The (international) battle for RonPaul.com

Who you gonna call? Ghostbusters? Nope, not if you're Ron Paul. Then you go whining to the United Nations like a hypocritical little bitch.  

Forget what I wrote earlier about Ron Paul's consistency. 

Ron Paul Calls on United Nations (Which He Doesn’t Believe In) to Confiscate RonPaul.Com

By Max Rivlin-Nadler

February 9, 2013 | Gawker

In 2008, a group of Ron Paul supporters founded RonPaul.com, a Ron Paul fan-site that became one of the leading sources for information about and support for the perennial Libertarian presidential candidate. The creators of the site "put our lives on hold and invested 5 years of hard work into Ron Paul, RonPaul.com and Ron Paul 2012." His presidential campaign fell short, but the enthusiasm lived on as supporters continued to rally around this free enterprise Messiah.

Yesterday morning, Ron Paul repaid their support by filing a complaint with the World Intellectual Property Organization, an agency of Paul's much-reviled United Nations, seeking the expropriation of both RonPaul.com and RonPaul.org from his supporters without any compensation.

The editors of RonPaul.com explained the situation,

Last month, after Ron Paul expressed regret on the Alex Jones show over not owning RonPaul.com (in an interview titled "Ron Paul: The Internet Is Our Last Chance to Awaken America"), dozens of supporters urged us to contact Ron Paul to work out a deal.

We sent Ron Paul the following respectful offer [View/Download PDF File], explaining that we'd prefer to keep RonPaul.com due to reasons explained in our letter.

At the same time we offered him RonPaul.org as a free gift so we could keep using RonPaul.com and he wouldn't have to use something like RonPaulsHomePage.com.

Ron Paul rejected their offer. They then told Paul exactly how much their site was worth:

Our offer went on to explain that in case Ron Paul insisted on obtaining RonPaul.com, we would prepare a complete liberty package consisting of RonPaul.com and our 170k mailing list.

The value we put on the deal was $250k; we are getting our mailing list appraised right now but we are confident it is easily worth more than $250k all by itself.

Their offer is consistent with their beliefs: In Libertarianism, nothing is free, except Freedom, which isn't really all that free anyway. What happened next is outstanding: instead of engaging in Free Market bargaining, Ron Paul (RON PAUL) appealed to an international governmental organization for help.

The editors of RonPaul.com have reprinted some very choice words that Paul had to say about the United Nations while he was in office:

Those bureaucrats are not satisfied by meddling only in international disputes, however. The UN increasingly wants to influence our domestic environmental, trade, labor, tax, and gun laws. Its global planners fully intend to expand the UN into a true world government, complete with taxes, courts, and a standing army. This is not an alarmist statement; these facts are readily promoted on the UN's own website. UN planners do not care about national sovereignty; in fact they are actively hostile to it. They correctly view it as an obstacle to their plans. They simply aren't interested in our Constitution and republican form of government.

The choice is very clear: we either follow the Constitution or submit to UN global governance. American national sovereignty cannot survive if we allow our domestic laws to be crafted by an international body. This needs to be stated publicly more often. If we continue down the UN path, America as we know it will cease to exist.

Down is up. Cats are doing dogs. Ron Paul has asked the United Nations for help.

Neocon Kagan: What's Rand Paul's foreign policy?

Answer: not even Rand Paul knows.

Paul represents "hope and change" for the status quo on foreign policy for disenchanted, incoherent Tea Partiers who don't know what they want either. As a result they'll end up with more of the same. Bottom line: they just want a Reagan-lip-syncing Republican to give it to them.

Rand is not his dad: he wants to win; he wants to be establishment. He knows a spoonful of sugar makes the tea taste better....

Rand Paul's conventional stance on foreign policy

By Robert Kagan

February 8, 2013 | Washington Post

URL: http://wapo.st/XYjwYU

The South's final defeat

First they lost the Civil War, then they lost the battle against civil rights, and now comes this, the white South's last defeat: demographics.

[I]t is difficult, if not impossible, for many white Southerners to disentangle regional culture (Southern) from race (white) and ethnicity (British Protestant). The historical memory of white Southerners is not of ethnic coexistence and melting-pot pluralism but of ethnic homogeneity and racial privilege. Small wonder that going from the status of local Herrenvolk to local minority in only a generation or two is causing much of the white South to freak out.

The demographic demise of the white South is going to be traumatic for the nation as a whole. [...] 

[T]he old-stock Yankees in the Northeast and Midwest did not accept their diminished status in their own regions without decades of hysteria and aggression and political gerrymandering. The third and final defeat of the white South, its demographic defeat, is likely to be equally prolonged and turbulent. Fasten your seat belts.

If only for white Southerners intolerable whining, it will be traumatic for all of us.

The white South’s last defeat

By Michael Lind

February 5, 2013 | Salon

URL: http://www.salon.com/2013/02/05/the_white_souths_last_defeat/

Does Russia still need Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty?

Here's the main argument:

Unlike Voice of America, which exists to promote U.S. culture and values to the world, RFE/RL’s mandate is “surrogate broadcasting” — the provision of objective journalism, diverse commentary and open political debate to societies whose local media, because of censorship or state pressure, cannot provide it.

For decades during the Cold War, the radios did this job superbly, attracting an audience throughout the Soviet Bloc and becoming the go-to medium in times of crisis. Since 1991, however, they have been subjected to serial attempts to revamp their programming, supposedly to accommodate a post-Cold War or post-Internet era. The idea, often peddled by board members and executives drawn from the entertainment industry, is that the audience needs to be broadened, radio downplayed in favor of digital offerings and ratings boosted. Hard-core journalism and political discussions should be leavened with lifestyle features, cultural offerings — or maybe just pop music.

The problem with this, as Radio Liberty is finding in Moscow, is that Russians — like Iranians or Belarusans — don’t need or want another Internet site pushing a mix of fluff and social commentary. They crave what’s missing on state media — serious journalism that offers a clear picture of what is happening in the Kremlin, the economy and the regions, and a forum for uncensored debates by Russians on those issues. Sure, the audience is often a small elite. But when political crisis comes to Moscow, as it did in late 2011 and surely will again, Russians will flock to the service, if they believe it to be credible.

I have met several people in the former Soviet Union who listened to Radio Liberty when it was something dangerous and subversive. I asked one person, "But did you believe it? Without knowing what was happening outside the Soviet Union, didn't you worry it was just propaganda from our side?" Absolutely not, he said, he believed it. 

That's still hard for me to understand. Maybe people trust the news when they hear in it dissenting views, tolerance, and room for uncertainty. They say people have an inborn bullshit detector. 

Anyway, the point is that people in Russia especially don't hear very much other than the state media line. Russian news on the Internet is alive and kicking... but also full of deliberate disinformation, stupid ads, aggressive forum trawlers, and vulgarity. There is a niche for RFE/RL in Russia.

Meanwhile, Russia Today (RT) channel is spreading the Kremlin's worldview in English all over the globe via satellite and the web. And our answer is... CNN? FOX? 

Static at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty

By Jackson Diehl

February 4, 2013 | Washington Post

URL: http://wapo.st/11FeUtC

Myths and realities of high-speed rail

High-speed rail has become one of those issues, like gun control and abortion rights, that seem to cleanly separate U.S. liberals from conservatives.

Why is that?  Whatever it is, it's something relatively recent, because up until WWII the United States had the most advanced passenger railway system in world. And our freight railway system is still "the envy of the world," carrying more than 40 percent of U.S. intercity cargo.

A US high speed rail network shouldn't just be a dream

By Alfred Twu

February 6, 2013 | Guardian

URL: http://gu.com/p/3djxg