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Scott is joined by Joseph Solis-Mullen to talk about China. They start with two articles Solis-Mullen published recently that examine the state of the economic war Washington is trying and failing to wage on Beijing along with the march towards a very real conventional war. They also take a step back and look at the precarious global situation we’re in, drawing connections to the outbreak of World War I and insights from libertarian theory.

Discussed on the show:

• “Washington Takes Another ‘L’ in China Policy” (Libertarian Institute)
• “Washington is Sprinting (Not Sleepwalking) Into War With China” (Libertarian Institute)
• “The Outbreak of World War I: A Libertarian Realist Rebuttal” (Mises.org)
• Wilson’s War by Jim Powell

Joseph Solis-Mullen is a political scientist and author of The Fake China Threat and Its Very Real Danger. Follow all his work at his website. 

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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Trita Parsi assesses the current risk of America going to war with Iran, given all the recent pressure from President Trump’s advisers to do so. Parsi reminds us that America has no real reason to fear Iran’s civilian nuclear program, since they were already signatories to the Non-Proliferation Treaty long before President Obama’s JCPOA. The pressure to attack them simply comes from wanting to appease the strategic interests of Israel and Saudi Arabia.

Discussed on the show:

• “Ret. Col. Macgregor: Attacking Iran Would Provoke a War, Create a Coalition Of The Willing Against Us” (RealClearPolitics)
• Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons

Trita Parsi is the president of the National Iranian American Council 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: Kesslyn Runs, by Charles Featherstone; NoDev NoOps NoIT, by Hussein Badakhchani; The War State, by Mike Swanson; WallStreetWindow.com; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott; and LibertyStickers.com.

Donate to the show through Patreon, PayPal, or Bitcoin: 1KGye7S3pk7XXJT6TzrbFephGDbdhYznTa.

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Scott talks to Gareth Porter about the growing threat of war with Iran. John Bolton and Mike Pompeo seem to be doing their utmost to ensure President Trump has no choice but to declare war on them, not to mention the fact that America’s draconian economic sanctions could already be seen as an act of war. Trump’s willingness to stand up to Bolton and call off a recent strike at practically the last minute may have been the only thing that stopped a war from starting already.

Discussed on the show:

• “No war with Iran, for now — but Mike Pompeo and John Bolton still really, really want one” (Salon.com)
• Iran Air Flight 655
• Order 66

Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist on the national security state, and author of Manufactured Crisis: The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare. Follow him on Twitter @GarethPorter and listen to Gareth’s previous appearances on the Scott Horton Show.

This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: Kesslyn Runs, by Charles Featherstone; NoDev NoOps NoIT, by Hussein Badakhchani; The War State, by Mike Swanson; WallStreetWindow.com; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott; and LibertyStickers.com.

Donate to the show through Patreon, PayPal, or Bitcoin: 1KGye7S3pk7XXJT6TzrbFephGDbdhYznTa.

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Professor Khalid Mustafa Medani joins the show to explain the protests going on right now in Sudan to try to bring about democratic rule in a country plagued for years by dictatorships and civil wars. In response to widespread civilian discontent, the military recently joined the cause of the people to overthrow the previous dictator—but then instead of handing the government over to democratic rule, the military set up its own dictator to take the place of the old one. Now the citizens of Sudan are calling for him to step down and help establish true democracy in the Western tradition.

Khalid Mustafa Medani is Chair of African Studies at McGill University. He writes regularly about African and Middle Eastern politics.

This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: Kesslyn Runs, by Charles Featherstone; NoDev NoOps NoIT, by Hussein Badakhchani; The War State, by Mike Swanson; WallStreetWindow.com; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott; and LibertyStickers.com.

Donate to the show through Patreon, PayPal, or Bitcoin: 1KGye7S3pk7XXJT6TzrbFephGDbdhYznTa.

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Ali Abunimah discusses the leaked documentary, “The Lobby – USA,” which reveals a coordinated campaign of tens of millions of dollars designed to silence news about Palestinians and to smear anyone fighting for Palestinian rights, including college students. When the Israel lobby found out about the project of undercover journalism exposing these facts, they put enormous pressure on the Qatari government, who runs Al Jazeera, to quash the documentary. It was unpublished until The Electronic Intifada put out the leaked copy. You can watch it at electronicintifada.net.

Ali Abunimah is co-founder of The Electronic Intifada and author of The Battle for Justice in Palestine. Follow him on Twitter @AliAbunimah.

This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: Kesslyn Runs, by Charles Featherstone; NoDev NoOps NoIT, by Hussein Badakhchani; The War State, by Mike Swanson; WallStreetWindow.com; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott; and LibertyStickers.com.

Donate to the show through Patreon, PayPal, or Bitcoin: 1KGye7S3pk7XXJT6TzrbFephGDbdhYznTa.

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Scott talks to Jon Schwarz about the threat of war with Iran in retaliation for shooting down an American drone and allegedly attacking Japanese tankers in the Gulf of Oman. Mike Pompeo recently claimed that the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force, intended to be used against Al-Qaeda, also authorizes the president to go to war with Iran if he wants to. Luckily—for the time being—there are enough people around Trump and among the democrats who strongly oppose war with Iran that he seems to have backed down.

