"If [Israel] invades Gaza and there are massive civilian casualties, which seems almost inevitable, then there will a very powerful temptation for Hezbollah to come. And if Hezbollah comes in, then possibly Iran comes in, and this could spin out of control"

John Mearsheimer, the Univ. of Chicago scholar, has been one of the most prescient voices on US foreign policy and wars. --Glenn Greenwald

Glenn's show starts @ 5:05. 

His interview with John Mearsheimer starts @ 7:25.  Topics they discuss as shown in the title are Israel Gaza, U.S. support for Ukraine, and the role of "America First" foreign policy.  The show aired on October 30, 2023.

Hardly anybody expected the Middle East to blow up.  We were focused on Ukraine, to a lesser extent on China, and all of a sudden . . . .

Israeli rhetoric says they're going to move in ground troops, but who knows for sure?  If they invade Gaza and there are massive civilian casualties, which seems almost inevitable, then there will a very powerful temptation for Hezbollah to come.  And if Hezbollah comes in, then possibly Iran comes in, and this could spin out of control.  One wants to remember that Hezbollah has 150,000+ rockets and missiles, many of which are quite accurate, and if they were to come into the war and unleash a good chunk of that missile force at Israel, the damage would be enormous, and of course, the Israelis would lash out at Lebanon and particularly at Hezbollah.  And if Hezbollah were in trouble, would the Iranians come to the rescue?  So a number of ways that this can spin out of control.  

First, for Hezbollah or Iran, the costs of getting into war would be enormous.  The costs would be enormous, but sometimes states, or organizations like Hezbollah, are willing to pursue extremely costly strategies because the political incentives to do so are so great.  If they saw something horrible happening to the Palestinian population, they may feel compelled for political reasons to absorb those enormous military costs.  Second, it is possible that public opinion in these countries will encourage the elites to pursue these costly war strategies.

In 1948, when a series of Arab armies invaded Israel, which had declared its independence, it's important to understand that those Arab armies did not want to fight against Israel.  They understood that they could not win the war against Israel.  They were too weak.  But popular opinion, and public opinion, in effect, pushed them to attack Israel, and in the end, they were defeated because they were inferior.  One doesn't want to underestimate these circumstances where public opinion in the Arab world might be strong enough to push the elites to start a war that would be very costly.  

History of the Left: People were killed for being on the Left. They were jailed for being on the Left, for making real and material and mortal sacrifices for a cause.

Why do left elites/partisan hacks push identity politics? @NormFinkelstein cites 3 primary motives:

1) Attracting new Democratic party voters to replace their former working class base.

2) To stop a class mobilization from below—like one the Bernie Sanders campaign had… pic.twitter.com/0zzfLl8ZtI

— System Update (@SystemUpdate_) April 22, 2023

Mario Cuomo's 1984 Keynote address.  It attacked the Republican Party as the party of the rich, while affirming the Democratic Party as the party of the working class. 

To fill the void in the Democratic Party, they created a juggernaut to stop a class struggle mobilization from below like Bernie Sanders.

Woke politics to give a veneer of being progressive and cutting edge without making any sacrifices.

History of Left: People were killed for being on the Left.  They were jailed for being on the Left, for making real and material and mortal sacrifices for a cause.  What does it mean now? 

Judith Butler, 2020.  Says she's doing something real historic, right up there with the Paris Commune, the Bolshevik Revolution, the Spanish Civil War.  What does she do? She announces that her new pronouns are they/them.  O, that's a real act of martyrdom.  That's Christ being nailed to the cross.  It's so laughable what passes now for radical politics.  Radical politics is raking in tons and tons and tons and tons of cash.  

Ibram X gets $10 million dollars from Jack Dorsey.  

Barrack Obama gets $100 million dollars from Jeff Bezos.  

Van Jones gets $100 million dollars from Jeff Bezos.  

Black Lives Matter so-called leadership--they collected $90 million dollars tohe year of the George Floyd demonstration, i.e., the Summer of Love, 2020.  None of the activists saw one dime of it.  But Patrisse-KhanCullorso, one of the so-called leaders, she goes out and purchases 4 homes.  Another leader, Tamika Mallory, did a commercials for Cadillac.  

This is a bonanza!  This is a bonanza!  This is not sacrifice.  This is not what the Left used to stand for.  It's just making money.  Grifters!  There are grifters making money off of the cause on one hand, and then there are all these fake radical people pretending they are so cutting edge and so woke because they changed their pronouns or they drool over trans people.

