Greg Shupak discusses America’s horrible “maximum pressure” sanctions campaign against Syria, and the media’s total willingness to cheer it along. Shupak reminds us that despite what policymakers claim, sanctions really only hurt the regular citizens of a country, particularly the poorest and most vulnerable, while leaving the wealthy and powerful more or less untouched. In theory, say the Madeleine Albright types, if the U.S. and its international allies can exert enough pressure on a country’s populace—meaning making life miserable enough for them—they will rise up and depose their governments. In reality, of course, the results of sanctions can be thousands of civilian deaths and cruel economic hardship for the rest of the population, while almost never achieving the desired result of regime change anyway. Unfortunately, the corporate media seem totally willing to carry water for the sanctions regime, helping to deceive the American people about inexcusable tragedies like Syria.

Discussed on the show:

• “Media Conceal—or Celebrate—Depriving Syrians of Food and Medicine” (FAIR)
• “Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act” (United States Department of State)
• “Syria’s Brutal Dictatorship Suffers a Severe Setback” (Washington Post)
• “Sanctions on Syria Can Help Stop Assad’s Atrocities” (Foreign Policy)
• Humanitarian Impact of Syria-Related Unilateral Restrictive Measures” (United Nations)
• “Syria: ICRC adapts to combat COVID-19” (The Red Crescent)
• “U.S. Hits Assad Family With ‘Caesar Act’ Sanctions” (Wall Street Journal)
• National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2020
• “The United States Used Depleted Uranium in Syria” (Foreign Policy)

Greg Shupak teaches media studies at the University of Guelph in Canada. He is the author of The Wrong Story: Palestine, Israel, and the Media. Find him on Twitter @GregShupak.

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

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Scott talks to Giorgio Cafiero about the devastating catastrophe facing the people of Yemen in the form of the coronavirus pandemic. Cafiero describes the way that a virus—or indeed any natural disaster—has the potential to decimate a country like Yemen, where it’s hard to count on the distribution of even basic necessities like food, water and medicine. To make matters worse, the divided powers in Yemen seem unwilling to temporarily put aside their differences in the name of fighting the pandemic. Scott reminds us that the U.S. has just as much responsibility for this war as Saudi Arabia and the UAE do, and perhaps even more, since the President could end it almost instantly with a phone call. Until the American people decide to make this an important issue, however, things are unlikely to change.

Discussed on the show:

• “COVID-19: Yemen’s ‘unprecedented calamity’” (Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft)
• “The Houthis Are Not Hezbollah” (Foreign Policy)

Giorgio Cafiero is the CEO and founder of Gulf State Analytics, a geopolitical risk consultancy based in Washington, DC. He writes regularly for the Middle East Institute, The National Interest, and LobeLog. Find him on Twitter @GiorgioCafiero.

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

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Phil Weiss joins the show to discuss what he views as the internal collapse of Zionism, especially in America. It is starting to become obvious to everyone, as signaled by a recent Peter Beinart piece, that the idea of a two-state solution has pretty much been an empty promise all along, used to placate Palestinians and to win the support of liberal Jews in America. Despite the growing clarity into what the Israeli government is really doing, Trump continues to be one of the most permissive presidents in history when it comes to allowing Israel to do whatever it wants to the Palestinians. Against all odds, says Weiss, Biden is positioning himself even further to the right, and even further in favor the Israeli Zionist project.

Discussed on the show:

• “Liberal Zionists use arguments — ‘There is no equality between us and the Palestinians’ — that echo white nationalists” (Mondoweiss)
• “Opinion | I No Longer Believe in a Jewish State” (The New York Times)
• “Yavne: A Jewish Case for Equality in Israel-Palestine” (Jewish Currents)
• Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy
• The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir
• Coming to Palestine
• “What Social Animals Owe to Each Other” (The Future of Freedom Foundation)
• “Notes on the State of Virginia” (Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello)

Philip Weiss is the long-time editor of Mondoweiss.net. Follow him on Twitter @PhilWeiss.

