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US Botches Ukraine: 'Who's Sorry Now?'

Thursday April 24, 2014

Obamayatssmile

On 21 February, the day the Yanukovich government collapsed, cocktail hour at the U.S. State Department must have been one rip roaring, hours-long, high-five fiesta. The many billions the US had invested in a string of attempts to undermine an elected government in a former Soviet republic had finally paid off.

Since the targeted government was Ukraine’s, the possibility of new NATO bases and the eviction of the Russians from the Black Sea naval base in Crimea were back in play. So too was control of Russian oil and gas transported via Ukrainian pipelines and the certain joy of another country-wide looting operation courtesy of the IMF.

The additional satisfaction of having delivered Vladimir Putin a bitch-slap for refusing to recognize Kosovo as a nation independent of Serbia, for having deflected a 2008 attack on Russia’s “soft underbelly” in Georgia, for having smudged Obama’s Syrian “red line,” and for having given shelter to NSA whistleblower, Edward Snowden, must have been immense.
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Obama Plays With Fire in Ukraine

Wednesday April 23, 2014

How many American parents would proudly send their sons and daughters off to kill or be killed in Slovyansk or Donetsk?  How many young men and women aspire to be the first American to fall in Kramatorsk?

Those towns are in eastern Ukraine. President Obama says the “military option” — war, that is — is not on the table in his effort to oppose Russia in the Ukraine crisis, but can we trust him? As pressure mounts on him from America’s war hawks, what will he do when sanctions fail to persuade Russian President Vladimir Putin to acquiesce? Will the military option then find its way onto that infamous table?
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Shocking Photos From Bundy Raid

Tuesday April 22, 2014

Many thanks to Shannon Bushman for his superb work documenting the truly shocking assault by armed federal agents on the Bundy Ranch, and many thanks for him sending them to us at the Ron Paul Institute with his permission to reprint. Looking at some of these photos it almost seems as if we are in Egypt or Ukraine, where a heavily-armed military turns its guns on its own peaceful citizens. While neocons, humanitarian interventionists, and even some who call themselves libertarian are so eager for the US government to spread liberty (by force) overseas, they seem to show little concern for government's relentless assault on liberty at home.
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The Bundy Paradigm: Will You Be a Rebel, Revolutionary or a Slave?

Tuesday April 22, 2014

Bundyraid

Those tempted to write off the standoff at the Bundy Ranch as little more than a show of force by militia-minded citizens would do well to reconsider their easy dismissal of this brewing rebellion. This goes far beyond concerns about grazing rights or the tension between the state and the federal government.

Few conflicts are ever black and white, and the Bundy situation, with its abundance of gray areas, is no exception. Yet the question is not whether Cliven Bundy and his supporters are domestic terrorists, as Harry Reid claims, or patriots, or something in between. Nor is it a question of whether the Nevada rancher is illegally grazing his cattle on federal land or whether that land should rightfully belong to the government. Nor is it even a question of who’s winning the showdown— the government with its arsenal of SWAT teams, firepower and assault vehicles, or Bundy’s militia supporters with their assortment of weapons—because if such altercations end in bloodshed, everyone loses.

What we’re really faced with, and what we’ll see more of before long, is a growing dissatisfaction with the government and its heavy-handed tactics by people who are tired of being used and abused and are ready to say “enough is enough.” And it won’t matter what the issue is—whether it’s a rancher standing his ground over grazing rights, a minister jailed for holding a Bible study in his own home, or a community outraged over police shootings of unarmed citizens—these are the building blocks of a political powder keg. Now all that remains is a spark, and it need not be a very big one, to set the whole powder keg aflame.
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The Smoking Pop-Gun: Obama Endorses a Forgery

Monday April 21, 2014

Obamayats

On Friday, April 18, President Obama voiced his righteous indignation over anti-Semitic fliers pasted on synagogue walls in the pro-Russian eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk.  The fliers, calling on all Jews to register or face expulsion, had appeared the day before and were instantly denounced by Donetsk leaders as a gross provocation and a forgery.

The next day, however, Obama “expressed his disgust quite bluntly”.  At least, that is what his hawkish national security advisor, Susan Rice, told the public. “I think we all found word of those pamphlets to be utterly sickening, and they have no place in the 21st century,” she declared.

