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Ron Paul: Only A Matter Of Time Until Government Starts Assassinating Members Of The Media
By
Ben Yakas
Published Oct 6, 2011
Modified Oct 6, 2011
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By
Ben Yakas
Published Oct 6, 2011
Modified Oct 6, 2011
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Everyone's favorite Kantian epistemologist Ron Paul is still unnerved by what he calls the American "assassination" of the U.S.-born al Qaeda leader and terrorist recruiter Anwar al-Awlaki last week. Yesterday, Paul told an audience at the National Press Club that citizens needed to protest the killing, or else the government may start eyeing new targets for assassination soon: "Can you imagine being put on a list because you're a threat? What's going to happen when they come to the media? What if the media becomes a threat? Or a professor becomes a threat?...This is the way this works. It's incrementalism," he said.
"It's slipping and sliding, let me tell you," he said. Al-Awlaki was killed in Yemen by a missile fired from an American drone aircraft; it was the first time since the Sept. 11 attacks that an American citizen had been deliberately targeted and killed by American forces. Also during his speech, Paul compared al-Awlaki, and Samir Kahn, another American-turned-al Qaeda operative killed in the attack, to Nazi war criminals. "All the Nazi criminals were tried. They were taken to court and then executed. The reason we do this is because we want to protect the rule of law," said Paul.
Paul, who also announced that he had raised $8 million from supporters, said that Obama was to blame for the erosion of civil liberties, and called the "assassination" an impeachable offense: "We have crossed that barrier from republic to dictatorship, to tyranny to empire."
Paul also showed solidarity with the "legitimate" protesters of Occupy Wall Street: "I think civil disobedience, if everyone knows what they're doing, is a legitimate effort. It's been done in this country for many grievances... The solution is to get a healthy economy back."
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anwar al-awlaki
assassinate
conspiracy
government
media
ron paul
Ben Yakas
Ben Yakas is a former Gothamist reporter.
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