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

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Scott interviews Wayne McElrath about the proliferation of military equipment in America’s police forces, and its harmful effect on police practices. McElrath describes the process by which local police departments are given “outdated” equipment from the military, like body armor, automatic weapons and armored vehicles. To prove how alarmingly easy it is to get hold of this equipment, McElrath and his team created a fake police department and submitted deliberately vague and spurious requests to the Pentagon, which were approved. McElrath contends that this militarization has a powerful effect on the psyches of police officers and on the communities they serve, making the relationship more like that of an occupying force than of a public service organization.

Discussed on the show:

• “Police reform begins with cutting Pentagon money, militarization program” (USA Today)
• “7/17/20 Ted Carpenter on the Bogus Russian Bounties Story” (The Libertarian Institute)

Wayne McElrath is a Senior Investigative Advisor to the Project on Government Oversight and is the former Director of Forensic Investigations with the Government Accountability Office (GAO). Follow him on Twitter @mcelrath_wayne.

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

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Ted Carpenter talks about the Russian bounties story, including all the ways it has been misreported by the media. Carpenter reminds us that the original intelligence that was leaked to the press was based on very flimsy anonymous sources, and may have been obtained via torture. Almost as soon as the CIA introduced the narrative, the NSA came out to publicly assert their skepticism about the credibility of the intelligence. And the Department of Defense, which thoroughly investigates every American death in Afghanistan, hasn’t found any evidence of these supposed bounties. But the fact that the national security state and their mouthpieces in the mainstream media were able to get 60% of Americans to believe the story, even temporarily, was enough to derail President Trump’s plans to withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan. Even if the story had been true, says Carpenter, wouldn’t that be all the more reason to get out?

Discussed on the show:

• “How the Media Mangled the ‘Russian Invasion’ of the Trump Administration” (The National Interest)
• “Russia Secretly Offered Afghan Militants Bounties to Kill U.S. Troops, Intelligence Says” (The New York Times)
• “NSA Differed From CIA, Others on Russia Bounty Intelligence” (WSJ)
• “Ten Most Embarrassing U.S. Media Failures on the Trump-Russia Story” (The Intercept)
• “Opinion | Don’t Let Russian Meddling Derail Afghanistan Withdrawal Plans” (The New York Times)
• “BOUNTYGATE: Scapegoating Systemic Military Failure in Afghanistan” (Consortium News)
• The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy And Its Geostrategic Imperatives
• “Ep. 1689 Scott Horton on the “Russian Bounties” Story” (Tom Woods)
• “Speech and the Following Discussion at the Munich Conference on Security Policy” (en.kremlin.eu)

Ted Galen Carpenter is a senior fellow for defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute. Carpenter has written 10 books including America’s Coming War with China: A Collision Course over Taiwan and most recently NATO: Dangerous Dinosaur. He is a contributing editor at The American Conservative Magazine and the National Interest.

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

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Doug Bandow discusses America’s failing world empire and the “threats” posed by rival powers like Russia and China. These countries, of course, don’t pose a plausible threat to the safety and security of citizens in the United States, but they do pose a very real threat to America’s ability to control everyone else’s affairs around the globe. Bandow thinks that the supposed “aggressive posturing” by Russia and China really represents fairly moderate steps to counter America’s rather extreme policy of extending its empire right up to their borders, as the U.S. has done by pushing for NATO expansion and in trying to meddle in southeast Asia. Americans, says Bandow, would be much better off if their government decided to focus on its own affairs, rather than on the expensive and quixotic project of ruling the entire world.

Discussed on the show:

• “Allies Are Supposed to Help the US, but Americans Always Do the Paying” (Antiwar.com Original)
• “Madeleine Albright – The deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children was worth it.” (YouTube)
• “What’s the point of having this superb military if you can’t use it?” (The Economist)

Doug Bandow is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and a regular contributor at Forbes Magazine, the National Interest, and elsewhere. He’s on Twitter @Doug_Bandow.

