What a busy week Ron Paul had last week!
The former Texas Republican Congressman and three-time presidential candidate spent last week defending gold, championing WikiLeaks and warning of United States Donald Trump’s surge in Syria.
Arizona’s Push for Honest Money
Speaking to Arizona state Senate Committee on Finance on Wednesday, Dr. Paul lent his support to HB2014. This is a piece of legislation that would treat gold and silver as money and remove the capital gains tax on the exchange of Federal Reserve notes for gold and silver.
He argued that “if you want to have liberty and limit the size of government, you have to have honest money.”
“We ought not to tax money – and that’s a good idea. It makes no sense to tax money,” said Paul. “Why does the government need the money is the big question.
“Congress is allowed to coin money,” Paul explained. “They don’t have the authority to print money.”
Here is Dr. Paul’s full testimony:
Also see:
Sound Money Is Rising at the State Level
Will Arizona make sound money great again? State moves closer to normalizing gold as currency
WikiLeaks Release of CIA Documents is ‘Fantastic’
It is well-known that Paul does not trust government and will always endorse transparency. Therefore, it isn’t much of a surprise that the bestselling author of “The Revolution: A Manifesto” is an ardent supporter of WikiLeaks.
On the heels of the government transparency organization’s dump of CIA documents that show widespread spying and surveillance, Paul told the Fox Business Network that the group’s work is “fantastic.”
He noted that the documents suggest “that liberty is in big trouble,” adding that the media are not doing their job covering the story and the apparent danger of today’s technology.
Here is the interview:
Donald Trump’s Surge in Syria Will Fail
Last week, United States President Donald Trump increased the nation’s military presence in Syria by sending approximately 400 Marines to the ISIS-controlled Raqqa, and about 100 Army Rangers to Manbji. Reports also suggest that he may send 2,500 U.S. troops to Kuwait in the event of further escalation in Iraq and syria.
This isn’t making Paul happy at all.
Writing in an op-ed, Paul slammed the administration for violating international law by sending U.S. troops into another nation without permission. He also averred that the president violated U.S. law by taking the U.S. into war without a declaration from Congress.
According to Paul, President Trump is “being drawn into a quaqmire by the neoconservatives in Washington,” noting that the escalation in Syria “is doomed to failure” because lives will be destroyed, it will cost the U.S. a lot of money and it will ruin his presidency.
What should Trump do? Paul recommends de-escalating immediately.
Here is the op-ed piece:
President Trump says the purpose of the escalation is to defeat ISIS in Raqqa, its headquarters in Syria. However the Syrian Army with its allies Russia and Iran are already close to defeating ISIS in Syria. Why must the U.S. military be sent in when the Syrian army is already winning? Does Trump wish to occupy eastern Syria and put a Washington-backed rebel government in charge? Has anyone told President Trump what that would to cost in dollars and lives – including American lives? How would this U.S.-backed rebel government respond to the approach of a Syrian army backed up by the Russian military?
Is Trump planning on handing eastern Syria over to the Kurds, who have been doing much of the fighting in the area? How does he think NATO-ally Turkey would take a de facto Kurdistan carved out of Syria with its eyes on Kurdish-inhabited southern Turkey?
And besides, by what rights would Washington carve up Syria or any other country?
Or is Trump going to give up on the U.S. policy of “regime change” and hand conquered eastern Syria back to Bashar al-Assad? If that is the case, why waste American lives and money if the Syrians and their allies are already doing the job? Candidate Trump even said he was perfectly happy with Russia and Syria getting rid of ISIS. If U.S. policy is shifting toward accepting an Assad victory, it could be achieved by ending arms supplies to the rebels and getting out of the way.
It does not appear that President Trump or his advisors have thought through what happens next if the U.S. military takes possession of Raqqa, Syria. What is the endgame? Maybe the neocons told him it would be a “cakewalk” as they promised before the 2003 Iraq invasion.
Part of the problem is that President Trump’s advisors believe the myth that the U.S. “surge” in Iraq and Afghanistan was a great success and repeating it would being the victory that eluded Obama with his reliance of drones and proxy military forces. A big show of US military force on the ground – like the 100,000 sent to Afghanistan by Obama in 2009 – is what is needed in Syria, these experts argue. Rarely is it asked that if the surge worked so well why are Afghanistan and Iraq still a disaster?
President Trump’s escalation in Syria is doomed to failure. He is being drawn into a quagmire by the neocons that will destroy scores of lives, cost us a fortune, and may well ruin his presidency. He must de-escalate immediately before it is too late.
Here is also a video of Dr. Paul discussing the escalation in Syria:
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