The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity
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A Rough Week in Iraq, But It Will Get Rougher

Thursday May 21, 2015

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I hear from competent reporters on the ground in Iraq that a great panic has set in within the Iraqi Ministry of Defense. Prime Minister Abadi, like his Shia co-religionist Maliki, has been engaged in a thorough effort to disadvantage all the Sunni populations of Iraq. This would include: the Kurds (90 percent Sunni), the Sunni Arabs, the Sunni Turkomans, etc. To accomplish this, Sunni majority areas have been systematically deprived of weaponry and funding for years. Alternatively, Shia manned army and police units were stationed in Sunni areas like Mosul for the purpose of keeping the Sunnis under control.

Now, to quote that notable American of the '60s and 70s, H. Rap Brown, "the chickens have come home to roost." Shia units have collapsed and fled wherever they have met ISIS on Sunni populated ground, and under-resourced Sunni units have been defeated in Sunni majority areas like Anbar Province. Is Tikrit an exception to that? No. The ISIS withdrawal from the city was, in my opinion, a calculated ISIS ploy successfully executed for the purpose of fixing government forces in place while ISIS mobile forces moved to Anbar.
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US Failure in Iraq and Syria: Troops on the Way?

Thursday May 21, 2015

The US bombing operation against ISIS in Syria and Iraq is all but a failure. A few days ago, Ramadi in Iraq fell to ISIS. More recently, Palmyra in Syria fell. If anything, ISIS seems stronger after US strikes began. Now, the US government is shipping weapons to Iraq to destroy the US weapons left behind by the fleeing Iraqi army in Ramadi. Does anyone think plans to send in US ground troops are being shined up for presentation to the president? Tune in to today's Liberty Report for more...
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Militarization Is More Than Tanks and Rifles: It’s a Cultural Disease, Acclimating the Citizenry to Life in a Police State

Thursday May 21, 2015

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Only now—after the Departments of Justice, Homeland Security (DHS) and Defense have passed off billions of dollars worth of military equipment to local police forces, after police agencies have been trained in the fine art of war, after SWAT team raids have swelled in number to more than 80,000 a year, after it has become second nature for local police to look and act like soldiers, after communities have become acclimated to the presence of militarized police patrolling their streets, after Americans have been taught compliance at the end of a police gun or taser, after lower income neighborhoods have been transformed into war zones, after hundreds if not thousands of unarmed Americans have lost their lives at the hands of police who shoot first and ask questions later, after a whole generation of young Americans has learned to march in lockstep with the government’s dictates—only now does President Obama lift a hand to limit the number of military weapons being passed along to local police departments.

Not all, mind you, just some.

Talk about too little, too late.

Months after the White House defended a federal program that distributed $18 billion worth of military equipment to local police, Obama has announced that he will ban the federal government from providing local police departments with tracked armored vehicles, weaponized aircraft and vehicles, bayonets, grenade launchers, camouflage uniforms and large-caliber firearms.
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Pity the Poor Stormtroopers: Baby Bou-Bou Ambushed Them

Wednesday May 20, 2015

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It was the baby’s fault that he was nearly burned to death in his own crib.

Bou-Bou Phonesavanh was barely a year and a half old, just learning to walk, and unable to speak, but those limitations didn’t stop him from engaging in “deliberate, criminal conduct” that justified the 2:00 a.m. no-knock SWAT raid in which he was nearly killed.

The act of sleeping in a room about to be breached by a SWAT team constituted “criminal” conduct on the part of the infant. At the very least, the infant was fully liable for the nearly fatal injuries inflicted on him when Habersham County Sheriff’s Deputy Charles Long blindly heaved a flash-bang grenade – a “destructive device,” as described by the ATF, that when detonated burns at 2,000-3,500 degrees Fahrenheit – into the crib.
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Cashless Society: More Attacks on Our Privacy

Tuesday May 19, 2015

In Louisiana if you want to purchase from a secondhand store with cash, the seller is required to inform the state about your purchase, along with invasive personal information about you. Other states may follow this anti-cash trend. Already several countries overseas are restricting or prohibiting the use of cash to make purchases. In the US this means the government will know everywhere you have been, everywhere you have shopped, everything you have purchased. Think about that for a moment. For Ron Paul's thoughts on it, go to his Liberty Report today...
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Making the World Less Safe: Sending the Wrong Message to Russia, China, and Iran

Tuesday May 19, 2015

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Currently the United States is assisting Ukraine against Russia by providing some non-lethal military equipment as well as limited training for Kiev’s army. It has balked at getting more involved in the conflict, rightly so. With that in mind, I had a meeting with a delegation of Ukrainian parliamentarians and government officials a couple of weeks ago. I tried to explain to them why many Americans are wary of helping them by providing lethal, potentially game changing military assistance in what Kiev sees as a struggle to regain control of Crimea and other parts of their country from militias that are clearly linked to Moscow. I argued that while Washington should be sympathetic to Ukraine’s aspirations it has no actual horse in the race, that the imperative for bilateral relations with Russia, which is the only nation on earth that can attack and destroy the United States, is that they be stable and that all channels for communication remain open.

