Antiwar.com Blog

[audio:http://wiredispatch.com/scott/07_11_14_alexandrovna.mp3]

RawStory’s managing news editor Larisa Alexandrovna discusses the recent Israeli attack on Syria, the War Party’s many versions of what happened, U.S. and Israeli refusal to cooperate with the IAEA’s investigation, Iran’s cooperation with the IAEA, a leak to her saying the war is in motion and cannot be stopped, Cheney’s hatred for the CIA, possible ulterior motives for the outing of Valerie Plame and the Sibel Edmonds case’s ties to the AIPAC trial and a tangled web of espionage, politics and international crime.

MP3 here. (46:15)

Larisa Alexandrovna is a journalist, essayist and poet. She is currently managing news editor for Raw Story, and contributes regularly to other publications in the alternative press. She also hangs out at her blog, AT-LARGELY.

Her work is cited by mass media outlets such as Rolling Stone, New York Times, Mother Jones, and other notable publications. She is best known for her reporting on domestic intelligence issues and foreign military affairs. For the past few years she has been focused on the build up for war with Iran, pre-Iraq war intelligence, and other national security and intelligence stories.

[audio:http://wiredispatch.com/scott/07_11_13_floyd.mp3]

Chris Floyd, author of Empire Burlesque, the blog and the book, discusses the new government of Gordon Brown in Great Britain, his position on war with Iran, the specious relationship between the US and UK and Saudis, the War Party’s bogus accusations about Iran’s nuclear program and sabotage of any effort to work things out, the win-win position of the neo-mercantilists in the event of war, depression, etc., the death of the republic, end of the empire, and rise of the domestic police state, the willful ignorance and acquiescence of the American people and the responsibility of those of us who care to keep fighting the State anyway.

MP3 here. (47:26)

Chris Floyd is an award-winning American journalist, and author of the book, Empire Burlesque: High Crimes and Low Comedy in the Bush Regime. For more than 11 years he wrote the featured political column, Global Eye, for The Moscow Times and the St. Petersburg Times in Russia. He also served as UK correspondent for Truthout.org, and was an editorial writer for three years for The Bergen Record. His work appears regularly CounterPunch, The Baltimore Chronicle and in translation in the Italian paper, Il Manifesto, and has also been published in such venues as The Nation, the Christian Science Monitor, Columbia Journalism Review, The Ecologist and many others. His articles are also featured regularly on such websites as Information Clearing House, Buzzflash, Bushwatch, LewRockwell.com, Antiwar.com, and many others. His work has been cited in The New York Times, USA Today, the Guardian, the Independent and other major newspapers.

Floyd co-founded the blog Empire Burlesque with webmaster Richard Kastelein, who created the site using open-source software. Floyd is also chief editor of Atlantic Free Press, which was founded and designed by Kastelein. Floyd has been a writer and editor for more than 25 years, working in the United States, Great Britain and Russia for various newspapers, magazines, the U.S. government and Oxford University.

[audio:http://wiredispatch.com/scott/07_11_13_prather.mp3]

Gordon Prather continues the discussion on Iran’s nuclear program, the recent attack on IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei by John “Bonkers Bolton,” speculation that the neocons outed Plame in order to destroy the CIA’s monitoring of Iranian nuclear black market operations, Cheney’s suppression of the Iran National Intelligence Estimate for over a year, the fact that Iran was not obligated to tell the IAEA about the things they were keeping secret, how Bolton and the neocons unraveled the Agreed Framework agreed upon by Clinton and North Korea, how Rice put it back together, the circumstances surrounding the withdrawal of UN weapons inspectors in ’98, the low quality of Iran’s P1 subsonic centrifuges and the current status of IAEA negotiations.

MP3 here. (42:44)

Physicist James Gordon Prather has served as a policy implementing official for national security-related technical matters in the Federal Energy Agency, the Energy Research and Development Administration, the Department of Energy, the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the Department of the Army. Dr. Prather also served as legislative assistant for national security affairs to U.S. Sen. Henry Bellmon, R-Okla. – ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee and member of the Senate Energy Committee and Appropriations Committee. Dr. Prather had earlier worked as a nuclear weapons physicist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California and Sandia National Laboratory in New Mexico.

