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Snowden’s Ride, Part 8: Papa Snowden and The Paulistinian Libertarian Organization

Posted by Dave Emory ⋅ July 29, 2013Post a comment Email This Post Email This Post Print This Post Print This Post
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Dave Emory’s entire life­time of work is avail­able on a flash dri­ve that can be obtained here. (The flash dri­ve includes the anti-fas­cist books avail­able on this site.)

COMMENT: We’ve cov­ered Eddie “The Friend­ly Spook” Snow­den’s exploits in numer­ous pre­vi­ous posts: Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, Part V, Part VI, Part VII, Part VIII, Part IX, Part X, Part XI, Part XII, Part XIII, Part XIV. Users of this web­site are emphat­i­cal­ly encour­aged to exam­ine these posts in detail, as it is impos­si­ble to do jus­tice to the argu­ments in those arti­cles in the scope of this post.

Suf­fice it to say, for our pur­pos­es here, that Snow­den’s activ­i­ties are–quite obviously–an intel­li­gence oper­a­tion direct­ed at Barack Oba­ma’s admin­is­tra­tion at one lev­el and the Unit­ed States and U.K. at anoth­er.

We note that the indi­vid­u­als and insti­tu­tions involved with Snow­den, as well as Fast Eddie him­self, track back to the far right, Nazi, white suprema­cists, Holo­caust deniers and ele­ments and indi­vid­u­als involved with the Under­ground Reich. Again, PLEASE exam­ine the pre­vi­ous posts on the sub­ject, as there is no way to flesh out this line of inquiry in this post. 

We will be post­ing a sum­ma­ry analy­sis of Fast Eddie’s “op” to aid with sort­ing out and clar­i­fy­ing this long, com­pli­cat­ed and tor­tu­ous pre­sen­ta­tion.

In this post, we update the gath­er­ing domes­tic fas­cist pha­lanx mus­ter­ing on behalf of Eddie the Friend­ly Spook and, in turn, posi­tion­ing to hand the 2014 and 2016 elec­tions to the Naz­i­fied GOP. Expect to see L’Af­faire Snow­den play into the Repub­li­can theme of Obama/Democrats as spon­sors of “big gov­ern­ment” etc., etc.

Although a con­gres­sion­al coali­tion of so-called pro­gres­sives and right-wingers is gath­er­ing to take mea­sures to “rein-in” NSA vac­u­um clean­ing oper­a­tions, the gen­e­sis, sub­stance and intent of this “op” is unde­ni­ably and com­plete­ly fas­cist.

It is only too typ­i­cal of the so-called “pro­gres­sive” sec­tor to ally them­selves with those who intend their destruc­tion. We will dis­cuss this more in our sum­ma­ry analy­sis of this oper­a­tion.

Chron­i­cling the fas­cists, white suprema­cists, Nazis and Under­ground Reich forces to which the ele­ments in our analy­sis track back, we not­ed that Snow­den’s Pres­i­den­tial can­di­date of choice was cryp­to-Nazi Ron Paul. Paul’s super PAC was cap­i­tal­ized by appar­ent Under­ground Reich oper­a­tive Peter Thiel, whose Palan­tir firm devel­oped the PRISM soft­ware.

NOTE: Palan­tir offi­cial­ly claims that “their PRISM” is NOT the same PRISM in the focal point of the Snowden/NSA imbroglio. We feel this claim is laugh­able, frankly. The notion that the intel­li­gence ser­vices are using TWO counter-ter­ror soft­ware pro­grams with iden­ti­cal names is not cred­i­ble. Had a com­pa­ny devel­oped a counter-ter­ror soft­ware pro­gram for use by the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty and called it “PRISM,” there would have been lit­i­ga­tion. The major tech com­pa­nies are NOTHING if not liti­gious, and Thiel and com­pa­ny have PLENTY of mon­ey!

Recent­ly, Snow­den’s father Lon has joined the fray, join­ing forces with ele­ments asso­ci­at­ed with both Ron Paul and his son, Rand–a bird of the same feath­er as his Nazi father.

The polit­i­cal front tak­ing shape against Oba­ma at one lev­el, and U.S. inter­net and media busi­ness at anoth­er, is inex­tri­ca­bly linked with the Nazi/fascist milieu of Ron Paul. Con­sid­er the fol­low­ing:

  • Ron Paul’s son Rand Paul is lead­ing the polit­i­cal charge over the Snow­den “dis­clo­sures” (note the quotes.) Rand Paul is lin­ing up as a GOP Pres­i­den­tial hope­ful for 2016, look­ing to cap­i­tal­ize on lib­er­tar­i­an pop­ulism as a vehi­cle for achiev­ing vic­to­ry. Again, expect to see L’Af­faire Snow­den play into the Repub­li­can theme of Obama/Democrats as spon­sors of “big gov­ern­ment” etc., etc. (Both the above-men­tioned Peter Thiel and Glenn Green­wald–Snow­den’s leak­ing jour­nal­ist of choice–network with the Koch broth­ers fund­ed Cato Insti­tute, an epi­cen­ter of lib­er­tar­i­an ide­ol­o­gy.) (See text excerpts below.)
  • We have not­ed in past dis­cus­sion that one of the goals of this “op” is to alien­ate younger, more ide­al­is­tic vot­ers from the Demo­c­ra­t­ic par­ty. That appears to be one of Rand Paul’s strat­a­gems in his cam­paign bid. (See text excerpts below.)
  • Rand Paul’s key staffer Jack Hunter is a for­mer chair­man of The League of the South, a racist neo-Con­fed­er­ate orga­ni­za­tion that advo­cates the seces­sion of the South and has links to the milieu behind the assas­si­na­tion of Mar­tin Luther King. Sarah Pal­in’s polit­i­cal milieu also has links to the League of the South. (See text excerpts below.)
  • Jack Hunter is the for­mer blog­ger for–Ron Paul, Snow­den’s Nazi Pres­i­den­tial can­di­date of choice. (See text excerpts below.)
  • Snow­den’s father Lon Snow­den has formed a polit­i­cal orga­ni­za­tion with Bruce Fein, a Ron Paul backer in 2008. (See text excerpts below.)
  • Bruce Fein is also, appar­ent­ly, the lawyer for Edward Snow­den as well, han­dling legal maneu­ver­ing for Eddie the Friend­ly Spook while he is in Rus­sia. (See text excerpts below.)
  • Fein was a coun­sel for Ron Paul’s Pres­i­den­tial cam­paign in 2012. (See text excerpts below.)
  • Fein’s asso­ci­a­tion with Lon Snow­den appears to have derived from the elder Snow­den’s net­work­ing with Rand Paul’s orga­ni­za­tion.
  • Fein also net­worked with the Ger­man-based Schiller Insti­tute, run by the fas­cist orga­ni­za­tion of Lyn­don LaRouche. (See text excerpts below.)
  • Fein also works on behalf of Turk­ish inter­ests, act­ing in con­junc­tion with forces alleged by Sibel Edmonds to be involved with mon­ey laun­der­ing on behalf of inter­ests that include Al-Qae­da. The prob­a­bil­i­ty is strong that Fein oper­ates in con­junc­tion with the Erdo­gan gov­ern­ment and–possibly–Fetul­lah Gulen. (See text excerpts below.)
  • Wik­iLeaks founder Julian Assange–joined at the hip with Eddie the Friend­ly Spook–has endorsed both Ron and Rand Paul.
  • In an update, we note that Ron Paul will be attend­ing a fund-rais­er for a fas­cist splin­ter sect of Catholi­cism that endors­es Holo­caust denial, claims the Jews are try­ing to exter­mi­nate Gen­tiles and denies that the earth revolves around the sun. Paul’s asso­ci­a­tion with this group goes back to 1998. (See text excerpts below.)
  • Anoth­er update flesh­es out Ron Paul’s racist asso­ciates and views.
  • Yet anoth­er update details some of the anti-demo­c­ra­t­ic views of the Lud­wig von Mis­es Insti­tute, as well as its pro­found links to the neo-Con­fed­er­ate move­ment.

“Edward Snow­den Bet­ter off in Rus­sia than US, His Father Says” [AP]; The Guardian; 7/26/2013.

EXCERPT: The father of the Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Agency whistle­blow­er Edward Snow­den says his son has been so vil­i­fied by the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion and mem­bers of Con­gress that he is now bet­ter off stay­ing in Rus­sia.

Lon Snow­den had been work­ing behind the scenes with lawyers to try to find a way his son could get a fair tri­al in the US. Edward Snow­den has been charged in fed­er­al court with vio­lat­ing the Espi­onage Act by leak­ing details of NSA sur­veil­lance. . . .

. . . . Lon Snow­den and his lawyer, Bruce Fein, released a let­ter on Fri­day ask­ing Oba­ma to dis­miss the crim­i­nal charges against Edward Snow­den and to sup­port leg­is­la­tion “to rem­e­dy the NSA sur­veil­lance abus­es he revealed”. . . .

. . . . Lon Snow­den and Fein are start­ing a non­profit group called the Defense of the Con­sti­tu­tion Foun­da­tion to pro­mote the issues his son has raised. . . .

“Attor­neys Alan P. Dye and Bruce Fein Join Con­gress­man Paul’s Pres­i­den­tial Explorato­ry Com­mit­tee”; disiner.wordpress.com; 2/22/2007.

EXCERPT: Attor­neys Alan P. Dye and Bruce Fein of Wash­ing­ton, D.C. have joined Con­gress­man Ron Paul’s 2008
Pres­i­den­tial Explorato­ry Com­mit­tee. Con­sti­tu­tion­al attor­ney Joseph Beck­er
of Den­ver, Col­orado is the committee’s chief legal advi­sor. . . .

“Ron Paul’s Chief Attor­ney Bruce Fein & His Clients” by Sibel Edmonds; Boil­ing Frogs Blogspot; 9/8/2011.

EXCERPT: Last month, on August 23, Bruce Fein became Ron Paul’s Chief Legal Advi­sor. In oth­er words, Ron Paul became Bruce Fein’s Client. . . .

“Snow­den Lawyer Close to Sen­a­tor Rand Paul’s Office” by Cliff Kin­caid; Cana­da Free Press; 7/2/2013.

EXCERPT: In a curi­ous devel­op­ment, NSA trai­tor Edward Snowden’s father is being rep­re­sent­ed by attor­ney Bruce Fein, who appeared with Sen­a­tor Rand Paul at his anti-NSA news con­fer­ence on June 13. Fein says “some­one in Sen­a­tor [Rand] Paul’s office” rec­om­mend­ed him to Edward Snowden’s father, Lon­nie. . . .

. . . . .But his involve­ment in the Snow­den case isn’t the only con­tro­ver­sial aspect of Fein’s recent career moves. A well-respect­ed con­sti­tu­tion­al lawyer whose books include Amer­i­can Empire: Before the Fall, Fein has appeared at two con­fer­ences this year spon­sored by the Schiller Insti­tute, a group start­ed by polit­i­cal extrem­ist and con­vict­ed felon Lyn­don LaRouche. . . .

“Leak­er’s Father and Lawyer Plan­ning Vis­its to Rus­sia” by Bri­an Knowl­ton; The New York Times; 8/12/2013.

EXCERPT: Edward J. Snowden’s father and the family’s lawyer said Sun­day that they had obtained visas to vis­it the for­mer intel­li­gence con­trac­tor in Rus­sia and indi­cat­ed that they would encour­age him to return to the Unit­ed States to face fed­er­al charges for reveal­ing secret Amer­i­can sur­veil­lance pro­grams to jour­nal­ists, but only if accept­able tri­al con­di­tions could be nego­ti­at­ed.

“What I would like,” said Lon Snow­den, the father, “is for this to be vet­ted in open court, for the Amer­i­can peo­ple to have all the facts.” He said he favored his son’s return if a fair tri­al was assured. As for a pos­si­ble plea deal, he said, “I’m not open to it, and that’s what I’ll share with my son.”

Appear­ing on the ABC News pro­gram “This Week,” Lon Snow­den and the family’s lawyer, Bruce Fein, declined to say when they would vis­it, to avoid what Mr. Fein called a news media “fren­zy,” but they said it would be soon.

