Is the acronym for the Ron Paul Institute to be R.I.P.? (updated)

Ron Paul Institute: Charlie Hebdo Massacre, Like 9/11, Was a False Flag Operation | The Weekly Standard

As The Weekly Standard rightly notes this is a sad piece of conspiracy theory with no evidence for its claims.  The Standard of course fails to identify the author (Paul Craig Roberts) or point out that the piece originally appeared  at LewRockwell.com.

They do manage to ask Rand Paul to take a position on it, probably the only reason they covered it.

Do they have opinions on all the writings of Midge Decter, Frank Gafny, and anyone and everyone else published in neocon land?

******************************************************************
Update:

I was of course curious about what Ron Paul supporters would say about this.  Would they double down and construct bizarre justifications of it as a knee jerk reaction to attacks by neoconservatives and others?

So last night at one of the perpetual DC libertarian happy hours, I asked someone, a friend and good person, who has worked for Ron Paul and his organizations for years:

Me:  So what did you think of that Paul Craig Roberts article on the Ron Paul Institute website?

Ron Paul apparatchik: Awww….I think…that article…has some interesting points…at the beginning…and then made some more interesting points…and then just took a flying leap with no logic whatsoever…into conspiracy theory.

Third Person (who works for a non-Ron Paul, free market, organization): Paul Craig Roberts is crazy. It’s like he couldn’t get a job after the Reagan administration and he went crazy.

RPA:  Paul Craig Roberts and Bruce Bartlett both couldn’t keep their careers going after the Reagan  administration so they had lunch and decided to both become crazy ideologues, Roberts went with Alex Jones and Bartlett went with Paul Krugman.

TP:  But Roberts went crazier because even Alex Jones says there is no evidence Charlie Hebdo was a “false flag” operation.

RPA:  No one at The Ron Paul Institute asked my opinion before they published that piece.

Me:  Maybe the editors in Tehran didn’t call you because it was long distance?

RPA:  Tehran?  You mean Russia?  No Putin didn’t call either.

Me: Oh you mean the senior editor, not the managing editor?

The conversation then devolved further into jokes about whether the Ron Paul Institute would be publishing new shirtless photos of Putin.

————————————————————-

P.S.  I put so called “conspiracy theory” blogs in our blog roll, if they are intresting, if they aren’t anti-Semitic, if they cover other interesting topics, if they are published abroad and offer an international perspective.  I haven’t put RPI in in part because I haven’t had time to monitor it and see if the bad outweighs the good.

An American "Progressive" in Paris

Real internet postings from American leftovers (updated continuously).

*****************************************************
AudioLaw@aol.com

    It does seem clear that Mohamad’s worshippers and followers have developed a strain of thought that killing lots of people for lots of reasons, is holy work.  This seems quite traditional, as it is in Christianity, from falsely labeling Jews as “Christ Killers”, to burning witches at the stake (usually impoverished women), torturing and killing heretics, and these days killing women’s health care providers.

    The website you linked to is CLEAR.  It uses boldface type for what is actually in the Qur’an and then regular type to distort what the Qur’an actually says.  I particularly note that bit that says the word the Qur’an uses for “curse” can also be claimed to mean “kill”.  So we can see that, just as with Christianity and Israeli Judaism, language can be perverted to mean whatever the user wants it to mean.  

*************************************************************************
Oracle

McM: “politicians need to figure out how to motivate Americans to have more children “

NO!

The biggest problem the entire world faces is TOO MANY PEOPLE.

We do not have the jobs (automation) or the resources or fresh water to handle the 7 billion people now living.

Adding more people is throwing gasoline on a fire.

As usual, the far right has a very myopic view of the world and the problems.

They cannot see or think outside of their immediate line-of-sight.

******************************************************************************

ladywindsor1@aol.com

20 minutes ago

Jane, I don’t always agree with you, but you ate right on about Charlie Hebdo. What he did was not satire. Not art. He was provocative.  I don’t even feel bad for him.
I regret innocent people who died.
Those poor souls in the kosher shop did not provoke anyone. It’s all very sad.

Sent from my HTC One™ VX, an AT&T 4G LTE smartphone

*******************************************************************************
Jane Stillwater” <jpstillwater@yahoo
Date: Tue, Jan 13, 2015 8:48 PM

   According to journalist Glen Ford, here are the little monsters in Paris and the Big Monsters in DC and NATO that started this whole snowball rolling in the first place.  And he’s right.


