Ivan Eland, Senior Fellow at The Independent Institute, discusses the China fear-mongering used to fend off U.S. defense budget cuts, the future of artificial intelligence warfare, the seeming normalcy of U.S. interventionist foreign policy and how Woodrow Wilson ruined the 20th century for everyone.

MP3 here. (26:05)

Ivan Eland is the author of Recarving Rushmore: Ranking the Presidents on Peace, Prosperity, and Liberty and regular Antiwar.com columnist.

John Basil Utley, associate publisher of The American Conservative, discusses the directly proportional relationship between lengthy congressional incumbency and pro-war attitudes, the left-right alliance needed to curb military spending, the military-industrial-congressional complex and the narrowing political divide in the U.S. (except the south).

MP3 here. (31:49)

John Basil Utley is a writer and adviser for Antiwar.com and edits a blog, The Military Industrial Congressional Complex.

Robert Higgs, senior fellow at the Independent Institute and author of Depression, War and Cold War, discusses his thesis of “regime uncertainty” as a major factor of the Great Depression, the crash and recovery of 1921-22, the bubble created by the Fed in the later “roaring” twenties in order to prop up British interests, how World War II provided the certainty big business needed to start investing again – in arms, why the Cold War buildup was still cheap enough for the economy to continue under its weight, who really benefits from empire, who pays, the irrelevance of trade deficits, the roots of the financial crisis in Wall St.’s bogus financial models, congressional and Federal Reserve polices and the cartelized ratings business, the all-important intertwined policy of inflation and war, his view of the extent of the collapse and whether the empire will be dismantled, the danger of high price inflation, danger of nationalization, and why government regulation of the market is responsible for – not the solution to – its failures.

MP3 here. (1:16:17)

Robert Higgs is Senior Fellow in Political Economy for The Independent Institute and Editor of the Institute’s quarterly journal The Independent Review. He received his Ph.D. in economics from Johns Hopkins University, and he has taught at the University of Washington, Lafayette College, Seattle University, and the University of Economics, Prague. He has been a visiting scholar at Oxford University and Stanford University, and a fellow for the Hoover Institution and the National Science Foundation. Dr. Higgs is the editor of The Independent Institute books Opposing the Crusader State, The Challenge of Liberty, Re-Thinking Green, Hazardous to Our Health? and Arms, Politics, and the Economy, plus the volume Emergence of the Modern Political Economy.

His authored books include Neither Liberty Nor Safety, Depression, War, and Cold War, Politická ekonomie strachu (The Political Economy of Fear, in Czech), Resurgence of the Warfare State, Against Leviathan, The Transformation of the American Economy 1865-1914, Competition and Coercion, and Crisis and Leviathan. A contributor to numerous scholarly volumes, he is the author of more than 100 articles and reviews in academic journals.

Joseph Salerno, senior fellow at the Ludwig von Mises Institute, discusses the praxeology of war-making, the difference between entrepreneurs and plutocrats, the unfortunate state of affairs that compels major U.S. businesses to employ Washington lobbyists, the geopolitics of Middle East oil and why foreign policy is war by another name.

MP3 here. (26:19)

Joseph Salerno is a senior fellow at the Ludwig von Mises Institute, professor of economics at Pace University, and editor of the Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics.

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.

Jon Basil Utley, director of Americans Against World Empire, discusses the true costs of the war and staggering defense budget, the many hidden earmarks Congress rewards itself, the role of the empire in the financial meltdown, the many new enemies being created around the world, Americans’ love of war and the end of the empire.

MP3 here. (41:31)

Jon Basil Utley is associate publisher of The American Conservative and Robert A. Taft Fellow at the Ludwig von Mises Institute. A former correspondent for Knight Ridder in South America, Utley has written for the Harvard Business Review on foreign nationalism and was for 17 years a commentator on the Voice of America. He is director of Americans Against World Empire.

Eric Margolis, foreign correspondent for Canada’s Sun National Media and author of the brand new American Raj: Liberation or Domination?: Resolving the Conflict Between the West and the Muslim World, discusses the importance of maintaining level-headed relations with Russia, the consequences of U.S. support for Georgia’s attack on South Ossetia, Pakistan’s decreasing stability and our increased interference, the beginning of the “pipeline security wars,” the war party’s bogus explanations of the causes of terrorism and the Arab world’s former admiration for America.

MP3 here. (53:24)

Award winning author, columnist, and broadcaster Eric S. Margolis has covered 14 wars and is a leading authority on military affairs, the Middle East, South Asia, and Islamic movements. He is foreign correspondent for Canada’s Sun National Media and author of War at the Top of the World and the brand new American Raj: Liberation or Domination?: Resolving the Conflict Between the West and the Muslim World.

Gareth Porter, independent historian and investigative journalist for IPS News and Antiwar.com, discusses the themes in his article “Georgia War Rooted in US Self-Deceit on NATO,” how the national security bureaucracy dominates American policy to the detriment of the rest of Americans’ interests, the rise of the empire after World War II, how American Cold War policy pushed China toward Russia until the 1970s, the imperial bureaucrats desire to expand NATO up to the Russian border to weaken them, the often conflicting views between the American military and corporate policy ambitions and the multitude of excuses given to retain our many hundreds of military bases around the world.

MP3 here. (34:06)

Dr. Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist on U.S. national security policy who has been independent since a brief period of university teaching in the 1980s. Dr. Porter is the author of four books, the latest of which is Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam (University of California Press, 2005). He has written regularly for Inter Press Service on U.S. policy toward Iraq and Iran since 2005.

Joe Lauria, freelance reporter and co-author with former senator Mike Gravel of the new book A Political Odyssey, discusses his article “The Personification of the Military-Industrial Racket,” McCain foreign policy adviser Randy Scheunemann’s long, diabolical history as a chief neocon and war-salesman, McCain’s side-jobs as a foreign asset first for Iran and now Georgia and how luring Russia to retaliate against Georgia may have been instigated to strengthen McCain’s campaign and ratchet up arms sales.

MP3 here. (24:06)

Joe Lauria is a New York-based investigative journalist. A freelance member of the Sunday Times of London Insight team, he has also worked on investigations for the Boston Globe and Bloomberg News. Joe’s articles have additionally appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Daily Telegraph, The Daily Mail, The Guardian, The Montreal Gazette, The Johannesburg Star, The Washington Times, New York Magazine, ARTnews and other publications. He is the author with former U.S. Senator and presidential candidate Mike Gravel of A Political Odyssey: The Rise of American Militarism and One Man’s Fight to Stop It, published by Seven Stories Press, with a foreword by Daniel Ellsberg.