Scott interviews journalist Andrew Quilty about his recent piece for the Intercept, which details the horrific violence being carried out in Afghanistan by U.S.-backed militia groups. In several recent attacks, these “death squads” have raided religious boarding schools known as madrassas, and murdered dozens of the boys who studied there. Although these madrassas are sometimes thought to be Taliban recruiting grounds, Quilty explains that this kind of violence only drives regular Afghans...

Scott talks to Kelley Vlahos about America’s 30-year nonstop bombing campaign of Iraq, and the prospects for ending it. The destruction of Iraq, says Vlahos, has followed a familiar trend: American politicians sell the public on the need to get involved in some country with what looks to be a brutal dictator in charge, then the military intervenes, usually by bombing indiscriminately, and finally the country is left far worse than it was before. In recent memory, America has done this to Iraq,...

Kalmen Barkin discusses the deplorable situation of Palestinians in Israel today, a people whose lands and rights are being slowly taken away from them by the Israeli government, while the delusive promise of a two-state solution vanishes along with them. Barkin believes Netanyahu may be in political (as well as legal) trouble these days, though he has been able to survive nearly every challenge to his regime thus far. Even if Netanyahu is replaced by another prime minister, it is unlikely...

Scott talks to Bob Murphy about the economic side of all the covid policies this past year. Most obvious are the huge spending bills, which dwarf even the stimulus measures taken after the 2008 recession. Murphy reminds us that this kind of rampant spending really means the federal reserve and the treasury have “created” new money out of thin air. This money enters through the financial sector, slowly making its way through the rest of the economy, where it can cause price inflation,...

rial from his personal life, but concedes that that has little to do with his father’s election as president. More importantly, the laptop has records of many of Hunter Biden’s business dealings, including, most notably, hundreds of millions of dollars from companies in Ukraine and China. In the case of both countries, Hunter was peddling the appearance of access to his father—meetings and photo ops with the Bidens in turn granted these foreign companies political connections within their own...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...