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Let’s look at actions and forget its words:Note: In its 200 year history, the USA has intervened in, invaded or militarily occupied the following Western Hemisphere nations:Canada, Confederate States of America, Mexico, Cuba, Haiti, Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Colombia, Panama, Venezuela, Surinam, Brazil, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Paraguay, Uruguay, Chile, Argentina, Puerto Rico, Grenada.While the dates most associated with the Central Intelligence Agency are the 1953 coup against Iran’s Mohammed Mossadeq and the following year against Guatemalan President Jacobo Arbenz, the world’s most notorious–and possibly ignoble–spy agency actually was chartered on this day, 18 September, in 1947.Since then, the CIA has played a role in hundreds of assassinations, military coups, and rebellions around the globe, from Argentina to Zaire.Despite it’s championing of freedom, the CIA’s true objective has always been imperialist in nature. Whether oil in Iran or bananas in Guatemala, the U.S. has a material interest in every country in whose affairs it has meddled.In order to meet its goals, the CIA recruits influential, intellectual and charismatic personalities. The agency also resorts to threats, kidnappings, torture, enforced disappearances and assassinations. The organization incites violence, uprisings and military rebellion, and causes economic chaos and misery to the people through scarcity of basic foods, etc..The CIA has been exposed on a number of occasions through documented evidence, leaks of information and whistleblowing by active and former agents.Che Guevera, the revolutionary face of resistance against U.S. homicidal interventions. Two years after leading a rebellion against Washington’s intervention in Bolivia, Che was murdered.1. 1954 – GuatemalaIn 1944, the violent U.S.-backed dictatorship of Jorge Ubico was overthrown by a popular uprising. The people of Guatemala were sick and tired of the brutal injustices of his regime, although in reality Ubico was merely a puppet of The United Fruit Company, which obeyed Washington’s orders. They basically enslaved the population. They stripped campesinos and Indigenous people of their lands and forced them to work their own parcels and paid them bread crumbs. Those who dared to disobey were brutally punished by a police force working for the U.S. fruit company.The victory of the uprising brought peace to the country but it only took 10 years for U S President Dwight Eisenhower (and two of Ike’s cabinet members [who were also United Fruit Company insiders] Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and CIA Chief Allen Dulles) to implement a plan to overthrow the government.In 1954, (US President Dwight Eisenhower’s) CIA launched the so-called Operation PBSuccess. The country’s capital, Guatemala City, was bombed by U.S. warplanes. The young Ernesto “Che” Guevara was there and witnessed the ordeal first hand. Hundreds of campesino leaders were executed and many campesino and Mayan Indigenous communities were completely wiped out. The brutal CIA intervention wasn’t complete until 200,000 had been killed. U.S. companies were again enjoying huge profits in the Central American country and Washington was happy.U.S.-backed and financed military tyrants of Guatemala 19542. 1959 – HaitiHaiti is equally strategic to the United States as are the Dominican Republic and Cuba. So, Washington doesn’t hesitate when their brutal control appears to wane in the Caribbean. Under no circumstance, would the U.S. allow governments in the region to lean to the left, and if they dare to, (US President Dwight Eisenhower’) CIA steps in to push them back to the right. Of course, Cuba is a rare example of resilience to U.S. efforts to achieve hegemony in the area. Since 1959, the Cuban revolution of Fidel Castro has repealed the relentless U.S. attacks.But in Haiti, the story is different. In 1959 as well, popular discontent rose against the brutal puppet of the U.S., Francois Duvalier. The CIA stepped in and stopped it immediately. With the help of the intelligence agency, Duvalier wasted no time and created an army to violently repress all those who rose up against him. He and his heir to the regime, Jean Claude Duvalier, ordered massacres that were so horrendous they defy words. Over 100,000 people were murdered. And in 1986, when a new but uncontrollable rebellion took over, a U.S. Air Force plane rescued Jean Claude and took him to France so he could live in peaceful luxury.U.S. puppet Francois “Papa Doc” Duvalier—a CIA murderer3. 1964 – BrazilThe year of 1964 was one of incredible transformation in Brazil. Democratically-elected President Joao Goulart implemented his “Plan of Basic Reforms.” Even though the U.S. had exerted much of its power through ensuring people weren’t lifted from ignorance and illiteracy, Brazil implemented real changes that made Washington very uncomfortable. Firstly, a tax reform was put in place that would hugely carve into the profits of the multinational corporations of the United States and its allies. Washington was also very unhappy with a reform by which land would be given back to their legitimate owners and would redistribute other lands to poor people.It was now time to send in (US President Lyndon Johnson’s) CIA to take action against the government of Goulart, which they did in 1964. They put in power a brutal dictatorship that lasted 19 years. During this regime, thousands were tortured and hundreds executed. The CIA also made sure all those leaders who had leftist tendencies were eliminated, particularly Marxists.4. 1969 – UruguayDuring the sixties, revolutionary movements spread through Latin America. Uruguay was drowned in crises. United States saw influential socialist leaders emerge in this South American nation. For example, the urban revolutionary guerrilla known as the Tupamaros. Jose “Pepe” Mujica was part of it, and so was his wife Lucia Topolansky. Washington became obsessed with eliminating them, fearing the influence and power they were achieving.Nelson Rockefeller went to Uruguay to observe first-hand how they were, generating a growing anti-Yankee sentiment. He returned to Washington to alert authorities that something needed to be done urgently.Of course, (US President Richard Nixon’s) CIA responded immediately. They sent their special agent Dan Mitrione. He trained security forces in the art of torture and other highly macabre practices that are indescribable in nature. And then the CIA put in power Juan Maria Bordaberry and his military dictatorship. He ruled under direct order from Washington the next 12 years, during which he killed hundreds of people and tortured tens of thousands more. Repression was so brutal and Uruguayans were so traumatized and fearful they no longer carried out their traditional dances, which symbolize happiness and victory.5. 1971 – BoliviaThe vast Latin American natural resources are the envy of the greedy and powerful politicians of the United States, who resort to any means to control them for their own benefit, and never for the people and countries they brutally exploit. During decades, U.S. multinational corporations enslaved people in vast regions of Chile, Bolivia and Peru. When those living under slavery conditions dared to rebel against their oppressors, they were annihilated in bulk. Che Guevara felt compelled to go to Bolivia and help the people rise in revolution.This was 1967. By then, U.S. mining companies had enslaved entire communities, including children, who they banned from school. Two years later, Che Guevara was murdered by (US President Richard Nixon’s) CIA. Once out of their way, CIA officials established a military regime.However, the people again turned on Washington. General Juan Jose Torres took power and implemented reforms to benefit workers and those living in poverty. Hope returned to Bolivia and its people, but the CIA would not allow this to continue. The agency recruited General Hugo Banzer. He led the coup against Torres and in 1971, he kicked off his violent dictatorship. He ordered the torture of a number of opposition leaders and the execution of hundreds of influential political leaders. He sent about 8,000 other leaders to jail. Washington was happy.6. 1973 – ChileChilean President Salvador Allende was just another of the many victims of the many coups on democracy carried out by the United States (Note the date: 9/11/73)Chile was another country brutally exploited by U.S. corporations.Washington (US President Richard Nixon and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger) made sure the people lived in utter misery. The CIA used different tactics but the results were the same. The agency led a smear campaign against the government of Chile, as it is currently doing in Venezuela. They used national and international media to demonize President Salvador Allende. They made sure people who had once been loyal to him because of his benevolent way of governing turned on him.How you ask? The same way they’re doing it in Venezuela. By causing scarcity through extortion, through torture, imprisonment, enforced disappearances and by assassinating all those who refused to bow to them. Washington was irritated beyond control after Allende nationalized natural resources. They were also annoyed because Allende built houses for those who couldn’t afford homes. He made sure his people had access to education. When Allende’s popularity was successfully undermined, the next step was to plan a coup against him. It would now be easy. And on September. 11, 1973, Gen. Augusto Pinochet led the military all the way to the presidential palace with the backing of the CIA, who provided him with all the necessary weapons and armored vehicles.War planes dropped bombs on the palace. Before he died, Allende told his people: “I will not give up! Placed in a historic transition, I will pay for the loyalty of the people with my life. And I tell you with certainty that that which we have planted in the good conscience of thousands and thousands of Chileans will not be shriveled forever. They are strong and they may be able to dominate us, but the social processes cannot be halted nor with crime nor by force.”Pinochet ruled for 17 years. He jailed 80,000 people, tortured 30,000 and murdered 3,200.7. 1976 – ArgentinaThe Argentine people endured arguably the bloodiest dictatorship of South America. It was so terrible that reading about it can be traumatic. Concentration camps, torture centers, massacres, massive rape of women and children, the beating of pregnant women, and the execution of boys and girls. In total, 30,000 people were executed. Behind it all: the CIA.In 1973, Argentina was going through a political crisis so grave that President Juan Peron collapsed and ultimately died of a heart attack in 1974. His wife, Eva Peron, took power only to confront conflicts everywhere, even within her own Peronist party.The CIA waited like a cat hunting its prey until 1976, when the situation they themselves provoked was so bad their intervention would be a walk in the park. Of course, as usual, a key recruitment was in order. The right-wing military dictator-to-be was Gen. Jorge Rafael Videla. The next step – a coup d’etat in yet another Latin American nation, and again another dictatorship at the service of the United States.This time, (US President Richard Nixon’s) nefarious Henry Kissinger would be in charge of supervising the brutal regime. The rest is history: genocide, massive human rights violations, enforced disappearances, child theft, among other heinous crimes. All this, with the approval of the hypocritical and shameless owners of power in Washington.8. 1980 – El SalvadorSalvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero broke with Catholic tradition by caring for the poor. He paid for it with his life.The people of this Central American country suffered no less than Argentina under the U.S. intervention that was carried out by you know who: the CIA. Washington had already backed a brutal dictatorship that lasted 50 years from 1931 to 1981. Campesinos and Indigenous were smashed without mercy. More than 40,000 were massacred.Things were so bad a rare incident occurred. The Catholic church tried to intervene in favor of the poor and oppressed. At this point in time, El Salvador was controlled by 13 mafia-style families who had expropriated about half of the national territory. The 13 families were closely linked to Washington. And (US President Jimmy Carter’s and later US President Ronald Reagan’s) CIA, just in case, made sure the military was very well trained in everything horrific.They were provided with all the right lethal equipment. And when the CIA found out that Jesuits were helping out the masses, they made sure they were killed. They also asked Pope John Paul II to speak to Archbishop Óscar Romero to try to persuade him to desist. Romero refused to comply and so they murdered him when he was officiating mass in 1980. When the U.S. intervention was over, 75,000 people were reported murdered, but the U.S. was at peace.9. 1989 – PanamaCIA agent and Washington-backed drug trafficker Manuel Noriega enraged the U.S. when he refused to obey their orders, prompting an invasion that left 3,500 innocent civilians dead.Another unprecedented incident occurs in this Central American country. A (US President George H. W. Bush’s) CIA agent rises to power as a dictator in the form of Manuel “Pineapple Face” Noriega. Washington’s interest here, among others, is the inter-oceanic canal.When President Omar Torrijos tried to take over control of the Panama Canal, the CIA planted a bomb on his plane and that was the end of that.In 1983, Noriega took power. He was a drug trafficker for the CIA. He had been for some 30 years. That was fine with Washington. He was of huge service to them. In fact, he was instrumental in the Iran-Contra affair, by which the CIA circumvented Congress’ prohibition to provide the Nicaraguan contras with weapons to be used against the leftist Sandinista movement.Noriega helped with cocaine to be sent mainly to Los Angeles, California, where it was sold in form of crack and served to poison vast Black communities, another of the devious objectives of the CIA. The money was used to buy arms in Iran to provide the contras with them.Money and power transforms the weak and devious. Noriega wasn’t exempt. It went to his head. He now believed he was untouchable and felt he could ignore Washington’s orders and instead of helping the U.S. place Guillermo Endara in power in Nicaragua, he decided he would impose a president of his own choosing: Francisco Rodriguez. Noriega also began harassing U.S. military bases in Panama. The U.S. was not about to put up his unruly behavior. Washington deployed troops to invade Panama in December 1989.They captured Noriega and locked him up in a Miami jail, but before that, they killed 3,500 innocent civilians and displaced 20,000 more… (The CIA called the operation against Panama « Operation Just Cause.”)10. 1990 – PeruFinally, we arrive at Peru (and US President George H. W. Bush’s CIA). First we need to understand that this list by no means represents the end of U.S. interventions worldwide. The CIA continues to cause havoc across Latin America and the rest of the world. However, these 10 cases may enlighten those who refuse to believe that the United States is responsible for death and destruction. It also serves to show how they operate and can be easily detected in places where there is instability, hunger and chaos. Instability, hunger and chaos is their specialty.In Peru another CIA agent rose to power. Alberto Fujimori was elected president in 1990. The reason why his election is highly suspicious is because he was a mediocre person with no education and no charisma. He had no political influence, and he was known to nobody but his family.But he did show some intelligence when he asked Vladimiro Montesinos to be his associate. Montesinos was a lawyer and a very intelligent person with above average strategic thinking. He was also a CIA man.Fujimori named him National Intelligence Service director. A paramilitary group was created only to murder leftist and Marxist leaders. Fujimori dissolved Congress and locked up all the members of the Supreme Court of Justice. The CIA helped him with his plan, they financed him and supervised all his atrocities. Today, Fujimori is in jail.Note: The 10 sovereign Latin American nations that were discussed in some detail above were just the Ten Most Lethal CIA-led Coups. The article did not include the militarily-invaded Latin American nations of Mexico, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Colombia, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Venezuela, Surinam, Paraguay, Puerto Rico and Grenada. – GGK[1][1][1][1]Elliot Abrams, a convicted war criminal who was hired by the Reagan administration to help support the death squads which terrorized and murdered people who resisted the right wing factions in Latin American nations, including El Salvador and Nicaragua. Abrams is now responsible for trying to overthrow the democratically elected government of Venezuela so U.S. oil companies can plunder the massive oil reserves for profit.The liberal American elites love the war criminal Elliot AbramsPractically the entire American political establishment and corporate press are repeating the Trump administration’s claims to have humanitarian motives in Venezuela. As that administration inches closer to full-blown military invasion, whether direct or by proxy, it behooves us to look into the track record of the officials steering this so-called “humanitarian policy.” None other are more deserving of scrutiny than Elliott Abrams, whose crimes have spanned the globe, from El Salvador to Nicaragua to Iraq.Before this month, Elliott Abrams was likely glad to have been largely forgotten by the U.S. public. When the Trump administration announced Abrams’ appointment as U.S. Special Representative in Venezuela in late January, the news caused some ripples on the Left, but across mainstream media outlets, the reaction was mostly sedate.Politico described Abrams as “a somewhat controversial figure,” while Bloomberg focused on his criticisms of Trump. In the wild world of Trump appointees, this was hardly exciting stuff. While Abrams has been associated with some of the darkest moments in American foreign policy over the last 40 years—from death squads in Central America to the Iran-Contra affair to the invasion of Iraq—his appointment failed to resonate with the media obsessions of the moment. This history was simply too long ago to generate much controversy today. A relic from another era, Abrams was on the verge of ascending to the coveted position of “elder statesman.”All of that changed February 13, when Rep. Ilhan Omar subjected Abrams to a withering interrogation. Citing his conviction in 1991 of withholding information from Congress concerning the Iran-Contra affair, Omar declared “I fail to understand why members of this committee or the American people should find any testimony that you give today to be truthful.” When Abrams, incensed, replied, “If I could respond to that,” Omar casually informed him “It wasn’t a question.”She went on to question Abrams about his record, from supporting U.S.-backed military dictatorships in Central America in the 1980s to his recent role in promoting right-wing coup-plotters in Venezuela. Throughout, Abrams protested again and again about the unfairness of her line of questioning. This was simply not how things were done in polite society.Immediately following this exchange, Abrams and his record began attracting significantly more attention than they had when his appointment was first announced. Prodded by Omar, media outlets across the country suddenly remembered the El Mozote massacre in El Salvador, committed by the right-wing military forces that Abrams and the Reagan administration were backing.Yet even this rude intrusion of history into the public sphere only hinted at the full extent of the blood on Abrams’ hands. In her five minutes of questioning, Omar could merely reference his record in shorthand. Yet Abrams’ full career, and its memory in public life, are worth considering in further detail, as they reveal important truths about how foreign policy is made in America.Despite his bloody history, in the aftermath of Omar’s interrogation, a number of mainstream liberal commentators such as the Center for American Progress’s Kelly Magsamen and prominent Joe Biden ally Dave Harden jumped to Abrams’ defense. This exculpation by a sector of the liberal intelligentsia also reveals the continuity of U.S. foreign policy across political parties, and the threat posed to this consensus by Omar’s inquiry.A young counter-revolutionaryThough the famous novelist Thomas Pynchon once made reference to “Schachtmanite [sic] goons like Elliott Abrams,” Abrams, like most neoconservatives, had actually never been on the Left. His career as a counter-revolutionary began in college, when, as an undergraduate at Harvard, he openly opposed Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and other campus leftists, whom he despised as spoiled children of the elite. When SDS members shut down Harvard in the student strike of 1969, Abrams helped found (with fellow student Daniel Pipes, son of Harvard reactionary Richard Pipes, and later an Islamophobe of some note in his own right) the Ad Hoc Committee to Keep Harvard Open. On the furthest right flank of cold war liberalism, Abrams backed Democratic presidential nominee Hubert Humphrey, who was running on the platform of continuing the Vietnam War, in 1968, and worked closely with AFL-CIO operatives to combat the left-wing insurgency developing in the Democratic primaries.At Harvard, Abrams received his law degree and in 1975 he briefly worked for the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, the same committee from which Joseph McCarthy prosecuted his anti-communist crusade in the 1950s. When Abrams got there, the committee was headed by Henry “Scoop” Jackson, also known as “the Senator from Boeing” for his service to the defense industry. Jackson formed a pole in the 1970s around which the most bellicose and bloodthirsty voices in the Democratic Party gathered, figures who were obsessed with not “losing” Vietnam, no matter the price in lives. When Jackson ran for president in 1976, Abrams worked on his campaign.The Reagan yearsAbrams first came to major prominence in the Reagan administration, where, in late 1981, he was appointed Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs. However, Abrams was not the administration’s first choice. Reagan had previously nominated the conservative political thinker Ernest W. Lefever, but his nomination had not gone smoothly. In 1979, Lefever had testified before the House that all human rights standards should be repealed. Questioned about this statement in 1981, he admitted that he had “goofed.” His nomination was finally sunk, however, when two of his brothers claimed that Lefever believed black people to be genetically inferior. This was too big a goof even for the Reagan administration, and in October, Abrams’ nomination was announced.Abrams started his career at the State Department with a lot to do. The day before he came on board, U.S.-trained forces had committed a massacre in the town of El Mozote, El Salvador, torturing, raping and slaughtering over 800 civilians. The killing was performed by the Altacatl Battalion, assembled and trained at Fort Bragg, and later described by the New York Times as having been “the pride of the United States military team in San Salvador.”The El Mozote massacre was but one moment in the Central American civil wars of the 1980s, when in country after country, poor peasants confronted their countries’ traditional military and economic elites, who responded with savage, American-backed violence. Abrams played a key role in directing American support for these regimes as well as running interference when evidence of their atrocities became too obvious for the corporate media to ignore. The main sites of action were as follows:El SalvadorIn 1979, amid mounting protests against an undemocratic government, El Salvador’s military leaders dispensed with the fig leaf of civilian rule and installed a military junta to crush the rising left-wing insurgency. The result was a civil war in which some 80,000 people died in a country with a population of less than 5 million. Later, a United Nations investigation estimated that 85 percent of civilian killings in the war were perpetrated by the military and its death squads. Atrocities such as El Mozote were commonplace. Less than a year later, the military killed over 200 civilians at El Calabozo.One of Elliott Abrams’ main jobs was to deny, distract from, or excuse these atrocities. When news of El Mozote reached the United States, Abrams testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that there was reason for doubt, claiming “We find … that it is an event that happened in mid-December [but it] is then publicized when the certification comes forward to the committee.” Even a decade later, after irrefutable evidence had accumulated about the scale of the horror in El Mozote, Abrams still tried to obfuscate the truth, protesting, “If it had really been a massacre and not a firefight, why didn't we hear about it right off from the F.M.L.N.? I mean, we didn't start hearing about it until a month later.”When questioned by Rep. Omar last week, Abrams defended his record in El Salvador, proclaiming, “From the day that President Duarte was elected in a free election to this day, El Salvador has been a democracy. That’s a fabulous achievement.” Indeed, in 1984, José Napoleón Duarte became president after elections in which parties of the left could not campaign for fear of assassination. He defeated death squad leader Roberto d’Aubuisson. Though Washington supported Duarte in that election, Abrams had previously defended D’Aubuisson, contending that he was not an extremist and claiming that “anybody who thinks you’re going to find a cable that says Roberto d’Aubuisson murdered the archbishop [Oscar Romero] is a fool,” when in fact, cables showing precisely that had arrived in Washington from the U.S. embassy almost immediately after the assassination.Nonetheless, d’Aubuisson was indeed an embarrassment to the United States as it attempted to defend Salvadoran oligarchs. Along with his extravagant brutality in El Salvador, he was also far too undisciplined in talking to the press, telling some European reporters, “You Germans were very intelligent. You realized that the Jews were responsible for the spread of communism, and you began to kill them.” This kind of language was an embarrassment, and so Washington judged that Duarte would be a more effective point man for coordinating the war on the Salvadoran peasantry. Duarte’s verbal promises to restrain the excesses of the military, for Abrams and company, counted as a win for human rights, even as his “moderation” provided a fig leaf that would allow the U.S. government to continue backing the Salvadoran military until the Left had been sufficiently exterminated that “normal” politics could resume.Despite Abrams’ theatrics, the truth of the American intervention in El Salvador was told in rather plainer terms by the liberal New Republic in 1984, which explained that “there are higher American priorities than Salvadoran human rights,” and that “military aid must go forth regardless of how many are murdered, lest the Marxist-Leninist guerrillas win.”NicaraguaTo El Salvador’s southeast, Nicaragua was also going through a political transformation in the early 1980s. In 1979, the Sandinista National Liberation Front overthrew the notoriously corrupt U.S.