[audio:http://wiredispatch.com/charles/aw2007-11-13craigunger.mp3]

Craig Unger, author of House of Bush, House of Saud and The Fall of the House of Bush, discusses George W. Bush and the neocon crew’s destruction of the Bush family name and the policy of Bush Sr., Brent Scowcroft’s attempts to reign the boy in, why the realists didn’t overthrow Baghdad, Jr.’s psychological problems, his lie that he was converted to Christianity by Billy Graham when really he was baptized in a toilet, his belief in John Hagee style Christian Zionism, Cheney’s role in the administration and the danger of war with Iran.

MP3 here. (38:44)

Craig Unger is an award winning investigative reporter and author based in New York. His work has been published in The New Yorker, Esquire, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times and many other publications. He is currently a contributing editor to Vanity Fair magazine and the best-selling author of House of Bush, House of Saud (Scribner, 2004), and The Fall of the House of Bush (Scribner, 2007). He is also a Fellow at The Center on Law and Security at NYU’s School of Law. His work was featured in Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 and he has appeared as an analyst on CNN, The Charlie Rose Show on PBS, NBC’s Today Show, National Public Radio, ABC Radio, Air America, and many other broadcast outlets.

Daniel Koffler douses the Ron Paul fund-raising brouhahardy-har-har cooked up by Jamie Kirchick and Daniel Sieradski. (Shockingly, Sieradski is employed by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, which I used to think was a serious news outlet.)

I have nothing to add to Koffler’s excellent commentary, except that Antiwar.com is in the middle of its quarterly fund-raiser, and if any disreputable types such as Kirchick and Sieradski would like to send us money, we’d be happy to take it – and keep right on promoting the peace and non-interventionism they so despise.

UPDATE 11/14: Wow, they really need to get their sh*t together over at the JTA. Whatever happened, I agree with Andrew Sullivan that Sieradski’s “assertion that Ron Paul ‘doesn’t take phone calls from Jews’ was designed to be, and remains, a slur.”

[audio:http://wiredispatch.com/charles/aw2007-11-08craigmurray.mp3]

Craig Murray, former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan and author of Dirty Diplomacy: The Rough-and-Tumble Adventures of a Scotch-Drinking, Skirt-Chasing, Dictator-Busting and Thoroughly Unrepentant Ambassador Stuck on the Frontline of the War Against Terror, discusses the tyranny in Uzbekistan, the similarity between the views of Michael Mukasey and those of Uzbek dictator Islam Karimov, the ties between the American government and the Karimov, the knowlege and complicity of the American government and some good times drinking and chasing skirts.

MP3 here. (23:14)

In 1984 Craig Murray joined the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office. As a member of the Diplomatic Service his responsibilities included the following:

1986-9 Second Secretary, Commercial, British High Commission, Lagos Responsible for promoting British exports to, and business interests in, Nigeria.

1989-92 Head of Maritime Section, FCO, London Responsible for negotiation of the UK and Dependent Territory continental shelf and fisheries boundaries, for implementation of the Channel Tunnel treaty and for negotiations on the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. From August 1990 to August 1991 he was also head of the FCO Section of the Embargo Surveillance Centre, responsible for intelligence analysis on Iraqi attempts at evading sanctions, particularly in the field of weapons procurement, and with providing information to UK military forces and to other governments to effect physical enforcement of the embargo.

1992-4 Head of Cyprus Section, FCO London Responsible for UN negotiations on the Cyprus dispute, relations with the government of Cyprus and for the mandate and requirements of the British contingent of the UN force in Cyprus,

1994-7 First Secretary (Political and Economic), British Embassy, Warsaw Head of the Political and Economic sections of our Embassy in Poland. Responsible for relations with Poland, and assisting Poland’s post-communist transition process with reference to preparation for EU membership.

1997-8 Deputy Head, Africa Department (Equatorial), Foreign and Commonwealth Office Responsible for British political and commercial relationships with West Africa, including development issues.

1998-2002 Deputy High Commissioner, British High Commission, West Africa Branch Responsible for British economic, political, commercial and aid relationships with Ghana and Togo. In Autumn 1998 Craig Murray was the UK Representative at the Sierra Leone Peace talks held in Togo, Liberia and Sierra Leone, including direct negotiation with the RUF terrorist leadership.

2002-2004 British Ambassador, Uzbekistan Responsible for our relationship with Uzbekistan. He found Western support for the dictatorial Karimov regime unconscionable, as detailed in the rest of this website.

At the 2005 UK General Election, Craig Murray takes on Foreign Secretary Jack Straw in Blackburn as an Independent candidate, winning 2,082 votes.