Who benefits from being Charlie: “I am NOT Bibi Netanyahu!”
    By Jane Stillwater  http://jpstillwater.blogspot.com/2015/01/who-benefits-from-being-charlie-i-am.html


     Clearly this subject has already been covered in the media news cycle ad nauseam but I still can’t stop thinking about the 
“I am Charlie” concept.  Was the idea behind all those people who held up “I am Charlie” posters supposed to be about protecting free speech?  Really?  Then why isn’t everyone carrying “I am Julian 
Assange, Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden” posters too? http://jpstillwater.blogspot.com/2015/01/blog-post.html  Or demanding that the police stop arresting guys who falsely yell 
“Fire!” in a crowded theater or deliberately start barroom brawls? 

   
Or if those “I am Charlie” posters are in protest of armed thugs in 
Paris gunning down civilians in cold blood, then why isn’t everyone in 
Paris also carrying posters proclaiming “I am
Iraq” or “I am Syria” or “I
am
Palestine” or “I am Ukraine” or Libya or Mali or….  You get the 
picture.  http://www.gilad.co.uk/writings/2015/1/11/je-suis-gaza

    
All those people holding up signs protesting the slaughter on Rue 
Nicolas-Appert might actually think that they too are “Charlie” — and 
that’s fine.  Terrible things happened to the employees of Charlie 
Hebdo.  No one should ever have to suffer the fate of being shot down in
cold blood, and thus the victims deserve to be mourned.  However I 
myself chose NOT to be Charlie Hebdo, a vicious slimy obscene rag 
clearly designed to stir up religious tensions in France.  http://www.workers.org/articles/2015/01/13/charlie-hebdo-free-press-racism/

   
And I also choose not to
be any other bigots or terrorist troublemakers who
clearly delight in trying to stir up religious tensions in France, 
crassly using others’ religious differences to pave their own way to 
riches and power — and yet who have the ultimate and offensive 
hypocrisy and nerve to show up for the French “I am Charlie” marches 
with innocent smiles on their faces.  “Who us?” they innocently proclaim
— after doing everything they possibly can to stir up bigotry against 
Muslims.  http://www.jpost.com/International/European-leaders-to-attend-Paris-anti-terror-march-Sunday-387290
    I am NOT Avigdor Liberman

    I am NOT Naftali Bennet

   And I am definitely NOT Bibi Netanyahu.

    These three guys and their cohorts seem to be always at the center of 
any religious tension or terrorist attack almost anywhere in the world — starting in 1948 
when the Stern Gang blew up the King David Hotel and Moshe Dayan’s 
“army” slaughtered Christian and Muslim Palestinians left and right in 
order to steal their land.  “Every time anyone says that Israel is our only friend in the Middle East, I can’t help but think that before Israel, we had no enemies in 
the Middle East,”a Jesuit priest stated back then.  And that’s still true today.


   Israel’s sleazy military-industrial complex then went on to be an 
uber-cheerleader for America when our own sleazy military-industrial 
complex bombed Kuwait, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yugoslavia, 
Yemen, Pakistan, Somalia and I forget what all else.  And Israeli 
neo-cons themselves have bombed Palestine, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon 
and I forget what all else too — not to mention their documented 
ongoing support for ISIS and Al Qaeda.  http://www.globalresearch.ca/israeli-military-supports-al-qaeda-tel-avivs-dirty-role-playing-in-the-syrian-crisis/5371624 

    
If bombs, missiles, white phosphorus, tanks, false-flag operations, 
F-16s, tear gas or even bottle-rockets are involved, Bibi and these guys
are so there!  

    Millions dead in the Middle East?  I call that terrorism.  And yet Bibi and his minions actually had the chutzpah to
march in Paris “against terrorism,” according to
Paris Match.  Yeah, right.  

   
Yet who benefited from the Charlie Hebdo incident?  Let’s see.  
According to Paul Craig Roberts, it’s the American military-industrial 
complex that benefited.  “Not France, not Muslims, but US world hegemony.  US 
hegemony over the world is what the CIA supports.  US world hegemony is 
the neoconservative-imposed foreign policy of the US.”  http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2015/01/08/charlie-hebdo-tsarnaevs-trial-qui-bono/

   
But as they say in poker, “I’ll see Roberts and raise him.”  Netanyahu 
benefited.  Apparently, right before the Charlie Dodo incident was 
staged, France had just announced that it might be backing off 
supporting sanctions on Russia.  What?  No immediate prospect of World 
War III?  No big Israeli weapons sales?  Bibi must have been tres disappointed!

