The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity
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The Golan Heights as a Key to Understanding the Problems of Syria

Monday September 9, 2013

Golan

The newspaper Israel Hayom conducted a public opinion survey according to which Israel was the only country in which a possible U.S. military strike against Syria is supported by the majority of the population. While in America and Europe 90% of the population is against the operation, in Israel 66% of the population supports it. 73% of Israelis believe that a strike against the el-Asad regime will be made, and only 13% are concerned that it will lead to a regional war.

This attitude among Israelis toward the military operations planned against Syria is the result of active state propaganda. Netanyahu's government has cast aside all concerns that if the ruling regime in the neighboring country is overthrown, even fiercer opponents of Israel may come to power, and it is advocating as powerful a strike as possible against Syria. Behind the missile launches held by the Israeli navy in conjunction with the Americans in the waters of the Mediterranean Sea on September 3 stand geopolitical reckonings connected mainly with the future of the Syrian Golan Heights, occupied in 1967; it is no accident that the question of their ownership has remained in the shadow of the discussion on Syria…


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The Wishful Thinking Left: Unwitting Agents of the Imperial Order

Sunday September 8, 2013

Once upon a time, in the early 1970′s, many people, including myself, thought that all the “struggles” of that period were linked: the Cultural Revolution in China, the guerillas in Latin America, the Prague Spring and the East European “dissidents”, May 68, the civil rights movement, the opposition to the Vietnam war, and the nominally socialist anti-colonial movements in Africa and Asia. We also thought that the “fascist” regimes in Spain, Portugal and Greece, by analogy with WWII, could only be overthrown through armed struggle, very likely protracted.


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The Intelligence Community's Revolt Against Obama on Syria

Saturday September 7, 2013

Intelligence Community

Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity have issued a memorandum to President Obama directly challenging his administration's claims on Syria's use of chemical weapons:

MEMORANDUM FOR: The President

FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)

SUBJECT: Is Syria a Trap?

Precedence: IMMEDIATE

We regret to inform you that some of our former co-workers are telling us, categorically, that contrary to the claims of your administration, the most reliable intelligence shows that Bashar al-Assad was NOT responsible for the chemical incident that killed and injured Syrian civilians on August 21, and that British intelligence officials also know this. In writing this brief report, we choose to assume that you have not been fully informed because your advisers decided to afford you the opportunity for what is commonly known as “plausible denial.”

We have been down this road before – with President George W. Bush, to whom we addressed our first VIPS memorandumimmediately after Colin Powell’s Feb. 5, 2003 U.N. speech, in which he peddled fraudulent “intelligence” to support attacking Iraq. Then, also, we chose to give President Bush the benefit of the doubt, thinking he was being misled – or, at the least, very poorly advised.

The fraudulent nature of Powell’s speech was a no-brainer. And so, that very afternoon we strongly urged your predecessor to “widen the discussion beyond …  the circle of those advisers clearly bent on a war for which we see no compelling reason and from which we believe the unintended consequences are likely to be catastrophic.” We offer you the same advice today


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Syria and Lessons Unlearned from The Bombing of Kosovo

Friday September 6, 2013

Wesley Clark

One theme we repeatedly hear about the Obama administration’s plan to bomb Syria is that the U.S./NATO bombing of Kosovo serves as a model. An examination of the reason for this is instructive.

It is well understood that the U.N. Security Council (UNSC) will not authorize this use of force against Syria, particularly given Russian opposition to such action. And short of using force in self-defense against armed aggression or with authorization from the UNSC for a specific mandate, such as to protect civilians, any resort to force against another country is under international law an act of aggression, defined at Nuremberg as “the supreme international crime”.

Incidentally, Nazis were hanged at Nuremberg not only for waging aggressive war, but for conspiring to. Obama is already a war criminal, such as for his illegal bombing of Libya (and, no, the UNSC emphatically did not authorize the use of force to implement a policy of regime change by supporting the armed rebels whose ranks included al-Qaeda affiliated Islamic extremists); but he could be prosecuted under international law just for his efforts to gain support for bombing Syria, even if this doesn’t come to pass, since this is the crime of conspiracy to commit aggression.
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US/Russia Summit Urgently Needed

Friday September 6, 2013

US Russia

Now that Russia and China have warned the United States against militarily intervening on behalf of the Syrian rebels, the need for a separate superpower summit between Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin is more urgent than ever. 

The dangers of a super-collision over a Middle East crisis are greater than they have been in exactly 40 years since U.S. President Richard Nixon ordered all global U.S. military forces moved to an alert status of DefCon One to deter Soviet President Leonid Brezhnev from sending Soviet forces to intervene in the 1973 Yom Kippur War, or War of Ramadan, between Israel and Egypt and Syria. 

Today, it is the United States, not the Soviet Union or Russia, which is gearing up to potentially plunge directly into a bloody Middle East conflict. On August 26, Russian presidential spokesman Alexander Lukashevich issued a statement warning, “Attempts to bypass the Security Council, once again to create artificial groundless excuses for a military intervention in the region are fraught with new suffering in Syria and catastrophic consequences for other countries of the Middle East and North Africa.”
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Syria: The Iron in Obama's Soul

Thursday September 5, 2013

Boehner Cantor

For the first time through the two-year old Syrian conflict, the United States has mentioned the sacred cow – "boots on the ground". The Secretary of State John Kerry has pleaded that the US Congress should approve the use of American ground troops although the Obama administration may not intend to take recourse to such action. 

This is a hugely significant turning point in the fast-developing scenario of US military intervention in Syria. There was added poignancy that Kerry was speaking at a congressional hearing on Tuesday with the Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel and the Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey seated beside him listening.


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Ron Paul Takes on Obama-Cultists on MSNBC

Thursday September 5, 2013

Watch Ron Paul obliterate the statists and Obama-cultists on MSNBC. "Oh isn't it wonderful that Obama came to Congress for authorization?" See RP's response for yourself. Clearly the corporate media has gotten the word from the Administration: attack all opposition. And they do as they are told. But they picked on the wrong person. 

Don't miss the condescending and hateful graphics they put in the screen -- "Father of the Fringe" "Paul-Bearers," etc. The mentality of the corporate media is that of a junior high school student.
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Libya Has Moved On...Into Lawlessness and Ruin

Wednesday September 4, 2013

Libya Gun

A little under two years ago, Philip Hammond, the Defence Secretary, urged British businessmen to begin “packing their suitcases” and to fly to Libya to share in the reconstruction of the country and exploit an anticipated boom in natural resources.

Yet now Libya has almost entirely stopped producing oil as the government loses control of much of the country to militia fighters.

Mutinying security men have taken over oil ports on the Mediterranean and are seeking to sell crude oil on the black market. Ali Zeidan, Libya’s Prime Minister, has threatened to “bomb from the air and the sea” any oil tanker trying to pick up the illicit oil from the oil terminal guards, who are mostly former rebels who overthrew Muammar Gaddafi and have been on strike over low pay and alleged government corruption since July.


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