The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity
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Wartime Washington Lives In Luxury...Guess Who Pays The Bills?

Tuesday April 26, 2016

Washington war contracts have enriched northern Virginia at a level equal to the total budgets of countries like Belgium and Sweden. That post-9/11 security- and military-industrial complex financial bonanza is why north Virginia counties are the wealthiest in the nation. Who is behind the explosions of  McMansions being built in the former sleepy outer counties of northern Virginia? The deep state operatives, who populate K Street, the think tanks, the security contractors, the permanent campaign operatives, etc. It is the one percent trafficking in fear to pad their nests at the expense of the rest of the country. How much longer can this scam go on? The Liberty Report is joined today by American Conservative Magazine's Kelley Vlahos to discuss the deep -- and deeply rich -- state that really runs things...
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The Hell on Earth Paved by Samantha Power’s Good Intentions

Tuesday April 26, 2016

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In Batman Vs. Superman, the intrepid reporter Lois Lane (played by Amy Adams), tries to expose a dastardly villain and gets herself into a deadly predicament from which Superman must save her. This has been the Lois Lane formula since 1938. But in this case, the rescue has blowback. The villain in question was an African warlord/terrorist. And the intervention of Superman (and the CIA) somehow precipitates a massacre of local civilians. Lois’s efforts end up leading to the very kind of atrocity she was crusading against.

This also aptly describes the Africa policy of Samantha Power, the most strident “humanitarian interventionist” in the Obama administration. Power’s career was encapsulated in a single awful moment last week. A New York Times story relates that:
“As the convoy barreled through a village in northern Cameroon on Monday, a 7-year-old boy darted to the road, excited to see the chain of white S.U.V.s carrying Samantha Power, the first cabinet-level American official to visit the country since 1991.

Distracted by a thundering noise, the boy glanced up at the helicopter providing security from above. Suddenly, he was struck dead — killed by the same convoy that had brought officials to showcase American efforts to help protect West Africa’s women and children.”
Running over one of those children with a car may seem a botched “showcase.” However it quite accurately, if tragically, exemplified the sort of “protection” that the US government, and Ms. Power in particular, has provided the people of the African continent.
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Censored, Surveilled, Watch Listed and Jailed: The Absurdity of Being a Citizen in the American Police State

Monday April 25, 2016

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In the American police state, the price to be paid for speaking truth to power (also increasingly viewed as an act of treason) is surveillance, censorship, jail and ultimately death.

However, where many Americans go wrong is in assuming that you have to be doing something illegal or challenging the government’s authority in order to be flagged as a suspicious character, labeled an enemy of the state and locked up like a dangerous criminal.

In fact, as I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, all you really need to do is use certain trigger words, surf the internet, communicate using a cell phone, drive a car, stay at a hotel, purchase materials at a hardware store, take flying or boating lessons, appear suspicious, question government authority, or generally live in the United States.

With the help of automated eyes and ears, a growing arsenal of high-tech software, hardware and techniques, government propaganda urging Americans to turn into spies and snitches, as well as social media and behavior sensing software, government agents are spinning a sticky spider-web of threat assessments, flagged “words,” and “suspicious” activity reports aimed at snaring potential enemies of the state.
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Escalation Without Representation: Syria, Iraq, and Black Sea

Monday April 25, 2016

According to the Washington Post, President Obama had promised the US public no fewer than eight times that he would not put US troops on the ground in Syria and would not mount ground opreations in Syria. Then the pretext of a rescue operation of the Yazidi minority was cooked up in 2014 and the president began military operations in Syria. He expanded them under the also false narrative that a "Khorasan Group" had emerged that was a direct threat to the United States. Then he used ISIS as a pretext to further expand US military operations in Syria. Today President Obama announced that he was quintupling the number of US troops on the ground in Syria to help create a Sunni-Kurd alliance against ISIS (and presumably against Assad). Meanwhile, US has decided to ramp up its naval presence in the Black Sea by using proxies Turkey, Romania, and Bulgaria to get around Montreux Convention restrictions. Also, more US troops to Iraq and to eastern Europe. Through all these escalations everywhere, Congress remains completely silent. What is the endgame? The Liberty Report provides some perspective...
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Yes, Prince Faisal, We Need to ‘Recalibrate’ Our Relationship

Sunday April 24, 2016

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For decades the US and Saudi Arabia have shared a peculiar relationship: the Saudis sell relatively cheap oil to the United States for which they accept our fiat currency. They then recycle those paper dollars into the US military-industrial complex through the purchase of billions of dollars worth of military equipment, and the US guarantees the security of the Saudi monarchy.