    France had
also just announced that it was gonna recognize the Palestinian state.  http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/03/world/europe/france-vote-recognize-palestine.html?_r=0  OMG!  That must have totally pissed Netanyahu off.

  
Also, our Bibi is having trouble finding settlers to occupy his many 
illegal condos in Palestine’s West Bank.  But he just loves French Jews 
— and hopes to scare them enough to force them to flee to Israel and 
live rent-free on Palestinian land.  Heck, I like Israel well enough.  
Wouldn’t mind living there myself.  It’s a nice place.  Heck, even the 
Palestinians used to like living there too.  But it’s
the Israeli neo-cons’ blood-thirsty hypocritical
scheming military-industrial-complex-flaunting neo-con 
national-socialist leaders that I do not respect or cannot like. 

   
And I’m not being anti-Semitic here.  Let’s leave all that religious 
bigotry to Charlie Hebdo.  I am only being a student of American-Israeli
neo-con “Realpolitik” (Rāˈälpōliˌtēk/:  Asystem of politics or principles based on practical rather than moral or ideological considerations).  And Realpolitik has nothing to do with religion.

    Good grief, I’m so glad that I’m NOT Netanyahu.

   
And I also feel nothing but compassion for all the billions of Muslims,
Christians and Jews who are being subjected to his vile manipulations. 
I also feel nothing but compassion for the hostages in the kosher 
supermarket who were also victims of Bibi’s lust for money and power and
to create chaos throughout the world.  Even if it means putting all the
world’s Jews in danger again.

PS: 
What is going to happen next in France?  Or in Israel and the United 
States too, for that matter.  As my friend RJ
suggests, let’s follow Norway’s heroic example after the dreadful 2011 
massacre there and stop spending our patrimony on guns, bombs, war and 
alienation and start spending that money on integrating our nations’ 
diversity
into our national bank of excellent human resources instead.  http://wakeupfromyourslumber.com/charlie-hebdo-and-the-hypocrisy-of-pencils/

    
We’ve already wasted a hundred trillion dollars on “war” so far, only to
discover again and again that violence doesn’t ever
work.  Not in the Middle East, not in Ukraine, not in Paris, not at the
World Trade Center and not in Ferguson either.  Just imagine if we had 
spent all that money on education, jobs, and integrating our society 
into a
smooth-running democratic machine instead.  

    
To paraphrase Thomas Piketty, “You can’t have a political democracy 
unless you have an economic democracy too.”  And “war” has ruined — 
absolutely ruined — the economic democracy of both Israel and the USA. 
And probably France too.
********************************************************************************

ShadysLife@aol.com

9 hours ago

There never was any country that was ruled by Communism. Name one and I’ll buy you a Ice Cream Cone. More people have been murdered by religion than anything else.

************************************************************************

Monday, January 12, 2015, Puma <CactusCougar@msn.com> wrote:

Here’s my question though:  Those two crazy brothers there in Paris shot those Charlie Hebdo folks which is awful BUT at least they killed the people they wanted to kill because they……who knows?  Offended Mohammad?  Maybe.  Owed them a few Euros?  Possible.  Mossad paid them to do it to start some crap?  Could be.  On the other hand, that crazy USAF pilot traveled halfway around the world and killed 50 people for what reason exactly?  I mean, that guy wanted to kill some total strangers (including children) so bad, he went through all that trouble and didn’t even have a grudge against them.  Talk about kill-crazy.  Those two jerks in Paris don’t hold an ace to him, that’s for sure.  Maybe a head shrink needs to examine that crazy pilot.  Or those nutcases in that helicopter in Iraq.  Remember them?  Shooting at the people there, even children, and pretending they’re playing a video game and even whooping when they killed someone.  Now that’s some real nuts.  I think I can handle guys like those two moslem terrorists a heck of a lot better than that weird American military personnel.  Everybody jumps up and down over those two jerks in Paris but nobody seems to worry about the mental faculties of American military personnel that runs halfway around the world just to get to kill total strangers for no apparent reason.  The whole concept boggles my mind.

