A new episode of Five Minutes Five Issues posted on Wednesday. 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.
On Friday, Libertarian Party presidential nominee Gary Johnson made a guarantee to the Deseret News and KSL TV and radio editorial board in Utah. Johnson said he would make 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney part of a Johnson presidential administration should Romney want to be in it. Johnson also said it would be Romney’s choice what position Romney has.
What job might Romney pick? Johnson’s running-mate Bill Weld told the editorial board that Romney would be a “great” secretary of defense or secretary of state.
Issue two.
Will mass surveillance whistle-blower Edward Snowden be moving to Iceland this autumn?
In October, Iceland likely will hold national elections. John Henley reports in the Guardian that the Pirate Party “has been at or near the top of every opinion poll for over a year” in Iceland and incudes in its platform offering asylum to Snowden.
In 2005, the extraordinary American chess player Bobby Fischer moved to Iceland after the nation offered him asylum. The United States government had been attempting to snatch Fischer from Japan, where Fischer was living. The US wanted to punish Fischer for playing a 1992 chess match in Yugoslavia against chess great Boris Spassky in violation of US sanctions.
Issue three.
What’s the deal with Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) documents concerning Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton being altered or just plain missing?
US House of Representatives Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) is bewildered by the FBI’s documents from its investigation of Hillary Clinton regarding her failure to adequately protect US government secrets. The FBI gave Chaffetz two copies of the documents. Chaffetz says, “When you turn them page by page, they’re different.” Oh, and the interrogation was not taped. What a mess.
Meanwhile, Ronald Kessler reports Tuesday in the Daily Mail regarding the 1993 death of President Bill Clinton’s Deputy White House Counsel Vince Foster. Kessler writes that an FBI investigation, according to FBI agents interviewed by Kessler, concluded “it was [Hillary Clinton’s] vilification of Foster in front of other White House aides, coming on top of [Foster’s] depression, that triggered [Foster’s] suicide about a week later.” So Kessler went looking for the related FBI reports in the Foster death investigation files at the National Archives. There, he found “the reports on Hillary Clinton’s role in [Foster’s] death were absent.”
Issue four.
Many people in the media and politics quickly blamed the Russian government for hacking the National Security Agency (NSA) to obtain some of the NSA’s hacking tools. James Bamford, whose insightful writing on spying is always worth the read, doubts this finger pointing.
Bamford presents in a Reuters commentary an alternative theory. Bamford writes that “it seems more likely that an employee stole” the hacking tools. Bamford continues that it is possible “someone assigned to the agency’s highly sensitive Tailored Access Operations” is responsible.
Issue five.
You have likely heard Ron Paul say, “End the Fed.” Among the benefits Paul says will come from ending the Federal Reserve is ending the US government’s wars.
Paul examined the connection between central banks’ monetary inflation and wars Friday at the Ron Paul Liberty Report. Wars are funded by, as Paul puts it, “increasing the money supply, diluting the coin.” In contrast, Paul concludes that “gold is a friend of liberty and peace.” The gold standard makes wars much less likely to be pursued because it deprives a government of the money printing option to pay for the wars. If government must tax people directly, instead of print money, to finance wars, Paul says people will tend to resist wars unless they believe their country is threatened.
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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.
Five four three two one.