In a crim­i­nal com­plaint filed in June, fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors charged Edward Snow­den with theft, “unau­tho­rized com­mu­ni­ca­tion of nation­al defense infor­ma­tion” and will­ful­ly dis­clos­ing clas­si­fied com­mu­ni­ca­tions intel­li­gence “to an unau­tho­rized per­son.” The sec­ond and third charge were brought under the Espi­onage Act of 1917.

“We intend to vis­it with Edward and sug­gest crim­i­nal defense attor­neys who’ve got expe­ri­ence in Espi­onage Act pros­e­cu­tions,” said Mr. Fein, a well-known Wash­ing­ton lawyer who spe­cial­izes in con­sti­tu­tion­al and inter­na­tion­al law. Such lawyers, he added, are uncom­mon, since pros­e­cu­tions under the Espi­onage Act have been rare his­tor­i­cal­ly.

Mr. Fein not­ed that he has laid out his con­cerns about a poten­tial tri­al, includ­ing its venue, in a let­ter to Attor­ney Gen­er­al Eric H. Hold­er Jr., but he insist­ed that the terms he dis­cussed were not “ulti­ma­tums” but rather nego­ti­at­ing points. . . .

“Rand Paul: Youth with Me on NSA Issue” by: Jessie Markel; campaignforliberty.org; 6/24/2013.

EXCERPT: Last week, Ken­tucky Sen­a­tor Rand Paul said, “I think as we have a fuller debate on these dis­cus­sions you’re going to find that not only Repub­li­cans are with me on this issue, the youth are.” As a for­mer Young Amer­i­cans for Lib­er­ty Chair­man for the State of Flori­da, I know that Rand Paul is 100% cor­rect.

The youth in this coun­try have an appre­ci­a­tion for pri­va­cy, espe­cial­ly Inter­net pri­va­cy, which the “nation­al secu­ri­ty over pri­va­cy” advo­cates don’t seem to under­stand. Young peo­ple are skep­tics as to just how much safer going through our Inter­net search­es of cats in fun­ny hats and our Insta­gram pic­tures of food are mak­ing us. In a gen­er­a­tion where every­thing is shared, young peo­ple cer­tain­ly do not want the NSA read­ing their posts crit­i­cal of Oba­maCare and arm­ing the Syr­i­an “rebels.”

In a recent CNN/ORC Inter­na­tion­al Poll, 61% of respon­dents said they dis­ap­prove of the way Barack Oba­ma is han­dling gov­ern­ment sur­veil­lance of U.S. cit­i­zens (only 52% dis­ap­proved of Pres­i­dent Bush in 2006, for com­par­i­son). If the poll had bro­ken down into age groups, it’s like­ly the youth would have respond­ed most neg­a­tive­ly. . . .

 “Neo-Con­fed­er­ate Rand Paul Aide A Dai­ly Caller Con­trib­u­tor, Fox Reg­u­lar” by Ben Dimeiro & Eric Hanano­ki; Media­Mat­ters; 7/9/2013.

EXCERPT: Jack Hunter, a con­gres­sional aide to Sen. Rand Paul with a his­tory of “neo-Con­fed­er­ate” and “pro-seces­sion­ist” views, has pro­duced dozens of arti­cles and video com­men­taries for The Dai­ly Caller and appeared as what one Fox Busi­ness host termed a “reg­u­lar” guest on that net­work. He also helped then-Sen. Jim DeMint (R‑SC), cur­rently the pres­i­dent of The Her­itage Foun­da­tion, write his most recent book.

The con­ser­v­a­tive Free Bea­con report­ed today that Hunter, a “close” Rand Paul aide who also co-wrote the Ken­tucky Republican’s 2011 book, “spent years work­ing as a pro-seces­sion­ist radio pun­dit and neo-Con­fed­er­ate activist ... Hunter was a chair­man in the League of the South, which ‘advo­cates the seces­sion and sub­se­quent inde­pen­dence of the South­ern States from this forced union and the for­ma­tion of a South­ern repub­lic.’” . . . .

“Rand Paul staffer Expressed Sup­port for Lin­coln Assas­sin” by James R. Car­roll and Joseph Gerth [The (Louisville, Ky.) Couri­er-Jour­nal]; USA Today;  7/9/2013.

EXCERPT: . . . . Hunter still main­tains a web­site, http://www.southernavenger.com, where he says he was the offi­cial blog­ger for the 2012 pres­i­den­tial cam­paign of for­mer Rep. Ron Paul, R‑Texas, the father of the sen­a­tor from Ken­tucky.  .  .  .

“Bruce Fein & Turkey”; lukery.blogspot.com; 5/2/2009.

EXCERPT: . . . . . Fein has anoth­er com­pa­ny called Bruce Fein & Asso­ciates, locat­ed at 1025 Con­necti­cut Avenue, N.W., Suite 1000. Wash­ing­ton, D.C.. 20036, which inci­den­tal­ly shares that address with the Turk­ish Amer­i­can Legal Defense Fund — TALDF, where Bruce Fein is the main con­tact. A bunch of sim­i­lar astro-trurf groups — includ­ing the Turk­ish Coali­tion of Amer­i­ca, TCA — share the same address. Bruce Fein is ‘res­i­dent schol­ar’ at the Turk­ish Coali­tion of Amer­i­ca. Fein’s Huff­in­g­ton Post bio also notes that he was pre­vi­ous­ly ‘res­i­dent schol­ar’ at ATAA. Accord­ing to Sibel Edmonds, the ATAA con­ducts “the dirty activ­i­ties” of the Turkey/Israeli lob­by — includ­ing deliv­er­ing bribes and oth­er forms of black­mail to con­gress­men like Hastert, Roy Blunt, Tom Lan­tos, Dan Bur­ton and oth­ers. Phil Giral­di sim­i­lar­ly fin­gers ATAA here.

Fein’s Huff­in­g­ton Post bio also notes that he has been “a con­sul­tant to the Turk­ish Repub­lic of North­ern Cyprus.” Isn’t that odd. Just last month I not­ed that the Turk­ish Repub­lic of North­ern Cyprus (TRNC) was at the heart of Sibel’s mon­ey laun­der­ing claims ‑and that the TRNC was also at the heart of mon­ey laun­der­ing oper­a­tions for Cen­tral Asian dic­ta­tors, ter­ror­ists like Osama Bin Laden, and “US gov­ern­ment agen­cies,” “cer­tain US gov­ern­ment peo­ple,” “cer­tain non-prof­it orga­ni­za­tions in the US,” “cer­tain US insti­tu­tions includ­ing bank­ing insti­tu­tions,” and “cer­tain US-based orga­ni­za­tions.”

So, yeah, Bruce Fein is a ‘res­i­dent schol­ar’ at the Turk­ish Coali­tion of Amer­i­ca, which, as Miz­gin notes, “is close­ly linked to the Deep State and has cre­at­ed and found­ed an “aca­d­e­m­ic” pro­gram to offi­cial­ly deny the Armen­ian geno­cide.” . . . .

“Julian Assange: I’m A ‘Big Admir­er’ Of Ron Paul, Rand Paul” by Nick Wing; The Huff­in­g­ton Post; 8/16/2013.

EXCERPT: Wik­iLeaks founder Julian Assange gave a strong endorse­ment to the lib­er­tar­i­an wing of the GOP on Thurs­day, prais­ing Sen. Rand Paul (R‑Ky.) and his father, for­mer Rep. Ron Paul (R‑Texas), for their polit­i­cal views.

“[I] am a big admir­er of Ron Paul and Rand Paul for their very prin­ci­pled posi­tions in the U.S. Con­gress on a num­ber of issues,” Assange said dur­ing a forum host­ed by Cam­pus Reform and trans­paren­cy orga­ni­za­tion OurSay.org. “They have been the strongest sup­port­ers of the fight against the U.S. attack on Wik­iLeaks and on me in the U.S. Con­gress.

Sim­i­lar­ly, they have been the strongest oppo­nents of drone war­fare and extra­ju­di­cial exe­cu­tions.”
Assange went on to com­mend the lib­er­tar­i­an ide­al of “non-vio­lence” with regards to mil­i­tary engage­ments, the draft and tax col­lec­tion. He then put forth an argu­ment against both estab­lished polit­i­cal par­ties in Wash­ing­ton, claim­ing that near­ly all Democ­rats had been “co-opt­ed” by Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma’s admin­is­tra­tion, while Repub­li­cans were almost entire­ly “in bed with the war indus­try.”

The cur­rent lib­er­tar­i­an strain of polit­i­cal thought in the Repub­li­can Par­ty was the “the only hope” for Amer­i­can elec­toral pol­i­tics, Assange con­clud­ed. . . .

“Ron Paul to Speak at Holo­caust Denier’s ‘Gala Din­ner Fundrais­er’” by Bruce Wil­son; Huff­in­g­ton Post; 9/06/2013.

EXCERPT: In a heat­ed Sep­tem­ber 5th inter­view with MSNBC’s Alex Wag­ner, For­mer U.S. Con­gress­man Ron Paul, who is cur­rently surf­ing a wave of main­stream media appear­ances due to his strong crit­i­cism of the push from the Oba­ma Admin­is­tra­tion for U.S. mil­i­tary inter­ven­tion in Syr­ia, defend­ed his planned Sep­tem­ber 11th, 2013 keynote address at a “gala din­ner fundrais­er” to be held dur­ing a con­tro­ver­sial [also see 1, 2] con­fer­ence orga­nized by a fringe, schis­matic Catholic orga­ni­za­tion accused of vir­u­lent anti-Semi­tism, the Fati­ma Cen­ter.

Accord­ing to a new report, Ron Paul’s asso­ci­a­tion with Fati­ma Cen­ter lead­ers, includ­ing Fati­ma Cen­ter head Father Nicholas Gruner — who has espoused Holo­caust denial, traces back at least as far as 1998.

Dur­ing the Sep­tem­ber 5th inter­view, MSNBC’s Wag­ner con­fronted Paul with the fact that the Fati­ma Cen­ter has been called a “hard-core anti-Semi­te group” and has in the past pub­lished writ­ing sug­gest­ing that Jews should be stripped of cer­tain civ­il rights — a sug­ges­tion also once made by one of the speak­ers, Father Paul Leonard Kramer, who will join Ron Paul at the upcom­ing Fati­ma Cen­ter “Path To Peace” con­fer­ence to be held Sep­tem­ber 8th to 13th in Nia­gara Falls, Ontario.

For­mer Con­gress­man Paul respond­ed to MSNBC cor­re­spon­dent Wagner’s chal­lenge by flat­ly refus­ing to recon­sider his planned appear­ance at the Fati­ma Cen­ter con­fer­ence and by accus­ing Wag­ner of “Catholic bash­ing.”

Also join­ing For­mer Con­gress­man Ron Paul (R‑TX) at the event will be speak­ers who have pro­moted Holo­caust denial and por­trayed glob­al warm­ing as a hoax that will be used to jus­tify a Jew­ish and Israeli-led geno­cide of most of the Earth’s pop­u­la­tion, and who reject the long-estab­lished sci­en­tific fact that the Earth orbits the Sun.

Fati­ma Cen­ter head Father Nicholas Gruner, and oth­er top lead­ers asso­ci­ated with the cen­ter, have for over two decades pro­moted claims that a glob­al con­spir­acy of wealthy “apos­tate Jews” and Freema­sons — who are alleged to have financed Hitler and the Nazis and hold a “Hitler-like doc­trine of exter­mi­nat­ing the gen­tile races and repop­u­lat­ing the Earth with their own kind” — is plot­ting to insti­tute a “New World Order” glob­al gov­ern­ment under the com­mand of the anti-Christ.

The South­ern Pover­ty Law Cen­ter, which tracks far-right, racist and anti-Semit­ic groups, iden­ti­fies the Fati­ma Cen­ter as part of the “‘rad­i­cal tra­di­tion­al­ist Catholic’ move­ment, [which is] per­haps the sin­gle largest group of hard-core anti-Semi­tes in North Amer­i­ca.” . . . .

