Antiwar Radio with Scott Horton » Korea

Grant F. Smith, John Feffer and Anand Gopal

Scott Horton — Mon, 29 Nov 2010 06:52:13 +0000

This interview of Grant F. Smith, John Feffer and Anand Gopal is from the KPFK Los Angeles 90.7 FM broadcast of Friday, November 26. The unedited segment can be heard here.

Grant F. Smith of IRMEP.org discusses Steven Rosen’s defamation lawsuit against his former employer AIPAC and what a renewed FBI criminal investigation could mean for the premiere Israel lobby in America.

John Feffer of Foreign Policy in Focus discusses (starting at 19:45 in the recording) the military conflict between North and South Korea and how joint US-S. Korea naval exercises near disputed maritime borders will only increase the tension.

Independent journalist Anand Gopal discusses (starting at 45:30 in the recording) the nine-year US boondoggle in Afghanistan that has now exceeded the Soviet occupation’s duration and the early missed opportunities in Kandahar when the US failed to take advantage of the Taliban’s surrender.

MP3 here. (54:20)

Gareth Porter

Scott Horton — Sun, 28 Nov 2010 05:49:45 +0000

Gareth Porter, independent historian and journalist for IPS News, discusses the newly-released IAEA Iran report that “continues to verify the non-diversion of declared nuclear material in Iran” but can’t verify the Rumsfeldian “absence of undeclared nuclear activities” as mandated by the UN Security Council; the IAEA’s far-more stringent enforcement of NPT obligations in Iran as compared to South Korea (which was guilty of serious violations); North Korea’s significant new uranium enrichment capability and the challenge of educating Americans about the intricacies of nuclear power and IAEA inspection protocols so they aren’t so easily misled about Iran.

MP3 here. (33:42)

Gareth Porter is an independent historian and journalist. He is the author of Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam. His articles appear on Counterpunch, Huffington Post, Inter Press Service News Agency and Antiwar.com.

Charles Armstrong

Scott Horton — Thu, 25 Nov 2010 15:56:21 +0000

Charles K. Armstrong, Professor of Korean Studies at Columbia University, discusses the heavily militarized Korean DMZ and disputed borders that make North/South conflicts unavoidable; how the N. Korean bombardment was a response (justified or not) to provocative S. Korean war games; how US interference – including a significant military presence in the South – hobbles reunification talks; Seoul’s risk of annihilation by an artillery barrage from the North and why N. Korean dictator Kim Jong-il is not nearly as crazy as Western media would have us believe.

MP3 here. (9:32)

Charles K. Armstrong is The Korea Foundation Professor of Korean Studies in the Social Sciences at Columbia University. He is the author of Korean Society: Civil Society, Democracy and the State and The North Korean Revolution, 1945-1950.

Rep. Ron Paul

Scott Horton — Wed, 24 Nov 2010 08:20:56 +0000

Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) discusses his preferred Korea policy in light of the North/South military clash: pull out all US forces and let the regional powers mediate if necessary; how Osama bin Laden’s plan to bankrupt the US empire (as he did to the USSR before) seems to be working perfectly; how government programs (like Obamacare) are incredibly difficult to repeal once enacted, the devastation wrought on Iraqi Christian communities since the US invastion and the groundswell of Americans who are angered by TSA screenings but fail to make the connection between US foreign policy and terrorism.

MP3 here. (18:29)

Congressman Ron Paul represents Texas’s 14th district. He is the author of The Revolution: A Manifesto, A Foreign Policy of Freedom: Peace, Commerce, and Honest Friendship and Freedom Under Siege. His archived columns for Antiwar.com are here.

Doug Bandow

Scott Horton — Sun, 06 Jun 2010 06:33:40 +0000

Doug Bandow, senior fellow at the Cato Institute, discusses N. Korea’s heated rhetoric after being blamed (and soon to be punished) for sinking a S. Korean warship, the strong motivation of all parties involved to ultimately find a peaceful settlement and the US intervention in yet another conflict halfway around the world.

MP3 here. (8:14)

Doug Bandow is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, specializing in foreign policy and civil liberties. He worked as special assistant to President Reagan and editor of the political magazine Inquiry. He writes regularly for leading publications such as Fortune magazine, National Interest, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Times. Bandow speaks frequently at academic conferences, on college campuses, and to business groups. Bandow has been a regular commentator on ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox News Channel, and MSNBC. He holds a J.D. from Stanford University.

