Channel: Russia Today
Date: 11/01/2009

Transcript

Dina Gusovsky: A national emergency is declared in the United States, but it doesn’t have anything to do with the war in Afghanistan, the economic crisis, or nukes in Iran. Instead, it’s H1N1, the swine flu. But is all this media hysteria really justified, and is the threat as dire as some would have us believe?

Joining me to discuss this and other burning issues, both here in the U.S. and abroad, is Congressman Paul. Thank you so much for speaking with me.

So you have called this full vaccination program a failure. Why?

Ron Paul: Well, they have failed to get the vaccine to the people that need it. They’ve been working on it for months and months, they’ve spent a couple of billion of dollars and I have several physicians in my family and they don’t have any vaccine in their office, so even if they wanted to give it they don’t have it. This just demonstrates that when governments decide to do something, they’re pretty inept at doing it even though a lot of money was spent. And yet the American people are indicating that they want federal government to take over medical care, but if they can’t even deliver a vaccine, I don’t see how they can deliver medical care to everybody any more efficiently.

Dina Gusovsky: You have questioned before why Barack Obama doesn’t get his own children vaccinated, and just recently we found out that he, in fact, had Sasha and Melia get the shot. Do you think that this was a response at all to what you might have said?

Ron Paul: I don’t know the exact sequence. I know when I did it I obviously believed he hadn’t because he had announced in a press conference, “Oh no, they have not had a shot”. But I thought he probably figured it was in their best interest politically to do it. But isn’t that sort of sad that if he deep down in his heart didn’t want his kids to have it, that he was willing to do this. Of course, the analogy I made there was, you know, so many of our presidents, Republicans or Democrats, always pushed government education. At the same time our Presidents don’t send their kids to public school here in DC. So they talk big that they’re going to take care of everybody, but they want special treatment for their own children.

Dina Gusovsky: You talk about having the freedom of choice when it comes to this. You know, we’ve seen rallies in New York where doctors and nurses were saying, “We don’t want this to be mandatory”. Do you think that Americans will ever come to a point where they will have to get this vaccine, it won’t be an option anymore?

Ron Paul: Of course, while a lot of Americans are fearful of this – even I’m fearful – I don’t want to do away with the vaccines. I do think that we give too many vaccines and we can overdo it. But I want these choices to be made by patients and doctors, not by government. And the fact that New York is forcing government employees, it might be a sign of the times if it’s not reversed. If the American people go along with it, that’s what’s going to happen. And under these emergency powers that were declared they can actually, you know, quarantine people in large numbers and say, “You either do it or else we’ll put you here and we’ll inoculate everybody”. That is hardly the way I want to accomplish this and solve our problems.

Dina Gusovsky: You’re a doctor and critics of the vaccine itself are coming out and saying that in the long run it’s actually going to do more harm than good. Do you agree with this?

Ron Paul: I think it can do damage and some children can be affected. It is a live virus, it’s attenuated, it’s not supposed to be as virulent. But yes, there are rare cases of people dying from reaction to medication. And if this flu is not so serious, which it doesn’t sound to be… you know, they were yelling and screaming about a 1000 deaths. Well, regular flu kills many, many more than that every year and nobody gets up in arms about it. This whole idea about working so hard on this one vaccine actually makes shortages in the other vaccine as well. So it really doesn’t make a lot of sense.

Dina Gusovsky: There seems to me so much media uproar regarding this issue. Perhaps even taking precedence over other burning issues, particularly when it comes to foreign policy and the situation in Afghanistan. Because the real crisis seems to be occurring within the White House with that debate to send more troops or change the military strategy completely. What are your thoughts on this?

Ron Paul: My first thought is, “Aren’t they a little bit late?” I mean, this is the good war, we’ve only been there 8 years, and now we have the war and now we have the fighting, now we’re looking for the reason. Why are we in there, what are we doing, what is the result, what is the end point? I think they have it turned around. That’s why I argue for the case that when we go war it should be very, very precise and very, very deliberate under a precise vote of declaration and knowing what the Congress wants and what the people want and stand up for it. But when we got to war under U.N. resolutions or under NATO or because it feels good that we’re doing this to promote democracy, it’s vague, it’s political, there is no endpoint and there is no precise enemy. And, therefore, they keep fighting and we go into these countries and we become occupiers.

The people who live there resent it and they start fighting us. So we call them terrorists and say, “We’ll they’re terrorist there, they’re bad people. We have to send more troops in”. And the citizens die from these bombing raids. They’ve even dying in Pakistan. All that does is incite more people to resent what we’re doing. So it’s a cycle. And here we are at a point of a cycle where few people are questioning it: “Do we really need more”. And, of course, the military wants more, and Obama probably is honestly in a box because he supports the war, he supported it during the campaign, and the military wants more troops, but a lot of Americans don’t, especially the Democratic base. So he has a dilemma. So it would be much better to have a precise position, non-intervention, you know what you’re supposed to do. Just stay out of these places.

Dina Gusovsky: I’m glad you mentioned Pakistan; it’s becoming more and more crucial in this fight. We’ve seen violence increasing. What is the future going to hold?

Ron Paul: More chaos, more killing and more resentment towards Americans and, you know, there is a big fuss because we just voted for more foreign aid, and rightfully so the civilian population sees that as more control. And the Pakistanis have quite frequently [fought] internally over civilian control versus military control. The last thing that we need is us being involved there. But our policy in Afghanistan has spilled over because some of the people we were trying to kill in Afghanistan have gone into Pakistan, so there is much more violence there and I think the resentment will be towards us. It just doesn’t look like there is an easy end to this, unless they change overall policy. And, of course, that’s what I’ve advocated all along: changing overall policy.

Dina Gusovsky: Now, switching gears to Iran. Do you think that the United States in this case is justified to pressure Iran to give up its nuclear program?

