Scott talks to Bob Murphy about the economic side of all the covid policies this past year. Most obvious are the huge spending bills, which dwarf even the stimulus measures taken after the 2008 recession. Murphy reminds us that this kind of rampant spending really means the federal reserve and the treasury have “created” new money out of thin air. This money enters through the financial sector, slowly making its way through the rest of the economy, where it can cause price inflation, stagnating wages and the loss of the value of savings. But it allows the federal government to spread out the harmful effects of its policies in a way that wouldn’t be possible if it were to raise taxes or borrow the money all at once. Murphy also talks about the way that small businesses have been devastated by lockdown policies, while large corporations have absorbed the losses more easily. These large corporations will survive when the small businesses close, buying up their assets and moving in on what used to be their business. This is yet another way that huge government action benefits big business and the politically connected at the expense of the average business owner, employee or taxpayer.

Discussed on the show:

• “Understanding Money Mechanics” (Mises Institute)
• “Neoliberal Champion Larry Summers Opens Mouth, Inserts Both Feet” (TK News by Matt Taibbi)
• The Great Deformation: The Corruption of Capitalism in America
  

Bob Murphy is an economist with the Institute for Energy Research, a research fellow with the Independent Institute, and a senior fellow at the Ludwig von Mises Institute. He is the author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Capitalism and Choice: Cooperation, Enterprise, and Human Action. Find him on Twitter @BobMurphyEcon and listen to his podcasts, Contra Krugman and The Bob Murphy Show.

This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: The War State, by Mike Swanson; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott; Photo IQ; Green Mill Supercritical; Zippix Toothpicks; and Listen and Think Audio.

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Peter Van Buren discusses Hunter Biden’s lost laptop and the shocking documents it contains. He begins by pointing out that many American voters never heard about this story at all: the mainstream media refused to cover it, the tech companies silenced almost anyone who wanted to talk about it and the “intelligence community” quickly united behind the position that the laptop was likely a Russian disinformation tactic. But Van Buren has been able to look at a copy of the hard drive himself. First, he notes that Biden’s hard drive contains lots of unsavory material from his personal life, but concedes that that has little to do with his father’s election as president. More importantly, the laptop has records of many of Hunter Biden’s business dealings, including, most notably, hundreds of millions of dollars from companies in Ukraine and China. In the case of both countries, Hunter was peddling the appearance of access to his father—meetings and photo ops with the Bidens in turn granted these foreign companies political connections within their own countries. But in China’s case in particular, the activity might be even more nefarious. Van Buren found evidence that Chinese companies were paying Hunter Biden’s consulting firm hundreds of millions of dollars in “fees,” which Hunter would then transfer back into Chinese-owned bank accounts in the United States, thus laundering the money across the Pacific without U.S. government scrutiny. The rest of Van Buren’s findings are detailed in his recent piece at The American Conservative.

Discussed on the show:

• “Hunter Biden’s Guilty Laptop” (The American Conservative)
• Brandenburg v. Ohio
• Yesterday’s Man: The Case Against Joe Biden
  
• The Burn Pits: The Poisoning of America’s Soldiers
  
• “Biden’s Hawk: The Case Against Sullivan” (scheerpost.com)
• “Red Dawn (2012)” (IMDb)
• “Ukraine crisis: Transcript of leaked Nuland-Pyatt call” (BBC News)
• “The Untold History of the United States” (IMDb)

Peter Van Buren worked for 24 years at the Department of State including a year in Iraq. He is the author of We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People and the novel Hooper’s War. He is now a contributing editor at The American Conservative magazine.

This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: The War State, by Mike Swanson; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott; Photo IQ; Green Mill Supercritical; Zippix Toothpicks; and Listen and Think Audio.

Donate to the show through Patreon, PayPal, or Bitcoin: 1Ct2FmcGrAGX56RnDtN9HncYghXfvF2GAh.

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Scott interviews Kevin Gosztola about the breaking news that a British judge has denied the request to extradite Julian Assange from England to the United States. The prosecutors will appeal, says Gosztola, but this ruling opens the possibility that Assange could be released within a few days. Although the decision is a big victory for Assange and his supporters, it is not necessarily a victory for press freedom. The problem with the judge’s ruling, Gosztola explains, is that it sides with Assange as an individual without addressing the precedent of charging journalists for doing the kind of work Assange did at Wikileaks. In other words, the extradition request was denied only because Assange was deemed a suicide risk in the inhumane American supermax prison conditions, and not because the judge believed the claims of his wrongdoing to be unfounded. In fact she seemed to agree with almost every point in the case the American prosecutors laid out. This could be a problem both for Assange’s appeal and for similar cases in the future.

Discussed on the show:

• “Assange Decision: British Judge Rejects US Extradition Request” (ShadowProof)
• State Department Cables
• Baghdad War Diary
• Afghan War Logs
• Collateral Murder
• Vault 7
• “UN expert says “collective persecution” of Julian Assange must end now” (OHCHR)
• “The Darkest Corner: Special Administrative Measures and Extreme Isolation in the Federal Bureau of Prisons” (Center for Constitutional Rights)

Kevin Gosztola is managing editor of Shadowproof. He also produces and co-hosts the weekly podcast, “Unauthorized Disclosure.” Follow him on Twitter @kgosztola.

This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: The War State, by Mike Swanson; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott; Photo IQ; Green Mill Supercritical; Zippix Toothpicks; and Listen and Think Audio.

Donate to the show through Patreon, PayPal, or Bitcoin: 1Ct2FmcGrAGX56RnDtN9HncYghXfvF2GAh.

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Scott talks to Alan MacLeod about the bizarre and troubling trend in both media and government where Russia is the automatic target of blame for everything these days. Every hack and cyber attack, of course, is automatically ascribed to the Russians, as are more mundane things, like CIA operatives getting mysterious migraines overseas. This reminds MacLeod of the old Cold War hysteria, where people thought Soviet agents were hiding in every area of American life. Increased hostility toward Russia is a tactic that the Democrats have used to score political points against President Trump for four years, which has had the additional side effect of forcing him into an aggressive foreign policy stance toward Russia to avoid allegations of treason and foreign allegiance. This is hardly a situation that Biden will be able to shrug off, and only sets America up for a new Cold War with Russia going forward.

Discussed on the show:

• “A CIA Officer Has a Headache. Media Blame Russia.” (FAIR)
• “The Mystery of the Immaculate Concussion” (GQ)
• “Russia hasn’t just hacked our computer systems. It’s hacked our minds” (Washington Post)

Alan MacLeod is a member of the Glasgow University Media Group. He is the author of Propaganda in the Information Age: Still Manufacturing Consent. Follow him on Twitter @AlanRMacLeod.

This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: The War State, by Mike Swanson; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott; Photo IQ; Green Mill Supercritical; Zippix Toothpicks; and Listen and Think Audio.

Donate to the show through Patreon, PayPal, or Bitcoin: 1Ct2FmcGrAGX56RnDtN9HncYghXfvF2GAh.

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Mark Perry talks about General Lloyd Austin, Biden’s pick for Secretary of Defense. Austin is a military man through and through, but he isn’t your run-of-the-mill war hawk, explains Perry—instead, Austin has shown himself to be a strong advocate for diplomacy and restraint, likely the reason Biden has chosen him. Perry is optimistic about the potential foreign policy of the Biden administration: although Biden was a prominent cheerleader for the war in Iraq, he has moderated his positions somewhat in the intervening years, opposing U.S. support for the war in Yemen, and often representing the most dovish position in the Obama administration. Still, many of the rest of Biden’s cabinet picks have aggressive neoconservative sensibilities, and they could end up steering his administration in a bad direction.

Discussed on the show:

• “Biden’s Defense Secretary Pick Lloyd Austin Isn’t Who You Think” (Foreign Policy)
• The Burn Pits: The Poisoning of America’s Soldiers
  

Mark Perry is the author of Talking to Terrorists: Why America Must Engage with its Enemies, The Most Dangerous Man in America: The Making of Douglas MacArthur, and The Pentagon’s Wars. Read his work at The American Conservative Magazine and follow him on Twitter @MarkPerryDC.

This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: The War State, by Mike Swanson; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott; Photo IQ; Green Mill Supercritical; Zippix Toothpicks; and Listen and Think Audio.

Donate to the show through Patreon, PayPal, or Bitcoin: 1Ct2FmcGrAGX56RnDtN9HncYghXfvF2GAh.

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Scott interviews Ted Carpenter about his recent coverage of America’s sanctions policies around the world. Carpenter begins by explaining that economic sanctions are both ineffective and inhumane. For one thing, the theory that when a population is pressed hard enough they will rise up and overthrow their government has never been successfully borne out in practice. What’s more, it is never the ruling class that suffers under a sanctions program, since they will be able to ensure security and comfort for themselves no matter how desperate things get—instead, it is only the most vulnerable civilians who end up suffering from poverty, famine and deprivation. Carpenter takes us through the examples of Yemen, North Korea, Libya and Cuba to drive home his point about how disastrous America’s policies in this area have been.

