Big Al says: “To show my support for The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity, I am going to start posting missives from it that I receive. This is part of my on-going study of current events in the Middle East.  The majority of KER Politics going forward will be devoted to political issues that, we feel, directly impacts investing.

The sporadicity of my “weekly” note to you over the past several weeks. I confess that the recent incredible drama over the “will he or won’t he” Trump Syria strike along with my obsessive determination to find cracks in the dominant media paradigm of what happened in Douma, Syria, on April 7th has led me to spend much time combing any and all available sources for information.

But to fight war, it is absolutely essential to fight war propaganda. The war propaganda is the foot in the door for the war machine and it must be thoroughly and convincingly refuted. So we had to gather and analyze all sources, we had to apply basic logic, and we also had to drizzle over our “secret sauce,” which is our collective many decades on Capitol Hill watching how the sausage is made, watching how the lies become accepted wisdom, watching the slow and steady demise of our Legislative Branch of government, which RPI Board Member Louis Fisher has rightly called “The People’s Branch.”

So Dr. Paul and I went to work immediately after the announcement of an “Assad gas attack” in Douma, Syria. To us it made no sense at all: the Syrian government had just completed negotiations with the rebels in control (most of whom were al-Qaeda linked) for safe passage from the area. The civilians were to be spared a military battle. As in Aleppo last year — see here the Christian residents celebrating Easter this month for the first time in years — Syrians anticipated finally returning to their homes and to their normal lives.

So we are expected to believe that Assad chose that very moment to drop a gas bomb on a civilian building that miraculously only injured/killed children and didn’t leave a single rebel fighter dead or even harmed? As Sen. Rand Paul told a startled Wolf Blitzer the other day, either Assad is the stupidest dictator in history or it was a false flag.

On our first broadcasting day after the “gas attack” was announced, we put together a program called, “Another False Flag – Will Trump Escalate In Syria?” That Liberty Report has gone viral, with going on 100,000 views.

Since our original program providing plenty of empirical and anecdotal evidence refuting the mainstream media paradigm, the Liberty Report has had a steady stream of record-breaking daily broadcasts.

As I told Dr. Paul a day or so ago, we should take comfort in the fact that when the mainstream media is in lockstep over an issue, Americans are naturally skeptical and they turn to us and to the Liberty Report for alternative, facts-based reporting.

Since that groundbreaking report, we’ve had several more milestones. Early last week we featured one of the first reports in all media from a source on the ground in Syria, with our program, “On The Ground In Syria – With Special Guest Vanessa Beeley.” Then, just days ago, we had the former UK Ambassador to Syria on the program who completely blew the mainstream media narrative about Syria out of the water.

You all may be shocked (not) to learn that our big increase in viewership on YouTube was not in fact celebrated by YouTube. One might think that our bringing tens of thousands more viewers to glance at their paid commercials before viewing our programs would be welcomed by YouTube. After all, that is their bread and butter. But as we increasingly have come to understand, YouTube’s business model has a strange political twist to it which precludes “monetizing” our programs which challenge Washington’s interventionist foreign policy.

In short, YouTube is doing all it can to prevent our videos from being widely viewed and therefore being properly monetized so that we can cover some of our studio expenses by sharing advertisement revenue on our channel. Yes, that’s right: YouTube would rather forego generating advertising revenue than distribute our Liberty Reports far and wide.

This is I must say a long introduction to the fact that five years ago this week the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity was launched at the Capitol Hill Club in Washington, DC.

In 2012 — as his final presidential campaign was still in full swing — Dr. Paul summoned his Congressional staff into the office for a special announcement. It was very unusual for Dr. Paul to make such a request so of course the rumors were flying. I remember it so well. We awkwardly filed into the room and Dr. Paul was behind his desk. He didn’t leave us hanging at all and he didn’t go in for any kind of drama: “Look, I am not going to run for re-election. It’s all over.”

He smiled a kind of smile that conveyed the finality of his decision. Yes, it was over.

We kind of expected it but still for those of us who had dedicated so many years of our lives to Congressman Paul I cannot deny it felt so horribly sad. We were a family and Dr. Paul was telling us all that our mission was over; that we needed to leave the nest, so to speak.

A few days later I asked to speak with him in his office. I had been talking frequently to Lew Rockwell for months and he encouraged me in no uncertain terms to propose a way to really continue Dr. Paul’s work in foreign policy and civil liberties. Thankfully Dr. Paul viewed his “retirement” as actually a new beginning so we from there rolled up our sleeves and set to work.

No more neocons! No more spying on us! No more police state! We will reach out to the young generation! That was our message at the opening press conference.

What have we achieved in this past five years with your generous support?

We may not have stopped the neocons, as I had perhaps foolishly hoped. But we have challenged them. We’ve made them squirm. We did let them know we were watching them and they would no longer get away with their falsehoods with impunity. We shined the light on them and while they did not all scurry away, I know they know we are here.

The very week we launched the Ron Paul Institute, the usual suspects were about their usual business. They would never debate us on the issues because they have no solid ground to stand on. Their track record is as miserable as the post-apocalyptic landscape of the recently US “liberated” Raqqa in Syria. They had to resort to personal slurs and attacks to try and strangle the baby in its crib. We were “evil” and chock full of “kooks” they wrote in their heavily subsidized publications.

Of course as we know from Solzhenitsyn, anyone who challenges the “benevolent” albeit authoritarian state is by definition mentally ill. After all, who could be against “progress”?

But we kept on. We kept going. We did what we did because of our dedication to the truth, not for a financial benefit like the rest of Washington. They couldn’t understand that. So they did their best to ignore us after that.

With your support we have prevailed. With your backing we are there, once more into the breach. When 150,000+ people flock to watch our series of Ron Paul Liberty Reports on the truth about the “chemical attack” in Syria, we have you to thank for keeping the flame of non-interventionism alive. Our triumphs may not be dramatically touted in the mainstream media, but they are imprinted in the minds and hearts of thousands more Americans each week. This is a long struggle, with continuous victories along the way.

In addition to our daily Ron Paul Liberty Report broadcast, we publish thousands of articles on our website challenging the pro-war narrative and making the case for non-interventionism. Next week we will be holding another in our series of sold-out conferences, this time in South Carolina (actually, we are 90 percent sold out — get your tickets here while they last). We have plenty more projects planned and ready to launch. We’ve had numerous inquiries lately from young people looking for educational programs, internships, fellowships, to help them prepare for the battle against the warhawks and “humanitarian” interventionists. I would love to be able to bring them in and give them the tools they need to continue Dr. Paul’s work, but of course we need your help. We need your support to keep going.

We recently had a visit from a very kind, wealthy friend of peace and freedom. He walked into our studio and the first thing he said was, “wow, you guys really don’t waste any money!” Yes, our digs are kind of spartan. They in no way resemble the multi-million dollar, glistening Beltway think tanks that we do battle with on a daily basis. We do not waste a penny because unlike the big think tanks raking in millions from defense contractors, we know where our money comes from. It comes from you. And we know you.

The tide is turning. Please keep watching and listening. Help us celebrate our fifth anniversary this year — please consider a tax-deductible donation to the Ron Paul Institute. We appreciate your support!

P.S. I’ll be back soon with exciting details about our upcoming Washington, DC conference set for August!

Thank you very much for your continued support for peace and prosperity.

Sincerely yours,
Daniel McAdams
Executive Director
Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity