Month: November 2010

Received from Richard Land of the Ridgefield Liberty Coop, host of Justin Raimondo’s recent talk at Western Connecticut University:

Essay Contest Due Date is Extended to December 8.

Video of Program is Posted Here: Link to Video and Other Related Information.

For students who could not make the program but who might want to submit an essay, we promised to post a video of the program.

It took longer than expected to post the video of the presentation to YouTube.  We finished that process Friday (11/19).  You will find a link to the video and other details of the program here:  Link to Video and Other Related Information.

You can read Justin’s presentation here:  Getting Beyond Left and Right Part Oneand Getting Beyond Left and Right Part Two.

Because we were late posting the video, we extended the due date for the essays to December 8 from December 1.

We reset the target date for announcing the winner to December 17 from December 10. 

Also, please keep in mind that we are encouraging collaboration.  One goal is to stimulate questions and discussions among students, teachers, friends, parents and other family members.  We encourage students to submit essays that are the product of group discussion, deliberation and effort.

I just received the very sad news that my old friend David Nolan has died.

David Nolan was the founder of the national Libertarian Party in 1971. He continued to be a leader of the LP, running for US Senate in this past election against John McCain. David was the creator of the “Nolan Chart,” which redefined the old left-right political spectrum unto a more-accurate two-dimensional field. He was an outspoken advocate of radical libertarianism and was a strong voice against war as the worst infringement on liberty.

I always enjoyed David’s company and political counsel. He was also an excellent source of money from the many political bets he lost to me. I will miss him.

Yesterday, David suffered a stroke while driving. He would have been 67 this Tuesday.

Last night, antiwar historian Chalmers Johnson died after an extended illness. This note is from Tom Engelhardt, who was Chalmers’ good friend and editor of his books.

I’m sad to report that Chalmers Johnson died on Saturday. He was a stalwart of this site, writing for it regularly from its early moments. Without the slightest doubt, he was one of the most remarkable authors I’ve had the pleasure to edit, no less be friends with. He saw our devolving American world with striking clarity and prescience. He wrote about it with precision, passion, and courage. He never softened a thought or cut a corner. I dedicated my new book to him, writing that he was "the most astute observer of the American way of war I know. He broke the ground and made the difference." I wouldn’t change a word. He was a man on a journey from Depression-era Arizona through the Cold War, the collapse of the Soviet Union, and deep into a world in which the foundations of the American empire, too, began to shudder. A scholar of Japan, one-time Cold Warrior, and CIA consultant, in the twenty-first century, he became the most trenchant critic of American militarism around. I first read a book of his – on Communist peasants in North China facing the Japanese "kill-all, burn-all, loot-all" campaigns of the late 1930s – when I was 20. I last read him this week at age 66. I benefited from every word he wrote. His Blowback Trilogy (Blowback, The Sorrows of Empire, and Nemesis.) will be with us for decades to come. His final work, Dismantling the Empire: America’s Last Best Hope, is a testament to his enduring power, even as his body was failing him. To my mind, his final question was this: What would the "sole superpower" look like as a bankrupt country? He asked that question. Nobody, I suspect, has the answer. We may find out. "Adios," he invariably said as he signed off on the phone. Adios, Chal.

James Fallows has a short obituary for Chalmers at The Atlantic.

from LobeLog: News and Views Relevant to U.S.-Iran relations for November 19th, 2010:

The Washington Post: The Post editorial board, led by neocon Fred Hiatt, is challenging Secretary of Defense Robert Gates’s opposition to a military strike on Iran. “To be clear: We agree that the administration should continue to focus for now on non-military strategies such as sanctions and support for the Iranian opposition. But that does not require publicly talking down military action,” writes the Post. The editorial notes that Gates’s comments are widely viewed as pushback against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s assertion that a “credible military threat” is a necessary component of diplomacy with Iran. To pushback against Gates, the Post employs the exact same talking point Netanyahu used: “[W]e do know for sure is that the last decision Iran made to curb its nuclear program, in 2003, came when the regime feared – reasonably or not – that it could be a target of the U.S. forces,” said the editorial. Eleven days ago, Netanyahu said: “The only time that Iran suspended its nuclear program was for a brief period during 2003 when the regime believed that it faced a credible threat of military action against it.” A report from the Stimson Center and the U.S. Institute of Peace recently said that pressure “should be pursued through prudent actions rather than through a language of confrontation, threats, or insults. Threats and coercion will be far more effective if they are implicit rather than explicit: a key element of over-all US policy, but not the sole basis of that policy.”

The Washington Times: Ben Birnbaum reports on the efforts of Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA), head of the House Foreign Affairs subcommittee on terrorism, to get a State Department briefing on why the Mujahedeen-e Khalq (MEK) remains on the U.S. list of foreign terror organizations. MEK activists have a well-known presence on Capitol Hill, and members of Congress have as recently as this week taken up their cause. ”This isn’t the same MEK that was assassinating people during the shah’s regime and was committed to Marxism,” said Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA). He added the organization was not the same as 30 or 40 years ago despite its leadership has remaining constant since 1979 and only publicly renouncing violence in 2001. Abbas Milani of the Hoover Institution tells Birnbaum that members of Iran’s Green Movement have a “range of views” on whether the MEK should be brought back into the fold. But Omid Memarian, a dissident journalist who served time in an Iranian prison, said: “Politically, they are dead. They have no place in Iran’s politics.” Most analysts believe this to be the overwhelming view of Iranians in Iran because the MEK fought for Saddam Hussein in the Iran-Iraq war, and continued to take money from him until 2003. Nonetheless, Miliani casts doubt on this view as nearly unanimous, saying only that “some people” believe it.

The Wall Street Journal: Iran has given Germany “a lesson in the futility of appeasement,” writes the WSJ editorial board. Following the return from the trip of five German law makers promoting “cultural exchange”, Iranian authorities moved forward on Tuesday and charged two German reporters with espionage.” The editorial writers suggest that as long as Iran holds the two journalists, German politicians will find it very difficult to impose harsh sanctions against Iranian banks which do business in Germany. “If having their journalists treated as hostages is what Germany gets for its ‘critical dialogue’ and ‘cultural exchange’ with Iran, then maybe it’s time for her government to take a tougher line,” concludes the WSJ.

Foreign Policy: Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) Visiting Fellow Michael Singh writes on Foreign Policy’s Shadow Government blog that Iran’s public campaign of expanding diplomatic and trade relations in Africa is really an extension of its “shadowy network of arms smuggling, support for terrorism, and subversive activities.” Singh warns these activities “paint a picture of a regime which pursues its own security by flouting international rules and norms of acceptable behavior.” He concludes that vigilance will be required in finding “new points of pressure” and enforcing existing sanctions against Iran while, at the same time, “even a resolution of the nuclear issue would only begin to address the far broader concerns about the regime and its activities, making a true U.S.-Iran reconciliation far away indeed.”

Last Sunday, the Daily Bell published a lengthy interview with Antiwar.com’s founder and managing editor Eric Garris. Garris discusses his time in Venice Beach, the beginning of LewRockwell.com, the influence of Murray Rothbard, political activism in the 70s, the importance of economic liberty, foreign policy in Israel and Afghanistan, and the future of Antiwar.com. Check out the exclusive piece “Eric Garris on Anti-War Activism, Military Adventurism and the Future of Economic Liberty” here.