Recent Appearances...

Warning: Undefined array key "rbname" in /data/rantburg.com/www/pgrecentorg.php on line 14
Hello !
Recent Appearances...

Home Front: Politix

America Unburdens Itself From What Has Been

2024-11-06

[Bee] Donald Trump has defeated Kamala Harris to become the next president of the United States, proving once and for all that Americans are ready to unburden themselves from what has been.

Sources say the unburdening could lead to unprecedented levels of imagining what can be.

"Kamala was a huge burden, but now it's time for us to be unburdened, more unburdened than ever before," Donald Trump said as he addressed crowds at the Palm Beach Convention Center. "She was so terrible. But now she's gone. She's a ’has-been.' So sad. Maybe she can work at McDonald's now."

Report: Kamala Already Switching to Box Wine

His supporters roared in approval, hanging onto every word as Trump reminded them of his plans for the first 100 days in office now that the nation has been unburdened from Kamala's glaring incompetence.

Sources within the Trump campaign say the president wasn't nervous at all leading up to the election thanks in part to his new spiritual advisors Joe Rogan and Elon Musk. Instead of panicking, Trump reportedly spent most days working on his golf game in between campaign stops and owning libs on Twitter.

At publishing time, Trump's new efficiency advisor Ron Paul encouraged the nation to imagine what could be if there were no Federal Reserve.

Link

Home Front: Politix

Losing Power? The Elites And The Leftist Mob Would Rather Burn It All To The Ground

2024-11-05

[ZERO] It’s been a long time since we’ve seen a significant positive evolution within American society. In the early days of the Ron Paul movement I remember the hopeful groundswell of support for a new conservative epoch that adopted a little Libertarianism and a recognition that most "conspiracy theories" are actually conspiracy realities. It was the kind of catalyst that was needed to break the long running false paradigm of Neo-Cons vs Democrats; it was the beginning of the conservative rebellion we see happening today.

How do I know things have changed? For one, Neo-Cons are almost universally hated by real conservatives. So much so that it has forced those politicians to show their true colors and come out in favor of Democrat/globalist candidates like Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. The mask is truly off and the act is over. You’re not going to see people like Mitt Romney, Liz Cheney or Lindsay Graham taken very seriously by anyone anymore.

The return to a true conservative philosophy has been initiated and this time it doesn’t look like it will be snuffed out like the Barry Goldwater era of the early 1960s. The concept of limited government, an end to debt spending, sound money, the removal of elitist NGOs from political influence, a hard-line stance against globalism, legit border security, meritocracy, a rejection of progressive deconstruction and moral relativism, all of these things are prime conservative principles.

Such ideas have been treated as "archaic" and "barbaric" for decades because they threaten the structures that keep the establishment elites in power. Today, they are making a comeback.

Some will say that it’s all because of Donald Trump, but this is not the case. This movement was growing into a Juggernaut long before Trump, though he is certainly riding the wave as it comes to fruition. The question is, will Trump do it justice if he gets the gold this week? I predicted a Trump win in 2016 for months leading up to the election despite the army of naysayers (I also predict he will win in 2024). But, for me, his first term left a lot to be desired; the biggest problem being the elitist creepers filling his cabinet.

But hey, at least he wasn’t promoting transsexual procedures for children or trying to start World War III with Russia like the Democrats have been doing. I’ll also admit that Trump’s coalition of allies is looking FAR better this time around. Talk of Ron Paul joining the team is surprising and gives me some hope.

Link

Home Front: WoT

‘How I Got Fired From The CIA’: Career Ops Officer Tells All

2024-09-04

[ZeroHedge] Former CIA operations officer Philip Giraldi spent over two decades in the agency, which took him around the world. We heard his fascinating and alarming story of "How I Got Fired From The CIA" during a closed-door session at the Ron Paul Institute's Liberty Platform conference held in Dulles, Virginia.

Below are ex-CIA Giraldi's words recounting how his long career led up to a difficult show-down with CIA leadership, and what happened next, as transcribed directly by ZeroHedge [emphasis ours].

After graduate school and following time in the US Army as an intelligence officer, I joined the CIA. I was an operations officer, which means a spy. I was sent to a lot of nice places to live in, starting with Rome. And then I was in Hamburg and then I was in Istanbul, and then Barcelona. After Barcelona I left the agency for a while and came back as a contractor after 9/11, and I was there for another three years.

How I got in trouble with the agency was... after I came back as a contractor I was sent to Afghanistan - this was after we had overrun it. It didn't take me long to figure out that we had replaced the Taliban
Taliban

...mindless ferocity in a turban...
by becoming worse than the Taliban.

