“You are the smartest people. I’m late to the party.” – former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene to the Ron Paul Spring Conference audience
“You have been right for so long. You have been awake longer than most Americans.” – former National Counterterrorism Center Director Joe Kent to the Ron Paul Spring Conference audience
The theme of Ron Paul’s Spring Conference in Lake Jackson, Texas was “War is Back on the Menu” but participants from all over the US weren’t placing any orders. The event program portrayed both President Trump and Bibi Netanyahu holding a US Army-stamped ladle stirring an unappetizing witch’s brew inside a cauldron. Look closer and you can see a soldier’s boot and camo pants. The gruesome and eerie depiction was designed by Ron Paul Peace and Institute Executive Director and conference organizer Daniel McAdams’ talented wife Cynthia.
Here is a link to YouTube videos of the speeches provided by the Ron Paul Liberty Report.
The central takeaway points: the US-Israel war against Iran was driven by Israel; the interests of the Zionist state are very different from the interests of the US, and the US needs to return to an America First foreign policy.
Ron Paul and his supporters saw this neocon-planned war coming decades ago, and as acknowledged by two conference speakers who recently resigned from their leadership positions of power – MTG and Joe Kent – Ron Paul and his supporters are the smartest people around and were way ahead of everyone else in warning about and opposing this war.
The conference theme and participants prove the Ron Paul revolution has not only been a movement based on the ideas of liberty, peace, prosperity and individual freedom but it has inspired effective and consequential political activism threatening enough to the political establishment to regard these activists as enemies of the state. In addition to his vision of liberty, what has made Ron Paul the greatest living American, the Thomas Jefferson of our age as Judge Napolitano has pointed out, has been his involvement in the political arena.
The feisty and energetic 90 years young Ron Paul walked to the podium to a prolonged standing ovation and reflected on a variety of topics: why the Founders understood gold and silver were money; a history of the last century of monetary policy; the secrecy of the Federal Reserve; how the printing of money funds war, inflation and the national debt; how long it took 42 years for the people to get gold back after FDR banned it (42 years); his conversation on Air Force One with President Reagan that led to the US Gold Commission on which he served; the subjective element to the movement of money; and why markets are more powerful than government. The audience cheered when Dr. Paul commented on Reagan’s acknowledgment in his memoirs that the worse thing he did as president was to send US Marines to Beirut. When their deployment resulted in the death of 241 servicemen by suicide bombers, Reagan realized since he had marched them in he could march them back out. “We are at the end stage of this collapsing empire,” Dr. Paul warned. “I’m a bit of a cynic as you might guess. The guns are pointed at the people and tyrants use safety as their excuse. The nihilists are in charge and say no one can approach truth. Truth is treason in an empire of lies.” He remains an optimist. “All I want to do is stop killing and overspending. Everything should be voluntary. You own your life and you can’t hurt people.” Dr. Paul is encouraged that a lot of people want freedom and pointed out it only took a small organized group of activists to break away from Britain which led to the writing of the ideas of liberty in the Declaration of Independence. The solution is to follow the Constitution.
“Our government is run by and for Israel,” stated former Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, who walked to the podium to a standing ovation from an audience who admires her for sticking to her principles despite attacks by the president, neocons and other political enemies. MTG’s topic was “MAGA is Dead: Where Do We Go From Here?” She resigned her congressional seat in Georgia after receiving death threats against her and her family. “Within the next 10 years both political parties will be dismantled,” she predicted, adding Social Security will be insolvent in six years and the Democrats will win on the issue of Medicare for all. “MAGA died some time ago and I watched it die from the unique view of being in Congress,” she explained. Trump built MAGA and what remains is a political and economic industry with a massive inventory of merchandise. In 2016 she was a mother raising children, a business owner, and a believer in states’ rights. MTG became a huge MAGA and Trump supporter, spending millions of her own money on the cause. Her four years in Congress under both Democratic and Republican Party rule was a “roller coaster ride” during which she figured out the leadership of both parties conspired together as the Uniparty. She watched Trump betray his campaign promises to release the Epstein files and stay out of foreign wars. Instead of playing along, she called out the hypocrisy and teamed up with Rep. Thomas Massie to release the files. Trump’s dismissal of the issue and refusal to release the files because his friends would get hurt “crossed all the lines” she said because 14-16 year old women had been raped. During the 12 day war against Iran that she acknowledged Charlie Kirk and Tucker Carlson also opposed, Trump called her a traitor and threatened to campaign against her as he is now doing to Massie. MTG said she could get no support from anyone in the administration.
