Forced lockdown of a city. Militarized police riding tanks in the streets. Door-to-door armed searches without warrant. Families thrown out of their homes at gunpoint to be searched without probable cause. Businesses forced to close. Transport shut down.

These were not the scenes from a military coup in a far off banana republic, but rather the scenes just over a week ago in Boston as the United States got a taste of martial law. The ostensible reason for the military-style takeover of parts of Boston was that the accused perpetrator of a horrific crime was on the loose. The Boston bombing provided the opportunity for the government to turn what should have been a police investigation into a military-style occupation of an American city. This unprecedented move should frighten us as much or more than the attack itself.

What has been sadly forgotten in all the celebration of the capture of one suspect and the killing of his older brother is that the police state tactics in Boston did absolutely nothing to catch them. While the media crowed that the apprehension of the suspects was a triumph of the new surveillance state – and, predictably, many talking heads and Members of Congress called for even more government cameras pointed at the rest of us – the fact is none of this caught the suspect. Actually, it very nearly gave the suspect a chance to make a getaway.

The “shelter in place” command imposed by the governor of Massachusetts was lifted before the suspect was caught. Only after this police state move was ended did the owner of the boat go outside to check on his property, and in so doing discover the suspect.

No, the suspect was not discovered by the paramilitary troops terrorizing the public. He was discovered by a private citizen, who then placed a call to the police. And he was identified not by government surveillance cameras, but by private citizens who willingly shared their photographs with the police.

As journalist Tim Carney wrote last week:

“Law enforcement in Boston used cameras to ID the bombing suspects, but not police cameras. Instead, authorities asked the public to submit all photos and videos of the finish-line area to the FBI, just in case any of them had relevant images. The surveillance videos the FBI posted online of the suspects came from private businesses that use surveillance to punish and deter crime on their property.”

Sadly, we have been conditioned to believe that the job of the government is to keep us safe, but in reality the job of the government is to protect our liberties. Once the government decides that its role is to keep us safe, whether economically or physically, they can only do so by taking away our liberties. That is what happened in Boston.

Three people were killed in Boston and that is tragic. But what of the fact that over 40 persons are killed in the United States each day, and sometimes ten persons can be killed in one city on any given weekend? These cities are not locked-down by paramilitary police riding in tanks and pointing automatic weapons at innocent citizens.

This is unprecedented and is very dangerous. We must educate ourselves and others about our precious civil to ensure that we never accept demands that we give up our Constitution so that the government can pretend to protect us.

Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit is given.

http://the-free-foundation.org/tst4-29-2013.html

this is just the key last minutes of the Cavuto interview yesterday, uploaded by National Review Online

CISPA has passed the House and has been sent to the Senate. Contact your Senators and Senator Reid, even if you have before, to tell them to vote NO on CISPA - make it clear Boston hasn't 'changed your mind'.
Senate Contacts: http://www.senate.gov/general/contac...nators_cfm.cfm
Congressional Twitter Accounts: http://t.co/TaF48XhFfx

"This week, as Americans were horrified by the attacks in Boston, both houses of Congress considered legislation undermining our liberty in the name of “safety.” Gun control continued to be the focus of the Senate, where an amendment expanding federal “background checks” to gun show sales and other private transfers dominated the debate. While the background check amendment failed to pass, proponents of gun control have made it clear they will continue their efforts to enact new restrictions on gun ownership into law.

While it did not receive nearly as much attention as the debate on gun control, the House of Representatives passed legislation with significant implications for individual liberty: the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA). CISPA proponents claim that the legislation is necessary to protect Americans from foreign “cyber terrorists,” but the real effect of this bill will be to further erode Americans’ online privacy.

Under CISPA, Internet corporations are authorized to hand over the private information of American citizens to federal agents, as long as they can justify the violation of your privacy in the name of protecting “cyber security”. Among the items that may be shared are your e-mails, browsing history, and online transactions.

Like the PATRIOT Act, CISPA violates the fourth amendment by allowing federal agencies to obtain private information without first seeking a warrant from a federal judge. The law also allows federal agencies to pass your information along to other federal bureaucrats — again without obtaining a warrant. And the bill provides private companies with immunity from lawsuits regardless of the damage done to anyone whose personal information is shared with the government.

CISPA represents a troubling form of corporatism, where large companies cede their responsibility to protect their property to the federal government, at the expense of their customers’ privacy and liberty. In this respect, CISPA can be thought of as an electronic version of the Transportation Security Administration, which has usurped the authority over airline security from private airlines. However, CISPA will prove to be far more invasive than even the most robust TSA screening.