Ron Paul: I think we’re completely wrong, because so far our own intelligence reports, NIE in 20 07, said that they haven’t been trying to do anything since 2003. And they’re allowed to have enrichment for peaceful purposes and the United Nations has never written a sanction against the Iranians for breaking the NPT treaty. They’ve never been accused of that. And the new place in Guam; they reported that and they said the IEA could come in and inspect it. And we’re about to put on more sanctions; we had that coming up in our committee today. And they want to prohibit anybody from delivering gasoline, so we’re going to punish the people of Iran. And the people aren’t going to get mad at their Ayatollahs and their radicals, they’re going to get mad at us and they’re going to solidify behind their radical leadership. So it backfires on us and it really helps China, because China will probably go in, sell them oil, develop their oil and they’ll have more influence there because they’re pretty good capitalists these days. And here we are, using aggression to try to control what’s happening in Iran. Our policy makes no sense.

Dina Gusovsky: Even so, some experts are hinting that a military strike might even be possible. That perhaps the United States and Israel are training or might be getting ready to strike Iran militarily. What do you think about this? Is this an option?

Ron Paul: Let’s hope not. I know some people go for the sanctions; they go for the sanctions believing that it is something better than going to war. But sanctions are an act of war. The point I made in the committee today was, “What would we think if somebody said we can’t import any oil”? We’d be furious and it would be an act of war. We wouldn’t put up with it one bit. So yea, it is an act of war. It encourages even more effort by the Chinese to come in there and help the Iranians, both to drill for oil and to refine their oil. And also it gives a real boom to the black market. And the people will suffer, the privileged will benefit, and American foreign policy will suffer another consequence.

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Date: 10/30/2009

Transcript

Ron Paul: I’m Congressman Ron Paul and this is a weekly update for the Campaign for Liberty.

Update on the House Foreign Affairs Committee

We were quite busy this week in Washington, a lot of hearings and a lot of activity. First off, we had very significant hearings in the Foreign Affairs Committee. This was somewhat different because in the past with previous chairmen of this committee, they would frequently bring up resolutions which I considered very, very important and they’d bring them to the floor, under suspension, with no announcement, no hearings and no mark up in committee and sometimes, they’d bring it up under unanimous consent. Well, at least, Howard Berman, the chairman, brought this to the committee and we did have a bit of a debate and a vote. Unfortunately, there were only four of us that were actually opposed to the bill, and this is the bill that’s to put much stronger sanctions on the Iranians and it is to prevent petroleum-refined products getting into Iran. And the debate was the same old story. You know, “they’re a great danger to the world and if we don’t stop them, someday they might get a nuclear weapon.” So it was war propaganda. It reminded me, and I said so in the committee, it reminded me of some of the talk that happened before we went into Iraq.

But nevertheless, I tried my best to make the point that it won’t be of any benefit to us or to them. It will aggravate and anger the people. The people will not be turning against the [Iranian] leadership, which are out on the fringes. They’ll turn their anger and hostility toward us. But it is a significant event because it represents the continued and perpetual determination to alienate the Iranians and it’s a big debate over nuclear activity and whether or not they might have a nuclear weapon someday. It’s a significant event, but quite frankly, I think our policies of intervention in that area of the country causes more trouble than the Iranian government itself. They are a Third World nation. They don’t have intercontinental ballistic missiles. They have no nuclear weapons. In 2003, our CIA said they quit any effort to make a nuclear weapon. But I’m sure they have an incentive to make a nuclear weapon, but most of the incentive is the fact that we have an interventionist foreign policy. The Pakistanis have nuclear weapons. The Chinese have nuclear weapons. The Indians have nuclear weapons. The Israelis have nuclear weapons. We’re surrounding their country. We have nuclear weapons. So it’s not the most outlandish thought in the world for a country like that wanting to have those weapons.

But I hope that we come to our senses, but right now, we have a President that seems to be determined to follow the foreign policy of neoconservatives. Fortunately, though, he is trying to have some negotiations and trying to talk to the Iranian government, but quite frankly, I think behind the scenes they’re really planning to continue this more aggressive foreign policy. Someday, when this country comes to its senses or we go broke, I’m sure this policy will change.

Update on the House Financial Services Committee

This week we also had significant hearings in the Financial Services Committee and this brought Secretary of the Treasury Geithner to our committee, and of course, I had my five minutes of questioning with him. The reason for the hearings is to start looking at this bill that the chairman of Financial Services, Barney Frank, is bringing forth, which is 280 pages of more and more regulations of the financial system. The point I made with Secretary Geithner was that regulations can hardly solve the problem if you’re only treating the symptoms of a flawed monetary policy.

I used a quote he made earlier this year where he said that, “The number one problem that led us to our troubles was the fact that we had too low interest rates too long,” and I tried to throw that back to him saying, “Well, that’s the kind of language that I use and I believe that is the case and you can’t solve that problem by just doing more of the same,” pointing out to him that it doesn’t make much sense to admit that the interest rates were too low too long and then turn around and endorse a program that we’ve endorsed for the past year and that is if one percent interest rates were too low, taking them to zero is hardly going to help, at the same time doubling the money supply. I mean, low interest rates and excessive monetization of debt either is a problem or it isn’t. Of course, he danced around that issue.

On a follow-up question that I had for him, which might have even been more significant, but unfortunately for him the time ran out, and that is that he did admit that they were making negotiations with the international organizations trying to internationalize all our regulations and of course, I made a statement I don’t even like the regulations coming out of Washington, DC, let alone having them internationalized and under the UN and IMF.

But I did mention the fact that that very day I read that the United Nations are talking about a new reserve standard. Because I think most people admit that the dollar reserve standard is dead, although the dollar is not dead and the dollar is still limping along, but the reserve standard that built the very friable, fragile financial system that has already collapsed is not going to be rebuilt with the dollar. So my question to him was, “in these conversations you have about regulations, how often do you talk about and what are your conversations at these meetings about a new reserve standard?” Well, his answer was, of course, the time had ran out, he didn’t have time to answer, but that he suggested we get together and have a conversation. I doubt if that would happen, but if he invites me to discuss this, I would just for educational benefits, not that I think he’s going to convert me or I’m going to convert him, but it is a significant question. What are they going to replace the dollar with? Will it be the international paper reserve standard? Or will we wake up and once again realize that the only truly reserve standard that would work for a sound economic system throughout the world would be something that would be backed by more than government promises, and he was indicating that this has to be a worldwide approach and my answer, of course, was that if we do the right thing for us, it will be the right thing for the world and others would follow us. So if it’s a bad idea to spend too much money and borrow too much money and print too much money and we just quit, not only would it benefit us, it would benefit the whole world. But we have a long way to go. I think that will come after we have a greater collision with the dollar.

