The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity
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The Last Fed Chairman?

Monday January 29, 2018

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Last week the Senate confirmed Jerome Powell as Federal Reserve Chairman by a vote of 84-13. This is in contrast to the contentious debates and closer votes over Janet Yellen’s confirmation in 2014 and Ben Bernanke’s confirmation for a second term in 2010. Powell benefited from a perception that the economy’s recovery from the 2007-08 meltdown proves that the Fed is a capable manager of monetary policy. However, the perceptions of economic recovery and Federal Reserve competence are both far from the truth.
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Russiagate Isn’t About Trump, And It Isn’t Even Ultimately About Russia

Sunday January 28, 2018

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MSNBC’s Chris Hayes recently asked a question of his Twitter following that was so heavily loaded it wouldn’t be permitted on most interstate highways: “Aside from genuine cranks, is there anyone left denying it was the Russians that committed criminal sabotage in the American election?”

Hayes asked this fake question because he works for MSNBC and it is therefore his job, and he asked it in response to a report first made viral by deranged espionage LARPer Eric Garland that a Dutch intelligence agency had been observing Russian hackers attacking US political parties in advance of the 2016 election. Like all “bombshell” Russiagate reports, this one roared through social media like wildfire carried on the wings of liberal hysteria about the current administration, only to be exposed as being riddled with gaping plot holes as documented here by independent journalist Suzie Dawson. The report revolves around an allegedly Russian cyber threat now known in the west as “Cozy Bear”, which as Real News‘ Max Blumenthal notes is not a network of hackers but “a Russian-sounding name the for-profit firm Crowdstrike assigned to an APT to market its findings to gullible reporters desperate for Russiagate scoops.”

This “bombshell” overlapped with another as it was reported by the New York Times that at one point many months ago Trump had wanted to fire Robert Mueller, but then didn’t.

*Cough.*

Why does this keep happening? Why does the public keep getting sold a mountain of suspicion with zero substance? Over and over and over again these “bombshell” stories come out about Trump and Russia, Russia and Trump, only to be debunked, retracted, or erased from the spotlight after people start actually reading the allegations and thinking critically about them and see they’re not the shocking bombshells they purport to be? These allegations are all premised upon claims made the US intelligence community, which has an extensive and well-documented history of lying to advance its agendas, as well as porous claims made by an extremely shady and insanely profitable private cyber security company, and yet all we’re ever shown is smoke and mirrors with no actual fire.
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America’s National Defense Is Really Offense

Friday January 26, 2018

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On Friday, the Pentagon released an unclassified summary of the 2018 National Defense Strategy report. On the same day, Secretary of Defense James Mattis delivered prepared remarks relating to the document.

Reading the summary is illuminating, to say the least, and somewhat disturbing, as it focuses very little on actual defense of the realm and relates much more to offensive military action that might be employed to further certain debatable national interests. Occasionally, it is actually delusional, as when it refers to consolidating “gains we have made in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and elsewhere.”

At times Mattis’ supplementary “remarks” were more bombastic than reassuring, as when he warned “…those who would threaten America’s experiment in democracy: if you challenge us, it will be your longest and worst day.” He did not exactly go into what the military response to hacking a politician’s emails might be and one can only speculate, which is precisely the problem.

One of the most bizarre aspects of the report is its breathtaking assumption that “competitors” should be subjected to a potential military response if it is determined that they are in conflict with the strategic goals of the U.S. government. It is far removed from the old-fashioned Constitutional concept that one has armed forces to defend the country against an actual threat involving an attack by hostile forces and instead embraces preventive war, which is clearly an excuse for serial interventions overseas.
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FBI-Gate? #ReleaseTheMemo

Friday January 26, 2018

Though dead-enders can't let go, the fact is "Russia-gate" is on the wane for lack of any kind of evidence. But what has emerged to take its place looks more like "FBI-gate," with senior officials seemingly plotting to prevent Donald Trump from taking office and then plotting to depose him once in the White House. RPI's Daniel McAdams joins RT's Crosstalk to point out that the FBI has always been a political organization and that the United States would be far better without such a national police force and without agents who do things that would land the rest of us in jail. And wasn't the Mueller investigation supposed to be all about Russia? Why are we only hearing about "obstruction of justice" and other unrelated avenues of investigation?
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Is the Trump Revolution Over?

Friday January 26, 2018

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A year after President Donald Trump’s inauguration, analysts and commentators are assessing both his performance in the first year of his presidency as well as the outlook for the remainder of his first term. Entering office as a surprise winner and a political neophyte, many people didn’t know just what to expect from Trump. Would he do what he pledged to do as a candidate, or was his campaign rhetoric just a lot of hot air to bamboozle enough people into voting for him? 
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Lew Rockwell: ‘It’s About Time the US Realized it Needs to Get Out of Afghanistan’

Thursday January 25, 2018

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The US has no business in Afghanistan but it loves war and could be there for another 17 years, killing hundreds of thousands more people, according to Lew Rockwell, chairman of the Ludwig von Mises Institute.

