The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity
The Ron Paul Peace and Prosperity Institute
Subscribe to the Institute View Us on YouTube Follow Us On Twitter Join Us on Facebook Join Us at Google Plus

Search Results

for:

Bolton: We're Taking Venezuela's Oil

Tuesday January 29, 2019

President Trump's National Security Advisor John Bolton made US policy toward Venezuela very clear in an interview on FoxNews yesterday: We're going to overthrow the government and take the country's oil. He gets points for bluntness, at least. But who are the "democratic forces" the US seeks to install to "restore Venezuela's constitution"? They were all trained by the same US government funded "regime change factories" behind the color revolutions of the Bush and Obama Administrations. In other words, they are the creations of the US government, not of the Venezuelan people. Tune in to today's Liberty Report...
read on...

The Making of Juan Guaido: How the US Regime Change Laboratory Created Venezuela's Coup Leader

Tuesday January 29, 2019

undefined

Before the fateful day of January 22, fewer than one in five Venezuelans had heard of Juan Guaidó. Only a few months ago, the 35-year-old was an obscure character in a politically marginal far-right group closely associated with gruesome acts of street violence. Even in his own party, Guaidó had been a mid-level figure in the opposition-dominated National Assembly, which is now held under contempt according to Venezuela’s constitution.
read on...

Distraction: Obsessing Over 'The Wall' While Ignoring Neocon Threat

Monday January 28, 2019

Where is Congress on issues that really matter? Venezuela? They don't want a debate because they all agree on interventionism. Syria? The only debate was to shut down any debate when the president proposed getting US troops out. Yemen? Nope. On NATO Congress voted to prohibit debate on getting out of that Cold War alliance. Nope - it's all about politics and scoring political points. Which is why we are mired in this phony debate about wall or no wall. Pure political grandstanding. A tour of the more important issues in today's Liberty Report...
read on...

NewsGuard: A Neoconservative Contrivance Which Promotes an Establishment View

Monday January 28, 2019

undefined

There’s a new thought policeman in town. He calls himself NewsGuard and he promises to restore “Trust and Accountability” to what one reads online. His website elaborates that “NewsGuard uses journalism to fight false news, misinformation, and disinformation. Our trained analysts, who are experienced journalists, research online news brands to help readers and viewers know which ones are trying to do legitimate journalism—and which are not…Our Green-Red ratings signal if a website is trying to get it right or instead has a hidden agenda or knowingly publishes falsehoods or propaganda.”

One might well stop reading immediately after running into “our trained analysts” with all that implies, but that would deny the greater pleasure derived from considering news-sites that have “…a hidden agenda or knowingly [publish] falsehoods or propaganda.” Excuse me, but hidden agendas, lies, and propaganda are what the mainstream media is all about, note particularly the recent feeding frenzy over the Covington school incident at the Lincoln Memorial. Catholic racist white boys vs. elderly Native American war hero was how the story was framed all over the mainstream media before it became clear that the entire chosen narrative was upside down. Only a couple of news outlets bothered to apologize when the truth became known.

NewsGuard claims to have a staff of 50 that evaluates 2,000 websites in something like real time. How exactly it does that is not clear, but The New York Times repeats company claims that “the sites it rates account for 96 percent of online news and information engagement in the US.” NewsGuard also told The Times that it intends to quadruple its vetting of sites and seeks to make its coverage “ubiquitous.”
read on...

Trump’s Venezuela Fiasco

Monday January 28, 2019

undefined

Last week President Trump announced that the United States would no longer recognize Nicholas Maduro as president of Venezuela and would recognize the head of its national assembly, Jose Guaido, as president instead. US thus openly backs regime change. But what has long been a dream of the neocons may well turn out to be a nightmare for President Trump.
read on...

America's Shameful War

Saturday January 26, 2019

undefined

The United States, champion of freedom and self-determination, is now in its 18th year of colonial war in Afghanistan. This miserable, stalemated conflict is America’s longest and most shameful war. So far it has cost over $1 trillion and killed no one knows how many Afghans.
read on...

