The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity
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Bolton Losing Ground on Venezuela, Iran – But Far From Down and Out

Tuesday July 9, 2019

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The wave of wishful thinking articles, including some by friends of mine whose judgment I usually respect was entirely wrong. President Donald Trump has not fired John Bolton for the failed fiasco of his latest inept attempt to topple the legitimate democratically-elected government of Venezuela: At least not yet.

Bolton remains National Security Advisor of the United States with his fingerprints all over the latest “incident” of limpet mine attacks on the two oil tankers in the Persian Gulf.

That is not to see that daylight has perceptibly opened up between Trump and Bolton, first on Venezuela and now on Iran. It most clearly has.

Had Trump still been fully in Bolton’s pocket, he would by now have ordered the ferocious air strikes against Iran that Bolton desperately craved. It is greatly to the president’s credit that he did not.
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Rattling Cages in the Propaganda War

Tuesday July 9, 2019

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It appears I have rattled some cages.

I recently appeared on RT to talk about how the United States weaponizes the dollar and wields it like a billy club to advance US foreign policy objectives. I specifically mentioned how the US can use the dollar-denominated SWIFT payment system as a tool and the threat that this kind of economic warfare poses to the US domestic economy.

A couple of days after the interview, I got a somewhat contentious email from Voice of America asking for my comment because they are “fact-checking” the web story RT published based on my interview. VoA is a US government-funded and operated media outlet.

The fact-checking arm of VoA (polygraph.info), asked if RT quoted me accurately. (They did.) The Polygraph reporter then stated, “We suspected there might be some inaccuracy because any expert on SWIFT would surely know that while the US has sought to influence it, it is primarily a European and European-based institution, which would of course limit the US’ ability to ‘use’ it as a weapon as the article states.”

SWIFT stands for the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication. The system enables financial institutions to send and receive information about financial transactions in a secure, standardized environment. Since the dollar serves as the world reserve currency, SWIFT facilitates the international dollar system.
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Unintended Consequences: UK Tanker Fears Iran Retaliation In Gulf

Monday July 8, 2019

Days after the UK - at US request - seized a tanker filled with Iranian oil near Gibraltar, a UK tanker in the Persian Gulf has made an abrupt u-turn and abandoned its mission to transport Iraqi oil to Europe. Now sheltering in Saudi waters, the tanker fears a tit-for-tat Iranian retaliation. Is this a case of "unintended consequences" for the US-engineered July 4th Iran tanker seizure? How far will this escalate? Watch today's Liberty Report...
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Trump Reminds Us That America is a Military Nation

Monday July 8, 2019

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President Trump is being criticized for surrounding himself with tanks, armored vehicles, flyovers, and generals and admirals during his Fourth of July celebration at the Lincoln Memorial. Critics say that it was unseemly for the president to be showing off the federal government’s military process on Independence Day. Some said it conjured up images of the Soviet Union, when that communist regime would showcase its tanks and military hardware in parades in Moscow’s Red Square.

But the fact is that America is a military nation. As Trump pointed out in his Independence Day address, the United States has the most powerful military in history, one that can pulverize any other nation on earth. His critics don’t have any problem with that. They just don’t want Trump to highlight it.

Of course, it wasn’t always that way. In extolling America’s position as a military nation, Trump left out something important in his talk: America did not start out as a military nation. In fact, quite the contrary. America was founded as a limited-government republic, not a military nation.
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Frog-Marching Trump Toward War on Iran

Monday July 8, 2019

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Hypocrisy seems to have become a defining characteristic of US foreign policy, especially when it comes to Iran. After breaking the Iran deal last year and, de facto, forcing the Europeans to violate the deal in May, the US Administration is now complaining that Iran is no longer abiding by its obligations under the deal!
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Obama: Front Man for Washington’s Imperialism

Saturday July 6, 2019

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Clarity Press is a good publisher for authors willing to provide real information in place of the officially sanctioned controlled explanations of our time. A current example is Jeremy Kuzmarov’s assessment of Obama, Obama’s Unending Wars. The forty-fourth president comes across as a successful front man for corporate rule and Washington’s imperialism.

Obama was the “drone king” whose regime bombed 7 Muslim countries, overthrew the democratic government in Hondurus, overthrew and murdered Gaddafi, tried to do the same thing to Assad in Syria, overthrew the democratic government in Ukraine and demonized Russia and the Russian president, tried to undermine and overthrow the democratically elected Latin American presidents Morales, Chavez, and Ortega, constantly lied through his teeth, and met with the approval of the military/security complex and global capitalists. 

Topping off these criminal events, Obama’s regime adopted the policy of murdering US citizens on suspicion alone without due process of law. Execution orders were issued every Tuesday as Obama with CIA director John Brennan at his side chose presumed terrorists from mug shots and biographies prepared by no one knows who. “Some were just teenagers like a young girl who looked ‘less than her seventeen years.’”
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Goodbye Dollar, It Was Nice Knowing You!

Thursday July 4, 2019

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Over the past two years, the White House has initiated trade disputes, insulted allies and enemies alike, and withdrawn from or refused to ratify multinational treaties and agreements. It has also expanded the reach of its unilaterally imposed rules, forcing other nations to abide by its demands or face economic sanctions. While the stated Trump Administration intention has been to enter into new arrangements more favorable to the United States, the end result has been quite different, creating a broad consensus within the international community that Washington is unstable, not a reliable partner and cannot be trusted. This sentiment has, in turn, resulted in conversations among foreign governments regarding how to circumvent the American banking system, which is the primary offensive weapon apart from dropping bombs that Washington has to force compliance with its dictates.

Consequently, there has been considerable blowback from the Make America Great Again campaign, particularly as the flip side of the coin appears to be that the “greatness” will be obtained by making everyone else less great. The only country in the world that currently regards the United States favorably is Israel, which certainly has good reason to do so given the largesse that has come from the Trump Administration. Everyone else is keen to get out from under the American heel.

Well the worm has finally turned, maybe. Even the feckless Angela Merkel’s Germany now understands that national interests must prevail when the United States is demanding that it do the unspeakable. At the recently concluded G20 meeting in Tokyo Britain, France and Germany announced that the special trade mechanism that they have been working on this year is now up and running. It is called the Instrument in Support of Trade Exchanges (Instex) and it will permit companies in Europe to do business with countries like Iran, avoiding American sanctions by trading outside the SWIFT system, which is dollar denominated and de facto controlled by the US Treasury.
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