Antiwar Radio with Scott Horton » Media

Gareth Porter

Scott Horton — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 04:22:49 +0000

Gareth Porter, investigative historian and journalist specializing in U.S. national security policy, discusses Washington Post writer David Ignatius’s claim that a deal has already been made on Iran’s nuclear program and that ongoing talks are scripted; why the US and Iran can’t just “make a deal and shut up already;” how Benjamin Netanyahu’s bluff about attacking Iran is influencing US policy and helping the GOP win election; why it’s still unlikely NATO will drag the US into war in Syria, like Libya before; and the US-Afghan Strategic Partnership Agreement that envisions US involvement through 2024.

MP3 here. (24:38)

Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist specializing in U.S. national security policy. The paperback edition of his latest book, Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam, was published in 2006.

M.J. Rosenberg

Scott Horton — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 12:36:17 +0000

M.J. Rosenberg, journalist and former Senior Foreign Policy Fellow at Media Matters Action Network, discusses how his criticism of Israel made him a liability for his former employer; why members of Congress won’t take a risk on controversial issues, even when they have “safe seats;” why the Palestinian Authority risks losing US aid for giving an award to journalist Helen Thomas; billionaire Sheldon Adelson’s circulation-leading, money-losing, right-wing Israeli newspaper; the longtime friendship between Mitt Romney and Bibi Netanyahu; why Americans are free to badmouth US presidents and politicians, but risk being labeled an anti-Semite for criticizing Netanyahu; and the enigma of Alan Dershowitz.

MP3 here. (37:47)

M.J. Rosenberg was Senior Foreign Policy Fellow at Media Matters Action Network. He worked on Capitol Hill for various Democratic members of the House and Senate for 15 years. He was also a Clinton political appointee at USAID. In the early 1980s, he was editor of AIPACs weekly newsletter Near East Report. From 1998-2009, he was director of policy at Israel Policy Forum.

Trita Parsi

Scott Horton — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 04:33:16 +0000

Trita Parsi, founder and president of the National Iranian American Council, discusses how Iranian sanctions block peaceful diplomatic solutions, making war more likely; the “risk premium” in oil prices, exacerbated by hawkish foreign policy, that hurts Iranians and Americans alike; the daunting resources and time commitment required to eliminate Iran’s nuclear program through invasion and war; the media’s increasingly conflicted narrative on the Iran “threat;” and why the Obama administration is amenable to a deal centered on Iran’s re-implementation of the NPT’s Additional Protocol.

MP3 here. (19:33)

Dr. Trita Parsi is the author of A Single Roll of the Dice: Obama’s Diplomacy with Iran, Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran, and the United States, and recipient of the Council on Foreign Relation’s 2008 Arthur Ross Silver Medallion and the 2010 Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order.

He wrote his Doctoral thesis on Israeli-Iranian relations under Professor Francis Fukuyama (and Drs. Zbigniew Brzezinski, R. K. Ramazani, Jakub Grygiel, Charles Doran) at Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies while heading the largest Iranian-American organization in the US, the National Iranian American Council (NIAC).

Peter Hart

Zooey Greif — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 13:01:14 +0000

Peter Hart, activism director at Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting, discusses how pro-Israel media watchdogs like CAMERA control the narrative by making the NY Times print seemingly minor retractions (although the Foreign Agents Registration Act marks the difference between an “Israel lobbying group” and a “pro-Israel lobbying group”); why the media won’t stick their necks out on an issue that Democrats and Republicans agree on; Hart’s media advisory “After Afghan Massacre, War Gets Victim Status” about the media’s overriding concern for the war’s public relations setback, not for the dead Afghans; and why anyone interested in real journalism on Afghanistan should read Michael Hastings.

MP3 here. (20:04)

Peter Hart is the activism director at FAIR. He writes for FAIR’s magazine Extra, and is also a co-host and producer of FAIR’s syndicated radio show CounterSpin.

He is the author of “The Oh Really? Factor: Unspinning Fox News Channel’s Bill O’Reilly” (Seven Stories Press, 2003). Hart has been interviewed by a number of media outlets, including NBC Nightly News, Fox News Channel’s O’Reilly Factor, the Los Angeles Times, Newsday and the Associated Press. He has also appeared on Showtime and in the movie Outfoxed.