By accepting only dollars for the sale of its oil, the Saudis help the dollar remain the world’s reserve currency. This has meant that we can export inflation, finance the warfare/welfare state, and delay our day of financial reckoning.
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Defending Democracy to the Last Drop of Oil

Saturday April 23, 2016

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Poor President Barack Obama flew to Saudi Arabia this past week but its ruler, King Salman, was too busy to greet him at Riyadh’s airport.

This snub was seen across the Arab world as a huge insult and violation of traditional desert hospitality. Obama should have refused to deplane and flown home.

Alas, he did not. Obama went to kow-tow to the new Saudi monarch and his hot-headed son, Crown Prince Muhammed bin Nayef. They are furious that Obama has refused to attack Iran, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and Syria’s Assad regime.

They are also angry as hornets that the US may allow relatives of 9/11 victims to sue the Saudi royal family, which is widely suspected of being involved in the attack.

Interestingly, survivors of the 34 American sailors killed aboard the USS Liberty when it was attacked by Israeli warplanes in 1967, have been denied any legal recourse.
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Ron Paul Rewind: 'You're Painting an Overly Optimistic Picture of Afghanistan Success' (2004)

Friday April 22, 2016

It was yet another in a periodic series of House International Relations Committee hearings where the "experts" were trotted out to tell us how incredibly well the US intervention in Afghanistan was going and that if only Congress would keep the money train at full throttle, one hundred flowers would bloom where US bombs planted the seeds. This date was 2004, a hearing titled "US Security Police in Afghanistan on the Eve of National Elections," featuring Lieutenant General Walter L. Sharp, Director, Strategic Plans and Policy, The Joint Staff.
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US-Saudi Relations: Yesteryear Days are Gone Forever

Friday April 22, 2016

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President Barack Obama’s visit to Saudi Arabia on Wednesday has boomeranged. His good intentions were never in doubt – mend fences between the two countries. But what emerges is that it will need much more than one visit – maybe, even one full presidency cannot fulfill such a mission. According to Prince Turki al-Faisal, former Saudi intelligence chief, all the King’s horses and all the King’s men cannot put Humpty Dumpty together again.

Turki told CNN’s Christian Amanpour that there is going to have to be “a recalibration of our (Saudi) relationship with America. How far we can go with our dependence on America, how much can we rely on steadfastness from American leadership, what is it that makes for our joint benefits to come together. These are things that we have to recalibrate.”

He then added, “I don’t think that we should expect any new president in America to go back to, as I said, the yesteryear days when things were different.”

When a close longstanding relationship unravels, it is always a painful sight to watch, leave alone experience. Obama experienced a humiliation in Riyadh that has probably no parallel in recent international diplomacy. He was received on arrival in Riyadh on Wednesday by a relatively less important Saudi functionary – the governor of Riyadh.
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US Assaults British Sovereignty

Thursday April 21, 2016

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The Washington elite believe that the British people should serve Washington’s interest and not their own. To this end, President Obama has been sent to London to emphasize that the UK must remain in the EU.

Does this make you wonder why it is important to Washington for the British people to surrender their national sovereignty to the European Union? If not, it should.

It is easier and less expensive for Washington to control the EU government than to control 28 seperate governments. For example, if Washington wants to open up Europe to Monsanto, it is easier for Washington to bribe one EU government than to deal with 28 governments, especially as the European Commission is not accountable to the European people, whereas the individual populations of the countries would make their objections known to the national governments. The EU can open the door to Monsanto without accountability.


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US Protects Saudis From Terror Suits, Yet Backs Suits Against Iran

Thursday April 21, 2016

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Intense debate and international diplomatic blackmail has dominated the discussion of the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act, a bipartisan bill which would open up civil lawsuits against any foreign nations if they are found to be involved in the funding of a terrorist attack occurring on US soil.

It’s not totally clear what the bill’s authors initially had in mind, but with the text explicitly started the liability under the act at 9/11/01, it is quite clear that the September 11 attacks in New York City are the big, obvious use of this bill, particularly since there aren’t exactly a lot of major terror attacks within the US since then, lat alone ones in which foreign nations are implicated.

The bill puts a big target on Saudi Arabia’s back, however, and the Saudis don’t like that. Foreign Minister Adel Jubeir was reported to have informed administration officials on Sunday that, if the bill was allowed to pass, Saudi Arabia would immediately move to sell $750 billion in US treasury assets, an amount which would cause US interest rates to spike, badly damaging the US dollar and the American economy.

It was all the Saudis had to do, it seems, because by Monday the White House was talking about vetoing the bill to protect "taxpayers," and there was growing opposition within Congress, with Sen. Lindsey Graham (R – SC), a co-sponsor, putting a hold on the bill, citing concern that the bill would come back to "bite us."
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