In an interview Monday with host Ameera David on RT, former United States House of Representatives member Ron Paul (R-TX) noted that the biggest resistance to his effort to require an audit of the Federal Reserve is rooted in the desire to shield the Fed’s international activities from scrutiny.
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Each chapter of Ron Paul’s latest book Swords into Plowshares: A Life in Wartime and a Future of Peace and Prosperity is preceded by song lyrics that help communicate the antiwar ideas Paul expresses in the book. That makes 21 songs for 21 chapters. Metallica, Willie Nelson, Pink Floyd, Elvis Presley, the Rolling Stones, and Pete Seeger are among the performers featured in the song collection.
Now there is an easy way to listen to all these songs and learn a fact or two about each as well. Tim Shoemaker over at the Campaign for Liberty has collected together, in two articles, YouTube links to and short introductions of these 21 songs.
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On occasion a college professor answers an interview question in such a way that it creates in some listeners a sudden, if fleeting, urge to drop everything, move across the country, and sign up for a course. College of William & Mary Professor Lawrence Wilkerson, whose background includes being a colonel in the United States Army and chief of staff for former Secretary of State Colin Powell, provided such an answer at the end of a 12-minute interview on RT this week.
In his answer, Wilkerson, who is a Ron Paul Institute Academic Board member, provides an introduction to the 70 years-in-building US national security state that makes US foreign policy very focused on militarism. It certainly would be interesting to see this introduction fleshed out over a semester in a college course.
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Interviewed Tuesday on Fox Business, three-time presidential candidate Ron Paul rejected the ongoing United States intervention in Syria, stating emphatically that he sees “no reason in the world for us to be involved in Syria.”
Referring to the US government’s oft-repeated directive that Syria President Bashar al-Assad “must go” — be removed from power in the Middle East nation — Paul explains in the interview that it looks like that effort will fail while creating “a lot bigger chance that this is going to be a conflict between Russia and the United States.”
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No wonder Americans have such disdain for Congress. On Thursday, a bipartisan group of nine United States senators joined together to introduce the Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act. In a press release heralding the bill’s introduction, sponsor Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), who is chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and several of the bill’s cosponsors commend the bill as mitigating overly-harsh aspects of the US criminal justice system, including mandatory minimum sentences. Left unmentioned is the fact that the bill, should it become law, would actually create new mandatory minimum sentences while lengthening existing maximum sentences.
Say one thing and do another. The deception continues on Capitol Hill.
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Eric Margolis returned to the Scott Horton Show on Wednesday for another intriguing interview regarding international relations and war. In the interview, Margolis, a Ron Paul Institute Academic Board member and international affairs writer, lifted the lid on the ongoing fight of the United States and coalition members against the Islamic State (ISIS), referring to ISIS as a “covert western asset” and the US-supported fight against ISIS as a “big charade.”
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Legal marijuana in Colorado has been a boon for freedom, allowing people to make, transfer, and consume marijuana products free from the threat of arrest by state or local police. At the same time, there is an unfortunate side-effect of the liberalization of marijuana laws in the state — the government scooping up great amounts of money via marijuana “sin taxes.”
The high marijuana taxes punish people who purchase marijuana by depriving them of money to save, to give away, or to spend on other goods or services. The sin taxes also are a means of controlling people’s behavior. Facing high taxes, some people will forgo or reduce their purchases of products containing the plant.
Proponents of the sin taxes claim the taxes are justified because using marijuana is a sin that should be discouraged. But, even if it is granted that there is some truth in that claim, a much greater sin is the use of government force via taxation to control people’s nonviolent activities.
There is plenty of marijuana sin tax to roll back in Colorado. Ethan Wolff-Mann calculates in Money magazine that sales and excise taxes increase the price of marijuana by 27.9% in the state.
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College of William & Mary Professor and Ron Paul Institute Academic Board Member Lawrence Wilkerson examined, in an interview last week with host Paul Jay on the Real News Network, the connection between war and profits. War brings profits, and this feeds a Washington, DC bias toward war, says Wilkerson.
In the interview focused on the Republican presidential primary candidates, Wilkerson, a former Army colonel who was chief of staff for Secretary of State Colin Powell, elaborates:
But there is a group in this country who will put money behind anyone who looks like he’s going to maintain and even push more stridently than before the business or war, if you will. I’ve recently had a person at the highest levels of power in this land say to me, ‘Inside Washington there is a bias toward war.’ That’s absolutely correct. Lots of people made a lot of money off the invasion of Iraq. Lots of people made a lot of money off Afghanistan. Lots of people are still making — did and are still making — lots of money over this politics of fear associated with terrorism and the counter-terrorism associated with it. So this is a very lucrative business, war.
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It is becoming increasingly obvious that the United States government’s war on drugs, and especially its war on marijuana, is being torn down by state and local governments choosing to move in a less punitive direction. But, drug warriors, in and out of government, are trying their best to keep the war going and the casualty count increasing. From Rep. John Flemming (R-LA) promoting misinformation about marijuana in the US House of Representatives to former “Drug Czars” William J. Bennett and John P. Walters writing nostalgically in the Boston Globe about the drug war that they assert “worked,” the drug warriors are refusing to just fade away.
In an insightful USA Today editorial “Bitter-end drug warriors do more damage than weed” published Friday, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) dresses down the drug war promoters, whom he terms “bitter-enders.” Rohrabacher devotes substantial attention in the editorial to criticizing marijuana prohibition in particular. Still, much of his critique extends to the entire war on drugs.
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Speaking Friday with host Scott Horton on the Scott Horton Show, Ron Paul Institute Academic Board Member Eric Margolis related the devastating consequences foreign intervention to depose Syria President Bashar al-Assad has created, as well as the further devastation that would be wrought if the intervention accomplishes its goal.
Concluding a discussion largely focused on governments, including those of the United States, Britain, and France, intervening in Syria, Margolis presents an important warning. “The question is ‘Why overthrow Assad?’” asks Margolis, “because, when he’s gone, we are definitely going to miss him.”
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