Comments on the GDP

Along this line, we also h­ad a report this week that showed that the GDP grew a little faster than I expected. It was up over three percent and the market responded by jumping up. The Dow Jones was up 200 points, which quickly corrected itself the next day. But the response was wonderful. “The GDP is up!” but when you think about it, why is the GDP up? Government printed a lot of money and passed it out and people bought cars and bought houses, even though they were buying them for artificial reasons. You know, they were stimulated. We don’t need to stimulate people to prop up prices of houses and building more houses. We need more of a natural correction, but they pass out money that they printed and it goes into the GDP. How can you believe that the GDP has much meaning if the government participates in spending money and calling that economic growth.

That probably is what changed the markets the next day because it was realized this isn’t real growth, this is just artificial. This is just gimmickry to claim the economy is growing by merely the government pursuing these giveaway programs. Eventually, the markets are always smarter than the government. The government can get away with it for a long time. They can get away with pretending there’s true value in our money and that this system will work, but in time it will be known exactly what true value is and the people and the markets will demand correction. That’s what we’re in the process of doing. The need for the correction is there. The resistance is just overwhelming in Washington and Wall Street to “do anything,” but they’ll just don’t allow the correction to occur. They consider that sound economic policy. I consider it foolish economic policy in doing exactly opposite of what they should do and we should have a lot better understanding how free markets work, how sound money works and have a lot more confidence that we will be all a lot better off if we follow those policies.

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Venue: Foreign Affairs Committee Hearing
Date: 10/28/2009

Ron Paul: Mr. Chairman, thank you and I oppose this legislation [HR 2194: Iran Refined Petroleum Sanctions Act of 2009]. I do not challenge the motivation of those who support this legislation, but I think it’s deeply flawed and I think it’s going to do a lot more harm than good. It reminds of all the talk that preceded us going into Iraq; all the wonderful things that could come by putting more pressure on a particular country starting first with sanctions. Sanctions are an act of war.

It was suggested that Venezuela may be going to send oil over there and that means intercepts on the high sea, but the best way for others to look at this to see my point is, how would we react if somebody closed down our oil imports. I mean, we would be pretty unhappy about that. To think that this is not a serious matter, I think it’s being rather naive.

First off, the Iranians have a right to enrich for peaceful purposes. They have never been found in violations of NPT treaty, not once. Our NIE report says they haven’t been working on weapons since 2003 and just because you disagree with it, you just can’t dismiss that report out of hand. So there is a lot of distortion on this information that we get.

When we went into Iraq, there were unintended consequences. There is still no stability there, but one thing for certain, is Iraq is a much closer ally of Iran right now. We drove the Iraqis into the hands of the Iranians and there has been an expression here that this is good [...], but we still should be concerned about China. Well, if you’re concerned about China, this is the best thing in the world for China. They are motivated. They have already invested in Iran. The production of petroleum products has gone up significantly in Iran, so this is a big motivation for the Iranians to do exactly what you don’t want them to do.

Now, the theory is that if we really punish the people, take their gasoline from them and they’re going to get angry – and they will. They’re going to get angry at us. They’re not going to get angry at the Ayatollah. What you are doing is you’re deliberately undermining the dissidents there. They will lose all credibility and people when they attack from the outside as we were on 9/11… we come together, so all we do is we keep pounding on people like this and we ruin the dissenting views that are operating in that country.

So I just think this is all going to backfire and we need to think in terms of the principle of free trade. You know, the more you put on sanctions, the more likely you will be fighting with them. We put on sanctions and we knew we were destined, at least for a lot of us, we were destined to go to war in Iraq and this means that we are willing to take on armed conflict. But you know what? What I don’t understand is your willingness to sort of disrupt what the President is trying to do. I mean, the President is trying to negotiate and talk. He said he wanted to do it; he should be allowed to do this. This just, I think, disrupts what the President is trying to do.

Recently, the President spoke at the United Nations and under his pressure and leadership he had UN Resolution 1887 passed. He is working multilaterally to try to bring peace to that area by having a non-nuclear Middle East. So if that’s the administration’s position to have a non-nuclear Middle East, then why do we do this to disrupt some of the things that he is trying to do, and I just am disturbed by us not looking through and looking at the ramifications, looking at the unintended consequences and this pretense that we can just do this and everything is going to come out all right because I really believe in the long run we will suffer, the people will suffer, and there will not be more stability.

How can we get terrified of a threat from the Iranians? You know, they are a Third World nation, up until recently, they couldn’t even make their own gasoline. But because of our pressure so far, they’re getting quite capable of doing it. We’re driving them into the hands of the Chinese. They have our money. They can control us through the dollar and yet, we’re driving the Chinese into taking over just as we drove the Iraqis to become close allies of the Iranians. I think our policies are deeply flawed. I say your motivations are fine and dandy, but motivations aren’t the answer; we have to think of the consequences.

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Show: Tavis Smiley Show
Channel: PBS
Date: 10/21/2009

Transcript:

Tavis Smiley: Congressman Ron Paul from Texas is serving his 11th term in Congress. In 2008 he mounted a bid for the White House that galvanized an eclectic mix of supporters, including legions of young voters. He’s also a bestselling author whose latest is called “End the Fed”. He joins us tonight from Capitol Hill. Congressman, nice to have you on the program.

Ron Paul: Thank you, nice to be with you.

Tavis Smiley: Before I jump into the text, let me ask you a couple of quick questions about Afghanistan since it’s all over the news. The White House has basically said that we don’t need to send more troops, Rahm Emanuel I’m quoting here now, the chief of staff, to Afghanistan until they have a legitimate and credible government. Two questions: 1) What does “legitimate and credible government” mean to you when you hear that? 2) Even if that were the case, do we need to be sending more troops to Afghanistan?

