Denis Collins

Libby Trial Juror #9 Speaks

[audio:http://dissentradio.com/charles/aw2007-07-10deniscollins.mp3]

Denis Collins, Libby trial juror #9, formerly a reporter with the Washington Post, and author of Spying: The Secret History of History and Nora’s Army discusses him time on the juror in the case of Scooter Libby.

MP3 here. (29:25)

Denis Collins, an American journalist who has written for the Washington Post, the San Jose Mercury News, and the Miami Herald, served as juror #9 in the trial of I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Jr., relating to the Plame affair, and was the first juror to comment publicly about the trial. He is a former reporter for the Washington Post and the author of two recent books: Spying: The Secret History of History; and Nora’s Army.

He is a resident of Washington, D.C..

Pauline Baker

“Failed” and “Near-failed” States

[audio:http://dissentradio.com/charles/aw2007-07-10drpaulinebaker.mp3]

Dr. Pauline Baker, president of The Fund for Peace, discusses the recent report on “failed states,” the factors which qualifies one as such, why Iraq is in second place on the list, Zimbabwe’s inflationary tyranny, Pakistan and Afganistan’s precarious positions.

MP3 here. (17:34)

Pauline H. Baker is President of The Fund for Peace, a research and educational organization that works to prevent war and alleviate the conditions that cause war. The FfP specializes on the diagnosis and resolution of conflicts associated with weak and failing states and on foreign policy responses. Dr. Baker pioneered the development of CAST, the Conflict Assessment System Tool, that provides a model for the early warning and assessment of post-conflict policies. CAST was the basis for the Failed States Index, published by Foreign Policy magazine and the FfP. A political scientist with over 40 years of experience working, Dr. Baker also taught at the University of Lagos in Nigeria, the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, and Georgetown University’s School of Advanced International Studies. She was also a professional staff member of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee and staff director of the African Affairs Subcommittee. She has published over 80 articles, essays and books. She received her Doctorate from UCLA and her undergraduate degree from Douglass College, Rutgers University.

Al Qaeda — Stronger Than Ever

Al Qaeda is as strong as it was before 9/11, and the American “counter-attack,” according to a new National Intelligence Estimate — and so the “war on terrorism” we’ve been fighting all this time has been for nought. We’re fighting them over there so we don’t have to fight them over here — but, guess what, they are still over here, stronger and more numerous than ever.

Christopher Hitchens, 1976: Saddam a “visionary”

The pro-war blowhard Christopher Hitchens is one of those former leftists-turned-neocons who changed his spots but not his soul, which is that of a power-worshipper. Back in the 1970s, when it looked like socialism might be the wave of the future, he was a Trotskyist (like so many of the neocons), who wrote an article for the New Statesman that valorized Saddam Hussein as “perhaps the first visionary Arab statesman since Nasser.” Hailing the “fierce revolutionary ideology” of a state that was “the first oil-producing government to opt for 100-per-cent nationalization,” Comrade Hitchens tells us he met a man who lives on a houseboat moored in the Tigris river who embodies the history of modern Iraq, having been imprisoned by the British, by the pro-Soviet predecessor to Saddam, and then by the Ba’athists. He writes:

“There had been torture and brutality of a far worse sort than his previous incarcerations. And yet he declared that he thought the present government the best Iraqi Administration he had seen. Why? ‘Because it has made us strong and respected.’ There seems no getting round this point. From the festeringly poor and politically dependent nation of a generation ago, Iraq has become a power in every sense — military, economic and ideological. “

You can see the Trotskyite gleam in his eyes as he exclaims:

“Iraq is dedicated to the idea of a single socialist Arab nation from Gibraltar to the Indian ocean; the original Ba’athist dream.”

Thirty years ago, Hitchens was hailing the secular socialist Saddam as the greatest Arab “visionary” of his time: today, he hails Saddam’s overthrow by the US as an act of “liberation,” and this even as the horrifically bloody aftermath continues to inflict terror on the prostrate peoples of Iraq. What changed?

Nothing, really: it’s just that, back in 1976, it looked like the Third World tyrants, “secular socialists” like Saddam, were winning. Today, it looks like the US is winning. As Orwell noted in his “Second Thoughts on James Burnham,” a certain kind of intellectual worships power, and will ally himself with the strongest brute out of “idealistic” idolatry, and a sense of invincible power.  

Yesterday Saddam was “perhaps the first visionary Arab statesman since Nasser,” today he is (or was) a vicious tyrant who had to be overthrown by American force of arms — and isn’t it odd that the same bad intellectual habits and frame of mind produced both evaluations?