Six Weeks in Jail for Possessing Laundry Detergent

A disturbing story out of Florida recounts that Matt Crull spent six weeks in jail on a drug trafficking charge after police claimed, based on drug field test results, that a substance in Crull’s van was heroin. Crull was released this month after further testing indicated the substance was actually laundry detergent.

While the mistreatment of Crull is terrible, it is important to understand that his experience is far from unique. In fact, for some people the situation is worse: Seeing little hope for vindication in the judicial system, they plead guilty and are sentenced due to shoddy drug field test results.

Continue reading

Ron Paul Challenges ‘Ironic’ Advancing Democracy Reason for Imposing New President on Venezuela

Ron Paul is not impressed by the convoluted reasoning presented by the United States government in support of its effort to impose a new president on the people of Venezuela. In his first answer in a Friday interview at RT focused on this ongoing “regime change” effort, the peace advocate and former presidential candidate predicted this effort would be difficult and would lead to violence and, possibly, a civil war. Paul then proceeds to criticize as “ironic” the US trying to justify its seeking to impose its choice of a president on Venezuelans as promoting democracy.

Continue reading

Five Minutes Five Issues: Venezuela Nonsense, US ‘Diplomats,’ Propaganda Trigger, Bloomberg, Shutdown Benefit

A new episode of Five Minutes Five Issues posted on Friday. You can listen to it, and read a transcript, below. You can also find previous episodes of the show at Stitcher, iTunes, YouTube, and SoundCloud.

Listen to the new episode here:

Read a transcript of the new episode, including links to further information regarding the topics discussed, here:

The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity welcomes you to Five Minutes Five Issues.

Starting in five four three two one.

Continue reading

Five Minutes Five Issues: Barr on Marijuana, Venezuela, Syria, More Marijuana Legalization, Trump Speech

A new episode of Five Minutes Five Issues posted on Saturday. You can listen to it, and read a transcript, below. You can also find previous episodes of the show at Stitcher, iTunes, YouTube, and SoundCloud.

Listen to the new episode here:

Read a transcript of the new episode, including links to further information regarding the topics discussed, here:

The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity welcomes you to Five Minutes Five Issues.

Starting in five four three two one.

Continue reading

Amazon Shareholders Seek to Restrict Facial Recognition Technology Sales to Government Agencies

People tend to think of Amazon as a big store on the internet. It is more than that. For example, in August of 2013, soon after Amazon founder and Chief Executive Officer Jeff Bezos purchased the Washington Post, I wrote about Amazon’s Amazon Web Services having as customers hundreds of government agencies. Included among them is the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) with which Amazon had a 10 years, 600 billion dollars contract to build private cloud servers inside CIA data centers.

Continue reading

Five Minutes Five Issues: National Emergency, Foreign Bases, Marijuana Noncrackdown, Oligarchs, Roving Patrols

A new episode of Five Minutes Five Issues is out. You can listen to it, and read a transcript, below. You can also find previous episodes of the show at Stitcher, iTunes, YouTube, and SoundCloud.

Listen to the new episode here:

Read a transcript of the new episode, including links to further information regarding the topics discussed, here:

The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity welcomes you to Five Minutes Five Issues.

Starting in five four three two one.

Continue reading

Ron Paul: The Warmongering in DC is Bipartisan

Included in a Thursday foreign policy report by Rick Sanchez at RT, are portions of an interview with peace advocate and former United States House of Representatives Member Ron Paul (R-TX) in which Paul explains that a big barrier to moving toward nonintervention overseas is that “warmongering” has become a bipartisan fixation. “It used to be the Democrats were considered less likely to be involved in war, but they’re every bit as aggressive as the Republicans,” said Paul.

Continue reading

Ron Paul to President Trump and Congress: Don’t Fence — or Wall — Us In

In 2011, when then-Representative Ron Paul (R-TX) was seeking the Republican presidential nomination, he spoke passionately from the debate stage against the US government having a fence at the US-Mexico border. “I think this fence business,” said Paul at a debate held at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in California, “is designed, and may well be used, against us and keep us in.” “In economic turmoil, the people want to leave with their capital and there’s capital controls and there’s people control,” continued Paul, “so, every time you think of a fence keeping all those bad people out, think about those fences maybe being used against us.”

Continue reading

Fed Up WikiLeaks Emails Media List of 140 ‘False and Defamatory’ Claims Not To Report as True

Julian Assange and WikiLeaks have not just been targeted by the United States government in response to their publishing of US government secrets. They have also been subjected to false reporting in the media.

In an email sent to media organizations on Sunday, WikiLeaks details that, due to “a pervasive climate of inaccurate claims about WikiLeaks and Julian Assange, including purposeful fabrications planted in large and otherwise ‘reputable’ media outlets,” Wikileaks is providing in the email a list of false and defamatory claims about WikiLeaks and Assange for journalists and publishers “to ensure they do not spread and have not spread falsehoods about WikiLeaks or Julian Assange.” A Reuters report counts a total of 140 items in the email’s “Defamation List.”

Continue reading