-backed dictator Anastasio Somoza. The coalition government the Sandinistas created immediately undertook vigorous campaigns in the areas of literacy and healthcare, expanding social service access to the Nicaraguan poor to an unprecedented degree. The government also provided aid to the peasant revolutionaries in El Salvador, and quickly established a close alliance with the Soviet Union and Cuba.This the Reagan administration could not abide. Shortly after coming into office, Reagan officials invited anti-Sandinista exiles to a meeting in Honduras, where the administration forced anti-Somoza opponents of the government to submit to the leadership of elements of the dictator’s hated National Guard. Troops were immediately assembled across the border in Honduras, with U.S. aid helping to put everything in motion. The anti-Sandinista army, popularly known as the Contras, soon accosted government targets, with special attention reserved for government social service locations, like schools and hospitals. Soon, evidence of Contra atrocities began to accumulate.In 1982, this evidence was so abundant that the U.S. Congress become convinced that funding for the Contras needed to be cut off. Abrams, fulminating over the tying of the United States’ hands in its battle against communism, immediately began looking for ways to overcome the ban on funding. One avenue came through soliciting funds from the Sultan of Brunei, whom Abrams convinced to donate $10 million to stopping communism in Nicaragua. But Oliver North’s secretary at the time fudged the transaction by copying the wrong numbers for the Swiss bank account to which the funds would be transferred, and the money ended up in the hands of an unusually virtuous Swiss businessman, who returned it, with interest.For the rest of the 1980s, Abrams essentially ran interference for Oliver North and the other Iran-Contra spooks. For this role, he was eventually indicted, and plead guilty to withholding information from Congress in 1991. At a time when the drug war was in full swing, and draconian sentences were all the rage, Abrams was sentenced to 100 hours of community service. President George H.W. Bush then pardoned him, completing Abrams’ official redemption.After the fallBy the time Abrams was pardoned, the world had changed considerably from the one in which he had been a leading cold warrior. The Soviet Union was no more, and Bill Clinton’s election had ended 12 years of Republican rule. Abrams needed a home in this new wilderness, and found one, ironically, in Ernest Lefever’s Ethics and Public Policy Center, which provided him with a comfortable sinecure. If Lefever’s views on racial fitness ever troubled Abrams, he didn’t comment on it.As the locus of American geopolitics shifted from Central America to the Middle East, Abrams reoriented his concerns accordingly. He was a signatory (along with assorted neocons from Paul Wolfowitz to Francis Fukuyama) to the Project for the New American Century’s infamous 1998 letter to Bill Clinton urging regime change in Iraq. The letter helped inspire the Iraq Liberation Act, which Clinton signed that same year and helped initiate the bipartisan consensus for the eventual war on Iraq.When George W. Bush was elevated to the presidency, Abrams found himself back on the inside. He was appointed to the National Security Council, and helped shape the administration’s Middle East strategy. He reportedly “lost” an Iranian peace proposal in 2003, and in 2006, helped shape the Fatah putsch against the democratically elected Hamas government in Palestine that helped lead to the current division between Gaza and the West Bank.During Trump’s rise, in 2015 and 2016, Abrams was a reliable “never-Trumper,” backing Marco Rubio’s doomed candidacy. In early 2017, Abrams was under consideration to be number two in the State Department under Rex Tillerson. However, the Trump team, under Steve Bannon, reportedly got Elliott Abrams confused with Eliot Cohen, a different hardcore neoconservative, and blocked his appointment.Now, thanks to Mike Pompeo’s appointment of Abrams as point person for the U.S. intervention in Venezuela, he’s back.Liberal enablersAs Rep. Omar dragged Abrams’ ugly past into the spotlight, millions of Americans were alerted to the country’s bloody footprints in Latin America. The El Mozote massacre in particular received renewed attention. Yet even as Americans heard about this record for the first time, a number of voices spoke up to defend Abrams’ honor.Some of these, like the neocon-turned-“resistance” member Max Boot, or the radical-turned-neocon Ronald Radosh, were predictable and uninspiring. Boot warned that Omar showcased the dangers of the “uber-progressive wing” of the Democratic Party, while Radosh compared her to white supremacist Rep. Steve King. National Review’s Jay Nordlinger put a bit more effort in, tweeting that “I’ve come back to my phone to find about 5,000 tweets libeling the great Elliott Abrams as a war criminal….I feel like I’m back in the dorm, listening to stoned undergrads repeat what they recently read in In These Times.” (Any stoned undergraduates reading this are invited to subscribe here).More surprisingly, Abrams also found a number of liberal defenders. Kelly Magsamen, Vice President for National Security and International Policy at the Center for American Progress, called Abrams “a fierce advocate for human rights and democracy” who had made “serious professional mistakes.” Dave Harden, a former USAID administrator (and Biden 2020 supporter), agreed, describing Abrams as “a kind, thoughtful, non partisan mentor” and exhorting his followers to “see the best—rather than the worst—in people.” R. Nicholas Burns, a diplomat and Trump critic, also chimed in, declaring “It’s time to build bridges in America and not tear people down.” Edward Luce, the British liberal journalist and author of The Retreat of Western Liberalism, offered his support for poor beleaguered Abrams as well.Abrams’ liberal defenders were, thankfully, met with a tidal wave of condemnation on Twitter, as hundreds of thousands of tweets denouncing Abrams filled their mentions. Harden petulantly told “the 170k twitter responders who pillared [sic] me as a war criminal in the last 24 hrs” that he’s “doubling down.” The impact Omar’s questioning had in galvanizing opposition to the bloody track record of American imperialism could hardly be clearer.But why were there liberals defending Abrams in the first place? And not merely any liberals, but highly-credentialed figures in the liberal foreign policy establishment. The answer to this question reveals no small amount about the American foreign policy intelligentsia.As several of Abrams’ defenders stated, they had worked directly with him. Whether at the State Department or the National Security Council, they had been part of the same body making and carrying out American foreign policy. But even outside of government, Abrams rubbed shoulders with establishment liberals in plenty of capacities. At the Council on Foreign Relations, a premier centrist foreign policy think tank, Abrams is an accredited CFR “expert” along with Clinton Administration officials Martin Indyk and Robert Rubin. On the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Committee on Conscience, he serves with liberal academics like Deborah Lipstadt and Timothy Snyder (as well as Nicholas Burns).This latter appointment is particularly ironic, given Abrams’ lies on behalf of an outright fascist like d'Aubuisson. But Abrams made a habit of associating with truly despicable racists. As mentioned above, he worked for Ernest Lefever after his Iran-Contra disgrace. Abrams even married a particularly unhinged racist, the stepdaughter of neocon Norman Podhoretz. Rachel Abrams, who died in 2013, maintained a blog, “Bad Rachel,” where she offered reflections on the War on Terror such as the following:[T]his is where I have begun to wonder whether it is possible to help these benighted forgeries of humanity save themselves from themselves—for after all, isn’t that the point, once we’ve beaten our enemy, of continuing the fight?—and, more to the point…whether the attempting to do so has been worth the lives…of all those great, valiant, heroic, wonderful, Americans who’ve given them for that cause.Abrams’ links to disreputable characters like these, however, weren’t enough to disqualify him from association in the eyes of elite liberals. Once he made it inside the clubhouse gates, he established himself as a Serious Person, deserving of respect from the plebs. Foreign policy has always been the most mandarin wing of the U.S. state, and when elite liberals saw a properly credentialed and accomplished fellow of theirs under attack from the plebeians, they reacted quickly.Analysts like Noam Chomsky have long insisted that there is more continuity than discontinuity when it comes to foreign policy in the United States. The bonhomie liberal elites exhibit towards Abrams is what this continuity means on the level of personnel. It’s the same people, working together, who carry out American foreign policy. This placid continuity, the disruption of which by Trump is a chief reason for the enmity he has earned from this camp, helps ensure that the ship of state remains on a steady course.But Ilhan Omar’s refusal to let Abrams’ bloody past rest threatened that continuity. It suggested that the new generation of progressives and socialists will not be content to let their revolution stop at the nation’s borders. Much like Bernie Sanders’ declaration in a 2016 presidential debate that he was proud Henry Kissinger was not his friend, Omar’s questioning of Abrams signaled a radical break with the traditional etiquette of deference in foreign policy.If this is the type of direct challenge to U.S. foreign policy that left-wing elected officials like Omar, Rashida Tlaib, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sanders have planned, establishment liberals are right to be nervous.[2][2][2][2]During Operation Condor the CIA supported right wing dictators who brutally killed tens of thousands of people, for the alleged purpose of “defeating communism.”[3][3][3][3] In actuality the purpose of Operation Condor was all about money. Right wing dictators were open to the neoliberal capitalist model the U.S. wanted so large U.S. corporations could make money exploiting new markets, cheap labor, and cheap natural resources.Alexander Finnegan's answer to What was the most overlooked event of the Cold War?Footnotes[1] The Ten Most Lethal CIA Interventions in Latin America[1] The Ten Most Lethal CIA Interventions in Latin America[1] The Ten Most Lethal CIA Interventions in Latin America[1] The Ten Most Lethal CIA Interventions in Latin America[2] The War Criminal Elliott Abrams and the Liberals Who Love Him[2] The War Criminal Elliott Abrams and the Liberals Who Love Him[2] The War Criminal Elliott Abrams and the Liberals Who Love Him[2] The War Criminal Elliott Abrams and the Liberals Who Love Him[3] Operation Condor - Wikipedia[3] Operation Condor - Wikipedia[3] Operation Condor - Wikipedia[3] Operation Condor - Wikipedia

Most Objectivist thinkers are ‘little known’ outside of Objectivist circles so I will post a list of the ones I know.Objectivist Intellectual’s Biographies (85) last updated 10/14/18 (not complete)Amesh AdaljaMD, 2002, American University of the CaribbeanDr. Adalja, a board-certified physician in infectious disease, critical care medicine, emergency medicine and internal medicine, specializes in the intersection of national security with catastrophic health events. He publishes and lectures on bio-terrorism, pandemic preparedness and emerging infectious diseases. He has been a guest on national radio and television programs.John AllisonMBA, Management, 1974, Duke UniversityMr. Allison is president and CEO of the Cato Institute. He was previously chairman and CEO of BB&T Corporation, the 10th-largest financial services holding company headquartered in the United States. During Allison’s tenure as CEO from 1989 to 2008, BB&T grew from $4.5 billion to $152 billion in assets.Carl BarneyCarl Barney is a businessman who, among other business activities, owns and manages several private business colleges.Rituparna BasuBS, Biology, 2010, Pennsylvania State UniversityMs. Basu is a health care policy analyst at ARI. Her work has appeared in publications such as Forbes and The Daily Caller, and she has been interviewed on radio and TV programs, internationally. Ms. Basu has briefed congressional staffers and speaks regularly at university campuses, including Georgetown, Emory and Temple.Ben BayerPhD, Philosophy, 2007, University of Illinois at Urbana-ChampaignDr. Bayer teaches philosophy at Loyola University New Orleans. His research focuses primarily on questions about the foundations of knowledge and the freedom of the will.Robert BegleyRobert Begley is a writer for The Objective Standard. He is the founder and president of the NY Heroes Society, an organization dedicated to promoting heroism in the culture. Robert is also a judge in Anthem, The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged essay contests. He was the host and producer for the Manhattan Cable TV program, The Voice of Reason. Robert is currently writing a book about the history of New York heroes.Michael S. BerlinerPhD, Philosophy, 1970, Boston UniversityDr. Berliner is the founding executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute and served as co-chairman of ARI’s board of directors. He is editor of "Letters of Ayn Rand", "Understanding Objectivism" and a recent biography of operetta composer Emmerich Kálmán. Dr. Berliner taught philosophy and philosophy of education for many years at California State University, Northridge.ANDREW BERNSTEINPhD, Philosophy, 1986, City University of New YorkAndrew Bernstein holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy from the Graduate School of the City University of New York. He has taught at Hunter College, the New School for