Yves here. Hudson had extensive contact with Mossad agents 50 years ago, and saw them take the idea of using “strategic hamlets” from Vietnam, as in balkanization of the native people’s land and communities. But in the end it didn’t work with Vietnam, and despite its apparent successes with Palestinians, it may finally be backfiring on Israel.
By Ania at her YouTube channel
ANIA: Hello, everyone. Welcome back to my channel. Today I have with me for the fourth time, I’m still counting, a very, very special guest, one of the best professors in economics and financial analysts in the world. And I’m very glad we are reconnecting with Professor Hudson again.
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Welcome back, Professor Hudson. Thank you so much for joining me today for this conversation.
MICHAEL HUDSON: Thanks for having me back again.
ANIA: And I would like to say to the audience as well that this video is dedicated to what is taking place, especially in Gaza and Israel. Of course, we will address other countries related to this situation, but Professor Hudson has sent me a very in-depth email after our last live stream a week ago, also on Friday, and we actually decided after we ended that live stream to have this particular topic to be the main topic of this video. So, I give this to you, Professor Hudson, where would you like to start this conversation, please?
MICHAEL HUDSON: I think I should start with my own background, because 50 years ago, in 1974, I was working with the Hudson Institute, with Herman Kahn, and my colleagues there were a number of Mossad agents who were being trained. Uzi Arad was there, and he became the head of Mossad and is currently the main advisor to Benjamin Netanyahu.
So, all of what is happening today was discussed 50 years ago, not only with the Israelis, but with many of the U.S. defense people, because I was with the Hudson Institute, which was a national security agency, because I’d written Super Imperialism, and I was a balance of payments expert, and the Defense Department used my book Super Imperialism not as an expose, but a how-to-do-it book. And they brought me there as a specialist in the balance of payments. Herman brought me back and forth to the White House to meet with cabinet members and to discuss the balance of payments. He also brought me to the War College and to the Air Force think tanks.
So, all of what is happening now was described a long time ago, and Herman was known as a futurist. He was Dr. Strangelove in the movie. That was all based for him on his theories of atomic war, but he was also the main theorist behind Vietnam. And nobody seems to have noticed that what is happening in Gaza and the West Bank now is all based on what was the U.S. strategy during the Vietnam War. And it was based on the “strategic hamlets” idea, the fact that you could cut back, you could just divide all of Vietnam into little parts, having guards at all the transition points from one part to another. Everything that Israel is doing to the Palestinians in Gaza and elsewhere throughout Israel was all pioneered in Vietnam.
And Herman had me meet with some of the generals there to explain it. And I think I mentioned I flew to Asia twice with Uzi Arad. We had a chance to [get to] know each other very much. And I could see that the intention from the very beginning was to get rid of the Palestinians and indeed to use Israel as the basis for U.S. control of Near Eastern oil. That was the constant discussion of that from the American point of view. It was Israel as a part of the oil.
So, Herman’s analysis was on systems analysis. You define the overall aim and then you work backward. How do you do it? Well, you can see what the Israeli policy is today. First of all, you isolate the Palestinians and strategic hamlets. That’s what Gaza had already been turned into for the last 15 years. It’s been carved up into districts requiring electronic passes from one sector to another to go into Israel, to go to Jerusalem, or to go to Israel for jobs to work.
The aim all along has been to kill them. Or first of all, to make life so unpleasant for them that they’ll emigrate. That’s the easy way. Why would anyone want to stay in Gaza when what’s happening to them is what’s happening today? You’re going to leave. But if they don’t leave, you’re going to have to kill them, ideally by bombing because that minimizes the domestic casualties. Israel doesn’t want its soldiers to die any more than Americans do. So, the American form of war, as it was in Vietnam, is bombing them. You don’t want person-to-person contact because people fighting for their lives and liberty tend to be better fighters because for them it’s really essential. For the others, they’re just doing soldier’s work.
So, the genocide that you’re seeing today is an explicit policy, and that was a policy of the forefathers, the founders of Israel. The idea of a land without people was a land without Arabs in it, the land without non-Jewish people. That’s really what it meant. They were to be driven out starting even before the official funding of Israel, the first Nakba, the Arab Holocaust. And the two of the Israeli prime ministers were members of the Stern gang of terrorists. The terrorists became the rulers of Israel. They escaped from British jail and they joined to found Israel. So, what you’re seeing today is the final solution to this plan. And the founders of Israel were so obsessed with the Nazis, essentially, they wanted to do to them what they did to us, is how they explained it to people.
