Some 300 US Marines are headed to Afghanistan, as the Taliban continue to gain and ISIS persists. The US Commander for Afghanistan wants several thousand more. The 2009-2010 "surge" was supposed to produce a victory in the 16 year war. It did not. Will doing the same thing over this time work?
By Ron Paul
Last week, the Liberty movement lost one of its most eloquent and courageous voices when William Grigg passed away at the far too young age of 54. William worked as a writer for The New American from 1993-2005, and was a contributor to LewRockwell.com and Antiwar.com. He also published many important articles at his Pro Liberate blog. In October 2016, William helped found The Libertarian Institute, and served as the Institute’s managing editor from its founding until his passing. While he wrote on a variety of topics, William is best known for his writings on police brutality and police militization. Years before modern police practices became a focus of national debate, Will was exposing how the rights—including the right to life—of innocent Americas are too often collateral damage in the war on drugs and terrorism. The liberty movement’s focus on this issue owes much to the work of Will Grigg. What made Will so effective was that he took the time to gather the facts behind each case that he wrote about, often traveling at his own expense to interview his subjects. He then combined this mastery of detail with a powerful critique of the policies used to justify the transformation of America from a Republic to a Welfare-Warfare-Police State. Unlike many who write on these issues, including some libertarians, Will never avoided discussing how racial minorities bear the brunt of modern police state policies. However, he never pretended that police brutality was solely a minority issue. He would not ignore certain incidents because the victim’s race did not fit the preferred narrative. My wife Carol, myself, and all of us at Campaign for Liberty, the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity, and The Ron Paul Liberty Report join Will’s many friends in sending our best wishes and prayers to his wife, Korrin, and his six children. I also join libertarians across the country in expressing gratitude for the example that Will set in how one can combine old-fashioned investigative reporting and a passionate commitment to freedom to make a real difference in the movement to reclaim our liberties. By Chris Rossini President Trump and Senator John McCain started off with a rocky relationship. But now that the President has suddenly come around in all the wrong ways, the notoriously war hungry Senator is pleased. McCain was recently on Meet The Press with Chuck Todd, and he joyfully expressed his approval of the Washington establishment sucking Trump in: Transcript: Todd: "I want to talk about the overall changes. You've said he's growing in office. There are some that will say, 'no the Washington establishment sucked him in.'" Isn't it funny how things work in Washington? One week Trump accuses John McCain of "always looking to start World War III," and the next week McCain is praising Trump for doing that very thing! (h/t - Zero Hedge)
Former CIA Officer John Kiriakou joins the Liberty Report to discuss his upcoming book, as well as his whistleblowing on CIA torture and the consequences. Kiriakou was the only person to go to prison for the CIA torture program -- and he was the whistleblower who exposed it! What advice does he have for others?
By Ron Paul In the critical area of foreign policy, President Trump has done an about-face from his campaign promises. Who's influencing him? What drives Trump’s ambition overseas? I give my opinions on SophieCo: Segment begins around 1min 15sec. As President Trump reportedly considers "kinetic military action" against North Korea, we must look at how we got to this point. What are we doing in the region? Is a US first-strike the solution to North Korea's nuclear ambitions?
