MP3 here. (25:13)

Steve Horn is a Research Fellow for DeSmogBlog. He joined the DeSmogBlog team in September 2011. Steve previously was a reporter and researcher at the Center for Media and Democracy, interned in Washington, DC with former U.S. Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI), and interned at the Rotary International world headquarters in Evanston, Illinois. In his free time, Steve is a competitive runner, with a personal best time of 2:43:04 in the 2009 Boston Marathon.

A graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, majoring in political science and legal studies, his writing has appeared on AlterNet, PR Watch, The Nation, Truth-Out, FireDogLake, Common Dreams, Mondoweiss, Uganda’s Daily Monitor, Modern Ghana, the London Evening Post, and CleanTechnica.

MP3 here. (20:36)

Dr. Yousaf Butt is a scientific consultant to the Federation of American Scientists and a physicist in the High-Energy Astrophysics Division at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. He was on the instrument operations team responsible for the main focal plane instrument aboard NASA’s orbiting Chandra X-ray Observatory from 1999-2004. Previously, he has been a fellow in the Committee on International Security and Arms Control at the National Academy of Sciences and a research fellow in the Global Security Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists. He has authored numerous papers on technical aspects of national and global security issues as well as on astrophysics and nuclear physics. He holds a Ph.D. in nuclear physics from Yale University and a dual B.S. in mechanical engineering and physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

MP3 here. (20:02)

Tom Porteous is the deputy program director at Human Rights Watch and is based in Washington DC. He joined Human Rights Watch in 2006 as the London director responsible for communications and advocacy in the United Kingdom. Porteous has a background in journalism, diplomacy, and UN peacekeeping. In the 1980s and early 1990s he was a freelance correspondent for the Guardian newspaper, the BBC, and other media, first in Cairo and later in Berlin, Algeria, and Morocco. He worked in UN peacekeeping operations in Somalia and Liberia. He also served as conflict management adviser for Africa in the UK’s Foreign Office from 2001 to 2003. Porteous studied classics at Oxford University.

Pepe Escobar, journalist and author of Obama Does Globalistan, discusses his article “R2P is now Right 2 Plunder” about the great fortunes to be made rebuilding Libya and extracting its natural resources; how al-Qaeda operative Abdelhakim Belhadj led the rebel onslaught on Tripoli; concern in Washington about the outcome of NATO regime change – helping install a Taliban-like regime in N. Africa won’t help Obama’s reelection chances; why the Saudi monarchy would prefer a friendly emirate, hard core Sunni government; and the huge stockpile of gold and money available to whatever new government takes hold.

MP3 here. (29:12)

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.

Brian Becker, national coordinator for the ANSWER Coalition, discusses his article “Why the NATO powers are trying to assassinate Moammar Gaddafi;” the WikiLeaks documents showing US oil companies and State Department officials unhappy with Libya’s steps toward nationalizing its oil; similarities with the 1953 US-backed coup in Iran; how the Arab spring provided an excuse for NATO’s eager intervention; and why the Iraq War may ultimately have been about oil also.

MP3 here. (16:46)

Brian Becker is the national coordinator for the ANSWER Coalition.

MP3 here. (20:22)

Mark Sheffield runs the Policy on Point blog.

MP3 here. (18:47)

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.

MP3 here. (22:07)

Nebojsa Malic writes the “Moments of Transition” (formerly Balkan Express) column for Antiwar.com and blogs at the Gray Falcon.

Internationally syndicated columnist Eric Margolis discusses the differences between the WikiLeaks Afghan War files and the Pentagon Papers, why the media won’t press the issue and inflame public opinion against the war, the U.S. ultimatum after 9/11 that made Pakistan walk a tightrope between servitude and strategic interests, how private mercenary contractors got out of control and why troop surges are usually met with even larger resistance surges.

Tom Engelhardt, author of The American Way of War: How Bush’s Wars Became Obama’s, discusses the flood of new leaks following the WikiLeaks blockbuster, a possible insurgency within the U.S. military or intelligence services that is determined to end the Afghanistan War, the unprecedented secrecy revealed in the “Top Secret America” Washington Post piece and the markedly different emphasis in the U.K. Guardian vs. The New York Times on the WikiLeaks documents. The show ends with listener calls and some Q&A.

MP3 here. (44:44)

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 appears as an expert on foreign affairs on CNN, BBC, France 2, France 24, Fox News, CTV and CBC.

Tom Engelhardt created and runs the Tomdispatch.com website, a project of The Nation Institute where he is a Fellow. He is the author of a highly praised history of American triumphalism in the Cold War, The End of Victory Culture, and of a novel, The Last Days of Publishing, as well as a collection of his Tomdispatch interviews, Mission Unaccomplished.

MP3 here. (19:24)

Dr. Muhammad Sahimi is a political columnist for Tehran Bureau. He is a professor of chemical engineering and materials science, and the NIOC Chair in petroleum engineering at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. In addition to his scientific research, which has resulted in four books and nearly 300 published papers, he has been writing about Iran’s nuclear program and its internal developments for many years.

His articles have appeared in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, the International Herald Tribune, the Wall Street Journal, Harvard International Review, the Progressive, Antiwar.com and Huffington Post. Muhammad has been a member of the Union of Concerned Scientists since 1986, and a contributor to its Partners for Earth program.