“Top 10 Racist Ron Paul Friends, Sup­port­ers” by Casey Gane-McCalla”; News One; 12/27/2011.

EXCERPT: . . . . 10. Willis Car­to

Willis Car­to is a holo­caust denier, Hitler admir­er and a white suprema­cist. A for­mer cam­paign­er for seg­re­ga­tion­ist can­di­date George Wal­lace, Car­to found­ed the Nation­al Alliance with William Pierce, the author of the “Turn­er Diaries,” which is cred­it­ed for inspir­ing Tim­o­thy McVeigh. Car­to found­ed the Pop­ulist Par­ty in 1984 and ran David Duke as a pres­i­den­tial can­di­date. Car­to also found­ed the Amer­i­can Free Press, which is labeled as a hate group by the South­ern Pover­ty Law Cen­ter (SPLC), where Paul’s col­umn runs. Paul has not sued Car­to for run­ning his col­umn or explained how it wound up in a white suprema­cist pub­li­ca­tion. The New York Times writes that Paul used the sub­scrip­tion list to a white suprema­cist pub­li­ca­tion of Carto’s to solic­it dona­tions. . . .
. . . . 8. Don Black

Don Black is a for­mer Grand Wiz­ard of the Ku Klux Klan, a cur­rent mem­ber of the Amer­i­can Nazi Par­ty, and the own­er and oper­a­tor of the white suprema­cist site Storm­front. Black reg­u­lar­ly orga­nizes “mon­ey bombs” for Ron and Rand Paul and has even tak­en a pic­ture with Ron Paul, who refused to return dona­tions from Black and Storm­front even with the polit­i­cal tra­di­tion of not accept­ing dona­tions from peo­ple who seem unfit. Black, who was sen­tenced to three years in jail for try­ing to over­throw the Caribbean coun­try of Domini­ca in 1981, sup­ports Paul through his Twit­ter account and on mes­sage boards for Storm­front.

Black told the New York Times that it was Paul’s newslet­ters that inspired him to be a sup­port­er:
That was a big part of his con­stituen­cy, the pale­o­con­ser­v­a­tives who think there are race prob­lems in this coun­try.

7. Lew Rock­well
Lew Rock­well is a close friend and advis­er of Paul’s who served as his con­gres­sion­al chief of staff between 1978 and 1982, worked as a paid con­sul­tant for Paul for more than 20 years, and was an edi­tor and alleged ghost writer for his racist newslet­ters. Rock­well formed the Lud­wig Von Mis­es Insti­tute, which Paul still has a close work­ing rela­tion­ship with.

The Lud­wig Von Mis­es Insti­tute is list­ed by the SPLC as a neo-Con­fed­er­ate orga­ni­za­tion. They also add that Rock­well said that the Civ­il War “trans­formed the Amer­i­can regime from a fed­er­al­ist sys­tem based on free­dom to a cen­tral­ized state that cir­cum­scribed lib­er­ty in the name of pub­lic order” and that the Civ­il Rights Move­ment was the “invol­un­tary servi­tude” of (pre­sum­ably white) busi­ness own­ers. Rock­well was list­ed as one of the racist League of the South’s found­ing mem­bers but denies mem­ber­ship. Rock­well reg­u­lar­ly posts arti­cles on his web­site, attack­ing a New World Order con­spir­a­cy.

6. David Duke
David Duke is a for­mer Grand Wiz­ard of the Ku Klux Klan and can­di­date for Gov­er­nor of Louisiana. Duke is also a New World Order con­spir­a­cy the­o­rist who believes that Jews con­trol the Fed­er­al Reserve. On his web­site, Duke proud­ly boasts about the endorse­ments and kind words that Paul gave him in his newslet­ters and in turn endors­es Paul for pres­i­dent:

Duke’s plat­form called for tax cuts, no quo­tas, no affir­ma­tive action, no wel­fare, and no bus­ing…
To many vot­ers, this seems like just plain good sense. Duke car­ried bag­gage from his past, the vot­ers were will­ing to over­look that. If he had been afford­ed the for­give­ness an ex-com­mu­nist gets, he might have won.

…David Broder, also of the Post and equal­ly lib­er­al, writ­ing on an entire­ly dif­fer­ent sub­ject, had it right: ‘No one wants to talk about race pub­licly, but if you ask any cam­paign con­sul­tant or poll­ster pri­vate­ly, the sad real­i­ty that a great many work­ing-class and mid­dle class white Amer­i­cans are far less hos­tile to the rich and their tax breaks than they are to the poor and minori­ties with their wel­fare and affir­ma­tive action pro­grams.”

Lib­er­als are noto­ri­ous­ly blind to the soci­o­log­i­cal effects of their own pro­grams. David Duke was hurt by his past. How many more Dukes are wait­ing in the wings with­out such a taint?

“Duke lost the elec­tion,” it said, “but he scared the blazes out of the Estab­lish­ment.” In 1991, a newslet­ter asked, “Is David Duke’s new promi­nence, despite his los­ing the guber­na­to­r­i­al elec­tion, good for anti-big gov­ern­ment forces?” The con­clu­sion was that “our pri­or­i­ty should be to take the anti-gov­ern­ment, anti-tax, anti-crime, anti-wel­fare loafers, anti-race priv­i­lege, anti-for­eign med­dling mes­sage of Duke, and enclose it in a more con­sis­tent pack­age of free­dom.”

Duke also gave advice to Paul on his web­site, say­ing:

What must Paul do to have any real chance of win­ning or mak­ing a big­ger impact? I think he should do exact­ly what I did in Louisiana, and for Ron Paul to fol­low exact­ly the same advice Ron Paul gave in his newslet­ters for oth­ers, take up my cam­paign issues with pas­sion and pur­pose.

Could it be that Paul is tak­ing Duke’s advice by hid­ing the racist “bag­gage from his past” in a more con­sis­tent pack­age of “free­dom?”

5. Thomas DiLoren­zo
Thomas DiLoren­zo is anoth­er neo-Con­fed­er­ate who believes the South was right in the the civ­il war and that Abra­ham Lin­coln was a wicked man who destroyed states’ rights. DiLoren­zo is list­ed as an affil­i­at­ed schol­ar with the racist League of the South, which pro­motes seg­re­ga­tion and a new south­ern seces­sion. Paul invit­ed DiLoren­zo to tes­ti­fy before con­gress about the Fed­er­al Reserve and is close friends with Paul and works for the Lud­wig Von Mis­es Instiute. Paul cit­ed DiLorezno’s book when telling Tim Russert that the North should not have fought the Civ­il War.

4. James Von Brunn
James Von Brunn was a white suprema­cist and anti-Semi­te who opened fired at the Holo­caust muse­um, killing an African-Amer­i­can secu­ri­ty guard. Von Brunn was an avid Paul sup­port­er who post­ed a mes­sage on the Ron Paul Yahoo Group, say­ing, “HITLER’S WORST MISTAKE: HE DIDN’T GAS THE JEWS.” In 1983, Von Brunn was con­vict­ed of kid­nap­ping mem­bers of the Fed­er­al Reserve Board, a com­mon tar­get of Paul’s, and was sen­tenced to six years in prison.Von Brunn died while await­ing sen­tenc­ing for his crime.

3. William Alexan­der “Bill” White
Bill White is a neo-Nazi who is a for­mer mem­ber of of the neo-Nazi group the Nation­al Social­ist Move­ment and founder of his own Nazi group, the Nation­al Social­ist Worker’s Move­ment. He has called for the lynch­ing of the Jena 6 and the assas­si­na­tion of NAACP lead­ers. White pre­vi­ous­ly cam­paigned for Pat Buchanan and the Reform par­ty. This year, White was con­vict­ed of threat­en­ing a juror but then freed by a judge who called the threats free speech. White is a for­mer Ron Paul sup­port­er who became dis­en­fran­chised with Paul, when a Paul spokesman called white suprema­cy “a small ide­ol­o­gy.” Here is what White wrote about Paul on a pop­u­lar white suprema­cist web­site:

I have kept qui­et about the Ron Paul cam­paign for a while, because I didn’t see any need to say any­thing that would cause any trou­ble. How­ev­er, read­ing the lat­est release from his cam­paign spokesman, I am com­pelled to tell the truth about Ron Paul’s exten­sive involve­ment in white nation­al­ism.

Both Con­gress­man Paul and his aides reg­u­lar­ly meet with mem­bers of the Storm­front set, Amer­i­can Renais­sance, the Insti­tute for His­toric Review, and oth­ers at the Tara Thai restau­rant in Arling­ton, Vir­ginia, usu­al­ly on Wednes­days. This is part of a din­ner that was orig­i­nal­ly orga­nized by Pat Buchanan, Sam Fran­cis and Joe Sobran, and has since been most­ly tak­en over by the Coun­cil of Con­ser­v­a­tive Cit­i­zens.

I have attend­ed these din­ners, seen Paul and his aides there, and been invit­ed to his offices in Wash­ing­ton to dis­cuss pol­i­cy.

For his spokesman to call white racial­ism a “small ide­ol­o­gy” and claim white activists are “wast­ing their mon­ey” try­ing to influ­ence Paul is ridicu­lous. Paul is a white nation­al­ist of the Storm­front type who has always kept his racial views and his views about world Judaism qui­et because of his polit­i­cal posi­tion.

I don’t know that it is nec­es­sar­i­ly good for Paul to “expose” this. How­ev­er, he real­ly is some­one with exten­sive ties to white nation­al­ism and for him to deny that in the belief he will be more respectable by deny­ing it is out­ra­geous – and I hate see­ing peo­ple in the press who denounce racial­ism mere­ly because they think it is not fash­ion­able

Bill White, Com­man­der
Amer­i­can Nation­al Social­ist Work­ers Par­ty

Ron Paul has not sued White for libel, which would be in his rights to do if White’s statement’s were lies. White is out of jail and has not lost cred­i­bil­i­ty in the white suprema­cist world, writ­ing for the neo-Nazi web­site the Amer­i­can Free Press and the same paper that used to car­ry Paul’s col­umn.

2. Richard Poplaws­ki
Richard Poplaws­ki is a neo-Nazi from Pitts­burgh who reg­u­lar­ly post­ed on the neo-Nazi web­site Storm­front. Poplaws­ki would post videos of Ron Paul talk­ing about FEMA camp con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries with Glenn Beck.

Polaws­ki was afraid of a gov­ern­ment con­spir­a­cy to take away people’s guns and wound up killing three police offi­cers who came to his house after his moth­er made a domes­tic dis­pute call. . . .

“Lud­wig von Mis­es Insti­tute”; Wikipedia.

EXCERPT: . . . . The Insti­tute is crit­i­cal of democ­ra­cy, which authors in Mis­es Insti­tute pub­li­ca­tions have called coercive,[22] incom­pat­i­ble with wealth creation,[23] replete with inner contradictions,[24] and a sys­tem of legal­ized graft. . . .

. . . . Insti­tute schol­ars have con­demned Abra­ham Lin­col­n’s con­duct of the Amer­i­can Civ­il War (e.g. sus­pend­ing habeas cor­pus), assert­ing that his poli­cies con­tributed to the growth of sta­tism in the Unit­ed States. Senior fac­ul­ty mem­ber Thomas DiLoren­zo, in his crit­i­cal biogra­phies The Real Lin­coln and Lin­coln: Unmasked, argues that the six­teenth pres­i­dent sub­stan­tial­ly expand­ed the size and pow­ers of the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment at the expense of indi­vid­ual lib­er­ty. Adjunct fac­ul­ty mem­ber Don­ald Liv­ingston shares a sim­i­lar view, blam­ing Lin­coln for the cre­ation of “a French Rev­o­lu­tion­ary style uni­tary state” and “cen­tral­iz­ing totalitarianism.”[28]

LvMI’s Thomas DiLoren­zo’s ref­er­ences to the Amer­i­can Civ­il War as the “War to pre­vent South­ern Inde­pen­dence” and Mis­es fac­ul­ty mem­ber Thomas Wood­s’s pres­ence at the found­ing of the League of the South were cit­ed by James Kirchick, writ­ing for the New Repub­lic, as sug­gest­ing a “dis­turb­ing attach­ment to the Confederacy.”[29] Woods has stat­ed that he was present at the meet­ing at which the orga­ni­za­tion was founded,[30] and lat­er con­tributed to its newsletter,[31] . . .

