Billy Bob

• The panel discusses the forces shaping our era, as US-led global capitalist hegemony declines ever more rapidly due to the accumulation of its incurable contradictions and flaws, accelerated by the emergence of socialist nations that have resisted for decades the brutal attacks of the imperialist bloc and survived due to the liberated populations’ higher political awareness. On the home front, the US oligarchy is doing what it has always done, lie and exploit the working class, albeit now, under Trump, with arrogant alacrity. The situation has been getting so bad so quickly for so many that Trump’s popularity is starting to erode, his pathetic tariff program and brutal DOGE attacks on employment and social safety nets certainly a huge bomb, including among his MAGA base. 

EDITOR—The panel debates Trump’s policy moves at home and abroad, and what their prospects are for actually accomplishing their goals, assuming we understand what Trump is really trying to do. Billy Bob outlines the dishonest maneuvers used by the Empire to precipitate the implosion of the Soviet Union, largely diplomatically, on the basis of naked lies, a posture being replicated by Trump. Regis Tremblay notes that the US is not “agreement capable”—a fact painfully clear to Russia—who is actually in a position to refuse making a deal and continuing the war until it accomplishes its original goals. The instability of agreements with the US is corroborated by Ian Kummer, who reminds the panel that Trump himself has a notorious record of cavalierly dismissing presidential deals, just as he reversed the nuclear JCPOA Obama deal with Iran. Billy Bob and the panel also discuss the instability of the dollar, as the US has abused the privilege of having its currency as a global reserve coin, a de facto dollar hegemony.

EDITOR—The Max Parry archive at Covert Action Mag, is here: https://covertactionmagazine.com/auth…
The panel debates the murky politics surrounding the “Gaza ceasefire” and its potential for a permanent peace or as a mere short interval between two phases of a genocidal bloodletting. Ian Kummer notes that Biden with his 11th hour claims to be the author of the ceasefire has evoked only laughter and derision. After all, he had more than 15 months to stop this horrendous massacre, as Trump’s actions have demonstrated. Trump, says Kummer, was expected to be worse—were that possible—than the Democrats in facilitating the mass killing and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. Trump has a Jewish son-in-law, Jared Kushner, a Zionist, and as a real estate magnate he also has deep roots among metro NY Jewish developers, not to mention he admitted openly that he was “owned” by the Edelsons, rabid Zionists interested only in the expansion and strengthening of Israel. But Trump is after all Trump, and, as Parry reminds everyone, Trump comes first. He also leans heavily to the “transactional”, and for his own reasons he wanted and needed a peace in the Mid East. Trump is also highly unpredictable, not the kind of man the Israelis would prefer, especially when compared with Biden, who gave the Zionist entity everything it wanted and then some. Parry also believes that Trump is far smarter in his politics than most people give him credit for. There’s “method to his madness.”  Ultimately, the panel agrees that while many “lefties” attacked those who refused to support the Harris ticket, Trump’s ceasefire deal confirms that he was a better choice, as the Democrats would have never pressured Netanyahu to make a real breakthrough.

EDITOR—Episode 129 of Blowback: Exposing Imperial Decline with special guests Max Parry and Greg Rosen. Max Parry sums up the opinion of the panel (shared by our editor) that those who refused to support Harris in the recent sham election were proved to be more correct morally and strategically than the “Blue liberal tide”, since it’s now clear that, whatever flaws and reservations we may have about Trump, the announced ceasefire would not have happened under the Biden-Harris regime.

BILLY BOB—The behaviour of the West, like never before in my (half century) lifetime, is dropping the pretence of its “values and principles”.  The US is openly supporting Nazis, ultranationalists, and ethnic chauvinists in Ukraine and Israel, and they are engaging in actual ethnic cleansing and *Genocide* against the Palestinian and Russian people.  The US is providing military support for their proxy terrorist groups ISIS and Al-Qaeda as they again have sought to overthrow the popular, secular, Arab democracy in Syria.