The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity : Search Results

What if There's a Real War in Ukraine?

Saturday August 9, 2014

Russia and the West are at war – over fruits, veggies, pork, and bank loans. The cause is Ukraine, a vast emptiness formerly unknown to the western world, but now deemed a vital national security interest worthy of a risking a very scary war.

Economic embargos such as those launched by the US against Russia may seem relatively harmless. They are not. Trade sanctions are a form of strategic warfare that is sometimes followed by bullets and shells.

Think, for good example, of the 1940 US embargo against Japan that led Tokyo’s fateful decision to go to war rather than face slow, economic strangulation. How many Americans know that President Roosevelt closed the Panama Canal to Japanese shipping to enforce demands that Tokyo get out of Manchuria and China?

Frighteningly, today, there are senior officials in Washington and Moscow who are actually considering a head on clash in Ukraine between Russian forces and NATO – which is an extension of US military power.
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Crushing Protests in Kiev: Neocons Never Liberate Twice

Thursday August 7, 2014

Western media has ignored it, but protesters have occupied the Maidan square in Kiev since last October. They were successful in overthrowing the elected president, Viktor Yanukovych, but they didn’t go home. They kept their tents, remained in occupied government buildings, and hunkered down.

Boxer-turned-revolutionary Vitali Klitschko was in the thick of the protests at the time, supported by the United States and its Assistant Secretary of State, Victoria Nuland. In fact, Nuland posed with protest leaders seeking to overthrow the government – including Klitschko – and even famously went down to the Maidan square to hand out cookies to the protesters. In her infamous intercepted telephone conversation with US Ambassador to Ukraine Geoff Pyatt, Nuland made it clear that the US was behind Klitschko and Arseniy “Yats” Yatsenyuk.

When then-President Yanukovych sent police down to the square to break up the violent protests, the US warned him not to crack down on them. Even peaceful moves by the authorities to clear out the square were met with firm US threats of sanctions.
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Flight 17 Shoot-Down Scenario Shifts: White House vs. Intelligence Community?

Tuesday August 5, 2014

Contrary to the Obama administration’s public claims blaming eastern Ukrainian rebels and Russia for the shoot-down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, some U.S. intelligence analysts have concluded that the rebels and Russia were likely not at fault and that it appears Ukrainian government forces were to blame, according to a source briefed on these findings.

This judgment – at odds with what President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry have expressed publicly – is based largely on the absence of U.S. government evidence that Russia supplied the rebels with a Buk anti-aircraft missile system that would be needed to hit a civilian jetliner flying at 33,000 feet, said the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Despite U.S. spy satellites positioned over eastern Ukraine, U.S. intelligence agencies have released no images of a Buk system being transferred by Russians to rebel control, shipped into Ukraine, deployed into firing position and then being taken back to Russia. Though the Obama administration has released other images of Ukraine taken by U.S. spy satellites, the absence of any photos of a rebel-controlled Buk missile battery has been the dog not barking in the strident case that Official Washington has made in blaming the rebels and Russia for the July 17 shoot-down that killed 298 people.
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Why Won’t Obama Just Leave Ukraine Alone?

Sunday August 3, 2014

President Obama announced last week that he was imposing yet another round of sanctions on
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Russia, this time targeting financial, arms, and energy sectors. The European Union, as it has done each time, quickly followed suit.

These sanctions will not produce the results Washington demands, but they will hurt the economies of the US and EU, as well as Russia.

These sanctions are, according to the Obama administration, punishment for what it claims is Russia’s role in the crash of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, and for what the president claims is Russia’s continued arming of separatists in eastern Ukraine. Neither of these reasons makes much sense because neither case has been proven.

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Political Purges Loom as Ukraine Falls Apart

Saturday August 2, 2014

The US-installed regime in Ukraine is collapsing, says RPI Academic Advisor John Laughland. The protests that eventually led to the overthrow of democratically-elected President Yanukovych were animated by demands that the power of the presidency be decreased and that of parliament increased. However, now that the new president, Poroshenko, has taken power he wants nothing of a reduction in power and has taken to outlawing opposition parties and stigmatizing as "fifth columns" his political opponents.
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Stop! Thief! Stop! — The Looting of Ukraine

Wednesday July 30, 2014

Kiev’s hastily assembled, post-coup coalitions couldn’t hold, and Ukrainian PM Arseniy Yatsenyuk threw in the towel last Thursday. On his way out, news stories said, the PM expressed his “disappointment with Ukrainian parliament’s decision to reject a bill that allows the government to hand over up to 49 percent of the country’s gas transport system to investors from the European Union and the United States.”

