The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity
The Ron Paul Peace and Prosperity Institute
Subscribe to the Institute View Us on YouTube Follow Us On Twitter Join Us on Facebook Join Us at Google Plus

Search Results

for:

The Continuing Al-Qaeda Threat

Sunday February 2, 2014

Appearing last week before the Senate Intelligence Committee, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper testified that he could not say the threat from al-Qaeda is any less today than it was ten years ago. It was a shocking admission. Does he mean that the trillions of dollars spent fighting the war on terrorism have resulted in no gains? That those who urged us to give up some of our liberties to gain security have, as Benjamin Franklin warned, lost both?
 
There may be reasons Director Clapper would want us to believe that the threat from al-Qaeda is as strong as ever. An entire industry has arisen from the government’s war on terror, and for both the government sector and the security-industrial complex the terrorist threat is big business.
read on...

Stalin's Crimes Haunt Sochi Games

Saturday February 1, 2014

Sochi

Sochi seems a strange place to hold the Olympic games. First, it’s almost subtropical. To find snow, one must travel up to the Caucasus mountains.

The Black Sea resort is charming and exotic. But Sochi is a beach resort. No one knows if there will be enough snow for the skiing and snowboarding events being held on the low mountains behind.

Let me stop here and say that I consider all Olympic games a titanic waste of money that leave behind white elephant buildings and debts that never get paid off. Bread and circuses. Russia is blowing over $3 billion on this extravaganza. The games are just a huge commercial jamboree with faux patriotic overtones.

Second, there is the big security scare facing Russia from violent militants in the North Caucasus. The US government, trying to rain on Vlad Putin’s parade, actually warned American visitors to take extreme caution or just not go to Sochi because of the dangers of “terrorism.”
read on...

The Year of Iran: Tehran’s Challenge to American Hegemony in 2014

Friday January 31, 2014

Hassan Rohani’s election as Iran’s president seven months ago caught most of the West’s self-appointed Iran “experts” by (largely self-generated) surprise. Over the course of Iran’s month-long presidential campaign, methodologically-sound polls by the University of Tehran showed that a Rohani victory was increasingly likely.

Yet Iran specialists at Washington’s leading think tanks continued erroneously insisting (as they had for months before the campaign formally commenced) that Iranians could not be polled like other populations and that there would be “a selection rather than an election,” engineered to install Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s “anointed” candidate—in most versions, former nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili. On election day, as Iranian voters began casting their ballots, the Washington Post proclaimed that Rohani “will not be allowed to win”—a statement reflecting virtual consensus among American pundits.
read on...

Obama and Kerry Jeopardize Peace With Iran

Thursday January 30, 2014

Obama Iran

Barack Obama and John Kerry should make up their minds: Do they want war or peace with Iran?

We should hope for peace, but Obama and Kerry make optimism difficult.

Ideally, the Obama administration would simply exit the Middle East, taking all its military and economic aid with it. The U.S. government cannot micromanage events there, especially when it is no honest, neutral broker. Shamefully, it is firmly in the Israeli camp against the Palestinians (who, let us remember, are the occupied, not the occupiers), and generally in the Sunni Muslim camp against the Shi’ites, led by Iran. (Iraq is the anomaly.)

As welcome as a U.S. exit would be, alas, it won’t happen anytime soon, so the best we can hope for is rapprochement with Iran. The U.S.-led economic sanctions impose an unconscionable hardship on Iranians — for example, depriving the elderly and children of medicines and nourishment. Clearly, a war would be catastrophic on many levels for nearly all concerned, including Americans. (I say “nearly all” because opportunistic rulers in Israel and Saudi Arabia could benefit.)
read on...

The State of Our Nation: The Greatest Threat to Our Freedoms Is the Government

Wednesday January 29, 2014

What was striking about this year’s State of the Union address was not the sheer arrogance of the president’s remarks, the staged nature of the proceedings and interactions, or the predictable posturing of the rebuttals, but the extent to which the members of the various branches of government—President Obama, Congress, the Supreme Court, and the assorted government agencies—are just one big, brawling, noisy, semi-incestuous clan.

