Antiwar Radio with Scott Horton » Africa

Jason Ditz

Scott Horton — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 05:05:35 +0000

Jason Ditz, managing news editor at Antiwar.com, discusses the African Union troops surging into Somalia; Burundi’s reliance on taxes from mercenary work to fund the government; the US Navy SEALs hostage rescue operation in Somalia, coincidentally conducted just before Obama’s SOTU address; why humanitarian interventionists aren’t bragging about the triumph of democracy and human rights in Libya anymore; and how the US has convinced European countries to shoot themselves in the foot by refusing Iranian oil exports (that will go to South and East Asia instead).

MP3 here. (28:57)

Jason Ditz is the managing news editor at Antiwar.com. His op-ed pieces have been published in newspapers and other media around the world.

Francis Nesbitt

Scott Horton — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 05:06:22 +0000

Dr. Francis Njubi Nesbitt, Associate Professor of Africana Studies at San Diego State University, discusses his article “History Repeats Itself With Somalia Invasion;” the many failed interventions and proxy wars involving the US, Ethiopia and Kenya; how al-Shabab rose to prominence after the US-backed Ethiopian invasion of Somalia in 2006; Kenya’s current plan to seize the Somali port city of Kismayo and cut off a significant source of income for al-Shabab; why clan-based cultures are not conducive to central governance; how oil pipeline routes figure into African conflicts; and Somalia’s severe famine that has hundreds of thousands at risk of starvation.

MP3 here. (28:13)

Francis Njubi Nesbitt is a Foreign Policy in Focus contributor and teaches African politics and conflict resolution at San Diego State University. He is the author of Race for Sanctions (Indiana University Press, 2004) and is completing a book on peacemaking in the Horn of Africa.

Mark Sheffield

Scott Horton — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 05:01:03 +0000

Mark Sheffield of the Policy on Point blog discusses his article “I Drink Your Milkshake! Checking the Chinese in Central Africa;” learning geography by tracking US military interventions the world over; deploying troops to central Africa to fight a has-been Christan millenarian cult – though curiously Uganda has lots of oil resources and no cultists; how US access to DRC (Congo) rare earth minerals could counter the current Chinese stranglehold on the market; the not-too-surprising increase in African deployments since AFRICOM‘s founding; and how Obama’s Libyan intervention seems to have emboldened him to begin new conflicts without even asking Congress.

MP3 here. (19:54)

Mark Sheffield runs the Policy on Point blog.

Pepe Escobar

Scott Horton — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 05:28:59 +0000

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 China and South Korea who actually produce things, and the US that wants to spoil it for everyone; the Heritage Oil company’s remarkable ability to capitalize on US military interventions in oil rich countries, and get oil contracts before anyone else; ample opportunities for humanitarian interventions in the DRC (Congo); and the version 1.3 US proxy war with Somalia, this time with Kenyan forces.

MP3 here. (40:33)

Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving Into Liquid War and Obama Does Globalistan.

An extreme traveler, Pepe’s nose for news has taken him to all parts of the globe. He was in Afghanistan and interviewed the military leader of the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance, Ahmad Shah Masoud, a couple of weeks before his assassination. Two weeks before September 11, 2001, while Pepe was in the tribal areas of Pakistan, Asia Times Online published his prophetic piece, “Get Osama! Now! Or else …” Pepe was one of the first journalists to reach Kabul after the Taliban’s retreat, and more recently he has explored and reported from Iraq, Iran, Central Asia, US and China.

John Glaser

Scott Horton — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 05:08:11 +0000

John Glaser, Assistant Editor at Antiwar.com, discusses the latest US war, this time battling the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda and neighboring countries; the loss of any objective criteria from the term “national interest;” propping up friendly African dictators who agree to take on the burden of US demands, like fighting Al-Shabab in Somalia; the previous disastrous attempts to fight the LRA; how AFRICOM’s rapid expansion will get the US bogged down in more interminable, unwinnable wars; and why the “antiwar President” Obama still has stalwart defenders, even though at least half a dozen new conflicts started on his watch.

MP3 here. (23:47)

John Glaser is Assistant Editor at Antiwar.com. He is a former intern at The American Conservative magazine and CATO Institute.

John Glaser

Scott Horton — Sun, 25 Sep 2011 05:01:23 +0000

John Glaser, Assistant Editor at Antiwar.com, discusses the claims that NATO airstrikes have killed hundreds of Libyan civilians in Sirte; how militant groups in Africa and beyond have suddenly become well armed, thanks to the looting of Gaddafi’s huge weapons cache; why Libya’s factions aren’t likely to ever form a strong central government, meaning NATO is yet again staying for the long haul; how AFRICOM is helping expand the empire into regions of minimal US influence – as difficult as it is to believe such places exist; and the trio of African Islamic movements deemed dangerous by the US.

