Ron Paul launches clemency petition for Edward Snowden

Demonstrators hold signs supporting former NSA contractor Snowden as they march at "Stop Watching Us: A Rally Against Mass Surveillance" near the U.S. Capitol in Washington (Reuters / Jonathan Ernst)

http://rt.com/usa/paul-petition-snowden-clemency-950/

Former Texas congressman Ron Paul has announced a petition aiming to secure clemency for Edward Snowden, the National Security Agency whistleblower who revealed extensive US surveillance programs and ignited a national debate on Americans’ privacy.

In a video released Thursday on the Ron Paul Channel, an online network the libertarian started last summer, he calls on supporters to sign the petition in an attempt to bring Snowden home to the US safely before his temporary visa in Russia expires in July.

“Edward Snowden sacrificed his livelihood, citizenship, and freedom by exposing the disturbing scope of the NSA's worldwide spying program,” he said. “Thanks to one man's courageous actions, Americans know about the truly egregious ways their government is spying on them.”

Paul worked as a physician before serving in Congress intermittently in the 1970s and 1980s then again from 1997 until 2013. He is best known for his libertarian positions, which often put him at odds with members of the Republican party. Paul has repeatedly lent public support to Snowden since the former NSA contractor came forward to admit he leaked classified documents to journalists affiliated with the Guardian and the Washington Post.

“By signing this petition, you are telling the US government that Mr. Snowden deserves the right to come home without the fear of persecution or imprisonment,” the website stated.

Former US Representative Ron Paul (R-TX) (AFP Photo / Brendan Smialowski)

Paul's announcement comes one day after his son, Senator Rand Paul (R-KY), filed a lawsuit against US President Obama and the NSA seeking to stop its collection of phone metadata. The younger Paul said his class-action suit is in response to the intelligence agency's violation of the Fourth Amendment, which requires law enforcement authorities to obtain a judicial warrant before conducting a search or seizure.

“There's a huge and growing swell of protest in this country of people who are outraged that their records are being taken without suspicion, without a judge's warrant, and without individualization,” Paul said. “I'm not against the NSA, I'm not against spying, I'm not against looking at phone records. I just want you to go to a judge, have an individual's name and [get] a warrant. That's what the Fourth Amendment says.” 

Yet the senator, who shares many of his father's libertarian positions and like his father is expected to mount a presidential campaign of his own in 2016, does not share Ron Paul's stance on clemency for Snowden.

“I don't think Edward Snowden deserves the death penalty or life in prison. I think that's inappropriate. And I think that's what he faced,” Paul told CBS last month. “I think the only way he's coming home is if someone would offer him a fair trial with a reasonable sentence.”

Ron Paul: Syria Chemical Attack A ‘False Flag’

During an interview on Fox Business’ Cavuto Wednesday, former Texas Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) commented on the unfolding situation in Syria, specifically calling the recent chemical attack a ‘false flag’ likely carried out by the US backed Al Qaeda filled rebels. 

“I think it’s a false flag…” said Paul. “Why don’t we ask about the Al Qaeda? Why are we on the side of the Al Qaeda right now?”

Despite the Obama administration’s attempt to immediately blame Assad’s forces for the chemical attack, multiple U.S. officials have said that the administration’s evidence is “not a slam dunk.” Officials also mentioned that the administration had no “smoking gun.” In fact, the rebels have now even claimed responsibility for the attacks.

Even with Syrian Deputy Foreign Fayssal Mekdad presenting evidence to the UN that strongly points to a rebel led chemical attack, the Obama administration has continued to ignore any evidence that can’t be used to justify military action against Assad, including multiple YouTube videos showing rebels launching chemical weapons on civilian targets.

Paul’s statements are given even more validity in light of the January Yahoo article that details a potential chemical attack on Syria on behalf of the United States. The emails revealed a plan, supported by the Obama administration, to have a chemical weapons attack blamed on Assad in order to gain international support for military action.

Paul also exposed the history of lies and propaganda used by the US government to justify military intervention, pointing specifically to the Iraq war.

“Look at how many lies were told to us about Saddam Hussein prior to that buildup, war propaganda. It’s endless, it happens all the time,” said Paul, also pointing to Donald Rumsfeld’s role in supplying chemical weapons to Saddam in the 1980′s.

