Muhammad Sahimi, Professor of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science at the University of Southern California, discusses the co-opting of Jundullah by the CIA and Saudi Arabia to destabilize Iran, Congress’s generous $300 million outlay to terrorist groups who participate in covert actions against U.S. enemies, Jundullah’s likely participation in the Afghanistan-to-Europe heroin trade and the global struggle over Central Asian petroleum pipeline routes.

MP3 here. (23:56)

Muhammad Sahimi is NIOC Professor of Petrolium Engineering and Professor of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science at the University of Southern California. He has written extensively on Iran’s nuclear program and its political developments. His article “Jundallah and the Geopolitics of Energy” is available on Antiwar.com.

Donald Losman, professor of economics at the Industrial College of the Armed Forces, discusses the secondary role OPEC played in 1970s U.S. economic problems, U.S. government intervention in oil prices that encouraged poor consumer choices in the broader economy, the numerous real costs not included in a barrel of oil and why military coercion is not needed to spur international trade.

MP3 here. (28:13)

Donald Losman is a professor of economics at the Industrial College of the Armed Forces, National Defense University, Washington, D.C. He is the author of a 2001 policy analysis for the CATO Institute, “Economic Security: A National Security Folly?”

Losman began teaching at the Industrial College of the Armed Forces (ICAF) in 1982 and also holds a diploma from ICAF. He has worked in senior professional military education since 1978, having taught at the U.S. Army War College and the National War College as well. Earlier, he was a civilian academic for 14 years. Dr. Losman holds a PhD in international economics from the University of Florida, with a minor in international politics. He has also served as a consultant to the Small Business Administration and the World Bank; he has worked in the Pentagon and for an economic consulting corporation. Dr. Losman is the author of four books, over 60 scholarly articles, and op-ed pieces in all our nation’s leading newspapers as well as in overseas publications. He has regional expertise in the Middle East and is recognized as an authority on economic sanctions. He also has expertise in defense industrial base issues and the electronics industries.

The views expressed are the author’s and do not represent the views of the National  Defense University or the Department of Defense.

Pepe Escobar, writer for the Asia Times, discusses the importance of home-field advantage in the fossil fuel Great Game, how the U.S. empire of bases is used to dominate access to critical energy resources, the IPI (Iran, Pakistan, India) pipeline proposal that defies U.S. influence and the increasing cooperation of Russia and China on energy issues.

MP3 here. (26:36)

Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving Into Liquid War and Obama Does Globalistan. His article “Welcome to Pipelineistan” appears at Tomdispatch.com.

Noam Chomsky, author of Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media, discusses the roots of U.S. imperialism, the often overlooked opportunity costs of empire, the exaggerated strength of U.S. economic rivals, the continuation of the Great Game into the 21st century, how the Western World’s observance of the Durand Line exacerbates problems in Afghanistan, the empire’s loss in Iraq, the U.S. doctrine of punishing Iran just to make an example out of them and the Israeli policy of incremental displacement of the Palestinian population in the occupied territories.

MP3 here. (41:12)

Noam Chomsky is professor emeritus of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and widely regarded as the father of modern linguistics. He is the author of Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy, Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic Societies and dozens of other books on politics and linguistics.

David R. Henderson, research fellow with the Hoover Institution, discusses the love-fest between Congressional Democrats and President Obama, the benefit of empire for a select few and the net loss for everyone else, the common misconceptions on what caused and worsened the 1973 oil crisis and the difficulty of communicating with people whose ideas and arguments are wrapped in insulating layers of emotion and patriotism.

MP3 here. (37:08)

David R. Henderson is a research fellow with the Hoover Institution and an associate professor of economics in the Graduate School of Business and Public Policy at the Naval Postgraduate School. He writes a regular column, “The Wartime Economist”, for Antiwar.com and is the author of The Joy of Freedom: An Economist’s Odyssey. His latest book is The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics.

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.

Bill Kelsey, libertarian activist and sometimes relief pilot for an NGO in Africa, discusses the crises in Congo and Sudan, what he learned about libertarianism growing up in the Middle East and how it relates to the Israel-Palestine conflict.

MP3 here. (54:47)

Bill Kelsey is a relief pilot for an NGO and oil companies in Africa.

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.

Robert Higgs, senior fellow at the Independent Institute and author of Crisis and Leviathan: Critical Episodes in the Growth of American Government, discusses the legacy of Woodrow Wilson’s Cheney, Edward Mandell House, House’s rise to power and links to big money men, Philip Dru Administrator: A Story of Tomorrow – the blueprint for a fascist America written by House in 1910-11, how House took advantage of Wilson’s narcissism to get America into World War I, the consequences of American intervention in that war, the concept of the “ratchet effect” of government expansion explained in Crisis and Leviathan, why most perceived governmental “failures” are really successes if you understand the intentions, the true character and beneficiaries of the American empire, the economics of the world’s oil market and the buried truth that all of state power is rooted in fear.

MP3 here. (54:05)

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.

Greg Palast, reporter for Harper’s magazine and Rolling Stone, explains how the primary goal of oil companies is to use the war power of the national governments to restrict supplies in order to artificially increase the price of oil, the consequences of the war in Iraq on the price we pay, the fight over control of Caspian oil in the Georgian conflict, the chicken-egg argument about the role of the oil companies and the Pentagon itself in pushing all this imperial expansion, the hidden government taxation in your price of gas per gallon, the truth that the taxpayer bailouts of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae are ultimately bailouts for foreign holders of U.S. debt rather than home owners, and his new project “Steal Back Your Vote.”

MP3 here. (24:18)

Greg Palast is the author of the New York Times bestseller, Armed Madhouse (Penguin 2006). His first reports appeared on BBC television and in the Guardian newspapers. Author of another New York Times bestseller, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, Palast is best known in his native USA as the journalist who, for the Observer (UK), broke the story of how Jeb Bush purged thousands of Black Florida citizens from voter rolls before the 2000 election, thereby handing the White House to his brother George. His reports on the theft of election 2004, the spike of the FBI investigations of the bin Ladens before September 11, the secret State Department documents planning the seizure of Iraq’s oil fields have won him a record six “Project Censored” for reporting the news American media doesn’t want you to hear. He returned to America to report for Harper’s magazine.