The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity
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Ron Paul and Lost Lessons of War

Thursday September 3, 2015

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Former US Rep. Ron Paul lays out a national security strategy for the United States in his book, Swords into Plowshares, which Carl von Clausewitz , the author of On War, would have approved. Clausewitz, a Prussian general in the early Nineteenth Century, is considered perhaps the West’s most insightful strategist, and On War is his classic work on the inter-relationship between politics and war.

A close reading of On War reveals a book far more on the strategy of statecraft, that is Grand Strategy, than it is on the mere strategy of warfare. Unfortunately, very few readers have understood that. Indeed, Clausewitz’s target audience may have been principally civilian policy makers with his view that the political perspective must remain dominant over the military point of view in the conduct of war.

Whether or not Ron Paul ever read Clausewitz, Swords into Plowshares restores a proper understanding of statecraft as Clausewitz understood it and today’s American leaders fail to.
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Buy the Rights-Abusing Cops Lunch Says Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick

Thursday September 3, 2015

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Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick issued a statement Wednesday that says that, to counter “America’s negative attitude toward our law enforcement officers,” people should all-but grovel at the feet of any police they come across. Patrick even suggests that “financially able” individuals (who presumably are already paying cops’ salaries via taxes) pay for the lunches of any cops they may see in a restaurant.

Here is Patrick’s complete list of groveling suggestions:
Join me in changing this negative attitude toward those that protect us, by practicing the following:

Start calling our officers sir and ma’am all of the time. It’s a show of respect they deserve.

Every time you see an officer anywhere, let them know you appreciate their service to our community and you stand with them.

If you are financially able, when you see them in a restaurant on duty pick up their lunch check, send over a dessert, or simply stop by their table briefly and say thank you for their service.

Put their charities on your giving list.

If your local law enforcement has volunteer-citizen job opportunities, sign up.

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Abusing Dead Syrian Children

Thursday September 3, 2015

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Images are a powerful tool in the hands of propagandists. A picture is worth a thousand words, as the saying goes. If a powerful image can be manipulated to tell a tale even if false, it can persuade more viscerally than can a thousand reasoned arguments.

So it is with the tragic photograph making the mainstream media rounds yesterday of a lone Syrian child drowned on a Turkish shore. Reams of articles can be written about the current refugee crisis but particularly in the US they will go relatively unnoticed by those not directly affected. There may be some video clips on the nightly news but overall the story -- and particularly the context -- will go unexplained.

But the powerful image of a dead child, abandoned by the world on the capricious sway of the tide, is putty in the hands of propagandists.

And proponents of the four-year US policy of Syrian destabilization and regime change are lining up to make their case that the current refuge crisis -- now swamping Europe with Syrians desperate for something approaching a normal life -- is one hundred percent the fault of both Syrian president Assad and the western non-interventionists who objected to plans in 2013 for the US and UK to begin bombing Syria.
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Refugee Crisis - Demise Of The EU?

Wednesday September 2, 2015

Thousands of refugees and migrants are streaming into Europe -- mostly Hungary -- on a daily basis. Transportation has ground to a halt in Hungary as they are swarming the trains in attempt to get to Austria and Germany. Where are they escaping from? Countries like Syria and Libya where the US and EU have bombed and promoted violent regime change. Will the media blame the interventionists for creating this mass-scale human tragedy? Don't count on it. More on the crisis and what it means for Europe in today's Liberty Report...
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Sheep Led to the Slaughter: The Muzzling of Free Speech in America

Tuesday September 1, 2015

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The architects of the American police state must think we’re idiots.

With every passing day, we’re being moved further down the road towards a totalitarian society characterized by government censorship, violence, corruption, hypocrisy and intolerance, all packaged for our supposed benefit in the Orwellian doublespeak of national security, tolerance and so-called “government speech.”

Long gone are the days when advocates of free speech could prevail in a case such as Tinker v. Des Moines. Indeed, it’s been 50 years since 13-year-old Mary Beth Tinker was suspended for wearing a black armband to school in protest of the Vietnam War. In taking up her case, the US Supreme Court declared that students do not “shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.”

Were Tinker to make its way through the courts today, it would have to overcome the many hurdles being placed in the path of those attempting to voice sentiments that may be construed as unpopular, offensive, conspiratorial, violent, threatening or anti-government.
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Why the War on Terror is Failing

Monday August 31, 2015

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A well-done article in the New York Times reminds us that four years after the United States assassinated American citizen and Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki (and his teenage son) in a drone strike, his influence on jihadists is greater than ever.

