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Scott interviews Trita Parsi about the ongoing talks between the Trump administration and Iran. While the talks appear to have some momentum at the moment, Parsi is cautious about getting too optimistic. He and Scott analyze the situation and reflect on the broader regional context.  

Discussed on the show:

• “On Iran, Trump Should Resist the Zero-Enrichment Fantasy” (The American Conservative) 
• Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran, and the United States by Trita Parsi

Trita Parsi is the Executive Vice President of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and the author of Losing an Enemy: Obama, Iran and the Triumph of Diplomacy. Parsi is the recipient of the 2010 Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order. Follow him on Twitter @tparsi

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

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Scott interviews Kevin Gosztola about the breaking news that a British judge has denied the request to extradite Julian Assange from England to the United States. The prosecutors will appeal, says Gosztola, but this ruling opens the possibility that Assange could be released within a few days. Although the decision is a big victory for Assange and his supporters, it is not necessarily a victory for press freedom. The problem with the judge’s ruling, Gosztola explains, is that it sides with Assange as an individual without addressing the precedent of charging journalists for doing the kind of work Assange did at Wikileaks. In other words, the extradition request was denied only because Assange was deemed a suicide risk in the inhumane American supermax prison conditions, and not because the judge believed the claims of his wrongdoing to be unfounded. In fact she seemed to agree with almost every point in the case the American prosecutors laid out. This could be a problem both for Assange’s appeal and for similar cases in the future.

Discussed on the show:

• “Assange Decision: British Judge Rejects US Extradition Request” (ShadowProof)
• State Department Cables
• Baghdad War Diary
• Afghan War Logs
• Collateral Murder
• Vault 7
• “UN expert says “collective persecution” of Julian Assange must end now” (OHCHR)
• “The Darkest Corner: Special Administrative Measures and Extreme Isolation in the Federal Bureau of Prisons” (Center for Constitutional Rights)

Kevin Gosztola is managing editor of Shadowproof. He also produces and co-hosts the weekly podcast, “Unauthorized Disclosure.” Follow him on Twitter @kgosztola.

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.

Donate to the show through Patreon, PayPal, or Bitcoin: 1Ct2FmcGrAGX56RnDtN9HncYghXfvF2GAh.

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Scott talks to Alan MacLeod about the bizarre and troubling trend in both media and government where Russia is the automatic target of blame for everything these days. Every hack and cyber attack, of course, is automatically ascribed to the Russians, as are more mundane things, like CIA operatives getting mysterious migraines overseas. This reminds MacLeod of the old Cold War hysteria, where people thought Soviet agents were hiding in every area of American life. Increased hostility toward Russia is a tactic that the Democrats have used to score political points against President Trump for four years, which has had the additional side effect of forcing him into an aggressive foreign policy stance toward Russia to avoid allegations of treason and foreign allegiance. This is hardly a situation that Biden will be able to shrug off, and only sets America up for a new Cold War with Russia going forward.

Discussed on the show:

• “A CIA Officer Has a Headache. Media Blame Russia.” (FAIR)
• “The Mystery of the Immaculate Concussion” (GQ)
• “Russia hasn’t just hacked our computer systems. It’s hacked our minds” (Washington Post)

Alan MacLeod is a member of the Glasgow University Media Group. He is the author of Propaganda in the Information Age: Still Manufacturing Consent. Follow him on Twitter @AlanRMacLeod.

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.

Donate to the show through Patreon, PayPal, or Bitcoin: 1Ct2FmcGrAGX56RnDtN9HncYghXfvF2GAh.

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Mark Perry talks about General Lloyd Austin, Biden’s pick for Secretary of Defense. Austin is a military man through and through, but he isn’t your run-of-the-mill war hawk, explains Perry—instead, Austin has shown himself to be a strong advocate for diplomacy and restraint, likely the reason Biden has chosen him. Perry is optimistic about the potential foreign policy of the Biden administration: although Biden was a prominent cheerleader for the war in Iraq, he has moderated his positions somewhat in the intervening years, opposing U.S. support for the war in Yemen, and often representing the most dovish position in the Obama administration. Still, many of the rest of Biden’s cabinet picks have aggressive neoconservative sensibilities, and they could end up steering his administration in a bad direction.

