Will Grigg, blogger and author of Liberty in Eclipse, discusses how little has changed since 1967 when MLK referred to the US government as 'the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today;' the incongruence of the US government’s taken-for-granted massive and arbitrary use of violence abroad and the official uproar over the relatively few casualties in the Tucson shootings; conflating 'anti-government' speech (aka First Amendment protected dissent) with incitement to violence; and Rep....
01/17/11 – John V. Walsh – The Scott Horton Show
John V. Walsh, frequent contributor to Counterpunch.org, discusses the Left's outrage about Sarah Palin's virtual cross hairs (in the wake of the Tucson shootings) and near-silence about the real cross hairs of helicopter gunships and Predator drones killing civilians overseas; the American reverence of government officials, especially in death, and the popular belief in the righteousness of state-sanctioned murder; the spectacle of Obama being cheered like a rock star while delivering his...
01/14/11 – Rep. Walter Jones – The Scott Horton Show
Rep. Walter Jones, eight term Congressman from North Carolina, discusses why he regrets his initial support for the 'unnecessary' Iraq War; the high cost we pay in blood and treasure for continuing the boondoggle in Afghanistan; why a super-debtor nation like the US can’t afford to continue policing the world; how a visit to Walter Reed to see the war wounded can change one’s opinion on US foreign policy; and the small-but-growing Congressional Republican opposition to the Afghanistan...
01/14/11 – Jack Hunter – The Scott Horton Show
Jack Hunter, talk radio host and newspaper columnist, discusses the cycle of hypocrisy, Left and Right, that turns skeptics to statists whenever their party occupies the White House; why conservatives like Grover Norquist, despite his hypocrisy, should be applauded for questioning the Afghan War; so-called political 'moderates' who are in fact the most fervent warmongering radicals; and why foreign policy isn’t at all a fringe issue, but the definitive political litmus test that excludes...
01/14/11 – Anand Gopal – The Scott Horton Show
Independent journalist Anand Gopal discusses why counterinsurgency strategy works better in theory than in practice; the short term PR victories in Afghanistan that create long term problems; the only two policy choices deemed worthy of popular consideration: continue the Afghan War forever, or scale down to night raids while moving into Pakistan; how the 'denying al-Qaeda sanctuary' justification for US military deployments ignores the real reasons the 9/11 attacks succeeded; why the...
01/14/11 – Patrick Cockburn – The Scott Horton Show
This interview is from the KPFK 90.7 FM Los Angeles broadcast on January 14th. The original program is here. Patrick Cockburn, Middle East correspondent for The Independent, discusses how Muqtada al-Sadr’s return to Iraq has changed the political landscape and made a full US withdrawal by year’s end more likely; how otherwise-nationalist Iraqis use foreign allies as leverage against domestic sectarian/religious rivals; why the Pentagon seems to have drunk its own surge narrative Kool-Aid (in...
01/13/11 – William Hartung – The Scott Horton Show
William Hartung, Director of the Arms and Security Initiative at the New America Foundation, discusses Lockheed Martin‘s close ties to leading neoconservatives and considerable contribution to US militarism; its domestic expansion into TSA agent training and contract work for the IRS, Postal Service, Census Bureau and FBI; Lockheed's work on the controversial TIA and TALON domestic intelligence gathering programs — going far beyond the role of a typical defense contractor into a big-brother...
01/13/11 – Coleen Rowley – The Scott Horton Show
Coleen Rowley, retired FBI agent and 9/11 whistleblower, discusses the recent COINTELPRO-style government infiltration of a peaceful activist group; planned MLK day protests at FBI Washington headquarters and Quantico Marine base in support of Bradley Manning; how the government’s overreaction to WikiLeaks has led to a culture of paranoia, including a memo warning of 'insider threats' and suspiciously grumpy employees; how the expansive national security state sacrifices our civil liberties...
01/12/11 – Jason Ditz – The Scott Horton Show
Jason Ditz, managing news editor at Antiwar.com, discusses how Joe Biden was caught talking out both sides of his mouth on the 2014 Afghanistan withdrawal date; how Gen Petraeus is now claiming progress in small and lesser-known Afghan cities after poor performances in Kandahar and Marjah; polls that show a record percentage of Americans dislike the Afghan War (not that it matters); and why Benjamin Netanyahu is displeased at the (relative) infrequency of US military threats against Iran.
01/12/11 – Nick Turse – The Scott Horton Show
Nick Turse, author of The Complex: How the Military Invades Our Everyday Lives and editor of The Case for Withdrawal from Afghanistan, discusses his research that shows the Pentagon has over 1000 foreign bases — taking care to exclude the golf courses, resort hotels and family housing from the final count; the 88 bases (at least) remaining in Iraq that comprise lots of facts on the ground impeding the SOFA-agreed 2011 'for real' withdrawal deadline; inferring the presence of secret bases from...
01/11/11 – Cynthia Wachtell – The Scott Horton Show
Cynthia Wachtell, author of War No More: the Antiwar Impulse in American Literature 1861-1914, discusses how Romantic literature, which tended to sanitize and idealize war, was unsuitable for portraying the mechanization of modern warfare and the brutal reality of the Civil War; how Julia Ward Howe, writer of The Battle Hymn of the Republic, eventually rejected the glorification of war and called for a worldwide woman's movement to advocate for disarmament; how Mark Twain's brief informal...
01/10/11 – Frida Berrigan – The Scott Horton Show
Frida Berrigan, journalist and activist blogger at Witness Against Torture, discusses the Day of Action Against Torture protest starting on Tuesday, Jan. 11, at the White House and Justice Department in Washington; and why Congress, Obama, and the DOJ will continue the perversion of justice at Guantanamo until sufficient political pressure is brought to bear.
01/10/11 – Nima Shirazi – The Scott Horton Show
Nima Shirazi, creator of WideAsleepinAmerica.com, discusses his catalog of the numerous failed predictions — primarily by the US and Israel — of Iran’s imminent creation of a nuclear weapon; how the latest Israeli estimate of a 2015 Iran nuke is explained, not by a longtime mistaken assumption about Iran’s nuclear intentions, but by the effectiveness of sanctions, espionage and assassination; the vastly overstated Iranian 'breakout' capability that could also be ascribed to well over 100 other...
01/10/11 – Tom Engelhardt – The Scott Horton Show
Tom Engelhardt, creator of Tomdispatch.com and author of The American Way of War: How Bush’s Wars Became Obama’s, discusses Tomdispatch writer Nick Turse’s updated estimate of just how many US foreign military bases exist; how the official DOD tally omits bases in Iraq, Afghanistan and most of the Persian Gulf; why, in the age of billion dollar embassies and $130 million fuel depots, the US 'empire of bases' is not economically sustainable; and how your stimulus dollars are being used for...
01/07/11 – Edward Hasbrouck – The Scott Horton Show
There is also a KPFK 90.7 FM Los Angeles broadcast version of this interview here. Edward Hasbrouck, global traveler, author and privacy advocate, discusses US citizen Gulet Mohamed‘s alleged abduction and torture in Kuwait, and how the US government blocked his return home (and violated international law) by adding him to the no-fly list; the questionable Constitutionality of an extrajudicial no-fly list immune from court challenge; how DHS sifts through extensive travel records (PNRs) and...