At the same time, the UK’s Guardian tells us about William Bradford, an assistant law professor at West Point, who argued in a peer-reviewed paper that attacks on Muslim scholars’ homes and offices, Middle Eastern media outlets and Islamic holy sites are legitimate and necessary to “win” the war on terrorism.

Bradford threatens “Islamic holy sites” as part of a war against radicalism. That war ought to be prosecuted vigorously, he wrote, “even if it means great destruction, innumerable enemy casualties, and civilian collateral damage. Other ‘lawful targets’ for the US military in its war on terrorism,” Bradford argues, “include law school facilities, scholars’ home offices and media outlets where they give interviews, all civilian areas, but places where a causal connection between the content disseminated and Islamist crimes incited exist.”
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Saudi Coalition Bombs Yemen Water Bottling Plant, Killing Dozens of Civilians

Monday August 31, 2015

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In the midst of a war-fueled water crisis, the Saudi Arabia-led coalition reportedly bombed a water bottling plant in northern Yemen on Sunday, adding to mounting civilian casualties as the military onslaught enters its sixth month.

"The corpses of 36 workers, many of them burnt or in pieces, were pulled out after an air strike hit the plant this morning," resident Issa Ahmed told Reuters of Sunday's bombing in the province of Hajjah.

The Yemeni Defense Ministry put the number of civilians killed at 34, with dozens wounded.

Coalition spokesperson Brigadier General Ahmed Asseri denied that the bombing hit a civilian target. However, this claim contradicts reports by residents and medical officials.

The apparent bombing follows a series of attacks targeting civilian infrastructure and neighborhoods. Coalition strikes killed 65 people in Taiz late last week, the vast majority of them civilians. Furthermore, the bombing of a milk factory in the Red Sea port city of Hodeida in July killed 65 people.

In a report released earlier this month, humanitarian aid agency Amnesty International criticized the coalition's "pattern of strikes targeting heavily populated areas including civilian homes, a school, a market and a mosque. In the majority of cases no military target could be located nearby."
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ISIS Gold Standard: Will it Work?

Monday August 31, 2015

A bizarre new video purportedly released by ISIS features archival clips from several prominent Austrian and free-market economics thinkers, including Ron Paul, discussing the Federal Reserve and the end of the dollar. Is this some sort of anti-gold propaganda, meant to suggest that anyone questioning the current Federal Reserve central banking system is on board with ISIS? Or is ISIS looking at the collapse of the dollar as a "second 9/11" as is said in the video. More on this very strange development in today's Liberty Report...
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Blame the Federal Reserve, Not China, for Stock Market Crash

Sunday August 30, 2015

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Following Monday’s historic stock market downturn, many politicians and so-called economic experts rushed to the microphones to explain why the market crashed and to propose "solutions” to our economic woes. Not surprisingly, most of those commenting not only failed to give the right answers, they failed to ask the right questions.

Many blamed the crash on China’s recent currency devaluation. It is true that the crash was caused by a flawed monetary policy. However, the fault lies not with China’s central bank but with the US Federal Reserve. The Federal Reserve’s inflationary policies distort the economy, creating bubbles, which in turn create a booming stock market and the illusion of widespread prosperity. Inevitably, the bubble bursts, the market crashes, and the economy sinks into a recession.
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Beijing Bingo

Saturday August 29, 2015

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My father, a New York financier, used to call dubious stocks or bonds, “Chinese paper.” Last week, we saw a blizzard of Chinese paper, both in China and around the world. 

As manager of a sizeable investment portfolio (an unwelcome second job from my main work, journalism), I watched last week’s near death experience on world markets with a mixture of cynicism and alarm. First of all, remember when Americans – and particularly Republicans – demonized Mao’s China and endlessly warned about the perils of Communism? 

Well, the Chinese seemed to have listened. China ditched Communism and embraced runaway capitalism – or at least a hybrid of 1900 raw capitalism and state socialism. But Chairman Mao was proven right. He warned his people against the evils of “casino capitalism” and money lending. 

The near collapse of China’s stock market in recent weeks scared the hell out of the entire world but, at least so far, really has not mattered very much. China’s markets are insulated from the rest of the world. They serve as a way of letting average people share some of China’s growth and as a form of national lottery – call it Beijing bingo.

Western stock markets are also semi-rigged casino games in which the big boys and their ultra high speed computer systems almost always win at the expense of small fry.
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