Ron Paul: No, we don’t need to be sending any more troops over there. We need to be bringing our troops home. And this whole idea of a legitimate government – there is no answer to that. It’s virtually impossible to arrange that and who is going to make the decision? And one thing for sure is that Karzai can’t be legitimate because he is seen as a puppet of ours. And I think this election is basically a fraud. A third of the votes that Karzai was supposed to have gotten were ruled illegal. So, the whole thing is preposterous. I mean, the whole notion of us being there is ridiculous, and the sooner we face up to this, the better off we are going to be. We don’t really have the troops to send. We don’t have the money to spend, and it’s just a part of a foreign policy that I have been talking about for many, many years. It’s deeply flawed. And this is an example of what happens to it. You’re in a place for eight years, and then you start deciding “What are we hear for? What’s the purpose? What’s the endpoint? Who’s the government?” I mean, it is so foolish, I can’t imagine why the people put up with this. And I just wish more people would send a message to their congressmen and said, “We ought to deal with our problems here at a home, maybe we ought to concentrate on getting better medical care than just fighting another war which will continue to expand.” I think the whole thing is foolish.

Tavis Smiley: Much has been said today, as you will know, about the fact that President Karzai has agreed to a runoff election. You’re not buying his plan on that?

Ron Paul: Oh yea, he probably will. That means there is a lot of pressure put on him, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s going to be eased out. You know, sometimes we turn on our puppets. Remember back in the Vietnam days, when DM was our puppet and we had our CIA overthrow him, and actually kill him. So who knows what is exactly going on, but Karzai seems to be hard to defend. I am sure we were rooting for him in the election, which means that we were involved in it. And there was so much fraud they got caught at it, so it’s getting pretty hard to defend him. So yes, there has to be an election, but I won’t be surprised if our government quits supporting him. He can’t exist without our support. But the big problem is they don’t have anybody to replace him.

Tavis Smiley: I’m about to ask you this… some people believe that he’s not perfect. I mean, I don’t think the White House would tell you he is perfect, but the argument might be that he is the best of the rest.

Ron Paul: Yeah. Well, I think it will be hard to find anybody that will suit the situation. And whether you put in 20,000 or 40,000 or 80,000 [troops], I think it’s not worth the investment.

Tavis Smiley: So what should the President do then with this tough decision on Afghanistan? What should he do?

Ron Paul: I think they should come home and say that we did our best, we took care of the Al-Qaida, they don’t exist there and the 300 that did exist there are all dead or gone. And we ought to allow the Afghans to decide what kind of government they want. They don’t want a centralized government. They want tribalism. And we just can’t change that. People have been trying to do that for centuries, and it’t just not going to happen.

Tavis Smiley: One last question before I get to your book. The argument though is, as you well know, is if the U.S. were to pull out of Afghanistan or pull out of Iraq, you pull out of that region, the argument is that the whole region collapses and the apocalypse happens if you take Ron Paul’s advice and just pull out.

Ron Paul: Well, I think staying there is going to cause more trouble. I think the fact that we’ve been there for 8 years and destabilized the area… Afghanistan isn’t stable, but now Pakistan is not stable. Now we’re sending our drones over there and innocent people are getting killed and pretty soon we’re going to think about what we have to do to stabilize and get control of the weapons of Pakistan. At the same time they’re planning on expanding the efforts to overthrow the government in Iran. They’re coming up with real strong sanctions against the Iranians, and that’s not going to help us.

It’s just an endless task to continue to try to nation build and police the world. We weren’t meant to do that and we can’t afford it any longer, and it all has ramifications and blowback phenomenons that will be hurtful to us. I think it’s a real threat to our national security to be overly involved in that area.

Tavis Smiley: It’s a great segway to this book that you’ve written now called “End the Fed” which is already on the New York Times bestseller list, I might add. One listens to your answers now in this conversation about Afghanistan, one prepares to go into a conversation now with you about this new book called “End the Fed”. One gets the impression that Ron Paul, although a member of Congress, doesn’t trust government. Is that a fair assessment?

Ron Paul: I wouldn’t say I don’t trust all government at all times. I would say that most Americans, including myself, don’t fully trust that the government’s taking very good care of us. They don’t have a good foreign policy and there is something very untrustworthy about our monetary system. It is very, very untrustworthy and very unfair that it takes care of Wall Street, and at the same time it hurts the people because they end up with the inflation, they end up with the unemployment, they end up with losing their houses.

And yet the Federal Reserve, behind the scenes, in secret, can create trillions of dollars and bail out companies like Goldman Sachs. They can deal with world banks and world central banks, and we’re not even allowed to know. The Congress is so derelict in their responsibility, and this is why I of course want an audit of the Fed, but indeed what will eventually have to happen is ending the Fed because they’re going to destroy our money. We’re in the process of doing that. They set the stage for destroying the financial system and that has collapsed. But now, they’re just embarking on endless inflation, doubling the money supply, running up the debt, and spending and not even worry about it. “We’ll print the money if we need it”. That is a devastation to the average person. In countries where it gets out of control, the middle class gets wiped out. And that’s what I am afraid is going to happen here.

Tavis Smiley: You know, there are those who are watching right now, no doubt, who will say that you got it all wrong. That not only should the Fed not be ended, but if we were to do something like that, the timing couldn’t be worse, because it is the Fed and it’s Congress who you’re saying were derelict in their duty to put the money, pumped the money back into Wall Street that turned this situation around. Now they’re celebrating on Wall Street and passing out bonuses. And of course, the line is that jobs are always the last thing that comes around; that’s the last indicator. But how do you respond to those who say that this will be a bad idea, the wrong time for this idea, and if it weren’t for us pumping money into Wall Street, the economy might not be making a turn right about now?

Ron Paul: Well, there is a half-truth there. The TARP funds did go there to a large degree and we did prop up a lot of those businesses. That’s why some politicians go to Wall Street to raise money for their political campaigns. But the Federal Reserve pumps in trillions, and we’re not even allowed to know. With the TARP funds the people caught on and they demanded from Congress “What’s going on here? Why don’t you find out if there are any strings attached?” So, as bad as the TARP funds are and as bad as what the Congress has done, the Federal Reserve is that much worse.

Now, the answer to other question,that it could it be chaotic to get rid of the Fed – if you read my book carefully, I’ve talked about a transition for many, many years. Even in the foreign policy everything I talk about … how do you get from one stage to the next stage. And what I suggest here is not abolishing the Federal Reserve tomorrow, but legalizing some competition against the Federal Reserve, legalize the Constitution, legalize sound money. Parallel currencies are operating all the time around the world.

