The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity
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FDA Wants to Jail Sam Girod for 48 Years, for Making Salves People Love

Tuesday February 9, 2016

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Sam Girod is a Kentucky farmer who runs a small business selling natural skin salves made from herbs such as chickweed, which seem to help relieve a host of skin conditions, including allergic rashes, psoriasis, poison oak and even skin cancers.

If you look up chickweed on Amazon, you will find pages of chickweed products, dozens and dozens of products, in some cases followed by glowing testimonials from users about how this or that chickweed provided relief from terrible itching, and even cured their skin cancers.

So why has the US Food and Drug Administration picked Girod out from all those producers, and had him indicted by a federal grand jury on a dozen criminal charges that could jail Sam Girod for 48 years? Neither Girod, who is 56 years old and the father of twelve, nor his lawyer, Chuck McFarland, can explain it.

According to McFarland, Girod, who is Amish and has no criminal record, has been selling chickweed for the last 15 years, from his farm in Owingsville, Kentucky and from some convenience stores in Missouri.
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Saudis Poised For Syria Invasion?

Tuesday February 9, 2016

According to press reports yesterday, Saudi Arabia is assembling a 150,000 man military force to invade Syria from Turkish soil and fight against Islamist terrorists in that country. But surely the rest of the world knows that for the past five years or more, Saudi Arabia has been the main source of support for those same terrorists. If the invasion goes forward -- and it apparently has US backing -- it would pit Saudi forces directly against Iranian, Syrian, and probably Russian forces. The Russians already said it would be a "declaration of war." Is the US really ready to unleash WWIII over whether or not Assad stays in office? We ponder these questions in today's Liberty Report...
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Obama Caves To Neocons - Military Spending To Skyrocket

Monday February 8, 2016

It looks like the neocons and the Beltway military-industrial complex are going to get their way, as President Obama's plan to scale back a few weapons systems has hit a brick wall in Congress. Meanwhile, citing the "Russian threat," the Pentagon announced that it would be quadrupling its military spending in Europe next year and that NATO would be stationing 40,000 troops on the Russian border. What is the relationship between the neocon think tanks, the mainstream media, the military-industrial complex, and Congress? They all conspire to create constant new threats to justify enormous military spending that is running the economy into the ground. They are ripping us off. More on this today in the Liberty Report...
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Coincidence? Baltic Invasion Story Reappears as Pentagon Seeks to Quadruple Europe Spending

Monday February 8, 2016

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It seems that Putin is about to invade the Baltics. Again. 

With journalists and commentators distracted by Syria and Europe’s refugee crisis, Putin’s enduring desire to dash Westwards across the continent “recreating the Soviet Union” was seemingly put on the media’s back burner for a while. In fact, journalists had been oddly quiet on the subject of the Baltic states and a potential Russian invasion for months. 

A piece published by the Financial Times last July admitted that the “consensus” among diplomats and analysts was that Putin had “not embarked on a rampage” to recreate an empire “as some feared last year”. 

Given that new-found consensus, one might have suspected that the lull in stories about a forthcoming invasion could be chalked up to journalists deciding to put the subject to rest — but one would have been wrong. For they were back last week with a vengeance.
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An Exasperated John Kerry Throws In Towel On Syria: ‘What Do You Want Me To Do, Go To War With The Russians?!’

Monday February 8, 2016

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“Russian and Syrian forces intensified their campaign on rebel-held areas around Aleppo that are still home to around 350,000 people and aid workers have said the city - Syria's largest before the war - could soon fall.”

Can you spot what’s wrong with that quote, from a Reuters piece out today? Here’s the problem: “could soon fall” implies that Aleppo is on the verge of succumbing to enemy forces. It’s not. It’s already in enemy hands and has been for quite some time. What Reuters should have said is this: “...could soon be liberated.”

While we’ll be the first to admit that Bashar al-Assad isn’t exactly the most benevolent leader in the history of statecraft, you can bet most Syrians wish this war had never started and if you were to ask those stranded in Aleppo what their quality of life is like now, versus what it was like in 2009, we’re fairly certain you’ll discover that residents aren’t particularly enamored with life under the mishmash of rebels that now control the city.

