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All right y'all, welcome back to the show.
It's antiwar radio.
I'm Scott Horton and our next guest is Stephen Webster.
He's the senior editor over at the Raw Story and they got a ton of news up there on the Raw Story today.
Welcome back to the show, Stephen.
How you doing?
Happy Tuesday to you, Scott.
I'm doing great.
Well, I'm really happy to have you here.
Chaos breaking out all over the place.
Can we start with Morocco and then head east and you can keep us up to date on what's happening in the Middle Eastern revolution there?
Can I keep us up to date on what's happening?
The answer is no.
No single person can keep you up to date on what's happening.
My Twitter feed is jam-packed.
Every other message is another breaking story out of the Middle East.
I've never never seen so much unrest in the world.
Wow, yeah, it really is something else.
Well, can you tell us anything about what's going on in Morocco for starters?
No, I can't.
Today we have been focusing exclusively on Gaddafi and his rambling crazy speech.
Right now this is the focal point and the media, as you mentioned earlier in the program, has pretty much stopped paying attention, U.S. media stopped paying attention to what's going on in Libya.
We're trying to focus on the most explosive part of the ongoing revolutions right now, which is Gaddafi.
I think that within the next few days we're either going to see him killed or he's just going to flee the country.
Well, yeah, okay.
First of all, I guess before we get into exactly what he said in the speech, tell us about the eastern cities already, the soldiers mutinying and all that.
Can you give us more or less your understanding of how the power is divided on the ground there now?
Very little.
What I can tell you is what's already been reported.
Basically, there are a lot of divisions in the military, but many of these soldiers have maintained their loyalty to Gaddafi.
They're still killing the protesters.
There's major demonstrations planned for tonight.
A lot of the smaller cities, not in Tripoli, but the protesters have actually succeeded in overrunning a lot of the military bases, police stations, and they're taking control of the cities.
In Tripoli, there's a major demonstration planned for tonight.
It should be probably ramping up about now, but the prediction is for more bloodshed.
It's really terrible.
It's very unfortunate.
Well, and so what about that speech?
Is anybody working on a transcript of that thing, or is such a thing even possible?
It was mind-blowing, wasn't it?
I have not seen a world leader, the leader of an entire country, just flip like that on television in my entire life.
It was almost unintelligible at times.
He claimed that hallucination pills are what's causing the revolution.
He claimed that the traitors in the media had led his country ministry.
He blamed the youth for being fooled by drugs and being drunk, and then he promised to continue violence, and then he said there was no violence, and then he said, oh, well, I would resign if I were president, but since I'm not, I can't do anything about it.
Yeah, it was raving lunacy, and they're just replaying a bit of the speech on Al Jazeera English right now, and one of the most striking things about it to me, other than just that he didn't go up there and give a short statement about how in control he is and then leave, he got up there and gave this rambling, desperate, lunatic rant, but at the same time, the background is he looks like he's in some bombed-out basement or something.
The ceiling is caving in, and he's certainly not in comfort.
He's hiding out somewhere in some run-down, abandoned, something terrible somewhere, which just ...
Remember George Bush used to always have keeping the homeland safe or whatever repeated in the background to reinforce his message.
Qaddafi's message here, reinforced by his background, is I'm on my way out of here.
This is the last time you're ever going to see me, and so I'm going to make it as bad as I can.
Well, you're absolutely right, and this is even further reinforced from his so-called speech yesterday that lasted about 15 seconds.
What was that?
The state television was hyping up, oh, we're going to have a very important speech.
The leader's going to come out and say something, and he shows up, says, I'm still here, and then just vanishes.
Amazing.
That's not the spine of power.
Now, what about the body counts?
Because I guess it was a few dozen in the first day or two, but that's the last I've seen of it.
Do you know?
Well, I haven't seen- I mean, not know, but do you have any kind of later figures, I guess?
I haven't seen any figures today.
Really, there's just so much chaos on the ground right now, it's very difficult to get anything confirmed, but Human Rights Watch yesterday was saying that at least 172 or 173 people had died, and probably even more now that we've been getting reports of Gaddafi using MiGs to drop bombs on protesters and murdering people from the skies with helicopters.
And even there's reports now of foreign mercenaries being brought in to slaughter civilians, so it's hard to say.