In other words, what the US and the EU have got themselves up to in Ukraine isn’t so much a demented, madhouse mirror set of policies built on bluster and gross deceit as it is a high-powered burglary.

Ukraine should craft attractive terms to facilitate foreign investment, especially of those technologically-advanced energy companies capable of locating and developing whatever energy assets Ukraine does enjoy. But what does foreign ownership of 49% of the nation’s functioning gas transport system have to do with energy exploration and development?
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On Dominoes, WMDs And Putin’s 'Aggression': Imperial Washington Is Intoxicated By Another Big Lie

Tuesday July 29, 2014

Imperial Washington is truly running amuck in its insensible confrontation with Vladimir Putin. The round of new sanctions is a counter-productive joke. Apparently, more of Vlad’s posse will be put on double probation, thereby reducing demand for Harry Macklowe’s swell new $60 million apartment units on Park Avenue. Likewise, American exporters of high tech oilfield equipment will be shot in the foot with an embargo; and debt-saturated Russian state companies will be denied the opportunity to bury themselves even deeper in dollar debt by borrowing on the New York bond market. Some real wet noodles, these!

But it is the larger narrative that is so blatantly offensive—that is, the notion that a sovereign state is being wantonly violated by an aggressive neighbor arming “terrorists” inside its borders. Obama’s deputy national security advisor, Tony Blanken, stated that specious meme in stark form yesterday:

“Russia bears responsibility for everything that’s going on in Eastern Ukraine” and “has the ability to actually de-escalate this crisis,” Blinken said.

Puleese! The Kiev government is a dysfunctional, bankrupt usurper that is deploying western taxpayer money to wage a vicious war on several million Russian-speaking citizens in the Donbas—the traditional center of greater Russia’s coal, steel and industrial infrastructure.
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Ron Paul: What's So Bad About a Split-Up Ukraine?

Thursday July 24, 2014

In an in-depth commentary about the recent Malaysian Airlines crash, Dr. Paul makes the point that no one in western media or government wants us to ponder: if eastern Ukraine wants to be closer to Russia and western Ukraine wants to be aligned with the EU, why can't they just go their separate ways without outsider meddling?
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On Malaysian Crash, Obama's Case Against Russia Disintegrates

Wednesday July 23, 2014

Tuesday the US government admitted it had been bluffing about its certainty that Russia was behind the downing of Malaysian Air Flight MH-17 over Ukraine.

This dramatic turn of events started with State Department Spokeswoman Marie Harf claiming Monday that the State Department's certainty of Russian involvement in the apparent downing of the plane was primarily based on "social media" evidence.

That means with a likely budget of more than $100 billion, the US Intelligence Community is making decisions that may involve global nuclear war based on people's Tweets and YouTubes!

Asked in Monday's State Department briefing about US government evidence for its claims of Russian government involvement and separatist direct blame for the shooting down of the plane, Harf said:

You saw the Secretary yesterday speak very clearly about our assessment that this was an SA-11 fired from Russian-backed, separatist-controlled territory; that we know – we saw in social media afterwards, we saw videos, we saw photos of the pro-Russian separatists bragging about shooting down an aircraft.

She added:

Based on open information which is basically common sense, right – we know where it was fired from, we know who has this weapon

Who needs evidence — it's "common sense"! Right?
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Kerry’s Latest Reckless Rush to Judgment

Monday July 21, 2014

Secretary of State John Kerry boasts that as a former prosecutor he knows he has a strong case against the eastern Ukrainian rebels and their backers in Russia in pinning last Thursday’s shoot-down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 on them, even without the benefit of a formal investigation.

During his five rounds of appearances on Sunday talk shows, Kerry did what a judge might condemn as “prejudicing the case” or “poisoning the jury pool.” In effect, Kerry made a fair “trial” almost impossible, what a bar association might cite in beginning debarment proceedings against prosecutor Kerry.

But what Kerry did was actually much worse. He essentially dictated the outcome of an inquiry that risks pushing the world into a new and dangerous Cold War. With his didactic – all-tell-no-show – presentation of the “evidence,” Kerry made any objective assessment of the actual evidence nearly impossible, certainly for U.S. government investigators and even for many international officials whose jobs often depend on the goodwill of the United States.

If you were, say, a U.S. intelligence analyst sifting through the evidence and finding that some leads went off in a different direction, toward the Ukrainian army, for instance, you might hold back on your conclusions knowing that crossing senior officials who had already pronounced the verdict could be devastating to your career. It would make a lot more sense to just deep-six any contrary evidence.
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