Category: Podcast Info

Dr. Nafeez Ahmed provides us with an overview of the role played by US military and intelligence practices in the creation of terrorism, particularly Al-Qaeda. This is the next edition of the Boiling Frogs interview series, co-hosted with Sibel Edmonds. He tells us about the status of investigations into the Blair government’s complicity with the Bush administration in supporting the invasion of Iraq. He discusses possible factors behind Americans’ long-held denial and dismissal of dark US foreign policy practices as conspiracies. Mr. Nafeez talks about the Obama administration, the ongoing posture of US corporate interests and the desire to dominate world energy supplies, the so-called liquid bombing plot and how it was mythologized in the US, and more.
Dr. Nafeez Ahmed is a bestselling author and political analyst. He is the Executive Director of the Institute for Policy Research & Development, and has taught courses in contemporary history and international relations theory at the University of Sussex. His Doctoral thesis investigated the radicalization processes and dynamics of violent conflict in the context of hierarchical social systems in the modern world. Dr. Ahmed has also published extensively on international security issues, including The London Bombings; The War on Truth; Behind the War on Terror; and The War on Freedom. He has been an expert commentator for BBC News 24, BBC World Today, Al-Jazeera English, among others. He is currently advising the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst on engaging British Muslim communities.

Scott Horton of Harper’s on Gitmo homicides; refugee Ziad Abbas on the humanitarian crisis in Gaza; PBC on Obama’s State of the Union speech. Horton has done an incredible reporting job with credible eyewitness accounts about the events of June 9, 2006 at the black site “Camp No” outside the main prison at Guantamo Bay, as 3 prisoners were transferred to Camp No and returned, dead, hours later. The incredible cover story is that these men stuffed cloths down their throats and hanged themselves “in acts of asymmetrical warfare”. Horton details the events, and the coverup that continues under Obama. Abbas is a Palestinian refugee who works for Middle East Children’s Alliance, and he details the man-made humanitarian crisis in Gaza, where 56% of the population is under 18 and most of the water is too polluted to drink. And your humble host points out the critical issues that slipped his mind and were not mentioned in the speech; he objects to Obama’s embrace the McCain-Hoover gimmick of a “spending freeze” that does not include military spending and energy proposals that include new nuke power plants, the lie of “clean coal”, and more offshore drilling.

Andy Worthington on Guantanamo. This is the next installment of the Boiling Frogs interview series, co-hosted with Sibel Edmonds. Worthington is a leading expert on Guantanamo and provides us with an overview of America’s detention center at Guantanamo Bay and the plight of 774 individuals, most of whom are innocent of any terrorism connections. He discusses the general view of the US government and Americans held by many of those released, and the rarity of radicalization or revenge seeking among them. Worthington talks about the astonishing lack of interest and coverage of these cases and stories by the US media, President Obama’s failure in meeting the release deadline despite his promises during the presidential campaign, the number and current status of inmates released to date…and more.

Andy Worthington is a journalist and historian, based in London. He is the author of The Guantánamo Files, the first book to tell the stories of all the detainees in Guantanamo Bay, and the co-director of the new documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantanamo.” You can visit his blog here.

David Cobb on Supreme Court, Inc. and nurse Deborah Berger on Haiti relief. Cobb was the 2004 Green Party presidential candidate and is a strong opponent of corporate control. He offers a clear critique of the Supreme Court’s landmark decision that removes the limits on direct corporate electioneering for candidates, and raises concerns about foreign corporate money and potential limits on union support for candidates. He directs our activism to efforts to amend the Constitution to limit corporate influence. Ms. Berger is a president of the California Nurses Assn and the new national union, National Nurses United; they have recruited 12,000 RN’s who are ready to deploy to Haiti over the next 4-6 months, but are on hold until they get approval to enter the country. Berger talks about the challenges Haiti is facing and the medical needs of displaced people. It costs $250 per nurse per day, and you can donate here.

