Laurie Calhoun | The Libertarian Institute

Drone Swarms and the Homicidal Impunity of Governments

by Laurie Calhoun | Sep 16, 2024 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy

Drone swarms have been under development for years now, with the usual suspects touting the virtues of the latest and greatest automated technology to be purchased through lucrative government contracts for what are claimed to be purposes of national defense. As the name implies, drone swarms are modeled after the behavior of large groups of birds or insects which move in concert to produce what looks like purposeful action, despite the lack of a conscious intention on the part of any of the individual members of the group. Drones can be programmed to act in tandem to accomplish tasks such...

Speaking of democracy…

by Laurie Calhoun | Aug 5, 2024 | Blog, Politics

Democracy has been a much discussed topic of late, what with the separation of President Joe Biden from his delegates only weeks before the upcoming Democratic party convention, to be held in Chicago from August 19 to 22, 2024. There have been brokered conventions in history before, but will Vice President Kamala Harris secure the Democratic party's presidential nomination after entirely bypassing the primary process and receiving not a single vote from the electorate? Only time will tell. Right before the DNC palace coup, and just after the attempt on former President Trump's life, Alex...

Julian Assange’s Deal With the Devil

by Laurie Calhoun | Jul 29, 2024 | Featured Articles

After five years of incarceration in Belmarsh high-security prison, having already spent seven years in political asylum—what was tantamount to house arrest in the Ecuadorian embassy—Julian Assange was finally permitted by the British government to return to his homeland of Australia. The deal Assange made with the U.S. government to end its extradition quest and thereby secure his release can be viewed in one of two ways. On its face, the deal required that Assange “confess” to a felony which he did not commit, accepting a sentence of prison time already served. The second way of...

Parody of a Statesman: Antony Blinken, Secretary of War

by Laurie Calhoun | Jul 8, 2024 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy

For Halloween last year, the United States’ highest ranked diplomat, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, dressed his son and daughter up as Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky and the Ukrainian flag, respectively. At a White House event on that day, Blinken’s children were photographed soliciting candy from President Joe Biden. Meanwhile, Zelensky himself had been doing his usual media circuit, appearing progressively more desperate to extract a fresh supply of “candy” from U.S. taxpayers by way of their nonrepresentative elected officials, most of whom, it would seem, have little if any...

Sham-ocracy, Scam-ocracy

by Laurie Calhoun | Jun 17, 2024 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy

The word "democracy" is bandied about rhetorically by politicians on a regular basis to rationalize whatever it is that they want to do. This tendency has increased markedly in recent times as so-called wars of democracy and campaigns to save or preserve democracy are cast as the most pressing priorities of the day. In the U.S. presidential election campaign currently underway, both members of the War Party duopoly claim to be the champions of democracy, while depicting their adversaries as loose cannon authoritarians. President Joe “Our Patience is Wearing Thin” Biden attempted in 2021 to...

Life During Gaza Wartime

by Laurie Calhoun | May 22, 2024 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy

People are by now firmly entrenched in their respective positions regarding the conflict raging in Gaza since October 7, 2023. The Hamas attacks on that day have served as the pretext for a “war” on the Palestinian people for the past seven months. The announcement that the ICC (International Criminal Court) has applied for arrest warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, along with their highest-level associates (asserting, in other words, that both sides are wrong) is unlikely to change anyone’s mind about what is going on. Many American...

No Crickets for Cricket!

by Laurie Calhoun | May 4, 2024 | Blog, Politics

The governor of South Dakota, Kristi Noem, has been plagued by a self-inflicted and festering wound for about a week now. An excerpt from her soon-to-be released memoir, aptly and prophetically entitled No Going Back, has transformed the governor from a Republican party darling and possible choice as Donald Trump’s vice presidential running mate to a permanent political pariah, even more repugnant than some people find Trump himself to be. Given that Noem has been vying for the position of vice commander-in-chief of the endless missions of mass homicide perpetrated by the U.S. military...

Our Bloody Cultural Psychosis

by Laurie Calhoun | Feb 29, 2024 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy

Imagine someone who did not know the difference between right and wrong and felt that he could, and should, take anything he wanted from anyone he wanted because, as far as he could see, there was no reason not to. If he wanted to buy something but was low on funds, he would not hesitate to kill someone in order to access his wallet. If he became hungry, he would be willing to slay a randomly selected human being for the contents of his lunch box. People like this are sometimes referred to as “criminally insane,” because they genuinely do not appear to understand why they should not do...