Discussed on the show:

• “The Futility and Cruelty of Washington’s Economic Sanctions” (Antiwar.com Original)
• “12/18/20 Tim Shorrock on the Prospects for Peace with North Korea” (The Libertarian Institute)
• Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam
  
• The Putin Interviews
• Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism
  

Ted Galen Carpenter is a senior fellow for defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute. Carpenter has written 10 books including America’s Coming War with China: A Collision Course over Taiwan and most recently NATO: Dangerous Dinosaur. He is a contributing editor at The American Conservative Magazine and the National Interest.

This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: The War State, by Mike Swanson; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott; Photo IQ; Green Mill Supercritical; Zippix Toothpicks; and Listen and Think Audio.

Donate to the show through Patreon, PayPal, or Bitcoin: 1Ct2FmcGrAGX56RnDtN9HncYghXfvF2GAh.

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Palestinian journalist Ramzy Baroud discusses a series of recent articles he’s written on the status of Israeli-Palestinian relations, and the long history that informs the situation today. It has now become clear, says Baroud, that the once-promised two-state solution is off the table. The Israeli government has realized that it can pretty much continue to expand its settlements into the dwindling Palestinian lands and keep oppressing its people, all with very little pushback in the international community or the mainstream media. The only realistic way forward will be to officially recognize a single state with full rights for Palestinians. Unfortunately Baroud says that Biden’s cabinet picks mostly hold terrible positions on Israel, and indeed Biden himself was known as one of the biggest Zionists in Washington before Trump came along. Baroud worries that little will change for the Palestinians under the next administration.

Discussed on the show:

• “Moving Past Apartheid: On” (tate is not Ideal Justice, but It is Just and Possible | Countercurrents)
• “When the People Rose up: How the Intifada Changed the Political Discourse on Palestine” (RamzyBaroud.net)
• “‘Long Live the (Dead) Peace Process’: Abbas Prioritizes US Ties over Palestinian National Unity” (RamzyBaroud.net)
• “The King’s Man: Blinken’s Appointment Reassures Israel that Little Will Change under Biden” (RamzyBaroud.net)

Ramzy Baroud is a US-Arab journalist and is the editor-in-chief of the Palestine Chronicle. He is the author of My Father Was A Freedom Fighter: The Untold Story of Gaza and The Last Earth: A Palestinian Story. His new book is These Chains Will Be Broken: Palestinian Stories of Struggle and Defiance in Israeli Prisons. Follow Ramzy on Twitter @RamzyBaroud and read his work at RamzyBaroud.net.

This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: The War State, by Mike Swanson; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott; Photo IQ; Green Mill Supercritical; Zippix Toothpicks; and Listen and Think Audio.

Donate to the show through Patreon, PayPal, or Bitcoin: 1Ct2FmcGrAGX56RnDtN9HncYghXfvF2GAh.

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Scott interviews Danny Sjursen about two prominent conflicts facing the world in 2020. In Nagorno-Karabakh, an uneasy, Russian-brokered peace deal is holding between Armenia and Azerbaijan, but Sjursen worries that this peace won’t last forever, as each country still feels that it has an unresolved claim on the disputed territory. In Ethiopia, age-old ethnic tensions have been breaking through the surface ever since the country’s government postponed elections on account of the coronavirus pandemic. The Tigrays, an ethnic minority, have long played an outsized role in the military and the government, and only in 2018 was a non-Tigray Prime Minister appointed for the first time in decades. But he has never faced popular election, and some Ethiopians fear he is trying to set himself up as an autocrat, resulting in tension all over the country, and brutal ethnic violence in some regions.

Discussed on the show:

• “Eastern [African] Exposure: Ethiopia, Ethnicity, and other Kindling for Tigray’s Backstory” (Antiwar.com)

Danny Sjursen is a retired U.S. army major and former history instructor at West Point. He is the author of Ghost Riders of Baghdad: Soldiers, Civilians, and the Myth of the Surge and Patriotic Dissent: America in the Age of Endless War. Follow him on Twitter @SkepticalVet.

This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: The War State, by Mike Swanson; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott; Photo IQ; Green Mill Supercritical; Zippix Toothpicks; and Listen and Think Audio.

Donate to the show through Patreon, PayPal, or Bitcoin: 1Ct2FmcGrAGX56RnDtN9HncYghXfvF2GAh.

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