Discussion

10 comments for “Snowden’s Ride, Part 8: Papa Snowden and The Paulistinian Libertarian Organization”

  1. We got anoth­er indi­ca­tion Snow­den is going to play a big role in the rebrand­ing of the GOP: The fight start­ed this week­end between Chris Christie and Rand Paul — the two fig­ures that are most like­ly to be seen as “the future” of the GOP — was par­tial­ly a fight about all the response to the Snow­den affair. As Bill Kris­tol put it, “I’m con­fi­dent the Rea­gan Repub­li­cans will pre­vail over the Snow­den Repub­li­cans.” That makes Rand Paul the leader of the “Snow­den Repub­li­cans”. It also puts Snow­den near the cen­ter of the bat­tle for the, uh, ‘heart and soul’ of the GOP:

    Politi­co
    GOP hawks: This will not stand, Rand

    By ALEXANDER BURNS | 7/26/13 3:34 PM EDT

    The Repub­li­can Party’s hawks are final­ly say­ing it out in the open: This aggres­sion will not stand, Rand.

    After three years of watch­ing the GOP’s non-inter­ven­tion­ist wing gath­er strength, there are mount­ing signs that a more com­bat­ive set of nation­al secu­ri­ty con­ser­v­a­tives have reached their break­ing point. Now, promi­nent con­ser­v­a­tive lead­ers in what used to be con­sid­ered the Bush-Cheney mold are increas­ing­ly tak­ing the offen­sive against their intra-par­ty rivals.

    New Jer­sey Gov. Chris Christie pub­licly chal­lenged lib­er­tar­i­an Repub­li­cans Thurs­day to explain their skep­ti­cism about gov­ern­ment sur­veil­lance to the fam­i­lies of 9/11 vic­tims, declar­ing at a Repub­li­can Gov­er­nors Asso­ci­a­tion event: “I want them to come to New Jer­sey and sit across from the wid­ows and the orphans and have that con­ver­sa­tion.”

    New York Rep. Peter King said this week that he will explore a 2016 pres­i­den­tial run to wrest con­trol of the defense debate from small-gov­ern­ment advo­cates such as Sens. Rand Paul of Ken­tucky and Ted Cruz of Texas, and warned that an Amer­i­ca-first can­di­date would stand lit­tle chance of defeat­ing Hillary Clin­ton.

    Per­haps the most dra­mat­ic provo­ca­tion to Paul-aligned con­ser­v­a­tives came ear­li­er this month, when Repub­li­can nation­al secu­ri­ty activist Liz Cheney – the for­mer vice president’s daugh­ter – announced a pri­ma­ry chal­lenge to Wyoming Sen. Mike Enzi, a low-key incum­bent backed by Paul and a num­ber of oth­er Sen­ate col­leagues.

    Repub­li­can hawks say these devel­op­ments amount to some­thing less than a coor­di­nat­ed coun­terof­fen­sive. But no one dis­putes that they’re near­ing a crit­i­cal mass of impa­tience with what some call “Rand-ism” – resis­tance to for­eign entan­gle­ments and deep, con­fronta­tion­al skep­ti­cism about the expan­sion of the fed­er­al defense appa­ra­tus, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the areas of sur­veil­lance and drone war­fare.

    “I want a strong nation­al defense and I don’t want Rand Paul to be the face of the Repub­li­can Par­ty,” King said in an inter­view. “I’ve felt this way for a while [and] once it gets out there, peo­ple say, ‘God, this is wrong, we’re killing our­selves. This is not the Repub­li­can Par­ty.’”

    For­mer Penn­syl­va­nia Sen. Rick San­to­rum, who was a vocal and at times caus­tic crit­ic of Rand Paul’s father, for­mer Texas Rep. Ron Paul, dur­ing the 2012 pri­maries, called it a wel­come devel­op­ment that “peo­ple are start­ing to push back.”

    “There was a lot of talk, par­tic­u­lar­ly dur­ing the Repub­li­can pri­ma­ry last year, of, ‘Well, we don’t want to alien­ate these vot­ers,” San­to­rum said, recall­ing that he’d been crit­i­cized as “too bel­li­cose” and “too war­like. “I can tell you, the Paulis­tas who were active on the state lev­el in 2012 were not inter­est­ed in the Repub­li­can Par­ty as it now exists. They are inter­est­ed in a very dif­fer­ent kind of mod­el.”
    ...

    Notice how the GOP is brand­ing “Rand-ism” as a hip­py peacenik alter­na­tive to that harsh neo­con­ser­v­a­tive fla­vor of con­ser­vatism that Amer­i­cans are now more than famil­iar with after decades of Rand-ish eco­nom­ic poli­cies cou­pled with a “neo­con”-influ­enced for­eign pol­i­cy. Rand Paul rep­re­sents a kinder, gen­tler GOP (the kind Jack Hunter high­light­ed back in 2011). The GOP just has to drop the neo­con for­eign-pol­i­cy and domes­tic sur­veil­lance agen­da — while main­tain­ing the Orwellian/Rand Pau­lian eco­nom­ic regime — to give the pub­lic a sense that this is a GOP that cares about you. And Rand does sort of rep­re­sents a kinder, gen­tler GOP, from a “war, civ­il-rights, and police-state” stand­point (at least, uh, in the­o­ry). And he sort of does­n’t rep­re­sents a kinder, gen­tler GOP, from a “day-to-day liv­ing for poor and mid­dle-class Americans”-standpoint. By latch­ing on to NSA sur­veil­lance as a GOP ‘heart and soul’ wedge issue this intra-par­ty fight could end up brand­ing the Lib­er­tar­i­an wing of the GOP as pro-“civil lib­er­ties” instead of pro-“gimmicky eco­nom­ic death-trap”. “Rand-ism” is sup­posed to be a “very dif­fer­ent kind of mod­el” . LOL. Pret­ty slick.

    Con­tin­u­ing...

    ...
    King acknowl­edged that pub­lic opin­ion has turned against some Bush-era secu­ri­ty poli­cies, such as the ongo­ing war in Afghanistan. But he sug­gest­ed that it doevfin’t take much to jolt vot­ers from their sense of com­pla­cen­cy.

    “I see every time there’s a ter­ror attack, or even a thwart­ed ter­ror attack, people’s views change dra­mat­i­cal­ly,” the Long Island law­mak­er said, con­ced­ing: “They want out after 12 years in Afghanistan, and real­ly after Pres­i­dent Oba­ma not explain­ing for the last five years why we’re there.”

    For the embold­ened pha­lanx of defense-mind­ed con­ser­v­a­tives, it remains to be seen how dif­fi­cult a task they’ll have in turn­ing the tide of the GOP’s nation­al secu­ri­ty con­ver­sa­tion. Repub­li­can hawks say they are firm­ly con­fi­dent that the par­ty is, in its heart, more sym­pa­thet­ic to the George W. Bush agen­da of expand­ing free­dom and fight­ing ter­ror­ism, than to the Rand-style focus on lim­it­ing the government’s secu­ri­ty pow­ers that many con­gres­sion­al Repub­li­cans have recent­ly embraced.

    That’s cer­tain­ly true of most nation­al Repub­li­can elites. In some Repub­li­can donor and oper­a­tive cir­cles, there’s active talk of whether the GOP’s strong-on-defense wing may need new infra­struc­ture and orga­ni­za­tions to pro­mote their pri­or­i­ties dur­ing pri­ma­ry sea­son in 2014 and beyond.

    Among those groups, opti­mistic Repub­li­cans argue that the GOP base cheers for tirades against drones and the NSA out of hos­til­i­ty toward the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion, rather than the actu­al sub­stance of those issues. They point out that the GOP-held House defeat­ed an amend­ment this week offered by lib­er­tar­i­an Rep. Justin Amash, which would have sharply cur­tailed the NSA’s domes­tic spy­ing pow­ers (though about two in five Repub­li­cans sup­port­ed the mea­sure.)

    Amid the con­tin­u­ing Edward Snow­den saga, there have been few Repub­li­can voic­es sym­pa­thet­ic to the NSA leak­er out­side the Paul fam­i­ly.

    “I’m hon­est­ly not too wor­ried,” said Week­ly Stan­dard edi­tor William Kris­tol, the influ­en­tial for­eign pol­i­cy con­ser­v­a­tive. “I’m con­fi­dent the Rea­gan Repub­li­cans will pre­vail over the Snow­den Repub­li­cans.”

    ...

    Paul, for all the flak he’s tak­ing inside the par­ty, has rid­den this shift in pub­lic opin­ion to nation­al promi­nence, mount­ing a 13-hour fil­i­buster against the (hypo­thet­i­cal) domes­tic use of drones against U.S. cit­i­zens. Just last week, he deliv­ered a speech at the Vet­er­ans of For­eign Wars Con­ven­tion in Louisville, denounc­ing for­eign aid pro­grams that sup­port Egypt and Pak­istan, and argu­ing against arm­ing rebels in Syr­ia.

    “Amer­i­ca has nev­er backed down from a fight, but we should nev­er be a nation that is eager to get involved in civ­il wars that don’t affect our nation­al secu­ri­ty,” Paul said, accord­ing to his pre­pared remarks. “America’s mis­sion should always be to keep the peace, not police the world.”

    Paul’s gang shows no signs of back­ing down in the face of renewed crit­i­cism from inside the GOP. The Ken­tuck­ian was attacked for hav­ing “strange ideas” on nation­al secu­ri­ty dur­ing his 2010 Sen­ate pri­ma­ry, and end­ed up crush­ing an oppo­nent endorsed by Dick Cheney. The sen­a­tor and his advis­ers are well aware of the response he gets out­side of Wash­ing­ton to his come-home-Amer­i­ca pitch on nation­al secu­ri­ty.

    In their view, all the elite dis­may at Paul’s views on every­thing from for­eign aid to gov­ern­ment sur­veil­lance, only under­scores the poten­cy of his small-gov­ern­ment pop­ulism.

    But Paul and his allies are also acute­ly aware that the heat on the sen­a­tor has increased. Ear­li­er this month, Paul’s world react­ed with fury to a report in the Wash­ing­ton Free Bea­con – a web­site found­ed by mul­ti­ple Week­ly Stan­dard alums – detail­ing the writ­ings of one Paul advis­er, Jack Hunter, who authored provoca­tive, neo-con­fed­er­ate columns under the label “The South­ern Avenger.”

    Despite ini­tial­ly stand­ing by Hunter, Paul accept­ed his res­ig­na­tion ear­li­er this week.

    In gen­er­al, Paul’s advis­ers have tak­en a bring-it-on approach to the stepped-up con­fronta­tion. When Liz Cheney announced for Sen­ate, Paul issued a state­ment sug­gest­ing that she’d be bet­ter off seek­ing office in “her home state of Vir­ginia.”

    And after Christie’s shock-and-awe remarks this week, senior Paul advis­er Doug Stafford sug­gest­ed the New Jer­sey gov­er­nor “needs to talk to more Amer­i­cans, because a great num­ber of them are con­cerned about the dra­mat­ic over­reach of our gov­ern­ment in recent years.” Paul him­self fired back at Christie on Twit­ter, writ­ing: “Christie wor­ries about the dan­gers of free­dom. I wor­ry about the dan­ger of los­ing that free­dom. Spy­ing with­out war­rants is uncon­sti­tu­tion­al.”

    “We are win­ning. They are lash­ing out,” one Paul advis­er said in an email, of the nation­al secu­ri­ty debate.

    ...

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | July 29, 2013, 10:54 pm

  2. LOL, yep, Lib­er­tar­i­an == Lib­er­al. At least, that’s the meme:

    Lib­er­al­tar­i­an: Rove, Amash spar over ‘lib­er­al Repub­li­can’ label
    W. James Antle III
    Edi­tor, The Dai­ly Caller News Foun­da­tion

    GOP strate­gist Karl Rove was caught on tape blast­ing Michi­gan Rep. Justin Amash as the “most lib­er­al Repub­li­can.”

