Pixiq

Sad. But apparently the Ron Paul campaign is no different than the Republicans, or the Democrats. They want their message as they see it, and will suppress other view points when ever possible.

I had a great deal or respect for the Ron Paul campaign until now, but appear no different than all the other schmucks.

One note – Campaign for Liberty wasn’t formed by Paul to get him in to the White House, it was formed by him using leftover campaign money after he formally withdrew from the race to further the ideals of the Ron Paul movement after and regardless of campaigns.
Jake Stichler´s last blog ..Cracking Down on Spending

Ahh FreeKeene.com one of those sites that RidleyReport.com has videos from time to time.

First let me preface my comment by saying that I like Ron Paul, or what he says at least. Do not look poorly on him just because of one incident at an event. If this sort of thing becomes frequent then we may have problems.

Now for the video. As far as the security guards denying the anti-zionist the ability to pass out his literature and asking him to leave, that’s well within their right to do so.

Also asking the videographer, Lupo, to stop taping is also within their right. However, as you said Ron Paul is popular because of his libertarian values. Now we are being shown an instance where his staff may not be entirely willing to protect those values when it becomes a little inconvenient for them.

I agree, they should not have hassled Lupo if they truly believe in libertarian values. I hope it won’t happen again.

I don’t see what the problem is. From the look of the place, this event was held in a hotel conference-room area.

One of the fundamental rights that libertarians support is the right of private property. The property owner has every right to eject whomever he wants from his property for whatever reason he wants.

As a portrait photographer myself, I’m very sensitive about respecting people who don’t want to be photographed, even if they’re in public. The exception to that, for me, would be the documentation of abuses by public officials.

In this case, I have to side with the hotel. It’s their property, and they have every right to curtail the use of cameras on their private property. There may be an argument that they are morally or ethically wrong to do so in a case like this, but that’s an opportunity to try to educate and persuade them to change their ways.

Am I the only one who cannot find the video posted on the freekeene site ?

Ron Paul should fire these goons right now. This would show that he is truly interested in the peoples liberties, & rights.

On the one hand, it’s a private event and they can eject any person for any reason in keeping with libertarian philosophy. On the other hand, it looks bad for them because they did so. Contact Ron Paul directly, see what he says.
Difster´s last blog ..Scott Brown’s First Senate Address

Unfortunately there is no need for people like this Tarrin guy and his racist, anti-semitic friend to make videos of our conference. I asked him to stop taping specifically for that reason. I don’t know if Tarrin and his friend were trying to set something up, or plan something, but Campaign for Liberty in no way approves or condones their beliefs.

Tarrin and his friend should be ashamed of themselves for playing out this stunt and trying to portray real supporters of Ron Paul and the Campaign for Liberty in a negative light. We believe in freedom, not racial bias.

Thanks, Jake. I cleared it up.

Do you have any evidence that Lupo and the event crasher were working together to paint the Campaign for Liberty in a negative light?

As an outsider, I think the security guards were effectively dealing with the event crasher in a firm but non-violent manner.

I never got the impression that his anti-Semitic rants were welcomed by the campaign.

I just didn’t understand why they would clamp down on a videographer who was obviously trying to document a newsworthy incident.

I don’t really have a problem with people being chucked out of private events for really any reason. It is not at all inconsistent with the concept of private property rights, which as mentioned above is a fundamental principle of libertarianism.

Steve, did you even look at the video before you posted ?

Wow, a conspiracy theory from a Ron Paul supporter. Must be a Tuesday.

While some may argue that this was a “private” event, we must take into consideration that these are people who want to take over our country politically.

And if they can’t handle a videographer filming the ejection of an event crasher, can we really expect them to run a transparent government?

Before chastising Ron Paul, allow him the chance to give his thoughts on this recording. Just because the event managers act a certain way does not mean Ron Paul would have done the same.

So private property is fine when you are expelling someone who has beliefs you don’t like, but not ok when it is your ox (photography) being gored.
A camera does not trump private property rights.

