‘He Did It’: Seymour Hersh Slams Biden As Nord Stream Bomber

Countercurrents | March 16, 2023

Pulitzer-prize winning investigative journalist Seymour Hersh made waves again Tuesday night as he excoriated the Biden administration and lambasted mainstream media coverage of the Nord Stream bombing, the Russiagate story, and the Democrat Party’s love of war at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.

Media reports said:

In a wide-ranging discussion, journalist Seymour Hersh doubled down on his explosive findings that U.S. President Joe Biden ordered the Nord Stream pipelines to be blown up last year using C-4 charges previously planted by U.S. Navy divers, took his former employers at the New York Times to task for their uncritical reporting on the issue, and slammed top Biden officials as “lunatics.”

“We’ve got to cut; we’ve got these lunatics,” Hersh told audiences at the storied press center.

Why 3 US banks collapsed in 1 week: Economist Michael Hudson explains

Geopolitical Economy Report | March 15, 2023

Economist Michael Hudson analyzes the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, Silvergate, and Signature Bank, explaining the similarities to the 2008 financial crash. He also addresses the US government bailout (which it isn’t calling a bailout), the role of the Federal Reserve and Treasury, the factor of cryptocurrency, and the danger of derivatives.

TRANSCRIPT: https://geopoliticaleconomy.com/2023/…

Moral hazard or creative destruction?

Michael Roberts Blog

As I write, US regional banks stock and bond prices are diving.  And a major international Swiss bank, Credit Suisse, is close to bankruptcy.  A financial crisis not seen since the global financial crash of 2008 appears to be unfolding.  What will be the response of the monetary and financial authorities?

Back in 1928, the then US treasury secretary and banker Andrew Mellon pushed for higher interest rates in order to control inflation and credit fuelled stock market speculation. At his bequest, the Federal Reserve Board began raising interest rates and in August 1929 the Fed banged up the rate to a new high. Just two months later in October 1929, theNew York Stock Exchangesuffered the worst crash in its history in what was called “Black Tuesday“. History repeats.

In 1929 Mellon was undeterred.  He advised the then president Hoover to “liquidate labor, liquidate stocks…

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The betrayers of Julian Assange

John Pilger

People’s Dispatch | March 17, 2023

I have known Julian Assange since I first interviewed him in London in 2010. I immediately liked his dry, dark sense of humor, often dispensed with an infectious giggle. He is a proud outsider: sharp and thoughtful. We have become friends, and I have sat in many courtrooms listening to the tribunes of the state try to silence him and his moral revolution in journalism.

My own high point was when a judge in the Royal Courts of Justice leaned across his bench and growled at me: ‘You are just a peripatetic Australian like Assange.’ My name was on a list of volunteers to stand bail for Julian, and this judge spotted me as the one who had reported his role in the notorious case of the expelled Chagos Islanders. Unintentionally, he delivered me a compliment.

I saw Julian in Belmarsh not long ago. We talked about books and the oppressive idiocy of the prison: the happy-clappy slogans on the walls, the petty punishments; they still won’t let him use the gym. He must exercise alone in a cage-like area where there is a sign that warns about keeping off the grass. But there is no grass. We laughed; for a brief moment, some things didn’t seem too bad.

Nord Stream Sabotage: German Newspaper Debunks Other Media Stories

Countercurrents | March 13, 2023

A German newspaper has debunked the Nord Stream sabotage stories by other Anglo-U.S. media.

German center-right newspaper Bild has insisted that the mainstream media story that the Nord Stream pipelines were destroyed by a team of six operating from the Andromeda, a 15-meter chartered yacht, is becoming increasingly dubious.

Earlier this week, The New York Times and Die Zeit claimed that “new intelligence” had traced the Nord Stream sabotage attack to a “pro-Ukrainian group” consisting of five men and one woman who used a yacht rented in Poland. The vessel was later found by German investigators and turned out to be the Andromeda, a Bavaria C50 sailing boat. The group reportedly embarked on their mission from Rostock on September 6, 2022. The equipment for the secret operation was allegedly transported to the port in a truck.

Iran-Saudi Rapprochement: Signs of Waning Influence of USA in the Region

Countercurrents | March 12, 2023

The Iran-Saudi Arabia rapprochement has wide reactions.

An NBC report — What does the Iran-Saudi Arabia truce mean for Washington’s standing on the global stage? (March 11, 2023, NBCNews.com) — said:

As some world leaders hailed the restoration of ties between long-standing enemies Iran and Saudi Arabia, there were growing fears in Washington that the deal could help spell the end of the United States’ pre-eminence in the region and beyond.

U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres celebrated the announcement, expressing his appreciation to China for brokering the deal.

Tale of two workers or workers’ tale

Farooque Chowdhury

Countercurrents | March 10, 2023

What are workers? Are they human beings? Do they have only a bundle of muscles but, no brains? How do they feel and how do they think? Do they think at all? What do they face in their life – in factories, in foundries and other shops, in assembly lines, in unions?

Workers’ answers to the questions above differ from the response the workers’ masters present. The factor that draws the delineating line is, in short, class position, which is often blurred while discussing issues of life and work, be it related to workplace or economic program, politics or social initiatives, charity, cooperative, ideology or culture.

Bush-Era Neocons Should Shut The Fuck Up About Iraq (And Everything Else)

Caitlin Johnstone | March 15, 2023

David Frum and Max Boot, two neoconservatives who helped grease the wheels for the invasion of Iraq, have some thoughts they’d like to share with us as we approach the 20th anniversary of that horrific and unforgivable war. Both of these perspectives can be read in widely esteemed mainstream publications, because everyone who was responsible for inflicting that war upon our species has enjoyed mainstream influence and esteem to this very day.

Both men concede in their own ways that the war was a mistake, while simultaneously cheerleading the US proxy war in Ukraine that has brought humanity closer to nuclear armageddon than it has been at any time since the Cuban Missile Crisis. Both men mix their Iraq War retrospectives with war apologia, historical revisionism, and outright lies. And both men should shut the fuck up. About everything. Forever.

Frum’s article is posted in The Atlantic, where he is a senior editor, and it is titled “The Iraq War Reconsidered“. Frum is credited with authoring George W Bush’s infamous “Axis of Evil” speech, which marked the beginning of an unprecedented era of US military expansionism and “humanitarian interventions” in geostrategically valuable nations after 9/11.