“I’ve never met either of the Koch brothers, I suspect that like most libertarians, they’d rather avoid the unseemly world of politics as often as possible, where winning generally means forcing other people to bend to your will. (David Koch did run for Vice President on the Libertarian Party ticket in 1980, but on a platform of legalizing drugs and prostitution, and abolishing the FBI and CIA.) They seem more interested in contributing to voluntary, civil society, by promoting ideas … the arts, research, and by fighting particularly pernicious laws like the PATRIOT Act…”
—Radley Balko, “The Koch Brothers’ Right-Wing Conspiracy to Undermine the PATRIOT Act,” Feb. 25, 2011
If the Kochs are so anti-interventionist, then why does a 2005 State Department cable show Charles Koch’s premier libertarian think-tank meddling in the former Soviet Union and circle-jerking with one of the most notorious CIA/State Department front-groups for the American Empire?
The cable is brief, but revealing: Titled “Tajikistan: Freedom House In Strategic Retreat,” the communique was sent from the U.S. Embassy in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, on November 9, 2005, and notified the folks back home that Freedom House, an infamous CIA/State Department outfit that had been tasked with funding pro-Western opposition movements and seeding regime change across the former Soviet Union, was being booted out of Tajikistan and had no choice but to abandon the NGO front group it had set up in the country. But luckily all was not lost. As the cable explained, the Institute of Humane Studies, a libertarian recruitment and educational organization controlled by Charles Koch since the early 1960s, had come to the rescue, and was ready and willing take over running and funding the Tajik NGO directly.
It would seem the Kochs have been more involved in meddling in the internal affairs of other countries than they and their lackeys lead on… (more…)
Some of the weirdest, longest wars around have been on the other side of the Big River, but for some reason most American war nerds would rather read about Eurasian battles. Not sure why, except I remember when I was…
Well, that was a quick takedown. One of the strange things about Libya was the pacing. It needed a good editor, because it started fast, then bogged down, and then just when everybody’d given up and gone to get some caramel corn, the credits started rolling.
I’m back, thanks to the don’t-call-it-a-depression. Thanks to this brief correction in the US economy, then. My new job lasted three months. I did all the right things, too, even smiled. Didn’t matter. I was the last hired, and you…
The second I had to quit daily blogging they got Osama. That was just one of the joys of starting a new job: Seeing all that great material wasted on mainstream journalists who have got to be the dumbest, most…
Data pulled from publicly-accessible federal contract databases shows that over the past 15 years, the Kochs have milked the U.S. war machine for about $170 million, all while funding libertarian groups, organizations and media outfits with anti-war positions.
This article first appeared in Antiwar.com “When it is said that nothing, including a nuclear strike, is off the table on Iran, are those who say it not also threatening genocide?” – Rep. Ron Paul, May 22, 2007 “I don’t think…
Hey there drug war fans, I got some statistics to throw your way. While you gringos pay attention to the unemployment rate and foreclosure statistics, we here in Mexico track the national kill count—how many people died, who suffered the…
Burton’s Alice in Wonderland is messed up in some ways—we’ll get to that in a second—but it’s seriously beautiful at intervals that command attention. There’s a war theme in it that’s pursued with surprising gravity. Example: the Mad Hatter (Johnny…
This article was first published in The eXile on March 6, 2008. In this post-Russian presidential election issue, while the righteous American editorialists wag their fingers at Russia’s farcical elections, we want to hold up a giant mirror (with loudspeaker…
So there are these narco-banners being hung up all around the metropolitan areas of San Pedro, Monterrey, Escobedo and San Nicolas. If you don’t read Spanish, here’s a rough translation: Mr. Felipe Calderon [that's our president]: With all the respect…
So now it’s official: I was right and the rest of the media was wrong about the war in Georgia last year. The EU just issued a report blaming Georgia for starting last year’s war with Russians. About 1 year…
I’ll talk about Gaza tomorrow, but I’ve got the day off and it’s not my idea of a good time. For now I’ll just say it turned out exactly like I said it would, but blecch, it’s not my idea…
When you look at the fighting in Gaza, or any of the other small, chronic wars we get these days, you notice that traditional war buffs, the ones who like to talk about WW II, don’t have much to say….
From the moment Georgia launched its invasion against the breakaway region of South Ossetia this past August, sparking a wider war with neighboring Russia, the New York Times‘s news coverage depicted Georgia as an innocent victim of Russia’s neo-imperialist evil….
Well ain’t that nice: Bono got another award. That’s what will help our world be a better and nicer place, Bono getting another award. What makes this one even more sickening than the rest is the name of the award:…
Will India and Pakistan ever finish the cat-fight and get on with a real war? “We live in hope,” like my grandma used to say — but don’t hold your breath. Listening to the Indian and Paki generals shaking their…
Zia ul-Haq: the Pakistani Dracula with the dead raccoon eyes. Well, time to ease out of my chair and get back to work, because people have been yelling at me to finish off that “Islamablog” series I started about the…