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

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Kelley Vlahos talks about prominent Democratic national security official Michele Flournoy, whom she calls “The Queen of the Blob.” The Blob, explains Vlahos, is the group of politicians, advisors, lobbyists and pundits who advocate for the continuation of America’s foreign policy status quo—often greatly enriching themselves in the process. The ideology behind their position, she and Scott speculate, is probably based on the idea that these policies are actually good for the United States and the rest of the world, and that if they can benefit personally, that’s just an added benefit. But the last 70 years of American foreign policy failures should by now have proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that the centrist liberal and neoconservative establishment has done little but endanger the U.S. and destroy the lives of millions of innocent foreigners.

Discussed on the show:

• “Michele Flournoy: Queen of the Blob” (The American Conservative)
• “How Biden’s Foreign-Policy Team Got Rich” (The American Prospect)
• “The Outpost (2020)” (IMDb)
• “The Outpost Is a War Movie Libs Like, For their Own Reasons” (The American Conservative)
• “In Defense of Restraint” (The American Conservative)
• “Rethinking Restraint: Why It Fails in Practice” (The Washington Quarterly)
• Empire Has No Clothes
• The Jungle Grows Back: America and Our Imperiled World
  
• “Three Marines, Now Focus of Russian Bounties Investigation, Show the Costs of an Endless War” (The New York Times)
• “Wiping another Country off the Map: Israel does it to Palestine” (juancole.com)

Kelley B. Vlahos is the executive editor of The American Conservative. Follow her on Twitter @KelleyBVlahos.

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

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Scott interviews Gareth Porter about the Russian bounties story, or “Bountygate” as it has come to be known. Porter describes attempts by outlets like the New York Times to portray this as a well-sourced story with consensus among America’s intelligence agencies—in reality, he says, the NSA and CIA have rated the intelligence with only low- to medium-confidence, and even the Department of Defense, which thoroughly investigates every U.S. death in Afghanistan, hasn’t found evidence to support the idea that the Russian government is paying bounties to the Taliban. Moreover, says Porter, Russia has very little to gain from such a policy, and a lot to lose. However, the people who would benefit from increased tensions with Russia are the war hawks in the U.S. government and the big players in the arms industry. Just like with the hundreds of other lies told by the U.S. government and sold by the media to benefit powerful military-industrial complex interests, we should be highly skeptical.

Discussed on the show:

• The CIA Insider’s Guide to the Iran Crisis: From CIA Coup to the Brink of War
  
• “How the Pentagon failed to sell Afghan government’s bunk ‘Bountygate’ story to US intelligence agencies ” (The Grayzone)
• “Russian Spy Unit Paid Taliban to Attack Americans, U.S. Intelligence Says” (WSJ)
• “Russia Secretly Offered Afghan Militants Bounties to Kill U.S. Troops, Intelligence Says” (The New York Times)
• “Spies and Commandos Warned Months Ago of Russian Bounties on U.S. Troops” (The New York Times)
• “The Russian Bounties Hoax” (Antiwar.com)

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: NoDev NoOps NoIT, by Hussein Badakhchani; The War State, by Mike Swanson; WallStreetWindow.com; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott; Listen and Think Audio; TheBumperSticker.com; and LibertyStickers.com.

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Bas Spliet is back to discuss the disaster that was America and the UN’s involvement in Libya after 2011’s Arab Spring. Spliet reminds us that Libya was once one of the wealthiest countries in north Africa, ruled by a secular dictator with relative liberty and prosperity. After the Obama administration decided to begin a bombing campaign there in support of a regime change, however, the country quickly disintegrated into one of the most chaotic and violent places in the world. Today there are open air slave markets and 30% of the population has fled the country. As usual, this intervention was sold in the name of humanitarian intervention and the need to stop a brutal dictator. But Americans should know by now that a bad situation can—and very often does—become much worse after the U.S. military gets involved.