John Feffer

Scott Horton — Wed, 26 May 2010 06:29:19 +0000

John Feffer, co-director of Foreign Policy In Focus at the Institute for Policy Studies, discusses the diplomatic fallout following S. Korea’s conclusion that N. Korea sunk its battleship, indications that – despite the heated rhetoric – war will be avoided on the Korean peninsula, the breakdown of N. Korea’s prior NPT commitment thanks to the US government and the Japanese Prime Minister’s change of heart on a US military base on Okinawa.

MP3 here. (22:41)

John Feffer is co-director of Foreign Policy In Focus at the Institute for Policy Studies. His webpage is JohnFeffer.com.

He is the author of several books and numerous articles. He has been a Writing Fellow at Provisions Library in Washington, DC and a PanTech fellow in Korean Studies at Stanford University. He is a former associate editor of World Policy Journal. He has worked as an international affairs representative in Eastern Europe and East Asia for the American Friends Service Committee. He has studied in England and Russia, lived in Poland and Japan, and traveled widely throughout Europe and Asia. He has taught a graduate level course on international conflict at Sungkonghoe University in Seoul in July 2001 and delivered lectures at a variety of academic institutions including New York University, Hofstra, Union College, Cornell University, and Sofia University (Tokyo).

John has been widely interviewed in print and on radio. He serves on the advisory committees of the Alliance of Scholars Concerned about Korea. He is a recipient of the Herbert W. Scoville fellowship and has been a writer in residence at Blue Mountain Center and the Wurlitzer Foundation. He currently lives with his partner Karin Lee in Hyattsville, Maryland.

Doug Bandow

Scott Horton — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 05:30:03 +0000

Doug Bandow, author of Foreign Follies: America’s New Global Empire, discusses the Bush administration’s foreign policy legacy, why maintaining a U.S. military presence in S. Korea makes less sense than ever, the difficulty of negotiating alternative U.S. supply routes to Afghanistan while taking a hard line on Russia and Iran, the high cost in Iraqi lives for their “liberation” from one authoritarian government to another and the demise of Bush’s two-state solution for Israel and Palestine.

MP3 here. (21:45)

Doug Bandow is a recent addition to the Cato Institute. His new and archived articles can be found at Antiwar.com/bandow.

Woody Powell

Scott Horton — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 05:02:11 +0000

Woody Powell, former executive director of Veterans For Peace, discusses his personal experiences serving in the Korean War, the difficulties and invective associated with anti-war activism in America and the virtues of advocating for peace rather than militarism on Armistice Day.

MP3 here. (20:20)

Wilson “Woody” Powell, is the former executive director of Veterans for Peace, which is based in St. Louis Missouri.

Gordon Prather

Scott Horton — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 20:13:28 +0000

Dr. Gordon Prather, Antiwar.com’s in-house nuclear physicist, discusses the chaos of the Bush regime’s policies against the “Axis of Evil” and global non-proliferation regime, from trying to frame North Korea with the same bogus intel as they used on Iraq to trying to connect Iran and North Korea with the Israeli-bombed facility in Syria, the U.S.’s nuclear deals with India, how A.Q. Kahn’s stolen intel scheme was falsely claimed by George Tenet to be a CIA success story, the vague credentials of nuke “expert” David Albright Ph.D and how the Bush team has put us in far more danger from nuclear proliferation.

MP3 here. (52:09)

YouTube here.

Physicist James Gordon Prather has served as a policy implementing official for national security-related technical matters in the Federal Energy Agency, the Energy Research and Development Administration, the Department of Energy, the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the Department of the Army. Dr. Prather also served as legislative assistant for national security affairs to U.S. Sen. Henry Bellmon, R-Okla. – ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee and member of the Senate Energy Committee and Appropriations Committee. Dr. Prather had earlier worked as a nuclear weapons physicist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California and Sandia National Laboratory in New Mexico.

Joshua Snyder

Scott Horton — Thu, 01 May 2008 06:57:32 +0000

Joshua Snyder, American English Professor in South Korea, discusses American involvement with North and South Korea since World War II, how the UN gave Truman the excuse to enter the conflict without declaring war, how the defeat of Robert Taft marked the end of the Old Right until Ron Paul, how 106 of America’s 700+ military bases are in South Korea, how the many billions of American tax dollars being wasted on the occupation are subsidizing the booming South Korean economy, how if we left, South Korea could easily defend itself from the North, how reunification would be an economic nightmare for the South to absorb the North, the wide spread dislike of George Bush in Korea and questions surrounding the Syrian/ North Korean nuclear allegations.

MP3 here. (36:27)

An American Catholic son-in-law of Korea, Joshua Snyder lives with his wife and two children in Pohang, where he serves as an assistant visiting professor of English at a science and technology university. He blogs at The Western Confucian.