The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity
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Think Before You Rush to War!

Friday December 4, 2015

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Concentration of forces is the most basic law of military science. Victory on the battlefield is won by amassing as many troops as possible at the key point of attack, or ‘schwerpunkt,’ as it’s known in German.

Unfortunately, the amateur strategists in the White House seem to have been studying social anthropology and women’s issues instead of basic military science. What they want is, to use the term coined by Russian poet Yevtuschenko, a half war.

This week, Pentagon chief Ash Carter, announced the US would send about 200 more special forces troops to Iraq and Syrian to fight the Islamic State. After vowing not to send troops to the Mideast, President Obama has by now deployed 3,500 new US soldiers to Iraq for “training.”
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After 13 Years in Gitmo, Pentagon Says Detainee is Case of ‘Mistaken Identity’

Friday December 4, 2015


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Mustafa Abd-al-Qawi Abd-al-Aziz al-Shamiri was captured in 2002 and believed then to be a major al Qaeda facilitator or courier, or maybe a trainer, according to the Department of Defense.

He was interrogated “vigorously” and when he did not admit to those activities and did not supply detailed, high level information on al Qaeda, was thrown away, without charge, into America’s offshore penal colony at Guantanamo Bay.

For 13 years.

Now, desiring after 13 years to reduce the prison population at Gitmo, the Department of Defense says al-Shamiri’s imprisonment was all a simply mistake of confused identity. In the Kafkaesque world America created post-9/11, al-Shamiri could not answer his torturers because he had no knowledge of what they were demanding from him. His silence was taken as insolence, and he was punished accordingly.

For 13 years.

Al-Shamiri is now age 37. He spent about one third of his entire life in Gitmo because of a mistake. And if somehow you are not human enough to be moved by that alone, perhaps you can care about the $2.7 million per prisoner per year it costs the U.S. to keep a person in Guantanamo.
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CA Shooting Reaction: Wrong Diagnosis, Wrong Treatment

Thursday December 3, 2015

The police had no motive and no suspects in custody after yesterday's shooting in California, yet those pressure groups with agendas were already demanding that Muslims be spied on and guns be confiscated. The media, as per usual, amplified every unsubstantiated rumor and outright falsehood about the San Bernardino shooting to keep people glued to their television and glued to their seats. There is little concern about accuracy or journalistic responsibility. The president jumps out ahead of the news and criticizes guns. These tragic events are tools in the hands of those who want to destroy our civil liberties. More on this real threat to our way of life in today's Liberty Report...
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TSA Bombs the Holidays

Thursday December 3, 2015

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If you use hand sanitizer when traveling, the Transportation Security Administration can badger you as if you were a terrorist suspect. TSA is one of the biggest hassles many Americans will encounter this holiday season. I learned that firsthand while flying home from Portland, Ore., on Thanksgiving morning.

I arrived at the airport two hours before my flight. As usual, I opted out of going through TSA’s Whole Body Scanners. The agency’s prize possessions are incompetent at detecting terrorist threats; the inspector general reported that they fail to detect 96 percent of weapons and mock explosives in smuggling tests. The machines take birthday suit snapshots of each traveler; TSA claims photos are not retained, but the agency has less credibility than Congress.

A TSA agent took me aside and gave me a vigorous patdown. This is the usual routine I experience at airports and a small price to pay for a silent protest for my constitutional right to be free of unreasonable, warrantless searches.

I was surprised when the agent claimed his glove showed a positive alert for explosives. “What type of explosive was it?” I asked. “I don’t know — it’s a code,” he replied. I asked how often the detection machine generated false positives. He said that was classified information. It was not like I had been hanging out at shooting ranges or missile launch sites in Oregon.
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After PATRIOT Act Reform, Spying Continues

Wednesday December 2, 2015


With the sunsetting of Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act last week, we were told that the NSA had stopped its bulk collection of the metadata of American citizens. In fact there are so many loopholes -- including downright ignoring the law -- that it is certain the massive NSA snooping on US citizens continues. There are Executive Orders authorizing it and sneaky moves to route our communications offshore to bypass US law. Today's Liberty Report is joined by Ron Paul Institute Senior Fellow Adam Dick to discuss the "reform" of the PATRIOT Act...
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Iraqis Swear: US "In Cahoots With ISIS…It Is Not In Doubt"

Wednesday December 2, 2015

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On Tuesday evening, we took a look at how Iran’s Shiite proxy arms fighting ISIS in Iraq responded to Ash Carter’s contention that the US would soon send an “expeditionary targeting force” to assist Iraqi and Kurdish Peshmerga forces in the battle against Islamic State.

