Connor Freeman joined Scott on Antiwar Radio to discuss the ongoing slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza. Freeman breaks down the death toll and the ratio of civilians to combatants revealed in the newest report from the analysts at Airwars. They also talk about the dynamic in the Middle East after the fall of Assad’s government in Syria.

Discussed on the show:

“Patterns of harm analysis” (Airwars.org)
“Haaretz: Israeli Soldiers Kill Civilians and Count Them as Terrorists” (Antiwar.com)
“Letter to President Biden and Vice President Harris” (Gaza Healthcare Letters)

Connor Freeman is the Assistant Editor of the Libertarian Institute, primarily covering foreign policy. He is a co-host on Conflicts of Interest. His writing has been featured in media outlets such as Antiwar.com and Counterpunch, as well as the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity. You can follow him on Twitter @FreemansMind96

This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: Roberts and Robers Brokerage Incorporated; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; Libertas Bella; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott.

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12/18/20 Danny Sjursen on Nagorno-Karabakh and the Ethiopian Civil War

Scott interviews Danny Sjursen about two prominent conflicts facing the world in 2020. In Nagorno-Karabakh, an uneasy, Russian-brokered peace deal is holding between Armenia and Azerbaijan, but Sjursen worries that this peace won’t last forever, as each country still feels that it has an unresolved claim on the disputed territory. In Ethiopia, age-old ethnic tensions have been breaking through the surface ever since the country’s government postponed elections on account of the coronavirus pandemic. The Tigrays, an ethnic minority, have long played an outsized role in the military and the government, and only in 2018 was a non-Tigray Prime Minister appointed for the first time in decades. But he has never faced popular election, and some Ethiopians fear he is trying to set himself up as an autocrat, resulting in tension all over the country, and brutal ethnic violence in some regions.

Discussed on the show:

“Eastern [African] Exposure: Ethiopia, Ethnicity, and other Kindling for Tigray’s Backstory” (Antiwar.com)

Danny Sjursen is a retired U.S. army major and former history instructor at West Point. He is the author of Ghost Riders of Baghdad: Soldiers, Civilians, and the Myth of the Surge and Patriotic Dissent: America in the Age of Endless War. Follow him on Twitter @SkepticalVet.

This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: The War State, by Mike Swanson; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott; Photo IQ; Green Mill Supercritical; Zippix Toothpicks; and Listen and Think Audio.

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12/18/20 Nasser Arrabyee on Yemen’s Desperate Humanitarian Crisis

Nasser Arrabyee is back with an update on the ongoing war in Yemen. Joe Biden, he says, has said some promising things about ending U.S. support for the Suadi war there, but both Arrabyee and Scott are skeptical that he will follow through at all. Supporters of the war, including Mohammed bin Salman in Saudi Arabia and Mike Pompeo in the U.S., are pushing for the international community to officially designate the Houthis as a terrorist group, which Arrabyee says would only make it even more difficult to get humanitarian aid to the Yemeni people. Yemen has now been identified as the world’s worst humanitarian crisis for the third year running, and yet the mainstream media devotes almost no coverage to the situation. Change, says Arrabyee, must begin with widespread awareness.

Discussed on the show:

“Yemen most at risk of humanitarian catastrophe in 2021: IRC” (Al Jazeera)
“The Saudi Coalition’s Food War on Yemen” (MERIP)

Nasser Arrabyee is a Yemeni journalist based in Sana’a, Yemen. He is the owner and director of yemen-now.com. You can follow him on Twitter @narrabyee.

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12/18/20 Tim Shorrock: the Prospects for Peace with North Korea

Tim Shorrock analyzes the prospects for peace on the Korean peninsula under the upcoming Biden administration. President Trump, he and Scott agree, made some promising moves toward detente between North Korea, South Korea and the United States, shaking up the status quo that had long held under Bush and Obama. Sadly John Bolton, a neoconservative establishment loyalist, was able to move the administration toward the position that North Korea would first have to give up its nuclear weapons before any concessions on the part of America and its allies, like the easing of economic sanctions. This policy, says Shorrock, is a poison pill: Bolton knows that North Korea will never give up its nuclear program until it’s entirely clear that America is acting in good faith, and so no progress is ever likely to be made if disarmament is America’s first demand. Shorrock remains hopeful that the Biden administration will decide to follow through on the opportunities provided by Trump and South Korean President Moon Jae-in, and try to achieve peace once and for all.

Discussed on the show:

Kwangju Diary: Beyond Death, Beyond the Darkness of the Age
“Old Obama hands on Korea policy could pose new problems for peace” (Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft)
The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir
“Hillary’s Hawks Are Threatening Escalation Against North Korea” (The Nation)
Rage

Tim Shorrock is the author of Spies For Hire: The Secret World of Intelligence Outsourcing and a regular contributor to The Nation and the Korea Center for Investigative Reporting. Follow him on Twitter @TimothyS.

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12/18/20 Doug Bandow on America’s New Cold War with Russia

Doug Bandow discusses the state of U.S. relations with Russia, an issue of increasing relevance these days as some figures in American government try to leverage Russophobia for political purposes. Bandow reminds us that Russia is virtually no threat to the United States, so long as we don’t provoke them first, but that because of their nuclear stockpile, peace is absolutely critical for the safety of humanity. For some reason Trump’s opponents seem to ignore this fact, jumping at every opportunity to score political points by attacking him on his Russia policies, with the result that he has governed in a way that is extremely hostile toward Russia. This is one of several ways in which Trump’s irenic campaign promises belied what turned out to be a fairly aggressive administration.

