Antiwar.com Blog

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.

Scott Ritter, former weapons inspector and author of Target Iran: The Truth About the White House’s Plans for Regime Change, says it is a deception that the U.S. government is concerned about Iran’s nuclear program or that they mean to use diplomacy to put an end to it, but instead is determined to have regime change in that country regardless. He also discusses some of the likely consequences if America does attack.

Transcript here.

MP3 here. (60:45)

Gasp! IOZ questions the “good war.” Can he do that?

Justin Raimondo explains the strange ideological journey of the neoconservatives from left-wing crazies to right-wing crazies, his take on the situation in Iraq and the possibility of war with Iran and the crazies grudge against Russia.

MP3 here.

Justin Raimondo is the editorial director of Antiwar.com. He is the author of An Enemy of the State: The Life of Murray N. Rothbard (Prometheus Books, 2000). He is also the author of Reclaiming the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement (with an Introduction by Patrick J. Buchanan), (Center for Libertarian Studies, 1993), and Into the Bosnian Quagmire: The Case Against U.S. Intervention in the Balkans (1996).

He is a contributing editor for The American Conservative, a Senior Fellow at the Randolph Bourne Institute, and an Adjunct Scholar with the Ludwig von Mises Institute, and writes frequently for Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture.