NB–When Suharto fell, US media such as the New York Times reported that Bill Clinton welcomed it greatly. The same Bill Clinton who months earlier had pledged his personal support to the dictator. When East Timor finally achieved independence, contemporary news reporting attributed it to the humanitarian spirit of empire, lavishing praise on Bill Clinton, Tony Blair, John Howard and others for helping install UN peacekeepers in East Timor. Whitewashed were the 25 years in which these same countries armed, financed and supported the genocide of the people they now professed to care deeply about. Clinton, attending the independence ceremony, gave a speech in which he said “your freedom has been paid for by blood and sacrifice.” The breath-taking gall and arrogance of empire is so shameful it is almost to be admired. A gall and arrogance only possible with the help of a complicit media which fails utterly to contextualise events and whose job is always to cover-up the scale and depth of imperial savagery and hypocrisy.

GD—This video features a discussion between Professor Richard Wolff and Professor Glenn Diesen regarding the accelerating decline of the U.S. Empire and the complex global consequences of its current economic and geopolitical strategies.
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The speakers use the metaphor of a dike in the Netherlands to explain how patching one economic hole (such as attempting to manage oil prices through sanctions) leads to ruptures elsewhere in a deeply interconnected global economy (1:17 – 3:40).
The Case of Japan: Professor Wolff details how recent U.S. financial maneuvers, such as loans to Japan to stabilize the yen against high oil prices, create new domestic political and economic vulnerabilities in the U.S., such as rising interest rates on Treasury bonds.
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Imperial Decline and Institutional Failure:They discuss how the U.S. is struggling to manage a multipolar world. The U.S. attempt to retain dominance through sanctions and military pressure is described as failing, while adversaries are successfully building alternative economic and security architectures.

GD—The discussion centers on the US transition from military strikes to a strategy of economic strangulation or “siege warfare” against Iran.

Prof. Marandi argues that this approach stems from a misunderstanding of post-revolutionary Iran and a reliance on flawed narratives (1:45-3:31).
The Nature of the Conflict: Marandi characterizes the current situation as an active war, noting that the JCPOA (nuclear deal) has effectively ended and that countries in the region hosting US assets are participants in this war.
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Iran’s Strategic Response: Marandi outlines that Iran is no longer just seeking survival but is prepared to retaliate militarily. He mentions that Iran would target US assets and infrastructure if economic pressure is intensified, potentially impacting oil exports from the Persian Gulf.

MW—“Trump learned from Cohn that the court of public opinion is far more important than a court of law,” Bird says. Had he lived long enough, Cohn might have coined “fake news,” one of the current president’s favorite insults. Both men, of course, loved the media spotlight and privately sought favorable coverage to reinforce their strongman reputations.

Also like his mentor, Trump inspires hatred in his enemies. Indeed, he seems to feed off it. Readers who endure Cohn’s remorseless crime spree across four decades of American life will better understand how his kindred spirit and protege could eventually make it to the White House.

PE—They have, on the surface, what was always supposed to be a distinct choice between parties, reinforced by conventional ideas of what they stand for, which did not always bear scrutiny.

The difficulty—thoroughly justified—comes in trying to identify, comprehend, and credit what the parties affirm as their prevailing philosophies now, and what actual positions they vow to defend.

Since the ridiculous implosion of the senile Biden apparatus and the Democrats frantic musical chairs farce to field a candidate, the Republican Party has undergone a hostile takeover by Trump.

In abject genuflection to him, it has abandoned any pretense of a coherent platform, and adopted in full that of Trump Victor, which consists of anything and everything he decides at any given time.

DH—Russian Academy of Sciences Academician Sergei Yuryevich Glazyev, listing potential conflict scenarios, writes about the “advisability of using effective weapons to neutralize the enemy’s advantages in information technology and communications systems”:

This could include cutting communications channels on land and on the seabed, disrupting data centers, destroying enemy reconnaissance and command aircraft within our strike zone, regardless of their nationality, and disabling communications satellites, including the notorious Starlink constellation, which forms the backbone of the enemy’s telecommunications network. Without communication with American and British target controllers, planners, and analysts, the Ukrainian Armed Forces would be blinded and lose the ability to systematically conduct combat operations.