Discussed on the show:

• “Biden’s Defense Secretary Pick Lloyd Austin Isn’t Who You Think” (Foreign Policy)
• The Burn Pits: The Poisoning of America’s Soldiers
  

Mark Perry is the author of Talking to Terrorists: Why America Must Engage with its Enemies, The Most Dangerous Man in America: The Making of Douglas MacArthur, and The Pentagon’s Wars. Read his work at The American Conservative Magazine and follow him on Twitter @MarkPerryDC.

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.

Donate to the show through Patreon, PayPal, or Bitcoin: 1Ct2FmcGrAGX56RnDtN9HncYghXfvF2GAh.

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Scott interviews Ted Carpenter about his recent coverage of America’s sanctions policies around the world. Carpenter begins by explaining that economic sanctions are both ineffective and inhumane. For one thing, the theory that when a population is pressed hard enough they will rise up and overthrow their government has never been successfully borne out in practice. What’s more, it is never the ruling class that suffers under a sanctions program, since they will be able to ensure security and comfort for themselves no matter how desperate things get—instead, it is only the most vulnerable civilians who end up suffering from poverty, famine and deprivation. Carpenter takes us through the examples of Yemen, North Korea, Libya and Cuba to drive home his point about how disastrous America’s policies in this area have been.

Discussed on the show:

• “The Futility and Cruelty of Washington’s Economic Sanctions” (Antiwar.com Original)
• “12/18/20 Tim Shorrock on the Prospects for Peace with North Korea” (The Libertarian Institute)
• Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam
  
• The Putin Interviews
• Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism
  

Ted Galen Carpenter is a senior fellow for defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute. Carpenter has written 10 books including America’s Coming War with China: A Collision Course over Taiwan and most recently NATO: Dangerous Dinosaur. He is a contributing editor at The American Conservative Magazine and the National Interest.

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.

Donate to the show through Patreon, PayPal, or Bitcoin: 1Ct2FmcGrAGX56RnDtN9HncYghXfvF2GAh.

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Palestinian journalist Ramzy Baroud discusses a series of recent articles he’s written on the status of Israeli-Palestinian relations, and the long history that informs the situation today. It has now become clear, says Baroud, that the once-promised two-state solution is off the table. The Israeli government has realized that it can pretty much continue to expand its settlements into the dwindling Palestinian lands and keep oppressing its people, all with very little pushback in the international community or the mainstream media. The only realistic way forward will be to officially recognize a single state with full rights for Palestinians. Unfortunately Baroud says that Biden’s cabinet picks mostly hold terrible positions on Israel, and indeed Biden himself was known as one of the biggest Zionists in Washington before Trump came along. Baroud worries that little will change for the Palestinians under the next administration.

Discussed on the show:

• “Moving Past Apartheid: On” (tate is not Ideal Justice, but It is Just and Possible | Countercurrents)
• “When the People Rose up: How the Intifada Changed the Political Discourse on Palestine” (RamzyBaroud.net)
• “‘Long Live the (Dead) Peace Process’: Abbas Prioritizes US Ties over Palestinian National Unity” (RamzyBaroud.net)
• “The King’s Man: Blinken’s Appointment Reassures Israel that Little Will Change under Biden” (RamzyBaroud.net)

Ramzy Baroud is a US-Arab journalist and is the editor-in-chief of the Palestine Chronicle. He is the author of My Father Was A Freedom Fighter: The Untold Story of Gaza and The Last Earth: A Palestinian Story. His new book is These Chains Will Be Broken: Palestinian Stories of Struggle and Defiance in Israeli Prisons. Follow Ramzy on Twitter @RamzyBaroud and read his work at RamzyBaroud.net.

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.

Donate to the show through Patreon, PayPal, or Bitcoin: 1Ct2FmcGrAGX56RnDtN9HncYghXfvF2GAh.

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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.

Donate to the show through Patreon, PayPal, or Bitcoin: 1Ct2FmcGrAGX56RnDtN9HncYghXfvF2GAh.

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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.

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.

Donate to the show through Patreon, PayPal, or Bitcoin: 1Ct2FmcGrAGX56RnDtN9HncYghXfvF2GAh.

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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.

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.

Donate to the show through Patreon, PayPal, or Bitcoin: 1Ct2FmcGrAGX56RnDtN9HncYghXfvF2GAh.

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