McCain May Be Dead, but ‘Bomb, Bomb, Bomb Iran’ Still Resounds

Saturday January 26, 2019

undefined

In 2007, when making a speech during his bid for the presidency of the United States, the late Senator John McCain spoke about Iran’s supposed nuclear weapons’ programme and when questioned as to whether there might be US reaction to such allegations responded by singing “That old Beach Boys song, Bomb Iran... bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb.”

This jovial retort about killing people by bombing them was not surprising to those who remembered that during the US war on Vietnam McCain was shot down on a mission to bomb a power generation plant in Hanoi, the capital of North Vietnam, in the course of the entrancingly-named Operation Rolling Thunder. If he hadn’t been shot down before he released his bombs there would almost certainly have been civilian casualties and deaths. Power stations in cities are not manned by soldiers, after all, and around the Hanoi plant there were houses that would doubtless be struck by errant bombs.  

But who cares about civilians who are killed or maimed in bombing or rocket attacks?

In Syria, for example, in October 2018 “the US-led coalition was responsible for 46% of civilian casualties from all explosive weapon use in Syria.” And in November Reutersreported that “At least 30 Afghan civilians were killed in US air strikes in the Afghan province of Helmand, officials and residents of the area said on Wednesday, the latest casualties from a surge in air operations aimed at driving the Taliban into talks.”
read on...

Trump Betrays MAGA Over Venezuela

Friday January 25, 2019

undefined

The US backed a coup in Venezuela that has failed. And President Trump was the architect of it. This is a farce surrounding an intrigue contained within a tragedy.

What has happened in Venezuela is tragic. Nicolas Maduro is a comical figure straight out of central casting for a South American leader of a junta. But it has been the US’s designs on Venezuela’s oil and gas reserves (the largest proven in the world as of 2017) that is the real story behind this week’s events.

For anyone still harboring doubts as to who Trump truly is Venezuela should end them. Trump’s Energy Dominance policy is at the core of his foreign policy. And he will do whatever it takes to secure that policy and deliver a long-standing order to the US and European oligarchy to gain control over Venezuela.

Energy Dominance

As Alistair Crooke succinctly put it last year at Strategic Culture:
The US – were energy dominance to succeed – simply would control the tap to the economic development – or its lack thereof – for rivals China, and Asia. And the US could squeeze Russia’s revenues in this way, too. In short, the US could put a tourniquet on China’s and Russia’s economic development plans. Is this why JCPOA was revoked by President Trump?

Here then, is the squaring of that circle (more US power, yet less empire): Trump’s US aims for ‘domination’, not through the globalists’ permanent infrastructure of the US defence umbrella, but through the smart leveraging of the US dollar and financial clearing monopoly, by ring-fencing, and holding tight, US technology, and by dominating the energy market, which in turn represents the on/off valve to economic growth for US rivals. In this way, Trump can ‘bring the troops home’, and yet America keeps its hegemony. Military conflict becomes a last resort.
Most of Trump’s supporters refuse to admit this is the plan. They still want to believe that National Security Advisor John Bolton and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo were thrust upon him by the nefarious Deep State.
read on...

Building the Information Control Highway

Friday January 25, 2019

undefined

With the rise of internet social media, patronized by multi-millions of receptive people and supplied by a small number of companies that have achieved dominance, a path way to information control was cleared.

To complete the highway, all that was required was its extension to and from Washington elites, neocon types, intelligence agencies and establishment types. These connections are being built now. They picked up speed in the last two years with the resistance to Trump and his agenda.

Microsoft now uses NewsGuard to rate news sites via an optional browser add-on; but NewsGuard’s ratings are biased, it being dominated by establishment types. Its blacklisting of the Drudge Report is an example. This is only one step in an ongoing process in which big-tech social media eliminate accounts and news sources. Facebook allied with the Atlantic Council, which houses the Digital Forensic Research Lab. Its aim is to “analyze open-source material to provide proof against false narratives”.

When the censors decide what’s false, they necessarily have beliefs about what is true. What if they are wrong? What if they are biased? What if the truth is more complex than they think it is? What if new facts come to light that tarnish or render obsolete their views? What if the censors act on behalf of interests in or close to government who want to maintain secrecy for their own purposes? What if the censors stand against Wikileaks, as NewsGuard does? What if truth-tellers sometimes get it wrong? Will they be entirely censored and cut off from certain internet avenues as is now being done?
read on...

Subscribe

Authors

Tags