Joe Kent walked to the podium to a standing ovation from an audience who knew he had recently resigned his position as National Counterterrorism Center Director due to the courage of his convictions. The former Green Beret commando talked about “A National Security Strategy for Our Republic, Not an Empire.” He was convinced Israel had pressured the US to start the war with Iran and that this war was not in the interests of the US. Kent served 11 combat tours and is a Gold Star husband whose wife Shannon was killed in a suicide bombing in Syria. Kent is regarded by the Ron Paul audience as a well-intentioned, idealistic and patriotic American who became disillusioned with the military and civilian federal government. Kent was in the special forces and deployed to Baghdad with a mission to look for WMDs when he realized he was given a false premise: “I didn’t think officers would lie.” Kent has supported Trump since 2016, inspired by his antiwar message, and ran for Congress on an America First platform. When accepting ODNI Director Tulsi Gabbard’s offer to serve as NCC Director, Kent assumed if good people were working in the government things could change. He still thinks Trump did not want this war but Israel does because its objective is regime change and chaos which it thrives on. No one in the US government had the courage or fortitude to oppose offensive action, Kent said, and then the US killed the Iranian leadership who may have been open to peace negotiations. He sees no off ramps for the war because Israel’s interests are not the same as US interests and this military intervention is not vital to our nation’s defense. Iranians have a high tolerance for pain, he said, so he expects the war to continue. He is not completely an isolationist, a position that may not please the purist non-interventionists in the Ron Paul movement, as Kent advocates a more nuanced foreign policy where surgical strikes would be acceptable. He is hopeful with 77 million Americans supporting an America First foreign policy he can build a diverse coalition and shape the platforms of candidates.
McAdams spoke on “The War on War Reporting.” The war with Iran is the most unpopular war ever, he said, recalling the horrific murder of 185 school children in a double tap strike using AI on the first day of the war. He decried the near impossibility of getting reliable information or news about the war. “It’s the most abysmal coverage of any war,” he said, noting the lack of Pentagon briefings. Back in the day people believed CBS news anchor Walter Cronkite, he said. (I would add there was no internet in those days to inform Americans the “most trusted man in America” was a member of the globalist Bohemian Grove or to post a video of Cronkite stating in a speech he was glad to sit at the right hand of Satan to support world government.) Even in 2003 during the Iraqi war, McAdams recalled, there were Pentagon reports and embedded journalists. Fewer trust the mainstream media than ever, he said, and the so-called alternative media is sketchy with its paid influencers and algorithms but there are hopeful signs within the independent media and the podcasts of Tucker Carlson and Judge Napolitano are gaining in popularity. Much of the war coverage is tightly controlled, he said, and when the Wall Street Journal or New York Times asks real questions, a mass of other media outlets treat these questions with disdain. Public statements of the status of the war by Trump are strategically designed to manipulate the stock markets to the financial gain of members of the administration. McAdams asked where are the rescued pilots or the casualty reports? Sadly, he said, the US is copying the Israeli model for war: media blackout, killing civilians and bombing critical infrastructure like hospitals and schools and is working toward the Israeli media model of censorship and propaganda.
