Richard D. Wolff & Michael Hudson: Middle East Exploding, Ukraine Crumbling! the US Take Action?

Michael Hudson had a normal one today. Even Richard Wolff was like wtf.

Also a lot of interesting anecdotes of Hudson (who apparently still live in the 1970s) during his time at the Hudson Institute (no relation, named after Hudson River) dealing with the neocons.

Judge for yourself if these are banger quotes or the deranged ramblings of a madman:

• “The United States doesn’t want to see a ceasefire, it wants to use Israel as a catapult; everything that happened today was planned out just 50 years back in 1973-74. I sat in meetings with the head of Mossad who then became Netanyahu’s chief military advisor. The whole strategy was worked out essentially by the Defense Department by the neoliberals and [Henry] “Scoop” Jackson - the ultra-right wing neocon who sponsored them all.”
• “The starting point for all US strategy since the 1970s was that Democracies no longer can field a domestic army with a military draft. America is not in a position able to field enough of an army to invade a country.”
• “That means today’s tactics are limited to bombing, not occupying countries. Neither the Israeli army or any other army are really able to invade and try to take over a country the way armies did during WWII.”
• “The US wars haven’t scaled back because it has a fallback position - it was going to rely on foreign troops to do the fighting as proxies instead of itself. The first example was to create the Wahhabi Jihadi fighters in Afghanistan and Jimmy Carter mobilized them against the secular Afghan interests. Carter justified this by saying, yes they’re Muslims, but after all we all believe in God, so the answer to the secular state of Afghanistan was Wahhabi fanaticism”
• “The US realized that in order for a country to fight to the last Afghan, the last Israeli, the last Ukrainian, you really need a country whose spirit is one of hatred.”
• “Herman Kahn’s (model for Dr. Strangelove) greatest achievement was to convince the US empire builders that the key to achieving their control of the Middle East was to rely on Israeli as their Foreign Legion.”
• “The US realized then that the only kind of full scale war that a Democracy can afford is an Atomic War, but that only works against adversaries who can’t retaliate. The result of today’s military alliances means that any attempt to use nuclear weapons is going to risk full scale nuclear war. What is left for the US? There is only one form of non-Atomic war that Democracies can afford, and that’s Terrorism. You should look at Ukraine and Israel as the Terrorist alternative to Atomic War.”
• “The whole idea of Ukraine and Israel is to bomb civilians, not military targets. It’s a fight to destroy the population under an Ideology of Genocide - that is absolutely central and not an accident.”
• “Zionism has been Christianized and has accepted the hatred of the Other”
• “There cannot be peace in Asia or in Ukraine, because then the status quo would remain and the US would not be able to take over these countries as satellites; peace would mean dependent countries gaining independence”
• “Many neocons at the Hudson Institute, 50 years ago, were Trotskyists or their fathers were Trotskyists and they have picked up Trotsky’s idea of Permanent Revolution; but instead of the Permanent Revolution spreading from the Soviet Union, the neocons believe the Permanent Revolution is the American Empire itself spreading to the entire world.”
• “Who wants to live in a world where we can’t control? Who wants to live in a world where we can’t siphon off their economic surplus for ourselves? That’s the kind of mentality we’re dealing with.”

If you think about it, the US believes that they live in a Dark Forest universe. They truly believe that they have to annihilate their opponents before these emerging states/powers surpass their own technologically and escape their sphere of influence.

I am seriously starting to believe that this is the reason Obama likes the Three Body Problem series so much, while taking the wrong lessons from the books, which was a cautionary tale about how the most “rational” belief of destroying your opponents before they have the capacity to do it against you may let you overpower them in the short run, but ultimately lead to the mutually assured destruction of our world. It emphasized that a bit of irrationality, naivety and delusional about our opponents are sometimes needed to put a stop into this chain of madness.

We’ve been very lucky that Putin, who is in control of thousands of nukes enough to blow up the world several times, does not see the world in the same Dark Forest state as the US does. Putin is naive and even delusional about a rapprochement with an imperialist West for years, and yet it was exactly this attitude that kept the peace for as long as we have (even with the war in Ukraine, there is a lot of restraint from escalating further).

It’s never been more over for the UK:

Treasury asking ministers to draw up billions of pounds of infrastructure cuts

Ministers are being asked to draw up billions of pounds in cuts to infrastructure projects over the next 18 months despite Rachel Reeves pledging to invest more to grow the economy, the Guardian has learned.

Members of the cabinet have been asked to model cuts to their investment plans of up to 10% of their annual capital spending as part of this month’s spending review, government sources said.

The demands would mean big projects such as hospital improvements, road building and defence projects being slowed down or stopped altogether as the government looks for ways to repair what they say is a £22bn black hole in the public finances.

