RPI Chairman and Founder Ron Paul presents this week at the Ron Paul Channel a list of seven books Paul suggests Secretary of State John Kerry should be reading to understand foreign policy and American history. Of course, these books would provide solid education for everyone seeking to expand their understanding of these matters.
Continue reading at the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity.
Speaking with Neil Cavuto on Fox Business, Judge Andrew Napolitano predicts that Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s (D-CA) strong reaction to Central Intelligence Agency snooping on the Senate Intelligence Committee she chairs “is a turning point in the relationship between the CIA and the United States Congress.”
This change of heart of “the biggest cheerleader, the strongest supporter, and arguably the most powerful member of Congress in support of the intelligence community,” says RPI Advisory Board Member Napolitano, puts Feinstein on a “collision course” with CIA Director John O. Brennan.
Continue reading at the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity.
We see in the United States government’s “targeted killings” program carried out by drones and other means a perversion of the law so extreme that it brings to mind the introductory paragraph of Frederic Bastiat’s classic book The Law:
The law perverted! The law — and, in its wake, all the collective forces of the nation — the law, I say, not only diverted from its proper direction, but made to pursue one entirely contrary! The law become the tool of every kind of avarice, instead of being its check! The law guilty of that very iniquity which it was its mission to punish! Truly, this is a serious fact, if it exists, and one to which I feel bound to call the attention of my fellow citizens.
As individuals we possess the, hopefully, rarely exercisable right to use lethal force to defend ourselves and others against people who threaten us with death or serious injury. Even then, in a court case regarding such a killing we are further called upon to prove that the killing is justified and rebut the presumption that the killing is wrongful.
Governments may rely on this individual defensive right as a justification for their exercise of killing power, terming the government’s right to kill as an extension of individuals’ right to kill in defense of themselves or others. In the targeted killings program, the Obama administration has perverted this reasoning beyond recognition so that in Bastiat’s phrasing an “entirely contrary” direction — unjustified homicides — is pursued.
Continue reading at the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity.
RPI Chairman and Founder Ron Paul, speaking on the Fox Business show The Independents Wednesday night, addresses the Central Intelligence Agency’s spying on the Senate Intelligence Committee — seemingly to cover up torture revelations against the agency. Paul notes the irony that Committee Chairman Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) “doesn’t care about our privacy, but, lo and behold, she does care about her own.”
Continue reading at the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity.
Breaking through the mainstream media’s suppression of contrary voices regarding the Ukraine crisis, RPI advisors Dennis Kucinich and Lawrence Wilkerson this week expose, on Fox News and MSNBC respectively, the United States government’s role in creating the crisis.
Kucinich, who served eight terms in the United States House of Representatives and ran for president as a Democrat, pushes past host Bill O’Reilly’s interruptions to state a few sentences of analysis. Asked what he would have done differently as president regarding Ukraine, Kucinich explains:
What I’d do is not have USAID and the National Endowment for Democracy working with US taxpayers’ money to knock off an elected government in Ukraine, which is what they did. I wouldn’t try to force the people of Ukraine into a deal with NATO against their interests or into a deal with the European Union which is against their economic interests.
Kucinich adds that the Central Intelligence Agency also took part in US government efforts “to stir up trouble in Ukraine.”
Continue reading at the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity.
RPI Chairman and Founder, interviewed on RT, explains that the United States should not bail out Ukraine, either directly or indirectly through the European Union or International Monetary Fund. “The whole thing makes no sense whatsoever from an economic viewpoint, from a political viewpoint,” says Paul, “It’s always vying for controls, and I think that is what’s going on.”
Continue reading at the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity.
RPI Chairman and Founder Ron Paul, over at the Ron Paul Channel, reports this week in a 14 minutes video the story behind the conflict in Ukraine. Paul also criticizes biases in how mainstream television programs cover the conflict, saying “they’re part of the banking system, they’re part of the military-industrial complex, they’re part of an educational system that endorses perpetual intervention overseas.” The full video is viewable without the subscription usually required for Ron Paul Channel videos.
In the video, Paul notes the hypocrisy of the United States government condemning Russia for violating Ukraine sovereignty while the United States has been invading countries, taking sides in revolutionary conflicts including in Ukraine, and interfering in elections around the world. Paul notes that, while many people around the world recognize this hypocrisy, “the propaganda here, in order to get the American people satisfied, is to say ‘they are the bad guys and we are the angels’”
Continue reading at the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity.
Speaking this morning on Fox News, Judge Andrew Napolitano, an RPI Advisory Board member, explains the Unites States Supreme Court’s Fernandez v. California decision this week that gives police greater leeway to search homes without a warrant. Napolitano describes the decision as a “U-turn” away from privacy protection that bodes badly for future cases before the court, including cases concerning the National Security Agency and the US government’s mass spying program:
Continue reading at the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity.
RPI Contributor Adam Dick comments today regarding the rise of libertarian ideas in American politics in a MintPress News article:
‘It is unfair to say that Libertarians are separating from conservatives,’ Adam Dick, a writer with the Ron Paul Institute, told MintPress News. Dick asserted that Libertarians come from all points in the political spectrum, and Democrats are just as likely to be Libertarians as Republicans.
‘There is a movement among some people in regards to Libertarian-thinking, the polling is showing that people are now seeing the government — more now than ever before — as being one of the greatest threats to individual rights … there is an undeniable libertarian movement underway that is separate and distinguishable from both the Republicans and the Democrats,’ Dick concluded.
Continue reading at the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity.
Following up on his interview with the Voice of Russia earlier this week, RPI Chairman and Founder Ron Paul elaborates, in his weekly podcast with Charles Goyette, why Paul is encouraging people to sign a petition urging President Barack Obama to grant clemency for whistle-blower Edward Snowden. Paul explains:
I think this is a perfect example of how [the United States president’s power to grant clemency] should be used. Under certain circumstances, individuals who may be charged for breaking a law may have been following a higher law, like a moral law or the Constitution.
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This is a perfect time to use the principle of clemency to let him off because technically he violated the technical law but he did not violate the Constitution. He was defending the Constitution. Isn’t it amazing that, if we have a government official that lied through their teeth to us and disobeyed the Constitution, they are never penalized, but you take one individual who lives up to a promise to uphold the Constitution and tells us the truth — those are the individuals being punished. I think we need to turn that around.
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I think the majority of the American people now are saying, “What is the purpose of putting somebody like Snowden in prison?”
Continue reading at the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity.