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Justin Raimondo

Who Downed Metrojet Flight 9268?

Friday November 6, 2015

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First they said the downing of Russian Metrojet Flight 9268 was most likely due to Russia’s “notorious” regional airlines, which supposedly are rickety and unreliable. The Egyptian government denied that terrorism is even a possibility, with Egyptian despot Abdel Fatah al-Sisi proclaiming:
“When there is propaganda that it crashed because of Isis, this is one way to damage the stability and security of Egypt and the image of Egypt. Believe me, the situation in Sinai – especially in this limited area – is under our full control.
However, it soon came out that the person in charge of Sharm el-Sheikh airport, where the Russia plane had landed before taking off again, had been “replaced” – oh, but notbecause of anything to do with the downing of the Russian passenger plane! As the Egyptian authorities put it:
“Adel Mahgoub, chairman of the state company that runs Egypt’s civilian airports, says airport chief Abdel-Wahab Ali has been ‘promoted’ to become his assistant. He said the move late Wednesday had nothing to do with media skepticism surrounding the airport’s security. Mahgoub said Ali is being replaced by Emad el-Balasi, a pilot.”

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Is Hillary Clinton Above the Law?

Friday October 16, 2015

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What did we learn from the Democratic presidential debates? We learned that Hillary Clinton hates Edward Snowden, loves the Patriot Act, and considers “the Iranians” among her biggest enemies. In short, we learned that she may very well be Lindsey Graham in drag.

And we also learned what many already knew: that she considers herself above the law. What we didn’t know, however, but do now, is that Bernie Sanders agrees with her. Or, as he put it:

“Let me say — let me say something that may not be great politics. But I think the secretary is right, and that is that the American people are sick and tired of hearing about your damn e-mails.”
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The New McCarthyism

Wednesday October 14, 2015

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Cold War II is upon us. Once again, to write the phrase “the Kremlin” is to evoke images of an Oriental despotism both ominous and inscrutable, only slightly less sinister than the Dark Tower. Russia, once thought to have been liberated from its Soviet chains, is now the new Mordor. And, of course, Vladimir Putin is the new Sauron: cunning, amoral, inhumanly ruthless, he is routinely likened to Joseph Stalin, the Soviet dictator who murdered millions and imprisoned many more in the gulags.

Not that Putin has murdered millions, or even as many as a dozen, but the ethics of the new McCarthyites – yes, they’re back – aren’t overly punctilious. Their polemics are even less exacting than their forebears’ for the simple reason that Communism, as an organized international movement with its epicenter in Russia, is dead, and will doubtless remain so. Furthermore, “Putinism,” if such an ideological creature can be said to exist – a problematic proposition – is not a global movement, let alone an international conspiracy: there are no “Putinist” parties outside of Russia, assiduously subverting the moral and political foundations of the West and harboring the 21stcentury version of the Rosenbergs. No Whittaker Chambers will emerge to reveal the dark secrets of these saboteurs of democracy and shine a bright light on their moral espionage – but never fear, because we have Cathy Young.

A columnist for various and sundry outlets, and long associated with Reason magazine, Young – born Ekaterina Jung – came to the US when she was 17 and became a naturalized citizen in 1989, the year her book, Growing Up in Moscow: Memories of a Soviet Girlhood was published. The book, which details life under the totalitarian rule of the Communists, might have ensured her a career as a defected Soviet dissident, perhaps a female version of Natan Sharanksy, but – alas – the Soviet Union fell before such promise could be fulfilled and she had to find another ideological niche, eventually zeroing in on the absurdities of radical feminism in her second book, and promoting a movement known as “Women Against Feminism.”
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War Party Hates Putin and Loves al-Qaeda

Friday October 2, 2015

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As Russian fighter jets target al-Qaeda and ISIS in Syria, the Western media is up in arms – and in denial. They deny the Russians are taking on ISIS – and they are indignant that Putin is targeting al-Qaeda, which is almost never referred to by its actual name, but is instead described as “al-Nusra,” or the more inclusive “Army of Conquest,” which are alternate names for the heirs of Osama bin Laden.