In any event, Russia and Iran have encircled Aleppo and once it “falls” (to quote Reuters) that’s pretty much it for the opposition. Or at least for the “moderate” opposition. And the Saudis and Turks know it.
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Mandatory Depression Screening is A Depressing Thought

Sunday February 7, 2016

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The United States Preventive Services Task Force recently recommended mandatory depression screening for all Americans. The task force wants to force health insurance companies to pay for the screening. Basic economics, as well as the Obamacare disaster, should have shown this task force that government health insurance mandates harm Americans.

Government health insurance mandates raise the price of health insurance. Consumers will respond to this increase by either choosing to not carry health insurance or by reducing their consumption of other goods and services. Imposing new health insurance mandates will thus make consumers, many of whom are already suffering from Obamacare’s costly mandates, worse off by forcing them to deviate from their preferred consumption patterns.
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The Super Bowl Promotes War

Sunday February 7, 2016

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Super Bowl 50 will be the first National Football League championship to happen since it was reported that much of the pro-military hoopla at football games, the honoring of troops and glorifying of wars that most people had assumed was voluntary or part of a marketing scheme for the NFL, has actually been a money-making scheme for the NFL. The U.S. military has been dumping millions of our dollars, part of a recruitment and advertising budget that's in the billions, into paying the NFL to publicly display love for soldiers and weaponry.

Of course, the NFL may in fact really truly love the military, just as it may love the singers it permits to sing at the Super Bowl halftime show, but it makes them pay for the privilege too. And why shouldn't the military pay the football league to hype its heroism? It pays damn near everybody else. At $2.8 billion a year on recruiting some 240,000 "volunteers," that's roughly $11,600 per recruit. That's not, of course, the trillion with a T kind of spending it takes to run the military for a year; that's just the spending to gently persuade each "volunteer" to join up.

The biggest military "service" ad buyer in the sports world is the National Guard. The ads often depict humanitarian rescue missions. Recruiters often tell tall tales of "non-deployment" positions followed by free college. But it seems to me that the $11,600 would have gone a long way toward paying for a year in college! And, in fact, people who have that money for college are far less likely to be recruited.
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Giving Peace Very Little Chance

Saturday February 6, 2016

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After nearly 15 years of Mideast war – with those conflicts growing ever grimmer – you might expect that peace would be a major topic of the 2016 presidential race. Instead, there has been a mix of warmongering bluster from most candidates and some confused mutterings against endless war from a few.

No one, it seems, wants to risk offending Official Washington’s neocon-dominated foreign policy establishment that is ready to castigate any candidate who suggests that there are other strategies – besides more and more “regime changes” – that might extricate the United States from the Middle East quicksand.

Late in Thursday’s Democratic debate – when the topic of war finally came up – former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton continued toeing the neocon line, calling Iran the chief sponsor of terrorism in the world, when that title might objectively go to US “allies,” such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey, all of whom have been aiding Sunni jihadists fighting to overthrow Syria’s secular regime.

Israel also has provided help to Al Qaeda’s Nusra Front, which has been battling Syrian troops and Lebanese Hezbollah fighters near the Golan Heights – and Israel’s mistreatment of Palestinians has played a key role in stirring up hatred and violence in the Middle East.
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Ron Paul Says Entering Presidential Race as Libertarian Party Candidate ‘Not in the Cards’

Friday February 5, 2016

In a new Fox Business interview, host Kennedy asks Ron Paul the question many people have considered the last couple days: With Paul’s son Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) having dropped out of the presidential race this week, how about the senior Paul jump into the 2016 presidential contest by seeking the Libertarian Party nomination? Paul responds that such a run is “not in the cards.”
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German Spy Chief Says ISIS Operatives Have Infiltrated Europe Disguised As Refugees

Friday February 5, 2016

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"We are in a serious situation and there is a high risk that there could be an attack. But the security agencies, the intelligence services and the police authorities are very alert and our goal is to minimize the risk as best we can.”

That’s from Hans-Georg Maassen head of Germany's domestic intelligence agency (BfV) and it certainly doesn’t inspire much in the way of confidence.

In an interview with ZDF television, Maassen said the BfV has “repeatedly seen that terrorists ... have slipped into [Germany] camouflaged or disguised as refugees.”

And that’s not mere speculation. “This is a fact that the security agencies are facing,” he added.
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