The Gaza ceasefire: an interview with Mouin Rabbani
This is a lightly edited transcript of an interview that I did with Mouin Rabbani on the January 23, 2025, edition of Behind the News. Rabbani is a journalist and analyst with a deep understanding of the Middle East. He has served as Principal Political Affairs Officer with the Office of the UN Special Envoy for Syria and Special Advisor on Israel-Palestine with the International Crisis Group. He is the co-editor of Jadaliyya, an ezine that covers the region, where he also hosts its Connections podcast. I asked Rabbani to comment on… Read More
Anatol Lieven on the Biden/Harris grand design
This is the lightly edited transcript of an interview I did with Anatol Lieven on Behind the News, October 17, 2024. The audio is here. My introduction to the segment: Joe Biden’s foreign policy has been consistently and impressively bellicose, aggressively supporting wars in Ukraine and the Middle East and amping up tensions with China. And his anointed successor, who has something like a 50-50 chance of succeeding him, looks to be following suit. Many people have read Kamala Harris’s courting of endorsements from the Cheneys—the Liz and Dick of our times—as mere pragmatic… Read More
Rashid Khalidi on settler-colonial Israel: an interview
This interview with Rashid Khalidi, author of The Hundred Years War On Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, was broadcast on Doug Henwood’s Behind the News, October 3, 2024. Khalidi’s family was a member of the old Palestinian elite that was destroyed in 1948 when Israel, freshly born as a state, expelled three-quarters of a million Palestinians from their homes to make way for the settlers. Along with the larger history, he writes extensively about that family in the book. It’s not a new book—though BtN has never been impressed with novelty… Read More
Anatol Lieven: it’s not quite early 1914, but…
This is the edited transcript of an interview I did with with Anatol Lieven, Eurasia Program Director at the Quincy Institute, on Behind the News, February 16, 2023. I’ve seen people in the last week or so making analogies to early 1914. Do you get any of that feeling? Yes, to a degree. The Biden administration is still trying to keep America and NATO out of direct war with Russia, but clearly they’ve done a number of things which had they been done to the United States probably would have us in… Read More
Anatol Lieven on the roots of disaster
[Here’s an transcript of my interview with Anatol Lieven, broadcast on March 3, 2022, edited to make it read more like prose than spoken word. My comments are in square brackets. In the 1980s and 1990s, Lieven covered the former Soviet Union, Eastern Europe and the wars in Afghanistan, Chechnya, and the southern Caucasus, for the Financial Times and the Times of London. In the 2000s, he worked at several think tanks in Washington and is now a senior research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. He’s also got seven… Read More
Me in Salon
Josh Eidelson interviews me about the shutdown, default, the Tea Party, and the rot of the American ruling class: “Tea Party’s shutdown lunacy: Avenging the surrender of the South” Josh and I had nothing to do with the headline.
Christian Parenti interviews me…
…for the Brooklyn Rail – on the bubble, the bust, the state of the American ruling class, and what comes next: Ka-Pow! Bang! Crash!
MinnPost interview
Steve Perry interviews me about the green shoots of recovery, EFCA, liberal austerity, grading the stimulus/bailout, contrasts with the New Deal, etc.: “Stabilization is a good thing, but it doesn’t equal recovery.”
Interview on MinnPost
Steve Perry interviews Doug Henwood on the current mess: No bottom in sight yet
LBO News from Doug Henwood 