The city of Mesa, Arizona settled a lawsuit with the family of a young man who was killed by police in September of 2020. As TFTP previously reported, Angel Benitez was found asleep in a car which was reported stolen. Benitez, for whatever reason, drove away from officers and stopped at an apartment complex in Mesa near the cross streets of University and Evergreen. Upon exiting the vehicle, bystanders reported Benitez had his hands raised when cops opened fire, killing the 21-year-old. The City of Mesa recently settled a civil lawsuit with the family for $250,000. Benjamin Taylor, the...
Benefits
Russia Will No Longer Depend on West, Deepen Trade Ties with China – Lavrov
Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said his country would pivot its economic relationships away from the West and towards China, suggesting Moscow could even rebuff an offer to reopen trade with the US and its allies. Speaking with reporters in Moscow on Monday, the Russian diplomat said that while his country would consider rebuilding ties with Western states, it is inclined to stick with more dependable partners going forward. "If they [the West] want to offer something in terms of resuming relations, then we will seriously consider whether we will need it or not," he said, adding...
10 Reasons that Freedom is Good
Advocates of freedom are often called upon to explain why people should be given specific freedoms. Why should people be free to work for less than $7 an hour? Why should people be free to leave their homes during a pandemic? Why should people be free to take drugs? These questions are asked as though until we can prove that an action would provide a net societal benefit, we should not be allowed to take that action. This is exactly backwards. Any restriction upon freedom should require an overwhelming case that it would prevent enormous harm before we consider adopting it. In order to...
Ukrainian Military Intelligence Chief Threatens Total “Guerrilla” Warfare
The head of Ukraine’s military intelligence, Kyrylo Budanov, threatened total “guerrilla” warfare in Russian-occupied territory. He also warned Moscow was attempting to split his country into a divided state. Budanov said that Ukraine was preparing a guerrilla war in any territory Russia continues to control. "The season of a total Ukrainian guerilla safari will soon begin," he said. The statement from the intel chief comes as the US is dumping billions of insurgency-style weapons into Ukraine. The American weapon’s shipments to Keiv included the shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missile that...
UN Human Rights Report Says Israel Guilty of ‘Apartheid’
The UN’s human rights body has accused Israel of the “crime of apartheid,” saying it has established a “regime of systematic racial oppression and discrimination” against Palestinians.
A Solution to Transgender Sports
Even in these politically divisive times, this headline fairly leaps off the page at you: “Texas Passes Bill Barring Sports for Transgender Students.” According to Texas State House Representative Valoree Swanson, a sponsor of this bill, it is “all about girls and protecting them” in the state’s University Interscholastic League. She continued: “We need a statewide level playing field…It’s very important that we, who got elected to be here, protect our girls.” This seems a bit unfair to a small group of marginalized students, but we all know the genesis of this initiative: boys with...
DECLASSIFIED: CIA Assassination Manual (1953)
https://youtu.be/73Sq50YKR5c ...the conspiracy theorist asks himself the question cui bono? Who benefits from this measure? If he finds that Measure A benefits X and Y, his next step is to investigate the hypothesis: did X and Y in fact lobby or exert pressure for the passage of Measure A? In short, did X and Y realize that they would benefit and act accordingly? Far from being a paranoid or a determinist, the conspiracy analyst is a praxeologist; that is, he believes that people act purposively, that they make conscious choices to employ means in order to arrive at goals. Murray...
Lunatic With a Plan: Erdogan and Turkey’s Economic Woes
Since the first assault on Turkey’s finances in 2018, which I wrote about multiple times (here, here, and here), I’ve been the lone voice telling everyone that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is a lunatic but he’s a lunatic with a plan. That plan is to de-dollarize the economy of a valuable member of NATO geostrategically. Since the first shots across the bow by the Trump administration at Erdogan’s toying with those powers east of the Bosporus (Russia, China and Iran) the Turkish lira has been the primary mode of attack against Erdogan. Erdogan has pursued what has been deemed unorthodox...
10/4/21 Scott’s Debate with Bill Kristol
On Monday, October 4th, Scott took part in a debate organized by Gene Epstein. Scott’s opponent was neoconservative Bill Kristol, one of the most prominent war hawks of recent American history. The resolution they debated was: A willingness to intervene, and seek regime change, is key to an American foreign policy that benefits America. The event was filmed by Reason TV so the video version can be found on their Youtube Channel. This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: The War State and Why The Vietnam War?, by Mike Swanson; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom;...
Automation: A Luddite’s Dystopia and the Future of Work
Andrew Yang ran his presidential campaign on the promise of providing American citizens with a monthly stipend to counter the effects of job loss. According to Yang, “up to 30% of jobs are at risk of automation.” The fear of the impact of new technologies is nothing new. The nineteenth century had its Luddites, a group of workers that took to smashing early industrial looms and other machinery in which they saw a threat to manual labor jobs. Technophobia is a retrograde and reactionary idea that continues to be popular, and as history shows, it is not justified. It is easy to imagine the...