OLIVER BOYD-BARRETT—Israel says it will strike back. I find this game of telling your oppenent you are going to attack – giving him plenty of time to prepare for your attack and then attacking, but maybe not so much as you said you would, and then waiting for the retaliation – somewhat quaint, to say the least.

It is reminiscent of seventeenth century style war-by-the-square tactics of bright uniforms, gleaming bayonets, chess-board moves and a death toll accounted for almost solely by civilians (unless you were Cromwell beseiging, starving and burning Irish towns, or European imperialists putting down the revolting natives).

ERIC ZUESSE—Ever since 25 July 1945, the U.S. Government has had, as its #1 objective, to take control ultimately over all other countries (“hegemony”); and its main targets to conquer have been the world’s largest country, which is Russia, and then the world’s most populous country, which has been China. In order to do this, the U.S. regime needed to deceive their public to believe that ‘freedom and democracy’ were what they spread around the world by their coups and invasions, but most of their successful “regime-changes” actually replaced popularly elected democraticGovernments, such as Mossadegh in Iran, Arbenz in Guatemala, and Allende in Chile, by imposing there instead decades-long murderous military dictatorships such as The Shah in Iran, a long succession of brutal juntas in Guatemala, and the fascist (Milton Friedman acolyte and propagandist for ‘freedom’) Pinochet in Chile. The deceits by the U.S. regime and its colonies, have enabled the U.S. regime to impoverish, torture, and murder, millions of people throughout the world, extracting wealth from the conquered countries for America’s billionaires, all the while pretending to be “a force for good in the world.”

RET. ADM. CEM GURDENIZ—The US and its allies continue to pay the price of the rapid downsizing at sea and in the region after the Cold War. They are falling behind in both the number of icebreakers and the number of troops ready for war in winter conditions.

In addition, Russia has advantages in the field of submarine warfare and hypersonic anti-ship missiles. However, despite its limited naval power, the US challenges Russia’s geographical superiority in these critical waterways through its allies. As the only NATO country with a permanent military headquarters north of the Arctic Circle (66°33’N latitude), Norway gives its most important security and defense priority to the protection of US interests in this region due to the newly developing Arctic geopolitics. NATO also uses Norway’s situation as a battering ram against Russia, putting it forward for the interests of the US in this region. Norway, one of the calmest, richest and most prosperous countries in the world, has now joined the group of risky countries that have to maintain high military vigilance and readiness at all times.

CHARLES McKELVEY—The United States, either through war with Iran to contain China, or through unconventional war to weaken all anti-imperialist states, or both, is seeking to stop the dialectical march of modern history.  The United States can do so only through destruction, which also could lead to its own demise.  It would be far more dignified for the American republic to participate positively in the second stage of the modern synthesis, in which cooperation and mutually beneficial trade are established as an international norm.  In doing so, the United States would once again be one of the world’s leading nations, and it could interpret its enlightened turn as the fulfillment of the promise of democracy contained in the founding of the American republic. 

INDRAJIT—Americans flatter him, to say Trump will be their Hitler. Hitler was actually a below-average evil as European rulers go.  American Presidents are all Hitlers, with Ronald Reagan being the last incarnation they’ve been stuck on for decades. Since then, every American President has been some poor Reagan impersonator, AKA Hitler. Bush I was nerd Reagan, Clinton was cool Reagan, Bush II was nepo Reagan, Obama was black Reagan, Trump was clown Reagan, and Biden was Reagan except somehow more senile and trigger-happy. America hasn’t had an original idea in decades, and every election since 1980 has been a reboot. Today, Harris is running as a Reagan Democrat next to the Cheney family, tapping into a rich base of 50,000 in Wyoming and assorted torture enthusiasts. History is truly repeating as farce. American politics is still centered around Reagan, who sucked.

EDITOR—An Eye-Opening Speech for the Tender Minds of a Young Privileged Audience.
Jeffrey Sachs delivers a speech and Q&A at 6pm in the Debating Chamber on Tuesday 22nd October 2024. Jeffrey gives a short speech about “whether there can ever truly be a liberal international order?” Followed by a few questions from Speakers Officer Alex Mitchell and then further questions from members of the audience. Jeffrey D. Sachs is University Professor and Director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University, where he directed the Earth Institute from 2002 until 2016.

KARL SANCHEZ—Professors Hudson and Wolff have discussed the upcoming US Election on several previous occasions with Nima, while this session specifically focuses on US political dynamics, issues foreign and domestic that are being completely ignored, and what the outcomes might be depending on who is declared the winner. And no, there’s no talk of the election being stolen by on side or the other or what the social response might be depending on who wins. The number of excellent ideas and insights are too many to list. Dr. Wolff carries the show because he has somewhat better insights and is able to articulate them better. Dr. Wolff provides one of the more interesting points that’s revealed at the 19:00 mark of the 80-minute podcast:

The Hegelian Moment of American Politics: Cold War Isolationism of the Other as the initial thesis has matured and become its antithesis: the isolation of the US as it’s now the Other compared with the Global Majority.

BILLY BOB—So, what can the US do to contain China?  Is it possible for the US to contain China without causing great harm to the global economy and plunging humanity into a period of tremendous depression and upheaval?  Of course not.  China is the single biggest manufacturing superpower on the planet.  They are the number one trading partner for over 120 countries.  If China is to be contained, the global economy must suffer.

So “sooner rather than later” and “the global economy will necessarily suffer if China is to be contained” are the two assumptions which provide the foundation for the rest of my analysis.

WILLIAM SCHRYVER—Most of the gods of American high-tech and finance, and those who worship them, simply cannot discern the degree to which American power in all its forms has steadily eroded over the course of the 21st century, and that this erosion has accelerated dramatically in recent years. For most of the western elite and their acolytes, it is still early 1991, and Norman Schwarzkopf is leading a million-man army against the hapless Iraqis in a demonstration of military might that would finally expunge the bitter humiliation of Vietnam from the American psyche. Such people have religiously embraced the Hollywood fantasies of unassailable American superpower dominance. And given the reality that Ukraine and Israel are considered merely appendages of this assumed American military supremacy, the eastern European and Levantine theaters of World War Three have given rise to extreme examples of an unprecedented tsunami of propaganda I have been wont to call “The Imaginary War”.

RAINER SHEA—Last week’s BRICS summit provided a clearer sense of who will join in on the war against the U.S. empire, and who will acquiesce to the empire. Brazil, led by the supposedly anti-imperialist Lula, vetoed the entry of Venezuela into BRICS. And fascist India blocked the entry of Pakistan and Turkey, which was less surprising but still a setback. These developments represent a major twist, because there’s evidence that the U.S. color revolution apparatus has intended to target Brazil and India in the past; a report from last summer by the neocon think tank the Eurasia Group listed these countries as among the geopolitical “swing states,” the players that have potential to come into China’s orbit. After the work that Modi and Lula just did to assist in the hybrid war against BRICS, it’s less likely that Washington will try to overthrow them, because they’ve shown themselves to be valuable assets.