Author: Charles Goyette

David Barsamian of AlternativeRadio.org talks about his recent trip to Iran and his forthcoming book Targeting Iran.

David Barsamian is founder and director of Alternative Radio, the independent award-winning weekly series based in Boulder, Colorado. He is a radio producer, journalist, author and lecturer. He has been working in radio since 1978. His interviews and articles appear regularly in The Progressive and Z Magazine.

His latest books are Imperial Ambitions with Noam Chomsky and Speaking of Empire & Resistance with Tariq Ali and Original Zinn with Howard Zinn. His earlier books include Propaganda and the Public Mind: Conversations with Noam Chomsky; Eqbal Ahmad: Confronting Empire and The Decline and Fall of Public Broadcasting.

The Institute for Alternative Journalism named him one of its “Top Ten Media Heroes.” Barsamian lectures on U.S. foreign policy, the media, propaganda, and corporate power in the U.S., Canada, Brazil, India and Europe. He is the winner of the ACLU’s Upton Sinclair Award for independent journalism, the 2006 Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Award and the Cultural Freedom Fellowship from the Lannan Foundation.

MP3 here. (37:04)

Historian Gareth Porter explains the Iranians’ cooperation with the United States after 9/11 and their attempt to make peace in 2003, which included putting Iran’s nuclear program, support for Hamas and Hezbollah and recognition of Israel on the table for negotiation, and how the Bush administration – including Rice and Rove – rebuffed it.

MP3 here.

Gareth Porter, a historian and journalist, writes regularly on U.S. policy in Iran and Iraq for Inter Press Service. His most recent book is Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam.

Michael Schwartz discusses his article “Baghdad Surges into Hell: First Results from the President’s Offensive,” the Sadrists’ tactic of withdrawing for the time being, the administrations’ goals for future control Iraqi resources.

MP3 here.

Michael Schwartz, Professor of Sociology and Faculty Director of the Undergraduate College of Global Studies at Stony Brook University, has written extensively on popular protest and insurgency as well as on American business and government dynamics. His books include Radical Protest and Social Structure, and Social Policy and the Conservative Agenda (edited with Clarence Lo). His work on Iraq has appeared on numerous Internet sites including Tomdispatch.com, Asia Times, Mother Jones, and ZNet; and in print in Contexts, Against the Current, and Z Magazine.

Antiwar Radio: David Mitchell

Former Vietnam War resister David Mitchell discusses his own case, the trial of Lt. Ehren Watada and the larger issue of men being forced to obey illegal orders.

MP3 here. (15:48)

Antiwar Radio: Tony Swindell

Vietnam veteran and newspaper editor Tony Swindell tells the story (he was there that day) of Hugh Thompson and the My Lai massacre, how the Army destroyed Thompson for his heroic actions, the terrible fact that his predictions about Iraq have come true, his open letter to U.S. soldiers “The Looming Shadow of Nuremberg,” and the case of Lt. Ehren Watada.

MP3 here. (17:53)

Antiwar Radio: Bob Watada

Bob Watada explains the situation of his son Ehren, the American officer being punished by the military for refusing to deploy to Iraq and “offending” the military with his public statements, how the State will not let him present a defense in “court” as the State rejects its own Nuremberg standard, the amount of gratitude expressed to him by fellow soldiers and how Americans can be helpful to Ehren’s cause.

MP3 here. (17:26)

From “US Hypocrisy Reaches All-Time High” by Paul Craig Roberts:

“U.S. Army Lt. Ehren Watada took the Nuremberg lesson to heart. He refused to deploy to Iraq on the solid grounds that the war is illegal, which it is under the Nuremberg standard, and that he cannot order troops under his command to commit illegal actions. Watada is correct. If the U.S. general staff had the integrity of Lt. Watada, America and Iraq would have been spared the pointless and bloody conflict. Bush was able to illegally initiate the conflict because the American military behaved exactly as the German military and followed the orders of a criminal commander in chief. Watada must be court-martialed in order to protect Bush and his obedient commanders from war crimes charges.

“By prosecuting Lt. Watada, the U.S. military has demeaned the Nuremberg trials and demoted them to merely the revenge of the victorious. Watada’s prosecution demolishes the illusion that the Nuremberg trials established a civilized principle of international law. All it did was to reaffirm that might is right. Germany’s ideology of domination was a war crime, but America’s ideology of domination is not.”