Watching these bureaucrats, both elected and appointed, interact in the unguarded moments before the event, with their hugging and kissing and nudging and joking and hobnobbing and general high spirits, I was reminded anew that these people—Republicans and Democrats alike—are united in a common goal, and it is not to protect and defend the Constitution. No, as Orwell recognized in Animal Farm, their common goal is to maintain the status quo, a goal that is helped along by an unquestioning, easily mollified, corporate media. In this way, the carefully crafted spectacle that is the State of the Union address is just that: an exaggerated farce of political theater intended to dazzle, distract and divide us, all the while the police state marches steadily forward.
read on...

Radical Ukraine?

Wednesday January 29, 2014

Watch RPI Academic Advisor John Laughland on RT's excellent Crosstalk discussing Ukraine's future as the unrest spirals out of control. Why is the US and EU supporting the same kinds of violent extramists in Ukraine that it condemns elsewhere in Europe and the US?
read on...

How Waist Deep in the Big Muddy Finally Got on Network Television in 1968

Wednesday January 29, 2014

Peteseeger

Most of my life I have assumed that the kind of songs I sing would not normally get played on the airwaves. I pointed to examples like Woody Guthrie’s song, “This Land Is Your Land” to show that they don’t have to get played on the airwaves. If it’s a real good song, it will get spread around anyway.

But in 1967 I wrote what I thought was a real good song, and I knew there wasn’t time for it to get around the country. People were being killed every day in Vietnam. I had a recording contract with Columbia Records at that time, and my friends there even agreed to put out a record of it; but the sales department just laughed at us both. The records stayed on the shelves and weren’t even sent to the stores.

But two young comedians had a successful television show, and they asked their bosses if I could be a guest on their show. The Smothers Brothers were turned down by CBS TV at first, but finally they said O.K. I flew out to California and sang some songs that had been sung by American soldiers in four different wars-the American Revolution, the Civil War, World War I, and lastly this song, “Waist Deep in the Big Muddy.”
read on...

US ‘Elephant in the Room’ at Russia-EU Summit

Wednesday January 29, 2014

US interference in Ukraine’s affairs and the overall EU approach to Kiev’s independence might force Russia to take measures that would damage economic relations with the 28-member bloc, Professor Mark Almond, a historian at Oxford University, told RT.

RT: The leaders managed to cover the most pressing issues during this short summit. Do you think despite the amount of time they had, much was achieved?

Mark Almond: Only the results can show it over time. The basic problem is that there are two issues being discussed here which in some ways are contradictory. One is the huge amount of economic contact and cooperation between Russian and EU countries, particularly between Russia and certain EU countries like Germany; others play a bit lesser role. And then the political dynamics where the EU and the other NATO states, America the elephant in the room in these discussions, are pursuing the kind of strategic policies that really goes to rubbing up Russia the wrong way. So trying to have good economic relations and at the same time playing a game of arm wrestling over the Ukraine, I think is really a way that makes it really difficult to have a positive outcome.
read on...

The Persecution of Justin Bieber

Wednesday January 29, 2014

Bieber

Though he is adored as a minor deity in the degenerate world of pop culture, when confronted by a member of the State’s punitive priesthood Justin Bieber is just another Mundane. This explains how the alleged singer has found himself charged with the supposed crime of “resisting arrest without violence.”

Bieber, who was reportedly drunk and uncooperative when stopped by a police officer, attempted to pull his arm away when the cop tried to take him into custody. Because of this reflex action (a healthy and predictable response to being grabbed by an armed and aggressive stranger) Bieber was hit with a charge that is remarkably commonplace in Florida.

Despite the fact that the charge is a logical anomaly, there is nothing unusual about people being arrested for resisting arrest (which is not a legitimate crime, but a long-recognized common law right). Many police officers treat filing a charge of resisting and obstructing as simply part of a well-established ritual – somewhat akin to kicking an extra point following a touchdown.
read on...

Subscribe

Authors

Tags