Economists warn that such cuts to capital spending could end up damaging the economy and Britain’s creaking public infrastructure.

It’s never been more over for the Euros:

Germany expects economy to shrink after cutting 2024 forecast

Germany is facing its first two-year recession since the early 2000s, as the government downgraded its growth forecast for 2024, predicting a contraction of 0.2 per cent.

“The situation is not satisfactory,” Robert Habeck, economy minister, said on Wednesday. “Since 2018, the German economy has not been growing strongly any more.”

Just a few months ago he had forecast the economy would grow by 0.3 per cent this year.

Germany has been battered by high interest rates, inflation and an increasingly uncertain geopolitical environment, which has suppressed consumer demand and investment activity.

Some companies, complaining of high labour and energy costs, a big tax burden and political turbulence, are considering locating some of their production to cheaper countries.

At the same time, consumer spending remains depressed, despite an increase in real wages and falling inflation. The government’s earlier forecast had expected a more robust rebound in consumer demand.

Political instability is also taking its toll on sentiment. Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s three-party coalition is riven by policy conflicts and the rise of populist parties on the far right and far left is undermining business confidence.

Incredible how ideological entrenchment (neoliberalism) + a currency war from the US (Ukraine war) accelerated the destruction of the future of the UK and continental Europe in just a few short years.

Europeans who have been laughing at how Americans don’t have healthcare and social welfare are going to have to seriously think about migrating there over the next decade and get used to what it feels like to live without basic welfare guarantees.

Scoop: U.S. wants to use Hezbollah’s weakness to elect new Lebanese president

U.S. officials say the White House wants to take advantage of Israel’s massive blow to Hezbollah’s leadership and infrastructure to push for an election of a new Lebanese president in the coming days.

Why it matters: Lebanon hasn’t had a president for almost two years, which has increased instability and exacerbated the political and economic crisis in the country.

• Hezbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah, top militia commanders and other Hezbollah members were killed by Israeli airstrikes in recent weeks, weakening the influential militia.

• The Israeli attacks killed more than 1,100 people in Lebanon, including dozens of women and children, the Lebanese health ministry said without specifying how many of the people killed were Hezbollah members. Hezbollah in recent weeks stopped publishing the number of casualties it suffered.

Good old regime change was likely the decision for Israel to assassinate Nasrallah. I kept thinking about what Michael Hudson said the other day that Terrorism has become the only non-Atomic war alternative for the US empire to shape the geopolitical conflicts to advance its interests.

Russian telegram:

Iranian agency ShafaqNA: More than 20 F-35 aircraft of the Israeli Air Force were hit during the missile strike of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps on the territory of the Jewish state.

More from Telegram:

Iranian media claim that 20 F-35 fighters were destroyed by hypersonic missiles during strikes on Israeli air bases.

It was also claimed that a concentration of Israeli armored vehicles in the Gaza Strip was destroyed (the IDF likes to display its equipment in large groups).

Iran emphasizes that it specifically targeted IDF military facilities and gas platforms, so there will not be a large number of civilian casualties.

Aside from the fact of strikes on air bases, it is currently difficult to assess the extent of the actual damage. It will be interesting to see satellite images of the facilities if some Western company publishes them.

Iran will naturally exaggerate the effectiveness of the strikes. Israel, on the contrary, will understate and emphasize the work of the air defense. At the same time, the parties will continue to exchange threats of new strikes.

More:

Iran informed the US and Russia of its intentions before striking Israel. No civilian targets were hit.

It is very obvious at this point that the Democratic Party will become the new Republican Party.

Trump created a historic opportunity that the Democrats could only have dreamed of - a Republican president who somehow managed to piss off the National Security State, the Military Industrial Complex, the Oil and Gas Industry, and the Wall Street Finance Capitalists all at the same time, where many of whom have been traditional supporters of the Republican Party.

Trump is the true Pied Piper candidate - only in the longer term than Hillary had anticipated - and the Democrats would be stupid not to take the opportunity gifted to them.

What will become of the Republican Party then? MAGA culture war petit bourgeois idiots will take over the party. The traditional bourgeois base is already jumping ship.

Remember, the Democrats do not want Republican voters, they want the Republican donors. The 1% that matters. This is the key to understanding the Democratic strategy.

Alexander Lukashenko advises students to study Marxism in order to understand life.

And earlier, meeting with Alexander Dugin, the President of Belarus said that nothing better than Marxist-Leninist philosophy has ever been created.

We completely agree, Alexander Grigorievich. It will be impossible to understand the current socio-economic life and see the prospects for the development of the world without Marxism.

lmao owned