THANK YOU to long-time supporters ERW and RRS! Their donations over the weekend, totaling $102.50, bring our year-end fundraiser total $2,375.50 — exactly $300 short of the finish line!
Once we’ve raised $2,675.50, supporter GL will “match funds” to get us to the $5,351 goal.
BUT! We have to raise that last $300. Please support the freedom movement’s daily newspaper at:
https://news.rationalreview.com/support-rrnd
Have a great day!
Yours in liberty,
Tom Knapp
Publisher
Rational Review News Digest / Freedom News Daily
Source: Common Sense
by Paul Jacob
“After 13 years of civil war, a rebel force seized the Syrian capital over the weekend, toppling more than half a century of the Assad dictatorship, with despot Bashar al-Assad fleeing to safety in Russia. Good riddance. But what next? Will any semblance of freedom come to Syria and be sustained? ‘Syria is a mess,’ President-elect Donald Trump posted on his Truth Social platform, concluding: ‘THE UNITED STATES SHOULD HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH IT. THIS IS NOT OUR FIGHT. LET IT PLAY OUT. DO NOT GET INVOLVED!’ He’s not wrong.” (12/09/24)
https://thisiscommonsense.org/2024/12/09/dictator-down/
Source: Politico
“Andy Kim, a three-term congressmember who upended New Jersey’s political landscape in his quest for higher office, was appointed to the U.S. Senate Sunday. Kim, 42, takes office following the resignation of interim Sen. George Helmy, who had long said he would leave office once the results of the 2024 election were certified. He will fill the seat vacated by Bob Menendez this summer following his federal conviction. … Kim was elected last month over Republican Curtis Bashaw by just shy of a 10-point margin — a relatively narrow victory for a New Jersey Democrat compared to previous Senate races, but nearly four points above Kamala Harris’[s] closer-than-expected six point margin over President-elect Donald Trump.” (12/08/24)
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/12/08/new-jersey-andy-kim-senate-00193194
Source: Tech Tank
“What to Expect from the Trump Administration on Cybersecurity.” (12/09/24)
https://shows.acast.com/tech-tank/episodes/what-to-expect-from-the-trump-administration-on-cybersecurit
Source: Washington Monthly
by David Atkins
“Donald Trump promised to be a dictator on day one, and he seems dead set on keeping his promise. With reckless speed, he has announced wildly unqualified nominees to his administration, whose only apparent merit is unswerving fealty to their master combined with a bloodlust for retribution against their perceived liberal enemies. But the fact that these men (and they are almost all men) want to destroy democracy and do untold harm to civil society doesn’t mean they can. People organized in unflinching resistance can stop them. Developed democracies only succumb to authoritarian backsliding with the consent of a cowering public.” (12/09/24)
https://washingtonmonthly.com/2024/12/09/saving-democracy-through-ideas/
Source: Reuters
“Ousted Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s prime minister said he had agreed on Monday to hand power to the rebel-led Salvation Government, a day after the rebels seized the capital Damascus and Assad fled to Russia. The imminent transfer of power follows 13 years of civil war and the end to more than 50 years of brutal rule by the Assad family, leaving Syrians at home and millions of refugees abroad hopeful yet deeply uncertain about their country’s future. Damascus stirred to life on Monday, with traffic returning to streets and people venturing out after a nighttime curfew, but most shops remained shut. Fighters from the remote countryside milled about in the capital, clustering in the central Umayyad Square.” (12/09/24)
https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/with-assad-ousted-new-era-starts-syria-world-watches-2024-12-09/
Source: Law & Liberty
by Max J Prowant
“Before exiting the Pentagon this summer, nuclear strategist and MIT professor Vipin Narang told reporters that we may ‘one day look back and see the quarter-century after the Cold War as a nuclear intermission.’ His comments were delivered in the context of President Biden’s quietly approving a new nuclear strategy to counter the threat of coordination between China, Russia, and North Korea. China, in particular, is rapidly building its nuclear arsenal and is projected to possess an equal number of warheads as the United States by 2035. The specter of nuclear conflict, be it the use of ‘tactical nukes’ or nuclear holocaust, now looms over the world in a way it has not since the 1980s. We are, as many have now acknowledged, in the early stages of a second Cold War.” (12/09/24)
https://lawliberty.org/book-review/a-cold-warrior-for-our-time/
Source: The American Prospect
by Harold Meyerson
“When much of America’s working class is downwardly mobile, and when 40 years of neoliberal policies have only made it harder for those workers to amass the power they’d need to better their lot, is it any surprise that those workers vote for a strongman who vows to circumvent the government that’s failed them and champion their interests through brute force? That was the starting point of the analysis that American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten laid out in an address last week to Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. And that was the starting point of the challenge that Weingarten posed to American liberals: Either empower American workers or face the prospect not just of the coming Trump second term, but of subsequent MAGA-esque regimes.” (12/09/24)
https://prospect.org/labor/2024-12-09-why-workers-deserted-neoliberal-democratic-party/
Source: Al Jazeera [Qatari state media]
“Tonga’s Prime Minister Siaosi Sovaleni has abruptly resigned ahead of a planned no-confidence vote in his leadership, capping a period of fraught relations between his government and the Pacific nation’s royal family. … Sovaleni, who took office in 2021, resigned before facing a vote of no confidence on Monday afternoon brought on by opposition lawmakers. His leadership had survived a previous no-confidence vote in September 2023. A statement on the Tongan parliament’s Facebook page said the prime minister had quit ‘for the good of the country and moving Tonga forward.'” (12/09/24)
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/12/9/tonga-prime-minister-resigns-ahead-of-no-confidence-vote
Source: Lions of Liberty
“The Latin America Red Pill with Fergus Hodgson.” (12/09/24)
https://www.lionsofliberty.com/episodes/the-latin-america-red-pill-with-fergus-hodgson
Source: CounterPunch
by Dave Lindorff
“Even after Obama had reached the apex of political success as a two-term president, no longer having to think about getting re-elected, he ignored the evidence presented to him by Ethel’s two orphaned sons Michael and Robert Meeropol that their mother had not been involved in the spying. He also ignored the admission by Ethel’s brother-in-law David Greenglass that he had lied under oath about her playing a role in his atomic spying, and despite the clear evidence in decrypted Soviet wartime spy cables that she was not working as a spy for the NKVD, Obama declined to reverse the fatal wrong done to her. … In the few remaining weeks of his lame-duck presidency, Biden should do the right thing and posthumously exonerate, not just pardon, Ethel Rosenberg …” (12/09/24)
https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/12/09/biden-do-the-right-thing-exonerate-ethel-rosenberg/