Yeah, Jonathan Landay from McClatchy Newspapers confirmed that yesterday.
In fact, I'm trying to remember where I was reading it, but somebody was saying it was Blackwater.
Yeah, anybody who's interested in more details on that can head up rawstory.com.
We've got a detailed video report carried over from the Guardian on our new site, Raw Replay.
Yeah, it's interesting.
Actually, yeah, I have that right here.
Speaking of Blackwater, you hear about this guy arrested in Pakistan?
Yeah, in fact, that's a very interesting story.
Glenn Greenwald's got a piece, mostly critical- well, two pieces, really.
One of them all about that story, another critical of the Times' so-called reporting on it, but I guess first and foremost, what's most important is the actual case itself.
Why don't you give us a quick rundown?
Okay, a guy was arrested in Pakistan, claimed to have shot two muggers.
The U.S. would go on to say that he was a diplomat, but then when the Pakistani authorities claimed he was actually CIA, the U.S. State Department revealed- or rather, I should say, the U.S. State Department gave mainstream newspapers the permission to reveal that he was, in fact, a contractor with XT Services, well, which is formerly Blackwater.
So now there's this diplomatic dispute going on, but there's more to the story than that.
In U.S. press, we mostly heard about, oh, how he shot these two guys.
Well, there was a report issued from a Russian intelligence service yesterday, and this is probably hearsay, this is probably not true, but it's important to note that claimed this individual was making contact with Al-Qaeda, and apparently the Russians are very concerned about the potential for an all-out ground war between U.S. and Pakistan.
Well, you know, it seems to me, you know, across the Middle East, we have these uprisings, the Tunisian and Egyptian precedent set in the minds of people who live in, you know, American puppet dictatorships around the world, and of course the Pakistanis are as bombed as any of them, and usually we bomb them with robots, where even if they could shoot back that high in the sky, they wouldn't even get the guy that's shooting them.
It's, you know, the least fair fight in the history of the world, so it seems like they have really taken this particular case and seized on it as, you know, sort of, you know, I don't mean to diminish their anger, but, you know, they're using this guy as a scapegoat.
He may be up to his eyeballs in drone strikes, as far as I know, you know, he's the guy with the laser targeter, but I'm just saying, they're really pissed, and they're focusing on this case.
It's not just another case, this guy's sort of standing in for the entire American drone war against those people.
Yeah, no kidding, and it really could trigger massive unrest in Pakistan, more so than what we have today, but not just that.
All right, well, hold it right there.
Bad news, yeah, Pakistan news always gets me.
All right, it's Stephen Webster, he's the senior editor over there at The Ross Story.
We're covering Middle East news.
We'll be right back.
All right, y'all, welcome back to the show.
It's anti-war radio.
I'm Scott Horton.
On the line is Stephen Webster, senior editor at The Ross Story.
RossStory.com.
Now, did you have anything to finish up there about the case of this guy, what's his name, Richardson or something, the CIA agent arrested in Pakistan?
Yeah, no, this report out of the Russian intelligence service actually said, and I have no way of verifying this, I just know that this is what they reported, and we have not yet carried this on Ross Story, that this individual was in the midst of contacting members of Al-Qaeda to give to them some sort of biological or nuclear material.
Now, they might have been playing a shell game with him.
They might have been doing like a double agent thing.
This is something that they do all the time.
So we really have no idea what the details are, but that's the rumor circulating the internet right now via Russian intelligence service.
Huh.
Well, that's interesting.
I guess I'd have to see further confirmation.
I'm trying to remember what it was I read the other day that said that he was involved in targeting for the drone strikes, which, you know, if that's the modified limited hangout that this guy has women and children murdered with his laser designator all day, then boy, he must really be up to no good.
We have Raymond Allen Davis is the gentleman's name and could be could be the flashpoint between the US and Pakistan that starts a broader war.
Well, you know, it's just, you know, I guess I already said this in a way, but, you know, it's like when the cartoon thing happened, the cartoons of Mohammed and everybody flipped out all over Europe and all that over it.
The thing is, it was not just a cartoon of Mohammed, it was a cartoon of Mohammed in the context of a giant war of aggression by the West into the Muslim world occupations everywhere.