Oh really Steve….No reason what so ever?
Documenting a possible news story?
Helping to cover your ass in case of a lawsuit?
Showing the rest of us exactly what your political party stands for REALLY instead of the polished ,spun view you want to portray?
None of those are good reason?
You didn’t have any problems with him filming elsewhere during the conferance, but suddenly when YOUR involved in an “incident” you want him to stop. Then accuse him of setting it all up?

Just what are YOU trying to hide Steve?
Can you say Hypocrite?
I knew you could.

I don’t want to go off on what is arguably a tangent here, but there is nothing inherently “anti-semitic” about anti-zionism. Zionism is basically a political philosophy that supports the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine, approximately two thousand years after the Jews ceased to represent a demographic majority in the area. To be anti-zionist effectively means that one believes Palestine should be governed by the indigenous population rather than by European immigrants who were brought in under the British Mandate. Incidentally, the indigenous population of Palestine is primarily Arab – and since the Arabs are a Semitic people, anti-zionism by definition cannot be “anti-semitic.”
Carlos, please don’t equate anti-zionism with racism. Part of the problem here is that we don’t know whether the crasher was anti-Jewish or not because the thugs in security interrupted the filming.

Sure they had the right to throw the videographer out… but when they allow filming, but then try and stop it as part of image control, it still makes them look like assholes.

Having the right to do something and being an asshole for doing it aren’t mutually exclusive.
Michaelk42´s last blog ..Again with the cluelessness

While the term Semitic includes Arabs, the term anti-Semitic refers specifically to being anti-Jewish. Many words in the English language have multiple meanings, and it may be confusing, but it should not be used to try and subvert the common meaning of a word.

Well Chris, since you’re so hung up private property rights, those assholes that threw that one guy out and that attempted to throw out the videographer do not own the property, so they had no right in hell to throw anybody out.

This is obviously symbolic of attempts to throw the Jews out of their ancestral home in Palestine.

^^^^ 90% OT ^^^^

I’ve never understood those people who don’t see the connection between private property rights and freedom of speech or any other civil liberties for that matter.

As if a society that doesn’t respect private property would somehow respect free speech.

Just look at all the fine past examples where private property was abolished.

And for those people who say “but it makes him look like an asshole”: if you don’t vote for a candidate because he looks like an asshole, we’re doomed anyway. That’s no better than voting for the most handsome candidate while ignoring his policies.

Will someone please show me where it says Campaign for Liberty owned the property they were standing on when they went after the videographer?

Carlos, if they rented the venue, then they had some degree of “ownership” of it. To what extent, I can’t say, but they certainly rented the right to control who got access to the speaker’s platform and the microphone, not so?

Not a Ron Paul fanboi, not defending, just sayin’

Nemo,

They had rented out a conference room. Not the lobby where this incident took place.

They had absolutely no degree of ownership of the lobby.

Carlos,

I applaud your bravery and greatly appreciate all you have done and will continue to do in the name of civil rights and protecting citizens from the abuse of authority.

I also feel the same way about Ron Paul and his organization as well and think we should be careful about painting what is most likely a statistical outlier as being representative of the movement as a whole.

For instance this statement:

“But most importantly, it demonstrates that the campaign that vows to “lay the groundwork for a different America” will probably be no different than any other party if it ever achieves power.”

is a bit of a logical jump. We can all pick out things in any situation which don’t match up with the whole but I do feel that it is a bit disingenuous to insinuate that this one incongruous thing is representative of the whole.

If you can name a few incidents like this and establish a pattern then you might be able to get me to take the above statement more seriously.

Now certainly we are right to put a spotlight on hypocrisy wherever we may find it but let’s not let our overarching opinion of a civil rights organization be based on one unfortunate indecent.

Because of 1 incident? It’s regrettable certainly but let’s not generalize over one bad incident which may or may not have been sanctioned by the organization as a whole.

this sucks to watch.

analogous to a good cop watching all the other vids on your site, i guess.

Agreed William. Until it becomes more of a pattern, I am not going to start bad mouthing the one candidate who actually has some balls to go up against big corporations and war like foreign policies.

While it might be an isolated incident (isn’t that what they saw when cops abuses civilians?), it was also prompted by one of the top dogs in the Campaign for Liberty, Steve Bierfeldt, not a couple of lowly security guards.

