News and Views
Issue one!
To understand John McLaughlin, it was helpful to have been a 13-year-old entering an all-boys Jesuit school in the 1950s.
For when John yelled "Wronnng" at me from his center chair of "The McLaughlin Group," it hit with the same familiar finality I had heard, many times, from Jesuits at the front of the class at Gonzaga.
Continue reading “A Eulogy for John J. McLaughlin by Pat Buchanan”
Ho, ho, ho, here’s a scenario no one could have possibly anticipated: some complex thing in the Middle East as a temporary patch to some previous complicated thing in the Middle East turned out to backfire for the U.S. because of a lack of any semblance of an actual policy as opposed to a series of random actions linked only in temporal order. Soon a new thing will be needed to counteract the lastest old thing, but that’s for next week.
The most current thing is that Russia has deployed bomber and fighter aircraft to Iran for air strikes on rebels in Syria, the first time in 37 years that Iran allowed foreign forces to base and deploy from its territory. The new basing dramatically cuts into the number of frequent flyer miles the Russian air forces needs to bomb Syria. Flying out of Iran instead of from inside Russia means more sorties a day, maybe lower maintenance burdens, or maybe heavier payloads.
Continue reading “Russia Teams Up With Iran To Continue To Bomb Syria”
Just when you thought US foreign policy could not get more absurd. Lt. Gen. Stephen Townsend, who is listed as “commander of US forces in Iraq and Syria,” has issued a warning to the Syrian military that if its counter-insurgency operations on Syrian soil leave US troops on Syrian soil “feeling threatened,” the US military would “defend itself.”
That needs to be broken down to even be believed.
The Syrian military is fighting an armed uprising on its own soil. The US government is training and equipping several factions of that armed insurgency, in this case the Kurdish YPG militia. The US military is also operating on Syrian soil alongside and in support of the YPG militia. Members of the YPG militia have, over the past several days, been firing on Syrian government forces. The Syrian air force returns fire on its own soil and the US military that is illegally operating on Syrian soil issues a warning to the Syrian government to stop firing on insurgents on Syrian soil!
Continue reading “US Warns Syrian Military… Against Operating Inside Syria!”
Ron Paul, interviewed Friday by Stuart Varney at Fox Business, says “trouble has been brewing” around Ukraine since the United States government in 2014 “participated in the coup” in the European nation, resulting in political upheavals including the ousting of President Viktor Yanukovych. The coup also set in motion developments leading to secession of Crimea from Ukraine and fighting between the Ukraine government’s forces and people in eastern Ukraine.
Concerning current tensions in the region that could lead to a larger military conflict, Paul cautions that “we should be aware of what NATO’s doing, what the European Union is doing, and what our CIA is doing, and how we’re sponsoring one side over the other without looking at what the people in Crimea and eastern Ukraine are actually wanting themselves.”
Paul, who founded the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity in 2013 after retiring from the US House of Representatives, also discusses Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s campaign in the interview.
Watch Paul’s complete interview here:
Reprinted from The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity.
In comments which appeared to be designed to end concerns about foreign donors buying influence in a future Clinton government through the Clinton Foundation, former President Bill Clinton has announced that, if Hillary is elected president, there will be changes made to the foundation’s donations guidelines, including an end to all foreign donations.
Instead of resolving the questions, however, this appears to only add to them, with the advanced notice about a potential end to foreign donations in three months giving the appearance that they’re soliciting those donors before the rule change.
Hillary stepped down from the board of the Clinton Foundation after launching her presidential campaign, and Bill has indicated he would step down as well if she is elected. Still, it is hard to say they would not retain substantial influence over the foundation’s activities.
When she was Secretary of State, Clinton faced similar questions, and indeed the foundation similarly stopped accepting foreign donations while she was in that role, though they resumed accepting such donations as soon as she left the office. This too gives the appearance that foreign donations might just be “temporarily” suspended during her administration, leaving the question of whether donors are buying influence totally unanswered, and just indicating that the cash can’t flow after a certain date.
Osama bin Laden’s youngest son, Hamza, purportedly released an audio recording earlier this week in which he called for young Saudis to get involved with al-Qaeda in Yemen and in which he called for retaliation against ongoing US military operations in several countries in the greater Middle East. Said the younger bin Laden: “We will continue striking you and targeting you in your country and abroad in response to your oppression of the people of Palestine, Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia and the rest of the Muslim lands that did not survive your oppression.” Should we listen to him and start thinking about removing his recruiting tools, or do we keep doing that which helps him and others like him recruit more terrorists? Our thoughts in today’s Ron Paul Liberty Report:
Reprinted from The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity.
