GREAT HYPOCRISY

DANNY HAIPHONG—In this MEGA Livestream, Professor Jeffrey Sachs joins in the first half of the show to discuss Israel’s path to all out war in Lebanon and what it means for the future of the conflict raging in the Middle East plus a full update on the multipolar world. Professor Mohammad Marandi then joins from Beirut on Iran’s possible response to the escalations in Lebanon as Israel war widens.

EDITOR—The Israeli government presents this invasion as a “limited” one, but as many have pointed out the same was said about the 1982 invasion of Lebanon. That led to years of brutal warfare and an occupation that lasted nearly until the end of the century. The Israeli government often describes its aggressive operations as “limited” to gain support in the West, but somehow they never stay “limited.”

Akbar Shahid Ahmed spoke to a career U.S. official who said that the administration was permitting “a nihilistic regional murder spree.” That is unfortunately all too accurate. Among other things, Israeli forces recently bombed Yemen by targeting critical civilian infrastructure once again. They seem to delight in devastating the vital infrastructure of the poorest parts of the region. The Netanyahu government’s first instinct appears to be to inflict collective punishment of the civilian population of other countries.

ERIC ZUESSE—The “Supplemental” this year (Ukraine+Gaza+Taiwan) totals to $95.3B, which causes the original $886B ‘Defense’ (or Aggression) budget for this fiscal year to be: $886B+752.5B+95.3B=$1,733,800 billion, or $1.734T. However, even that is incomplete, because the entire U.S. intelligence community, CIA, DIA, and the many others, is classified, its budgets are secret, hidden from the public, and, of course, these are also important parts of the U.S. military; so, perhaps annual U.S. military spending is now around $2T. On 12 March 2024, the U.S. Director of National Intelligence headlined “DNI RELEASES FY 2025 BUDGET REQUEST FIGURE FOR THE NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE PROGRAM” and publicly revealed (in accord with a 2007 law) “the aggregate amount of $73.4 billion in requested appropriations for the Fiscal Year 2025 National Intelligence Program (NIP),” and on 20 April 2024 I shall request from the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community the IC’s latest Audit Report in order to determine how complete that $73.4B figure is. I start with the assumption that it is the bare minimum of what the complete number is, and that what the maximum might be, and what the reality is, have remained top secret in this dictatorship.

LARRY JOHNSON—I am always honored to be invited to appear on The Duran with Alex Christoforou and Alexander Mercouris. They were the first one I stumbled upon at the start of the SMO who talked intelligently about the political and military dynamics. I was fortunate to come to their attention and have appeared several times since March 2022. We discussed the situation in Ukraine and Israel/Palestine. With respect to Ukraine, I explain the significance of the 12 CIA bases that the New York Times claims are scattered throughout Ukraine.

EDITOR—Failing to get concessions from China on what Janet Yellen called “China’s overcapacity” (curiously deemed unfair by Washington), Yellen threatened the introduction of protectionist policies.  Needless to say, this is a complete reversal of Washington’s usual extremist free market posture. Yellen also had the gall to complain about China helping Russia in its Ukraine contest with the West, apparently assuming Beijing is incapable of figuring that America wants a free hand to subdue and neutralise Russia to then proceed to do the same to China. This and much much more.