John Glaser, Assistant Editor at Antiwar.com, discusses Obama’s “let this be a lesson to the rest of you dictators (except the ones we like)” comment about the beaten, sodomized, executed Gadhafi; the doctors and nurses in Bahrain who were arrested and tortured for helping injured protesters; the continuing Bahrain protests despite the crackdowns – although the media ignores them anyway; why the Libya War was essentially waged as a PR campaign to showcase the US as a benevolent actor instead...
10/26/11 – James Bovard – The Scott Horton Show
James Bovard, author of Attention Deficit Democracy, discusses the PATRIOT Act’s ten year anniversary and its legacy of unlimited government power; why there’s nothing more permanent that a temporary government program; the silence of Democrats who stopped protesting the PATRIOT Act’s provisions once Obama took office; why a large majority of Americans have no problem with their government assassinating “bad guys” deemed too inconvenient or difficult to prosecute; and why the MSM thinks Ron...
10/25/11 – Sheldon Richman – The Scott Horton Show
Sheldon Richman, senior fellow at The Future of Freedom Foundation, discusses his article “Drone Warfare Is Fraught with Danger;” setting a new “Libya precedent” of cheap and easy regime change with US drones in the air and indigenous fighters on the ground; forgetting the quick “victories” in Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003 that later went sour; the case for impeaching Barack Obama for violating the War Powers Act; why a commander in chief less removed from the field of battle might not...
10/25/11 – Jason Ditz – The Scott Horton Show
Jason Ditz, managing news editor at Antiwar.com, discusses the election results in Tunisia (birthplace of the Arab spring) that produced a victory for a conservative Islamist party; why any new Middle East/North Africa government with “Muslim” or “Islamic” in its name should worry about a US regime change scheme; Senator Lindsey Graham’s overt plan to bribe Libya’s rebel government with foreign aid and grab their oil; and how Somalia’s mass-starvation problem is related to the multiple...
10/25/11 – Gareth Porter – The Scott Horton Show
Gareth Porter, independent historian and journalist for IPS News, discusses the 20 year US campaign of death and destruction in Iraq, seemingly coming to an end after the Iraqi government rejected a troop extension beyond 2011; how Ahmed Chalabi convinced the neoconservatives a post-Saddam Iraq would be emphatically pro-Israel; why it shouldn’t surprise anyone that the current Iraqi government – composed largely of former exiles living in Iran – would be closely allied with Iran; how Nouri...
10/24/11 – Kevin Zeese – The Scott Horton Show
Kevin Zeese, Executive Director of VotersForPeace and Co-Chair of Come Home America, discusses whistleblower Bradley Manning’s treatment at Fort Leavenworth prison; why the UN torture investigator is still being denied a private interview with Manning; how Manning’s chance for a fair military trial has been greatly impaired by Obama’s pronouncement of his guilt; the common ground shared by protesters – from the Left and Right – against government corruption; and why relying on the UN to...
10/24/11 – Gareth Porter – The Scott Horton Show
Gareth Porter, independent historian and journalist for IPS News, discusses how the Obama administration pushed hard for an extended Iraq troop presence, got rejected, then spun it as fulfillment of a campaign promise; why the Iraq War’s principal aim was to establish a massive military garrison from which to project power in the Middle East; the long-term training of Iraqi pilots on US fighter jets; and why the huge US embassy in Baghdad may not have enough force protection to secure it –...
10/24/11 – Luc Cote – The Scott Horton Show
Luc Côté, director of the film You Don’t Like the Truth: 4 days inside Guantanamo, discusses the interrogation videos of 16-year old prisoner Omar Khadr, taken by Canadian intelligence agents inside Guantanamo; how the same American interrogator who killed Dilawar the taxi driver at Bagram prison also interrogated the badly-injured Khadr about 50 times; and how sleep deprivation of prisoners (through the “frequent flyer program“) made extracting false confessions much easier for...
10/21/11 – Glenn Greenwald – The Scott Horton Show
Salon.com blogger Glenn Greenwald discusses the release of his new book With Liberty and Justice for Some: How the Law Is Used to Destroy Equality and Protect the Powerful; how Barack “Nobel Peace Prize” Obama gets away with assassinating US citizens, like Anwar al-Awlaki and his sixteen year old son; and why Americans discouraged by their economic prospects can at least be proud of their government’s killing prowess.
10/21/11 – Robert P. Murphy – The Scott Horton Show
Robert P. Murphy discusses the "boom and bust" business cycle and what exacerbates it; why the Federal Reserve - with a primary mandate of ensuring price stability - is a demonstrable failure; how Ron Paul popularized the Austrian school of economics and removed the aura of infallibility from Fed chairmen Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke; why we shouldn't focus solely on the Fed - lest we forget the pernicious roles of big banks and insurance companies; whether Bernanke is an academic doggedly...
10/21/11 – Nick Baumann – The Scott Horton Show
Nick Baumann, news editor at Mother Jones, discusses his article “Locked Up Abroad—for the FBI;” US citizen Gulet Mohamed’s secretive “proxy detention” in Kuwait where he was beaten and interrogated for weeks, apparently at the US government’s behest; other individuals subject to “rendition-lite;” and how to hold the government accountable when the state secrets privilege functions as a “get out of court free” card and the Department of Justice is asleep at the switch.
10/20/11 – Grant F. Smith – The Scott Horton Show
Grant F. Smith, director of the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy in Washington, D.C., discusses his article “Americans Pay Dearly to Maintain Israel’s Nuclear Secrets;” the Army Corps of Engineers’ $170 million cleanup project at NUMEC, a Pennsylvania nuclear facility that diverted uranium to Israel in the 1960s; why the CIA still won’t release documents on NUMEC (and the agency knows plenty about it), even to aid the cleanup effort; the juvenile stupidity of “strategic...
10/20/11 – Patrick Cockburn – The Scott Horton Show
Patrick Cockburn, Middle East correspondent for The Independent, discusses Moammar Gadhafi’s death and NATO’s “mission accomplished” in Libya; why the rebel factions will have to find a new cause to rally around, or else face divisions and infighting; why the Arab spring is a genuine grassroots movement, not a CIA-engineered series of color coded revolutions; and having to rely on human rights NGOs for reports critical of Libya’s NTC, since the media doesn’t do its own investigations or...
10/19/11 – Scott Horton – The Scott Horton Show
The Other Scott Horton (no relation), international human rights lawyer, professor and contributing editor at Harper’s magazine, discusses the double standard wherein the US can assist in assassinating Iranian nuclear scientists but the very idea of reciprocity (via a dubious plot) is beyond the pale; the skeptical accounts of the Iranian assassination “plot” in the European press, especially compared to the credulous US media; the hardliners in Congress pushing for mandatory military custody...
10/19/11 – Pepe Escobar – The Scott Horton Show
Pepe Escobar, journalist and author of Obama Does Globalistan, discusses his article “Obama, the king of Africa” about the US military commitment in Uganda and surrounding countries, supposedly to fight the Lord’s Resistance Army; the terrible human rights record of Uganda’s government (even worse than the LRA); the strange African brew of neo-colonialism, tinpot dictators, pipeline routes and JSOC outposts; the great game of mineral and energy extraction playing out between countries like...