************************************************************************

ShadysLife@aol.com

58 minutes ago

You say Global Warming is not connected to fossil fuel. This is proof that you and people like you are murdering our population. ISIL is less evil than you. The worse Muslim in the world is better than low life like you and religious people like you.

Shady

*********************************************************************************

On Tue, Jan 13, 2015 at 4:02 AM, Puma  <CactusCougar@msn.com> wrote:

[T]hat attack in Paris was on a type of magazine we don’t even have here in the US.  Get real.  Charlie Hebdo targeted all religions and not just the Islam.  The magazine has been around since the 60s.  I wonder how long a magazine like that would last in the US without some televangelist calling on his followers to blow the place up.  Furthermore, those 5 characters involved don’t represent every moslem, not even every moslem in France.  Heck, when Chirac was still the president of France he once suggested that this magazine might want to tame some of it’s stuff down.  Well, they didn’t and Chirac didn’t say any more about it (he could have closed them down but didn’t, but that’s France for you).  If that attack was an attack on freedom of speech (although one would think it might really involve freedom of the press), then the entire US must be an assault on freedom of the press considering that a magazine of the type has never even existed in the US.  And then there’s Snowden.  Then again there is this:

http://mic.com/articles/108076/here-s-how-arab-papers-reacted-to-the-charlie-hebdo-massacre

Paris Picayune

One of the advantages of having misspent your youth in going to philosophy graduate school and taken all the class work for a philosophy doctorate is that you end up reading all of Aristotle’s minor works.  In one discussion, I believe on types of friendship, Aristotle has a small essay on the picayune or trivial – on a kind of obsessive compulsive vice where one takes into account things not relevant in a given context (e.g. who had the more expensive appetizer at lunch between two true friends).  Likewise this week many people, mainly leftists (though some Moslem or Catholic theocrats have joined in), wish to discuss the many European state limitations on free speech, as if it compared in some way to cold blooded murder of journalists or artists.  Here is one such, by Jeremy Scahill, whose website The Intercept we have in our blog roll in our sidebar, and who speaks at Students for Liberty events.  And his remarks on hypocrisy are all true.  But does censoring journalists reporting on surveillance or even jailing or lashing journalists equal killing and calling for more killing of anyone who criticizes or spoofs a totalitarian religion or ideology.  I think the perfect is being made an enemy of the not good enough, in a way that furthers the evil.

Meanwhile, fascists on the left, for example MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell are already asking what is so bad about attacking Charlie Hebdo and other publications that criticize Islam, when there are so many laws protecting Europeans from hearing any speech that might offend them.

“Circus of Hypocrisy”: Jeremy Scahill on How World Leaders at Paris March Oppose Press 

…Jeremy Scahill, co-founder of the TheIntercept.org, where his most recent article is “Al Qaeda Source: AQAP Directed Paris Attack.” His latest book, Dirty Wars: The World is a Battlefield, is out in paperback. His film Dirty Wars was nominated for an Academy Award. He is also the author of the best-selling book Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army. 

AMY GOODMAN: An estimated 3.7 million people rallied across France Sunday in response to the Charlie Hebdo shootings and ensuing attacks that left 17 people dead. On Sunday, more than 40 world leaders traveled to Paris for the demonstration. At the Place de la République, demonstrators wearing Charlie Hebdo headbands waved French flags, and some sang “La Marseillaise,” the national anthem. Several mounted the Statue of the Republic, a symbol of the French Revolution, and hoisted up an inflated pencil to honor the killed Charlie Hebdo cartoonists. Here are some of the voices from the streets of France on Sunday.

DEMONSTRATORS: [singing] …dans les campagnes
mugir ces féroces soldats?
Aux armes, citoyens.

DEMONSTRATOR 1: [translated] We are free people in France, where everyone can live with one another. And it is important to voice and show it.

DEMONSTRATOR 2: [translated] Beyond Charlie, it is about freedom of speech, secularism, all the values that make up France that have been rattled. But the fact of gathering together, to see all these people, gives back a lot of hope.

DEMONSTRATOR 3: [translated] I sympathize with the people who have lost their loved ones. I would like to tell French people not to get confused, that at no time, in not a single book related to religion, whether it be the Qur’an, the Bible or the Torah, is it asked to kill one’s fellow man or woman.