And especially I think I forgot exactly what year that was, but it was right during the real heat of the worst, the civil war in Iraq at America's hands.
And that was the context where, you know, adding insult to the injury and that kind of thing.
And that's why this is such a big deal.
I mean, hell, you think about all the people America's gotten away with killing in.
Americans have gotten away with killing in Pakistan over all these years.
You know, it's this one guy who's responsible for killing these two guys, at least in the case he's arrested over.
You know, you can see how they're really taking out their anger on him, how this really could.
I mean, I saw pictures of a protest the other day.
Is that my line?
I saw pictures of a protest the other day, Stephen, a huge protest in Pakistan against the idea of releasing this guy, giving him diplomatic immunity.
Oh, and I don't know if that's your phone or mine, but we're done.
That's bad.
I'll have to.
And maybe I'll try to call you back to interview.
We got Stephen Webster, senior editor at Raw Story back on the line here.
And I think we got Pakistan pretty well done anyway.
If you wanted to finish up on Pakistan, go ahead.
Otherwise, I wanted to ask you about the Iranian warships going through the Suez Canal, Steve.
Yeah, yeah.
First time since 1979.
Oh, really?
Yeah.
First time since the fall of the Shah.
And Israel is, well, to put it lightly, they're pissed.
Yeah, well, I saw Avigdor Lieberman, the foreign minister, threatened war the other day.
I like to believe he doesn't really speak for Netanyahu and Barack, who really hold the power on that question.
But well, what have they said?
Well, I believe the statement put it as they viewed the situation with, quote, the utmost gravity.
Basically, they interpreted the move of this naval frigate and supply ship going through the canal.
They interpreted this as Iran trying to exploit the unrest in the region, kind of trying to gain a new leverage against them and have access to this trade route, this very valuable trade route.
Well, and then so what's the destination?
They're headed to Syria?
Yes, they were en route to Syria.
And really, it's more of a symbolic, symbolic thing, because like I said, the Egyptian government has not approved any Iranian ships passing through Suez Canal since 1979.
This is a big deal.
Egypt's military, now that they're in control, it seems to be almost a gesture towards Iran, if you know what I mean.
And of course, Israel was already very concerned about the situation in Egypt, considering the position of Egypt's minority party, which is very staunchly anti-Israel.
However, Egypt's minority party really doesn't have much of a shot at gaining any sort of foothold in parliament.
So it's not as much of a concern as Fox News would have you believe.
Right.
I mean, that's an important point, that this is a ugly middle finger on the world stage of state actors and whatever.
This is no threat, you know, offensive, you know, lethal threat to Israel, these two warships by any measure, correct?
No, no, it's not.
But it's like a propaganda victory, you know, for Iran.
It's like, well, if we can do this, what else can we do?
How much further can we push Israel's, I guess, line that they've drawn to kind of hold their neighbors back?
I sure wish they wouldn't do stuff like that.
You know, I think the most important thing is not having a war with Iran.
You know, all these other things going on, the Israel lobby still, as the guys at the low blog keep track of every day, the war party neocons and the Israel lobby, especially the more right wing types, they do not give up.
Day after day after day, they are demagoguing against Iran and trying to come up with a way to get us into a war with Iran, which would be an absolute disaster for this country, never mind what would happen to the Iranians.
And so then to see those guys, you know, playing the bad guy when usually their hands are up and they're saying, you know, leave us alone because we're not really doing anything and it's credible.
Then they go and pull stunts like this.
You know, it makes them seem like they're trying to pick a fight or I guess they are picking a fight.
And, you know, I guess the hawks on both sides benefit.
But what about the rest of us?
Well, the rest of us will be held hostage by whatever happens to the price of oil.
I mean, we can already see it today.
It's going up incredibly.
It was like four or five dollars already up just because of Libya.
And Libya is what the seventh largest oil producing nation in the world.
You know, this leads me to segue into another interesting thing we had on Raw Story yesterday.
There is a group called the U.S.
Libya Business Association that yesterday mysteriously went dark.
Their Web site just vanished.
And this is a group that was formed and led by companies like Halliburton, Chevron, Shell, Raytheon, Occidental Petroleum.
And yet they can't get a Web site to work.
Very odd.
