Ron Paul and Terrorism
"There must be an agenda," suggested Congressman Ron Paul (R-TX) in a recent video message to supporters.
"It seems ironic that there is so much excitement about this and now talk about attacking Yemen," he said, noting recent bombing raids by Saudi forces, carried out with the explicit blessing of the United States.
"The Saudis are our close allies," Paul explained. "We provide them with the weapons and the airplanes and we did sanction and endorse the bombing of Yemen."
He said that terrorist-style tactics carried out against the United States and U.S. interests are a response to occupation of Arab lands. The attempted attack on Northwest Airlines Flight 253, he said, was a result of "either awful stupidity or there must be an agenda."
"I am concerned what they are going to do to the American people," he said.
And by "they," he meant U.S. leaders.
"They’ll add some more security on to us," Paul explained. "First they make us take off our shoes and then our belts and then small bottles of water and put our computers in a tray and on and on so something else is going to happen, they won’t let us get out of our seats or look at our bags, thinking that’s going to make us a lot safer."
"The bigger the problem and the more the fear is built up, the more they take away our personal liberties and turn us all into zombies and the American people go along with it and say, 'as long as it makes us safer I guess it’s okay to go along,'" he countinued. "But it's time the American people woke up and started realizing that there's a bit of propaganda going on and quite possibly this incident will not only undermine our personal liberties but will also accelerate our intervention and the violence occurring in the Middle East."
How does a massive, costly security apparatus fail to stop a known terrorism threat from boarding an airplane and wrecking devastation?
It happened on Sept. 11, 2001, and again on Dec. 25, 2009.
By Stephen C. Webster
Tuesday, December 29th, 2009 from RawStory.com
Ron Paul suggests ‘agenda’
to expand terror war,
attack American liberty
Syed Fahad Hashmi can tell you about the dark heart of America. He Bay knows that our First Amendment rights have become a joke, that habeas corpus no longer exists and that we torture, not only in black sites such as those at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan or at Guantánamo, but also at the federal Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC) in Lower Manhattan. Hashmi is a U.S. citizen of Muslim descent imprisoned on two counts of providing and conspiring to provide material support and two counts of making and conspiring to make a contribution of goods or services to al-Qaida. As his case prepares for trial, his plight illustrates that the gravest threat we face is not from Islamic extremists, but the codification of draconian procedures that deny Americans basic civil liberties and due process. Hashmi would be a better person to tell you this, but he is not allowed to speak.
This corruption of our legal system, if history is any guide, will not be reserved by the state for suspected terrorists, or even Muslim Americans. In the coming turmoil and economic collapse, it will be used to silence all who are branded as disruptive or subversive. Hashmi endures what many others, who are not Muslim, will endure later. Radical activists in the environmental, globalization, anti-nuclear, sustainable agriculture and anarchist movements--who are already being placed by the state in special detention facilities with Muslims charged with terrorism--have discovered that his fate is their fate. Courageous groups have organized protests, including vigils outside the Manhattan detention facility. They can be found at www.educatorsforcivilliberties.org or www.freefahad.com. On Martin Luther King Day, this Jan. 18 at 6 p.m. EST, protesters will hold a large vigil in front of the MCC on 150 Park Row in Lower Manhattan to call for a return of our constitutional rights. Join them if you can.
The case against Hashmi, like most of the terrorist cases launched by the Bush administration, is appallingly weak and built on flimsy circumstantial evidence. This may be the reason the state has set up parallel legal and penal codes to railroad those it charges with links to terrorism. If it were a matter of evidence, activists like Hashmi, who is accused of facilitating the delivery of socks to al-Qaida, would probably never be brought to trial.
One Day We'll
All Be Terrorists
by Chris Hedges
December 28, 2009 from Truthdig.com