DEMONSTRATOR 4: [translated] Everybody is concerned, not only in France. It’s all the people. The entire planet Earth is concerned. That means we’re united. All countries are free, but we are here to prove that France is a welcoming country and that we are really free to express our joy whenever we want.

AMY GOODMAN: Voices from Sunday’s demonstration in France, one of the largest protests in the nation’s history. Again, 3.7 million people marched across France.
The march took place two days after the gunmen who attacked Charlie Hebdo, Chérif and Said Kouachi, were killed by police after a siege at a printing works plant following a three-day manhunt. Minutes after the print shop assault, police broke a second siege at a kosher supermarket in eastern Paris. Four hostages died there along with the gunman, Amedy Coulibaly. France has announced it will deploy 10,000 soldiers on home soil and post almost 5,000 extra police officers to protect Jewish sites. On Friday, Chérif Kouachi said he received financing by the Islamic cleric Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen. He made the assertion to BFMTV before his death.

CHÉRIF KOUACHI: [translated] I’ll tell you only that we were defenders of the Prophet Muhammad and that I was sent, me, Chérif Kouachi, by al-Qaeda of Yemen. I went over there, and it was Anwar al-Awlaki who financed me. Rest in peace.

AMY GOODMAN: Reuters is reporting both brothers who carried out the attack against Charlie Hebdo traveled to Yemen in 2011 and had weapons training in the deserts of Marib, an al-Qaeda stronghold. Meanwhile, a source within al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula has provided The Intercept with a full statement claiming responsibility for the Charlie Hebdo attack. The statement reads in part, quote, “The leadership of #AQAP directed the operation, and they have chosen their target carefully as a revenge for the honor of Prophet …The target was in France in particular because of its obvious role in the war on Islam and oppressed nations,” unquote. Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula members have taken to social media and discussion boards to praise the attacks.
Well, for more, we’re joined by the article’s author, Jeremy Scahill. He is co-founder of the TheIntercept.org, where his new article is “Al Qaeda Source: Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula Directed Paris Attack.” His latest book, Dirty Wars: The World is a Battlefield, it’s now out in paperback. His film Dirty Wars was nominated for an Academy Award. He’s also author of the best-selling book Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army.
Jeremy, welcome back to Democracy Now!
JEREMY SCAHILL: Thanks, Amy.
AMY GOODMAN: Let’s talk about this latest news out of France.
JEREMY SCAHILL: Yeah, well, I mean, first of all, you know, what we saw yesterday on display, on the one hand, was very heartening, to see so many people come into the streets. And, you know, one of the core issues of press freedom, if this is a moment where the whole world is saying we have to have a free press, and that no matter how controversial or hateful some of the speech is or may be interpreted in some communities, that we judge a free press by how we treat the journalists or the stories that we don’t like or that we’re offended by.
But on the other hand, this is sort of a circus of hypocrisy when it comes to all of those world leaders who were marching at the front of it. I mean, every single one of those heads of state or representatives of governments there have waged their own wars against journalists. You know, David Cameron ordered The Guardian to smash with a hammer the hard drives that stored the files of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. Blasphemy is considered a crime in Ireland. You had multiple African and Arab leaders whose own countries right now have scores of journalists in prison. Benjamin Netanyahu’s government in Israel has targeted for killing numerous journalists who have reported on the Palestinian side, have kidnapped, abducted, jailed journalists. You know, there’s this controversy right now: Why didn’t President Obama go, or why didn’t Joe Biden go? You know, Eric Holder was there already and was representing the United States.
I think that we should remember—and I was saying this on Twitter over the weekend—that Yemen should have sent the Yemeni journalist Abdulelah Haider Shaye as their representative. He, of course, was in prison for years on the direct orders of President Obama for having reported on secret U.S. strikes in Yemen that killed scores of civilians. Or Sudan should have sent Sami al-Hajj, the Al Jazeera cameraman who was held for six years without charge in Guantánamo and repeatedly interrogated by U.S. operatives who were intent on proving that Al Jazeera had some sort of a link to al-Qaeda. So, you know, while there is much to take heart in, in terms of this huge outpouring of support for freedom of the press, hypocrisy was on full display in the streets of Paris when it came to the world leaders.