Understanding Ron Paul: 9/11 & Blowback

By Dan Beaulieu

Twitter

 "I am an imperfect messenger, but the message is perfect"  –  Ron Paul

One thing is certain of Dr. Ron Paul, he is not a sound-bite candidate. That is, he often speaks over the heads of voters which causes a lack of understanding. It is in my personal opinion that Ron Paul cannot be understood in the 30 seconds allocated to him in debates. His ideas must be studied; however, once one does understand Dr. Paul, they often stick around.

For this reason I present to you my series:  

Understanding Ron Paul


9/11 & Blowback

9/11 is an evasive subject for many, fortified under a coveted veil of loyalty. Akin to the contumacious devotion a mother has to her child. As she turns her head away from any undesirable realities that may ensue; we simply believe in our beloved’s innocence. Regardless of your stance on 9/11, we owe it to the men,  women and children who died that day to investigate the available facts, to disconnect the mother-child temperament, if only for a moment, to perhaps enlighten ourselves to a superior wavelength, or maybe to simply solidify our prior convictions. It’s been 10 years and I think we’re strong enough now to take the blinders off.

Osama Bin Laden was a terrible person for the hell he bestowed upon us, no doubt. It wasn’t just the single act of violence that took place on 9/11. It's the decade of lost freedoms, fear, perpetual war, nation-building and militarism persued by our government and private interests that are fighting (aka profiting from) "the war on terror". 

This has provided Osama with success on two counts: One, that he wanted to destroy our economy. Two, That he wanted us on his land so that he could "target us better". Unfortunately, we fell right into the trap that Osama laid for us. It was a maniacal and calculated plan to collapse us. But what was the reason?

As a nation living with the “mother-child” mentality we seemed to be fine with the answer that George W. Bush gave to congress on September 20^th of 2001, "They hate our freedoms: our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other". (1) No fact, no real substance behind it, just the knowledge that it would pull hard on our heartstrings and rally our support to go to war.

I think today we are strong enough to listen to another view as to why the attacks took place. A more probable view backed up with fact, substance and conviction. That is, the view of Osama Bin Laden himself in 2002:

"While seeking Allah's help, we form our reply based on two questions directed at the Americans:

(Q1) Why are we fighting and opposing you?
(Q2) What are we calling you to, and what do we want from you?

As for the first question: Why are we fighting and opposing you? The answer is very simple:

(1)   Because you attacked us and continue to attack us.

(i)                 Palestine, which has sunk under military occupation for more than 80 years. The British handed over Palestine, with your help and your support, to the Jews, who have occupied it for more than 50 years; years overflowing with oppression, tyranny, crimes, killing, expulsion, destruction and devastation. The creation and continuation of Israel is one of the greatest crimes, and you are the leaders of its criminals. And of course there is no need to explain and prove the degree of American support for Israel. The creation of Israel is a crime which must be erased. Each and every person whose hands have become polluted in the contribution towards this crime must pay its*price, and pay for it heavily. “

…

“(b) You attacked us in Somalia; you supported the Russian atrocities against us in Chechnya, the Indian oppression against us in Kashmir, and the Jewish aggression against us in Lebanon.”

…

“(d) You steal our wealth and oil at paltry prices because of you international influence and military threats. This theft is indeed the biggest theft ever witnessed by mankind in the history of the world.

(e) Your forces occupy our countries; you spread your military bases throughout them; you corrupt our lands, and you besiege our sanctities, to protect the security of the Jews and to ensure the continuity of your pillage of our treasures.”

It goes on… (2)

Is it really so hard to believe that due to our foreign policy of intervention, choosing allies, occupation and war that we would one day experience some form of blow-back? It wasn't just the past 10 or 20 years, Palestine has been under foreign occupation for more than 80 years, and we assisted that occupation every step of the way. Did we really get attacked on September 11th simply due to the fact that we are free? I think we all know the answer, but can we break away from the “mother-child” mentality long enough to admit it?

