Mark Ames, author of “The Cold War that Wasn’t” in The Nation, discusses the dominant narrative and ideological underpinnings in the U.S. press regarding the recent Georgian attack on South Ossetia and subsequent Russian counterattack on Georgia, the attempt to portray Russia as the aggressor by floating the idea of a first-strike cyber war despite the lack of any evidence, the alleged poisoning of Ukraine’s Victor Yushchenko and the current dispute between Yushchenko and Yulia Timoshenko over her reaction to the Georgia war, the poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko, NATO expansion into Eastern Europe, the precedent set by U.S. intervention in Kosovo, the danger of putting “defensive” missiles in Eastern Europe while the U.S. foreign policy establishment contemplates first strike capability, U.S. NED support for the Russian National Bolsheviks, the “shock therapy” robbery of Russian resources under Yeltsin’s autocracy in the 1990s and the consequences.

MP3 here. (64:25)

Mark Ames is a journalist who has written for several publications including the New York Press, The Nation and GQ Russia and is the founding editor and regular contributor of the Moscow-based newspaper The eXile. He is the author of Going Postal: Rage, Murder and Rebellion From Reagan’s Workplaces to Clinton’s Columbine and Beyond and The eXile: Sex, Drugs and Libel in the New Russia.

Richard Maybury, author of the U.S. and World Early Warning Report, discusses the evolution of common law, the American Revolutionary revolt for natural rights, the “divine right” of the majority, the importance of self-defense to a society’s freedom, the imbalanced offensive/defensive cost ratio, Osama Bin Laden’s strategy of bankrupting the American empire, how to profit from a libertarian understanding of money and power, the emerging second Cold War with Russia, the moral questions around investing in government-tied businesses, the corruption of political power, the two-party system hoax and the coming second American Revolution.

MP3 here. (44:25)

Richard Maybury is the author of the investment newsletter, U.S. and World Early Warning Report and the Uncle Eric books.