Tavis Smiley: What would competition against the Federal Reserve look like? Can you describe that?

Ron Paul: Well, gold coins and gold savings accounts could be used. Today if you use gold and silver as legal tender you go to jail. And yet the law and the Constitution say only gold and silver can be legal tender. But the courts always rule that the only legal tender is what the IRS says, and that’s Federal Reserve notes. But there is no law that says Federal Reserve notes are dollars. So it’s total chaos and that’s why you have the financial system in chaos. But you can legalize competition. For instance, in Mexico the middle class and the poor have been wiped out several times because their peso went to zero, and all their money becomes worthless. But in Mexico now, if you want to save, you can put it in silver and the accounts will be backed by silver, which means that you’re not going to lose. The lower the peso goes, the higher your silver prices go up. You can do that in this country, you can have a transition and if you want to use Federal Reserve notes you could, but other people could get paid for and make payments… with the computer age this is big problem. I mean, if you go to Mexico you can translate dollars into pesos very, very easily. So it could be done, and rather than looking for chaos and closing down the system. But if you continue what we’re doing now, you are going to get chaos because you’re going to have runaway inflation, destruction of the dollar. Now that is real chaos, not what I’m suggesting.

Tavis Smiley: Go back for me real quick and unpack what you were trying to say a moment ago that there are examples around the world where when these issues go unabated and go unaddressed, the middle class gets wiped out. Make the connection between the Fed and the middle class being wiped out.

Ron Paul: Okay, if the Fed continues to inflate the currency, that is to print money, the dollar looses value, which it is doing all the time. Mexico has had runaway inflation, Central American countries have had runaway inflation. We know about the runaway inflation in Germany, the most recent one in Zimbabwe. The money goes to zero value and the people lose out. But the very rich don’t lose out. They get bailed out and they don’t care about the cost of living. Right now they claim the cost of living isn’t going up and the elderly aren’t being heard. But the elderly didn’t get a cost of living increase this year on Social Security. But the cost of living for them is going up. Sometimes it goes up much faster for somebody living on a fixed income than somebody living on Wall Street. But here, instead of helping those people, we help Wall Street. And they’re making billions of dollars, they have a 120 billion dollars in the bank now to hand out in bonuses this year. At the same time, we have a 20% unemployment rate. I mean there is something very unfair about this system.

Tavis Smiley: I couldn’t agree more on that point. Let me ask you a final question here. In the book you talk about the fact, as we’ve been discussing in this conversation, your notion on how this country can prosper by addressing the Fed as it is now structured. But you also make the point that this is also tied to our freedom. I hear the prosperity argument. What’s the freedom argument?

Ron Paul: Well, the freedom argument is this: if you have a secret central bank which has been given the license to counterfeit money, they’re very, very powerful. So when governments grow, I believe when governments grow they always have to do it at the expense of the individual; whether it’s economic liberty or personal liberty or fighting wars that we shouldn’t fight. And there is always a cost to this. So if government grows and undermines personal liberty and passes more laws like the PATRIOT Act and all kinds of things, and you don’t have to pay for it. If everybody had to pay for this through taxes, we wouldn’t have this type of government. So we tax and then we borrow and then we still don’t have enough money so we print the money which then, of course, you accept the economic argument. But at the same time, the bigger the government is, the less personal freedoms we have. And this is a pretty well known fact. The maximum amount of freedom is when the government is smaller and the purpose of government is to protect liberty, protect our civil liberties, to protect our economic liberties, and make sure that we don’t get involved in these wars around the world. Because anytime you’re at war, you’re supposed to sacrifice for the greater cause. And people are more willing to give up on their civil liberties if we’re at war. So it is freedom issue to me.

Tavis Smiley: Ron Paul, of Texas, ran for president, if you recall, the last time around. He had a huge following of young people and made an impact in that campaign. He now has a new book out called “End the Fed”. Congressman Paul, glad to have you on the program. All the best to you sir.

Ron Paul: Thank you very much.

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Venue: U.S. House Committee on Foreign Affairs
Date: 10/15/2009

Transcript:

Ron Paul: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. In the last months, we have had a pretense of having a debate about Afghanistan, but unfortunately, it’s not much of a debate. We’re deciding whether or not to send 40,000 or 80,000 troops over to Afghanistan and we can’t even decide where the frontlines are. But the worst part of this is this is just déjà vu again, all about going to war needlessly. The same arguments were used in going into war against Iraq and that is “weapons of mass destruction and al-Qaeda, scare the people, it’s in our national security interest to go there” and we continue.

The Taliban never did a thing to us. The Taliban, we were paying them money up until May of 2001. They’re not capable, even if they wanted to, they’re not capable of touching us. So we’re over there, pursuing a war, spreading the war, and going into Pakistan. The American people don’t want it. We’re out of money. We can’t afford medical education here and we’re demanding that we send 80,000 or 40,000 troops to Afghanistan and expand the war. It’s time to end the whole mess.

Chairman Howard L. Berman: The time of the gentleman has expired.

The time has expired and the gentleman from Texas, Mr. Paul, is through.

Ron Paul: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It seems like we’ve had now a war going on for eight years, into the ninth year, and from the discussion, it looks like we’re searching for a justification for it; what is the reason we are there? I think we got that cart before the horse. We’ve been fighting all this time and it means that it isn’t a management problem. It’s a policy problem of how we got there, why we’re there, and what we’re doing, and besides, this type of debate about management, I can’t imagine this type of debate going on in World War II. You know, we knew who the enemy was; we declared war. The President said he’s the commander in chief and told the Congress what he needed. Now, that isn’t an argument for the Congress not paying attention. It’s an argument against the way we go to war and it looks like we have accepted this notion that perpetual war leads to perpetual peace, and we satisfy the military-industrial complex and the special interests and all these motivations just to stay in war endlessly.

But even these eight years, I don’t see where the success is. Men die, thousands of Afghanis are displaced and die. It cost a quarter trillion dollars and we’re still finding out, you know, what are we there for? Oh, well, “if the Taliban takes over” – whom we used to, you know, get along with quite well = “if they take over all of a sudden, al-Qaeda is going to be there and there’s going to another 9/11.”

