The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity
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Turkey’s ‘Bear Trap’ Option in Syria

Wednesday October 7, 2015

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The two incidents involving Turkey and the Russian aircraft operating in northern Syria on successive days in the weekend throw into bold relief the single most crucial template of the Syrian conflict in the coming months. Turkey happens to be the only regional power that could actually create a “quagmire” for Russia in Syria – similar to the role Pakistan performed in the eighties vis-à-vis the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan.

Like in the case of Pakistan (which started nurturing Islamist groups in Afghanistan as far back as the early seventies, much before the Soviet intervention), Turkey too has a 3-4 year old nexus with the extremist groups in Syria (including the Islamic State). These Islamist groups hold the potential to be transformed as the famous “Peshawar Seven” of the Afghan jihad in the eighties – provided, of course, Turkish President Recep Erdogan chooses to follow the audacious footsteps of the Pakistani dictator Gen. Zi ul-Haq.

Will he, or won’t he? That is the question that Moscow will be keenly testing out in the weeks and months ahead. Consider the following.

An unnamed Turkish official bragged on Friday that the country’s radar system had “locked on” the Russian aircraft operating in northern Syria. If so, no doubt, it was an unfriendly — and needlessly provocative — act by Turkey.
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This Has Become Routine

Wednesday October 7, 2015

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In his comment on the mass shootings at the Oregon community college, President Obama said: “This has become routine.”

So have police shootings of unarmed and unresisting Americans.

So have numerous other undesirable and deplorable happenings, such as the foreclosure on the homes of millions of Americans, while the “banks too big to fail” are bailed out with trillions of dollars, and such as foreign policy lies that have destroyed seven countries, bringing the US and Europe millions of refugees.

In addition there are the foreign policy lies that have brought the US and Europe into conflict with Russia, and the economic lies that shield the extraordinary concentration of income and wealth of the One Percent.

Also routine is Washington’s obliteration of weddings, funerals, and medical centers with bombs and drones. Two days after Obama expressed his despair, frustration and anger over the Oregon mass shootings, a US air strike hit a hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan. According to numerous news reports, at least 19 people were killed, including 12 members of Doctors Without Borders, and another 37 wounded. The US air strike killed one person on the operating table, and intensive care patients burned to death in their beds.
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How to Sustain Perpetual War (It’s Easy!)

Tuesday October 6, 2015

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Sustaining America’s state of post-9/11 perpetual war requires skillful manipulation of the public at home. The key tool used for this purpose is the bloodless narrative, a combination of policy, falsehoods and media manipulation that creates the impression that America’s wars have few consequences, at least for Americans.

How can the American government sustain its wars in the face of dead soldiers coming home? Why is there no outcry among the American people over these losses? The answer is the narrative of bloodless war.

The Dead

The bloodless war narrative’s solution to the dead is a policy of don’t look, don’t tell.

Dick Cheney, as Secretary of Defense for George H. W. Bush, helped decide in 1991 the first Iraq War would play better if Americans did not see their fallen return home. He recalled the images of coffins from the 1989 invasion of Panama on television, transposed against the president speaking of victory, and banned media from Dover Air Force Base, where deceased American personnel would arrive from the Persian Gulf.
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Seize the Chaos: Israel, the Neocons, and their Bloody, Blundering 'Art' of War

Tuesday October 6, 2015

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Israel lacks a national motto. If its leaders are looking for a Latin one, “carpe chaos” would be an apt and honest choice.

“Seize the chaos” is half of Israeli foreign policy in a nutshell (the other half being the instigation of that chaos in the first place). Indeed, even its friends in the media cannot help but put it in such terms. For example, The New York Times recently reported about the:
…many Israeli leaders and thinkers seizing on the chaos in Syria to solidify Israel’s hold on Golan.
This refers to the Golan Heights, which Israel captured from Syria in 1967 and has occupied ever since. Even the Israel-enabling United Nations considers that occupation and subsequent annexation to be unjust and illegal. Returning Golan to Syria has long been advanced as part of a potential peace deal.

