Scott Horton | The Libertarian Institute

9/18/20 Muhammad Sahimi on Pompeo’s Dangerous Iran Failures

by Scott Horton | Sep 21, 2020 | The Scott Horton Show

Muhammad Sahimi discusses Mike Pompeo's continual efforts to provoke a war between the U.S. and Iran, or to incite regime change from within. His "maximum pressure" sanctions campaign is part of the quest to attain one of these outcomes, a policy that Sahimi thinks is both doomed to fail and incredibly dangerous for America. The JCPOA, negotiated by the Obama administration, helped to take the excuse for war off the table, easing tensions between the U.S. and Iran. But President Trump withdrew from the deal almost right away, and his administration has been making aggressive moves toward...

9/18/20 Grant Smith on the Exaggerated Significance of Evangelical Zionists in America

by Scott Horton | Sep 21, 2020 | The Scott Horton Show

Scott talks to Grant Smith about the role of evangelical Christians in the Zionist movement in America. Grant examines the premise that evangelicals are the most significant driving force behind American support for Israel, a popular notion ever since George Bush Sr. blamed his loss to Bill Clinton on his failure to appease evangelical voters on the issue of Israel. But Smith argues that their influence is overblown. He says that the power wielded by actual lobbying groups like AIPAC are still the overwhelming driving force in shaping U.S. policy toward Israel, pushing for things like...

#PalestinianLivesMatter

by Scott Horton | Sep 21, 2020 | Blog

Haaretz: Israeli cops thought the Palestinian shepherd stole a car. So they shot him in the head In the dead of night, Border Police stopped a car carrying three young Palestinians and without a word shot one of them in the head, point blank. Now he may lose his eyesight.

You See, The Police Are Not Actually Your Security Force. They Are Your Enemy.

by Scott Horton | Sep 21, 2020 | Blog

Democrats Scuttle Marijuana Decriminalization Vote Over Fears of Not Being Deferential Enough to Cop Lobbyists A planned House vote on a bill to decriminalize the possession of marijuana was canceled on Thursday under pressure from law enforcement lobbyists and other pro-prohibition special interests. The expected floor vote on the Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement (MORE) Act would have been the biggest accomplishment yet for cannabis reformers, but the effort has been postponed until after Election Day, Politico reports. Democrats have gotten weak-kneed about a bill that...

9/18/20 Tana Ganeva on the Death of Holly Barlow-Austin

by Scott Horton | Sep 20, 2020 | The Scott Horton Show

Scott interviews Tana Ganeva about her recent article detailing the death of a woman due to medical neglect in one of America's worst private jails. Holly Barlow-Austin, an HIV patient, was detained for violating probation starting in April, and within a few short months of brutal neglect, had died. Ganeva hopes to bring attention to this story and others like it through her reporting on private prisons and corrupt police departments. Discussed on the show: "In April, She Was Jailed on a Probation Violation. By June, She Was Dead." (Reason) Tana Ganeva is a reporter covering criminal...

9/18/20 Nasser Arrabyee on the Continued Horrors of the War in Yemen

by Scott Horton | Sep 19, 2020 | The Scott Horton Show

Nasser Arrabyee discusses the war in Yemen, where the Trump administration is now approaching four years of continued support for Saudi Arabia in their war of genocide against the Yemeni population. The UN estimates that close to a quarter of a million civilians have died there since Obama helped start this war, and Arrabyee says that with all the excess deaths from malnutrition and deprivation, there is good reason to believe that that number is much higher. Scott reminds us that the war in Yemen differs from other modern wars in the Middle East in that in most of America's wars, civilians...

9/18/20 Joe Lauria: Day Nine of the Assange Extradition Hearing

by Scott Horton | Sep 19, 2020 | The Scott Horton Show

Joe Lauria comments on the last few days of Julian Assange's extradition hearing. He notes a movement on the part of the prosecution away from their previous tack, which was to argue that Assange was not really a journalist, but actually engaging in hacking and intelligence himself. By establishing that, they may have been able to avoid the obvious problem that the prosecution of Assange could create a precedent for the prosecution of any news organization that published classified documents. The British prosecution may have realized that this strategy was not working because of the obvious...

9/17/20 Ted Snider on the Bahrain ‘Peace’ Agreement

by Scott Horton | Sep 19, 2020 | The Scott Horton Show

Ted Snider comes back for an update on the recent round of "peace deals" conducted by President Trump over the last few weeks. Now Bahrain has joined the normalization agreement between the U.S., Israel and the UAE, a move that Trump and his allies are hailing as unprecedented, but which Snider believes is a great deal of fanfare with very little substance. For one thing, he reminds us that these countries can't declare peace, since they were not at war; they've already been at peace for decades. These deals amount to a public announcement of policies that in practice have been in place for...