ‘He may leave,’ Trump said of Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, according to an interview excerpt released by CBS News. ‘I mean, at some point, everybody leaves. Everybody. People leave. That’s Washington.’ The New York Times reported last month that Trump may have soured on Mattis. In addition to thinking that Mattis is a Democrat at heart, the Times said, Trump doesn’t like being unfavorably compared to Mattis. For his part, the defense secretary has said Trump acts as if he has the understanding of a fifth or sixth grader, according to Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward’s recently published book ‘Fear.'” (10/14/18)
