The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity
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US Ambassador to Hungary: Overthrow Assad, Let in Refugees, and Fight Russia...or Else!

Friday May 6, 2016

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If anyone wants a short course on what's wrong with US diplomacy look no further than US Ambassador to Hungary Coleen Bell's speech Friday to the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Hungarian Parliament. In typical diplo-speak there was plenty of flowery language about shared values, fish swimming together in the same water (?), sappy poetics like "together, out of that winter, we would force the spring," and talk of together being "part of the world’s greatest military and political alliance."

But make no mistake: Inside Ambassador Bell's velvet glove is an iron fist, poised to strike should Washington's annoyingly independent-minded Fidesz-led government step out of line on the big issues. And by "big" issues it should be understood that the US means the issues it considers in the interests of its own foreign policy, not necessarily those in Hungary's interest.
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Aleppo – Syria’s Stalingrad?

Friday May 6, 2016

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In a message on Thursday addressed to Vladimir Putin felicitating Russia on its Victory Day, Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad compared the fighting around the city of Aleppo to Stalingrad, which turned the tide of World War II. It’s a powerful metaphor for the Russian psyche, driving home that winning the Syrian war in Aleppo’s battle fields is a must and there is no scope for compromise.

Assad sent his message on the same day the US-Russia agreement extending the Syrian truce to the Aleppo theatre came into effect. Damascus insists this is only a 48-hour cease fire. Indeed, the Iranian reports on Thursday highlighted that the Syrian army and Hezbollah fighters “backed up by the country’s fighter jets and Russian artillery units” continue their operations in western Aleppo, pushing back the extremist fighters.

On the other hand, Washington is anxious to interpret that the agreement with Moscow means that Aleppo falls within the purview of the ceasefire across the country. But is the ceasefire possible in a situation where the extremist groups (who have been excluded from the ceasefire) freely intermingle with the so-called moderate opposition groups?
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Texas Teachers and Police Launch Absurd Investigation After Eighth Grader Attempted To Pay for Lunch With $2 Bill

Thursday May 5, 2016

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We have been discussing the over-reaction officials in past cases where police have been called to address pranks or controversies once handled internally in schools. A news story out of Houston only servers to capture this absurdity. It began when Danesiah Neal, an eighth grader at Fort Bend Independent School District’s Christa McAuliffe Middle School, attempted to pay for lunch with a $2 bill given to her by her grandmother, Sharon Kay Joseph. The lunch personnel had never seen a $2 bill and what happened after that is truly absurd with school officials joining police in almost comical overreactions.
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Are Young People Really Going Socialist?

Thursday May 5, 2016

This election season is presenting unprecedented challenges to the peace and prosperity coalition that was born in opposition to the traditional Left/Right matrix. Young people have been strongly attracted to Ron Paul's message of keeping the government out of their private lives and out of the lives of people living overseas. It seems that presidential candidates in both major parties are appealing to some who continue to value non-intervention and civil liberties, yet the candidates' messages on these central issues are mixed at best. What are the implications for this shift and should we be worried that our message is being subsumed by the great populist wave currently being surfed by both Trump and Sanders? Tune in to today's Liberty Report...
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Suspect Held in Solitary for Seven Months for Forgetting Hard Drive Passwords

Wednesday May 4, 2016

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Innocent until proven guilty? Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination? Hah! Not if you forget your passwords, in Post-Constitutional America.

Former Philadelphia Police Sergeant Francis Rawls, above, has spent the past seven months in solitary confinement without conviction because passwords he entered for investigators failed to decrypt his hard drives, seized in connection with a child porn investigation. Rawls says he’s forgotten the correct passwords and so can’t decrypt the drives and provide the cops with evidence that he possessed child porn.
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Mandatory Draft Registration: A Victory For Women?