This is making the assumption that 9/11 couldn’t have occurred without these training camps in Afghanistan. Do you think those nineteen guys went over there and did push-ups in those camps? There is no way. There is no way they were there doing those things. The report, when they studied 9/11, they said, “Well, there is a lot of planning going on in Germany. A lot of planning going on in Spain and there were 15 of them and were Afghans [Saudis]. I mean, if somebody really wanted to, I bet they could have talked the American people into bombing Saudi Arabia. I mean, 15 of them are Saudis. I imagine under those circumstances, the American people and the Congress could have been talked into bombing Saudi Arabia under those conditions.

So I just don’t see how we could continue to do this and come up with any sensible policy because we never challenge, we never question whether preemptive war is a good strategy and this is what this is all about: preemptive wars, starting wars, saying it’s preventative. But this is a completely un-American approach to fighting wars because under the original system, the people got behind the war, declared the war, knew who the enemy was and we didn’t come up with these strategies; “Do we need 40,000 or 80,000 people and who should we give the money to? Should we give it to this group?”

Why don’t we ever ask the question and this will be the question I’ll leave with you. Why don’t we as a Congress and the administrations, former administrations as well as this one, why don’t we ask the question, what is the motivation for somebody to attack us? And I don’t think it’s ever really asked because I think there is a different answer than then if some say, “Oh, they hate us. They hate us for our freedoms and our wealth.”

And I don’t believe that for a minute. I think the people in Afghanistan, the large majority, no matter what the reports are from the administration, our puppet administration, most people want us out of there. They don’t want us in Pakistan. The people in Pakistan don’t want us there. People in Iraq don’t want us there. It’s occupation. So my question is this, why is that never talked about, or why is it dismissed so easily if indeed you study and you find out that people who are willing to sacrifice their life to make a point is because we are seen as foreign occupiers. Just as the Soviets were seen as foreign occupiers, just as we joined those individuals who wanted to throw out the foreign occupiers in the past, and yet now, we are. We learn nothing from history, both ancient history or even recent history. Why don’t we pay more attention to the true motivations behind somebody who wants to commit suicide terrorism against us. Anybody care to answer?

Chairman Howard L. Berman: In 20 seconds.

Unidentified Male Speaker: In twenty seconds. (Laughs).

Robert Kagan: Congressman, I think in 20 seconds, I can only tell you that some of us do pay a great deal of attention to what the ideology is that drives al-Qaeda and affiliated groups to try to attack us. It’s been articulated in tremendous detail on multiple books. It goes beyond not liking us because of our wealth and a variety of other things and it has to do with the struggle within Islam that they see us participating in whether we are present there or not. It is a very, very sophisticated strategy. It is a very, very sophisticated ideology and it is extremely clear on what their intentions are and why.

Chairman Howard L. Berman: The time of the gentleman has expired.

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Saving Face in Afghanistan

by Ron Paul

This past week there has been a lot of discussion and debate on the continuing war in Afghanistan. Lasting twice as long as World War II and with no end in sight, the war in Afghanistan has been one of the longest conflicts in which our country has ever been involved. The situation has only gotten worse with recent escalations.

The current debate is focused entirely on the question of troop levels. How many more troops should be sent over in order to pursue the war? The administration has already approved an additional 21,000 American service men and women to be deployed by November, which will increase our troop levels to 68,000. Will another 40,000 do the job? Or should we eventually build up the levels to 100,000 in addition to that? Why not 500,000 – just to be “safe”? And how will public support be brought back around to supporting this war again when 58 percent are now against it?

I get quite annoyed at this very narrow line of questioning. I have other questions. We overthrew the Taliban government in 2001 with less than 10,000 American troops. Why does it now seem that the more troops we send, the worse things get? If the Soviets bankrupted themselves in Afghanistan with troop levels of 100,000 and were eventually forced to leave in humiliating defeat, why are we determined to follow their example? Most importantly, what is there to be gained from all this? We’ve invested billions of dollars and thousands of precious lives – for what?

The truth is it is no coincidence that the more troops we send the worse things get. Things are getting worse precisely because we are sending more troops and escalating the violence. We are hoping that good leadership wins out in Afghanistan, but the pool of potential honest leaders from which to draw have been fleeing the violence, leaving a tremendous power vacuum behind. War does not quell bad leaders. It creates them. And the more war we visit on this country, the more bad leaders we will inadvertently create.

Another thing that war does is create anger with its indiscriminate violence and injustice. How many innocent civilians have been harmed from clumsy bombings and mistakes that end up costing lives? People die from simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time in a war zone, but the killers never face consequences. Imagine the resentment and anger survivors must feel when a family member is killed and nothing is done about it. When there are no other jobs available because all the businesses have fled, what else is there to do, but join ranks with the resistance where there is a paycheck and also an opportunity for revenge? This is no justification for our enemies over there, but we have to accept that when we push people, they will push back.

The real question is why are we there at all? What do our efforts now have to do with the original authorization of the use of force? We are no longer dealing with anything or anyone involved in the attacks of 9/11. At this point we are only strengthening the resolve and the ranks of our enemies. We have nothing left to win. We are only there to save face, and in the end we will not even be able to do that.

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Date: 10/9/2009

Key points:

• Ron Paul wasn’t totally shocked that it happened
• the prize represents not peace, but internationalism, world government and a UN/NATO-type approach to global affairs
• Obama’s tone is better, but he isn’t pro-peace
• Obama totally neutralized the anti-war left, which is very sad
• the same happens when conservatives are elected: they promise less government, but give us more, and there is no resistance from the conservative base
• the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will continue, the front of the war will be Pakistan
• did they believe that giving Obama the peace prize would promote peace? Comparison to Woodrow Wilson… no credibility…
• to promote peace, we have build a coalition of constitutional conservatives, libertarians and the anti-war left
• we have to stand up for what is right and not be so narrow-minded in our partisanship

Transcript:

Congressman Paul, what do you think about President Obama being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize?