Discussed on the show:

• “2020 Democratic Candidates Counter Mike Pompeo’s Iran Idea” (The Intercept)
• “Attacking Iran Would Unleash Chaos on the Middle East” (The National Interest)
• “Ret. Col. Macgregor: Attacking Iran Would Provoke a War, Create a Coalition Of The Willing Against Us” (Real Clear Politics)

Jon Schwarz is a writer for The Intercept, and has written for the New Yorker, the New York Times, The Atlantic, the Wall Street Journal, “Saturday Night Live,” and many others. Find him on his blog, A Tiny Revolution, or on Twitter @schwarz.

This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: Kesslyn Runs, by Charles Featherstone; NoDev NoOps NoIT, by Hussein Badakhchani; The War State, by Mike Swanson; WallStreetWindow.com; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott; and LibertyStickers.com.

Donate to the show through Patreon, PayPal, or Bitcoin: 1KGye7S3pk7XXJT6TzrbFephGDbdhYznTa.

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For Scott’s 5,000th interview, 317-time guest Gareth Porter shares some of his life story and how he got into national security journalism in the first place. Porter recounts his years in graduate school studying Southeast Asian politics, including a year spent in Vietnam during the war, and the intervening decades before he finally embraced journalism as his passion and vocation. Porter started writing about Bush’s and Cheney’s wars in the early 2000s, shortly before Scott started interviewing him. Since then Porter has become one of the very best voices in the anti-war movement and a favorite guest of the Scott Horton Show.

Discussed on the show:

• The Perils of Dominance (Amazon.com)
• Gulf of Tonkin incident
• “Neoconservativism in a Nutshell” (LobeLog)
• “Could Bush Start Another War?” (Antiwar.com Original)

Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist on the national security state, and author of Manufactured Crisis: The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare. Follow him on Twitter @GarethPorter and listen to Gareth’s previous appearances on the Scott Horton Show.

This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: Kesslyn Runs, by Charles Featherstone; NoDev NoOps NoIT, by Hussein Badakhchani; The War State, by Mike Swanson; WallStreetWindow.com; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott; and LibertyStickers.com.

Donate to the show through Patreon, PayPal, or Bitcoin: 1KGye7S3pk7XXJT6TzrbFephGDbdhYznTa.

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Scott talks to Tom Eddlem about the late Will Griggs’ new book, No Quarter, now out on paperback and Kindle. Eddlem also discusses the anti-Muslim propaganda spread by those who want to make war in the Middle East more palatable to Americans. Eddlem says that most people who promote an anti-Muslim (or anti-immigrant) narrative aren’t being deliberately subversive or evil, but they use statistics that are misleading or only true in a limited context in service of a cause they believe is good for America’s safety. But the result is that those who are deliberately spreading this misinformation have plenty of willing supporters for their cause.

Discussed on the show:

• “The Immigration-Bigotry-War Nexus” (Antiwar.com Original)
• No Quarter: The Ravings of William Norman Grigg (The Libertarian Institute)
• “6/7/19 Eli Clifton on Israeli Money in American Politics” (The Libertarian Institute)
• “Watch the film the Israel lobby didn’t want you to see” (The Electronic Intifada)

Tom Eddlem is a freelance writer who has been published in more than 20 periodicals, including The New American magazine, the Providence Journal, LewRockwell.com, Future of Freedom Foundation and Antiwar.com. He is the author of A Rogue’s Sedition: Essays Against Omnipotent Government. Write him at teddlem@comcast.net

This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: Kesslyn Runs, by Charles Featherstone; NoDev NoOps NoIT, by Hussein Badakhchani; The War State, by Mike Swanson; WallStreetWindow.com; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott; and LibertyStickers.com.

Donate to the show through Patreon, PayPal, or Bitcoin: 1KGye7S3pk7XXJT6TzrbFephGDbdhYznTa.

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Bob Murphy joins the show to discuss his work on the economics of climate change. He explains that even according to the science cited by the UN and the Obama administration, the economic costs of the proposed plans to slow down global warming would be wildly more expensive than the costs associated with the warming itself. The more reasonable plans, like a modest carbon tax, on the other hand, would allow for up to 3.5 degrees celsius of warming, which is much more than most of the scientists think is tolerable. Most activists don’t want to address any of these economic questions because it’s highly inconvenient for their narrative.

Discussed on the show:

• “What Universities Won’t Teach College Students About the Economics of Climate Change” (Mises Wire)
• ‎Plugged In: #25: Robert Murphy on the economics of climate change at Connecticut College

Bob Murphy is an economist with the Institute for Energy Research, a research fellow with the Independent Institute, and a senior fellow at the Ludwig von Mises Institute. He is the author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Capitalism and Choice: Cooperation, Enterprise, and Human Action. Find him on Twitter @BobMurphyEconand listen to his podcasts, Contra Krugman and The Bob Murphy Show.

This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: Kesslyn Runs, by Charles Featherstone; NoDev NoOps NoIT, by Hussein Badakhchani; The War State, by Mike Swanson; WallStreetWindow.com; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott; and LibertyStickers.com.

Donate to the show through Patreon, PayPal, or Bitcoin: 1KGye7S3pk7XXJT6TzrbFephGDbdhYznTa.

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