Discussed on the show:

• “How NATO’s War Crimes Brought Chaos to Libya” (Antiwar.com)
• “Hillary Clinton undercut on Libya war by Pentagon and Congress, secret tapes reveal” (Washington Times)
• “Libya’s Pathway to Peace” (The New York Times)
• Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam

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

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Scott talks to Ryan Dawson about cancel culture and the latest wave of deplatforming, of which Dawson himself is a victim. Dawson, who spends much of his time fighting against the neoconservative ideology, has come under fire over and over again for the alleged thought crimes of racism and anti-semitism. In reality, of course, Dawson is the furthest thing from a racist, having devoted much of his life to advocating things like police reform and the abolition of the war on drugs. But he has also been staunchly antiwar, and that has helped to earn him some vocal enemies. Scott and Dawson go on to discuss the Marxist roots of Black Lives Matter, the history of slavery, the economies of Africa and skateboarding as a force for social good.

Discussed on the show:

• “SDG&E Worker Fired Over Alleged Racist Gesture Says He Was Cracking Knuckles” (NBC San Diego)
• Epstein: Dead Men Tell No Tales
  
• Trick or Treason: The 1980 October Surprise Mystery
• “American Made (2017)” (IMDb)
• Compromised: Clinton, Bush and the CIA
  
• “Ukraine crisis: Transcript of leaked Nuland-Pyatt call” (BBC News)
• Things Fall Apart
  
• Skate Palestine
• The Separation of Business and State
  

Ryan Dawson is the host of The Anti Neo-Con Report, which you can follow on YouTube, Twitter and his website.

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

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Scott interviews Jeffrey Kaye about Avril Haines, a former Obama administration adviser and Deputy Director of the CIA recently appointed as a foreign policy adviser to Joe Biden. Haines has been described as a “superstar”, and clearly has a future as a well-connected national security insider. But Kaye says people should be alarmed by her past, most notably her probable connections to the CIA’s torture and “kill list” programs. Despite appearances—Haines is known for her more compassionate, intelligent approach—Kaye warns that she is just another part of the same destructive, immoral foreign policy establishment that Biden represents, and which he would surely seek to advance as president.

Discussed on the show:

• “Biden Advisor an “Apologist for Torture,” an Architect of “Kill Lists”” (Institute for Public Accuracy)
• “Avril Haines, The Least Likely Spy” (Newsweek)
• “Palantir Affiliation Disappears from Biden Adviser Avril Haines’s Bio” (The Intercept)
• “The Proxy War over Joe Biden Adviser Avril Haines” (The Daily Beast)
• “Jeremy Scahill Reveals CIA Facility, Prison in Somalia as U.S. Expands Covert Ops in Stricken Nation” (Democracy Now)
• “Terror Tuesdays, Kill Lists and Drones: Has the President Become a Law Unto Himself?” (Huffington Post)
• “The Drone Papers: Secret documents detail the U.S. assassination program.” (The Intercept)

Jeffrey Kaye is the author of Cover-up at Guantanamo: The NCIS Investigation into the “Suicides” of Mohammed Al Hanashi and Abdul Rahman Al Amri. Kaye is a retired psychologist, blogger, and author. Read his blog and follow him on Twitter @jeff_kaye.
Thomas Powell is an artist and writer. He is the author of numerous articles on foreign policy and American politics.

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

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Grant Smith discusses the Israel lobby’s deep involvement in the U.S. economy, this time as regards the American firms in the business of promoting Israeli interests, who have recently received large sums of money through special coronavirus relief programs. Smith cross-referenced the list of companies receiving such aid with pro-Israel lobbying groups from his previous research, finding a great deal of overlap, particularly among the recipients of large “loans” (which under certain circumstances don’t even need to be repaid). These firms include the Zionist Organization of America, Friends of the IDF and the Israeli American Council, among others. Smith hopes that bringing this type of influence to light will also help Americans understand the Israeli government’s unjust and inhumane subjugation of the Palestinian people, and the many ways that our government enables it.

