Adam Dick

It is a treat to hear a non-rushed interview of Dr. Ron Paul that allows him to lay out more fully the reasoning behind his views. Paul, the chairman and founder of RPI, had such an interview this week with the Voice of Russia. Over 15 minutes, Paul discusses his petition for clemency for Edward Snowden as well as United States foreign policy generally and regarding Ukraine, Iran, Egypt, and Syria in particular.

Continue reading at the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity.

Apparently trying to one-up President Barack Obama, who last month twisted American history and logic to equate US government mass spying with Paul Revere and other revolutionaries’ actions to protect Americans from an oppressive government, House of Representatives Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) is claiming President George Washington and the American founders would support Cantor’s world-wide interventionist agenda.

Cantor made the laughable assertion a key theme of his “An America That Leads” speech Monday at the Virginia Military Institute. The agenda Cantor proposes in his speech, and that we can expect the Republican leadership of the House to push, can be summed up as war, war, and more war. Here are some ways Cantor proposes America “leads”:

• Cantor laments any easing of sanctions on Iran and suggests imposing new sanctions, as well as employing the “credible threat of the use of military force” in diplomatic talks with Iran;

• Cantor laments that the US has forgone a military attack on Syria and calls on the US to take action to “change the balance of power on the ground” in Syria;

• Cantor laments that the US military may soon exit Afghanistan and calls for the military presence to continue;

• Cantor laments the easing of US intervention in Libya and calls for the US to “bolster the capabilities of the Libyan security forces and, as necessary, be willing to engage in and support counter-terrorism efforts;”

• Cantor laments that North Korea has, despite US sanctions, “yet to pay a meaningful price” and calls for increasing the sanctions and conducting joint military actions with “regional allies;”

• Cantor laments the US government’s failure to more aggressively challenge China regarding sea lanes in the vicinity of China and several other nations and calls for the US to provide “guidance, security, and coordination” in Asia;

• Cantor calls for “equipping security forces” in countries around the world for use in those countries and in their respective regions;

• Cantor laments that “we cannot continue to blindly reduce defense spending” (throwing aside the reality of a decade-plus of huge increases in military, intelligence, and “homeland security” spending) because the US needs to “project adequate military power in any theater, be it the Middle East, Latin America or Asia;” and

• Cantor calls on the US to “invest” in a “more lethal military” — to “promote peace and stability,” he says.

Continue reading at the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity.

No wonder President Barack Obama has cloaked in secrecy his administration’s justifications for ordering “targeted killings,” including through the use of drones. Jeremy Scahill and Glenn Greenwald report in First Look’s “The Intercept” today that kill orders in the drones program are based on National Security Agency electronic surveillance analysis that is inherently misleading, easily foiled by targeted individuals, and necessarily causes the death and injury of unidentified, non-targeted people.

Continue reading at the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity.

Researchers in several states soon should be able to legally grow hemp for the first time in decades because of legislation approved today in the US Senate.

While the new exception to the US law prohibiting growing hemp will be limited and will not affect US government prohibitions related to other substances under the Controlled Substances Act (CSA), the exception is significant as a rare instance where a prohibition under the CSA — a statute at the core of the US drug war — is limited instead of expanded.

The legal change, now passed by both chambers of Congress and on its way to President Barack Obama for signing into law, may be a harbinger of the dismantling of the US government’s drug war mentality that has reigned since President Richard Nixon declared in June of 1971:

America’s public enemy number one in the United States is drug abuse. In order to fight and defeat this enemy, it is necessary to wage a new, all-out offensive.

Continue reading at the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity.

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR), in a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing today, presents succinctly and forcefully the case that senior officials overseeing the US government’s mass spying program have relied on “secret interpretations of the law” and “years of misleading and deceptive statements…to the American people.” Wyden proceeds to question witnesses James R. Clapper, John O. Brennan, and James B. Comey, Jr. — the directors, respectively, of National Intelligence, the Central Intelligence Agency, and Federal Bureau of Investigation — regarding the mass spying and the “culture of misinformation” surrounding it.

Continue reading at the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity.