NewsOne now brings to light a YouTube video in which Ron Paul gives a "South was Right" speech to an evident gathering of Confederacy nostalgists. No date or place is offered, but this supposed "libertarian" is speaking against the backdrop of a giant Confederate battle flag! The video was apparently first placed on YouTube by a neo-Confederate channel with the slightly ironic name "Patriot Review." In it, Paul regurgitates several of the usual revisionist tropes—he dismisses slavery as an "excuse" and "rabble-rousing issue" that "really wasn't the issue of why the war was fought"; he suggests differences over "protectionism" and the "banking system" were really behind the war; he points out that other countries "got rid of slavery without war" through "legislation" (as if the abolitionists hadn't fought generations for that!) or (of course, the free-market solution) "literally buying slaves' freedom." Et cetera. NewsOne adds:

The Zionist propaganda machine (e.g. Palestinian Media Watch, Arutz Sheva, Christian Broadcasting Network, FrontPageMag) is having the predictable field day with the latest indiscretions from Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Muhammad Ahmad Hussein, who at a celebration (presumably in Ramallah) marking the 47th anniversary of the founding of Fatah, said (apparently quoting a hadith): "The hour [of resurrection] will not come until you fight the Jews. The Jew will hide behind stones or trees. Then the stones or trees will call, 'O Muslim, servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me. Come and kill him.'"

Big kudos to the African American-oriented NewsOne website for relentlessly calling out Ron Paul's ties to the white supremacist radical right. Now they have dug up an unseemly affair covered by the New York Times in 1981—today disgracefully ignored by the supposed "liberal media"!—that implicates the supposed "libertarian" presidential hopeful in an attempted mercenary invasion and coup d'etat to establish a white separatist homeland in the Black-majority Caribbean nation of Dominica. No, we aren't kidding. It seems that one of Paul's more ugly contemporary supporters, Don Black of the neo-Nazi outfit Stormfront, at that time a Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard, was indicted by US federal authorities in the plot, dubbed "Operation Red Dog." The scheme called for hiring mercenaries to overthrow then-Prime Minister Eugenia Charles and restore the previous prime minister, Patrick John—and then creating an Aryan paradise on the island, funded through casinos, cocaine and brothels. On the day the mercenary force was to set out for Dominica in a small ship on the Louisiana coast, they were busted by BATF agents—who found over thirty automatic weapons, shotguns, rifles, handguns, dynamite, a confederate flag and a Nazi flag. In a brief flurry of coverage, the media dubbed the plan the "Bayou of Pigs." Prosecutors tried to subpoena then-congressman Paul and ex-Texas governor John Connally after mercenary leader Mike Perdue said they were in on the plot. The request was turned down by a federal judge. David Duke—also now an outspoken Paul supporter (check out his website)—was called to testify before a grand jury, but took the Fifth Amendment.

From Lower Manhattan's Downtown Express, Jan. 18:

Girl killed on Delancey St.
A 12-year-old girl on her way home from Castle Middle School on Henry St. was struck and killed by a car around 2:40 p.m. Fri., Jan. 13 at Delancey and Clinton Sts, at the Williamsburg Bridge ramp.

Does it get any murkier than this? The conspirosphere is abuzz with claims aired in Foreign Policy magazine Jan. 13 that Mossad agents recruited militants from the Iranian terrorist group Jundallah by passing themselves off as CIA agents in a "false flag" operation. Iran's Press TV and Pakistan's The Nation as well as stateside conspiranoids like Prison Planet and Antiwar.com have jumped all over it. But, predictably, the actual original report is fuzzy on the details and raises more questions than it answers. Here's the salient passage:

The Chinese government's new white paper outlining its plans for the next five years in space mentions not only launching new orbiting laboratories, and manned mission to dock with its current orbiting lab, the Tiangong-1—but also actually placing a human being on the Moon, although it does not give a projected date for this goal. China has already successfully launched two lunar orbiters in 2007 and 2010. For its next phase, China plans to put rovers on the Moon to collect samples by 2016. A new launch center is under construction in Hainan, and upgrades are underway at the three existing launch sites in Jiuquan (Gansu province), Xichang (Sichuan) and Taiyuan (Shanxi). The white paper also outlines ambitions for 24-hour continuous, high-resolution surveillance of the Earth—which if realized, would put China on a level with the United States in this field. The white paper emphasizes that the People's Republic "opposes weaponization or any arms race in outer space." (Sapa-AFP, Jan. 7; Forbes, Dec. 30; Xinhua, NYT, Dec. 29)

From the New York Daily News, Jan. 4:

Delaware woman in wheelchair is hit by three cars and left to die
A Delaware woman trying to cross a roadway in her wheelchair was killed Tuesday night after three cars struck her—and not a single one stopped to help, police say.

Philip Weiss on his modestly named MondoWeiss blog again gushes shamelessly for far-right zealot Ron Paul, effusing about his supposed "challenge to progressives." What challenge would that be? To abandon every progressive principle at the lure of a little populist rhetoric? Gee, a good thing nobody has ever made that mistake before (cough). Weiss' basic argument is that "Ron Paul's campaign...might politicize the militant American policy in the Middle East. Americans will get to argue this openly. That is why the Washington Post is slamming Paul—it doesn't want that to happen. That is why the New York Times has conflated anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism and white supremacism—to marginalize Ron Paul's ideas." As if Ron Paul's "ideas" (like repealing birthright citizenship and selling the national parks to Exxon) don't deserve to be marginalized! As if Ron Paul weren't really in bed with actual white supremacists!