Stark Realities Substack journalist Brian McGlinchey spoke on “How the US-Israel Relationship Weakens America and Harms the World.” This relationship is the “strangest in the world,” he observed, causing the US immeasurable misery. The US has been forced to adopt a geopolitical agenda resulting in despair for millions of people at a staggering official price of $3.8 billion per year in foreign aid borrowed with interest, but more realistically the total is $8.7 billion. Aid to Egypt is actually aid to Israel and aid to Jordan is the result of a 1994 treaty. Foreign policy was much the same under Biden whose regime presided over 100 arms deals “dishing out weapons to Israel.” The regime change wars in Libya and Syria have been costly – 4,600 killed and 2,000 wounded, causing the psychological stress of PTSD and costing many billions of dollars. More blowback: The killing of US Marines in Beirut deployed on a peacekeeping mission after Israeli military activity; the mass suffering of civilians in attacked countries; the millions of displaced refugees. Remember former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright’s revolting statement on “60 Minutes” that the murder of 500,000 children in Iraq was worth it? McGlinchey noted economic sanctions which have been often imposed by the US is a different type of warfare that kills and harms civilians. The war with Iran is a growing global catastrophe, he said, and now the US is increasingly allowing Israel to unabashedly impose its will on domestic policy: 38 states have made it illegal to boycott Israeli businesses and pro-Palestinian students have been expelled from college. What about the first World Trade Center bombing; 9-11; the Pulse nightclub shootings; the genocide in Gaza and current obliteration of southern Lebanon; the arrest of the student for writing a pro-Palestinian op-ed? There is an effort to stamp out any criticism of the current US-Israel relationship. Israel gives the US fake intelligence and doesn’t rush or even bother to share legitimate intelligence with the US. Israel thought of JFK as a major adversary because the assassinated president opposed the Zionist state’s acquisition of nuclear weapons. At one point the FBI identified 187 Israeli agents in the US government; Israel passed on US intelligence to Russia to get deals; Israel attacked the USS Liberty and the US government covered it up and treated the survivors disgracefully; the IDF cruelly targets specific body parts of Palestinians to shoot at – one day it’s heads, the next day it’s groins. The horror of Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians in Gaza has forever changed the world’s perception of Israel.
Professor Robert Pape’s speech “Iran and the Escalation Trap: Avoiding a Future of Forever Wars in the Middle East” called for issues possibly necessitating military responses to be handled by the country nearest the problem. This approach was likely disappointing to the purist non-interventionists in the audience who believe the simple answer is, as Dr. Paul once famously said in a GOP presidential debate, “We marched right in there and we can march right out” but Pape’s nuanced approach may actually be considered by reasonable policy makers as a pragmatic solution. The pattern of interventionism, sheer waste and cost of regime change wars must stop, Pape advised, noting the carnage from deindustrialization. The US needs a clear strategy for Middle East wars, he pleaded, as Iran has become the fourth center of world power with China and Russia. If the US continues its current course, our domestic economy will collapse, adding to the national debt and inflation. Pape said the US should only use military force abroad if others cannot contain it, the US should shift from overseas bases to offshore naval power, and local countries must do 90% of the military work.
McAdams acknowledged a true American hero in the audience – Phil Tourney, a survivor of Israel’s unprovoked and deliberate attack on the USS Liberty on June 8, 1967. He received a well-deserved standing ovation. The treasonous attack killed 34 and wounded 174 American servicemen. The US government – LBJ was president at the time – covered up the attack which was intended as a false flag to justify the US joining Israel in its Six Day War. The evil plan was to sink the ship, kill all aboard, and claim it was a case of mistaken identity. Awareness of this attack leads to the realization that US foreign policy has been under the control of Israeli interests since at least as far back as 1967.
Also in the audience was Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes, one of the J6 defendants whom many understand were political prisoners including MTG who was a strong defender of them when few would speak out on their behalf. His J6 seditious conspiracy felony conviction may soon be dismissed. The DOJ recently filed a motion asking the court of appeals to vacate the appeal and send it back to the trial court where DOJ will ask for a dismissal of the indictment. Trump commuted the 18 year sentence but Rhodes, who spent more than a year in solitary confinement, was not one of the J6ers who received a pardon on the first day of Trump’s presidency.