CISPA and the gun control bill are only the most recent examples of politicians manipulating fear to con the people into giving up their liberties. Of course, the people are told the legislation is for “limited purposes,” but authority granted to government is rarely, if ever, used solely for the purpose for which it is granted. For example, the American people were promised that the extraordinary powers granted the government by the PATRIOT Act would only be used against terrorism. Yet soon after the bill became law, reports surfaced that it was being used for non-terrorism purposes. In fact, according to data compiled by the American Civil Liberties Union, 76 percent of the uses of the controversial “sneak-and-peak” warrants where related to the war on drugs!

Sadly, I expect this week’s tragic attacks in Boston to be used to justify new restrictions on liberty. Within 48 hours of the attack in Boston, at least one Congressman was calling for increased use of surveillance cameras to expand the government’s ability to monitor our actions, while another Senator called for a federal law mandating background checks before Americans can buy “explosive powder.”

I would not be surprised if the Transportation Security Administration uses this tragedy to claim new authority to “screen” Americans before they can attend sporting or other public events. The Boston attack may also be used as another justification for creating a National ID Card tied to a federal database with “biometric” information. The only thing that will stop them is if the American people rediscover the wisdom of Benjamin Franklin that you cannot achieve security by allowing government to take their liberties."

http://the-free-foundation.org/tst4-22-2013.html

VIDEO Of Press Conference


Ron Paul’s New Foreign-Policy Website: www.RonPaulInstitute.org
Twitter account: https://twitter.com/RonPaulInstitut
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/RonPaulInstitute

Ron Paul launched his new foreign-policy educational effort today with this website and a press conference featuring fellow congressman past and present Walter Jones, Dennis Kucinich, John Duncan, and Thomas Massie. The former three are all on the Ron Paul Institute’s board. Massie was there for moral support and to show how the liberty movement is adding to its ranks in Congress even without Paul in office.

As always, Walter Jones was a particularly powerful speaker—he has an Old Testament quality when he acknowledges the guilt he feels for his vote in favor of the Iraq War. Congressman Duncan, meanwhile, is the last of the six Republicans to vote against the war who is still in Congress. Kucinich lauded Paul for his qualities that went beyond partisanship: “The thing that impressed me the most was your love of country.”
more: http://www.theamericanconservative.c...institute-org/

https://twitter.com/amconmag/status/324638452006150144

https://twitter.com/search/realtime?...CISPA&src=hash

Congressional twitter accounts: http://fearlessrevolution.com/blog/t...directory.html

House contacts: http://www.house.gov/representatives/find/

Next Wednesday, former Texas US Rep. Ron Paul will formally announce the creation of a new foreign policy think tank. It will be called the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity...

“It will fill the growing demand for information on foreign affairs from a non-interventionist perspective through a lively and diverse website, and will provide unique educational opportunities to university students and others. . . .

“The neo-conservative era is dead. The ill-advised policies pushed by the neo-cons have everywhere led to chaos and destruction, and to a hatred of the United States and its people. Multi-trillion dollar wars have not made the world a safer place; they have only bankrupted our economic future. The Ron Paul Institute will provide the tools and the education to chart a new course with the understanding that only through a peaceful foreign policy can we hope for a prosperous tomorrow.”...

Paul will be the CEO. Daniel McAdams, who served as a foreign policy adviser to Rep. Paul for several years, will be the executive director. Serving on the board will be Fox News judicial analyst Andrew Napolitano and Faith Whittlsey, the former ambassador to Switzerland under President Ronald Reagan. Also on the board are US Reps. Walter Jones of North Carolina and Jimmy Duncan of Tennessee as well as former Paul staffer Lew Rockwell.

Another adviser on the board is former Ohio US Rep. Dennis Kucinich. Although a Democrat, Kucinich frequently worked with the Republican Paul on numerous common causes including the defense of civil liberties, restraining presidential war powers, opposition to drones, and Federal Reserve transparency....

Paul will reveal more details of the foreign policy institute at a press conference on Wednesday, April 17 from the Capitol Hill Club in Washington DC.

more: http://ivn.us/icon/2013/04/13/ron-pa...ity-announced/

http://sherriequestioningall.blogspo...xville-tn.html

http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2013/ap...-day-crowd-in/
Ron Paul, former Texas congressman and presidential contender, brought his message of balanced federal budgets and non-interventionism in foreign policy to the Knox County Republican faithful Friday night for one of the largest crowds ever to attend a Lincoln Day dinner in Knoxville.

Paul, a personal friend of U.S. Rep. John J. Duncan Jr., R-Knoxville, is forming an Institute for Peace and Prosperity to work on what he called “frustration” with foreign policies because Democrats and Republicans “pretend” during elections they have different policies but really don’t, he said. He said he expects the institute to attract Democrats, Republicans and libertarians, which is what he really is, along with constitutionalists and others.