Mounting evidence forced out by the alternative media has destroyed the government’s credibility, with now only 9 percent of Americans supporting military intervention in Syria. The international backlash also caused UK Prime Minister David Cameron to momentarily back down after the British parliament voted against authorizing military action. Cameron later decided to send Military jets to Cyprus, claiming the move was purely “defensive.”

Despite having no congressional authority or support from NATO, the UN or the Arab League, the Obama administration has brazenly threatened to carry out strikes regardless, openly flouting the Constitution. Now, 140 members of the House of Representatives have signed a letter demanding that President Obama get authorization from Congress if he wants to carry out any strikes against Syria.
“The American people right now by a very large majority are opposed to this war. The Constitution can’t support this war and morally we can’t support this war,” Paul said in closing.

Update: Last April during a speech in Austin, Texas, Paul warned of the system’s increasing war propaganda and predicted that a false flag incident would likely accelerate the US deeper into the Middle Eastern conflict.

Read more: http://www.storyleak.com/ron-paul-syria-chemical-attack-a-flase-flag/#ixzz2deZIZYMM

Another Nail in the Neocon Coffin

by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.

The recent opening of the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity was a watershed moment in American history. There has never been anything quite like it. Ideologically diverse, the Ron Paul Institute reaches out to all Americans, and indeed to people all over the world, who find the spectrum of foreign-policy opinion in the United States to be unreasonably narrow. Until Ron Paul and his new institute, there was no resolutely anti-interventionist foreign-policy organization to be found.

Neoconservatives have not responded warmly to the announcement of Ron’s new institute. Whatever their particular gripes, we can be absolutely certain of the real reason for their unhappiness: they have never faced systematic, organized opposition before.

The Democrats would see the earth tumble into the sun before supporting nonintervention abroad, so they pose no fundamental problem for the neocons. Ron Paul, on the other hand, is real opposition, and he can mobilize an army. The neocons know it. What’s Tim Pawlenty up to these days? Where are his legions of well-read young fans who seek to carry on his philosophy? You see the point.

For the first time, strict nonintervention will have a permanent voice in American life. It is another nail in the neocon coffin. The neocons know they are losing the young. Bright kids who believe in freedom aren’t rallying to Mitt Romney or David Horowitz, and, like anyone with a critical mind and a moral compass, they are not going along with the regime’s war propaganda.

At this historic moment, I thought it might be appropriate to set down some thoughts on war – a manifesto for peace, as it were.

(1) Our rulers are not a law unto themselves.

Our warmakers believe they are exempt from normal moral rules. Because they are at war, they get to suspend all decency, all the norms that govern the conduct and interaction of human beings in all other circumstances. The anodyne term "collateral damage," along with perfunctory and meaningless words of regret, are employed when innocent civilians, including children, are maimed and butchered. A private individual behaving this way would be called a sociopath. Give him a fancy title and a nice suit, and he becomes a statesman.

Let us pursue the subversive mission of applying the same moral rules against theft, kidnapping, and murder to our rulers that we apply to everyone else.

(2) Humanize the demonized.

We must encourage all efforts to humanize the populations of countries in the crosshairs of the warmakers. The general public is whipped into a war frenzy without knowing the first thing – or hearing only propaganda – about the people who will die in that war. The establishment’s media won’t tell their story, so it is up to us to use all the resources we as individuals have, especially online, to communicate the most subversive truth of all: that the people on the other side are human beings, too. This will make it marginally more difficult for the warmakers to carry out their Two Minutes’ Hate, and can have the effect of persuading Americans with normal human sympathies to distrust the propaganda that surrounds them.



(3) If we oppose aggression, let us oppose all aggression.

If we believe in the cause of peace, putting a halt to aggressive violence between nations is not enough. We should not want to bring about peace overseas in order that our rulers may turn their guns on peaceful individuals at home. Away with all forms of aggression against peaceful people.

(4) Never use "we" when speaking of the government.