Stolen election? Stolen democracy? Brad Friedman of Bradblog.com raises serious questions about the Senate election in Massachusetts and grave concerns about the pro-corporate Supreme Court decision; Joe Carson, Energy Dept. whistleblower, with a challenge to Obama and NY Times. Friedman hammers the Democrats for conceding before the votes were counted, despite a number of reports of ballots pre-marked for Scott Brown and clear disparities between hand-counted precincts and machine-counted ones. He also decries the 5-4 Supreme Court vote allowing corporations to fund political campaigns; PBC predicts the GOP will soon buy passage of “paycheck protection” to silence unions and enhance the power of the corporate interests. Carson, a safety engineer at the Dept. of Energy’s Oak Ridge labs, has won numerous whistleblower cases, and still has his job! He challenges the administration and the media to follow the law and restore the rights of federal employees who expose wrongdoing and lawbreaking. Carson invites you to support Dave Nolan for appointment to Office of Special Counsel.

Daniel Ellsberg: Obama has “pissed on” our hopes. Co-hosted with Sibel Edmonds, this is the next chapter of the Boiling Frogs interview series. Dan Ellsberg provides us with his analysis of Barack Obama’s presidency, shares with us what led him to cast his vote for Obama, and how and why he’s been let down and betrayed by our current president. He discusses the stark similarities between the previous administration and Obama’s White House on issues and abuses related to civil liberties, and questions the possibility of ‘hoping’ again. Ellsberg talks about his experience as a whistleblower, the futility of disclosure to Congress then and today, the current sorry state of the US media, and how he met Sibel Edmonds–and why he admires her.
Ellsberg graduated from Harvard in economics in 1952, served in the US Marine Corps from 1954-57, and obtained a PhD in economics from Harvard while working for the Rand Corporation in 1962. In 1964 he joined the Defense Department to work principally on decision-making in the Vietnam War. Ellsberg precipitated a national political controversy in 1971 when he released the Pentagon Papers, a Top-Secret Pentagon study of US government decision-making about the Vietnam War, to the New York Times and other publications. Ellsberg has ever since campaigned for peace and encouraged others to speak truth to power.

Sasha Abramsky, Inside Obama’s Brain, new study questions validity of Prop. 8 election. Abramsky writes for The Nation, Mother Jones, Rolling Stone and other publications. His book is a study of Obama’s traits and is based on interviews with over 100 people who know Obama. We talk about the campaign and the first year in office, and PBC asks how this “brain” could run a brilliant campaign, then fumble health care reform, maintain or extend some of Bush’s worst actions, and make the dumb decision to escalate in Afghanistan. Emily Levy of Velvet Revolution helped set up the exit poll analysis of the Prop 8 vote in Los Angeles County, and Richard Hayes Phillips conducted the study. Phillips did the painstaking reconstruction of Ohio’s election heist in 2004, Witness to a Crime. You can read the report and get links to activism here.

Russ Baker on the Bush dynasty. Baker discusses his book, Family of Secrets, the first complete historic portrait of the generations of Bushes in government, and provides us with an overview of how this dynasty shaped our politics. This is the next installment of the Boiling Frogs interview series, co-hosted with Sibel Edmonds. He tells us about the shadow government in the US, the real players, elites, and power centers within each president’s government, and the limitation on what and how much an American president can accomplish – considering the influence of these powerful and independent fiefdoms characterized by entrenched agendas and constant intrigue. Baker defines and explains the concept of Forensic Journalism, and talks about his nonprofit news organization WhoWhatWhy, the need for nonpartisan and independent journalism today, the current media landscape in the US, and more.
Russ Baker is an award-winning investigative journalist and the author of Family of Secrets- – the Bush Dynasty, America’s Invisible Government, and the Hidden History of the Last Fifty Years. He has written for The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, The Nation, The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Village Voice and Esquire. He has served as a contributing editor to the Columbia Journalism Review, and is the founder of WhoWhatWhy, a nonpartisan, nonprofit investigative news organization.