And there are no ideological lines being drawn in this information war: both the left and the right – e.g. the left-liberal Vox and the Fox News network – are utilizing a map put out by the neoconservative “Institute for the Study of War” to “prove” that Putin isn’t really attacking ISIS – he’s actually only concerned with destroying the “non-ISIS” rebels and propping up the faltering regime of Bashar al-Assad.

The premise behind this kind of propaganda is that there really is some difference between ISIS and the multitude of Islamist groups proliferating like wasps in the region: and that, furthermore, al-Qaeda is “relatively” moderate when compared to the Islamic State. Yes, incredibly, the US and British media are pushing the line that the al-Qaeda fighters in Syria, known as al-Nusra, are really the Good Guys.

Didn’t you know that we have always been at war with Eastasia?
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The Rape of Afghanistan

Wednesday September 23, 2015

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The rape of young boys in Afghanistan by our “allies” is getting a lot of press attention these days, provoked by the revelation that US military personnel who tried to stop it are being disciplined for interfering. Two US officers apparently beat up one of our pet warlords, who insisted on keeping a boy chained to his bed as a sex slave: this kind of rough justice got one relieved of his command and the other is being forced to retire.

The US military denies ordering its personnel to look the other way, but this is a lie: why else would they be discharging one of the Special Forces soldiers who beat up that Afghan commander? If he didn’t disobey orders to ignore the practice then on what grounds are they forcing him out?

Writing in National Review, Mark Krikorian fulminates:
“While punishing our soldiers for roughing up pedophile rapists is outrageous, the general policy that “allegations of child sexual abuse by Afghan military or police personnel would be a matter of domestic Afghan criminal law” (in the words of an Army spokesman) is unavoidable given our policy of semi-colonization. If it were up to me, we’d wash our hands of Afghanistan, making clear that if the Taliban (or whichever armed gang manages to take power) makes the mistake of again serving as a safe haven and training ground for people planning to attack the United States, we’ll come back and kill a bunch of them again. But that until that day, and that day may never come, they’re on their own and are free to go on raping their children, if that’s what their primitive and barbarous culture calls for.”
Krikorian goes on to pose another alternative: go all out and “simply colonize the place.” While he acknowledges this isn’t going to happen – after all, “that’s never worked out well in Afghanistan” – “it would have the advantage of allowing us to impose our (objectively superior) standards on them.”
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The Return of Ron Paul

Monday August 10, 2015

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Ron Paul changed American politics in a way that no single individual can claim: it was Paul, a congressman from a rural district in Texas, who put libertarianism on the political map. It was the movement he inspired – a movement driven largely by young people – that has challenged the War Party like no other. Not even the antiwar movement of the 1960s has done so much to change the American consciousness when it comes to our interventionist foreign policy – and Paul’s new book, Swords Into Plowshares: A Life in Wartime and a Future of Peace and Prosperity, encapsulates the spirit of the man and the seed he has planted. 

Written in the form of a memoir, Swords Into Plowshares tells the story of how Paul’s philosophical and political development made him into one of the foremost champions of peace in the history of this country. Born in a small farming community in Pennsylvania, young Ron grew up during the early years of World War II and he relates that experience – the rationing, the war propaganda, the deaths that impacted his friends and family – from the perspective that only wisdom and distance can grant. No, he wasn’t born a libertarian – that came later – but he instinctively recoiled at the tragedy and regimentation that wartime America engendered. Through the Korean “police action” and then into the Vietnam era – when Paul, by then a medical doctor, served in the Air Force – the author recalls his growing alienation from the rah-rah “patriotism” and unthinking belligerence expected of all “good” Americans during that era. 

By the time Paul was elected to Congress as a Republican, in 1976, he had become convinced that the foreign policy of the Founders – friendly relations with all, entangling alliances with none – was the best prescription for peace and prosperity. Unfortunately, not many of his colleagues agreed with him.
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Monsters of Ukraine: Made in the USA

Friday July 31, 2015

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We’re in the summer doldrums of the news cycle, a perfect time for our government and the media – or do I repeat myself? – to drop certain inconvenient stories down the Memory Hole. My job, of course, is to retrieve them….