I also observed that the negative perception of Washington-driven democracy promotion around the world has been in part shaped by the actual record on interventions since 2001, which has not been positive. Each exercise of the military option has wound up creating new problems, like the mistaken policies in Libya, Iraq and Syria, all of which have produced instability and a surge in terrorism. I noted that the US does not need to bring about a new Cold War by trying to impose democratic norms in Eastern Europe but should instead be doing all in its power to encourage a reasonable rapprochement between Moscow and Kiev. Providing weapons or other military support to Ukraine would only cause the situation to escalate, leading to a new war by proxies in Eastern Europe that could rapidly spread to other regions.
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More Evidence of Israel’s Dirty Role in the Syrian Proxy War

Tuesday May 19, 2015

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Video footage surfaced last week showing the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) treating a wounded anti-Assad Syrian rebel, following a UN report at the end of last year which found that the IDF and the Syrian rebels (including ISIS) were in regular contact. The Times of Israel reported on this latest video in an article titled,IDF posts footage of medics saving Syrian rebel in Golan:
The IDF on Saturday released rare footage of its medics performing a life-saving procedure on one of the most severely wounded Syrian combatants medical personnel have encountered in the Golan Heights… The man, a Syrian rebel who belongs to an unnamed organization fighting against the Assad regime and its allies, received treatment at the border and then inside Israel, and was ultimately able to return to Syria… Since the start of the civil war in 2011, the IDF has treated an estimated 1,600 non-combatants and anti-Assad rebels… Although Israel’s treatment of militants from Syria — many of whom are believed to belong to Islamist organizations such as the al-Qaeda affiliated Nusra Front — may seem bizarre given the animosity these types of groups have expressed for the Jewish state in the past, Israel has approached the issue from a humanitarian point of view.
The Times of Israel tries to spin Israel’s assistance to the Syrian rebels as purely 'from a humanitarian point of view,' in reality however, Israel supports the Syrian opposition for its own geopolitical ends.
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US Allies Flee Ramadi, US Weapons to ISIS

Monday May 18, 2015

Ramadi, the capital of Iraq's Anbar province, was captured by ISIS over the weekend. The Iraqi army deserted their posts, leaving scores of US-provided weapons behind. Also, over the weekend US special forces troops conducted a military operation on Syrian soil without permission from the Syrian government. The neocons are pushing for another US invasion of Iraq and of Syria as well. Watch the Ron Paul Liberty Report...
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New Military Spending Bill Expands Empire But Forbids Debate on War

Sunday May 17, 2015

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On Friday the House passed a massive National Defense Authorization for 2016 that will guarantee US involvement in more wars and overseas interventions for years to come. The Republican majority resorted to trickery to evade the meager spending limitations imposed by the 2011 budget control act – limitations that did not, as often reported, cut military spending but only slowed its growth.
 
But not even slower growth is enough when you have an empire to maintain worldwide, so the House majority slipped into the military spending bill an extra $89 billion for an emergency war fund. Such “emergency” spending is not addressed in the growth caps placed on the military under the 2011 budget control act. It is a loophole filled by Congress with Fed-printed money.
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Garland’s Lesson? Democrats, Republicans, and Neocons Bring The Jihad to America

Sunday May 17, 2015

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Since 9/11, Americans have been treated to an ongoing tutorial by the self-professed best-and brightest from America’s universities, media, Christian clergy, and national government explaining how American Muslims become radicalized into Islamist militants. These Muslims, say the country’s brains-trust, are discriminated against by other US citizens; are disenfranchised by poverty; have a hard time transitioning to US society from the Muslim culture they lived in abroad; hate all non-Muslims, or are brain-washed by cynical Islamist leaders and so learn to hate America and become eager to waste their lives in attacking it.

These same explanations have been spewed forth by the aforementioned elites ever since the second plane hit the World Trade Center, and now fourteen years they later they are again being served up to explain to the citizenry — really, to mislead the citizenry — what radicalized the Garland, Texas, attackers.
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