Wednesday May 4, 2016

In 1980 President Carter issued an order requiring males between 18 and 25 to register with Selective Service should a military draft become necessary. It was a response to the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. At the time women were not eligible for the draft because they were not eligible for combat roles. Much has changed in the intervening 36 years, and women are now eligible for military combat. In the name of "equality," some have argued that it is only fair for women to be forced to register for the draft as well. Unfortunately those who hold such a position are missing the main point: equality in slavery is nothing to cheer. Being forced by the government to fight and possibly die for its foreign policy goals is an idea incompatible with a free society. We do not owe the government a part of our lives to repay the "freedom" they give us, as our freedom is not a gift granted by government. What should young people facing the obligation of registering for a draft they do not believe in? We cover this and much more in today's Liberty Report...
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What Is the US Military Doing in the Baltics?

Wednesday May 4, 2016

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Get ready for the new cold war, which will no doubt turn hot if Hillary Clinton gets into the White House: NATO has just announced it is “considering” the addition of 4,000 more troops to be stationed in Poland and the Baltic states, i.e. right on Russia’s western border. The Washington Post helpfully informs us that this is being done “to deter future Russian aggression” – as if there’s any real possibility that Putin will order the Russian army to take Warsaw or march on Estonia.

What this is is another NATO provocation aimed at showing Putin who’s really in charge in the former Soviet Union’s sphere of influence. They’re hoping the Russian leader will respond in kind. But he’s too smart for that: instead, Putin will retaliate in a different theater, perhaps in Syria or Armenia, where the fight with Azerbaijan in Nagorno-Karabakh is in full swing.

This latest move will bring the number of NATO troops staring at the Russkies across their western border to nearly 10,000, if we take into account the “Very High Readiness Joint Task Force” previously mobilized and the US troops already in Ukraine.
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Remember How We Got Out of Vietnam

Wednesday May 4, 2016

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Do you remember what US national-security state officials were saying when millions of Americans were demanding that the US government withdraw its troops from Vietnam and bring them home?

They were saying that “national security” was at stake — i.e., the very survival of the United States. If the US government withdrew from Vietnam, they said, the dominoes would start falling to the communists, first in Southeast Asia and ultimately all over the world, with the United States being the final big domino. Vietnam was our line of defense against the entire world going red.

It was all false. As I point in my new ebook The CIA, Terrorism, and the Cold War: The Evil of the National Security State (which just hit #5 in Amazon’s top 100 bestselling ebooks in Political Freedom), in actuality it didn’t make a whit of difference whether Vietnam and other countries in the world went red, at least not insofar as the United States was concerned. That is, the existence of the United States was never threatened by the fact that other countries had communist regimes.
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Torture: Stopping Terrorism...Or IS It Terrorism?

Tuesday May 3, 2016

Just ten years after America was shocked at the treatment of detainees at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and just a year and a half after the Senate torture report, a recent poll suggests that three-fourths of the population would support torture of terrorism suspects. Have we so quickly forgotten the fallout from the CIA's shameful practices, where innocents were tortured for information they did not possess? Have we forgotten that torture is a moral outrage, is itself a form of terrorism, and does not even work? Have we forgotten that the "ticking time bomb" scenario is a Hollywood fiction, not a reality? Or is the media manipulating the population into supporting Washington's interventionist foreign policy with carefully-worded polls designed to show more support for torture than really exists. Tune in to today's Liberty Report...
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Iraq: The Interventionist Hellhole

Monday May 2, 2016

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When Vice President Joseph Biden traveled to Iraq a few days ago, he did it, as always, under a shroud of secrecy. The mainstream press was asked in advance to keep the trip secret and dutifully complied. Biden declined to spend the night in Iraq, staying only 10 hours before whisking away to Italy, where presumably he slept safe and sound.

Why all the secrecy? Why didn’t Biden stay in Baghdad a few days, walk the streets, do a little shopping, visit with the people, and tour the country? After all, isn’t this the country that the US government invaded and regime-changed under the military rubric “Operation Iraqi Freedom”? Isn’t this the country that the US military and the CIA occupied for more than 10 years, killing people with impunity and destroying homes, buildings, and infrastructure in the process, all with the aim of producing a showcase for interventionism to present to the world?

Oh, let’s not forget the regime they installed. After all, lest we forget, this was, in fact, a regime-change operation, one devoted to removing Saddam Hussein from power (who had been a partner and ally of the US government during the 1980s) and installing and establishing a government that would be, well, more pro-USA. and, therefore, more “free.”
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