Social Research, Pace University and Marymount College, where he was chosen Outstanding Faculty Member for 1995. He currently teaches at the State University of New York at Purchase, where he was selected Outstanding Faculty Member for 2004.Dr. Bernstein has lectured at universities across the United States, including at Harvard, Yale, Stanford, the United States Military Academy at West Point and many others; and at philosophical conferences both in America and abroad. He is the author of The Capitalist Manifesto: The Historic, Economic and Philosophic Case for Laissez-Faire, to be published in the spring of 2005 by University Press of America. His first novel, Heart of a Pagan, was released in 2002. He is currently writing Objectivism in One Lesson, an introduction to the philosophy of Ayn Rand. His website is Andrew Bernstein | Philosopher and TeacherDr. Bernstein is the author of "The Capitalist Manifesto" (2005), "Objectivism in One Lesson" (2008), "Capitalism Unbound" (2010), "Capitalist Solutions" (2011), and of numerous essays. He is currently writing “Heroes and Hero Worship” for the Clemson Institute for the Study of Capitalism. Dr. Bernstein lectures widely on Ayn Rand’s novels and Objectivism.DAVID BERRYD.M.A., Composition, 2002, University of South CarolinaDavid Berry is an associate professor of music. He teaches courses across a wide range of historical and theoretical musical subjects including film music. He is a recorded and published (BMI) composer with performances of his music in America and Europe in both fine art and popular music genres.CRAIG BIDDLEB.A., Fine Arts, 1988, Virginia Commonwealth UniversityCraig Biddle is the author of Loving Life: The Morality of Self-Interest and the Facts That Support It and is currently writing another book, Good Thinking for Good Living: The Science of Being Selfish. In addition to writing, he lectures on the Objectivist ethics and teaches workshops on thinking in principles. Editor and Publisher of “The Objective Standard”Specialties: Ethics, ObjectivismHARRY BINSWANGERPh.D., Philosophy, 1973, Columbia UniversityDr. Binswanger is the author of The Biological Basis of Teleological Concepts, the editor of The Ayn Rand Lexicon and co-editor of the second edition of Ayn Rand’s Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology. Dr. Binswanger is a professor of philosophy at the Ayn Rand Institute’s Objectivist Academic Center and is a member of ARI’s board of directors. He is currently working on a book on the nature of consciousness.Dr. Binswanger is the author of "How We Know" and "The Biological Basis of Teleological Concepts", the editor of "The Ayn Rand Lexicon" and co-editor of the second edition of Ayn Rand’s "Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology". He is an instructor of philosophy at the Ayn Rand Institute’s Objectivist Academic Center and a member of ARI’s board of directors.TORE BOECKMANNWriterMr. Boeckmann has written and lectured extensively on Ayn Rand’s fiction and philosophy of esthetics. He edited for publication Rand’s The Art of Fiction. His own fiction has been published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine and Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. He is currently writing a book on Romantic literature.Thomas A. BowdenSpecialties: Legal issues, physician-assisted suicide, abortion rights, mandatory community service.Mr. Bowden, an attorney in private practice in Baltimore, Maryland, taught at the University Of Baltimore School Of Law from 1988 to 1994. Author of a booklet against multiculturalism, “The Enemies of Christopher Columbus,” he has also published op-eds in the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel, Philadelphia Inquirer, Portland Oregonian, Los Angeles Daily News, Minneapolis Star Tribune, and Charlotte Observer. He is a former member of the board of directors of The Association for Objective Law, a non-profit group whose purpose is to advance Objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand, as the basis of a proper legal system. In that connection, Mr. Bowden has filed amicus curiae briefs in the U.S. Circuit Courts of Appeal for the Second and Third Circuits, challenging mandatory community service for high school students on legal and moral grounds.YARON BROOKPh.D., Finance, 1994, University of Texas at AustinDr. Brook is president and executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute. A former finance professor, he has published in academic as well as popular publications, and is frequently interviewed in the media. He has appeared on CNN, Fox News Channel and PBS among others. On college campuses across America and in the boardrooms of large corporations, he has lectured on Objectivism, business ethics and foreign policy.Dr. Brook is executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute. He is the coauthor of the national best-seller “Free Market Revolution: How Ayn Rand’s Ideas Can End Big Government” and a contributing author to both “Neoconservatism: An Obituary for an Idea” and “Winning the Unwinnable War: America’s Self-Crippled Response to Islamic Totalitarianism.”ANDY CLARKSONMBA University of MarylandMr. Clarkson is a decades-long Objectivist He has focused on researching the history of ideas and published The Impact of Aristotle Upon Christian, Islamic, and Jewish Cultures : A Compilation of Notes and Quotes From A Variety of Sources Plus Commentary, published in December 2016.PAT CORVINIPh.D., Electrical Engineering, 1995, University of California at Santa BarbaraDr. Corvini recently left a twenty-year career in semiconductor optoelectronics to work full time in the history of science and mathematics. She lectured on Archimedes at the 2003 Objectivist Summer Conference.SUSAN CRAWFORDB.S.N, Nursing, 1982, Marymount College, VirginiaSusan Crawford is a registered nurse. She has given two parenting courses and wrote the pamphlet “The Reading Habit/Money Management.” Susan is married to Jack Crawford and the mother of two sons, Jason and DavidERIC DANIELSPh.D., American History, 2001, University of WisconsinDr. Daniels is a visiting assistant professor of history at Duke University’s Program on Values and Ethics in the Marketplace. He has lectured at summer conferences and to numerous Objectivist community groups. He is an alumnus of ARI’s Objectivist Graduate Center (precursor to the Objectivist Academic Center). A contributor to the Oxford Companion to United States History, he is currently working on a book about American politics andDr. Daniels works at LePort Schools, teaching science and history, and as a curriculum developer. Previously, he was a professor at Clemson, Duke and Georgetown Universities. Dr. Daniels has published book chapters and articles on antitrust, individualism and economic freedom.John DennisPhD, Psychology, 2010, University of Texas at AustinDr. Dennis teaches at Catholic University in Milan, University of Perugia and University of Alberta. His research on motivation is funded by the EU and Templeton Foundation. He is a licensed psychologist trained in CBT. In 2013 Dr. Dennis started Melioravit, a scientific communication company that helps researchers get funded, published and cited.Robert van DortmondMSc in Applied Physics, Delft University of Technology; Executive Program, Stanford Graduate SchoolMr. van Dortmond teaches entrepreneurship at the University of Amsterdam/The Amsterdam Centre for Entrepreneurship. He is an active mentor, shareholder and board member of various startups. He speaks on Ayn Rand’s ideas and is an advisory board member of ARI Europe of which he was one of the initiators.Dianne DuranteSpecialties: Esthetics, painting, sculpture, homeschooling.Dr. Durante is a freelance writer on art and current events. She has lectured on painting and sculpture at Objectivist conferences; several of these lectures are available on tape from the Ayn Rand Bookstore. She has also just finished a book on New York sculpture, Forgotten Delights: The Producers. Dr. Durante and her husband homeschool their daughter in Brooklyn, NY.Alex EpsteinSpecialties: Current Affairs, racism, and moral defense of businessmen.Alex Epstein is an Objectivist speaker and writer living in Richmond, VA. His Op-Eds have been published in dozens of newspapers around the country, including The Houston Chronicle, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Miami Herald, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and The Washington Times. He is also a regular contributor to The Intellectual Activist, a monthly magazine analyzing political and cultural issues from an Objectivist perspective. Mr. Epstein holds a BA in philosophy from Duke University, where he was editor and publisher of The Duke Review for two years.STUART MARK FELDMANM.A., Art, 1975, Rowan University, New JerseyStuart Feldman works in bronze, stone and wood, creating sculptures of the human figure expressing man’s most noble and inspiring qualities. A former instructor at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art, he is cofounder of the Schuylkill Academy of Fine Art, in Philadelphia. His sculptures are held in private collections, and he has created a number of commissioned pieces.ROBERT GARMONGPh.D., Philosophy, 2002; University of Texas at AustinDr. Garmong is a graduate of the Objectivist Graduate Center, and has lectured on philosophy at many Objectivist conferences. He is the author of “J.S. Mill’s Re-Conceptualization of Liberty,” currently under submission to publishers. Dr. Garmong teaches philosophy at Texas A&M University and at Texas State University.MARILYN (GEORGE) GRAYB.S., Child Development, 1961, Iowa State UniversityMarilyn George is a retired Montessori teacher, school owner and administrator. She holds teaching certificates from both the American Montessori Society and the International Association of Progressive Montessorians and was a Montessori teacher for twenty-five years. She owned, administered and taught for ten years in her own school, which had an international reputation for excellence. She taught Montessori courses at Seattle University for more than ten years and has consulted for schools nationwide. Marilyn has been ballroom dancing since she met Ted Gray at a conference in 1989, at her first lesson, and today they compete at the Silver level.Debi GhateLLB, Law, University of Calgary, 1995Ms. Ghate is vice president of Education and Research at the Ayn Rand Institute, where she heads up a variety of educational and policy-related programs. She is also director of the Anthem Foundation for Objectivist Scholarship, an organization that supports academic scholarship based on Ayn Rand’s work.Onkar GhatePhD, Philosophy, 1996, University of CalgaryDr. Ghate is senior fellow and chief content officer at the Ayn Rand Institute. He specializes in Rand’s philosophy, Objectivism, and is ARI’s senior instructor and editor. He publishes and lectures on Rand’s philosophy and fiction, including application of Objectivism in the culture, and has been a guest on national radio and television programs.GENA GORLINPhD, Clinical Psychology, 2012, University of VirginiaMs. Gorlin has two years of experience conducting individual psychotherapy with anxious and depressed young adults. Her research has been published in highly regarded academic journals. She is also a graduate of the Objectivist Academic Center and a former board member of The Undercurrent, a national campus publication.Allan Gotthelf (deceased)Specialties: Love, self-esteem, happiness, Objectivism, AristotleAllan Gotthelf is emeritus professor of philosophy at The College of New Jersey. He is an internationally recognized authority on the philosophy of Aristotle, with many scholarly publications. He has lectured on Objectivism and Aristotle — including their views on love and sex, self-esteem, and individual happiness — throughout North America and in Europe and Japan. He has been a visiting professor at Swarthmore College, Georgetown University, Oxford University, Tokyo Metropolitan University, and most recently, the University of Texas at Austin. In 1987, Dr. Gotthelf was one of the founders of the Ayn Rand Society; a professional organization affiliated with the American Philosophical Association, Eastern Division, and has headed it since 1990. He enters his second year as Visiting Professor of Historyand Philosophy of Science (HPS) at the University of Pittsburgh. Prof. Gotthelf holds the Pitt Fellowship for the Study of Objectivism, funded by the Anthem Foundation and he will be working throughout the year on various projects in connection with his Fellowship. He is the author of On Ayn Rand (Wadsworth Publishing, 2000), the best-selling book in the Wadsworth Philosophers Series.4-19-2007 from his website:Visiting Professor, under the university's new Fellowship for the Study of Objectivism (Member: Classics, Philosophy and Ancient Science Program). A specialist on Aristotle's biology and philosophy, and on the philosophy of Ayn Rand, Gotthelf is emeritus professor of philosophy at The College of New Jersey, and has taught on a visiting basis at Swarthmore, Oxford, Georgetown, Tokyo Metropolitan, and the University of Texas at Austin. He is a life member of Clare Hall Cambridge, and was a visiting member of the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton. Gotthelf is author of On Ayn Rand (Wadsworth Philosophers Series, 2000); co-editor of Philosophical Issues in Aristotle's Biology (Cambridge 1987); editor of Aristotle on Nature and Living Things (Pittsburgh 1985); and has prepared for publication D.M. Balme's posthumous editions of Aristotle's Historia Animalium (Cambridge 2002, Cambridge MA 1991). His collected Aristotle papers will by published next year by Oxford University Press, under the title: Teleology, Scientific Method, and Substance: Essays on Aristotle's Biological Enterprise. He is currently working on several Aristotle projects and an extended study of Rand's theory of