Discussed on the show:

• “Israel Lobby Orgs Grab Covid-19 CARES Act Funds for Itself, IDF Facilities, and Sketchy Israeli Companies” (Antiwar.com)
• Yom Kippur War
• “The Men From JINSA and CSP” (The Nation)
• A Pretext for War: 9/11, Iraq, and the Abuse of America’s Intelligence Agencies
  
• “For Israel and Palestine, Equality in a One-State Solution” (The New York Times)
• Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995
• “Bin Laden’s ‘Letter to America’” (The Guardian)

Grant F. Smith is the author of a number of books including Big Israel: How Israel’s Lobby Moves America, Divert!, and most recently The Israel Lobby Enters State Government: Rise of the Virginia Israel Advisory Board. He is director of the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy in Washington, D.C.

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

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Scott interviews Ramzy Baroud about the Israeli annexation of Palestine, including Trump’s role as perhaps the most acquiescent president in American history in going along with the agenda of the Israeli government. Most recently this has meant acceding to Netanyahu’s plans for massive annexation of the West Bank. Although Israel has appeared to back down slightly from its aggressive annexation plan, Baroud is adamant that this is merely a public posture to deflect international criticism, when in reality these Palestinian territories have always been under de facto Israeli control, and will continue to be so. And although Trump has been unusually indulgent with the Israelis, Baroud suspects that a Biden presidency wouldn’t be any better. Baroud laments the fact that the Palestinian perspective is never portrayed in the mainstream media, and so almost everyone in the U.S. only ever hears a deceptive, pro-Israel narrative.

Ramzy Baroud is a US-Arab journalist and is the editor-in-chief of the Palestine Chronicle. He is the author of My Father Was A Freedom Fighter: The Untold Story of Gaza and The Last Earth: A Palestinian Story. His new book is These Chains Will Be Broken: Palestinian Stories of Struggle and Defiance in Israeli Prisons. Follow Ramzy on Twitter @RamzyBaroud and read his work at RamzyBaroud.net.

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

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Ron Enzweiler exposes some of the falsehoods behind the developing story about supposed Russian bounties on American soldiers in Afghanistan. For one thing, outlets like the New York Times have implied that there is consensus among America’s intelligence agencies on this story—in reality, says Enzweiler, the NSA, who monitor nearly all Taliban cell phone traffic, “strongly dissented” from the CIA’s initial claims. Even the Department of Defense, which thoroughly investigates every U.S. death in Afghanistan, hasn’t found evidence to support the idea that the Russian government is paying bounties to the Taliban. All of the media commotion, of course, is being used as an excuse to keep this war going forever. The timing of the story is certainly suspicious, coming on the heels of President Trump’s claim that he’d like to pull all troops from Afghanistan before the election.

Discussed on the show:

• “The Russian Bounties Hoax” (Antiwar.com Original)
• “Who To Believe on Afghan Intelligence: CIA, NSA, or Pentagon?” (Antiwar.com Original)
• “Trump Wants Troops in Afghanistan Home by Election Day. The Pentagon Is Drawing Up Plans.” (The New York Times)

Ron Enzweiler is an air force veteran and worked for USAID in Iraq for seven years. He is the author of When Will We Ever Learn. You can follow his writing at Antiwar.com.

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

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Trita Parsi discusses John Bolton’s tenure in the Trump administration, during which time he worked tirelessly to sabotage any form of negotiation between the United States and Iran. Bolton is a fierce advocate for America’s alliance with Israel, says Parsi, which often means acting in ways that are actually quite harmful to American interests. Netanyahu, Parsi explains, worries that any peace between the U.S. and Iran would threaten Israel’s position as the dominant superpower in the Middle East, and it would no longer be so easy for them to accomplish the things the Netanyahu government wants to do, like annexing more and more Palestinian territory. Unless you have the warped neocon worldview, however, Scott and Parsi agree that attempted American hegemony in the Middle East can only mean disaster for the true interests of the American people.

Discussed on the show:

• “John Bolton can stomach Kim Jong Un’s North Korea, but not Iran” (Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft)
• The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir

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: NoDev NoOps NoIT, by Hussein Badakhchani; The War State, by Mike Swanson; WallStreetWindow.com; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott; Listen and Think Audio; TheBumperSticker.com; and LibertyStickers.com.

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