But now, Israel is using the civil war in Syria as an excuse to expand settlements in the Golan Heights; a senior minister wants 100,000 new residents in the next five years. Its potential uses are manifold:
The 400-plus square miles of the Israeli-controlled Golan on the northeast border with Syria is both strategic plateau and lush agricultural terrain yielding prize apples, cherries and beef. It is also a vast playground that drew 3 million tourist visits last year.
This is Israel’s usual M.O. in the Palestinian West Bank as well: forging ahead with illicit settlements to establish “realities on the ground” that will be too intractable to reverse, thereby fixing the occupation permanently in place.
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Gun Violence - More Control Needed?

Monday October 5, 2015

What do the recent school shooting in Oregon and the US bombing of a hospital in Afghanistan have in common? President Obama is taking advantage of one tragedy to push for more government control of our guns. The other tragedy shows us that what we really need is more control over government guns. More today in the Liberty Report...
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The Russian Bear Growls

Monday October 5, 2015

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Frankfurt, Germany –Could anyone in the Obama administration have been so slow-witted to imagine that Russia wouldn’t move hard to counter US efforts to overthrow Moscow’s ally, Syria? 

The Syrian war began almost five years ago by the US, France, Britain and Saudi Arabia to overthrow Syria’s Iranian and Russian-backed government. The result so far: 250,000 dead, 9.5 million refugees flooding Europe and Syria shattered. 

This is nothing new: the first CIA coup attempt to overthrow a Syrian ruler Gen. Husni Zaim was in 1949.

A combination of imperial hubris and ignorance has led Washington to believe it could overthrow any government that was disobedient or uncooperative. Syria was chosen as the latest target of regime change because the Assad regime – a recognized, legitimate government and UN member –was a close ally of America’s Great Satan, Iran. Formerly it had been cooperating with Washington.

After watching Syria be slowly destroyed, Russia’s President, Vladimir Putin, moved his rook onto the Syrian chessboard. For the first time since 1991, Moscow sent a small expeditionary unit of 50 warplanes to Syria both to shore up the Assad regime and to reaffirm that Russia has long-standing strategic interests in Syria.
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I Wish Nobody Was Bombing Syria

Monday October 5, 2015

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The US regime change policy for Syria has been a catastrophe. More than 200,000 killed and an entire country reduced to rubble at least partly because President Obama decided that “Assad has lost his legitimacy.” How is it that the president of a country 6,000 miles away has the authority to decide whether another leader belongs in office or not? What if Rouhani in Iran decided that Obama had lost his legitimacy for killing a number of American citizens by drone without charge or trial? Would we accept that?

At least three years of US efforts to train rebels to overthrow the Syrian government has produced, as General Lloyd Austin, Commander of US Central Command, testified last month, “four or five” trained and vetted “moderates” in Syria. The $500 million appropriated for this purpose has disappeared.
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A Useful Prep-Sheet on Syria for Media Propagandists

Saturday October 3, 2015

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State Department talking points on Syria for cable news anchors:

1) Keep mentioning the barrel bombs. Do not mention how their use was pioneered by the Israeli Air Force in 1948, and how they were used by the US Air Force in Vietnam in Operation Inferno in 1968. Keep repeating, “barrel bombs, barrel bombs” and stating with a straight face that the Syrian regime is using them “against its own people.” Against its own people. Against its own people. Against its own people.

2) Keep mentioning “200,000.” (The UN estimates that 220,000 have been killed in the conflict since 2011.) Declare like you really believe it that this is the number of civilians the Syrian government of Bashar Assad has killed during the war. (Do not be concerned about any need to back the figure up. No one is ever going to call you on it publicly.)

Do NOT mention that around half of the war dead (estimates range from 84,000 to 133,000) are Syrian government forces waging war against an overwhelmingly Islamist opposition, and an additional 73,000 to 114,000 are anti-government combatants.

Do not discuss these figures because they would call into question the claim that the Syrian government is targeting and killing tens of thousands of civilians willy-nilly. (If feeling any qualms of conscience, recall Karl Rove’s immortal dictum that “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality.”)
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On The Ropes: 60 % Don't Trust Media

Saturday October 3, 2015

According to a recent Gallup Poll survey, the majority of Americans do not trust the mainstream media. Among younger Americans the numbers for the MSM are even worse. According to the Washington Post, this is a "terrible thing" because it means publications like the Washington Post are less able to serve as "referees" guiding us through what we should think about events and what we dare not think. Today in a special edition of the Liberty Report, we look at the declining mainstream media and the alternatives...
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