Remember Ukraine? I seem to recall blaring headlines about a supposedly “imminent” and “massive” Russian invasion of that country: the Anglo-Saxon media was ablazewith a veritable countdown to D-Day and we were treated to ominous sightings of Russian troops and tanks gathering at the border, allegedly just awaiting the order from Putin to take Kiev. And it turns out there has been an invasion, of sorts – although it isn’t a Russian one. It’s the Kiev regime’s own foot-soldiers returning from the front and turning on their masters.

The war is going badly for the government of oligarch Petro Poroshenko. The east Ukrainians, who rose in revolt after the US-sponsored coup threw out democratically elected President Viktor Yanukovych, show no signs of giving up: they’ve repulsed the “anti-terrorist” campaign launched by Kiev, withstanding relentless bombardment of their cities and enduring many thousands of casualties, not to mention widespread destruction. Indeed, the brutal protracted war waged by Kiev against its own “citizens” has arguably steeled the rebels’ resolve and made any thought of reconciliation unthinkable.
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Leave the Houthis Alone!

Friday March 27, 2015

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Saudi Arabia‘s US-backed aggression against the sovereignty of Yemen is a textbook example of how local conflicts are internationalized – and become tripwires for regional wars and even global conflagrations.

Like Libya, Yemen is yet another Middle Eastern country that doesn’t really exist: it is actually at least two separate countries, perhaps three – the southern provinces, which are primarily Sunni, the northern tribes, who adhere mostly to they Zaydi form of Shi’ite Islam, and the area around Sa’na, the capital, one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities on earth, where all Yemen’s clashing cultural, political, and religious factions meet.



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Happy Kosovo Independence Day?

Wednesday February 18, 2015

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Kosovars are celebrating the seventh anniversary of Kosovo’s independence – by leaving in record numbers. By some estimates as many as 100,000 have fled the country in the past few months. Germany is dispatching policemen to the Hungary-Serbia border to stem the rising tide, since most wind up there so they can apply for asylum.

It’s a tragic end to a long and difficult journey, however, as more than 99 percent of asylum applications from Kosovars are rejected. Germany, which supported the US-backed Kosovo "Liberation" Army (KLA), wanted an independent Kosovo: the Kosovars, not so much….

Fourteen years after the end of the Kosovo war, the "liberation" of the Kosovars has delivered them into the hands of a despotic clan of thugs who have turned the country into the crime capital of Europe, and the continent’s major source of heroin smuggling and human trafficking – a place where the former President has been credibly accused of organ harvesting. The Albanian Mafia has ruled the country ever since the "liberation," and Kosovo’s government has taken its place among the most corrupt in the world. The unemployment rate is close to 50 percent.
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Kiev’s Bloody War Is Backfiring

Monday February 9, 2015

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When Ukrainian army officers came to the Ukrainian village of Velikaya Znamenka to tell the men to prepare to be drafted, they weren’t prepared for what happened next. As the commanding officer was speaking, a woman seized the microphone and proceeded to tell him off: "We’re sick of this war! Our husbands and sons aren’t going anywhere!" She then launched into a passionate speech, denouncing the war, and the coup leaders in Kiev, to the cheers of the crowd.

What she did is now a crime in Ukraine: the only reason she wasn’t arrested on the spot is that the villagers wouldn’t have permitted it. But in Ukrainian Transcarpathia, well-known journalist for Ukrainian Channel 112 Ruslan Kotsaba has been arrested and charged with "treason" and "espionage" for making a video in which he declared: "I would rather sit in jail for three to five years than go to the east to kill my Ukrainian brothers. This fear-mongering must be stopped." Kotsaba may sit in jail for twenty-three years, the prescribed term for the charges filed against him.

Kotsaba’s arrest is part of a desperate effort by the Ukrainian government to intimidate the growing antiwar and anti-draft movement, which threatens to upend Kiev’s dreams of conquering the rebellious eastern provinces. Kotsaba’s particular crime, according to prosecutors, was in describing the conflict as a civil war rather than a Russian "invasion." This is a point the authorities cannot tolerate: the same meme being relentlessly broadcast by the Western media – that an indigenous rebellion with substantial support is really a Russian plot to "subvert" Ukraine and reestablish the Warsaw Pact – now has the force of law in Ukraine. Anyone who contradicts it is subject to arrest.
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