MP3 here. (19:48)

John Glaser is Assistant Editor at Antiwar.com. He is a former intern at The American Conservative magazine and CATO Institute.

David Bromwich

Scott Horton — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 08:10:01 +0000

David Bromwich, professor of literature at Yale University, discusses his article “The Bipartisan Case Against U.S. Involvement in Libya” for the Huffington Post, how divisive fringe issues are used to create political divisions that keep the public from realizing the real conflict is the state vs. everyone else, hypothetical cross-party 2012 presidential tickets: Obama-Palin and Paul-Kucinich, taking liberties with language, from Bush’s “enhanced interrogation” to Obama’s “limited military action,” and how the “hostilities” referred to in the War Powers Act have been reinterpreted by Obama’s lawyers to mean “US soldiers in harm’s way” in order to pretend the war in Libya is legal.

MP3 here. (20:05)

David Bromwich teaches literature at Yale. He has written on politics and culture for Huffington Post, The New Republic, The Nation, The New York Review of Books, and other magazines. He is editor of Edmund Burke’s selected writings On Empire, Liberty, and Reform and co-editor of the Yale University Press edition of On Liberty.

Eric Margolis

Scott Horton — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 07:24:16 +0000

Eric Margolis, foreign correspondent and author of War at the Top of the World and American Raj, discusses his article “Shock, Awe and Déjà Vu in Libya;” the self-inflicted political pressure on Sarkozy and Obama to force Gaddafi from power, lest they lose reelection themselves; why the West’s preferred successor will likely be chosen from London’s ample community of Libyan expatriates; the many questions left unanswered by hasty liberal interventionists; and the officers in AFRICOM who relish the chance to project power and win medals.

MP3 here. (19:24)

Eric S. Margolis is an award-winning, internationally syndicated columnist. His articles appear in the New York Times, the International Herald Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, Times of London, the Gulf Times, the Khaleej Times and Dawn. He is a regular contributor to The Huffington Post. He appears as an expert on foreign affairs on CNN, BBC, France 2, France 24, Fox News, CTV and CBC.

As a war correspondent Margolis has covered conflicts in Angola, Namibia, South Africa, Mozambique, Sinai, Afghanistan, Kashmir, India, Pakistan, El Salvador and Nicaragua. He was among the first journalists to ever interview Libya’s Muammar Khadaffi and was among the first to be allowed access to KGB headquarters in Moscow. A veteran of many conflicts in the Middle East, Margolis recently was featured in a special appearance on Britain’s Sky News TV as “the man who got it right” in his predictions about the dangerous risks and entanglements the US would face in Iraq.

Margolis is the author of War at the Top of the World: The Struggle for Afghanistan, Kashmir and Tibet and American Raj: Liberation or Domination?: Resolving the Conflict Between the West and the Muslim World.

Nick Turse

Scott Horton — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 12:41:52 +0000

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 discrepancies between troop deployments and the Pentagon’s official list of bases; and how Africa’s recent colonial history makes it difficult to headquarter AFRICOM on the continent.

MP3 here. (21:50)

Nick Turse is an historian, journalist, essayist and the associate editor and research director of the Nation Institute’s Tomdispatch.com. He is the editor of The Case for Withdrawal From Afghanistan and author of The Complex: How the Military Invades Our Everyday Lives. He has written for a wide variety of publications on subjects ranging from street art to war crimes.

Eric Margolis

Scott Horton — Thu, 06 Jan 2011 07:14:42 +0000

Eric Margolis, foreign correspondent and author of War at the Top of the World and American Raj, discusses how the secession of South Sudan could jeopardize the entire African continent’s colonial-drawn borders; considerable US influence in South Sudan that almost guarantees the new nation will be yet another American protectorate flush with oil; why controlling the world’s oil supplies has been a US foreign policy goal since WWII, when Axis countries were irreparably damaged by fuel supply shortages; the increasing US/China rivalry in resource-rich Africa; fundamentalist Christian missionary groups competing with Islamic groups for conversions in Africa; the incremental US stealth-occupation of Pakistan that threatens to become the boggiest of military quagmires; and why the US stands to lose substantial influence in Western Europe should NATO fail in Afghanistan.

MP3 here. (24:52)