Muhammad Sahimi

Scott Horton — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 06:03:28 +0000

Muhammad Sahimi, Professor of Chemical Engineering and political columnist on Iran issues, discusses the latest anti-Iran talking point from World Net Daily and serial propagandist Reza Kahlili (“Ayatollah: Kill all Jews, annihilate Israel“); what Alireza Forghani, the blogger in question, really said about Israel and preemptive strikes; and why many Americans want to believe every anti-Muslim propaganda piece they see.

MP3 here. (20:48)

Muhammad Sahimi, Professor of chemical engineering & materials science and the National Iranian Oil Company chair in petroleum engineering at the University of Southern California, has published extensively on Iran’s political development and its nuclear program. He is the lead political columnist for the web site PBS/Frontline/Tehran Bureau, blogs at The Huffington Post, and contributes regularly to antiwar.com and National Public Radio on issues related to Iran.

John Glaser

Scott Horton — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 13:53:46 +0000

John Glaser, Assistant Editor at Antiwar.com, discusses why the talking heads on MSNBC are perfectly willing to make fools of themselves in an effort to prove the IAEA’s case against Iran; why crimes like cyberterrorism (Stuxnet) don’t count when committed by the US/Israel against Iranian targets; the Reuters report on what Iraqis think about the “democracy” given to them at the end of an American gun barrel; and the contingent of troops headed to Australia to remind China that the “peer competitor” policy remains in effect.

MP3 here. (23:50)

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

Patrick Cockburn

Scott Horton — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 05:18:42 +0000

Patrick Cockburn, Middle East correspondent for The Independent, discusses Moammar Gadhafi’s death and NATO’s “mission accomplished” in Libya; why the rebel factions will have to find a new cause to rally around, or else face divisions and infighting; why the Arab spring is a genuine grassroots movement, not a CIA-engineered series of color coded revolutions; and having to rely on human rights NGOs for reports critical of Libya’s NTC, since the media doesn’t do its own investigations or publicize information contrary to US government aims (even Al Jazeera is a rebel cheerleader).

MP3 here. (26:49)

Patrick Cockburn, Middle East correspondent for The Independent, has been visiting Iraq since 1978. He was awarded the 2005 Martha Gellhorn prize for war reporting in recognition of his writing on Iraq. He is the author of, his memoir, The Broken Boy (Jonathan Cape, 2005), and with Andrew Cockburn, Saddam Hussein: An American Obsession (Verso, The Occupation: War, Resistance and Daily Life in Iraq (Verso, 2006) and Muqtada: Muqtada al-Sadr, the Shia revival and the Struggle for Iraq.

Philip Giraldi

Scott Horton — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 04:44:37 +0000

Former CIA officer Philip Giraldi discusses a couple alternative explanations of the Iranian assassination plot, both more sensible than the official government story; why Iran would essentially commit national suicide by conducting a terrorist attack in Washington DC; the system of incentives for law enforcement agents and informants to play up any terrorism angle; prosecuting the CIA officials who lied to National Security Advisor Richard Clarke, in order to get the big fish in the Bush administration; and how the mainstream media is failing (on purpose) to expose government lies and give Americans credible information.

MP3 here. (19:48)

Philip Giraldi, a former CIA officer, is a contributing editor to The American Conservative and executive director of the Council for the National Interest. He writes regularly for Antiwar.com.

Ken Silverstein

Scott Horton — Sun, 09 Oct 2011 04:05:04 +0000

Ken Silverstein, Washington Editor for Harper’s Magazine, discusses his article “Neoconservatives hype a new Cold War;” the public relations firms used as lobbies for foreign governments, like Randy Scheunemann’s Orion Strategies; the close-knit world of Washington D.C. where everyone knows everyone else and investigative journalists self-sensor for fear of alienating friends and colleagues; and the incestuous relationship between Georgia’s government, Scheunemann’s PR firm and reporters who collaborate to produce an anti-Russian propaganda echo chamber, not journalism.

I was wrong about Scheunemann talking with Saakashvili in the days before the Georgia war of 2008. I regret the error. -Scott

MP3 here. (18:29)

Ken Silverstein is the Washington Editor for Harper’s Magazine and writes Washington Babylon for Harper’s online.