    “The most lib­er­al Repub­li­can is Justin Amash of Michi­gan. Far more lib­er­al than any oth­er Repub­li­can,” said Rove, who served as deputy chief of staff to for­mer Pres­i­dent George W. Bush.

    The man dubbed “Bush’s Brain” in a New York Times best­seller blamed Amash’s lib­er­tar­i­an lean­ings for this dis­tinc­tion.

    “And why? Because he is a 100 per­cent, purist lib­er­tar­i­an,” Rove said, “and if it’s not entire­ly per­fect, ‘I’m vot­ing with [House Minor­i­ty Leader] Nan­cy Pelosi.”

    Rove actu­al­ly made the remarks at the Aspen Ideas Fes­ti­val in late June, but jour­nal­ist Andrew Kirell tweet­ed out the video Mon­day. It was sub­se­quent­ly picked by a lib­er­tar­i­an blog and local media in Michi­gan.

    Amash indi­rect­ly replied on Twit­ter that an OpenCongress.org score­sheet showed he was the House Repub­li­can who votes least often with Pelosi.

    The sec­ond-term Michi­gan Repub­li­can was one of three House mem­bers to receive a 100 per­cent rat­ing from the con­ser­v­a­tive Club for Growth in 2012. Her­itage Action also rat­ed him as one of the most con­ser­v­a­tive mem­bers of Con­gress dur­ing his first term.

    But the Wash­ing­ton mag­a­zine Nation­al Jour­nal rat­ed Amash the fifth most lib­er­al Repub­li­can, in part because he was the House Repub­li­can who vot­ed least often with his par­ty.

    Amash was also removed from the House Bud­get Com­mit­tee after vot­ing against a Repub­li­can bud­get pro­pos­al on the grounds that it did not cut spend­ing or reach bal­ance quick­ly enough.

    ...

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | July 30, 2013, 2:50 pm

  3. This is so dan­ger­ous! Peo­ple for­get that Hitler in his time was a pop­u­lar leader, not unlike Ron and Rand Paul. Some­one who gave “voice” to the peo­ple. Bush total­ly destroyed peo­ple’s trust in the Repub­li­can par­ty and now with this Snow­den affair plus the IRS and Beng­hazi scan­dals, peo­ple are total­ly los­ing their trust in the Demo­c­ra­t­ic par­ty as well. If Hillary, Jeb Bush and Rand Paul were to run for pres­i­dent it would not be a stretch of the imag­i­na­tion to think Rand Paul just might win the fol­low­ing elec­tions sim­ply because Amer­i­cans have become dis­il­lu­sioned with the two par­ty sys­tem. They might think a break with the old sys­tem is just what the US needs, not unlike the Ger­mans thought Hitler was what Ger­many need­ed at the time.

    Fas­cism is like a can­cer, it keeps crop­ping up time and again. How­ev­er, I can’t help but admire their intel­li­gence and abil­i­ty to strate­gize.

    I at first had my doubts when you said the Snow­den affair was a direct assault on the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion but now that I step back and see the big pic­ture it all makes sense. Destroy the GOP, destroy the Demo­c­ra­t­ic par­ty and then peo­ple will go run­ning straight into the new führer’s arms. Geez!… That’s why you’re always on the mon­ey. Only some­body who has been fol­low­ing their agen­da since the 70’s can see the strat­a­gem.

    I believe many of the so called “con­spir­a­cy the­o­rists”, who by the way are big Ron Paul sup­port­ers, are not pur­pose­ly try­ing to deceive. It’s just that it all start­ed for them on 911 and when you arrive so late in the game it is extreme easy to fall for the feints and fakes.

    Posted by Shibusa | July 31, 2013, 7:30 am

  4. Here’s some more info on Snow­den’s back­ground. Accord­ing to his dad, Edward grew up in a patri­ot­ic home sur­round­ed by fed­er­al agents and police offi­cers. He does­n’t know what made his son decide to do what he did, but the 2010 self-immo­la­tion by a Tunisian street vender that became a cat­alyz­ing event for the Arab Spring was appar­ent­ly part of his ‘grow­ing polit­i­cal aware­ness’. In addi­tion, Lon Snow­den sug­gest­ed that mis­lead­ing state­ments of US offi­cials about the sur­veil­lance meth­ods Snow­den revealed were part of it, say­ing “If you could say there was a tip­ping point, I would say it was what hap­pened in the last six to nine months of this nation”. Since Snow­den start­ed down this path back in Jan­u­ary, the mis­lead­ing state­ments by intel­li­gence offi­cials could­n’t be refr­erring to DCI James Clap­per’s con­gres­sion­al tes­ti­mo­ny back in March so it would be inter­est­ing to learn more about those oth­er intel­li­gence-relat­ed pub­lic state­ments pre-Jan­u­ary that inspired Snow­den (was it Beng­hazi-relat­ed perhaps?...that did­n’t involve sur­veil­lance meth­ods but who knows how it could have impact­ed him). Coop­er­a­tion between Lon Snow­den and the FBI also appears to have col­lapsed:

    Wash­ing­ton Post
    Effort to get NSA leak­er Edward Snowden’s father to Moscow col­laps­es
    By Jer­ry Markon, Pub­lished: July 30

    The FBI tried to enlist the father of Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Agency leak­er Edward Snow­den to fly to Moscow to try to per­suade his son to return to the Unit­ed States, but the effort col­lapsed when agents could not estab­lish a way for the two to speak once he arrived, Snowden’s father said Tues­day.

    “I said, ‘I want to be able to speak with my son. ... Can you set up com­mu­ni­ca­tions?’ And it was, ‘Well, we’re not sure,’?” Lon Snow­den told The Wash­ing­ton Post. “I said, ‘Wait a minute, folks, I’m not going to sit on the tar­mac to be an emo­tion­al tool for you.’?”

    In a wide-rang­ing inter­view, the elder Snow­den offered a vehe­ment defense of the young man some have labeled a trai­tor. He said that Edward, who is holed up at an air­port in Moscow, grew up in a patri­ot­ic fam­i­ly in sub­ur­ban Mary­land, filled with fed­er­al agents and police offi­cers, and that he “loves this nation.’’

    Asked what trig­gered his son’s deci­sion to leak top-secret intel­li­gence doc­u­ments, Snow­den, a retired Coast Guard offi­cer, said he didn’t know. Although Edward had seemed trou­bled in April dur­ing their final din­ner togeth­er, he said his son had recent­ly put up a “fire­wall between him­self and his fam­i­ly.”

    “We had no idea what was com­ing,’’ he said.

    But he point­ed to a pos­si­ble expla­na­tion: what he con­sid­ers mis­lead­ing state­ments by U.S. offi­cials about the sur­veil­lance meth­ods that Edward Snow­den revealed. “If you could say there was a tip­ping point, I would say it was what hap­pened in the last six to nine months of this nation,” the elder Snow­den said.

    He also men­tioned a con­ver­sa­tion that hint­ed at his son’s grow­ing polit­i­cal aware­ness; he said Edward told him that he was “trou­bled” by the 2010 sui­cide of a Tunisian street ven­dor that helped trig­ger the Arab Spring protests.

    “It was the idea that a man who sim­ply want­ed to make a liv­ing, who sold fruits and veg­eta­bles to sup­port him­self and his fam­i­ly, felt so sup­pressed and humil­i­at­ed by his gov­ern­ment that he would set him­self on fire,” Lon Snow­den said.

    The younger Snow­den, 30, has remained a fig­ure of intrigue since he revealed his iden­ti­ty last month as the prin­ci­pal source behind arti­cles in the British news­pa­per the Guardian and The Post about secret sur­veil­lance. Under the pro­grams he exposed, the NSA col­lects the tele­phone records of mil­lions of Amer­i­cans from U.S. telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions com­pa­nies and the online com­mu­ni­ca­tions of for­eign tar­gets from major Inter­net firms.

    Snow­den, who has been charged in the Unit­ed States with theft and espi­onage, is seek­ing asy­lum in Rus­sia. U.S. offi­cials have con­demned the leaks and said the pro­grams he exposed are legal and super­vised by a fed­er­al court.

    In the elder Snowden’s first news­pa­per inter­view, con­duct­ed with his attor­ney, Bruce Fein, he offered insight into his son, whose own girl­friend labeled him a “man of mys­tery.’’ Snow­den, who is divorced from Edward’s moth­er, said his son was “a gen­tle child” who was high­ly intel­li­gent and fas­ci­nat­ed by com­put­ers and tech­nol­o­gy but didn’t always do well in school.

    Yet he grew ani­mat­ed when asked why Edward left Arun­del High School halfway through the 10th grade. “If peo­ple are going to call him a high school dropout, they should call him a 16-year-old col­lege drop-in as well,’’ he said, explain­ing that Edward missed months of school because he con­tract­ed mononu­cle­o­sis and made up the course­work at a com­mu­ni­ty col­lege.

    He added that his son, a vora­cious read­er, once smiled at him, quot­ed Mark Twain and said, “Dad, my edu­ca­tion is inter­fer­ing with my learn­ing.’ ’’

    Snow­den said he was unsur­prised that the adult Edward lat­er made the remark­able leap from secu­ri­ty guard at a fed­er­al­ly fund­ed cen­ter at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Mary­land to the intel­li­gence world. “I’m assum­ing that what they saw was a 23-year-old bril­liant man. Some­one saw some­thing in him,” said Snow­den, 52.

    But Snow­den said he was shocked when his son was iden­ti­fied as the leak­er.

    “I was as sur­prised as the rest of Amer­i­ca. I was stunned,” he said. He said he saw no direct signs of the grow­ing dis­il­lu­sion­ment with the gov­ern­ment and its sur­veil­lance meth­ods that Edward has spo­ken about in inter­views. “He sim­ply did not talk about his work. He was true to the cul­ture,’’ Snow­den said.

    Edward has said he took his final gov­ern­ment con­tract­ing job with Booz Allen Hamil­ton in Hawaii to gain access to sen­si­tive NSA infor­ma­tion. But his father said Edward told him that his pre­vi­ous con­tract­ing job had been elim­i­nat­ed because of the fed­er­al bud­get seques­tra­tion.

    “As a father, it pains me what he did,’’ Snow­den said. “I wish my son could have sim­ply sat in Hawaii and tak­en the big pay­check, lived with his beau­ti­ful girl­friend and enjoyed par­adise. But as an Amer­i­can cit­i­zen, I am absolute­ly thank­ful for what he did.’’

    Less than two days after Edward’s unmask­ing, FBI agents showed up at his father’s home out­side Allen­town, Pa., where he retired from the Coast Guard in 2009. He spoke to them for four hours, telling them “every­thing I could pos­si­bly think of’’ and shar­ing e‑mails he had exchanged with Edward, he said.

    Soon after that, the FBI asked him to fly to Moscow.

    It is not pre­cise­ly clear why the nego­ti­a­tions over the trip failed, and FBI offi­cials declined to com­ment. Nor is it clear why Lon Snow­den has not gone to Moscow on his own.

    “Sure, I could get on a flight tomor­row to Rus­sia. I’m not sure if I could get access to Edward,’’ said Snow­den, who said he had com­mu­ni­cat­ed with his son through unspec­i­fied “inter­me­di­aries” as recent­ly as two days ago.

    What is clear is that rela­tions between Lon Snow­den and U.S. offi­cials have since dete­ri­o­rat­ed. He con­demned the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion and mem­bers of Con­gress for label­ing his son a trai­tor and said he now prefers that Edward stay in Rus­sia.

    ...

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | July 31, 2013, 11:03 am

  5. @Shibusa–

    Yes, indeed! Thanks so much for your atten­tion to this web­site and your kind remarks!

    By way of under­scor­ing this whole, very com­pli­cat­ed and depress­ing affair:

    This is not only an assault on Oba­ma, but on the U.S. econ­o­my and, even­tu­al­ly, the world.