The US State Department confirmed Tuesday that several Americans were among the victims in Saturday's attack on a hotel in the Afghan capital, Kabul, where 22 people died in the overnight siege by Taliban militants, local officials said. On Wednesday, a suicide attacker detonated a car bomb next to the office of the humanitarian group Save the Children in Jalalabad.

RT spoke to Rockwell, a political consultant who believes the US military presence is aggravating the situation in Afghanistan.

RT: The US is now ramping up the fight against the Taliban by sending new aircraft for close-air support. Do you believe that's connected to the attack?

Lew Rockwell: No, I think Trump has already talked about sending in more troops and more planes and other weapons. This is a further unfortunate back down from the campaign promises he made. He said some very good things about getting out of Afghanistan, that the US had no business there. And then of course as soon as he was elected, he has switched and he is now stepping up the war in Afghanistan. It is terrible these people were killed. I don’t think we have an idea how many Afghan civilians have been killed in the 17 years of this war, how many soldiers on both sides. It is a terrible thing. The US has no business in Afghanistan, any more than Russia did, any more than Alexander the Great did. The US has got to get out, let the Afghans run their own county.
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Pentagon's New 'Cold War' Strategy: Peace...Or War Profits?

Thursday January 25, 2018

The Pentagon has just released its 2018 National Defense Strategy for the United States. After at least 18 years of being told that international terrorism is the number one threat to the United States and that we must spend enormous amounts of money ($11 trillion since 2001) fighting it, we are now told that terrorism is no longer a big threat. The new biggest threat that we must spend more mountains of money defeating? Russia and China! Who benefits from this official return to the Cold War? The military-industrial complex. Who loses? The rest of us. More on the Pentagon's "Orwell moment" in today's Liberty Report...
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Playing ‘Kurdish Card’ in Syria Backfires on US As Turks Move In

Thursday January 25, 2018

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What the result will be of Turkey’s offensive against the Kurdish-held enclave of Afrin in northwest Syria may not be clear for a while, but two things are already certain. Bad decisions in Washington provided the trigger, and Washington’s regional position will suffer as a result of Ankara’s Orwellian-named “Operation Olive Branch.”

The offensive is the latest twist from Turkey’s erratic and unpredictable leader, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Let’s recall that “Sultan” Erdogan was an early and active participant in what was supposed to have been a relatively easy regime change operation in Syria starting in 2011, on the pattern of NATO’s overthrow of Libya’s Muammar Qaddafi that same year. Turkey, with its lengthy border with Syria, was (and to some extent still is) a major supporter of al-Qaeda-linked jihadist groups in Syria, working with Saudi Arabia and Qatar under American guidance, with Israel as a silent partner. The appearance of ISIS (Daesh, ISIL) as an outgrowth of al-Qaeda in Iraq was a direct and foreseen consequence of that effort, as the Obama Administration was warned in 2012 by the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), then under the command of General Michael Flynn.

To the surprise of many, the Syrian government under President Bashar al-Assad didn’t just roll up and die but displayed an unexpected tenacity in defending that country’s secular, multi-religious society against outside efforts to impose a Wahhabist sectarian state. The clincher came with Russia’s September 2015 intervention, a distinctly unwelcome development for the “Assad must go!” crowd.
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Destroying, Suppressing Evidence is FBI Standard Procedure

Wednesday January 24, 2018

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Congressional investigators were rocked this weekend when the FBI notified them that five months of text messages from a top FBI investigator into the Trump campaign’s Russian connections had mysteriously vanished. The FBI-issued cell phone of Peter Strzok, whose previous texts to his mistress (also an FBI employee) showed fierce hostility to Trump, suddenly had problems due to “software upgrades” and other issues — and voila —all the messages between the two from Dec. 14, 2016, to May 17, 2017 vanished.
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VP Pence At Olympics To Prevent North Korea Peace Overtures

Wednesday January 24, 2018

Relations between North and South Korea have taken a surprisingly positive turn this year. First, bilateral negotiations between the North and South began the thaw and an announcement of unprecedented North/South joint participation in the coming Olympic games have left some observers wondering how far this cooperation might go? Meanwhile, Washington casts a skeptical eye on the big thaw. The Trump Administration has bet the bank that the only way to handle North Korea is with sanctions and threats. That has not worked. With North/South rapprochement become the big story at the Olympics? Our take in today's Liberty Report...
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