Bierfeldt then acknowledged in his online conversation with Lupo that he was trying to prevent him from filming because it wasn’t “good for business” – meaning that while they are asking the public for money for their campaign, they don’t believe the public has the right to see how the money is being spent.

And then Bierfeldt comes on this blog and accuses Lupo of being anti-Semitic and conspiring with the other guy who was getting thrown out, yet offers absolutely no evidence this was the case.

This shows me that they are no different than any other political organization that is trying to seize power.

Well certainly Bierfeldt was in the wrong here but I’m not ready to agree yet that -

“This shows me that they are no different than any other political organization that is trying to seize power.”

But I’ll certainly keep an eye on it.

I have no doubt that Bierfeldt is going to get some blowback from this for Paul’s army. Certainly he should know about the Streisand effect by now.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect

You say police use the same excuse, that it was an isolated incident(and I agree with you that police have no right to use that excuse, police abuse is a nationwide syndrome). When was the last time the Ron Paul campaigners forbid photography of an awkward situation? Has it ever happened?

As for the conversation between Lupo and Bierfeldt. It does seem like a lame excuse.

ah, I missed that. Different story, then.

Yeah, I heard later that one of the honchos called my boss pleading to take down the link. They were calling around trying to head it off and prevent it from going viral. Like that works.

Truth is the only way to mollify the incident would have been to apologize to Lupo and assure him he not only had every right to film, but that the security just over reacted and they would try to make it clear to them in the future that filming anything is not just approved but encouraged.

This is quite disturbing. Bush set up a police state and Obama’s only added more police and enacted more laws. These guys were practically our only hope and now this looks very bad. Hopefully this one man was responsible and maybe he will leave the organization or otherwise be rebuked. We don’t really know if Dr. Paul had anything to do with it or not. I wait to see if any more incidents like this take place before making judgement. As for the police analogy, we have hundreds of incidents with police as opposed to one here.

He who protested against the TSA questioning him about his $4700 and illegally detaining him, while he secretly recorded them with his iPhone, now protests against an honest and open recording of a C4L event?

This does not make me happy. Steve, if that’s really you, that’s contrary to liberty.

I do not think that C4L is organized enough for this incident to have been an official position, nor do I think that they are organized enough to have any political potency, as much as I agree with them on many issues.

Were they hotel security or did they have consent to evict people from the building?

If they did, then no “rights” were trampled on here.

If you can’t accept that, then you have no ground for understanding what a right is.

A little journalism would easily clear this up. Instead, Carlos chooses to mouth off and showcase his ignorance.

If you saw the video, you would see they were not hotel security. And if you read the story, this would further confirm that it was done by Ron Paul’s top people.

It’s mind-boggling how so many so-called libertarians are so quick to defend their actions when it was clear all they were trying to do was cover up something that they thought would be bad press.

They even admitted this in the conversation with Lupo.

The incident occurred in the hotel lobby, so I seriously doubt the hotel gave them authority to evict whomever they wanted from the lobby because I’m sure there were many there that had nothing to do with the conference.

A wise man keeps his mouth shut rather that prove he is an ass…congrats ass.

Given the recent treatment of Arabic peoples in the west, and the United States in particular, I would argue vigorously the term antisemitism can now legitimately be said to include all the Semitic peoples.

And arguments over the semantics of antisemitism don’t change the fact that anti-Zionism is in no way synonymous with antisemitism.

Carlos,
I must be honest. I recently withdrew my activity from the C4L organization because of 2 things:

1. They are MOSTLY all conspiracy theorist. Every time I turned around it was 9/11 inside job this, NWO that, everyone is wrong but us, blah, blah, blah.

2. Things just like this!! I have had numerous talks with State leaders who have quoted national leaders as saying that “our way is the only way.” “everyone is wrong and we need to be in control.” etc.

I’m sure that is not everyone in the C4L group but I think that for the most part it’s a lot of them. I think that is why many C4L members are join tea party groups because they are not for or against any group as they are more against big government.

I guess that’s my 2 cents.

Though I don’t think Ron Paul himself is that way…..at least I hope not.
Shawn Wilson´s last blog ..A New America