    That’s com­pli­cat­ed. I will be dis­cussing soon the EU’s attempt at estab­lish­ing its own drone force, inter­net sur­veil­lance secu­ri­ty body, and mil­i­tary capa­bil­i­ty.

    All of this because of Snow­den!

    A few points: Snow­den’s a spook, he’s a god­damn spy, not a boy scout or a mem­ber of the 4H Club.

    Spy rhymes with “lie.” Nev­er lose sight of that.

    His pub­lic per­sona is as though he were some kind of rock star: “Eddie the Friend­ly Spook: The Pri­va­cy and Civ­il Lib­er­ties World Tour.”

    First stop on the tour: Chi­na, that world famous bas­tion of civ­il lib­er­ties and inter­net free­dom, JUST as Oba­ma was prepar­ing to meet with Pres­i­dent Xi.

    Eddie the Friend­ly Spook dis­clos­es info about U.S. hack­ing of Chi­nese com­put­er sys­tems, there­by dam­ag­ing Oba­ma’s for­eign diplo­ma­cy and U.S. rela­tions with Chi­na.

    Just before Oba­ma is to meet with Angela Merkel, Snow­den’s leak­ing jour­nal­ist of choice–Nazi fel­low trav­el­er Glenn Greenwald–publishes infor­ma­tion about U.S. spy­ing on Ger­many, dam­ag­ing rela­tions with EU/Germany.

    Then Eddie the Friend­ly Spook’s Pri­va­cy and Civ­il Lib­er­ties World Tour heads to anoth­er world renowned bas­tion of civ­il lib­er­ties and inter­net freedom–Russia!

    This just AFTER Oba­ma meets with Putin and before the G20 con­fer­ence and a pro­posed sum­mit con­fer­ence with Putin.

    Oba­ma has placed improv­ing rela­tions with Rus­sia on the front burn­er. Snow­den dam­ages that!

    This makes absolute­ly NO sense as any­thing BUT a spook oper­a­tion.

    This will also hurt the U.S. inter­net econ­o­my.

    It also dove­tails with Wik­iLeaks, anoth­er far-right, Nazi-linked spook oper­a­tion.

    BTW–you should make a point of digest­ing the anti-fas­cist books made avail­able on this web­site for down­load for free.

    Among them is a book of par­tic­u­lar inter­est to some­one from Latin Amer­i­ca: https://spitfirelist.com/books/falange-the-secret-axis-army-in-the-americas/

    Also check out the Bor­mann book–another that is essen­tial for under­stand­ing the dark under­bel­ly of Latin Amer­i­can pol­i­tics.

    Best,

    Dave Emory

    Posted by Dave Emory | July 31, 2013, 1:03 pm

  6. Well this is inter­est­ing: Fol­low­ing a chat ses­sion between Lon and Ed Snow­den, Lon’s legal team, led by Bruce Fein, just voiced the con­cerns Lon has about the inten­tions of Green­wald and Assange. And they even threat­ened to cut off media access to any media out­let that agreed to an alleged exclu­sive inter­view with Glenn Green­wald. So Lon Snow­den’s ear­li­er con­cerns about the inten­tions of the peo­ple sur­round­ing his son appears to have grown:

    The Wall Street Jour­nal
    Divi­sions Widen Among Snow­den’s Sup­port­ers
    Edward Snow­den and His Father Spoke for the First Time Since Late May
    Updat­ed August 15, 2013, 3:27 p.m. ET

    By LUKAS I. ALPERT

    MOSCOW—Former Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Agency con­trac­tor Edward Snow­den and his father spoke for the first time since late May ear­ly Thurs­day, going against the wish­es of their lawyers and reflect­ing grow­ing rifts among fam­i­ly and advis­ers of the fugi­tive leak­er of U.S. sur­veil­lance doc­u­ments.

    ...

    Mr. Snow­den and his father, Lon Snow­den, spoke for about two hours via an encrypt­ed Inter­net chat pro­gram, said two lawyers who helped arrange the con­tact. The elder Mr. Snow­den par­tic­i­pat­ed in the chat from the Wash­ing­ton, D.C., office of his attor­ney, Bruce Fein, and was con­nect­ed to his son with the help of Ben Wiz­n­er, an attor­ney with the Amer­i­can Civ­il Lib­er­ties Union, who is involved in coor­di­nat­ing Mr. Snow­den’s legal defense in the U.S. What they dis­cussed was­n’t dis­closed.

    ...

    More frac­tious is the rela­tion­ship among Lon Snow­den, Wik­iLeaks and Mr. Green­wald. Mr. Fein’s wife and spokes­woman, Mat­tie Fein, said Lon Snow­den’s legal team does­n’t trust the inten­tions of Mr. Green­wald or Wik­iLeaks and wor­ry they are giv­ing Edward Snow­den bad advice.

    “The thing we have been most con­cerned about is that the peo­ple who have influ­ence over Ed will try to use him for their own means,” Ms. Fein said. “These guys have their own agen­da here and we aren’t so sure that it has Ed’s best inter­est in mind.”

    Mr. Green­wald called the Feins’ con­cerns ridicu­lous and said they had no stand­ing in the mat­ter as they have nev­er had direct con­tact with Mr. Snow­den.

    “They have no con­nec­tion to Ed,” Mr. Green­wald said. “Snow­den is not 14 years old. He is a very strong-willed, inde­pen­dent, autonomous adult and is mak­ing all his own choic­es about who he deals with and who rep­re­sents him.”

    Ms. Fein said she was only voic­ing the con­cerns of Mr. Snow­den’s father, who want­ed to make sure his son end­ed up with the best avail­able legal defense and wor­ried that the team being put togeth­er was focused on pro­mot­ing the inter­ests of Wik­iLeaks founder Julian Assange.

    On Aug. 9, Wik­iLeaks start­ed a “Jour­nal­is­tic Source Pro­tec­tion Defence Fund,” to raise mon­ey for Mr. Snow­den, say­ing he had endorsed it. So far, the fund has raised $12,011, accord­ing to Wik­iLeaks’ web­site.

    Wik­iLeaks also recent­ly began sell­ing Edward Snow­den mer­chan­dise, includ­ing T‑shirts and cof­fee mugs, via its online store. Wik­iLeaks did­n’t respond to ques­tions about the fund or alle­ga­tions made by with Lon Snow­den’s legal team.

    On Sun­day, Ms. Fein says she was called by a pro­duc­er at a U.S. tele­vi­sion net­work she did­n’t spec­i­fy say­ing Mr. Green­wald had been shop­ping around an exclu­sive inter­view with Mr. Snow­den for sev­en fig­ures.

    She said she warned the pro­duc­er that she would cut off access to Mr. Snow­den’s father, who has appeared reg­u­lar­ly on tele­vi­sion, to any­one who agreed to Mr. Green­wald’s terms. A few hours lat­er, she said she received a furi­ous email from Mr. Green­wald, call­ing her a liar and deny­ing he had made such an offer.

    Mr. Green­wald calls the accu­sa­tion that he was shop­ping an inter­view “defam­a­to­ry,” but did admit to hav­ing infor­mal dis­cus­sions with NBC about pro­duc­ing an inter­view he would con­duct him­self and licens­ing it to them for $50,000.

    “There were no nego­ti­a­tions. I did­n’t shop any­thing around. I did­n’t go to NBC, they called me and asked and made these offers,” he said. “By the time we paid the crew and got our­selves to Moscow and stayed there for two-three days, we would end up los­ing mon­ey, or maybe break­ing even.”

    A spokes­woman for NBC did­n’t imme­di­ate­ly respond to a request for com­ment.

    He said he decid­ed against the idea because it would dis­tract from the pub­lic dis­cus­sion about sur­veil­lance and pri­va­cy that has emerged since Mr. Snow­den leaked details of the U.S. pro­grams.

    But Ed does­n’t seem to agree with that assess­ment:

    Edward Snow­den: My father and his legal team do not speak for me
    By CNN Staff
    updat­ed 11:04 PM EDT, Thu August 15, 2013

    (CNN) — The man want­ed by the Unit­ed States for leak­ing details of Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Agency intel­li­gence gath­er­ing says jour­nal­ists have been mis­led into print­ing false claims about his legal sit­u­a­tion, The Huff­in­g­ton Post report­ed Thurs­day.

    In an e‑mailed state­ment to the news orga­ni­za­tion, Edward Snow­den dis­tanced him­self from his father, Lon Snow­den; his father’s attor­ney, Bruce Fein; and Fein’s asso­ciates, say­ing “they do not pos­sess any spe­cial knowl­edge regard­ing my sit­u­a­tion.”

    “None of them have been or are involved in my cur­rent sit­u­a­tion, and this will not change in the future,” the state­ment said.

    “I ask jour­nal­ists to under­stand that they do not pos­sess any spe­cial knowl­edge regard­ing my sit­u­a­tion or future plans, and not to exploit the trag­ic vac­u­um of my father’s emo­tion­al com­pro­mise for the sake of tabloid news.”

    The state­ment was released the same day The Wall Street Jour­nal report­ed that Lon Snow­den’s legal team does not trust his son’s clos­est advis­ers: Wik­iLeaks and Guardian reporter Glenn Green­wald.

    “I would like to cor­rect the record: I’ve been for­tu­nate to have legal advice from an inter­na­tion­al team of some of the finest lawyers in the world, and to work with jour­nal­ists whose integri­ty and courage are beyond ques­tion,” Snow­den said in the state­ment.

    ...

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | August 15, 2013, 8:36 pm

  7. http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2013/08/22/ron-paul-his-sons-jeremiah-wright-rand-paul-anti-semitis/#more-831941

    Ron Paul: His Son’s Jere­mi­ah Wright
    Jonathan S. Tobin | @tobincommentary 08.22.2013 — 1:05 PM

    One of the most fas­ci­nat­ing aspects of the tran­si­tion from the 2012 pres­i­den­tial cam­paign to the post-Novem­ber polit­i­cal align­ment is the seam­less man­ner in which Ken­tucky Sen­a­tor Rand Paul assumed the lead­er­ship of the lib­er­tar­i­an move­ment from his father Ron. The elder Paul was a peren­ni­al pres­i­den­tial can­di­date as well as a Texas con­gress­man. Last year marked his last futile run for the White House and he also decid­ed not to run for reelec­tion, for­mal­ly end­ing his polit­i­cal career and infor­mal­ly pass­ing the torch to his son. While Ron was wide­ly regard­ed as some­thing of a crank because of his extreme views about the Fed­er­al Reserve and for­eign pol­i­cy, albeit one with an impas­sioned fol­low­ing, Rand is a very dif­fer­ent sort of politi­cian. Though no less com­mit­ted to lib­er­tar­i­an ide­ol­o­gy than his father, Rand has been care­ful to posi­tion him­self with­in the main­stream on most issues and that strat­e­gy has paid off hand­some­ly for him: two and a half years into his Sen­ate career, he has become one of the dar­lings of the Repub­li­can base and a prob­a­ble first-tier can­di­date for the GOP pres­i­den­tial nom­i­na­tion in 2016.

    That is some­thing his father could nev­er have dreamed of achiev­ing. It is far from clear that Rand can make the next leap from a fac­tion­al leader to some­one who could actu­al­ly win the nom­i­na­tion and make a cred­i­ble chal­lenge for the White House. But there is no com­par­i­son between Ron’s crazy-uncle-in-the-attic image and the niche that Rand has carved out for him­self in the cen­ter ring of the Amer­i­can polit­i­cal cir­cus. The ease with which he has bridged the gap between the lib­er­tar­i­an fringe and the Repub­li­can main­stream has been impres­sive. But one of the things that made it pos­si­ble was Ron’s absence from the polit­i­cal stage. The ques­tion for Rand and his fol­low­ers is whether that will con­tin­ue and if the polit­i­cal bag­gage of his father’s extrem­ism will start to hand­i­cap what must be con­sid­ered a very real­is­tic shot at win­ning the GOP nod in 2016.

    But unfor­tu­nate­ly for his son, the elder Paul has not retired from pub­lic life, mean­ing that his state­ments and asso­ci­a­tions are bound to raise awk­ward ques­tions for his son. A prime exam­ple of this is pro­vid­ed by the Wash­ing­ton Free Bea­con, which yes­ter­day report­ed that Ron Paul will be a fea­tured speak­er at a con­fer­ence run by a group with a record of anti-Semi­tism.