concepts, essences, and objectivity.TED GRAYB.S., Mechanical Engineering, 1965, Northeastern University;M.S., Mechanical Engineering, 1971, Brooklyn Polytechnic InstituteTed Gray, an engineer, has been dancing since his teens. They both consider dancing primarily a social and romantic activity. Occasionally, they enter amateur dance competitions. As a couple they have given many formal and informal group lessons—at home, at conferences and on a cruise ship. Ted is a mechanical engineer with forty years experience in design and analysis of structures, and prevention of vibration. He is an amateur student of history, enjoying especially the biographies of great Americans and the history of technology. He has been a student of Objectivism for thirty-eight years.Hannes HackerSpecialties: history and politics of the space program, science and technology.Mr. Hacker graduated from the University of Notre Dame with a BS degree in aerospace engineering in May 1988. He earned a MS degree in aerospace engineering at the University of Texas at Austin December 1990. He has eleven years of space-flight operations experience including work on the space shuttle, international space station and commercial communications satellites.DAVID HARRIMANB.S., Physics, 1979, University of California at Berkeley;M.S., Physics, 1982, University of Maryland;M.A., Philosophy, 1995, Claremont Graduate University, CaliforniaDavid Harriman is the editor of Journals of Ayn Rand and a senior writer for the Ayn Rand Institute. He has lectured extensively on the history and philosophy of physics. He is currently developing the physical science curriculum at VanDamme Academy and working on two books: one demonstrating the influence of philosophy on modern physics (The Anti-Copernican Revolution) and the other presenting Leonard Peikoff’s theory of induction (Induction in Physics and Philosophy).David HolcbergSpecialties: Environmentalism, science, capitalism. David Holcberg holds a degree in civil engineering and is a senior writer for the Ayn Rand Institute.JONATHAN HOENIGCommunications and Philosophy, 1999, Northwestern UniversityMr. Hoenig manages Capitalistpig Hedge Fund, LLC. A former floor trader, his first book, Greed Is Good, was published by HarperCollins. Mr. Hoenig has written for publications including The Wall Street Journal, Wired andMarketWatch: Stock Market News - Financial News. He was named one of Crain’s Forty Under Forty and appears regularly on Fox News Channel.Gary HullSpecialties: Philosophy, multiculturalism, business ethics, education.Dr. Hull is director of the Program on Values and Ethics in the Marketplace at Duke University. His op-eds have been published in numerous newspapers, including the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Orange County Register, the Philadelphia Inquirer, and the Chicago Tribune. He has made numerous television and radio appearances to discuss Ayn Rand’s philosophy, multiculturalism, affirmative action, the Elian Gonzalez affair, sex, ethics, politics. He has lectured on Ayn Rand’s philosophy at conferences around the world and, as a member of the Ayn Rand Institute’s Speakers Bureau, has spoken at universities across the country, including Harvard, Michigan at Ann Arbor, Wisconsin at Madison, Texas at Austin. Dr. Hull is the author of A Study Guide to Leonard Peikoff’s book Objectivism: the Philosophy of Ayn Rand, and is co-editor of The Ayn Rand Reader (Penguin/Plume, 1999), a collection of fiction and non-fiction writings by Ayn Rand.MARTIN F JOHANSENMS, Computer Science, 2009, University of OsloMr. Johansen is a PhD research fellow at SINTEF, the largest independent research institute in Scandinavia. He is currently completing his PhD studies at the University of Oslo as part of an international research project on software testing.Elan JournoBA, Philosophy, 1997, King's College, LondonMr. Journo, director of policy research at ARI, is completing a book on American policy toward the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. His 2009 book, “Winning the Unwinnable War,” analyzes post-9/11 U.S. foreign policy. His writing has appeared in “Foreign Policy,” “Journal of International Security Affairs” and “Middle East Quarterly.”ELLEN KENNERPh.D., Clinical Psychology, 1992, University of Rhode IslandDr. Kenner, a clinical psychologist, has taught university courses in introductory psychology, abnormal psychology and theories of personality. She gives talks on romance, self-improvement, psychological self-defense, parenting and communication skills. She is in her eighth year as host of the nationally syndicated radio talk show The Rational Basis of Happiness®.Ryan KrausePhD, Strategic Management and Organization Theory, 2013, Indiana UniversityDr. Krause is an assistant professor at Texas Christian University’s Neeley School of Business. He researches corporate governance and has published in “Academy of Management Journal,” “Strategic Management Journal” and “Journal of Management.” His research has been covered by the “Wall Street Journal,” “USA Today,” “Businessweek” and Fox Business Network.Andrew LaymanAndrew Layman is a Senior Program Manager at Microsoft where he works on Internet and database technologies. Prior to joining Microsoft in 1992, he was a Vice President of Symantec Corporation and original author of the Time Line project management program.Peter LePort, M.D.Specialties: Medicine, free market reform of healthcare, medical savings accountsDr. LePort, a full-time surgeon, lectures nationwide on free market reform in healthcare, particularly on the benefits of medical savings accounts. He is a member of the board of directors of Americans for Free Choice in Medicine. He co-wrote a healthcare reform proposal that discusses voluntary, tax-free medical savings accounts and high-deductible personal health insurance and which includes a method to privatize Medicare. He earned his medical degree from Downstate Medical Center, Brooklyn, New York, and is a former assistant professor of surgery at that institution. He is a member of the Faculty of the American College of Surgeons and of the Orange County Surgical Society.Andrew LewisPostgraduate Diploma of Philosophy, 1994, University of Melbourne, AustraliaMr. Lewis has studied philosophy at the Objectivist Academic Center, the University of Melbourne and the University of Southern California. He worked with Leonard Peikoff on his radio show, has lectured at Objectivist conferences, and is principal at VanDamme Academy, where he teaches a three-year history curriculum covering ancient, European and American history.JOHN LEWIS (deceased)Ph.D., Classics, 2001, University of CambridgeDr. Lewis is assistant professor of history at Ashland University, where he holds an Anthem Fellowship for Objectivist Scholarship. He is Assistant Professor of History in the Department of History and Political Science. He has published in several professional journals, and has been a visiting scholar at Rice University and Bowling Green State UniversityEDWIN A. LOCKEPh.D., Industrial Organizational Psychology, 1964, Cornell University.Dr. Locke is Dean’s Professor of Leadership and Motivation (Emeritus) at the Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland, College Park. He is internationally known for his research and writings on work motivation, leadership and related topics, including the application of Objectivism to psychology and management. He is a senior writer for the Ayn Rand Institute and has published numerous op-eds.Keith LockitchPhD, Physics, 1999, University of Wisconsin at MilwaukeeDr. Lockitch is an ARI fellow and director of advanced training. In addition to speaking and writing for ARI on issues related to energy, climate and environmentalism, he teaches writing for the OAC and has developed courses on Ayn Rand’s ideas and novels for a variety of audiences.ROBERT MAYHEWPh.D., Philosophy, 1991, Georgetown UniversityDr. Mayhew is associate professor of philosophy at Seton Hall University. He is the author of Aristotle’s Criticism of Plato’s Republic and The Female in Aristotle’s Biology and the editor of Ayn Rand’s Marginalia, Ayn Rand’s The Art of Nonfiction, Essays on Ayn Rand’s “We the Living” and (forthcoming) Ayn Rand’s Q & A. He has completed a book on Ayn Rand’s HUAC testimony and is preparing for publication a collection of essays on Ayn Rand’s Anthem.Arline MannArline Mann is an attorney. She is vice president and associate general counsel of Goldman, Sachs & Co.John P. McCaskey, Ph.D. in history, is the founder and chairman of the Anthem Foundation for Objectivist Scholarship. He spent twenty years in the computer business, most recently as founder of Epiphany, Inc., before returning to academia in 2001. He studies and teaches history and philosophy of science at Stanford University.Scott McConnellSpecialties: Volunteerism, Communism in America, Ayn Rand's life. Mr. McConnell is a former literature teacher and high school English teacher. He has a BA in behavioral sciences and worked in Hollywood as a script reader. He has given several lectures on Ayn Rand's life.Shoshana MilgramPhD, Comparative Literature, 1978, Stanford UniversityDr. Milgram, associate professor of English at Virginia Tech, specializes in narrative fiction and film. She has lectured on Ayn Rand at Objectivist and academic conferences and has published on Ayn Rand, Hugo and Dostoevsky. Dr. Milgram is editing the draft of her book-length study of Ayn Rand’s life (to 1957).Ken Moelis. Mr. Moelis is founder and chief executive officer of Moelis & Company, a global investment bank that provides financial advisory, capital raising and asset management services to a broad client base including corporations, institutions and governments. Mr. Moelis has over thirty years of investment banking experience. Prior to founding Moelis & Company, he worked at UBS from 2001 to 2007, where he was most recently president of UBS Investment Bank and, previously, Joint Global Head of Investment Banking. Mr. Moelis serves on the University of Pennsylvania Board of Trustees, the Wharton Board of Overseers, the Board of the Tourette Syndrome Association, and the Board of Governors of Cedars Sinai Hospital.Jean MoroneyCertificate, 1996, Objectivist Graduate Center, Ayn Rand Institute;MS, Psychology, 1994, Carnegie Mellon University;MS, Electrical Engineering, 1986, Massachusetts Institute of TechnologyMs. Moroney is president of Thinking Directions, a business that develops and teaches methods in applied psycho-epistemology. She has given her flagship course, Thinking Tactics, to corporate and public audiences across North America. She is writing a book titled “Smarter: How to Achieve Your Goals When Nothing Goes as Planned.”Adam Mossoff is Professor of Law at George Mason University School of Law. He is also Co-Director of Academic Programs and a Senior Scholar at the Center for the Protection of Intellectual Property at George Mason, which he co-founded in 2012. He teaches and writes in the areas of patent law, trade secrets, trademark law, property law, and internet law. He has published extensively on the theory and history of how patents and other intellectual property rights are fundamental property rights. His article on the very first patent war, the Sewing Machine War of the 1850s, has been widely cited in today's public policy debates concerning patent litigation, patent licensing, and patent pools. He has testified before the Senate, and he has spoken at numerous congressional staff briefings, professional association conferences, and academic conferences, as well as at the PTO, the FTC, the DOJ, and the Smithsonian Institution. He is Co-Chairman of the Intellectual Property Committee of the IEEE-USA, and he is a member of the Amicus Committee of the American Intellectual Property Law Association, the Public Policy Committee of the Licensing Executives Society, and the Academic Advisory Board of the Copyright Alliance. ADAM MOSSOFF is an expert in patent law and property theory. He has published numerous law review articles and book reviews on topics in legal philosophy, patent law, and property law, including in law reviews at the University of Arizona and UC-Hastings, and in the interdisciplinary law journal, the University of Chicago Law School Roundtable. He was a visiting lecturer and John M. Olin Fellow in Law at Northwestern University School of Law, where he taught a seminar on property theory. Immediately prior to coming to MSU College of Law, he clerked for the Hon. Jacques L. Wiener, Jr., of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Professor Mossoff graduated from the University of Chicago Law School with honors in 2001. He has a M.A. in philosophy from Columbia University, where he specialized in legal and political philosophy, and a B.A. in philosophy from the University of Michigan, where he graduated magna cum laude and with high honors in philosophy. Hi is now an Associate Professor of Law at George Mason University School of LawSpecialties: Philosophy of Law, Constitutional Law, Intellectual Property Rights, Patent RightsJ. PATRICK MULLINS is a doctoral candidate in the history department of the University of Kentucky. He is in the last stages of writing his doctoral dissertation with the help of a generous grant from the Ayn Rand Institute.Travis NorsenSpecialties: Physics, science, history and philosophy of science, science education.Mr. Norsen is a physics and philosophy double-major at Harvey Mudd College in Claremont, CA. He is currently attending his final year of a PhD program in physics at the University of Washington in Seattle. Mr. Norsen is also a former adjunct instructor of physics at DigiPen Institute of Technology in Redmond, WA.JOHN E. OPFER, who still tops the list of Amazon Reviewers on the CyberNet Scoreboard, is Assistant Professor of Psychology at Ohio State University where he specializes in cognitive and developmental psychology. Nowadays he's too busy reviewing his research findings to review