The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity
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How CENTCOM Chief McKenzie manufactured an Iran crisis to increase his power

Saturday January 16, 2021

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During the final two months of the Trump administration, a series of provocative US military moves in the Middle East stirred fears that a war against Iran was being hatched. The atmosphere of crisis was not the result of any threat posed by Tehran, but rather the product of a campaign manufactured by the head of US Central Command (CENTCOM), Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr., to advance his interests.

In a bid for prestige and power within the military, and the influence over policymaking that it guarantees, McKenzie has worked to accumulate military assets. The general’s thirst for influence has been a driving factor in the latest episode of US-Iran tensions. To advance his self-serving agenda, McKenzie has deployed a calculated series of political-bureaucratic moves, combined with a PR push in the media.

A four-star general who previously served as director of the Joint Staff at the Pentagon, McKenzie is regarded as the most politically astute commander ever to lead Middle East Command, according to journalist Mark Perry. He has also shown himself to be exceptionally brazen in scheming to defend his interests.
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'Revoke Their Degrees': Harvard Faculty and Students Seek Revocation Of Degrees For Trump Officials and Allies

Saturday January 16, 2021

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There is a building campaign at Harvard to rescind the degrees of Trump officials and allies including White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany, Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX), and Representative Dan Crenshaw (R-TX). This is not the only such effort to retaliate against Trump officials from blacklists to campaigns of harassment. Indeed, previously there was a demand for a ban on former Trump officials from being allowed on campus at Harvard. 

Recently Rep. Elise Stefanik was removed from a high-ranking board on Harvard for challenging the victory of President-elect Joe Biden. The concern for some of us is that the Capitol riot is now being used by many to accelerate the crackdown on free speech on our campuses.

The revocation of degrees would result in immediate and likely successful court challenges. I cannot imagine a court allowing such an action to occur on this basis.
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9/11 Was the Prelude. 1/6 Is the Holy Grail

Saturday January 16, 2021

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9/11 was the prelude. 1/6 is the Holy Grail. 9/11 opened the gates to the Global War on Terror (GWOT), later softened by Team Obama to the status of Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) even as it was suavely expanded to the bombing, overt or covert, of seven nations.
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Biden Taps Veteran Interventionist Samantha Power to Head USAID

Thursday January 14, 2021

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On Wednesday, Joe Biden announced that he will nominate Samantha Powerto head the US Agency for International Development (USAID).

Power served as ambassador to the UN for President Obama from 2013 to 2017. Before that, she worked on Obama’s National Security Council, where she played an instrumental role in pushing for US intervention in Libya in 2011.

Power argued in favor of US intervention in Libya under the guise of protecting human rights and preventing genocide. She was joined in her crusade by then-Secretary of State Hilary Clinton and Susan Rice, who served as the UN ambassador at the time.

Reports from 2011 say the pressure from Power, Rice, and Clinton is what led Obama to intervene militarily in Libya, even though his other top advisors were against it. Then-Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates would later say that in a “51 to 49” decision, Obama decided to bomb Libya.
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How Silicon Valley, in a Show of Monopolistic Force, Destroyed Parler

Thursday January 14, 2021

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Critics of Silicon Valley censorship for years heard the same refrain: tech platforms like Facebook, Google and Twitter are private corporations and can host or ban whoever they want. If you don’t like what they are doing, the solution is not to complain or to regulate them. Instead, go create your own social media platform that operates the way you think it should.

The founders of Parler heard that suggestion and tried. In August, 2018, they created a social media platform similar to Twitter but which promised far greater privacy protections, including a refusal to aggregate user data in order to monetize them to advertisers or algorithmically evaluate their interests in order to promote content or products to them. They also promised far greater free speech rights, rejecting the increasingly repressive content policing of Silicon Valley giants.

Over the last year, Parler encountered immense success. Millions of people who objected to increasing repression of speech on the largest platforms or who had themselves been banned signed up for the new social media company.
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The Pentagon Speaks

Thursday January 14, 2021

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The Joint Chiefs of Staff have spoken. Issuing a remarkable memorandum to all members of the Armed Forces, the JCS have declared that Joe Biden will be the new president of the United States. The memo may have been not only one to military personnel but also to President Trump: No matter how convinced you are that the election was stolen from you, don’t even think about remaining in power because we will ensure your forcible exit from the White House.
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Trump Impeachment 2.0: Necessity Or Farce?

Wednesday January 13, 2021

After the January 6th mob ruckus inside the US Capitol building, the US House, led by Speaker Nancy Pelosi, rushed to put together articles of impeachment (again) for President Trump. Trump, they claim, led an insurrection on that day and must be held accountable. Constitutional law professor Jonathan Turley recently wrote in The Hill of the dangers of lowering the bar for impeachment. Do the House Democrats have a point that Trump must be removed from office days before he is removed from office, or is Impeachment 2.0 as much of a farce as Impeachment 1.0? Watch today's Liberty Report...
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Here Comes the Post- 'Invasion' Crackdown

Wednesday January 13, 2021

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Just as thunder follows lightning, you can rest assured that Democrats, the Deep State, and the mainstream press are going to use recent events at the Capitol to crack down on civil liberties. Why let a good opportunity to expand governmental power go to waste?

Why, some of these people are even alluding to such things as a “fascist” attempt to take over the government, a “putsch,” and the “Reichstag Fire.” And why not? They know that Hitler was able to use the terrorist firebombing of the Reichstag to get the Enabling Act passed, which gave him “temporary,” emergency, omnipotent, and tyrannical powers to enable him to protect “national security.”

That’s what Democrats and liberals are now doing. They are setting the stage for another civil-liberties crackdown, just like the one that they and Republicans and conservatives engaged in after the 9/11 attacks. That’s when we got the so-called USA PATRIOT Act, the illegal telecom scandal, the massive secret surveillance schemes, assassinations of “terrorists,” indefinite detention, kangaroo military tribunals, Gitmo, secret prisons, denial of due process, denial of speedy trial, torture, and much more — all to protect us and keep us safe from the “terrorists” and the Muslims.

Democrats and liberals, as well as the mainstream press, are referring to the event at the Capitol as an “invasion.” But that’s patently ridiculous. An invasion is what the US government did to Iraq. Troops shooting people. Planes dropping bombs on people and buildings. Torture of people at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere. Indefinite detention. POWs. Massive death, suffering, and destruction.
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Can Burns Change the CIA?

Wednesday January 13, 2021

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In nominating former Deputy Secretary of State William Burns to be CIA director, President-elect Joe Biden has chosen a highly experienced diplomat to lead a hydra-headed agency.

But, if past is precedent, the highest hydras who head calcified fiefdoms at CIA can be expected to resist any real control from the top. They are more likely to try to co-opt top management or make end runs around it. This is not new.

Most senior CIA operations officers, in particular, have never been comfortable with meaningful supervision, lest it lead to reining them in or impinging on their ample budgets. With secrecy always in play (including strict application of the “need-to-know” principle), Burns will need a good deputy — preferably a strong outsider — to avoid being blind-sided — or diddled.

Burns lacks proven experience managing organizations as large and variegated as the agency, so the jury is out on whether he will be able to do it.

One endemic challenge is to ensure that substantive intelligence analysis is not tainted by CIA’s operations. In recent years, analysts have been thrown together with operations officers, making it very difficult for analysts to maintain the distance needed to evaluate objectively the efficacy of policies and actions in which operations colleagues close by are fully engaged.
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