And there was no evidence whatsoever coming from CIA analysts that [Osama] bin Laden [and the Afghan government] had actually been involved in 9/11,

Seriously??

and so it was a bit of a contradictory assignment, and I became suspicious after that concerning the bogus things going on and what was developing inside the government.

So a couple years later I was back at CIA headquarters at Langley, Virginia and working with them on basic security issues. I had been a counterterrorism specialist and so I was working on different groups that they were considering to be 'over horizon' threats to the United States. This was a new concept, this threat. The tune that was being played in Washington was that 'we are threatened'.

Anyway, while I was doing this I was also talking to a number of my friends who were classmates [from prior schooling and training early in his career] who were analysts and they at this point were very senior analysts in the agency. And the United States meanwhile was preparing to attack Iraq because Iraq was 'a threat'.

And these friends of mine who were analysts saw all of the raw information that went into what the US government was seeing and they said, "you know this is all bullshit, this is all a lie - the intelligence that's coming in is fake. And this fake intelligence is being used to justify starting another war."

So anyway I got 'converted' and I started to be somewhat outspoken on the issue of why we should not be going into Iraq and we should leave this alone. And word of this got around [the agency].

So they called me in, they polygraphed me. They wanted to know who among all of my friends have similar views. I refused to cooperate and they said at that point, "well you failed your polygraph exam, we want to take away your security clearance."

Link

-Lurid Crime Tales-

Ron Paul - Why We'll Never Know What Really Happened in Butler, PA

2024-07-17

[Ron Paul Institute] Just days after the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump, theories are flying from all directions. Many who ridiculed the "conspiracy theories" of conservatives are now suggesting the whole event was a set-up to boost Trump in the polls ahead of the election. Others suggest it was the "deep state" or even foreign actors who organized it.

Former US Navy Seal and founder of Blackwater, Erik Prince, claims that "The fact that [the Secret Service] allowed a rifle armed shooter within 150 yds to a preplanned event is either malice or massive incompetence." He went on to observe that, "unaccountable bloated bureaucracies continue to fail us as Americans," adding that "unserious and unworthy people in positions of authority got us to this near disaster. Merit and execution must be the only deciding factors in hiring and leadership, not the social engineering priority of the day."

Video has emerged showing that for at least two minutes law enforcement knew someone with a gun was on a roof aiming at the former President and no one communicated the need to pull Trump from the stage. You can clearly hear the crowd warning law enforcement that someone was on the roof. Yet he was unhindered until the first shots rang out.

Considering this fact, Erik Prince has a point.

If this is like any previous governmental foul-ups, we can expect hearings, investigations, and commissions that will actually serve to hide the official errors or even malicious intent by some in the government. That’s what government does no matter who is in office: protect itself from actual scrutiny and resist being exposed as incompetent or worse.

Link

Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia

US-Backed Ukrainian Publication Releases New ‘Enemies List' Including Donald Trump, Ron Paul, Ron Paul Institute, Hundreds More…

2024-06-11

[Ron Paul Institute] The US government-affiliated Ukrainian web publication "Data Journalism Agency" (TEXTY) has just released a report attacking hundreds of prominent American individuals and organizations as enemies for not supporting sending more US money and weapons to Ukraine.

The report, titled "Roller Coaster: From Trumpists to Communists. The forces in the U.S. impeding aid to Ukraine and how they do it," intends to smear American politicians, journalists, and social media influencers as tools of Russia, writing:

Most of the people in our study do not have direct, proven ties to the Russian government or propagandists. However, the arguments they use to urge authorities to distance themselves from Ukraine echo key messages of Russian propaganda aimed at depriving Ukrainians of the ability to defend themselves with Western weapons and funds. (emphasis added)

Although the "enemies list" purports to correct disinformation about Ukraine spread by those on its list, the report itself is full of crude disinformation. For example this bit:

Link

Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia

The Great Ukraine Robbery is Not Over Yet

2024-05-08

[Ron Paul Institute] The ink was barely dry on President Biden’s signature transferring another $61 billion to the black hole called Ukraine, when the mainstream media broke the news that this was not the parting shot in a failed US policy. The elites have no intention of shutting down this gravy train, which transports wealth from the middle and working class to the wealthy and connected class.

Reuters wrote right after the aid bill was passed that, "Ukraine’s $61 billion lifeline is not enough." Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell went on the Sunday shows after the bill was passed to say that $61 billion is "not a whole lot of money for us..." Well, that’s easy for him to say — after all it’s always easier to spend someone else’s money!

Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, was far from grateful for the $170 billion we have shipped thus far to his country. In an interview with Foreign Policy magazine as the aid package was passed, Kuleba had the nerve to criticize the US for not producing weapons fast enough. "If you cannot produce enough interceptors to help Ukraine win the war against the country that wants to destroy the world order, then how are you going to win in the war against perhaps an enemy who is stronger than Russia?"

How’s that for a "thank you"?

Link

Israel-Palestine-Jordan

The Tragic Self-Destruction of an Enraged Israel

2024-02-05

[Ron Paul Institute] Israel is boxed-in, as is becoming very evident to many Israelis. One Israeli correspondent (formerly a Cabinet Secretary) illustrates its nature:

"The meaning of the 7th October default is not only the loss of lives ... but mainly the potential transformation of how Israel is perceived ... as no longer to be feared by Middle Eastern actors."

"The Israeli leadership must internalize that we can no longer be content with a "sense of victory" among the Israeli public ... It is doubtful whether victory in Gaza is enough to restore the fear of Israel to the levels we had vis-a-vis our enemies. A victory that boils down to just the release of the captives and confidence-building measures to establish a Palestinian state would not be enough in shoring up Israel’s image in that regard."

"If the quagmire of Gaza ... brings the [Israeli] leadership to the realization that there is no ability to present a clear victory on this front, one that will lead to a strategic change in the region, they must consider switching fronts and reasserting Israeli deterrence through the removal of the strategic threat in Lebanon ... victory against one of the richest and most powerful terrorist organizations in the world — Hezbollah — can restore deterrence in the region in general ... Israel must remove the threat from the north and dismantle the power structure Hezbollah has built in Lebanon, regardless of the situation in the south."

"But without victory in the south, a significant achievement in the north becomes that much more important."

The above quotation goes directly to the heart of the issue. That is: "How can Zionism be saved?." All the rest of the "blah-blah" coming from world leaders is largely bluff. Not only is Gaza NOT giving Israelis a sense of victory; on the contrary, it is widely proliferating a violent anger at a surprise, "shameful" defeat.

Some in the war cabinet (i.e., Eisenkot) suggest that Israel look truth in the eye: It should capitulate to Hamas; give a ceasefire a chance; release incarcerated Palestinians, and save the hostages held in Gaza:

"I think it is necessary to say boldly that it is impossible to bring the hostages back alive in the near future without a [ceasefire] deal, and anyone who is feeding lies to the public is feeding lies."

But this is not the predominant sentiment amongst Israelis: The latest Peace Index survey reflects the pervasive gloom: 94% percent of Jews think Israel has used the right amount of firepower in Gaza (or "not enough" (43%)). Three-quarters of all Israelis think the number of Palestinians harmed since October is justified to achieve its aims; a full two-thirds of Jewish respondents say numbers of casualties are definitely justified (only 21% say "somewhat" justified).

The true price Israel will be paying, however, is not merely the release of Palestinian prisoners (though that, in itself, would create a popular uproar); but rather, it is fear that acquiescence to Hamas demands would spell the end to the Israel-security paradigm:

Link

Fifth Column

Someone uploaded one of those viral

2023-11-23

The words of Australian leftwing “activist” blogger Caitlin Johnstone. For some reason the Ron Paul Institute likes to publish her stuff.

[Twitter] Someone uploaded one of those viral "help identify this racist jerk" clips featuring a man accosting a street vendor with awful Islamophobic vitriol, and it turned out he was the former US State Department Deputy Director in the Office of Israel and Palestinian Affairs.

It sounds made up, but that’s exactly what just happened; Vice has a whole article out about it. The video was uploaded today, and within hours the man was identified as Stuart Seldowitz, who helped direct US diplomacy on Israel-Palestine from 1999 to 2003 and then served on the Obama administration’s National Security Council.

Seldowitz’s identity was confirmed by his former employer Gotham Government Relations, who released a statement denouncing him and saying they’ve ended all affiliation with him.

Seldowitz is seen hounding the New York City vendors in multiple different videos wearing multiple different outfits,

...how very odd that someone was following him around the big city to film this...

showing a sustained campaign of harassment and abuse. He told them while fully aware he was being filmed that Israel killing thousands of Palestinian kids "wasn’t enough",

...to be more precise, he said if Israel killed 4,000 Palestinian children, it wasn’t enough. There was no admission of culpability from someone not in a position to know the facts. But Ms Johnstone claims to be an activist journalist, and her American husband/co-writer believes she is a good person instead of calling her on her propagandizing...

insulted their religion, threatened them, mocked their intelligence and their English, called them terrorists, and asked "Did you rape your daughter like Mohammed did?" From the videos he appears to be harassing them for no reason other than because they are Muslims selling halal food.