books. His work at OSU's Concepts and Learning Lab explores how young children form and change their concepts, such as concepts of living things and number. His website is at <Department of Psychology - John Opfer> where you will find links to several of his fascinating papers.Michael PaxtonMFA, 1984, New York UniversityMr. Paxton directed the world premiere of Ayn Rand’s Ideal (1989) and adapted and directed a dramatic presentation of Anthem (1991). His documentary, Ayn Rand: A Sense of Life, won an Academy Award nomination and a Golden Satellite Award for Best Feature Documentary. He teaches production design and film history at the Art Institute in Hollywood.Lee PiersonPhD, 1982, Psychology, Cornell UniversityDr. Pierson, director of the Thinking Skills Institute at Fairleigh Dickinson University, teaches students and business professionals how to keep any thought process moving toward its goal by activating the right knowledge as needed. He has a long-standing interest in and recently participated in life-extension research.AMY PEIKOFFJ.D., 1998, University of California, Los Angeles School of Law;Ph.D., Philosophy, 2003, University of Southern CaliforniaDr. Amy Peikoff is an Anthem fellow at the University of Texas at Austin, where she is teaching undergraduate courses in ethics and epistemology. Her writings on legal and philosophical issues have appeared in academic journals and leading newspapers. She has taught for the Objectivist Academic Center and lectured for Objectivist organizations and at conferences. Visiting Fellow at Chapman University’s Law School.Leonard PeikoffPh .D., Philosophy, 1964 New York UniversityFrom 1957 until 1973, Peikoff taught philosophy at Hunter College, Long Island University, New York University, the University of Denver and the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn.After that, he worked full-time on The Ominous Parallels (published 1982) and gave lectures across the country. He gave courses on Ayn Rand's philosophy regularly in New York City, which were taped and played to groups in some 100 cities in the U.S., Canada, and Europe. In addition, he spoke frequently before investment and financial conferences on the philosophic basis of capitalism.Dr. Peikoff, who is a naturalized American citizen, was born in Winnipeg, Canada, in 1933. His father was a surgeon and his mother, before marriage, was a band leader in Western Canada. He has been a contributor to Barron's and an associate editor, with Ayn Rand, of The Objectivist (1968-71) and The Ayn Rand Letter (1971-76).He is author of Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (Dutton, 1991), the definitive statement of Objectivism.Steve PlafkerJ.D., 1973 USCPh.D., Math, 1966 UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOISBS, MATH, MIT, 1961Dr. Plafker is a retired Los Angeles County deputy district attorney. His teaching experience includes teaching law to law students and to undergraduates. Before becoming a lawyer, he taught mathematics at Tulane University. He is a founder and member of the Board of Directors of The Association For Objective Law (TAFOL).Richard RalstonSpecialties: Ayn Rand’s life, Objectivism (General), Projects of the Ayn Rand Institute, Volunteerism, Foreign Policy, Journalism and MediaAfter serving seven years in the U.S. Army, Mr. Ralston completed an M.A. in International Relations at the University of Southern California in 1977. He then began a career in newspaper publishing and direct marketing. He has been the circulation director and publisher of The Christian Science Monitor, a radio producer, a national television news business manager, and a book publisher. As an independent direct marketing consultant, his clients included IBM, British Airways, CNN, and the Los Angeles Times. His book Communism: Its Rise and Fall in the 20th Century was published in 1991. Mr. Ralston is now Managing Director for the Ayn Rand Institute.JOHN RIDPATHPh.D., Economics, 1974, University of VirginiaDr. Ridpath (York University, retired) writes and speaks in defense of capitalism, and on the impact throughout Western history—including the American Founding era—of the ideas of the major philosophers. A recipient of numerous teaching awards, and nominee for Canadian Professor of the Year, he continues to lecture throughout Europe and North America.Jonathan Paul Rosman, MDSpecialties: Medicine, psychiatry.Dr. Rosman is a board certified psychiatrist, with additional qualifications in the subspecialties of addiction psychiatry and forensic psychiatry. Prior to entering full-time private practice in California in 1989 he was an assistant professor at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. For several years, Dr. Rosman has been a psychiatric consultant to the City of Hope National Medical Center in Duarte, California, and is the psychiatric consultant to the Sleep Disorders Center at Huntington Memorial Hospital in Pasadena, California. He is also medical director for the Eating Disorder Center of California, a private, intensive outpatient clinic in Brentwood, California, devoted to the treatment of patients with anorexia and bulimia.Dr. Rosman is a published writer and lecturer on various aspects of psychiatry. Dr. Rosman's theoretical orientation is broad-based, drawing on and integrating aspects of cognitive-behavioral, short-term psychodynamic and biologic theories with Objectivist epistemological principles. He practices as both a psychotherapist and a psychopharmacologist.GREG SALMIERIB.A., Philosophy, 2001, The College of New JerseyPhD, Philosophy, 2008, University of PittsburghDr. Salmieri is a philosophy fellow at the Anthem Foundation and co-secretary of the Ayn Rand Society (a professional group affiliated with the American Philosophical Association). He teaches at Rutgers University. He has published and lectured on Aristotle and Ayn Rand and is co-editor of forthcoming books on both thinkers.Richard M. SalsmanSpecialties: Banking, free market economics, economic forecasting, capitalism, investmentsRichard M. Salsman is president and chief market strategist of InterMarket Forecasting, which provides quantitative research and forecasts of stocks, bonds, and currencies to guide the asset allocation decisions of institutional investment managers, mutual funds, and pension plans. He is the author of numerous books and articles on economics, banking, and forecasting from a free-market perspective, including Breaking the Banks: Central Banking Problems and Free Banking Solutions (American Institute for Economic Research, 1990) and Gold and Liberty (American Institute for Economic Research, 1995). Mr. Salsman’s work has appeared in The Intellectual Activist, the New York Times, Investor’s Business Daily, The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and Barron’s. From 1993 to 1999, he was a senior vice president and senior economist at H. C. Wainwright & Co. Economics. Prior to that he was a banker at Citibank and the Bank of New York. Mr. Salsman is an adjunct fellow at the American Institute for Economic Research and the founder of The Association of Objectivist Businessmen.Lee Sandstead received his B.A. Philosophy/B.S. Mass Communication from Middle Tennessee State University in December 1996, when he was awarded the prestigious award for “Outstanding Magazine Journalism Graduate.” He has studied art history at the University of Memphis’ graduate program, and most recently, the art history doctoral program at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, New York City. He is a popular writer/photographer/lecturer of art-historical subjects. He has delivered almost 50 keynote lecture-addresses to such prestigious institutions as: Yale, Duke, University of Michigan, Penn State, NYU and the Academy of Realist Art in Toronto. Articles of his have been published in numerous journals, and his photography has been seen in publications such as: The New York Times, Fortune, and Ms. Magazine. He currently teaches art history at Montclair State University and is author of the forthcoming book on American master-sculptor Evelyn Beatrice Longman (1874-1954DINA SCHEIN FEDERMAN (deceased) is completing her article on "Integrity in The Fountainhead_" for ROBERT MAYHEW's upcoming collection of essays. She will also be delivering two lectures at the European Objectivist conference in London this month. Her writing projects include severalarticles on Virtue Ethics, a movement in academic ethics.DANIEL SCHWARTZBA, Liberal Arts, 2006, St. John’s CollegeMr. Schwartz is a doctoral candidate in philosophy at UC San Diego, where he is working on a dissertation titled “Baconian Foundationalism and the Problem of Certainty.” He specializes in early modern philosophy and the history of the philosophy of science.PETER SCHWARTZM.A., Journalism, 1972, Syracuse UniversityPeter Schwartz is the founding editor and publisher of The Intellectual Activist. He is the editor and contributing author of Ayn Rand’s Return of the Primitive: The Anti-Industrial Revolution, and is chairman of the board of directors of the Ayn Rand Institute.Thomas ShoebothamMM, Orchestral Conducting, 1996, University of New MexicoMM, Cello Performance, 1992, Eastman School of MusicMr. Shoebotham is music director of the Palo Alto Philharmonic. Previous conducting engagements have included Berkeley Opera, Opera San José, Peninsula Symphony Orchestra and many other groups. He has lectured on music, taught in school music programs and performed numerous recitals as a cellist and pianist over the last twenty years.Stephen SiekPhD, Musicology, 1991, University of CincinnatiDr. Siek, professor emeritus at Wittenberg University, has recently publishedEngland’s Piano Sage: The Life and Teachings of Tobias Matthay. For many years he has lectured and written about the early work of Frank Lloyd Wright, including a scholarly study of Wright’s 1909 home for Burton Westcott in Springfield, Ohio.BRIAN P. SIMPSONPhD, Economics, 2000, George Mason UniversityDr. Simpson is a professor at National University in San Diego. He is author of the book Markets Don’t Fail! and he has a number of papers published in academic journals. He is currently working on another book titled “Money, Banking, and the Business Cycle,” which he hopes to publish soon.Steve SimpsonJD, 1994, New York Law SchoolMr. Simpson is director of legal studies at the Ayn Rand Institute. A former constitutional lawyer for the Institute for Justice, he writes and speaks on a wide variety of legal and constitutional issues, including free speech and campaign finance law, cronyism and government corruption, and the rule of law.Aaron SmithPhD, Philosophy, 2010, Johns Hopkins UniversityDr. Smith is an instructor at the Ayn Rand Institute where he teaches in the Objectivist Academic Center and the Summer Internship program. He lectures for ARI and develops educational content for the Institute’s e-learning programs.Tara SmithPhD, Philosophy, 1989, Johns Hopkins UniversityDr. Smith, professor of philosophy at the University of Texas, holds the BB&T Chair for the Study of Objectivism and the Anthem Foundation Fellowship. She has published books on values, virtues, and individual rights. Her latest, “Judicial Review in an Objective Legal System,” is forthcoming in fall 2015 (Cambridge University Press).MARY ANN SURESM.A., Art History, 1966, Hunter College, New YorkMary Ann Sures taught art history at Washington Square College of N.Y.U. and at Hunter College. She applied Objectivist esthetics to painting and sculpture in a ten-lecture course, “Esthetics of the Visual Arts,” which was written in consultation with Ayn Rand. Her philosophical approach to art history is presented in “Metaphysics in Marble” (The Objectivist, February/March, 1969). She is co-author with her (late) husband Charles of Facets of Ayn Rand (published by the Ayn Rand Institute), memoirs of their longtime friendship with Ayn Rand and her husband Frank O’Connor.C. BRADLEY THOMPSONPh.D., History, 1993, Brown UniversityC. Bradley Thompson is the BB&T Research Professor at Clemson University and the Executive Director of the Clemson Institute for the Study of Capitalism. He has also been a visiting fellow at Princeton and Harvard universities and at the University of London.Professor Thompson is the author of Neoconservatism: An Obituary for an Idea and the prize-winning book John Adams and the Spirit of Liberty. He has also edited The Revolutionary Writings of John Adams, Antislavery Political Writings, 1833-1860: A Reader, co-edited Freedom and School Choice in American Education, and was an associate editor of the four-volume Encyclopedia of the Enlightenment. His current book project is on the ideological origins of American constitutionalism.Dr. Thompson is also an occasional writer for The Times Literary Supplement of London. He has lectured around the country on education reform and the American Revolution, and his op-ed essays have appeared in scores of newspapers around the country and abroad. Dr. Thompson's lectures on the political thought of John Adams have twice appeared on C-SPAN television.LISA VANDAMMEB.A., Philosophy, 1994, University of Texas at AustinLisa VanDamme is the owner and director of VanDamme Academy, a private elementary and junior high school in Laguna Hills, California. She specializes in the application of Objectivism to educational theory. Her previous lectures on homeschooling, hierarchy and the teaching of values will be included in a forthcoming education anthology featuring Leonard Peikoff’s “Philosophy of Education.”Don WatkinsBA, Business Administration, 2005, Strayer UniversityMr. Watkins is a fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute. He is the author of “RooseveltCare: How Social Security Is Sabotaging the Land of Self-Reliance” and coauthor, along with Yaron Brook, of the national best-seller “Free Market Revolution: How Ayn Rand’s Ideas Can End Big Government.”KEITH WEINERPh.D., Economics, 2012, New Austrian School of Economics (non-accredited)Dr. Weiner is the founder and CEO of Monetary Metals, a company on a mission to pay interest on gold, and the president of the Gold Standard Institute USA.He makes the economic arguments, as well as the moral, for a free market in money and credit. There has never been an unadulterated gold standard in history, as all governments (including the U.S.) have regulated and interfered with banking, even when other enterprises were unshackled. Today our monetary system is failing, and Keith describes the mechanics in detail, why making the passionate case for gold as the money of free markets.He is also the founder of DiamondWare, a software company sold to Nortel in 2008.Glenn WoiceshynSpecialties: Education, ethics, environmentalism, science, politics.Mr. Woiceshyn is currently developing curriculum and teaching materials for grades 4 to 6 based on his understanding of Objectivism and his experience in "homeschooling" his son and other children. As a freelance writer, Mr. Woiceshyn's op-eds have appeared in numerous newspapers, including the Los Angeles Times, Houston Chronicle, Philadelphia Inquirer, Baltimore Sun and Miami Herald.JAANA WOICESHYNM.B.A., 1983, Helsinki School of Economics and Business Administration; Ph.D., Organization and Strategy, 1988, University of Pennsylvania (Wharton School)Dr. Woiceshyn is an associate professor at the Haskayne School of Business, University of Calgary. She has taught business ethics and strategic management to undergraduate, MBA and executive MBA students and to various business audiences since 1987.BARRY WOODPh.D., History of Art and Architecture, 2002, Harvard UniversityDr. Wood is curator of the Islamic Gallery Project at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. He has lectured and published on subjects ranging from Persian poetry to Web design.Darryl WrightSpecialties: Ethics, political philosophy, ObjectivismDarryl Wright is associate professor of philosophy at Harvey Mudd College, a member of the Claremont Colleges consortium. He received his Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Michigan in 1991, and his A.B. in philosophy from Princeton University in 1985. Dr. Wright has published scholarly articles and/or lectured on the history of ethics, early twentieth-century philosophy, value theory, coercion, and other topics in philosophy.

Thanks for the a2a.Too long didn't read: We hate everything about joe bidens gun control policies.Long answer:It could not be more crazier if charles manson wrote it himself.Joe Biden's Plan to End Gun Violence | Joe Biden for PresidentRemember it sounds nice on paper. I could say I will end homelessness by creating a government funded program to end homelessness in America. If you dig deeper youd find the plan to end homelessness is through euthanasia.Biden claims his Brady handgun violence act has kept 3 million people who shouldn't have a gun from having a gun….however the truth is that is bullshit. If you look at prosecution of prohibited people who lie on a federal form to buy a gun which is a felony that carries a 10 year prison sentence and a 250,000 dollar fine…out of 120,000 (fluctuates but is around 120k) lie and buy referrals for prosecution…results in just 12…When gun buyers are caught in 'lie-and-try,' how many are prosecuted? 12Then there is straw purchases which is how criminals often get guns. A straw purchase is when someone buys a gun for someone who refuses to do the paperwork because they legally cannot buy a gun.'Straw Buyers' Of Guns Break The Law — And Often Get Away With ItSo his 3 million claim is accurate but it fails to disclose that these 3 million prohibited people just break the law anyway and are never arrested for it. They remain free to keep trying to illegally obtain a firearm through other means causing untold damage to our communities.So right off the bat he's not in our good graces.Wants to open up manufacturers to legal liable for people who illegally use the gun to commit a crime. It is like if A Ford hits my truck that I sue ford for being liable for the driver of their vehicle who was not paying attention. Its a horrible idea.Claims to want to remove weapons of war off our streets….weapons of war are not on our streets. The AR-15 has NEVER BEEN ISSUED TO ANY MILITARY. Weapons like the m16 have been illegal for civilian ownership with the passage of the 1986 firearm owners protection act. The only civilians who own automatic weapons are the ones that are currently federally registered complete with the owners fingerprints and photo. These are also over 20,000 dollar weapons minimum. Those made after 1986 are owned by people who have federal business licenses through the ATF. These licensed individuals can only sell these weapons made after 1986 to other government licensed individuals, the government, military or law enforcement.Banning “high capacity magazines” is unconstitutional. Infact Duncan v. Becerra is a case in california the attourney general Beccera is desperately fighting to defend California's law banning magazines over 10 rounds fell afoul of the common use set in the landmark ruling Heller vs DC.Regulate AR-15s under the NFA. The NFA is the national firearms act of 1934 which set up categories of weapons for federal registration. This would be illegal as AR-15s do not meet any category of NFA weapon. The NFA was passed to limit “gangster weapons” like the BAR rifle used by john dillanger.Those categories are:Machine gunsThis legal definition includes any firearm which can fire repeatedly, without manual reloading, "by a single function of the trigger", which is broader than the common definition. Both continuous fully automatic fire and "burst fire" (e.g., firearms with a 3-round burst feature) are considered machine gun features. The weapon's receiver is by itself considered to be a regulated firearm. A non-machine gun that may be converted to fire more than one shot per trigger pull by ordinary mechanical skills is determined to be "readily convertible", and classed as a machine gun, such as a KG-9 pistol (pre-ban ones are "grandfathered").Short-barreled rifles (SBRs)This category includes any firearm with a buttstock and either a rifled barrel less than 16" long or an overall length under 26". The overall length is measured with any folding or collapsing stocks in the extended position. The category also includes firearms which came from the factory with a buttstock that was later removed by a third party.Short barreled shotguns (SBSs)This category is defined similarly to SBRs, but with either a smoothbore barrel less than 18" long or a minimum overall length under 26".SuppressorsThe legal term for a suppressor is silencer. This category includes any portable device designed to muffle or disguise the report of a portable firearm. This category does not include non-portable devices, such as sound traps used by gunsmiths in their shops which are large and usually bolted to the floor.Destructive devices (DDs) - (added to the NFA of 1934 via the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968)There are two broad classes of destructive devices:Devices such as grenades, bombs, explosive missiles, poison gas weapons, etc.Any firearm with a bore over 0.50 inch except for shotguns or shotgun shells which have been found to be generally recognized as particularly suitable for sporting purposes. (Many firearms with bores over 0.50 inch, such as 10-gauge or 12-gauge shotguns, are exempted from the law because they have been determined to have a "legitimate sporting use".)Any other weapon (AOW)Firearms meeting the definition of "any other weapon", or AOW, are weapons or devices that can be concealed on the person and from which a shot can be discharged by the energy of an explosive. Many AOWs are disguised devices such as pens, cigarette lighters, knives, cane guns, and umbrella guns. AOWs can be pistols and revolvers with smooth bore barrels (e.g., H&R Handy-Gun, Serbu Super-Shorty) designed or redesigned to fire a fixed shotgun shell. While the above weapons are similar in appearance to weapons made from shotguns, they were originally manufactured in the described configuration rather than modified from existing shotguns. As a result, such weapons do not fit within the definition of shotgun or weapons made from a shotgun.The AOW definition includes specifically described weapons with combination shotgun and rifle barrels 12 inches or more but less than 18 inches in length from which only a single discharge can be made from either barrel without manual reloading.The ATF Firearms Technology Branch has issued opinions that when a pistol (such as an AR-type pistol) under 26" in overall length is fitted with a vertical fore-grip, it is no longer "designed, made and intended to fire ... when held in one hand," and therefore no longer meets the definition of a pistol. Such a firearm then falls only within the definition of "any other weapon" under the NFA.The AR-15 would require biden illegally rewritting an act of Congress which he does not have authority to do. It should also be noted the ATF has also violated this by rewritting bump stocks and maybe doing it again with pistol braces for pistol versions of Ak platform and AR-15 platform rifles. The ATF doing this violates the seperation of powers within our government. The ATF cannot legislate through opinion making.The buy backs that biden thinks he can do are vehemently opposed. You cannot buy back something you never owned. You cannot force us to sell you our property which we legally bought either.Biden wants to limit how many guns we own to reduce stock piling weapons…how about no. What we buy is our business. If I wanna buy a 22 to hunt squirrels and a muzzleloader to hunt deer I should not have to wait to buy a gun because some asshole thinks hes doing something good. It could be a very harmful policy. If a woman bought a 22 caliber rifle prior to breaking up with her abusive boyfriend she shouldnt have to wait a month to buy a handgun cause the creep is sending death threats to her.He wants a universal background check. Universal background checks are something only misinformed people think is good. 1 in 5 criminals get a gun with a background check cause the other 4 have someone else buy it for them. Plus how can a citizen run a background check? Remember black americans think the police are racist and are out hunting them. They will be uncomfortable walking into a police station to buy a gun. We prefer switching to the BIDS or blind identification system for a background check which could easily be made into an app to allow a citizen run a background check without exposing the buyer or seller at risk for identity fraud.Biden also thinks guns sold online do not have background checks. It is federal law all internet sales across state lines needs to go to a FFL. Gun owners also go into gun shops and do transfers through the FFL for a background check on privaye sales unless they are immediate family.Biden wants to close the boyfriend loophole. Biden proves once again he's a fudd. The boyfriend loophole is an imaginary loophole that anti gun and ignorant people made up. They allege that a dimestically violent boyfriend can buy a gun putting the woman at risk.Please download the following: https://www.atf.gov/firearms/docs/4473-part-1-firearms-transaction-record-over-counter-atf-form-53009/downloadThis is the federal background check. I draw your attention to the definitions on page 5 lower left hand side for question 21 i.Notice the terms partner and intimiate partner…this legally includes abusive boyfriends…I also draw your attention also on page 5 the definition for 21 b.Again…boyfriends who are abusive are prohibited by federal law. Only fudds like biden dont know this. Only people who willfully do not research a subject before forming an opinion do not know this.Biden wants the Social security administration to throw people into the prohibited category. The social security aministration cannot lawfully do this. The reasoning to fudds like biden is that SSA can adjudicate. Ajudication is a legal process involving a judge who is involved in litigation. The SSA is not part of the judicial branch of government. So this would be illegal which is why trump reversed course before the government lost its pants and tighty whities in a major class action law suit for illegally denying people their rights under the second amendment. A doctor would have to testify in court you cannot have a weapon for ajudication to show your mentally ill or have to have entered a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity for this to happen. The SSA cannot do it.Biden wants to make it so if you been convicted of a misdemenor hate crime or a crime of bias to prevent you from having a gun. This is a whole level of ignorant. Hate crimes in states are felonies which prohibit you from owning a gun to begin with. They usually mimic federal law being 10 years in prison. Misdemenor hate crimes are often more then 2 years in prison. A misdemenor of more then 2 years in prison under federal law makes you a prohibited person exempt from owning a firearm.Biden wants to increase the feds having more time to investigate you from 3 days to 10. The issue with this is new Jersey. There is a case where a woman was waiting 43 days for her background check to clear when it was supposed to be returned in 30 days. She was stabbed to death in her drive way by her abusive ex which is why she wanted the gun. She died. We will not green light anyone sitting on paperwork to investigate. If the feds with the instant results of the nics cant do their job in 3 days they dont need another 7.Biden claims he will close the fugitive from justice loophole. I again ask for you to review the 4473.Again question 21 d page 5.Federal law already prohibits fugitives from justice from buying a gun. The 500,000 fugitives purged by trump were records for individuals who under federal definition did not flee the state to avoid prosecution. It was attributed to trump…the decision was actually made by obama when Joe biden was the second highest man in the land.