This presidential reaction occurred 24 hours after the pamphlet in question had been thoroughly denounced as a fake, not only by the Donetsk leader, Denis Pushilin, who said his signature on the document had been forged, but by local Jewish community leaders and even by The New Republic, which cannot be accused of indifference to anti-Semitism.
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Amateur Hour in Ukraine

Monday April 21, 2014

Bismarck

Marbella, Spain – Here in Spain’s sunny south, you wouldn’t know that a new world war over Eastern Europe threatens. In fact, rumor has it that none other than Vlad Putin is house-shopping in this glamorous resort.

Easter is Europe’s most important holiday. While churches are empty, restaurants, clubs and boutiques are packed with visitors and residents. Northern Spain is racked by record unemployment and a deep recession, but armies of British, French and German tourists are back in the south and the mood is upbeat.

To Spaniards, the dangerous fracas over Ukraine seems remote and unimportant. Western Europeans are taking this nasty business calmly. There is none of the media hysteria and patriotic drum beating found in North America. No one that I’ve met thinks Ukraine is worth a war, even a small one.

To paraphrase the great statesman Bismarck, Ukraine is not worth the life of a single Prussian grenadier. I recalled this famous maxim at dinner the other night here in Marbella where I’m a house guest of the Bismarck family, which is reunited here for Easter.
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Nevada Standoff a Symptom of Increasing Authoritarianism

Sunday April 20, 2014

The nation’s attention has for the past few weeks been riveted by a standoff in Nevada between armed federal agents and the Bundys, a ranching family who believe the federal government is exceeding its authority by assessing “fees” against ranchers who graze cattle on government lands. Outrage over the government's use of armed agents to forcibly remove the Bundys’ cattle led many Americans to travel to Nevada to engage in nonviolent civil disobedience in support of the family. 

The protests seem to have worked, at least for now, as the government appears to have backed off from direct confrontation. Sadly, some elected officials have inflamed the situation by labeling the Bundys and their supporters “domestic terrorists,” thus justifying any future use of force by the government.
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Ron Paul Rewind: 'Disband NATO!'

Saturday April 19, 2014

Contrary to how the mainstream media tries to portray the U.S. as an innocent bystander in Ukraine, the reality is that provocative meddling has been going on for a very long time.

Below is a speech that Dr. Paul gave on the U.S. House floor on April 1, 2008. It’s fascinating that the very same speech (with just a few minor tweaks) could be given today: 

Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to this resolution calling for the further expansion of NATO to the borders of Russia. NATO is an organization whose purpose ended with the end of its Warsaw Pact adversary. When NATO struggled to define its future after the Cold War, it settled on attacking a sovereign state, Yugoslavia, which had neither invaded nor threatened any NATO member state.
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What John Kerry Didn't Say in Geneva

Friday April 18, 2014

Kerryquote

As usual, Secretary of State John Kerry got off on the wrong foot at his press conference in Geneva yesterday, where he announced a US/EU/Russia/Ukraine agreement to lower tensions in eastern Ukraine. In fact he again put his foot in his mouth.

After ignoring the real neo-Nazis who have infected the US-backed post-coup government in Kiev like an ebola virus, Kerry began his press conference yesterday denouncing the anti-coup protesters in the east as the real Nazis, citing an inflammatory document purportedly demanding that the Jews in the restive Donetsk region register as such with local authorities and pay a fee for the privilege.
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Ranchers vs. Regulators: The Clark County Range War

Friday April 18, 2014

Interviewing Cliven
photo: Will Grigg

War came to the Western Range that April, a conflict pitting the forces of order and respectability against a restive band of extremists accused of cheating the government of what it was due. The prohibitively stronger side consisted of regulatory agencies allied with powerful non-governmental organizations determined to control the land and expel small private interests who made productive use of it. The unyielding demands of the political elite were met with the unflinching defiance of rural ranchers, leading to talk of a “range war.”

Eventually the ranchers exhausted the patience of the government, which deployed dozens of heavily armed Regulators to the county under orders to put down the rebellion. This would mean arresting – or shooting – anybody who resisted. Rather than submitting, the rebels – with the support of the county sheriff and the aid of several veterans of the most recent war – mobilized to confront the threat. Citizens coalesced into a militia and rode out on horseback to confront the invaders at their staging area.

To the consternation of the government and the respectable media, the rebels held their ground, forcing the Regulators to retreat.
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