Back to Understanding Ron Paul Index

Follow @transfer_point

(1) In an attempt to keep this writing short  I won’t go into the possible reasons as to why George Bush Jr. would lead us from the truth but I will provide you with a link to a great writing I found informative written by a respected Theologian Dr. David Ray Griffin (Link)

(2) Osama Bin Laden goes on to explain in detail exactly what we did to make them attack us on 9/11. Read more here: (Osama's Letter)

Understanding Ron Paul: The Patriot Act

 By Dan Beaulieu
Twitter

"I am an imperfect messenger, but the message is perfect"    

–  Ron Paul

One thing is certain of Dr. Ron Paul, he is not a sound-bite candidate. That is, he often speaks over the heads of voters which causes a lack of understanding. It is in my personal opinion that Ron Paul cannot be understood in the 30 seconds allocated to him in debates. His ideas must be studied; however, once one does understand Dr. Paul, they often stick around.

For this reason I present to you my series: 

Understanding Ron Paul

The Patriot Act

Though most Americans arbitrarily support the Patriot Act in respect to how “9/11 changed our way of life”, few are aware that the Patriot Act was authored long before that date. This negates that notion altogether and confirms that 9/11 was craftily used as a convenient device to instate the legislation.

Upon reading the 1,472* page bill, one can see why the authors made sure it was not available to the eyes of our congressmen before it was voted on. The ill-titled “Patriot” Act represents anything but patriotism, and in fact impedes on virtually all of the amendments in the Bill of Rights. Due to the fact that most Americans are oblivious to the contents of the Patriot Act, I will briefly go over a few bullet points; however I will spare you lengthy detail to abstain the scope of this document.

·         Freedom from unreasonable searches: The government may search and seize Americans' papers and effects without probable cause to assist terror investigation. Violates Amendment IV

·         Right to a speedy and public trial: The government may jail Americans indefinitely without a trial. Violates Amendment VI

·         Freedom of association: To assist terror investigation, the government may monitor religious and political institutions without suspecting criminal activity. Violates Amendment I

·         Right to legal representation: The government may monitor conversations between attorneys and clients in federal prisons and deny lawyers to Americans accused of crimes. Violates Amendment VI

  -        Freedom of speech: The government may prosecute librarians or keepers of any other records if they tell anyone the government subpoenaed information related to a terror investigation. Violates Amendment I

·         Right to liberty: Americans may be jailed without being charged or being able to confront witnesses against them. US citizens (labeled "unlawful combatants") have been held incommunicado and refused attorneys. Violates Amendment VI

·         The enemy redefined: The patriot act also broadens the definition of "terrorist" to anyone who opposes a federal government program or policy. This gives them probable cause for 70% of Americans conservatively.

By supporting the Patriot Act, the other candidates endorse the idea of exchanging security for our basic freedoms, a model Benjamin Franklin strongly advised against. Americans rational idealizes that if you are guilty of no crimes than you’ve got nothing to hide, so it’s worth it. This just isn’t the case, as the great Thomas Paine once said, “He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.”

These wise words resonate today in the case of a 10^th grader wrongfully arrested and held for 2 months without council, due process or visitation from his mother. (video) He was innocent (see comments) but the Patriot Act refused him the right of due process. These trespasses on our civil liberties will only get worse and happen more frequently as time goes by, as is the predictable evolutionary process.

People often try to dismiss these criticisms as libertarian alarmist propaganda, though I combat that ideology with simple logic. Once our Constitutional rights have been taken away from even just one single American, no matter how bad they are, then we have undoubtedly lost our way.  As I outlined in an article I wrote entitled “The American Way Abandoned” (link) I expressed the importance of adhering to our founding fathers principles, which concludes that if we do not, we do so at our own peril.

The absence of legislation like the Patriot Act is what makes America free. When we submit our freedoms in fear - then the terrorist truly have won.