“That was a decision that was made under the previous administration,” Bowdich replied. “It was the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel that reviewed the law and believed that it needed to be interpreted so that if someone was a fugitive in a state, there had to be indications that they had crossed state lines.”So legally 500,000 people were illegally added to the nics database as a fugitive from justice even though they did not meet the legal definition of fugitive from justice….law suit…government loses its pants and undies.Joe biden wants to ban the sale of guns online, along with parts and ammunition. No…that is insane. It would violate the interstate commerce laws and constitution so bad.He wants to create an agency to ensure prohibited people give up their guns. Pretty sure that will look like Waco and ruby ridge…the answer is no joe!Joe biden wants red flag laws. Red flag laws are where someone says your dangerous and law enforcement storms your house to take your lawfully owned property without you going before a judge. This is a violation of the 5th and 14th amendment which says no one can take your lawfully owned property without your day in court. These red flag laws are ripe for abuse. They have already been abused. I have a friend who was a cop who was fired from his job after his weapons were taken away cause of a spiteful ex wife who lied to cause him trouble during a messy divorce. He lost his job cause it appeared he was guilty why else would his guns be taken away…oh yeah cause his ex wife lied to get back at him for divorcing her. He still has not gotten his guns back despite a court order either. Hell no Joe.He wants licensing through states. No offense but state licenses are a registry. Registry leads to a list for confiscation…people say its not a registry…it's a license…how do you think they keep track of who has a license and who doesn't…a list… plus anti gunners and fudds claim licenses reduce firearm trafficking….last I looked murder was illegal. Just cause you make something illegal doesn't mean it stops…murder..prostitution…meth..coke..rape…theft..money laundering…running across a boarder…blowing up buildings…arson…drunk driving….all illegal all still happen. No Joe no.Funding the background check…no Joe…we need to end states using local police to do background checks. We need to make it mandatory that states submit records to the federal government or lose ALL federal funding and open states up to be liable for failing to submit records to the nics database by allowing families to sue the state. Its called accountability Joe.Establish a new Task Force on Online Harassment and Abuse to focus on the connection between mass shootings, online harassment, extremism, and violence against women. Dear Joe…I know you have dementia. Police and law enforcement has cyber divisions for this. Mass shootings are commited by people who are depressed and angry and looking to hurt others. We know this from a man who was going to shoot his school up or a mall. The answer is no to your task Force.Establish risk accessment to identify domestic violence victims at risk of being killed with a gun by their abuser. Joe no. The problem is domestic violence victims cover for their abusers and will even lie to police. I know this cause one year I spent new years with police when a dude punched his girlfriend and she was laying motionless on the ground with a busted lip. Unfortunately I did not see the punch just him standing over her on the ice covered ground with his hand in a fist screaming at her he will hit her again while she was unconscious…she told the police and me that it was her fault. She slipped and hit her face on the telephone pole 12 feet from where she was laying on the ground. Needless to say the small town found out and he got jumped by some yokels in a bar room bathroom…not that I was involved with that. Any who the police cannot access if victims cover for the abuser. Houston control to Joe fudd come back joe fudd.Joe wants smart guns. Sounds good on paper. Smart guns use RFID technology. Rfid technology is broken. I dont mean broken as in it dont work. I mean broken as in criminals are using stuff from hardware stores to exploit the RFID chip in your credit card to steal it. You might as well just leave your gun on the front porch for criminals. The other issue is fingerprint smart guns…its used on gun safes too. It is…well a joke.Fingerprint recognition is spotty especially with wet or dirty fingers.LPL Picking Gun LocksIn fact the lock picking lawyer trashes a lot of gun locks including fingerprint locks. Fingerprint technology just is not mature enough yet. I also saw such stuff embedded in epoxy in pistol grips. These things are dumb. I can use a heat gun from homedepot to reheat the epoxy to remove the “Smart Components”.Hold adults accountable for minors having guns. No Joe. That is already law. It is illegal for a minor to be in posession of a firearm when not in direct supervision of an adult. It also prohibits taking young kids hunting or teaching them safe firearm handling under your fudd proposal.Require gun owners to lock their guns up. Gun locks are a joke. They can be opened within seconds…even without lock picking tools. I have seen gun locks opened with a star wars Lego character.See lock picking lawyers playlist on gun locks!! LPL Picking Gun Locks PSA (public service announcement) california DOJ certified gun locks require are certified as compliant if they can withstand being picked for 2 minutes by a person with a screw driver and a paperclip who does not know how to pick a lock. Thats right lock picks are not allowed to be used for certification! False sense of security. No joe no stop being a fudd.Joe wants to make straw purchasing a serious crime…Joe its already a serious crime punishable by 10 years in prison and or a 250,000 dollar fine. It does not get more serious…Joe wants to give more funding to prosecute straw purchasers…Joe they got plenty of funding..they choose not to prosecute…if a real gun owner got into the white house they'll pass a law that the prosector who denied to prosecute a straw purchaser is guilty of dereliction of duty and are civilly liable for any death or injury to the victim or their family and can be sued by the victim and their family. That will light a fire under them to do their job.Joe biden wants to notify state and local law enforcement of any and all firearm denials to prevent prohibited people from buying guns through other means. Joe they cannot legally buy the gun…even attempting to is illegal under federal law…cause they would have to lie on the 4473. Plus I am an FFL. I have seen firearm denials on state mandated background checks denied because under other identifying charactistics the customer put that he had a nice dick…I have seen denials for doodling on the 4473…i have seen denials for crossing out mispellings in the address…I have seen denials cause a pen died and half a letter was visible with ink but the ink was uneven on the lettering causing it to be denied…are we really going to waste police resources having local police following up for nice dick, big tits, and badonka donk and bubble butt denials? No no the police got better things to do. The feds are more then capable of doing their job by executing their duty to make arrests for which they are collecting a pay check for with our tax dollars.Mandate that lost or stolen guns are reported….oh Joe what nursing home did they abduct you from. Gun owners already self report stolen firearms without the law you propose. If someone steals your car joe you dont shrug and say uh well I'm not required by law to report my car stolen so I'm not gonna do anything…we wont compromise with you. Gun owners know when you give an inch anti gunners and fudds will take a 1000 miles by cramming it full of your anti gun fudd wish list that we do not support in the slightest so no. It sounds reasonable but so did the idea of the greeks leaving a trojan horse to appease the gods of troy….how did that work out for Troy again? No.Stop ghost guns…joe that would be illegal as well. It runs afoul of the second amendment cause of common use. Home made guns have been in our country since we were a British colony. Millions and millions of such guns exist. That would run afoul of the heller common use standard. You also cannot ban 3d printers as they are also in common use…you don't have legal standing for that…or lathes…mills…cnc machines…screw drivers…hammers…welders that are also used to build weapons. You also cannot ban the 3d printed files as code is protected by the constitution as free speech. In the 1990s while you were sleeping in the senate joe the electronic freedom foundation took on a series of cases for a man named Bernstein a cryptographer who wanted to release the source code for an algorithm he made. The us department of justice wanted him to get a license to do so. He sued and won as the supreme court found code is infact a protected form of free speech in the case Bernstein v. Department of Justice. So you would be breaking many laws Joe. The answer is no.Restructure the atf and fund it…the ATF doesnt need restructuring it needs abolishing. The ATF now legislates when its not supposed to. They also have a lot of illegal things they do.Padding numbers - Specific Acts of Unlawful Reprisal Against ATF Agents, Employees & Whistleblowers.The FBI can do everything the ATF does…the FBI already runs the background check.Have the atf report on firearms trafficking….joe the FBI does that. The FBI investigates trafficking and unlike the atf already reports on it.Six Indicted on Gun Trafficking ChargesYoud know that if you stopped rambling about how your proposals would help a worker in Scranton pennsylvania or talking about your hairy legs and read a memo that you didnt forget you were reading and wander off.Dedicate the brightest minds to solving gun violence…Joe your brightest minds lack common sense…for example out of 30,000 gun deaths a year 20,000 are suicides…your brightest minds are puppets who will parrot the illogical claim that just so happens to suit your anti gun agenda ban all guns. They dont have the brains to understand taking a gun from someone whos suicidal does not change that they are suicidal. Sure it may make them choose another less successful method but that's a coin toss. The common sense thing is to change their mind with intervention programs to prevent them from becoming suicidal.Prohibit federal funds from being used to arm or train educators…bad Joe bad. Through federal funds you could ensure they are properly trained and equipped to safely use their gun around children. Believe it or not there's 2 places educators are armed and they have never had a school shooting in the school. They also got a program for students who see or hear bullying or violent longings to report it anonymously so the school can prevent a school shooting. Armed teachers and anonymous reporting by students saves lives.Biden believes his plan of locking guns up with atrocious gun locks and red flag laws would prevent gun suicides…no Joe…they won't.Biden wants trauma centers for gun shot wounds…the hospital has those!!! Infact er doctors recieve training just for treating gun shot wounds and are very good at it…we dont need your trauma centers.These trauma centers for sexual assault and domestic violence also already exist…they specialize in it…they exist within a federally funded network already. We dont need double of everything.He wants to train health care providers in sexual assault and domestic violence….joe that have this already…infact I know a woman in texas who works for a health care provider and she specializes domestic violence and sexual assault that is all she does! She recieves training every 6 months!!!Wants to add people on the no fly list to a new prohibited category preventing them from owning guns. Absolutely horrible as these no fly lists are secret lists that have no ability for you to appeal them. People are on these no fly lists for the dumbest reasons like wearing a full face respirator on a 15 hour flight. (The 95 masks loose their effectiveness after 12 hours and doctors recommend people like cancer patients to avoid wearing 95 mask on long flights and should wear a full face respirator instead to prevent infections as a result of chemotherapy.if they refuse the 95 mask they can be kicked off the plane AND be added to the airlines no fly list.)Joe biden is just a fudd.Biden is a poorly informed arm chair expert who pretends to be a gun owner. His ideas are either illegal or redundant mirroring things that already exist. Other proposals like his “assault weapon ban” which are illegal are best defined as gleaned from the lowest hanging rotten fruit of the idea tree and piled onto a platter with other refuse and served up to satiate a hunger of the uninformed to feel like they are important and doing good things so they can pat themselves on the back while stroking their ego in trump like fashion in a congradulatory circle jerk while doing nothing to actually fix the real problems.Such individuals are the enemy of progress and the leading force clinging desperately to unhinged and delusional ideals so they can be pat on the head by their masters blowing their anti gun whistle. Such people have dragged this out for decades preventing knowledgable gun owners from enacting real meaningful measures to combat the underlying problems driving the deaths. The blood of countless americans have stained these lap dogs red and stained their masters hands with a red stain from the routine petting of their pets that cannot be removed from the hands of their masters no matter how much they try to wash their hands as they blame everyone but themselves for the issues we gun owners need to fix due to their failed policies.