By Ron Paul
Audit the Fed recently took a step closer to becoming law, when it was favorably reported by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. This means the House could vote on the bill at any time. The bill passed by voice vote without any objections, although Fed defenders did launch hysterical attacks on the bill during the debate as well as at a hearing on the bill the previous week. One representative claimed that auditing the Fed would result in rising interest rates, a stock market crash, a decline in the dollar’s value, and a complete loss of confidence in the US economy. Those who understand economics know that all of this is actually what awaits America unless we change our monetary policy. Passing the audit bill is the vital first step in that process, since an audit can provide Congress a road map to changing the fiat currency system. Another charge leveled by the Fed’s defenders is that subjecting the Fed to an audit would make the Fed subject to political pressure. There are two problems with this argument. First, nothing in the audit bill gives Congress or the president any new authority to interfere in the Federal Reserve’s operations. Second, and most importantly, the Federal Reserve has a long history of giving in to presidential pressure for an "accommodative" monetary policy. The most notorious example of Fed chairmen tailoring monetary policy to fit the demands of a president is Nixon-era Federal Reserve Chair Arthur Burns. Burns and Nixon may be an extreme example — after all no other president was caught on tape joking with the Fed chair about Fed independence, but every president has tried to influence the Fed with varying degrees of success. For instance, Lyndon Johnson summoned the Fed chair to the White House to berate him for not tailoring monetary policy to support Johnson’s guns and butter policies. Federal Reserve chairmen have also used their power to shape presidential economic policy. According to Maestro, Bob Woodward's biography of Alan Greenspan, Bill Clinton once told Al Gore that Greenspan was a “man we can deal with,” while Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentsen claimed the Clinton administration and Greenspan’s Fed had a “gentleman’s agreement” regarding the Fed’s support for the administration’s economic policies. The Federal Reserve has also worked to influence the legislative branch. In the 1970s, the Fed organized a campaign by major banks and financial institutions to defeat a prior audit bill. The banks and other institutions who worked to keep the Fed’s operations a secret are not only under the Fed’s regulatory jurisdiction, but are some of the major beneficiaries of the current monetary system. There can be no doubt that, as the audit bill advances through the legislative process, the Fed and its allies will ramp up both public and behind-the-scenes efforts to kill the bill. Can anyone dismiss the possibility that Janet Yellen will attempt to "persuade" Donald Trump to drop his support for Audit the Fed in exchange for an “accommodative” monetary policy that supports the administration’s proposed spending on overseas militarism and domestic infrastructure? While auditing the Fed is supported by the vast majority of Americans, it is opposed by powerful members of the financial elite and the deep state. Therefore, those of us seeking to change our national monetary policy must redouble our efforts to force Congress to put America on a path to liberty, peace, and prosperity by auditing, then ending, the Fed. By Carey Wedler It is widely known that the U.S.-led NATO intervention to topple Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi in 2011 resulted in a power vacuum that has allowed terror groups like ISIS to gain a foothold in the country. Despite the destructive consequences of the 2011 invasion, the West is currently taking a similar trajectory with regard to Syria. Just as the Obama administration excoriated Gaddafi in 2011, highlighting his human rights abuses and insisting he must be removed from power to protect the Libyan people, the Trump administration is now pointing to the repressive policies of Bashar al-Assad in Syria and warning his regime will soon come to an end — all in the name of protecting Syrian civilians. But as the U.S. and its allies fail to produce legal grounds for their recent air strike — let alone provide concrete evidence to back up their claims Assad was responsible for a deadly chemical attack last week — more hazards of invading foreign countries and removing their heads of state are emerging. This week, new findings revealed another unintended consequence of “humanitarian intervention”: the growth of the human slave trade. The Guardian reports that while “violence, extortion and slave labor” have been a reality for people trafficked through Libya in the past, the slave trade has recently expanded. Today, people are selling other human beings out in the open. “The latest reports of ‘slave markets’ for migrants can be added to a long list of outrages [in Libya],” said Mohammed Abdiker, head of operation and emergencies for the International Office of Migration, an intergovernmental organization that promotes “humane and orderly migration for the benefit of all,” according to its website. “The situation is dire. The more IOM engages