That such a horrible person could climb his way to the highest echelons of the world’s most powerful government — working on Palestinian affairs no less — illustrates an important point about the US empire and what it is. There are no barriers stopping such creatures from rising to the top of that power structure, just the opposite in fact — they get an express lane to the top. That’s why bloodthirsty swamp monsters like John Bolton, Lindsey Graham, Victoria Nuland and Elliott Abrams find themselves so intimately involved with US policymaking.

That’s the true face of the US empire, right there. That’s the empire at its most honest. Not dressed up in affable charm and slick PR work, but sneering and hurling racist invective at immigrants who are just trying to do their jobs in peace. Not performing carefully rehearsed faces of compassion for the Palestinians who are being tragically unintentionally killed as collateral damage in Israel’s war of defense against Hamas, but staring right into the camera and saying "If we killed 4,000 Palestinian kids, you know what? It wasn’t enough."

Ah. She got the if in there this time.

Too many people look at Israel as something separate from the US empire, seeing it as a small nation run by a historically mistreated ethnic group that everyone singles out and picks on unfairly. If you look at Israel separately from the US-centralized global power structure, it feels off to have any forceful animosity toward Israel and its government, because it feels like you’re picking on the little guy.

It’s only when you see clearly that Israel is just an arm of the same empire that’s been murdering people by the millions around the world with nonstop invasions, bombing campaigns, proxy conflicts, starvation sanctions and CIA coups that you understand that, yes, Israel really is exactly as evil as it appears to be, and its behavior in Gaza is exactly what it looks like.

Wheeeee! And there she goes, activisting set to eleven.

The US empire backs Israel for the same reason it backs most of the world’s dictatorships: because a globe-spanning empire can only be held together by nonstop violence and tyranny. Israel and other US-aligned states in the middle east are like the chair and the whip of a lion tamer — weapons used to violently abuse the populations of a crucial geostrategic region into compliance. It suits the empire perfectly to have a nuclear-armed government which exists in a constant state of war in the middle east governed by officials who speak English with American accents and interests which are reliably in alignment with those of the United States.

Stuart Seldowitz is not an aberration but a perfect manifestation of all this.

Yeah? Then why is this the only report of some American Jewish guy yelling at Moslem immigrants?

This is the sort of mind which keeps the empire marching along from administration to administration no matter who Americans elect. This is the sort of mind which keeps the weapons flowing, the blood pouring, the fossil fuels burning, and the terrified screams which power the imperial machine continually erupting into the night sky.

The New York Post has the deets. The jerk harassed one vender several times over two weeks, and lots of people are mad at him now, including the lobbyist company he worked for until the video came out. He was never as important as Ms Johnstone makes him put to be, though — just an assistant department head, as far as I can tell, and now an example of the “Hey, kids, get off of my lawn!” style of invective.
Update from the NY Post at 7:30 a.m.: He’s been arrested for harassment, and the vender is talking of suing him.

Link

Home Front: Politix

Ron Paul: We Need A Peace President

2023-06-20

[Ron Paul Institute] Most people agree that we are closer to nuclear war than at any time since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. Some would even argue that we are closer now than we were in those fateful days, when Soviet missiles in Cuba almost triggered a nuclear war between the US and the USSR.

In those days we were told that we were in a life-or-death struggle with Communism and thus could not cede a square foot of territory or the dominoes would fall one-by-one until the "Reds" ruled over us.

That crisis was very real to me, as I was drafted into the military in the middle of the US/USSR standoff over Cuba and we could all feel how close we were to annihilation.

Fortunately, we had a president in the White House at the time who understood the dangers of nuclear brinkmanship. Even though he was surrounded by hawks who could never forgive him for aborting the idiotic Bay of Pigs Cuba invasion, President John F. Kennedy picked up the telephone for a discussion with his Soviet counterpart, Nikita Khrushchev, which eventually saved the world.
Both Kennedy and Khrushchev had served, survived world conflict, and knew something about war.
Historians now tell us that President Kennedy agreed to remove US missiles from Turkey in exchange for the Soviets removing missiles from Cuba. It was a classic case of how diplomacy can work if properly employed.

