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Sinister Fruits of The West's Alliance with Jihad Warriors in Syria

Syria Jihadists

After suffering one military defeat after another, the Syrian radical opposition, backed by the support of the West and the monarchies of the Persian Gulf, are increasingly retaliating cruelly against the civilian population. The jihadists seize towns and cultural and religious sites which up to that point had remained outside the combat zone, loudly proclaiming their victories.

For example, in response to the advance of the government army into the Qalamoun mountains between Damascus and Homs, where a powerful group of rebels had gathered for a sudden advance on the capital from the north (this group grew from 5,000 men a year ago to 20,000 in November of this year), the jihadists once again rushed into the nearby Christian town of Maaloula.

After vandalizing and desecrating the ancient churches, on December 2 they took 12 nuns from the Orthodox convent of St. Thecla hostage, hiding them in the city of Yabrud, which is held by the rebels. The rebels stated that they would burn the convent and kill the hostages, including the abbess, Mother Pelagia Sayyaf, after which the army retreated.
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Ron Paul Rewind: Ignore The Calls For Sacrifice...Cut The Empire!

On December 12, 2007, six years ago today, Dr. Paul was a participant at the Iowa Republican Presidential debate. He was asked the following questions:

1) “What sacrifices would you ask Americans to make for debt reduction?”

2) “Realistically, what do you believe you could accomplish in your first year as President?”

Dr. Paul goes straight for the U.S. military empire in both of his responses. You can watch them below, or read the transcript after the video:
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What We Missed in the Hunger Games

Hunger Games

One of the first critics to miss the point was Laura Miller. Writing in The New Yorker in 2010, she claimed that “dystopian fiction exists to warn us about the dangers of some current trend,” and she went on to interpret The Hunger Games as “a fever-dream allegory of the adolescent social experience,” her idea being that coming of age in America is now a particularly scathing crucible, with foreboding trends, like bullying and near constant parental surveillance. It was a fine theory, but a bit of a stretch, as there are so many more obvious warnings. Suzanne Collins, author of the young adult trilogy, who also happens to be a Roman Catholic, rarely responds to what is written about her work, but she felt compelled to make a public clarification later in an interview with The New York Times.

Collins said: “I don’t write about adolescence. I write about war. For adolescents.”
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Ron Paul And Lew Rockwell: The Interview!

What a treat to have this video of RPI Founder and Chairman Ron Paul interviewing RPI advisor Lew Rockwell on the Ron Paul Channel. They have been the great teachers in my life -- and in the lives of so many millions! And thankfully their influence continues to grow at a rapid pace. So sit back and enjoy...
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'Parade of Losers': EU Delegation to Kiev Threatens Democracy

Kiev Protest

Far from promoting EU values and democracy the European delegation to Ukraine threatens democratic process, Professor Mark Almond told RT in his extensive analysis of the events in Kiev.


RT: The German chancellor and the French foreign minister say they want to meet with Ukrainian opposition leader Vitaly Klitschko - and support his presidential ambitions. Do they see an exit for Yanukovich as a done deed, then?

Mark Almond: Well I think they hope so, and I think this is what is deeply problematic because in addition to the double standards that the EU leaders are showing when very little has taken place in Kiev that could remotely justify foreign intervention there. There have been no deaths. There have been a few heads hit with truncheons. But when we think about the deaths that took place in other countries where the European leaders ignored or even colluded with regimes that did this - Egypt for instance this summer, when perhaps 1,000 people were killed - it’s very striking the double standards and I think this is also a threat to our democracy domestically.

In the EU countries, if crowds on the street are to determine that the government that may be unpopular in the midterm should fall, where does that stop?...
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Ron Paul Rewind: Are the Palestinians An Invented People?

Welcome to a new series on RPI called “Ron Paul Rewind”!

Dr. Paul has a long and rich history of battling every form of U.S. government militarism -- whether it is focused abroad or against American citizens. As much as the interventionists and neoconservatives would love to see that history go down the memory hole, we at RPI will never let that happen. The Internet is full of "Ron Paul was right" video clips, where his past predictions have come to pass and his advice, where taken, has produced fruitful results.

We are going to bring you some of these moments that have lit up the minds of millions. We’re all non-interventionists now and such a monumental shift in public opinion did not occur by accident. This is not nostalgia, this is the future! So sit back...and rewind!
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Hobby Lobby Case is About Rights, Not Contraceptives

One of the most important cases the US Supreme Court will consider this term is Hobby Lobby’s lawsuit challenging the Obamacare mandate that employer-provided health care plans must cover abortion and contraceptives. Hobby Lobby, a corporation owned and managed by a traditional Christian family, argues that the mandate violates their First Amendment rights.

Much of the discussion has focused on whether a corporation such as Hobby Lobby can even have First Amendment rights. But the issue of “corporate personhood” is a smokescreen. Hobby Lobby’s corporate status has no bearing on whether under Obamacare, Hobby Lobby’s owners, about whose personhood there is no doubt, have a right to run their business in a manner consistent with their moral beliefs.
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The Phony Pullout From Afghanistan

Soviet Afghanistan

Those wondering what lies in store for Afghanistan need only look at the way the British Empire ruled Iraq in the 1920’s. As Shakespeare wrote, “what is past is prologue.”

Imperial Britain created the state of Iraq after World War I to secure Mesopotamia’s vast oil deposits that had become vital for the Royal Navy. To control this artificial nation seething with unrest, Britain imposed a puppet king, Faisal, and created a native army commanded by British officers.

Britain’s colonial rule was formalized by the 1930 Anglo-Iraq Treaty, a deal between puppet and master.

But real power in Iraq was held by the Royal Air Force, which was “granted” two permanent bases at Habbaniyah and Basra. The RAF ruled supreme over the open wastes of Iraq.
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Israel Aims to Sabotage the Geneva Agreement with Iran

Netanyahu Abdullah

Israel is stepping up its efforts to sabotage the agreements reached in Geneva on the issue of Iran's nuclear program. On December 1 the head of the Israeli military intelligence agency AMAN, Amos Yadlin, and former CIA director Michael Hayden simultaneously and in unison, although in different parts of the world, stated that Iran has already crossed the nuclear threshold and is ready to “build several nuclear bombs in a matter of weeks.” In their opinion, requirements for the further denuclearization of Iran should be made significantly stricter.

American congressmen and senators close to AIPAC, which lobbies for the interests of Israel in the U.S., have prepared a package of sanctions against Iran which they propose to put into effect immediately if the agreements between the IRI and the P5+1 are not being fulfilled. Furthermore, several pro-Israel congressmen are prepared to introduce bills to both houses of the U.S. Congress in the near future urging the tightening of existing sanctions against Iran.

A real uprising against the closing of the “Iranian dossier” is brewing in Congress. Both Republicans and Democrats are criticizing Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry. For the first time, the administration has come up against the joint efforts of the two most powerful foreign policy lobbies in the U.S. - the pro-Israel lobby and the pro-Arab lobby. The latter is no less active in the U.S. than the former, and is headed by Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE. The Gulf lobby differs from the better-known Israel lobby in that it spends dozens of times more money on its PR campaigns than Israel…
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Welcome To The Memory Hole

Computer Storage

What if Edward Snowden was made to disappear? No, I’m not suggesting some future CIA rendition effort or a who-killed-Snowden conspiracy theory of a disappearance, but a more ominous kind.

What if everything a whistleblower had ever exposed could simply be made to go away? What if every National Security Agency (NSA) document Snowden released, every interview he gave, every documented trace of a national security state careening out of control could be made to disappear in real-time? What if the very posting of such revelations could be turned into a fruitless, record-less endeavor?

Am I suggesting the plot for a novel by some twenty-first century George Orwell? Hardly. As we edge toward a fully digital world, such things may soon be possible, not in science fiction but in our world -- and at the push of a button. In fact, the earliest prototypes of a new kind of “disappearance” are already being tested. We are closer to a shocking, dystopian reality that might once have been the stuff of futuristic novels than we imagine. Welcome to the memory hole.
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