BEN NORTON—Political economists Radhika Desai and Michael Hudson are joined by Beijing-based scholar Mick Dunford to discuss China’s economy and debunk Western media myths, addressing accusations that consumption is too low, fears of “Japanification”, the role of exports, and the new Chinese growth strategy.
ANTI-CORPORATISM
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New Atlas LIVE: Iran Strikes Back – Tehran Steps into US Trap, is it Prepared? The New Atlas
8 minutes readTHE NEW ATLAS—Brian and Angelo are cautious regarding recent events in the Middle East. They believe the US Hegemon (with Israel’s conscious or objective assist) may be playing intricate and highly devious games to detonate a regionwide conflagration. Hamas, for one thing, may have been chosen by Israel and the US to play a divisive role among Palestinian factions, while maintaining the image of a fanatical anti-Israeli threat, eventually even allowing Oct. 7 attacks to permit Israel and the US to flatten Gaza, and provoke Iran and other members of the anti-Zionist/imperialist alliance to step in, thereby justifying, again a reasonable “response” that would destroy Iran and the forces resisting Western hegemony. In that sense, Oct 7 would be analogous to 9/11, a pretext to launch a vast imperialist campaign.
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US Artillery Capabilities Fall Victim to “Profit Over Purpose,” No Solution in Sight
17 minutes readBRIAN BERLETIC—Washington’s problems continue to stem from its private industry-dominated military industrial base, which favors profits over purpose and performance, preferring small numbers of expensive weapon systems over large volumes of simple but effective equipment.
After abandoning the US Army’s own ERCA prototype, it is now investigating existing systems like Israel’s Elbit Systems Autonomous Truck Mounted Ordnance System (ATMOS) Iron Sabre, as well as systems produced by the UK’s BAE, France’s Nexter, and others.
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INDRAJIT—Today, America and their Jewish client state think they can defeat Palestinians by genociding them. Not merely killing them, but starving them to death, making them suffer and die without food, water, medicine, or sanitation. As the cowardly Yoav Gallant said, announcing the whole thing, “No electricity, no food, no fuel, no water. Everything is closed. We are fighting human animals, and we act accordingly.” The concentration camp became an extermination camp after the inmates dared rebel.
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EDITOR—A wide-ranging discussion on imperialism. The panel discusses the nature of Western imperialism and its nasty tendency to use all manner of dirty tricks, from global demonisation to blackmail, regime change ops, including organising proxy groups such as ISIS, economic warfare (sanctions), long-term insurgencies, and vicious targeted terrorism. Billy Bob clarifies that usually “imperialism” is chiefly understood in two forms: The Marxist-Leninist way which sees imperialism as merely the latest and most developed (and decaying) phase of capitalism, finance capitalism, and the more bourgeois, liberal interpretation, which sees imperialism simply as a big nation oppressing and exploiting weaker ones. In general, the panel agrees that, as a rule, imperialism exists when an entity—Britain, France, the US—uses the powers of the state to conquer and maintain markets around the globe, largely because capitalism, especially in the imperialist phase, needs constant expansion to survive. Carlo and Ian point out that from domestic labour disturbances, where the state can intervene in favor of the oligarchs, or allow private armies (i.e., Pinkertons, etc.) to be used against the working class, to open international intervention using national state resources such as the armed forces (Marines, navy, army, etc.) the capitalists who control the bourgeois state as a class, utllize the national might to benefit their own interests, often at the expense of the masses.