    As the Bea­con notes:

    For­mer con­gress­man and pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Ron Paul is sched­uled to give a Sept. 11 keynote address at a con­fer­ence spon­sored by an anti-Semit­ic orga­ni­za­tion, the South­ern Pover­ty Law Cen­ter reports.

    Also slat­ed to speak at the con­fer­ence is the pres­i­dent of the John Birch Soci­ety, a fringe con­spir­a­cy-the­o­rist group that was famous­ly denounced by the late William F. Buck­ley. …

    The Fati­ma Center’s pub­li­ca­tions have pub­lished columns crit­i­ciz­ing the Pope for “kow­tow­ing” to the “Syn­a­gogue of Satan,” argued that Jews are attempt­ing to under­mine the Catholic Church on behalf of Satan, and claim­ing that “Zion­ist bil­lion­aires” have been “finan­cial­ly rap­ing” the Russ­ian peo­ple. The orga­ni­za­tion also pro­motes New World Order con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries.

    SPLC reports that the group’s leader, Father Nicholas Gruner, has attend­ed Holo­caust denial con­fer­ences. Gruner will speak pri­or to Paul at the Fati­ma con­fer­ence, accord­ing to the post­ed sched­ule.

    As the Bea­con also notes, Ron Paul came under fire for pub­lish­ing newslet­ters in the 1980s and ’90s with bla­tant­ly racist and anti-Semit­ic mate­r­i­al, although he lat­er claimed he wasn’t respon­si­ble for the con­tent. If the denials rang false, it was because Paul has always seemed com­fort­able with the world of con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries that dove­tailed with many of his posi­tions on domes­tic and for­eign issues that res­onat­ed in the fever swamps of the far right and left.

    Should Rand be held account­able for his father’s views? In the abstract, the answer to that must be no. Rand Paul is enti­tled to live his own life and must be held respon­si­ble for what he does and says, not what his rel­a­tives do.

    But Ron Paul is not the moral equiv­a­lent of the prover­bial black sheep younger broth­er that some­times pops up in our polit­i­cal his­to­ry to bedev­il the more respon­si­ble fig­ures in a promi­nent fam­i­ly, such as Bil­ly Carter. Giv­en that Rand always sup­port­ed his father’s cam­paigns and that his own posi­tions are root­ed in the same core beliefs as that of the elder Paul, ask­ing where one man’s posi­tion begins and the other’s ends has always been a rea­son­able query. It will be even more impor­tant once Rand starts a pres­i­den­tial cam­paign that aims for some­thing more than the occa­sion­al good show­ing in a cau­cus that Ron aimed at. At that point, he is going to have to come to terms with the fact that, like every oth­er real­is­tic pres­i­den­tial can­di­date, he must either endorse or dis­as­so­ci­ate him­self from con­tro­ver­sial state­ments and actions of those close to him.

    Since enter­ing the Sen­ate, this is some­thing that Rand has stead­fast­ly refused to do. To date he has been able to keep some dis­tance between his father’s wingnut pro­nounce­ments about the gov­ern­ment and for­eign pol­i­cy (which bear a close resem­blance to those embraced by the far left) while uphold­ing his own lib­er­tar­i­an stands. He has nev­er con­demned his father, but he has tried to make it clear that he has his own views. But once he enters the pre-2016 fray as a real­is­tic con­tender that won’t be pos­si­ble. Ron Paul will either have to cease and desist his extrem­ist state­ments and asso­ci­a­tions or Rand will have to start giv­ing him the same treat­ment Barack Oba­ma gave Rev. Jere­mi­ah Wright. The anal­o­gy in which a politi­cian is asked how a long­time men­tor and friend impact­ed his beliefs is quite apt. If Rand doesn’t back away from his father he will soon find that a media that will be out to get him (in con­trast to their refusal to hold Oba­ma account­able), as well as a sus­pi­cious Repub­li­can elec­torate that wants noth­ing to do with that sort of extrem­ism, will sink an oth­er­wise viable pres­i­den­tial run.

    Posted by Vanfield | August 22, 2013, 10:00 pm

  8. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bruce-wilson/ron-paul-to-speak-at-holo_b_3881363.html

    Ron Paul to Speak at Holo­caust Denier’s ‘Gala Din­ner Fundrais­er’
    Post­ed: 09/06/2013 5:43 pm

    In a heat­ed Sep­tem­ber 5th inter­view with MSNBC’s Alex Wag­n­er, For­mer U.S. Con­gress­man Ron Paul, who is cur­rent­ly surf­ing a wave of main­stream media appear­ances due to his strong crit­i­cism of the push from the Oba­ma Admin­is­tra­tion for U.S. mil­i­tary inter­ven­tion in Syr­ia, defend­ed his planned Sep­tem­ber 11th, 2013 keynote address at a “gala din­ner fundrais­er” to be held dur­ing a con­tro­ver­sial [also see 1, 2] con­fer­ence orga­nized by a fringe, schis­mat­ic Catholic orga­ni­za­tion accused of vir­u­lent anti-Semi­tism, the Fati­ma Cen­ter.

    Accord­ing to a new report, Ron Paul’s asso­ci­a­tion with Fati­ma Cen­ter lead­ers, includ­ing Fati­ma Cen­ter head Father Nicholas Gruner — who has espoused Holo­caust denial, traces back at least as far as 1998.

    Dur­ing the Sep­tem­ber 5th inter­view, MSNBC’s Wag­n­er con­front­ed Paul with the fact that the Fati­ma Cen­ter has been called a “hard-core anti-Semi­te group” and has in the past pub­lished writ­ing sug­gest­ing that Jews should be stripped of cer­tain civ­il rights — a sug­ges­tion also once made by one of the speak­ers, Father Paul Leonard Kramer, who will join Ron Paul at the upcom­ing Fati­ma Cen­ter “Path To Peace” con­fer­ence to be held Sep­tem­ber 8th to 13th in Nia­gara Falls, Ontario.

    For­mer Con­gress­man Paul respond­ed to MSNBC cor­re­spon­dent Wag­n­er’s chal­lenge by flat­ly refus­ing to recon­sid­er his planned appear­ance at the Fati­ma Cen­ter con­fer­ence and by accus­ing Wag­n­er of “Catholic bash­ing.”

    Also join­ing For­mer Con­gress­man Ron Paul (R‑TX) at the event will be speak­ers who have pro­mot­ed Holo­caust denial and por­trayed glob­al warm­ing as a hoax that will be used to jus­ti­fy a Jew­ish and Israeli-led geno­cide of most of the Earth­’s pop­u­la­tion, and who reject the long-estab­lished sci­en­tif­ic fact that the Earth orbits the Sun.

    Fati­ma Cen­ter head Father Nicholas Gruner, and oth­er top lead­ers asso­ci­at­ed with the cen­ter, have for over two decades pro­mot­ed claims that a glob­al con­spir­a­cy of wealthy “apos­tate Jews” and Freema­sons — who are alleged to have financed Hitler and the Nazis and hold a “Hitler-like doc­trine of exter­mi­nat­ing the gen­tile races and repop­u­lat­ing the Earth with their own kind” — is plot­ting to insti­tute a “New World Order” glob­al gov­ern­ment under the com­mand of the anti-Christ.

    The South­ern Pover­ty Law Cen­ter, which tracks far-right, racist and anti-Semit­ic groups, iden­ti­fies the Fati­ma Cen­ter as part of the “ ‘rad­i­cal tra­di­tion­al­ist Catholic’ move­ment, [which is] per­haps the sin­gle largest group of hard-core anti-Semi­tes in North Amer­i­ca.”

    That SPLC char­ac­ter­i­za­tion was based in part, on the orga­ni­za­tion’s land­mark 2006 report, by SPLC researcher Hei­di Beirich, Rad­i­cal Tra­di­tion­al­ist Catholics Spew Anti-Semit­ic Hate, Com­mit Vio­lence Against Jews, which was care­ful to note that such “Rad­i­cal Tra­di­tion­al­ist” Catholic groups devi­ate sub­stan­tial­ly from offi­cial Catholic Church teach­ings, posi­tions, and doc­trine, and can be con­sid­ered a fringe ten­den­cy with­in the stream of ortho­dox and Tra­di­tion­al­ist Catholic groups as well.

    Gruner, a defrocked Catholic priest who has repeat­ed­ly por­trayed the Vat­i­can as at least part­ly con­trolled by the alleged satan­ic con­spir­a­cy, recent­ly went on record sug­gest­ing that the com­mon­ly-accept­ed Jew­ish death toll in the Holo­caust had been sub­stan­tial­ly inflat­ed. As Father Gruner explained to the Wash­ing­ton Free Bea­con:

    Are we talk­ing about the six mil­lion Jews that are alleged to been killed by Hitler? A ques­tion that nobody has been able to answer for me, is how can you have six mil­lion die, and have 13 mil­lion left, when you only had 13 mil­lion to start with? I think it’s impos­si­ble. But you know, I’m open-mind­ed. I’ll lis­ten to some­body who can prove it oth­er­wise.

    Father Gruner is not the only Holo­caust denier sched­uled to speak at the upcom­ing Fati­ma Cen­ter along with Ron Paul. Anoth­er is Catholic lawyer Robert Sun­ge­nis — who has been iden­ti­fied by the South­ern Pover­ty Law Cen­ter as “one of the most rabid and open anti­semites in the entire rad­i­cal tra­di­tion­al­ist move­ment.”

    In a doc­u­ment post­ed in 2011 on his per­son­al web­site, Robert Sun­ge­nis wrote, echo­ing Gruner:

    What I ques­tion is whether 6 mil­lion Jews were killed by the Nazis. I sim­ply find that fig­ure hard to believe, not only because the then cur­rent records show that the world­wide Jew­ish pop­u­la­tion in 1948 was vir­tu­al­ly the same as it was in 1940, but also because there is eas­i­ly obtain­able doc­u­ment­ed evi­dence that only a few hun­dred thou­sand Jews lost their lives in Nazi intern­ment camps.

    Accord­ing to the Jew­ish Chron­i­cle, Sun­ge­nis has also stat­ed:

    The sta­tis­tics show us that there was no large dif­fer­ence between the num­ber of Jews liv­ing in 1939 as there were liv­ing in 1948, so how could six mil­lion Jews have died between those two peri­ods?

    In June 2011, Sun­ge­nis’ views on the Holo­caust led to a last-minute can­cel­la­tion of a UK Ortho­dox Catholic con­fer­ence sched­uled to be held at West­min­ster Hall. Sun­ge­nis and Father Paul Kramer had been invit­ed to speak at the event.

    Also in 2011, Father Gruner’s Fati­ma Cen­ter pub­lished an op-ed in defense of Catholic tra­di­tion­al­ist Bish­op Richard Williamson, of the Soci­ety of St. Pius X, who was then on tri­al, in Ger­man court, for a state­ment he had made dur­ing an inter­view on Swedish tele­vi­sion:

    I believe that the his­tor­i­cal evi­dence, the his­tor­i­cal evi­dence is strong­ly against, is, is, huge­ly against, six mil­lion Jews hav­ing been delib­er­ate­ly gassed in gas cham­bers as a delib­er­ate pol­i­cy of Adolf Hitler.

    In the March 28, 2011 Fati­ma Cen­ter op-ed, author Edwin Faust stat­ed that “there is a pauci­ty of phys­i­cal evi­dence” con­cern­ing the Nazi use of gas cham­bers and went on, “Most accounts of the gas cham­bers at con­cen­tra­tion camps are anec­do­tal.”

    Faust then described Bish­op Williamson’s reliance on the so-called “Leuchter Report”, a pseu­do-sci­en­tif­ic study con­duct­ed by the Amer­i­can Fred Leuchter, who had estab­lished a career in design­ing and build­ing exe­cu­tion sys­tem used by states with cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment.

