Author: Justin Raimondo

Oh, the virtue-signaling was hot and heavy as conservative and ostensibly “libertarian” media outlets competed to see who come up with the most self-righteously abusive rhetoric to describe North Korean Politburo member Kim Yo Yong, sister to Kim Jong Un. BuzzFeed grabbed the prize with “a garbage monster” – BuzzFeed being an expert when it comes to garbage. Reason’s Nick Gillespie could hardly contain his joy at the fusillade of hatred: “It was younger media outlets and personalities such as Buzzfeed and CNN’s Jake Tapper that called bullshit on such stories.” In Gillespie’s world, “young” is a synonym for good, because the young and the … Continue reading →

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What the libertarian theorist Murray Rothbard dubbed the welfare-warfare state has held sway in the US, and in the West generally, since the run up to World War II. The “welfare” part of the equation describes the growth of the State as the source and guarantor of social equity, while the “warfare” side describes the role of the State – in this case, the American State – as the source and guarantor of the “international order.” For the past half century or so this system has proved impregnable to would-be challengers. Indeed, the solidity and seeming permanence of this state … Continue reading →

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The recent presidential campaign saw a plethora of open letters directed at Donald Trump, at least two of which were authored and signed by neoconservative foreign policy “experts” denouncing him for challenging their most cherished notions. Now it’s my turn to write an open letter, albeit coming from the opposite direction. Dear President Trump: Unlike what you might expect from a writer for a website like Antiwar.com, I’ve given you a pretty fair shake. I have to admit that, at first, I just didn’t get it, but I’m honest enough to admit when I’m wrong. As you began to lay … Continue reading →

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Is the Iraqi city of Mosul on the border with Syria, as Mrs. Clinton averred during the third presidential debate? No way. Exactly no one has called her out on this. I guess you have to be Gary Johnson, rather than a former Secretary of State, for the mainstream media to start mocking you over your lack of geographical knowledge. And this was no inconsequential error: it’s supposedly key to her strategy that after “we” take Mosul we’re going to “press into Syria.” Did seventeen US intelligence agencies say that the Russians hacked the Democratic National Committee’s server and John Podesta’s … Continue reading →

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I have to admit to being alternately puzzled and depressed that I seemed to be the only libertarian with a major public platform to take a nuanced view of Donald Trump. After all, many of his foreign policy positions echo the libertarian critique of our interventionist foreign policy – and his enemies are, in large part, our enemies. However, with the publication of David Stockman’s Trumped!: A Nation on the Brink of Ruin, and How to Bring It Back, I see that I am not alone. Stockman’s thesis is that Trump is essentially right about the decline of American greatness, … Continue reading →

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The Clinton smear machine, having finally noticed that Gary Johnson is cutting into what they regard as Hillary’s rightful share of the so-called “millennial” vote, has set its sights on the Libertarian Party’s presidential candidate. It wasn’t supposed to be this way: the conventional wisdom was that the Libertarian ticket of Johnson and former Massachusetts Governor William Weld would split the traditionally Republican base, providing an outlet for the “Never Trump” crowd to vent their spleen. This delighted the pro-Clinton “mainstream” media, which gave both Johnson and Weld more publicity – most of it highly favorable – than any third … Continue reading →

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While we have gotten used to the neo-McCarthyite tactics employed by the Clinton campaign linking Donald Trump to the Kremlin, the whole disgraceful operation has reached a new low with the introduction of US law enforcement agencies into the mix. According to a report by Michael Isikoff – who has become the Judy Miller of this smear campaign – the feds are moving in on the Trump campaign: “U.S. intelligence officials are seeking to determine whether an American businessman identified by Donald Trump as one of his foreign policy advisers has opened up private communications with senior Russian officials — … Continue reading →

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As I sat there wondering how to explain the latest twist in the US presidential election, this story popped up on my Twitter feed: Bank of America analysts claim there’s a 50% chance we live in a “Matrix reality simulation”. Aha! As I read, it all began to make “sense”: “Top bank analysts claim there’s a 50% chance our world is a computer simulation and we’re all plugged into a Matrix-style virtual reality. “And they also reckon if it’s true – then there’s no way we’ll ever find out about it. “The Bank of America’s Merrill Lynch made the astonishing … Continue reading →

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Hardly a day goes by without some “news” about the Russian “threat,” and in the past twenty-four hours, the hate-on-Russia campaign seems to have picked up speed. After learning from Hillary Clinton that Vladimir Putin is not only responsible for the Trump campaign, but also for the “global nationalist movement” that yanked the British out of the European Union, mainstream media are telling us that Russian interlopers are supposedly invading our electoral process by hacking into voter databases. The Washington Post “reports”: “Hackers targeted voter registration systems in Illinois and Arizona, and the FBI alerted Arizona officials in June that Russian … Continue reading →

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Even as top Turkish officials excoriate the United States for supposedly backing the failed coup attempt against President Recip Erdogan, Turkish troops, and US Special Forces are coordinating with Syrian Islamist rebels to carry out a de facto invasion of Syria. Under the pretext of fighting the Islamic State, Erdogan’s Janissaries, thousands of “Free Syrian Army” jihadis, and 300 US “advisors” are moving to consolidate control over a large swathe of Syrian territory along the Turkish-Syrian border. The government of Bashar al-Assad immediately denounced the move as a “blatant violation” of Syria’s sovereignty. Syria’s four-sided civil war just got more … Continue reading →

The post Will the US Start WWIII Against Russia appeared first on LewRockwell.

We are sitting atop a volcano that could erupt at any moment. Indeed, the only question is not whether it will explode, but when – and where. For this impending seismic event has multiple pathways to the surface, spread across no less than three continents. Europe – The long peace that has prevailed in Europe is coming to an end. Ukraine is a battlefield between East and West, where a proxy war between a US-backed regime and an insurgent movement that seeks separation from Kiev is tearing the country apart – and threatens to involve both the Western powers and … Continue reading →

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[From the Introduction by Justin Raimondo.] Murray Rothbard was a true polymath. He wasn’t just the number one theoretician of the modern libertarian movement — author of the monumental Man, Economy, and State; Conceived in Liberty, a four-volume history of the American Revolution; the two-volume An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought; and essays too numerous to list — he was also its most tireless publicist, at least in its early days. He didn’t live in an ivory tower: far from it. As he wrote in a 178-page memo entitled “Strategy For Libertarian Social Change”: If the advancement … Continue reading →

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We’re back in Libya, with US warplanes bombing targets in the city of Sirte, on a mission that, according to the Pentagon, has “no endpoint at this particular moment.” And that statement sums up perfectly the Sisyphean task that presented itself to US policymakers when the Terrible Triumvirate – Hillary Clinton, national security honchette Susan Rice, and UN ambassadress Samantha Power – prevailed on President Obama to overthrow the regime of Libyan despot Moammar Ghaddafi. Take a look at what we’re getting ourselves into: with no less than three governments, lawless Libya is a perfect example of Ronald Reagan’s famous … Continue reading →

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I’ve finally figured out why so many pundits and journalists are signing on to the new cold war with Russia: they weren’t alive during the last one. They have no memory of the Cuban missile crisis, they didn’t grow up in the era of backyard bomb shelters: for them, Fail Safe and On the Beach are just old movies. Take Greg Sargent, an opinion columnist with the Washington Post, who was a twinkle in his parents’ eyes when John F. Kennedy put American nukes in Turkey and the Russians responded by installing nuclear missiles in Cuba. So eager is he … Continue reading →

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We haven’t seen this kind of hysteria since the darkest days of the cold war: a spy scare that is being utilized by one political party against another in a national election, with charges of disloyalty and even “treason” being hurled by one side against the other. The publication of the Democratic National Committee’s emails by WikiLeaks has caused a storm of spin and counter-spin that threatens to throw the entire election discourse off balance – not that it was all that centered, to begin with – and cause an international incident with perilous consequences for us all. The media, … Continue reading →

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