The people and the warmakers are two distinct groups. We must never say "we" when discussing the US government’s foreign policy. For one thing, the warmakers do not care about the opinions of the majority of Americans. It is silly and embarrassing for Americans to speak of "we" when discussing their government’s foreign policy, as if their input were necessary to or desired by those who make war.

But it is also wrong, not to mention mischievous. When people identify themselves so closely with their government, they perceive attacks on their government’s foreign policy as attacks on themselves. It then becomes all the more difficult to reason with them – why, you’re insulting my foreign policy!

Likewise, the use of "we" feeds into war fever. "We" have to get "them." People root for their governments as they would for a football team. And since we know ourselves to be decent and good, "they" can only be monstrous and evil, and deserving of whatever righteous justice "we" dispense to them.

The antiwar left falls into this error just as often. They appeal to Americans with a catalogue of horrific crimes "we" have committed. But we haven’t committed those crimes. The same sociopaths who victimize Americans themselves every day, and over whom we have no real control, committed those crimes.

(5) War is not "good for the economy."

A commitment to peace is a wonderful thing and worthy of praise, but it needs to be coupled with an understanding of economics. A well-known US senator recently deplored cuts in military spending because "when you cut military spending you lose jobs." There is no economic silver lining to war or to preparation for war.

Those who would tell us that war brings prosperity are grossly mistaken, even in the celebrated case of World War II. The particular stimulus that war gives to certain sectors of the economy comes at the expense of civilian needs, and directs resources away from the improvement of the common man’s standard of living.

Ludwig von Mises, the great free-market economist, wrote, that "war prosperity is like the prosperity that an earthquake or a plague brings. The earthquake means good business for construction workers, and cholera improves the business of physicians, pharmacists, and undertakers; but no one has for that reason yet sought to celebrate earthquakes and cholera as stimulators of the productive forces in the general interest."

Elsewhere, Mises described the essence of so-called war prosperity: it "enriches some by what it takes from others. It is not rising wealth but a shifting of wealth and income."

(6) Support the free market? Then oppose war.

Ron Paul has restored the proper association of capitalism with peace and nonintervention. Leninists and other leftists, burdened by a false understanding of economics and the market system, used to claim that capitalism needed war, that alleged "overproduction" of goods forced market societies to go abroad – and often to war – in search for external markets for their excess goods.

This was always economic nonsense. It was political nonsense, too: the free market needs no parasitical institution to grease the skids for international commerce, and the same philosophy that urges nonaggression among individual human beings compels nonaggression between geographical areas.

Mises always insisted, contra the Leninists, that war and capitalism could not long coexist. "Of course, in the long run war and the preservation of the market economy are incompatible. Capitalism is essentially a scheme for peaceful nations…. The emergence of the international division of labor requires the total abolition of war…. The market economy involves peaceful cooperation. It bursts asunder when the citizens turn into warriors and, instead of exchanging commodities and services, fight one another."

"The market economy," Mises said simply, "means peaceful cooperation and peaceful exchange of goods and services. It cannot persist when wholesale killing is the order of the day."

Those who believe in the free and unhampered market economy should be especially skeptical of war and military action. War, after all, is the ultimate government program. War has it all: propaganda, censorship, spying, crony contracts, money printing, skyrocketing spending, debt creation, central planning, hubris – everything we associate with the worst interventions into the economy.

"War," Mises observed, "is harmful, not only to the conquered but to the conqueror. Society has arisen out of the works of peace; the essence of society is peacemaking. Peace and not war is the father of all things. Only economic action has created the wealth around us; labor, not the profession of arms, brings happiness. Peace builds; war destroys."

See through the propaganda. Stop empowering and enriching the state by cheering its wars. Set aside the television talking points. Look at the world anew, without the prejudices of the past, and without favoring your own government’s version of things.

Be decent. Be human. Do not be deceived by the Joe Bidens, the John McCains, the Barack Obamas and Hillary Clintons. Reject the biggest government program of them all.

Peace builds. War destroys.

May 1, 2013

Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. [send him mail], former editorial assistant to Ludwig von Mises and congressional chief of staff to Ron Paul, is founder and CEO of the Mises Institute, executor for the estate of Murray N. Rothbard, and editor of LewRockwell.com. See his books.

Copyright © 2013 by LewRockwell.com. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit is given.

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