    Although dis­cred­it­ed, the 1988 Leuchter Report — which is cel­e­brat­ed in Holo­caust denial cir­cles — pur­port­ed to dis­prove Nazi mass-gassing of pris­on­ers at the Auschwitz death camp. Leuchter had lit­tle or no engi­neer­ing or sci­en­tif­ic train­ing rel­e­vant for mak­ing such an assess­ment.

    Faust’s Fati­ma Cen­ter op-ed reserved judg­ment on the valid­i­ty of the Leuchter Report, but went on to por­tray Bish­op Williamson, Fred Leuchter, and not­ed Holo­caust denial­ist Ernst Zun­del as vic­tims of per­se­cu­tion who “dis­cov­ered that it is dan­ger­ous to speak freely about cer­tain things”.

    While recent schol­ar­ship has shed light on the moral com­plic­i­ty of the Catholic Church in help­ing stoke anti-Semi­tism and for fail­ing to pub­licly speak out against Nazi per­se­cu­tion and exter­mi­na­tion of Europe’s Jews, the Vat­i­can nonethe­less acknowl­edges that Hitler and the Nazis killed rough­ly six mil­lion Jews and has for­mal­ly apol­o­gized for its inac­tion.

    Holo­caust denial­ism is not the only crank the­o­ry pro­mot­ed by Fati­ma Cen­ter lead­ers.

    In an April 2011 broad­cast of the Cen­ter’s “Fati­ma Today” show, Nicholas Gruner and Father Paul Leonard Kramer, who works close­ly with and often makes pub­lic appear­ances with Gruner, dis­cussed their belief that glob­al cli­mate change is a hoax, per­pe­trat­ed by mem­bers of the alleged glob­al Jew­ish Freema­son­ry con­spir­a­cy — which they sug­gest­ed includes Hen­ry Kissinger, For­mer U.S. Pres­i­dent George H.W. Bush, For­mer Vice Pres­i­dent Al Gore, and For­mer U.S.S.R. head Mikhail Gor­bachev — to jus­ti­fy the killing of up to six bil­lion peo­ple by, accord­ing to Gruner, “star­va­tion or by guns or by gas cham­bers or by what­ev­er.”

    Speak­ers slat­ed for the upcom­ing Fati­ma Cen­ter con­fer­ence go fur­ther still. Two speak­ers join­ing Ron Paul at the event are Catholic lawyers Robert Sun­ge­nis and John Salza, who are in the Catholic van­guard of a move­ment of “geo­cen­trists” who reject the helio­cen­tric mod­el of the Solar Sys­tem (that was accept­ed by the Roman Catholic Church cen­turies ago) and main­tain that the Sun and all the celes­tial objects in the heav­ens rotate around the Earth once per 24-hour peri­od.

    In 2010, Sun­ge­nis and Salza could be found, along with sev­er­al of their Protes­tant geo­cen­trist coun­ter­parts, at the First Annu­al Catholic Con­fer­ence on Geo­cen­trism, held at the Hilton Gar­den Inn in South Bend, Indi­ana. Sun­ge­nis is author of the book (and web­site by the same name) “Galileo Was Wrong.”

    As researcher Rachel Tabach­nick described in an August 23, 2013 report on the upcom­ing Fati­ma Cen­ter con­fer­ence in Nia­gara, ON, the orig­i­nal ros­ter of speak­ers sched­uled to join For­mer Con­gress­man Paul at the event also includ­ed pro­fessed neo­fas­cist Ital­ian politi­cian Rober­to Fiore, var­i­ous far-right Amer­i­can rad­i­cal Catholic tra­di­tion­al­ists asso­ci­at­ed with the Fati­ma Cen­ter who have also pro­mot­ed anti-Jew­ish vari­ants of “New World Order” con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry, and the Pres­i­dent of the John Birch Soci­ety John McManus.

    Anoth­er notable event speak­er will be Father Karl Stehlin, Soci­ety of St. Paul X Dis­trict Super­vi­sor of East­ern Europe, who in 1998 stoked a con­tro­ver­sy con­cern­ing Chris­t­ian cross­es placed in a field bor­der­ing on the for­mer Nazi con­cen­tra­tion camp of Auschwitz. In defi­ance of Catholic author­i­ties, Stehlin blessed cross­es placed at the site by Pol­ish cit­i­zens who pro­mot­ed the view that “Jews con­trolled the gov­ern­ment and the church.”

    In addi­tion, speak­ing at the event will be Bar­bara Skurnow­icz, Pres­i­dent of the Michi­gan group Health­care Pro­fes­sion­als For Vac­cine Choice — a group which fights against manda­to­ry vac­ci­na­tion and pro­motes the claim, gen­er­al­ly con­sid­ered to have been dis­proved, that cer­tain vac­cines can trig­ger autism in chil­dren.

    The Fati­ma Cen­ter “Path To Peace” con­fer­ence will not be the first time that Ron Paul has col­lab­o­rat­ed with lead­ers from the Fati­ma Cen­ter and the John Birch Soci­ety, in pro­mot­ing “New World Order” con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry, accord­ing to new find­ings from researcher Rachel Tabach­nick.

    In 1998, five of the lead­ers sched­uled to speak at the upcom­ing “Path To Peace” con­fer­ence, includ­ing Father Nicholas Gruner, appeared in the John Birch Soci­ety-pro­duced 30-minute con­spir­a­cy video “The Unit­ed Nations: A Look Into The Future”, which pro­mot­ed a Unit­ed States with­draw­al from the Unit­ed Nations. Play­ing a star­ring role in the video was Ron Paul. Reports Tabach­nick:

    Scenes in the JBS film change to black and white when Unit­ed Nations bul­lies in dark sun­glass­es come to snatch chil­dren from their homes and force them to go to pub­lic schools. Depic­tions of the Unit­ed Nations’ infil­tra­tion are inter­spersed with images invok­ing Nazi Ger­many.

    Nor is it Paul’s first brush with hate groups or hate speech. In 2008, dur­ing his first pres­i­den­tial bid, Con­gress­man Ron Paul came under heavy crit­i­cism due to anti-Semit­ic and racist newlet­ters pub­lished in his name in 1990s.

    Posted by Vanfield | September 10, 2013, 9:16 am

  9. It’s not exact­ly a rev­o­lu­tion or evo­lu­tion...get ready for the Rand­vo­lu­tion!

    Politi­co
    Rand Paul’s Repub­li­can rev­o­lu­tion

    By KATIE GLUECK | 2/18/14 5:00 AM EST

    DALLAS — It’s 7 a.m. on a Sat­ur­day, Rand Paul is exhaust­ed and air­port secu­ri­ty has just con­fis­cat­ed his morn­ing joe.

    “The TSA took away my cof­fee,” the lib­er­tar­i­an-lean­ing sen­a­tor, Hous­ton-bound for a day of events with GOP activists, com­plains of the fed­er­al agency he’s pro­posed abol­ish­ing. “I offered to drink it to show it wasn’t a bomb.”

    The Ken­tucky Repub­li­can has many more sleep-deprived moments in store as he pre­pares for a near-cer­tain 2016 pres­i­den­tial bid. On an ear­ly Feb­ru­ary polit­i­cal swing through his native Texas, where Paul was joined by a POLITICO reporter, the con­tra­dic­tions and chal­lenges that would define such a run were on vivid dis­play — as was Paul’s belief that his blend of lib­er­tar­i­an-infused con­ser­vatism could forge an entire­ly new path to the White House.

    In an exten­sive in-flight inter­view, the first-term sen­a­tor out­lined his vision for a more inclu­sive GOP — only to meet a frosty response hours lat­er when he spoke favor­ably about immi­gra­tion to a room­ful of peo­ple enam­ored of the tea party’s lumi­nary of the moment, Sen. Ted Cruz.

    Paul didn’t talk much dur­ing the trip about his roots as the son of an ex-con­gress­man and lib­er­tar­i­an folk hero. But Tex­ans at every turn brought up his father, the high­ly polar­iz­ing for­mer Rep. Ron Paul, from whom Rand Paul knows he must stake out a sep­a­rate iden­ti­ty to have any shot at the GOP nom­i­na­tion.

    And as Paul argued that the GOP needs a 2016 stan­dard-bear­er with broad­er appeal than its recent nom­i­nees, Mitt Rom­ney and John McCain, he did not evince Barack Obama’s abil­i­ty to move a crowd, George W. Bush’s every­man relata­bil­i­ty or Bill Clinton’s love of the game.

    At the same time, Paul made clear his ambi­tion to remake the Repub­li­can Par­ty by draw­ing sup­port from con­stituen­cies that have vot­ed reli­ably Demo­c­ra­t­ic. Just as Ronald Rea­gan drew work­ing-class Democ­rats into the GOP fold and Bill Clin­ton pulled his par­ty to the polit­i­cal cen­ter, Paul has a vision of that mag­ni­tude in mind for his par­ty.

    “The country’s a mess, and I think there needs to be a pro­gram that Repub­li­cans put for­ward, and also there needs to be a mes­sen­ger who can actu­al­ly win,” Paul said, in per­haps his most overt remarks to date about what a pres­i­den­tial bid would look like. “And I’m con­cerned that if we put for­ward the same sort of can­di­date again, that we won’t be suc­cess­ful.”

    Sport­ing a gray suit, red tie and cow­boy boots, Paul said ideas that fall into the “lib­er­tar­i­an-slash-Repub­li­can” camp “are a bit dif­fer­ent from what we’ve done in the past” and could expand the GOP tent. Those pro­pos­als go beyond his well-known prob­lems with Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Agency sur­veil­lance, which led him to file a class-action law­suit against the agency last week. Drug pol­i­cy reforms, Paul said, would par­tic­u­lar­ly res­onate in minor­i­ty com­mu­ni­ties that have large­ly shut out Repub­li­cans.

    And oppos­ing indef­i­nite deten­tion of detainees, he said, would strike a chord with groups that his­tor­i­cal­ly have been per­se­cut­ed.

    “I think that our mes­sage … has great appeal if you are part of any kind of group that’s ever been mis­treat­ed in his­to­ry,” he said. “That could be African-Amer­i­cans, Jew­ish-Amer­i­cans, Japan­ese-Amer­i­cans, all of which, at times in our his­to­ry, haven’t been treat­ed as they should be.”

    Paul rode the tea par­ty wave to an upset win in 2010, and he devel­oped a rep­u­ta­tion dur­ing his first few years in the Sen­ate as a per­sis­tent thorn in the side of GOP lead­ers. But over the past sev­er­al months, while his pol­i­cy posi­tions haven’t shift­ed much, he has refrained from lead­ing the rhetor­i­cal charge against estab­lish­ment fig­ures in his own par­ty. A case in point: It was Cruz who spear­head­ed the fight that led to the gov­ern­ment shut­down, while Paul large­ly kept his head down and even invit­ed Democ­rats to a cof­fee sum­mit to smooth things over.

    Paul has also made a point to vis­it minor­i­ty com­mu­ni­ties and has been among the most aggres­sive in his par­ty about pro­mot­ing out­reach to non­tra­di­tion­al GOP vot­ing blocs.

    ...

    It actu­al­ly makes a lot of sense for Rand Paul to pro­mote the end of the War on Drugs as part of his vision for a new lib­er­tar­i­an Amer­i­ca because it’s going to be an issue that does­n’t just appeal to youths and minori­ties but also the elder­ly, espe­cial­ly legal­iz­ing mar­i­jua­na. After all, some­thing is going to have to replace Medicare and Med­ic­aid after Pres­i­dent Paul gets done pri­va­tiz­ing them. Not all aspects of the Rand­vo­lu­tion have to be nuts.

    But there are some lib­er­ty-relat­ed ques­tions that Rand’s minor­i­ty-friend­ly pro­pos­als invite. For instance, if I open up my new med­ical mar­i­jua­na clin­ic can I dis­crim­i­nate against minor­i­ty cus­tomers? We’ll have to wait and see whether or not that’s going to be allowed in Rand­mer­i­ca.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | February 18, 2014, 2:08 pm

  10. Or do you mean “Green­Snowald­Stan”? (-:

    Posted by Kathleen | February 20, 2014, 2:53 pm

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