The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity
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A Second Even More Unjustifiable Episode of Government Collection of Phone Records

Friday January 23, 2015

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In the rush to sensationalize the Paris terrorist attacks and minimize all other news (for example, even more horrendous terrorist attacks in Nigeria), the American media has conveniently overlooked one major ill effect of the public hysteria it is helping to foment.

In a mini-redux of what happened subsequent to the 9/11 attacks, the American public, by confusing what's on TV with reality, is demonstrating what experts call "probability neglect." This phenomenon entails people excessively worrying about a rare event -- for example, a terrorist attack -- but being much less perturbed about much more common ways of dying by eating unhealthy foods, not exercising, smoking, failing to wear a seat belt, etc.

This excessive public fear allows the US government to run wild outside the Constitution and erode the civil liberties that make the United States unique, in the name of saving the populace from "terror" -- for example, unconstitutional indefinite jailing without charge or trial, the creation of kangaroo military tribunals as a substitute for civilian courts, illegally suspending people's right to challenge their detention, torture that violated  US and international law, and warrantless surveillance under the Patriot Act and even by violating existing law.
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The Ambiguity of Charlie Hebdo: France Under the Influence

Wednesday January 21, 2015

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The Charlie Hebdo terrorist assassinations struck France at a moment when it has an unpopular government and a weak President, when factories are closing and jobs are being lost, when French economic policy is determined by Germany via the European Union and its foreign policy is determined by the United States via NATO. Except for the therapeutic moment of togetherness on January 11, the country feels buffeted by winds of conflict it cannot resist. 

There is a certain terrible symmetry playing out in France. Israel is deliberately and consistently doing all it can to excite fears among French Jews, in order to lure this desirable population into moving to Israel. Tsahal holds annual support drives in Paris, and a number of French Jews do military service in Israel. 

At the same time, the so-called “Islamic State”, as well as “al Qaeda in Yemen” and associated fanatic Islamic groups are working hard to recruit fighters out of the Muslim communities in France and other European countries. Some 1,400 jihadists have traveled to Syria from France to join the Holy War. They are lured by the heroic prospect of helping to “build the Caliphate”, a sort of Israel for Muslims, a holy land restored.
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The Danger of an MH-17 ‘Cold Case’

Tuesday January 20, 2015

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Now more than six months after the shoot-down of a Malaysia Airlines plane over Ukraine, the refusal of the Obama administration to make public what intelligence evidence it has about who was responsible has created fertile ground for conspiracy theories to take root while reducing hopes for holding the guilty parties accountable.

Given the US government’s surveillance capabilities – from satellite and aerial photographs to telephonic and electronic intercepts to human sources – American intelligence surely has a good idea what happened on July 17, 2014, when Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 crashed in eastern Ukraine killing all 298 people onboard.

I’m told that President Barack Obama has received briefings on what this evidence shows and what US intelligence analysts have concluded about the likely guilty parties — and that Obama may have shared some of those confidential findings with the Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak when they met on Dec. 24 in Hawaii.
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Why Should Charlie Hebdo Deaths Mean More Than Those in E.Ukraine?

Monday January 19, 2015

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The Western public justly condemns the murders at Charlie Hebdo, but continues to behave as if Kiev's terror victims in Donetsk are “subhuman.”

On January 7, masked terrorists massacred the staff of the French magazine Charlie Hebdo in downtown Paris, killing ten. Two police officers (one of them a French Muslim, Ahmed Merabet) were also gunned down in the attack, while five more innocents lost their lives during a subsequent hostage standoff at a Parisian kosher store. Three male suspects were killed by the police, while their female accomplice is reported to have fled to ISIS-held parts of Syria. The attack was allegedly a reprisal for the magazine's cartoon covers, condemned as “blasphemous” for mocking Islam and its prophet, Mohammed.

Meanwhile, in eastern Ukraine, forces loyal to the NATO-backed government in Kiev renewed the terror-bombing of civilians in Donetsk, killing and maiming indiscriminately. While the slain French cartoonists were declared martyrs on the altar of free speech in a social media campaign under the hashtag #JeSuisCharlie (I am Charlie), a similar Twitter campaign to raise awareness of civilian deaths in Donbass (#IamVanya) was soon hijacked by Russophobic propaganda.
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If the Fed Has Nothing to Hide, It Has Nothing to Fear

Sunday January 18, 2015

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Since the creation of the Federal Reserve in 1913, the dollar has lost over 97 percent of its purchasing power, the US economy has been subjected to a series of painful Federal Reserve-created recessions and depressions, and government has grown to dangerous levels thanks to the Fed’s policy of monetizing the debt. Yet the Federal Reserve still operates under a congressionally-created shroud of secrecy.

