Dear friends,
Today I had the pleasure of being interviewed by Scott Horton for the second time (click here to listen to my first interview with him after the Hamas takeover of Gaza) for his radio talk show. Scott asked me to call his show to discuss my recent article about Iranian options in case of a US attack.
Click here to listen to this interview (the interview proper begins after a 25 minutes monologue by Scott).
Let me know what you think, ok?
Cheers,
VS
(audio in ogg format available here)
Blown away by your interview.
Thanks so much for your work. I am so glad anti-war radio is posting your stuff.
Hopefully informationclearinghouse,counterpunch, Juan Cole, angryarab,Scott Ritter, etc. will start posting your stuff.
Be well and best of luck
Thanks for your words of support. I know that the editor of antiwar.com as refused to publish my article as “too long, too speculative, and too anti-Israeli” (I am not kidding)
I also wrote to Ritter, but he has not replied so far. Does he have a blog or website I do not know about?
I’ll Look into the Ritter thing and get back to you.
I can’t seem to find a Ritter blog, but he is an official “contributor” at truthdig.com and you could probably contact him through their website.
Really surprised to hear that crap about antiwar.com regarding your pieces. I think informationclearinghouse.info may be a good bet. An Iraqi woman named Layla Anwar gets her utterly scathing indictments of the American war machine published. Also the author Mike Whitney,whose often at ICH, can help authors get their foot in the door at that website(or at least I’ve been told that, don’t know for sure.)
Vees,
Quit trying to persuade the “Libertarians” or the “Paleocons”of your point of view. Though they may agree with a lot of what you write on specific issues, their agenda is not that much different to the “Neocons” or “Traditional capitalists”.
Don’t forget these same people are quite happy to support unbridled capitalism (eg China, child labour in Indonesia). The fact they have a “libertarian” anti-war stance doesn’t make them progressive.
datta – thanks for the info. Do you know any the folks you mentioned personally?
Quit trying to persuade the “Libertarians” or the “Paleocons”of your point of view. Though they may agree with a lot of what you write on specific issues, their agenda is not that much different to the “Neocons” or “Traditional capitalists”. Don’t forget these same people are quite happy to support unbridled capitalism (eg China, child labour in Indonesia). The fact they have a “libertarian” anti-war stance doesn’t make them progressive.
No, it indeed doesn’t. But that is not something they claim to be, or something which I want them to be, for that matter. However important, horrible, dramatic or otherwise important all the other issues on the table might be, they are, at least in the USA, all totally dwarfed by the two “big ones”:
1) Should the USA remain a democratic (small ‘d’) republic or should it turn into an authoritatian Empire
2) Are US Imperial wars of agression on behalf of Israel, the oil lobby and the military-industrial complex good or bad for the USA (not to mention the rest of the world).
There is a gradual realization here that these two big issues are vital to the future of this country. Ron Paul, Mike Gravel, Dennis Kucinich, Ralph Nader, Pat Buchanan and many others are just the tip of an iceberg of people who come to that realization. Look at the Counterpunch folks: they are, at least by US standards, fairly strongly to the left. Buchanan is considered, again by US standards, a very conservative person. Well, they actually have much in common.
Of course, none of them will be some US version of Arlette Laguiller or even Hugo Chavez, that simply ain’t happening here. Period. But all of them are all that stands between us (the rest of the planet) and a Fascist President in the White House in 2008.
Also – there really has been a neocon grab for power here. I do not buy into the “the Jews did it” kind of rhetoric (if only because a lot of Jews in the USA are opposed to the Neocons), but when the Jew-haters here speak of “ZOG” as in Zionist Occupation Government they almost have a point. There is definitely a Neocon Occupation Government which is totally alien to what this country has been, to its history and to its culture. Creeps like Libby or Perle or Wolfowitz are truly representatives of a “cabal” (to use their own expression) which has taken over under Dubya and which is going to ruin this country (and Israel, by the way). This cabal needs to be given the boot. That is literally vital for the future of the planet.
The USA has a long and ugly history of doing the wrong thing, and yes, the people who ran this country since the European occuppied it were not, for the most part, good people. But as Hegel says, quantitative differences do eventually result in qualitative differences and I submit to you that the Neocons are in *quality* fundamentally different form the folks which ran this country in the past.
All this is to say that I will not stop trying do help unify any and all forces which oppose the Neocon Empire. For my sins, I now live here. This is my civic duty not to “be a bystander” as Ehuda Bauer wrote (see “words to live by” on my front page). Also, I know and love many Americans and I do not want this country to turn into an Imperial Fascist Gulag run by Neocons.
I consider opposing and denoucing these Neocons as a civic and moral duty of mine. Even if I fail, at least I will be able to tell myself and my kids that I tired, that I fought with the only weapon which I will ever use: ideas.
This all probably souns naive. Fine – then I choose to be naive.
Kind regards, my friend,
VS
Second attempt, first one lost in cyberspace.
Hey Vees, filos mou.
Maybe I wasn’t clear in my last post. I was responding to this part:
“…..I know that the editor of antiwar.com as refused to publish my article as “too long, too speculative, and too anti-Israeli” (I am not kidding)” – Vees.
What I meant was, because I don’t trust the “Paleocons” and the “Libertarians”, I wasn’t particularly surprised by their refusal to publish your article.
That’s why I said to quit on them, not quit full stop.
Keep up the writing the radio shows etc, we need your clear analysis and insight into what is happening in the Imperial homeland. I would never tell anyone to quit criticising the Neocons and fighting for their beliefs.
The Neocons need to be exposed and stopped, but IMO, not at any cost.
I’ll write a longer piece when I get time. I think the whole issue is really about whether the Neocons ARE in fact fundamentally qualitatively different from their predecessors, or are they just a more authoritarian continuation?
More later, keep up the writing.
What I meant was, because I don’t trust the “Paleocons” and the “Libertarians”, I wasn’t particularly surprised by their refusal to publish your article.
That’s why I said to quit on them, not quit full stop.
Dear AC, filos mou,
I guess I am truly a mikrokefali as I undersood that you meant not that I should stop it all, but that I should stop trying to unite those Americans who oppose the Empire because (at least most of)these Americans are not progressives (which is true, they aren’t).
And my poorly written response (it was late and I was exhausted) was meant to say that even though I realized that most anti-Imperial Americans were rabid conservatives *by European standards* it did not really matter as long as they were sincere in their anti-war and anti Empire stance (which a large chunk of US conservatives in fact truly are).
Please read how Justin Raimondo endored Ralph Nader in 2004:
http://www.amconmag.com/2004_11_08/cover2.html
That is a well-known Libertarian, close to paleo-conservatives, endorsing a GREEN candidate favored by the American hard left (by US standards, that is).
Lemme know what you think, ok?
Cheers!
VS
VS,
Do not know them personally.