Discussed on the show:

“Russia hasn’t just hacked our computer systems. It’s hacked our minds.” (Washington Post)
“Joe Biden Confronts Russia: The Problem of Diplomacy Without Compromise” (Antiwar.com)
“Why America Must Lead Again” (Foreign Affairs)

Doug Bandow is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and a regular contributor at Forbes Magazine, the National Interest, and elsewhere. He’s on Twitter @Doug_Bandow.

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12/18/20 Dave DeCamp on Assange’s Warning to the State Department

Scott talks to Dave DeCamp about a new audio recording of Julian Assange released by Project Veritas, which proves Assange’s contention that he tried to warn the State Department before the famous leak of the state department cables in 2010. For years, government officials have claimed that Assange and Chelsea Manning endangered the lives of American agents by recklessly releasing these confidential documents. In reality, Assange and his team worked around the clock to redact personal information before they released the cables, and it was British journalist Luke Harding who first enabled the release of the unredacted version. Even so, not a single American death has been connected to the information leaked by Manning and published by Assange.

Discussed on the show:

“Trump expected to issue wave of pre-Christmas pardons today” (Axios)
“Baghdad War Diary” (WikiLeaks)
“Kabul War Diary” (WikiLeaks)
“State Department Cables” (WikiLeaks)
“Project Veritas Releases Audio of Assange Warning U.S. Government of Damaging Leak of Classified Information” (Project Veritas)
“Risk (2016)” (IMDb)
Collusion: Secret Meetings, Dirty Money, and How Russia Helped Donald Trump Win
“Glenn Greenwald says Trump should use his pardon power to end ‘abusive prosecution’ of Julian Assange” (Fox News)
“Recording Proves Assange Warned State Department Ahead of Cable Dump” (Antiwar.com)
“IAEA Chief: New Agreement Needed to Revive Iran Deal” (Antiwar.com)
“Our Work with the DNC: Setting the record straight” (CrowdStrike)

Dave DeCamp is the assistant news editor of Antiwar.com, follow him on Twitter @decampdave.

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12/18/20 Ray McGovern on Biden’s Dangerous Foreign Policy Picks

Ray McGovern reflects on the ways America’s foreign policy and national security state have changed since his time in the CIA. In particular, he warns that Michael Morell, one of Joe Biden’s top picks to head the CIA, is categorically unqualified to do so based on his record in the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq and as an apologist for torture during the early years of the war on terror. In general, says McGovern, Biden’s people conform far too much to the worst of the modern foreign policy establishment: aggressively committed to promoting Israel’s interests in the Middle East, unwilling to end any of the wasteful and unjust foreign wars and far too eager to gin up tensions with Russia and China, the two countries with which it is most important that the U.S. have peaceful relations in the coming decades.

Discussed on the show:

“RAY McGOVERN: Why Michael Morell Cannot Be CIA Director” (Consortium News)
The Putin Interviews
Downing Street memo
“Our Work with the DNC: Setting the record straight” (CrowdStrike)
Scott Horton: “I’m Here for My Bill of Goods” (Antiwar.com)

Ray McGovern is the co-creator of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity and the former chief of the CIA’s Soviet analysts division. Read all of his work at his website: raymcgovern.com.

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12/11/20 Aaron Maté on the OPCW’s Hero Whistleblowers

Aaron Maté is back with yet another update on the cover-up of the investigation into the supposed chemical attack in Douma, Syria. An initial investigation by the OPCW appeared to verify that the 2018 attack was indeed a chlorine gas attack, which must have been carried out by the Syrian government. This report justified the retaliatory American bombing of Syrian government targets. But it quickly emerged, thanks to whistleblowers within the OPCW, that the official report contradicted the actual findings of the investigators on several key points. These whistleblowers were immediately smeared as discredited and disgruntled former employees, but as time goes on, that narrative becomes less and less tenable. The latest leaks, explains Maté, show conclusively that members of the OPCW were very concerned at the time about the fact that the report may have been compromised, and praised the whistleblowers for trying to tell the real story.

Discussed on the show:

“OPCW executives praised whistleblower and criticized Syria cover-up, leaks reveal” (The Grayzone)
“Russiagate Archives” (The Grayzone)

Aaron Maté is a former host and producer at The Real News and writes regularly at The Nation. Follow him on Twitter @AaronJMate.

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12/4/20 Chris Woods on the Real Civilian Death Toll in Iraq

Scott talks to Chris Woods from Airwars about some of the difficulties in assessing civilian casualties from U.S. bombs in Iraq. Woods estimates very conservatively that between eight and thirteen thousand civilians have been killed during the war in Iraq, but coalition governments only admit to about 1,400. When factoring in excess deaths from the secondary consequences of war, some have estimated that civilian deaths could be as high as one million. Sadly this is not an issue that receives attention in most circles—the war in Iraq is too far away, and for the most part people in the west simply don’t notice its consequences. Woods’ organization works hard to change that perception.

Discussed on the show: