Linked with Why war with Iran is likely, with Antiwar.com, and with Just foreign policy.org.
Justin Raimondo (born Dennis Raimondo on November 18, 1951) is a libertarian / paleoconservative author and the editorial director of the website Antiwar.com.
Recent Activities: In the 1996 U.S. congressional elections, Raimondo ran as a Republican candidate in California’s 8th district against Nancy Pelosi. While championing conservative and libertarian causes in general, the main emphasis of his campaign was his opposition to the deployment of U.S. troops in the Balkans and, in particular, Pelosi’s vote to that effect. Raimondo received 13% of the vote while Pelosi got 85%. (full long text).
He says: « The warlords of Washington don’t care about international public opinion, and that goes double for what Americans think. The politicians, the bureaucrats, the policy wonks, and the lobbyists (both foreign and domestic) could care less that the people of this country, and the world, have a very low opinion of their deadly antics: all the elites know or care about is that they have the power – and the will to use it. Do Americans overwhelmingly disapprove of the Iraq war? Well, isn’t that tough: they’ll just have to grin and bear it, because – guess what? – we know better ». (full text).
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Justin Raimondo – USA
His book: AntiWar.com, behind the headlines.
Justin Raimondo is a policy analyst at the Center for Libertarian Studies, in Burlingame, California; he is also an adjunct scholar with the Ludwig von Mises Institute, which is based in Auburn, Alabama. Raimondo is the author of RECLAIMING THE AMERICAN RIGHT: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement (1993), as well as numerous pamphlets, such as In the Flames of Waco (1995), in addition, he contributes regularly to well-known conservative periodicals; his articles have appeared in the Washington Times, the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Examiner, Reason magazine, Chronicles magazine, the Free Market, and the Rothbard-Rockwell Report, among many others. He is also the author of COLIN POWELL AND THE POWER ELITE, to be published early in 1996. Raimondo has lived in San Francisco for 25 years, originally hailing from upstate New York. During the 1970s and 80s, he was active in the Libertarian Party, and ran for public office under that party label. In 1985, he joined the Republican Party, and has been active ever since. (About the Candidate).
Why Are They So Afraid of Ron Paul?
The biggest US anti-war coalition UFPJ is trying something brand new on Saturday, October 27, eleven big rallies across the US all at the same time. The rallies are not being organized top down, but region by region by whichever groups show up at meetings. Sometimes this can lead to blunders (as Sharon Smith recently pointed out) like the Chicago group sending invitations to Obama, Durbin and Daley. Yet it can also lead to a lot of creativity. (full text).
The War in the Media, The Iraq war and dueling narratives.
He writes: … Cut back on Antiwar.com when the prospects for peace are so dark? That’s the last thing we need to do, but we’ll have to do it if we don’t make our fundraising goal of $70,000. It’s as simple as that. I don’t know what I have to do to communicate the seriousness of the situation we face. All I know is that for a decade we’ve been turning to you, our readers and supporters, for the funds we need to keep going, and you’ve always come through. Now, we need your support more than ever – and we’re asking that you come through once again. At a time of constant war, the need for Antiwar.com has never been greater. Are you really going to let this day, this moment, go by without contributing? (full text).
The War and the Wimp Factor, Reid blames GOP « bullies » for his party’s spinelessness.
During the 1992, 1996, and 2000 presidential elections, Raimondo supported the campaigns of Pat Buchanan, both as a Republican and in the Reform Party. Being openly gay, his support of the social conservative Buchanan attracted considerable attention. In 1995, during the Clinton administration’s military interventions into the Bosnian war, Raimondo and Garris launched Antiwar.com to provide a platform for their opposition. The site has continued to publish on a daily basis. Raimondo has been a vocal critic of the invasion of Iraq and the ongoing occupation. In 2004, he supported Ralph Nader for President, and explained his reason for this in an article published in The American Conservative. (full text wikipedia).
Georgia: The Bloom Is Off the Rose, Another ‘colored revolution’ fades to black.
CBS broke the story three years ago: a high-ranking Pentagon analyst had been caught handing over highly classified information to a foreign government – sensitive intelligence about al-Qaeda, U.S. policy deliberations regarding Iran, and other top-secret information of particular interest to his two American handlers. The spy’s native-born confederates, top officials of one of Washington’s most powerful lobbying groups, passed America’s most closely guarded secrets directly to foreign government officials in hurried meetings in empty restaurants, outside a train station, and over the phone, whispering their treason in some of Washington’s darkest corners so as not to leave a paper trail of purloined documents. (full text).
John Edwards Takes on the War Party, But is it too little, too late?
We keep hearing about the « liberal, » « antiwar » media, which is supposedly spinning the « success » of the administration’s « surge » in Iraq into a defeat. The stab-in-the-back thesis is being run up the flagpole by the neocons, in the hopes that at least some of their base – the most deluded of the Kool-Aid drinkers – will swallow it. Yet it was this supposedly liberal media that led us down the primrose path to war and occupation and immersed us in what Gen. William E. Odom calls the biggest strategic disaster in American military history – and they did it by instilling fear. (full text).
As I predicted last month, the only consistently antiwar candidate on the Republican side of the aisle is breaking through – but in a spectacular manner that I certainly did not foresee. Suddenly, Paul is everywhere, from the Sunday morning talk shows to the length and breadth of the blogosphere. His amazing $4.2 million-in-one-day fundraising feat has entered the annals of presidential politics as the long-promised fulfillment of Internet-based political fundraising. And the myth that it’s all online and not translatable into real people is belied by his recent 5,000-strong Philadelphia rally and similar events in Iowa and elsewhere. Paul has become the equivalent of a rock star among the young, and his appeal goes way beyond the usual libertarian crowd: liberals and conservatives, all races and cultural types, from home-schooling Christians to San Francisco pagans and everything in between. On the Internet, and in the streets, the Ron Paul Revolution, as his followers have dubbed their movement, is taking off. (full text). And: Backtalk.
Dynasties and Democracy, America’s royal families battle for power.
The recent threat by the Turks to invade Iraq in hot pursuit of PKK terrorists has the administration scrambling to appease Ankara and stave off a major blow to the claim that the U.S. occupation has provided « stability » to the region. Kurdistan, after all, has been touted up until now as a model of peace, prosperity, and unalloyed happiness – a foretaste of the country’s golden future, provided « defeatists » in the U.S. don’t pull the rug out from under our imminent victory. To see this veritable utopia smashed by Turkish force of arms would be a disaster for Washington – but even worse would be the revelation of how we got ourselves into this wholly untenable position to begin with. Worse, that is, for whoever would be indicted and prosecuted for pulling off what may turn out to be one of the most ambitious, and dangerous, « rogue » operations since Iran-Contra. (full text).
His publications: on amazon; on wikipedia; on ; on .
During the 1960s, Raimondo took a brief interest in the philosophy of Ayn Rand before joining Young Americans for Freedom. In the 1970s, he became active in the Libertarian Party. With Eric Garris, he organized a « Radical Caucus », which brought Raimondo and Garris to the attention of the influential libertarian theorist Murray Rothbard. In 1983, after a schism in the party, Raimondo left the Libertarian Party and attempted to organize a libertarian faction in the Republican Party. After 1989, Raimondo again began working with Rothbard in the anti-war John Randolph Club. (full text).
The GOP Purge, The War Party can’t win the war in Iraq, so they’re taking it out on the GOP.
links:
Raimondo for Congress, Campaign News and Statements;
Get Them Haters Out Your Circle;
Veterans Day: In Memoriam.