Will Grigg, author of Liberty in Eclipse, discusses the loss of 'local' police to a homogeneous federally-funded force designed to fight the war on drugs, how police departments facing budget cuts use asset forfeiture laws to make up the difference, the dramatic change of police portrayals in movies (and the culture’s acceptance of lawbreaking cops at large) following The French Connection and Dirty Harry, how the 'Mosque at Ground Zero' exposed conservatives’ opposition to private property...
08/17/10 – Jon Basil Utley – The Scott Horton Show
Jon Basil Utley, director of Americans Against World Empire, discusses the 'national defense' exception from popular outrage against government waste, conservatives who think government isn’t competent to run a nursery school but is up to running a world empire, why warfare and welfare go hand in hand, the coming VAT that will aid in prolonging the U.S. empire and why the conservative movement is all out of good ideas.
08/17/10 – Bretigne Shaffer – The Scott Horton Show
Bretigne Shaffer, author of the article 'Saving Women and Preventing Genocide: The Real Reasons We’re in Afghanistan Now,' discusses the ridiculous notion of harmonious societies created by foreign occupation armies, a reminder that Aisha’s mutilation by Taliban decree happened eight years into the 'protective' U.S. occupation, the very real WSJ divide between the editorial and news divisions, the American predilection to take harmful action rather than no action and how economic prosperity is...
Iran Debate
Below is the 2 1/2 hour entirety of that Iran debate at UCR on April 1, 2010. Featured speaker was Reese Erlich. Panelists were Erlich, Larry Greenfield, Christopher Records and myself. The host was Louis Vandenberg. Thanks to Joe Briggs for putting this on his YouTube account. One correction: After this conference, I learned from Syed Saleem Shahzad that the Jundallah that the CIA and JSOC use against Iran is different from the Jundallah that KSM used to be the leader of. However, they are...
08/16/10 – David Finkel – The Scott Horton Show
Washington Post reporter David Finkel, author of The Good Soldiers, discusses his year-long embedded Iraq War reporting in 2007 with Army infantry battalion 2-16, his book’s reliance on first-hand accounts and unclassified information, how the WikiLeaks 'Collateral Murder' video missed the big picture and why the ground-level view of war bears little resemblance to the one imagined in Washington strategy sessions.
08/16/10 – Josh Stieber – The Scott Horton Show
Josh Stieber, conscientious objector and former U.S. Army Specialist, discusses the explicit direct order from Lieutenant Colonel Ralph Kauzlarich (featured in David Finkel’s The Good Soldiers) to open fire on any Iraqis in the vicinity of an IED attack, the 'magic 8-ball' type randomness to daily patrols in 2007 Baghdad, soldiers who resisted or refused orders that imperiled civilians and where veterans and active duty soldiers can find support groups.
08/16/10 – Gareth Porter – The Scott Horton Show
Gareth Porter, independent historian and journalist for IPS News, discusses the overlooked messages that undermine the premise of Jeffrey Goldberg’s Iran fear-mongering article, the recent history of Israel pretending Iran is an 'existential threat' as revealed in Trita Parsi’s Treacherous Alliance and Israel’s (real) intense fear of friendly relations between the U.S. and Iran.
08/12/10 – David Culp – The Scott Horton Show
David Culp, Legislative Representative for the Friends Committee on National Legislation — Quaker Nuclear Disarmament Program, discusses the START Treaty's origin in the Reagan administration, how Senate Republicans and the Heritage Foundation are delaying the latest iteration of START to deprive Obama of a legislative success, the military's preference for conventional rather than nuclear weapons and why the U.S. and Russian arsenals of 2200 deployed missiles each could be greatly reduced and...
08/12/10 – Philip Giraldi – The Scott Horton Show
Former CIA officer Philip Giraldi discusses the State Department’s unintentionally hilarious report on global terrorism, the government’s steadfast refusal to see the underlying grievances that motivate terrorist actions, how Congressional Resolution 1553 defers Iran war-making decisions to Israel and how countries designated 'state sponsors of terrorism' are placed on the State Department’s 'ignore' list.
08/12/10 – Zack Mellette – The Scott Horton Show
Zack Mellette, cofounder of Give Us Names, discusses his organization's short films that showcase the plight of displaced Colombian farmers, the U.S. creation of multi-billion dollar Plan Colombia in 1998 to continue the failed supply-side War on Drugs, the devastating effect of aerial fumigation on food crops (and lesser effect on the targeted coca plants), the economic incentives for Colombians to grow coca instead of food and the heavily-armed paramilitary groups that seize land and kill...
08/12/10 – Stephan Salisbury – The Scott Horton Show
Stephan Salisbury, author of Mohamed’s Ghosts: An American Story of Love and Fear in the Homeland, discusses the 'Mosque at Ground Zero' that is neither a mosque nor at ground zero, how most 'Not in MY NYC' protesters are from out of town and don’t reflect the tolerance of Manhattan residents, the hostile sendoff of NYC cultural center representative Feisal Abdul Rauf on his State Department-sponsored Middle East religious tolerance tour, the deep rooted xenophobia in the U.S. exacerbated by...
08/11/10 – Carlos Miller – The Scott Horton Show
Multimedia journalist Carlos Miller discusses his arrest and court ordeal stemming from photographing police in public, cops who use wiretap laws to arrest videographers (because of the audio capability), the use of trumped-up charges (that are dropped or greatly reduced when contested) for intimidation and why the Anthony Graber 'wiretapping' case is so blatantly unjust even the MSM sides against the cops.
08/11/10 – Tim Cavanaugh – The Scott Horton Show
Reason columnist Tim Cavanaugh discusses the Georgia/Russia/South Ossetia conflict of 2008 and the Georgia-biased misinformation spewed by the Obama and McCain campaigns, former McCain foreign policy advisor Randy Scheunemann‘s conflict of interest, how the U.S. media continued to get the South Ossetia story wrong for months, evidence that Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili’s attack was a spontaneous 'loose canon' event and not the result of an April Glaspie-style wink and nod and how...
08/11/10 – David Bromwich – The Scott Horton Show
David Bromwich, professor of literature at Yale University, discusses the American style of sleepwalking from one war to another, The Atlantic writer Jeffrey Goldberg‘s effective role as public relations frontman for Israel, the ill-defined and loosely applied terms 'existential threat' and 'breakout capability,' Hillary Clinton’s inadvertent admission of how tenuous are U.S. claims on Iran’s nuclear threat, the fallacy of a limited war with Iran, how the simultaneous counterterrorism and...
08/10/10 – Cindy Sheehan – The Scott Horton Show
Peace activist Cindy Sheehan discusses the still-elusive 'noble cause' soldiers are supposedly dying for, why consumers of mainstream media might reasonably conclude the Iraq War is over, the GI Bill’s under-utilization and why the election of a Democratic president prompts the antiwar movement to take a four year vacation.