He made the comments at a news conference prior to the dinner at Rothchild’s Catering and Conference Center in West Knoxville. He was introduced by Duncan, who will be a member of the Institute’s board of advisers....

Duncan told Paul the Friday night crowd was the largest Lincoln Day dinner in Knox County in attendance for a non-election year and the second largest ever. Duncan said the largest was in 1994 when then-U.S. Rep. Newt Gingrich of Georgia spoke. That year, Republicans swept Congress.

Knox County Republican Chair Ruthie Kulhman said 750 people were expected at the dinner.

Apparently there ended up being about 800 people there.

https://twitter.com/search?q=%23VoteNoCISPA&src=tren

As tweeted by Jim Rickards:
Jim Rickards ‏@JamesGRickards 8h
Hope #Bernanke never sees this picture. (L to R #RonPaul #NigelFarage #PeterSchiff #JimRogers #JimRickards) #Avengers http://t.co/HD3KLK8l3X
[QUOTE]Ron Paul spoke this morning in Santiago, Chile.

William Kristol knows what is wrong with the United States. As he wrote recently in the flagship magazine of the neo-conservatives, the Weekly Standard, the problem with the US is that we seem to have lost our appetite for war. According to Kristol, the troubles that have befallen us in the 20th century have all been the result of these periodic bouts of war-weariness, a kind of virus that we catch from time to time.

He claims because of the US “drawdown” in Europe after World War II, Stalin subjugated Eastern Europe. Because of war weariness the United States stopped bombing Southeast Asia in the 1970s, snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. War weariness through the 1990s led to Rwanda, Milosevic, and the rise of the Taliban. It was our fault for not fighting on! According to Kristol, our failure to act as the policeman of the world is why we were attacked on September 11, 2001. Of the 1990s, he wrote, “[t]hat decade of not policing the world ended with 9/11.”

That revisionism is too much even for fellow neo-conservatives like Paul Wolfowitz to swallow. In a 2003 interview, Wolfowitz admitted that it was the presence of US troops in Saudi Arabia that led to the growth of al-Qaeda:

"(W)e can now remove almost all of our forces from Saudi Arabia. Their presence there over the last 12 years has been a source of enormous difficulty for a friendly government. It's been a huge recruiting device for al Qaeda. In fact if you look at bin Laden, one of his principle grievances was the presence of so-called crusader forces on the holy land, Mecca and Medina.”

But for Kristol and his allies there is never enough war. According to a new study by Brown University, the US invasion of Iraq cost some 190,000 lives, most of them non-combatants. It has cost more than $1.7 trillion, and when all is said and done including interest the cost may well be $6 trillion. Some $212 billion was spent on Iraqi reconstruction with nothing to show for it. Total deaths from US war on Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan have been at least 329, 000. None of this is enough for Kristol.

The neo-con ideology promotes endless war, but neo-cons fight their battles with the blood of others. From the comfortable, subsidized offices of magazines like the Weekly Standard, the neo-conservatives urge the United States to engage in endless war – to be fought by the victims of the “poverty draft” from states where there are few jobs. Ironically, these young people cannot find more productive work because the Federal Reserve’s endless money printing to keep the war machine turning has destroyed our economy. The six trillion dollars that will be spent on the Iraq war are merely pieces of printed paper that further erode the dollar’s purchasing power now and well into the future. It is the inflation tax, which is the most regressive and cruel of all.

Yes, Americans are war weary, concedes Kristol. But he does not blame the average American. The real problem is that the president has dropped the ball on terrifying Americans with the lies and imaginary threats that led to the invasion of Iraq. Writes Kristol: “One can’t, for example, be surprised at the ebbing support of the American public for the war in Afghanistan years after the president stopped trying to mobilize their support, stopped heralding the successes of the troops he’d sent there, and stopped explaining the importance of their mission.”

If only we had more war propaganda from the highest levels of government we could be cured of this war-weariness. Ten years ago the US invaded Iraq under the influence of neo-conservative lies. Those lies continued to promote US military action in places like Libya, and next on their agenda is Syria and then on to Iran. It is time for the American people to shout “enough!”



Subscribe to Ron Paul's Texas Straight Talk through the link:

http://www.the-free-foundation.org/tst3-25-2013.html

link to video: http://www.bing.com/videos/watch/vid...cmsn%257c%257c



Ron Paul ‏@RonPaul 19 Mar
My question for Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke can be heard on my new podcast at: http://bit.ly/10XZqFW

I haven't heard of this group before but Rachael Mills, Ron's old media person is on the show as well. Ron is talking about competing currencies, and much else, he comes on about 1:45: