This week Saudi Arabia bombed an airfield in Yemen to prevent an Iranian aid plane from landing. Yemen's population is suffering severe food and water shortages after five weeks of US-backed Saudi bombing. As Ron Paul says in his latest Liberty Report below, this is reminiscent of the terrible civilian toll taken by US sanctions against Iraq before the US attack... read on...
The admission by the White House that two western hostages were killed by an errant drone strike in Pakistan serves as only an ugly little footnote to what has been nearly fifteen years of undeclared war waged by Washington against a large part of the world. The New York Times notes that “…most individuals killed [by drones] are not on a kill list, and the government does not know their names,” adding that “the proliferating mistakes have given drones a sinister reputation in Pakistan and Yemen and have provoked a powerful anti-American backlash in the Muslim world.”
The most recent ex-judicial killings come on the heels of a report by the highly respected Nobel prize winning Physicians for Social Responsibility that reveals that more than 1.3 million people were killed during the first ten years post 9/11 as part of the so-called “global war on terror” (GWOT) in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan alone. The GWOT has been euphemized by the current Administration as “overseas contingency operations,” which has a nicer sound and does not appear to be so preemptive or premeditated. The relabeling also suggests that the process is both responsive and occasional, which it is not as it has been the driving component of American foreign policy since 2001 until the present day. read on...
A few weeks ago, I spoke to about 200 people at the famous Willard Hotel in Washington in a program put on by the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce. I had been told that this was a group of CEOs and owners of major companies in Southern California, obviously a very upper-income group.
I got to a point in my speech where I said: “It is long past the time when we need to stop trying to run the whole world and start putting our own people and our own Country first once again.”
Much to my surprise, the audience broke into applause. Middle- and lower-income groups have applauded when I have said similar things in my district and around the country. But many upper-income people claim to be moderates, and, contrary to popular belief, conservatives lose most very wealthy areas two-to-one or worse.
I have spoken to a very wide variety of groups in Washington, around the country, and in my district, and I have gotten an overwhelmingly positive response every time I have said that it has been a horrible mistake to spend trillions on unnecessary wars in the Middle East. read on...
US special operations forces are operating in 81 countries according to the Wall Street Journal. Their budget has increased five-fold since 2001 and their personnel have doubled. They operate in secret, most often without Congressional oversight or even knowledge. Is it dangerous for the president to have what is de facto a personal army like this? Tune in to the Ron Paul Liberty Report... read on...
This weekend it was reported that al-Qaeda affiliated rebels were “almost completely in control” of the last major government held city in the Idlib province in northern Syria.
This is really big news as it means that the Syrian government’s coastal heartlands including the important port of Latakia, a Baathist stronghold are under direct threat. It’s a major advance for the cause of al-Qaeda, yet what is most revealing is the lack of reaction or any concern from Western leaders.
You‘d think that Western leaders would be alarmed at the al-Qaeda advances given how much they warn us of the “threat” from radical Islamists and how many Western troops were lost in the “war on terror” in Afghanistan.
In fact, the lack of concern regarding the militants’ gains in Syria exposes the fundamental deceit at the heart of Western foreign policy. The elites claim to be fighting radical Islamists, yet in Syria they’re doing everything they possibly can to ensure that the side that’s fighting radical Islamists, the secular Syrian government, is weakened and eventually defeated. read on...
One of the great ironies of American politics is that most politicians who talk about helping the middle class support policies that, by expanding the welfare-warfare state, are harmful to middle-class Americans. Eliminating the welfare-warfare state would benefit middle-class Americans by freeing them from exorbitant federal taxes, including the Federal Reserve’s inflation tax.
Politicians serious about helping middle-class Americans should allow individuals to opt out of Social Security and Medicare by not having to pay payroll taxes if they agree to never accept federal retirement or health care benefits. Individuals are quite capable of meeting their own unique retirement and health care needs if the government stops forcing them into one-size-fits-all plans. read on...
.In 2011 the US backed the "Arab Spring" which overthrew military dictator Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, in the name of democracy. But US officials soon soured on the democratically-elected Muhammad Morsi so they supported a military dictator who overthrew him, al-Sisi. Now the elected Morsi is going to jail for arresting some protestors, while Sisi retains US support after killing more than a thousand of his political opponents. As usual, the Ron Paul Liberty Report brings a different perspective read on...
Thousands are desperate to escape from a Libya that is increasingly in the hands of ISIS and other murderous gangs. This past week more than a thousand drowned in the Mediterranean on rickety boats. The mainstream media will never report the real cause of this mass exodus, the 2011 NATO attack on Libya. As usual, the case to bomb the country was largely manufactured by special interests. Today's Ron Paul Liberty Report takes a look at who is really at fault for this crisis. read on...
Today President Obama held an extraordinary event to announce that in January the US had killed two hostages in Pakistan. One was an American, a USAID contractor, the other an Italian aid worker. Presumably these two were killed by a drone strike as the US targeted what it believed was an al-Qaeda headquarters building. This was big news, but what was really interesting -- but not as covered by the mainstream media -- is that other drone strikes in that time period killed two other American citizens who were accused of joining al-Qaeda. These Americans were not tried and found guilty of terrorism. They were executed on orders from the president. The Ron Paul Liberty Report today takes a look at this disturbing development. read on...
Earlier this year I spent a few days at the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center with my daughter who was having an EEG done. On our way home, I learned that there had been an outbreak of an antibiotic-resistant bacteria while we were there, that it had infected seven people and killed two of them. My daughter and I were fine – the infection having been limited to people using a particular kind of duodenoscope.
When the story hit the news, I fully expected nationwide outcry similar to that inspired by the recent measles “epidemic” that began at Disneyland. That outbreak killed no-one, yet set the country on fire with calls for mandatory vaccination and even prison sentences for parents who choose not to vaccinate their children. Drug-resistant “superbugs” kill nearly 15,000 people a year in the US and a recent report predicts that they could kill as many as 300 million people by 2050. Surely this far more deadly health threat would lead to similar widespread outrage and calls for those even remotely responsible to be held accountable. read on...