It's very odd.
Amid this uprising, you know, these oil companies are very, very concerned.
And this symbolic gesture towards the Suez Canal by Iran all plays into that.
If that becomes a point of contention between Iran and Israel and Egypt standing right in the middle, it could severely affect the price of oil.
Right.
It makes me wonder whether they're all just calling each other and saying, hey, let's jack up the price of oil really high.
It's all just a big game.
But yeah, I mean, you know, Colonel Gaddafi, when I was a kid, let's see, fourth grade, he was the devil.
He's a new Hitler.
We got to stop him.
Ronald Reagan went over there and bombed the hell out of Libya.
And he was the bad guy for a long time.
But ever since 2003, he was let back into the fold.
And in fact, has been given millions of dollars of military aid by the United States.
He's another Mubarak.
That's right.
And this U.S. Libya Business Association actually played a lead role in helping open up U.S. diplomatic channels between the Bush administration and Gaddafi.
Yeah, which all things being equal, I'm in favor of open relations with all countries.
But, you know, Don Rumsfeld's on TV with Andrew Mitchell right now saying that, yes, it was the Iraq war that convinced Gaddafi to come out from the cold when, in fact, he'd been trying to suck up to the West for years and years, as Gary Hart wrote about in the New York Times magazine and other places.
He'd been going out for years and years trying to suck up to the West.
But they use that as like a way to give the Iraq invasion credit for doing something good for somebody.
Right.
Well, they've been on their little PR tour for a while now.
Rumsfeld's trying to polish what little of a legacy he has left.
And I really think this story about how Curveball made up the made it all up.
And we just he just tricked us.
This one guy.
No, this is all it's just a spin campaign.
Oh, sure.
There were burn notices against Curveball.
They knew good and well that that was a bunch of lies.
Hey, at the U.N., Colin Powell had to show cartoon drawings of what these trucks might look like if they existed.
No kidding.
Whole thing was a giant joke.
In fact, if you Google like, you know, Iraq biological weapons, where that's the first thing that comes up in Google images is these cartoon drawings of these trucks that aren't real.
You know, what kind of guilty conscious is that?
What government in the world do you think might have a truck that can make germ weapons?
I bet you it's us.
Right.
Well, all you have to do is really just read that Downing Street memo.
It's been such a foundational document for U.S. anti-war campaigners.
Downing Street memo explained it all.
The facts were fixed around the policy.
They made up their mind.
They did it.
Part of a broader plan.
Of course.
And, you know, anybody can just go back through the history of the Project for a New American Century.
That site's still up.
And, you know, they can just go and read it all for themselves.
Well, that site itself is not, but there are archives of it that are still up.
Oh, really?
Well, it was back up again not too long ago.
I was rereading Rebuilding America's Defenses.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's a that's a freaky document, man.
Yeah, that's the that's the big one, really.
If everybody if people in the audience are new to the Project for a New American Century, read Rebuilding America's Defenses.
Yes, it's quite a euphemism for world empire, but certainly worth checking out.
Well, I mean, it basically lays out a plan for a new global hegemony over world economies.
The U.S. economy is based on war, and this is like a way to start a world economy based on war.
It seems like the product of all of these defense projects and all of these democratization projects seems like just produces more and more chaos.
They want they want a global war economy even bigger than it is today.
Right.
Yeah.
Blowback as the plan.
It's just like, you know, the State Department and Pentagon officials, they all read Robert Higgs Crisis and Leviathan and they go, yeah, perfect.
What a great blueprint.
Well, just the more we screw up, the more we screw up.
It's great.
You know, we could just keep going forever and ever, I guess, until we get us all nuked.
When you think about it, Art, we've got a lot of currency issues here in the U.S. A lot of countries are abandoning the U.S. dollar.
Well, what is the U.S. dollar based on?
A lot of people take the word fiat and interpret it to mean faith.
How many people have faith in U.S. empire?
No, it's based on military hardware.
Yeah, well, and that military hardware itself is pretty expensive.
It's a it's a equation for bankruptcy for sure.
All right.
Well, thanks very much.
We're out of time.
I really appreciate your time on the show today.
Thank you, everybody.
That's Steven Webster.
He's the senior editor at the Raw Story.
RawStory.com.