It is all too clear that we do not have a John F. Kennedy in the White House today. Although we no longer face a Soviet empire and communist ideology as justification for taking a confrontational tone toward Russia, the Biden Administration is still dragging the US toward a nuclear conflict. Why are they putting us all at risk? The same old "domino theory" that was discredited in the Cold War: If we don’t fight Russia down to the last Ukrainian, Putin will soon be marching through Berlin.

Link

Government Corruption

Ron Paul Says There Has Been a Coup in America, Claims it Began With the CIA Murder of JFK (VIDEO)

2023-04-13

[Gateway] Former presidential candidate, congressman and medical doctor Ron Paul appeared on the Tim Pool podcast this week and made some bold statements about the state of country.

Paul called out the numerous current members of Congress who have no knowledge of or loyalty to the U.S. Constitution. He slammed corrupt and out of control government spending.

Finally, he claimed that JFK was murdered by the CIA and that that moment was the beginning of a coup.

The Daily Caller has details:

Link

-Land of the Free

Heritage Turns Conservative, Neocons Freak Out

2022-10-16

The Libertarian perspective:

[Ron Paul Inst.] The Heritage Foundation is getting carjacked by Beltway neocons after its political arm, Heritage Action, actually embraced fiscal conservatism and opposed the latest round of endless multi-billion dollar giveaways to Europe's most corrupt country, Ukraine. With crocodile tears, the Washington Post's neocon scribbler Josh Rogin is bemoaning how the "once-conservative" (read: neocon) Heritage Foundation is "abandoning the principles" of Ronald Reagan and instead embracing the isolationist nationalism of the MAGA crowd.

Quoting several neocon former Heritage "analysts" who took their toys and went home when Heritage began to veer off the neocon reservation, Rogin notes that:

The Heritage Foundation has been an influential brain trust for GOP administrations since the Reagan years — and still claims to stand for Ronald Reagan’s doctrine of 'peace through strength.' But beginning in the Trump era, and even more so now under its new president, Kevin Roberts, Heritage is moving away from that tradition, according to several foreign policy staffers who recently left the foundation.

Rogin quotes a former spook and Heritage analyst with the ridiculous name of "Klon Kitchen," who said of Heritage's newfound embrace of actual conservative principles, "This pivot on foreign policy is ignorant, reckless, and it is clearly elevating partisan opportunism over literally decades of principle."

Yes, as we learned from the first Trump impeachment, any dissent from the blob's embrace of endless war is not approved by the "inter-agency consensus."

Mr. Kitchen went on to land a gig at the neocon warmongering American Enterprise Institute after walking away from Heritage, so we needn't feel sorry for him. As long as Raytheon's checks are still clearing, Kitchen will keep on cooking at AEI.

The target of Rogin's attack is new Heritage president, former Texas Public Policy Foundation director and self-described "recovering neocon" Kevin Roberts, who committed the ultimate sin of praising Sen. Rand Paul for his "leadership" in opposing the seemingly-limitless Ukraine aid gravy train.

Roberts is to be commended for his realization that the Cold War is actually over and that were Reagan still with us it is unlikely he would be espousing the same foreign policies as he did in the 1980s when there was this thing called the "Soviet Union." The world is changing and thanks to Roberts, Heritage is realizing it.

Rogin is no dummy, and in the semi-hit piece on Heritage he accurately captures what the shift is all about:

In the battle for the soul of GOP foreign policy between establishment Republicans and Trump-style national conservatives, the former still hold the levers of official power but the latter are gaining ground. The Heritage Foundation’s turn toward the 'new right' is the clearest symbol yet that the MAGA movement’s foreign policy is becoming institutionalized but moving further away from the Republican leadership.

If the Republican Party is to have any future it will continue to move into the camp of the antiwar conservatives and the example set by former Republican Presidential candidate Ron Paul (and other trailblazers like Pat Buchanan).

I had no idea big L Libertarians and Paleocons approved of one another.

The new Republican candidates who embrace this pro-America foreign policy, and there are several of them poised to win in November, will be vilified as merely "MAGA" zombie-bots, but in fact the tired old neocon ideology that has dominated the Republican party is played out. It has no more energy. It is in a wheelchair on life-support.

Washington already has a pro-war, pro-police state, pro-tyranny party and it is called the Democratic Party. Can Republicans read the writing on the wall? Hopefully Roberts at Heritage will stand his ground and lead the way!

Link

Europe

The Curious Whodunit of Nordstreams 1 and 2

2022-10-02