"ironically there seems to be ONLY one statesmen still standing and that is Donald Trump"

Thank you to Martin Armstrong.  

Russia TV called out Borris Johnson for threatening to launch nuclear weapons against Russia. As they aptly warned that Borris has simply lost his mind that the UK is a very small island and one long-range nuclear weapon will wipe out the UK from the face of the planet. They also point out that they can simply detonate one offshore that would create a tsunami that would also wipe out the UK. 

As one reader pointed out, strategic nukes and tactical nukes are different in classical terms of “strategy” and “tactics”. The long-range strategic nukes are long-range (ICBMs, SLBMs, BTW launched, etc.) and generally used for a large-scale assault, whereas tactical nukes are short-range (smaller artillery-launched) and less powerful (relatively speaking, of course). Russia could use a tactical nuke and wipe out Kyiv without destroying the entire country. That would at least shut up Zelensky and he will never get to spend the $850 million he has already allegedly stolen post-war with the blood of his own people to keep the money flowing which he is stuffing offshore in the traditional fashion of Ukrainian politicians. In the US, they go in broke and leave as millionaires. In Ukraine, they strive to live as billionaires.

Russia is correct that just one nuke would wipe out Britain and Scotland. Just what the hell is going on here with these brain-dead leaders in the West is unimaginable. I spoke with a Congressman this morning and the sad state of affairs was that I was told that there is little expertise on Capitol Hill for the cold war generation seems to have retired. That is not helped when we have a senile President who seems to be rambling and will simply sign whatever they stick in front of him and needs the Easter Bunny to direct him and turn to shake hands with people who are not there.

Nobody wants to discuss the fact that Kyiv sent its army to begin the Civil War against Donbas on April 15th, 2014. It was called the “Anti-terrorist operation.” I have stated that I have personally known people on both sides from Kyiv and Donetsk. I have listened to the sheer hatred of Russians that stems from the days of Stalin who killed 7 million Ukrainians by starvation (see the film Mr. Jones). Understandably, Ukrainians would hate Russians and that includes those in the Donbas. Likewise, the ethnic Russians in the Donbas feel oppressed and hated based entirely on their ethnicity. But the Western Neocons just hate Russians so their story of Donbas is never told in the Western press.

As I have pointed out, Russian scholars have been debating this issue for decades trying to answer the questions (1) who is Russian and (2) what is the territory of Russia. Stalin was not Russia – he was Georgian. Lenin wanted to maintain the USSR and the Russian Empire with each state retaining its sovereignty. Stalin disagreed and demanded USSR be one country and terminated Lenin’s idea of a quasi-United States of Russia

Nikolai Patrushev is much more hard-right than Putin.

Putin has cancer and he is undergoing surgery. His number 2 is Nikolai Patrushev who is much more hard-right than Putin. I am deeply concerned that Putin may not make it to 2024 and if that is the case, these insults the West keeps hurling at Russia have not only severed all relations but also the direct phone line set up after the Cuban Missile Crisis to ensure that the leaders could always communicate to avoid war. Biden has virtually thrown the phone out the window.

Despite all the propaganda that demonizes Putin, those behind him are FAR WORSE for they are no different than the Neocons in America who just cannot sleep at night as long as Americans are still breathing. Our war cycle post-2024 appears to be the worst period. I fear that Putin will no longer be in charge and then we will see the real rage of Russia and how it has been treated by Biden and Europe. Russia will celebrate defeating the German Nazis on May 9th.

As Glen Greenwald pointed out on Twitter, “Noam Chomsky, in an interview this week, says “fortunately” there is “one Western statesman of stature” who is pushing for a diplomatic solution to the war in Ukraine rather than looking for ways to fuel and prolong it. “His name is Donald J. Trump,” Chomsky says. ” Indeed, in my discussions, ironically there seems to be ONLY one statesman still standing and that is Donald Trump. All we have a war-mongers cheering on World War III. Not a single world leader is interested whatsoever in world peace. They have all deliberately lied about what the Ukrainians have been doing against the ethnic Russians for they have killed over 6,000 civilians in this relentless war. Nobody can now stand up and even acknowledge that Putin was not lying or that he was even the slightest bit correct. Nobody will talk about Zelensky and how he has now polarized the Middle East as well as fueled the old hatred against the Jews. If you have not noticed, the countries surrounding Israel are aligning with Russia, not the USA and the EU.