Back to Understanding Ron Paul Index

Follow @transfer_point

*Depending on the source the amount of pages in the patriot act is between 342 and 2,500. Dr. Twight mentioned in an interview that she had read all 1,472 pages. Personally I don't claim to be the expert on every page, however I have read enough to ascertain its completely unconstitutional.

"Ron Paul's Plans are Too Extreme"

By Dan Beaulieu

Twitter

 "I am an imperfect messenger, but the message is perfect"  –  Ron Paul

One thing is certain of Dr. Ron Paul, he is not a sound-bite candidate. That is, he often speaks over the heads of voters which causes a lack of understanding. It is in my personal opinion that Ron Paul cannot be understood in the 30 seconds allocated to him in debates. His ideas must be studied; however, once one does understand Dr. Paul, they often stick around.

For this reason I present to you my series:  

Understanding Ron Paul



"Is Ron Paul Too Extreme?"

An argument I encounter time and again is that Ron Paul’s fiscal plan is just too extreme to accept. To those who subscribe to such a notion I offer the burden of knowledge, because without question you don’t understand the urgency of the matter.  Not unlike the frog who boils himself to death when the water in the pot is gradually brought to a boil. We have long been blind to the subtle changes around us which, like the frog, will ensure our own doom. Economically, we are nearing the boiling point; a precipice.

The Road to Hyper-Inflation

It began upon the installation of the Federal Reserve central bank in 1913, which introduced government micromanipulation of our money supply; or Keynesian economics. This greatly accelerated in 1971 when America unceremoniously departed from the gold standard at the behest of then Chairmen of the Federal Reserve Arthur Burns in an effort to introduce elasticity to the money supply. This gave the private Federal Reserve an unlimited ability to expand our money supply along with unlimited secrecy.

Furthermore it allowed the Fed to interject the business cycle to make economic booms last longer, which in turn caused the recessions last longer. The Federal Reserve does this by way of inflation (inflation is the act of injecting money into the money supply resulting in the depreciation of the dollar). Despite the Fed’s efforts to prop the boom, the presence of the real market restricts the boom from perpetuity, that is, every period of economic euphoria must be respected by an equal period of economic misery.

The great bubble was largely attributed to the bad policies of Alan Greenspan who was the chairman of the Federal Reserve from 1987 until 2006. Greenspan intervened in the recession that should’ve followed the dot-com bubble. Instead of accepting the natural recession that should have occurred in 2001, the Fed began expanding the Housing Market. This didn’t negate the previous bubble; it merely stalled it by creating a bigger bubble. The Fed arrogantly continued its efforts to stop recession through low interest rates and actual interest rates fell below historical averages. At that point the Fed had abandoned all monetary rules in attempts to prop the market.

The housing market collapsed as a direct result of government intervening in the business cycle. In January of 2001, Alan Greenspan slashed the federal fund targets from 6.5% all the way down to 1% by June 2003. He fixed the rates at an artificial low of 1% for a full year, which encouraged tremendous bad investments and caused a massive expansion of the bubble. Then, by June of 2006, Greenspan had raised it back to 5.25%, a move that popped the bubble and unleashed the havoc of three overdue recessions.

However the unforgiving travesty has truly occurred since the financial market collapse in 2008. Instead of taking the needed hands off approach by letting the market correct itself, we have continued with the Keynesian manipulation of the business cycle with Ben Bernanke’s quantitative easing efforts (now inflating the student loan bubble). What’s worse is we have now become addicted to a hyper-accelerated devaluation of the dollar through the immense injection of money from the TARP bailouts, secret handouts  by the Fed (here and here) and Obama’s continued bailout efforts, most of which we haven’t experience the effects of yet, but we will. All of this injected money has resulted in dramatic devaluation of the dollar (see graph).

Hyper-Inflation

Is it really so hard to imagine inflation of our dollar on the level that Zimbabwe experienced in recent years? Zimbabwe had subscribed to the same monetary model that we use; central economic planning and Keynesian micromanipulation, and in recent years experienced inflation of 23,000,000%. We need to wake up to the warning signals before it is too late. As the crisis gets worse our Federal Reserve will work harder to prop the market, just as the Central Bank of Zimbabwe did and the Central Bank of Germany did with the German Mark in the 1920s. The devaluation is exponential, meaning at first the inflation will go unnoticed, though, once it is notice able it will be much to late to stop. Compare graphs, notice a similarity? (please listen to the audio file at the end of this article for a deeper understanding of how hyper-inflation happens.)



Extreme Measures for Extreme Times

So you might still be asking yourself, “Why administer such extreme cuts? If the problem is inflation then why don’t we just go back to a gold standard and avoid the loss of federal jobs?” The answer is simply because we cannot afford to. The elasticity of our dollar has led us to a predilection to over-spending, it is a reality that we currently spend much more than our government takes in. Raising taxes to meet that demand would be devastating to our private sector as consumer spending would be reduced, the need for production would drop, followed by the demand for workers. 

It should be noted that these cuts must apply to our militarism in order for us to return to fiscal sanity. We cannot have such a presence in the Middle East while in financial chaos, it's simply impractical and damaging to our recovery. It should be noted that it was only possible to afford such military expansion through our elastic money supply and deficit spending, both of which we must do away with. With a sound currency this type of foreign policy would not be possible, though, nor would be possible noticeable depressions and recessions. But fret not, those of you who lust for militarism, Ron Paul’s budget of $500 billion per year will still far exceed that of any other countries military budget. To be sure, we will reign in our military either way  either by choice or, like Rome, by collapse.

Ron Paul’s plan would not bring us back to the Stone Age, nor back to Colonial Times. His plan would reduce spending back to 2006 levels while balancing the budget by 2016. Paul's plan would also guarantee that we never have a crisis like this again which is not a bad exchange if you ask me. It would come with about a year of necessary short lived agony, but we must be adults and take the medicine or risk total hyper-inflation and a world wide financial collapse. After the markets correct themselves we would, without doubt, experience greater prosperity than we’ve experienced in the last 100 years. We would no longer succumb to the hidden inflationary tax nor would we be tricked into malinvestment by the Fed. Most of all, our dollar would remain the reserve currency of the world, which provides us many benefits that we take for granted. Only Ron Paul's plan offers us this and only Paul's plan will work.

Ron Paul was right in his predictions predating the market collapse of 2008, and he is right now.

(predictions: 1983, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2007)

For a deeper understanding on why we must change our monitary policy please listen to this audio from one of Ron Paul's mentors, Murray Rothbard, titled "Economic Depressions: Their Cause and Cure".

 

Back to Understanding Ron Paul Index

Follow @transfer_point

Ron Paul: The Economic Benefits of Bringing Our Troops Home

 By Dan Beaulieu

Tweet

I have heard many people say that with our economy in turmoil that brining home nearly a million troops would be disastrous to our unemployment. That somehow having our troops overseas is economically beneficial, ignoring the obvious costliness of the war. This notion is derived from the negligence of the arguer only looking at one side of the process, that is, soldiers being turned loose on the labor market.

Take into consideration the hundreds of billions we spend on these wars per year. This money doesn’t come into existence from thin air; it’s taken from the tax payers. Now as long as the government does not intervene by trying to provide compensation for the soldiers through taxing the people, the taxpayers retain more wealth than previously. This means that the taxpayers have additional funds to spend on products, food and businesses. This creates demand and ultimately higher productivity, more workers are needed. This process, as history shows, is rather fast.

Once demand puts the soldiers (now civilians) back to work, they not only become self-supporting they, with a steady paycheck, begin consuming more and the need for production rises further. Higher overall productive output results in increased national wealth. That said, we would be in a much better economic state after our troops come home.   

This thought process is rudimentary economics and can be found in Henry Hazlitt's book titled, "Economics in one Lesson".

Follow @shadowsounds