A former reporter for the Los Angeles Times, Silverstein has covered such topics as intelligence collaboration between the CIA and controversial foreign governments in Sudan and Libya, political corruption in Washington, and links between American oil companies and repressive foreign governments. His 2004 series “The Politics of Petroleum,” co-written with T. Christian Miller, won an Overseas Press Club Award. His stories on ties between the government of Equatorial Guinea and major U.S. companies—including Riggs Bank, ExxonMobil and Marathon Oil—led to the convening of a federal grand jury, and to investigations by the Senate and the Securities and Exchange Commission. His report, co-written with Chuck Neubauer, on a lobbying business opened by Karen Weldon, daughter of Rep. Curt Weldon of Pennsylvania, led to the opening of an investigation by the House Ethics Committee.

Silverstein has been an outspoken gadfly in the newspaper business. In December of 2005, a memo he wrote to his editors at the Los Angeles Times expressing his dismay over their insistence on false “balance” was discussed in an article by Michael Massing in The New York Review of Books. While reporting on potential voter fraud in St. Louis in 2004, Silverstein was angered to learn that his findings were to be woven into a larger “balanced” piece on accusations being made nationwide, when it was clear that Republican charges of irregularities in St. Louis were insubstantial. “I am completely exasperated by this approach to the news,” Silverstein wrote. “The idea seems to be that we go out to report but when it comes time to write we turn off our brains and repeat the spin from both sides.”

Silverstein had been a contributing editor to Harper’s before joining the Times. One of his pieces for the magazine, The Radioactive Boy Scout, became a highly acclaimed book of the same title published by Random House in 2004. He has also written for Mother Jones, Washington Monthly, The Nation, Slate, and Salon. From 1989 to 1993 he was a correspondent for the Associated Press in Brazil.

Glenn Greenwald

Scott Horton — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 06:06:28 +0000

Glenn Greenwald, Salon.com blogger and author of With Liberty and Justice for Some: How the Law Is Used to Destroy Equality and Protect the Powerful, discusses a 9/11 retrospective alternative to the mainstream media’s distorted coverage; how the national security state has eroded our freedoms and eliminated government accountability; the surprising near-majority of Americans who recognize the root cause of terrorism and don’t believe in trading freedom for security; why a “free press” doesn’t guarantee that the truth is readily available; why everyone should care about Muslims losing their civil rights; how the PATRIOT Act, supposedly a tool for fighting terrorism, is used more often for drug, immigration and financial investigations; and the lack of a political process for changing the system (switching between Democrats and Republicans every few years doesn’t accomplish anything).

MP3 here. (26:55)

Glenn Greenwald was a constitutional lawyer in New York City, first at the Manhattan firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, and then at the litigation firm he founded, Greenwald, Christoph. Greenwald litigated numerous high-profile and significant constitutional cases in federal and state courts around the country, including multiple First Amendment challenges. He has a J.D. from New York University School of Law (1994) and a B.A. from George Washington University (1990). In October of 2005, Greenwald started a political and legal blog, Unclaimed Territory, which quickly became one of the most popular and highest-trafficked in the blogosphere.

Upon disclosure by the New York Times in December 2005 of President Bush’s warrantless eavesdropping program, Greenwald became one of the leading and most cited experts on that controversy. In early 2006, he broke a story on his blog regarding the NSA scandal that served as the basis for front-page articles in the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times and other newspapers, all of which credited his blog for the story. Several months later, Sen. Russ Feingold read from one of Greenwald’s posts during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Feingold’s resolution to censure the president for violating FISA. In 2008, Sen. Chris Dodd read from Greenwald’s Salon blog during floor debate over FISA. Greenwald’s blog was also cited as one of the sources for the comprehensive report issued by Rep. John Conyers titled “The Constitution in Crisis.” In 2006, he won the Koufax Award for best new blog.

Greenwald is the author of A Tragic Legacy: How a Good vs. Evil Mentality Destroyed the Bush Presidency, How Would a Patriot Act? Defending American Values from a President Run Amok and Great American Hypocrites: Toppling the Big Myths of Republican Politics.