While France and the rest of Europe — not to mention Asia — are busy signing trade deals with Iran for when UN sanctions are lifted early next year, US companies are hampered by myriad legal restrictions on doing business with Iran. Will these restrictions continue even after UN sanctions are lifted, keeping US companies out in the cold? That is what the real isolationists hope for. Who are they? Tune in to today’s Liberty Report:
Reprinted from The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity.
I caught the New York City Veterans Day parade yesterday. Never saw so many cops in one place – I’m glad I don’t have any outstanding warrants in New York state. There was endless adulation with no questions asked about the politicians who send American men and women to get killed and maimed for no good reason. Here are a few photos from the event.
Jail Guards for Jesus:
I avoided getting arrested even though I forgot to bring my press pass.
President Obama met with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu on November 9 in the White House and is considering the Israeli request to give a 50% increase of nearly $1.5 billion in U.S. military funding bringing the US donation to the killing of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza to $4.5 billion a year.
As it stands now, more that half of the US foreign military spending for 2016 goes to Israel. As in all things, Israel gets special treatment by the US allowing Israel to spend 25% of its gift from the US to pay itself for buying weapons from its own weapons industry!!!
According to a recent congressional report, Israel has received $124.3 billion in military assistance from the US since its founding in 1948.
The report states that “strong congressional support for Israel has resulted in Israel receiving benefits not available to any other countries; for example, Israel can use US military assistance both for research and development in the United States and for military purchases from Israeli manufacturers.
A delegation of 23 members of the women’s peace activist group CodePink just returned to the U.S. after a 9 day tour of Palestine. I was among the delegates that wanted to show my solidarity with the Palestinian people, meet with Palestinian activist groups and learn about conditions on the ground first hand. The trip was organized to coincide with the Canaan 10th Annual Olive Harvest Festival at Burqin, Palestine.
The itinerary included visits to the Palestinian cities of Ramallah, Nablus, Nus Jbeil, Sebastia, Jenin, and East Jerusalem. In Ramallah we met with the Stop the Wall Campaign, a Palestinian grassroots organization against apartheid and the illegal Israeli settlements on stolen Palestinian lands. In Nablus we met with women’s cooperative organizations that manufacture Palestinian organic olive oil soap, maftoul, freekeh, spices and other products.
In Jenin we met with the Palestinian Fair Trade Association (PFTA), and the Freedom Theatre project in the Jenin refugee camp. Other highlights of the tour included overnight homestays with local Palestinian families, picking olives with Palestinian farmers, gathered with Palestinians in singing the national anthem of Palestine, hiking the mountain trails and picnics under centuries-old olive trees. CodePink organized an impromptitude demonstration in front of a Re-Max sign advertising real estate for sale in the illegal Israeli settlement of Ma’ale Lovona.
After 14 years, more than a trillion dollars, tens of thousands of lives lost on all sides, the US/NATO mission in Afghanistan is more adrift than ever. Next month NATO member state ministers will meet to determine the next steps in Afghanistan. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg claims there will be no future combat mission for NATO, but NATO generals admit that if NATO leaves there will be an even swifter collapse. In today’s Liberty Report, Ron Paul offers some advice to NATO leaders:
Reprinted from The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity.
When I arrived at the Kabul International Airport on November 4, I was unaware that the same day the New York Times published an article, “Life Pulls Back in Afghan Capital, as Danger Rises and Troops Recede.” My friends Abdulhai and Ali, 17 years old, young men I have known since my first visit five years ago, greeted me with smiles and hugs and took my bags. Disregarded by soldiers and police armed with automatic weapons, we caught up on old times as we walked past concrete blast walls, sand bag fortifications, check points and razor wire to the public road and hailed a cab.
The sun was just burning through the clouds after an early morning rain and I had never seen Kabul look so bright and clean. Once past the airport, the high way into the city was bustling with rush hour traffic and commerce. I was unaware until I read the New York Times on line a few days later, that this time I was one of only a few US citizens likely to be on that road. “The American Embassy’s not allowed to move by road anymore,” a senior Western official told the Times, which reported further that “after 14 years of war, of training the Afghan Army and the police, it has become too dangerous to drive the mile and a half from the airport to the embassy.”
Helicopters now ferry employees working with the United States and the international military coalition to and from offices in Kabul we are told. The United States Embassy in Kabul is one of the largest in the world and already a largely self-contained community, its personnel are now even more isolated from Afghan people and institutions than before. “No one else,” other than US and coalition facilities, the Times reports, “has a compound with a landing pad.” While proclaiming its mission there “Operation Resolute Support” for Afghanistan, US officials no longer travel on Afghan streets.