Ron Paul: I’ve received several questions today on what I thought about President Obama winning the Nobel Peace Prize. I actually wasn’t totally shocked that it happened, but at least this gives us a chance to talk a little bit about foreign policy. It’s a bit ironic for him to win the Nobel Peace Prize because the application had to be in on February 1st when he had been in office for a total of 12 days. And during that short period of time he had already given orders and supported an extension of the bombing into Pakistan where some civilians were killed.

His policy is not exactly pro-peace. His tone is better and he talks about wanting negotiations, but he’s a much bigger internationalist and I believe that winning this Nobel Prize represents more internationalism and a more UN/NATO type approach to world affairs.

But I think the idea that it’s a real symbol of a great move towards peace is a little shortcoming on that. But the one thing that bothers me the most, though, about this is that presidents very often win with a more pro-peace program, and Obama was obviously more pro-peace than McCain, and people expected a less militant type of foreign policy.

As a matter of fact, President Bush in the year 2000 took the position that we shouldn’t have nation building and we shouldn’t be the policeman of the world, and yet look at what happened. But right now I think what is happening is that Obama has been able to totally neutralize the anti-war coalitions that have existed around the country. The anti-war left doesn’t exist anymore. Code Pink now support Obama’s position in Afghanistan. So this to me is very sad that it’s happening.

It reminds me of what happens when we elect conservative presidents. We elect a president to have less government and a balanced budget and less spending. And yet we get them in office and they do exactly the opposite, and there is no resistance from the conservative base. And now there is no resistance of much value in the liberal base to be opposed to war.

Right now it looks like the war will continue over there. Obama wants more troops into Afghanistan, more bombing in Pakistan. It looks like Pakistan is going to be the front of the war and there has been no significant troop reduction in Iraq. We’ve armed the Sunnis over there, and when the war breaks out once again the Sunnis are going to have the weapons that are going to kill Shiites and maybe Americans.

So, this debate about what we should be doing over there really isn’t a debate. There should be a debate on “should we be there and why are we there and should we win the war?” versus “we shouldn’t be there.” No. The debate is “How many troops do we send? Should the frontlines be in Afghanistan or should the frontlines be in Pakistan? And how many contractors should replace the soldiers that we are removing from Iraq?”

It’s the wrong, wrong debate. This whole idea that you can give the president a Nobel Peace Prize and think it’s going to be a promotion to peace, you know, it’s sort of like giving Woodrow Wilson the Nobel Peace Prize which he did receive. And just think of the harm he has done to the American system and to our government and how much harm he created in the 20th century.

So these prizes have to make one point: they can’t be credible and I think in this case a lot of people already are pointing out the irony of a president who has essentially not done anything, yet nominated 12 days after he was elected. What is the real goal behind this?

Unfortunately I don’t think it’s a good goal. I think it’s internationalism and world government and not peace at all. Someday I’d like to see the pro-peace movement grow. It’s still alive and well but it is quiescent and I think there may be less of a coalition.

It looks to me like if we are going to argue the case for pro-peace and pro-American strength without going to war and pro-trade and pro-travel and all these things, it’s probably going to have to come from constitutional conservatives and libertarians and hopefully we can keep persuading as many people that come from the left to support us from this position rather than them succumbing to temptation for partisan reasons like, say “Whatever Obama says, we’ll do it.” Just like so many conservatives in the previous administration said, “No matter what the president says, we will support him.”

Someday we have to stand up for what is right and not be so narrow minded in our partisanship.

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Bombs and Bribes

by Ron Paul

What if tomorrow morning you woke up to headlines that yet another Chinese drone bombing on US soil killed several dozen ranchers in a rural community while they were sleeping? That a drone aircraft had come across the Canadian border in the middle of the night and carried out the latest of many attacks? What if it was claimed that many of the victims harbored anti-Chinese sentiments, but most of the dead were innocent women and children? And what if the Chinese administration, in an effort to improve its public image in the US, had approved an aid package to send funds to help with American roads and schools and promote Chinese values here?

Most Americans would not stand for it. Yet the above hypothetical events are similar to what our government is doing in Pakistan. Last week, Congress did approve an aid package for Pakistan for the stated purposes of improving our image and promoting democracy. I again made the point on the floor of the House that still no one seems to hear: What if this happened on US soil? What if innocent Americans were being killed in repeated drone attacks carried out by some foreign force who was trying to fix our problems for us? Would sending money help their image? If another nation committed this type of violence and destruction on our homeland, would we be at all interested in adopting their values?

Sadly, one thing that has entirely escaped modern American foreign policy is empathy. Without much humility or regard for human life, our foreign policy has been reduced to alternately bribing and bombing other nations, all with the stated goal of “promoting democracy”. But if a country democratically elects a leader who is not sufficiently pro-American, our government will refuse to recognize them, will impose sanctions on them, and will possibly even support covert efforts to remove them. Democracy is obviously not what we are interested in. It is more likely that our government is interested in imposing its will on other governments. This policy of endless intervention in the affairs of others is very damaging to American liberty and security.

If we were really interested in democracy, peace, prosperity and safety, we would pursue more free trade with other countries. Free and abundant trade is much more conducive to peace because it is generally bad business to kill your customers. When one’s livelihood is on the line, and the business agreements are mutually beneficial, it is in everyone’s best interests to maintain cooperative and friendly relations and not kill each other. But instead, to force other countries to bend to our will, we impose trade barriers and sanctions. If our government really wanted to promote freedom, Americans would be free to travel and trade with whoever they wished. And, if we would simply look at our own policies around the world through the eyes of others, we would understand how these actions make us more targeted and therefore less safe from terrorism. The only answer is get back to free trade with all and entangling alliances with none. It is our bombs and sanctions and condescending aid packages that isolate us.

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Bill: HR 3642, the Enhanced Partnership with Pakistan Act of 2009
Venue: House Floor
Date: 9/30/2009

Ron Paul: Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to this bill. Sometimes I wonder how we can, with a straight face, bring a bill up like this with the conditions of this country, especially financially.

I oppose this bill for two reasons. One, we don’t have the money. That would be a pretty good reason not to support it. And the other reason is I do not believe it’s in our national security interests. I know this is being promoted as benefiting our national security, but I do not believe it helps us one bit. This bill was essentially voted on in June, and the vote was 234-185, which means that it is assumed at least 56 or more individuals in the Congress have switched their votes.