From Kata'ib Hezbollah: "We will chase and fight any American force deployed in Iraq. Any such American force will become a primary target for our group. We fought them before and we are ready to resume fighting."

From the Badr Organisation: "All Iraqis look to (the Americans) as occupiers who are not trustworthy."

And as for the official reaction from Baghdad, we go to PM Haider al-Abadi: “Iraq does not need foreign ground combat forces on Iraqi land."

So basically, “thanks, but we’ve seen enough of your ground troops over the past 15 years and if they come here again, they’re likely to get shot at, and not just by ISIS.”

This is a conundrum for Washington. The US-trained and armed Iraqi regulars fight alongside, and in some cases report directly to, the Shiite militias and these militias are far more effective at fighting ISIS than government forces. In some battles, there are more militiamen fighting than Iraqi soldiers.
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Turkey, Russia, and the Fallacy of ‘Collective Security’

Tuesday December 1, 2015

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Today we are only a few miscalculations and missteps away from a nuclear world war: fewer than ever since the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Last week Turkey shot down a Russian military plane over Syria. Turkish-backed fighters on the ground then executed one of the parachuting crew members. The militants also shot down a responding Russian rescue helicopter with a US-supplied anti-tank missile, killing a Russian marine.

Turkey justified the shoot-down with allegations about airspace violations (lasting mere seconds), which Russia denies. The Turkish prime minister boasted that he personally authorized the attack.

Russian President Vladimir Putin called the incident a “stab in the back by the accomplices of terrorists.” Russia retaliated by imposing sanctions on Turkey and by allegedly “wiping out” the militants in the area of the shoot-down with heavy bombing. Russia has also built up defenses for its planes operating over Syria near Turkey: fighter-plane escorts for bombers, as well as cover by sea-to-air and ground-to-air missile launchers.
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COP21: Climate Action Or Pushing A Hoax?

Tuesday December 1, 2015

More than 100 heads of state join almost 40,000 other elites in Paris for two weeks to discuss how to approve a legally binding global agreement to fight climate change. When polls in the US showed that Americans view climate change as a very low priority, political leaders backed up by the loyal media began pushing the idea that climate change is driving global terrorism. So if you are not motivated to take action to fight global climate change you must be soft on terrorism. That is how propaganda works. And it is working. What will be the implications for US sovereignty and economic and personal liberty of empowering a global body to regulate US economic activity? Join the Ron Paul Liberty Report today for our take...
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Life in the Electronic Concentration Camp: The Surveillance State Is Alive and Well

Monday November 30, 2015

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Bottle up the champagne, pack away the noisemakers, and toss out the party hats.

There is no cause for celebration.

We have secured no major victories against tyranny.

We have achieved no great feat in pushing back against government overreach.

For all intents and purposes, the National Security Agency has supposedly ceased its bulk collection of metadata from Americans’ phone calls, but read the fine print: nothing is going to change.

The USA Freedom Act, which claimed to put an end to the National Security Agency’s controversial collection of metadata from Americans’ phone calls, was just a placebo pill intended to make us feel better and let the politicians take credit for reforming mass surveillance.

In other words, it was a sham, a sleight-of-hand political gag pulled on a gullible public desperate to believe that we still live in a constitutional republic rather than a down-and-out, out-of-control, corporate-controlled, economically impoverished, corrupt, warring, militarized banana republic.

You cannot restrain the NSA. The beast has outgrown its chains.
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Sen. Lindsey Graham In Iraq - Wants US Troops To Come Back!

Monday November 30, 2015

Senators Lindsey Graham and John McCain have returned to the scene of the crime -- Iraq -- where the war they demanded has left the country shattered into a million bits with ISIS there to take care of the rebuilding. These two "experts" are forever wrong in their every utterance and policy position -- remember how angry McCain became when it was pointed out that he was meeting with terrorists in Syria and telling us they were moderates? -- yet the slavish US mainstream media continues to defer to their rotten judgement. Back in Iraq over the weekend, the Senators again pushed the only policy they know -- war -- demanding a fresh supply of young American meat to be ground up in Iraq and Syria. Troops on the ground, they scream. Give us 20,000 to start! Today's Liberty Report looks at the logical fallacy that doing more of what caused terrorism can defeat terrorism...
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