A new episode of Five Minutes Five Issues is out today. You can listen to it, and read a transcript, below. You can also find previous episodes of the show at Stitcher, iTunes, YouTube, and SoundCloud.
Listen to the new episode here:
Read a transcript of the new episode, including links to further information regarding the topics discussed, here:
The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity welcomes you to Five Minutes Five Issues.
Starting in five four three two one.
Hello, I am Adam Dick, a Ron Paul Institute senior fellow.
Let’s start.
Issue one.
WikiLeaks revealed this week thousands of United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) documents. The documents include information concerning the government hacking some televisions so they become surveillance devices for listening to people.
This brings to mind the telescreens in the dystopia of George Orwell’s novel 1984. Here is part of the description of telescreen surveillance in the first chapter of 1984:
Any sound that Winston made, above the level of a very low whisper, would be picked up by it; moreover, so long as he remained within the field of vision which the metal plaque commanded, he would be seen as well as heard. There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any given wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all of the time.
Issue two.
On Saturday, President Donald Trump expressed indignation that the US government subjected his presidential campaign to electronic surveillance. Yet, earlier in the week, an anonymous White House official was quoted in a Reuters article saying the administration supports reauthorizing, with no limitations added, US mass surveillance law provisions that are set to expire.
Is this the elitist approach we are to expect from the Trump administration — surveillance of Trump and his associates is wrong, but surveillance of the common people is OK?
Issue three.
On Wednesday, Ron Paul testified at an Arizona State Senate Finance Committee hearing. The topic of Paul’s presentation was his support for sound money and, in particular, for HB 2014, a bill being considered in the Arizona legislature that defines certain coins containing precious metal as legal tender. The bill also eliminates the state’s taxation of capital gains from the exchange of such coins for US dollars. The bill has passed in the Arizona House of Representatives, and, after the hearing at which Paul spoke, it was approved by the Senate committee.
Issue four.
The US Transportation Security Administration (TSA) began employing a “universal pat-down” procedure this week that will result in the more invasive frisking of many individuals, including people who are randomly chosen for frisking, as well as people who either refuse to stand in a full-body scanner or for whom a full-body scanner’s results indicate they should be frisked.
The TSA calls the friskings “pat-downs,” a phrase that may make the action involved sound less offensive. Whatever you call it, the TSA is subjecting people, who just want to travel from point A to point B, to mandatory invasive touching and searching similar to what people are subjected to before being taken to jail on a criminal charge or while serving a sentence in prison.
In the Tuesday episode of the Ron Paul Liberty Report, Ron Paul strongly criticized the worsening TSA friskings. Paul also declared that he would like to see President Trump wait in an airport TSA line and be publicly subjected to the new type of frisking. Maybe that experience, Paul suggested, would lead Trump to respect our rights more.
Issue five.
On Thursday, US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) spokesman Jonathan Liu wrote in a statement to media that “Julian Assange is not exactly a bastion of truth and integrity.” Strange, that sounds more like a description of the CIA than of Assange or his WikiLeaks organization.
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That’s a wrap.
Transcripts of Five Minutes Five Issues episodes, including links to related information, are at the Ron Paul Institute blog.
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