No wonder almost 75 percent of the American public supports legislation to audit the Federal Reserve.

The new Senate leadership has pledged to finally hold a vote on the audit bill this year, but, despite overwhelming public support, passage of this legislation is by no means assured.
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Fed Asset Seizures Rollback Less Than Advertised

Sunday January 18, 2015

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While headlines in Yahoo News and Raw Story blare, respectively, “U.S. attorney general bans asset seizure by local police” and “No more asset seizure: Eric Holder bans controversial ‘war on drugs’ tactic,” the truth is that United States Attorney General Eric Holder on Friday changed US Department of Justice policy in a manner that will result in at most a small rollback of asset seizures.

It is true that there appears to be a rollback in the police state for a change. The catch is that the rollback is nowhere near the monumental change that some people in the media are trumpeting. The many and broad exceptions in Holder’s order all but swallow the announced headline-garnering rollback. Depending on how the order is interpreted and implemented, it may provide almost no asset seizure relief.

Holder’s order terminated immediately on Friday a portion of the US government’s Equitable Sharing Program. The program has funneled billions of dollars to local police departments via seizures of people’s cash and property without any demonstration required of a relation between the person deprived of the assets, or the assets themselves, and criminal activity.
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Will New US Training Program Produce More ISIS Fighters in Syria?

Saturday January 17, 2015

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US involvement in Iraq War 3.0 was initially sold as a limited, humanitarian rescue operation to save members of a religious minority the administration claimed were threatened by ISIS's long march through northern Iraq. Who could object to rescuing a poor religious minority without sounding like a complete monster? 

As expected, many otherwise suspicious of the use of military force in the US embraced this mission as an example of how the US military can be used as a force for good. Principled non-interventionists found themselves surrounded on all sides by those clamoring for a humanitarian rescue mission. Opposition having been mostly neutralized, the mission, of course, was launched.

The foot was in the door.

Soon we were told that the operation needed to expand a bit to protect US diplomatic and military facilities in northern Iraq from the marauding hordes of ISIS. Who could object to using the military to protect US diplomatic and military personnel? Skeptics were accused of not caring about American citizens or perhaps even wishing them harm. No thought was given to simply evacuating US government personnel from northern Iraq in the face of danger, as the US did recently in Libya when US-sponsored "liberation" didn't work out as planned and terrorists took over the country.
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'Do You Believe it Was a False Flag?' Ron Paul on Paul Craig Roberts' Controversial Article

Friday January 16, 2015

RPI Chairman Ron Paul was on NewsMax's "Midpoint" program today to discuss how blowback should be considered a big factor in the recent attacks in Paris. French and US foreign policy has been very aggressive in the Middle East and the idea that there are no consequences to such actions makes little sense.

Dr. Paul was also questioned about the Ron Paul Institute's decision to publish an essay by Paul Craig Roberts that highlighted some of the very unusual facts about the Paris attacks that the mainstream media has chosen to ignore. The attacks have "many of the characteristics" of a false flag operation, wrote Roberts.
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The Open Society and its Worst Enemies

Friday January 16, 2015

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Last week’s bloody events in Paris demonstrate yet again that a noninterventionist foreign policy, far from being a luxury, is an urgent necessity — literally a matter of life and death. A government that repeatedly wages wars of aggression — the most extreme form of extremism — endangers the society it ostensibly protects by gratuitously making enemies, some of whom will seek revenge against those who tolerate, finance, and symbolize that government and its policies. (On the specific connection between the Paris attacks and wars of aggression, see my “Understanding the Paris Violence.”)

Obviously, the police in more or less open societies — “but rather less than more” — cannot fully prevent the kind of violence that occurred at Charlie Hebdo and the kosher grocery Hyper Cacher. Some or all of the killers, who were known to authorities, reportedly spent time in Syria, Iraq, or Yemen with al-Qaeda or the Islamic State — organizations, let us recall, that were not in those places or did not exist before George W. Bush invaded Iraq in 2003 and started bombing other Muslim societies in his “war on terror.” But travel abroad is not necessary to carry out horrendous attacks. The Internet provides all the information a would-be killer could want to pull off a mass atrocity. “Lone wolf” operations executed by “self-radicalized” individuals are by nature virtually undetectable, even with a battalion of spies and suborned informants or sophisticated eavesdropping regimes.
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