inside Libya, the more we learn that it is a vale of tears for all too many migrants.” The North African country is commonly used as a point of exit for refugees fleeing other parts of the continent. But since Gaddafi was overthrown in 2011, “the vast, sparsely populated country has slid into violent chaos and migrants with little cash and usually no papers are particularly vulnerable,” the Guardian explains. One survivor from Senegal said he was passing through Libya from Niger with a group of other migrants attempting to flee their home countries. They had paid a smuggler to transport them via bus to the coast, where they would risk taking a boat to Europe. But rather than take them to the coast, the smuggler took them to a dusty lot in Sabha, Libya. According to Livia Manente, an IOM officer who interviews survivors, “their driver suddenly said middlemen had not passed on his fees and put his passengers up for sale.” “Several other migrants confirmed his story, independently describing kinds of slave markets as well as kinds of private prisons all over in Libya,” she said, adding IOM Italy had confirmed similar stories from migrants landing in southern Italy. The Senegalese survivor said he was taken to a makeshift prison, which the Guardian notes are common in Libya. “Those held inside are forced to work without pay, or on meager rations, and their captors regularly call family at home demanding a ransom. His captors asked for 300,000 west African francs (about £380), then sold him on to a larger jail where the demand doubled without explanation.” When migrants were held too long without having a ransom paid for them, they were taken away and killed. “Some wasted away on meager rations in unsanitary conditions, dying of hunger and disease, but overall numbers never fell,” the Guardian reported. “If the number of migrants goes down, because of death or someone is ransomed, the kidnappers just go to the market and buy one,” Manente said. Giuseppe Loprete, IOM Niger’s chief of mission, confirmed these disturbing reports. “It’s very clear they see themselves as being treated as slaves,” he said. He arranged for the repatriation of 1,500 migrants just in the first three months of this year and is concerned more stories and incidents will emerge as more migrants return from Libya. “And conditions are worsening in Libya so I think we can also expect more in the coming months,” he added. As the United States government continues to entertain regime change in Syria as a viable solution to the many crises in that country, it is becoming ever-more evident that ousting dictators — however detestable they may be — is not effective. Toppling Saddam Hussein led not only to the deaths of civilians and radicalization within the population, but also the rise of ISIS. As Libya, once a beacon of stability in the region, continues to devolve in the fallout from the Western “humanitarian” intervention – and as human beings are dragged into emerging slave trades while rapes and kidnappings plague the population — it is increasingly obvious that further war will only create even further suffering in unforeseen ways. This article was originally published at The Anti-Media.
By Liberty Report Staff As reports are surfacing that President Trump is being presented plans to put tens of thousands of troops into Syria to overthrow Assad, one must wonder where candidate Trump has disappeared to... Candidate Trump knew full well that overthrowing Assad would just create another Libya. He said so himself, and we know that he said it! Just watch the 30 second clip below. Can someone please advise the President to listen to his former self?
By Jack Burns
As The Trump administration is flexing its military muscle, having stood up to Syria and its ally Russia, and while it’s now relishing in the news it has dropped the nation’s largest most-powerful non-nuclear bomb on a cave complex in Eastern Afghanistan, one critic was quick to point out one little-known fact. Wikileaks tweeted a simple but true statement concerning the origin of the cave complex the Americans are so proud to have reportedly destroyed. “Those tunnels the U.S is bombing in Afghanistan? They were built by the CIA,” Wikileaks tweeted.
Linked to the tweet was a New York Times article from 2005, which described a similar cave complex in detail, and added a few additional details worth noting. “Tora Bora” as it’s known, contains “fortified caves” which are reported to contain, “miles of tunnels, bunkers and base camps, dug deeply into the steep rock walls.” The tunnels were built by the “C.I.A.”, with the help of the Bin Laden family, who constructed the complex.
Also jumping in on the mockery of the Trump administration is Edward Snowden, who tweeted, “The bomb dropped today in the middle of nowhere, Afghanistan, cost $314,000,000.” And in a follow up tweet, also said, “Those mujahedeen tunnel networks we’re bombing in Afghanistan? We paid for them.” He, too, linked his tweet to The NY Times article mentioned above. Apparently, the ant farm network of tunnels built by the CIA can now be destroyed by the American military in yet another pseudo-show-of-force meant to make the Trump administration seem tough on Syria, ISIS, and Al Qaeda. Read the rest at The Free Thought Project |
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