Now they say they have tinkered with the bill and changed it a little bit, but it’s an authorization that could be $15 billion. So it hasn’t had that much of a change. But today it is expected that these individuals will change and vote for this bill not really asking the questions.

Now, the bill is defined as fortifying democratic institutions. That is a good goal. But it never, never works. We are in 130 countries, we have 700 bases around the world, and we pursue this, and we are bankrupting our country by trying to maintain this empire. I have often made the point that the way we treat our fellow countries around the world is we tell them what to do, and if they do it we give them money. If they don’t do it, we bomb them. Under this condition, we are doing both. We are currently dropping bombs in Pakistan. The CIA is dropping bombs, and innocent people get killed.

If you want to promote our good values and our democratic process, you can’t antagonize the people by literally killing people over there, because if bombs were falling on this country, we wouldn’t be all that happy with that. So this does not improve our conditions whatsoever.

I would suggest another proposal for our foreign policy, not using bombs and bribes, but what about neither one? What about just talking to people? What about reducing tariffs? What about trading with them? Instead, it is this form of foreign policy that will not serve our interests.

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Date: 9/28/2009

Jake in Houston: There seems to be a lot of hype and attention this weekend concerning the Iranian nuclear program. Why is that?

Ron Paul: I don’t think it’s by accident. You know, all of a sudden it burst that up in Pittsburgh and all these charges were made. I think the number one reason why this all broke, because there’s really nothing new about what’s going on over in Iran. I think the reason is that the very, very powerful and the most militant neocons are very worried about Obama and other countries meeting with Iran and actually having negotiations with the government of Iran and they want to see it stopped.

I don’t think we have an anti-neocon administration, but I do think some of the people outside the administration, are very, very intent on stopping the negotiation and pursuing a very hard-line policy toward the Iranians.

The big charge was that all of a sudden there was this secret nuclear plant being built in Qom and that it had not been reported. Quite frankly, the way it got reported in the news was the Iranians reported it to IAEA, the United Nations investigation team and that’s how it became public and all of a sudden, they were jumped on for having done something secret.

Also, the truth is the United States knew about this since 2006. Obama was briefed on this in November right after he was elected. In 2007, there was an NIE, an intelligence estimate made in 2007, a year after we found out that they were doing something in Qom and it wasn’t even reported and the CIA report at that time said there was no evidence that the Iranians had been working on a nuclear weapon since 2003, so this is very much old news.

Now, the reason the argument is going on is, what does the law say? The Iranians, unlike three other countries in the Middle East, they don’t even pay any attention to and don’t even belong to the Non-Proliferation Treaty, but the Iranians’ obligation under the law is that six months before they go into production, to do any enrichment for peaceful purposes, they have to notify the United Nations inspectors and they did exactly that, and yet they’re yelling and screaming now that they broke the law, that they’re on the verge of building a bomb.

You know what this sounds like? It sounds like warmongering. It sounds like the same old stuff that we heard prior to the Iraqi war. Remember the yellow cake with forged papers trying to say that Saddam Hussein was buying yellow cake and he was on the verge of a nuclear weapon or had nuclear weapons? It’s the same old thing going on and all the lies told that we were going to march in and find these nuclear weapons.

So it’s hysteria. It’s warmongering and unfortunately, the major media has not reported anything in balance whatsoever. They keep saying that the Iranians are on the verge. Of course, they’re talking tough. That’s the way they operate over there. It’s a tough neighborhood. That’s how they rise to power, so they are… you know, in many ways, rude and loudmouth, but that’s how tough guys exist over there and yet our response to them has been pretty irrational as well because I think the determination to add sanctions.

Right now, they continue this clamor for sanctions on the Iranians. “Don’t allow one drop of gasoline to be imported into the Iranians. Punish the people of Iran and that will bring them to their knees and they’ll throw out their ayatollahs and they’ll be friends with the West.” Quite frankly, it does exactly the opposite. It unifies the people of Iran. It does not help the dissidents in Iran and it actually… once we do this, pursue a policy like this, the real beneficiary are the Chinese because the Chinese happen to have a lot of dollars. They have a trillion dollars of our money, but they are not using bombs and weapons to influence and try to gain, you know, advantages in Iran. What they’re doing is they’re going in there and investing their money, so we, I believe, are on a completely wrong track. I think this is hysterical reaction that we ought to sit back and relax and look at the truth.

One of the reasons why this argument came up was that a few years ago, I think it was in 2003, the Iranians did sign a supplemental protocol with the West and they were in negotiations, and the protocol said that they would even report when they start building a nuclear facility, not just when they were getting ready to go into production, six months before production, but just when they started to build it. Now, they are building it and they’re said to be in violation of this. But the whole thing is, is that supplemental protocol, which was not a part of the original Non-Proliferation Treaty, they signed this willingly and it was never ratified by their parliament. You know, it would be like us having a president sign a treaty and never ratified by the Senate, it wouldn’t be the law of the land. And then the Iranian government announced precisely that they’re no longer following it because the negotiations were suspended by the West. They were negotiating with the Iranians and trying to come to an agreement and finally, they just said, “No, we’re not going to do it. If you’re not going to negotiate with us, we’re not going to follow this voluntary protocol.”

But the United Nations, the IAEA has never found the Iranians at fault. They have never been sanctioned. They have never broken the law. They have lived up to their commitment.

Now, the real problem politically is defending the kind of people who run Iran, but the whole truth is if you’re going to try to operate within the international law, we shouldn’t be so arrogant as to say that they’re doing such and such and they haven’t done it or they haven’t broken the law. So it’s time that we pay attention to our promises and our commitments rather than intimidating and threatening, putting on sanctions, which are an act of war and then setting the stage for ultimately bombing these facilities.

So to me, it sounds a whole lot like déjà vu, exactly the kind of nonsense that led us into a no-win, nonsensical war in Iraq where we’re still bogged down. We’re bogged down in Afghanistan and Pakistan and here they are trying to stir up another fight with another country. It is of no benefit to the American people. It is of no benefit to our national security interest and the sooner we get to the bottom of this and know the facts, the better off we would be as Americans.

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