Monday 26 March 2012
ron paul
Tuesday 28 February 2012
Friday 24 February 2012
Ron Paul Wants to Abolish the CIA; His Largest Donor Builds Toys for It ☀
If there’s one thing that distinguishes Ron Paul from the rest of the GOP field, it’s his principled stand against American empire and his ardent defense of individual liberties. Paul’s opposition to wars, bloated defense budgets and government espionage of US citizens has made him a hero among some young conservatives. His seemingly rock-solid principles and radicalism has even drawn some on the left; unlike even left-wing Democrats, Paul has said he wants to abolish both the CIA and the FBI to protect individual “liberty.”
So it should come as a shock and disappointment to his followers that Ron Paul’s single largest donor—his Sheldon Adelson, as it were—founded a controversial defense contractor, Palantir Technologies, that profits from government espionage work for the CIA, FBI and other agencies, and which last year was caught organizing an illegal spy ring targeting American political opponents of the US Chamber of Commerce, including journalists, progressive activists and union leaders. (Palantir takes its name from the mystic stones used by characters in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings to spy one another.)
According to recently filed FEC disclosure documents, Ron Paul’s Super PAC has received nearly all of its money from a single source, billionaire Peter Thiel. So far, Thiel has contributed $2.6 million to Ron Paul’s Super PAC, Endorse Liberty, providing 76 percent of the Super PAC’s total intake.
Thiel, a self-described libertarian and opponent of democracy who made his fortune as the founder of PayPal, launched Palantir in 2004 to profit from what the Wall Street Journal described as “the government spy-services marketplace.” The CIA’s venture capital firm, In-Q-Tel, was brought in to back up Thiel as one of Palantir’s first outside investors. Today, Palantir’s valuation is reported to be in the billions.
Friday 30 September 2011
If you were an alien visiting Earth and somehow dropped into a Ron Paul rally, you’d get the feeling that America’s a scary dictatorship on the brink of apocalypse. People talk enthusiastically about buying guns, stocking up on gold, and maybe moving overseas. They break out into spontanous chants of “END THE FED!” When Ron Paul says something like “No one wants to be tyrannized! No one wants to be regulated!”—which he does quite often—the crowd cheers wildly. And when he calls for an end to the IRS, people lose their minds. citizen kerry: i went to a ron paul rally ☀
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