For the United States, what they wanted was the oil reserves in the Middle East. And again and again, I heard the phrase, you’re our landed aircraft carrier in Israel. Uzi Arad, the future Mossad head, would be very uncomfortable at this because he wanted Israel to be run by the Israelis. But they realized that for Israel to get by with the money that it needed for its balance of payments, it had to be in a partnership with the United States.
So, what you’re seeing today isn’t simply the work of one man, of Benjamin Netanyahu. It’s the work of the team that President Biden has put together. It’s the team of Jake Sullivan, the National Security Advisor, Lincoln, and the whole deep state, the whole neocon group behind them, Victoria Nuland, and everyone. They’re all self-proclaimed Zionists. And they’ve gone over this plan for essentially America’s domination of the Near East for decade after decade.
But as the United States learned in the Vietnam War, populations protest, and the U.S. population protested against the Vietnam War. What the Biden administration wants to avoid is the situation that President Johnson had in 1968. Any hotel, any building that he went to, to give a speech for his re-election campaign, there were crowds shouting, LBJ, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today? President Johnson had to take the servants entrance to get away from the press so that nobody would see what he was doing. And essentially, he went on television and resigned.
Well, to prevent this kind of embarrassment, and to prevent the embarrassment of journalists who were doing all this, Seymour Hersh described the [Mai Lai] massacre, and that helped inflame the opposition to Johnson. Well, President Biden, who’s approved Netanyahu’s plan, the first people you have to kill are the journalists. If you’re going to permit genocide, you have to realize that you don’t want the domestic U.S. population or the rest of the world to oppose the U.S. and Israel. You kill the journalists. And for the last, ever since the October 2nd Al-Aqsa event, you’ve had one journalist per week killed in Israel. That’s part of it.
The other people you don’t want, if you’re going to bomb them, you have to start by bombing the hospitals and all of the key centers. That also was part of the idea of the Vietnam War. How do you destroy a population? This was all worked out in the 1970s, when people were trying to use systems analysis to think, how do you work back and see what you need? And the idea, if you bomb a population, you can’t really hide that, even if you kill the journalists. How do you kill a population passively? So you minimize the visible bombing. Well, the line of least resistance is to starve them. And that’s been the Jewish, the Israeli policy since 2008.
You had a piece by Sarah Roy in the New York Review, citing a cable from 2008, from Tel Aviv to the embassy saying, as part of their overall embargo plan against Gaza, Israeli officials have confirmed to the embassy officials on multiple occasions that they intend to keep the Gaza economy on the brink of collapse without quite pushing it over the edge. Well, now they’re pushing it over the edge.
And so Israel has been especially focusing after the journalists, after the hospitals, you bomb the greenhouses, you bomb the trees, you sink the fishing boats that have supplied food to the population. And then you aim at fighting the United Nations relief people.
And you’ve read, obviously, the whole news of the last week has been the attack on the seven food providers that were not Arabs. And this was, again, from a systems analyst point, this is exactly what the textbook says to do strategically. If you can make a very conspicuous bombing of aid people, then you will have other aid suppliers afraid to go, because they think, well, if these people, aid suppliers, are just shot at, then we would be too.
Well, the United States is fully behind this. And to help starve the Gazan people, the Biden immediately, right after the ICJ finding of plausible genocide, withdrew all funding from the United Nations relief agencies. The idea, again, the hope was to prevent the United Nations from having the money to supply food.
So when the United States is now trying to blame one person, and Biden goes on a television recorded call with Netanyahu saying, please be humane when you’re dropping your bombs, do it in a humane way. That’s purely for domestic consumption. It’s amazing how nakedly hypocritical all this.
And ever since the Al-Aqsa Mosque was raided by Israeli settlers on October 2, leading to Hamas’s Al-Aqsa Flood retaliation on October 7, it was closely coordinated with the Biden administration. All the bombs have been dropped day after day, week after week, with the whole of the US. And Biden has said on a number of occasions, the Palestinians are enemies.
So I think I want to make it clear that this is not simply an Israeli war against Hamas. It’s an American-backed Israeli war. Each of them have their own objectives. Israel’s objective is to have a land without non-Jewish population. And America’s aim is to have Israel acting as the local coordinator, as it has been coordinating the work with ISIS and the ISIS commanders to turn them against targets provided by the United States.
Basically, that’s the duopoly that’s been created.
And I think Alastair Crooke has cited Trita Parsi, one of the Israeli political leaders, saying the objective really in all this, of Israel’s conflict and Biden’s acquiescence to it, is that Israel is engaged in a deliberate and systematic effort to destroy existing laws and norms about warfare. And that’s really it.
You have people, you have reporters, such as Pepe Escobar, saying that the United States is a chaos agent. But there’s a logic in this. The United States is looking forward to what it’s going to be doing in the Near East, in Ukraine, and especially in the China Sea and Taiwan. Looking forward, the United States says, how do we prevent other nations moving against us in the international court or suing or somehow putting sanctions against us? Israel is the test case, not simply for what’s happening there in Israel and Palestine itself, but against anything that the United States will be doing through the rest of the world.
That’s why the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., echoed by Lincoln and other U.S. officials, said there’s no court of justice ruling against genocide, that it was a non-binding ruling. Well, of course it was binding, but it has no means of enforcement. And both Lincoln and yesterday, the head of the army said, there is no genocide taking place in Gaza. Well, what that means is you have to go to a court, and that’s going to take years and years. And by the time the court case is over and there’s any judgment of reparations due, then you’re going to, by then the Gazans will all be dead. So the U.S. aim is to end the rule of international law that is why the United Nations was founded in 1945.
And in fact, this international law goes way back to 1648 with the peace of Westphalia in Germany to end the 30 years war. All the European nations agreed not to interfere with the internal affairs of other countries. Well, that also was part of the United Nations principle.
And yet you have the United States explicitly advocating regime change in other countries, and most specifically in Russia and throughout the Middle East. So if you can end the whole kind of rule of law, then there’s really no alternative to the United States rules-based order, which means we can do whatever we want, chaos.
And if you look at what’s happening in Gaza is facilitating a transition from a orderly world of the United Nations to chaos, then you’re going to understand basically what the whole, the big picture, the long range picture that’s been put in place really over a series of decades. That’s why the United States, and the United States has no plan B. It only has the plan A to do this. It’s not taking into account the counter reactions and the feedback. Maybe we can discuss that a little later. I’d better leave the questions up to you.
ANIA: Thank you. You actually have already answered many of my questions in that intro, but I want to ask you this now. I will jump a little bit now. I have a question about something that you wrote to me in your email.
I believe looking at many, many situations that are taking place in the world, that sometimes all you really need to do is to follow the money and it will give you a lot of answers. So as you said in your email that, let me check, where is it? The Israeli developers already are planning to turn Gaza into luxury beachfront properties.
So let me ask you here, Professor Hudson, What is really the main goal for Israel’s existence? And in this case, is this really about their luxurious properties, oil? What else is this region really about? Why is it so crucial?
MICHAEL HUDSON: Well, it’s not just about beach properties. It’s what’s off the beach, the gas, the natural gas that they’ve discovered right offshore the Mediterranean that belongs to Gaza. So the Israelis are after the gas.
But your basic question, you’d sent me a list of questions you were going to go through. And I think if you keep to that sequence, it’s good. What you’re really asking is, you know, what’s the main goal for Israel’s existence? And I think if people don’t really, their sense of justice is so strong that they can’t believe what the original goal was. And the initial goal in the 19th century was formed in a period where Europe was anti-Semitic. The most anti-Semitic part of all was Ukraine. If you read Leon Trotsky’s autobiography of growing up in Odessa, he described the pogroms there. And so the Zionists, the first wave of Zionists, were looking for how can the Jewish people escape from this anti-Semitism.
Here’s the problem. By 1947, when Israel was formed, anti-Semitism was passé. Most Jews in the United States, certainly who I grew up with, they were all assimilated. Of course, they had well wishes for Israel. There was very little talk of the Arabs. But you had two arms of Judaism.
The one arm were the people who remembered with a vengeance what was done for them against them in Ukraine and Russia, and especially by Hitler and the Holocaust. They wanted to be separate and to have just to be protected.
But most of the Jewish population in America and Europe was thoroughly assimilated. And the last thing they wanted was to be separate. They wanted just the opposite. They wanted anti-Semitism to end.
But the Zionists who were in charge of Israel, the Stern Gang leaders, were obsessed with the old antagonisms. And in a way, they were obsessed with Nazism and said, well, we want to do to them what they did to us.
And again, the idea of a land without a people meant a land— we intend to make Israel into a land without non-Jewish people. That’s what a land without people, their slogan, meant. And from the very beginning, they started by driving Arabs out of Palestine, destroying their olive trees, destroying their orchards, taking their houses, and just killing them. That’s why the English threw them in jail before turning around and said, well, it’s true that we’ve thrown all the leaders in jail, but let’s recognize Israel and make Israel a whole country to do what these leaders that we were before throwing in jail were doing.
ANIA: Thank you.
You said also in your email that ISIS is part of America’s foreign legion. Can you please elaborate on that?
MICHAEL HUDSON: Well, ISIS was organized originally to fight in Afghanistan against the Russians. And al-Qaeda, which was the parent of ISIS, was simply the roster of people who were willing to fight under the U.S. command.
Well, part of al-Qaeda turned against America on 9-11, but most, especially the Sunni followers of Wahhabi theology, were very eager to fight against the Shiites. Islam is divided into two parts, the Sunni Islam of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Republics, and much of the Near East, and the Shiites from Iran and maybe half of Iraq and parts of Syria also.
So you had these two sectarian groups fighting each other, and the United States provided the funding and the organization to them and essentially delegated to Israel much of the organization of organizing ISIS to fight against Assad, to fight against whomever the United States designated as our enemies, meaning we want to take their oil lands. America has taken Iraqi oil and won’t leave, is taking Syrian oil and won’t leave.
So essentially, the U.S. has used ISIS to fight against all of the Shiites on the theory that the Shiite Islam is all controlled by Iran, and they want to essentially wipe out the Shiites as they’re doing in Gaza, even though I think the Palestinians are mainly Sunni, but you should think of the ISIS as America’s foreign legion. They’ve hired them, they pay them, and they recruit from them.
You’ve just seen in what happened in Russia from the Ukrainians, Oregon recruited Sunni terrorists from Tajikistan. You’ve seen the United States trying to use ISIS to recruit, to fight in Russia’s southern periphery in Central Asia and to fight in the Uyghur territories of Xinjiang in Western China. They’re using ISIS to try to essentially attack the integrity of China, Russia, and Syria and any other area where the United States wants a regime change to put in the usual client oligarchy.
ANIA: So interesting, and they sell it under the description that this is the enemy and terrorist, and they are founding it. And the public is still buying this, Professor Hudson. How is this possible?
MICHAEL HUDSON: Well, this is hypocritical. Everybody throughout the world is appalled by the cruelty and the barbarism of ISIS. The United States is not going to come right out and say, hey, that’s us that they’re fighting. We’re directing ISIS from the presidential office. We love ISIS.
Well, Biden loves ISIS, and Blinken loves ISIS, and the entire neocons, the CIA loves ISIS because they’re all running it, but they can’t say it to the American public. They have to pretend just like they’re pretending with Netanyahu that, oh my heavens, look at [what] ISIS is doing. We’ve really got to fight against it.
And for instance, when it put in the white helmets in ISIS, these were the American supplied public relations unit to essentially do false propaganda, false images, make false flag attacks. All of these false flag attacks, all of the white helmets and the propaganda has all been coordinated by the United States.
ANIA: I want to ask you now a question that to some extent you actually answered already. Does Israel make any independent decisions that are not consulted with the United States in regards to bombing Gaza?
MICHAEL HUDSON: Well, the question is, what is the United States or what do you mean by the United States? They don’t need official approval. There’s already a broad agreement in principle. Do whatever you have to do.
The United States has given them a free hand saying, we’re not going to interfere. You’re our managers on site. Just as you’re managing ISIS, you can manage certainly your own country. The U.S. has given blanket approval for Israel’s genocide. That’s why it says there’s no genocide there.
And it shares the aim of extending the war to fight Iran. Again and again, what Netanyahu is saying, we’re not going to be safe until we defeat Iran. Well, the United States has, that’s America, that’s the neocon plan outlined in the 1990s. It was spelled out, I think, by General Petraeus of first Afghanistan, then Iraq, then Syria, and then Iran. All of this was worked out from the beginning. The United States is trying to figure out, how do we do it?
Well, there’s a general expectation that one way to do it is to have Israel mount a false flag attack, something Iran does that is so bad that Israel retaliates and then, as it just bombed the Iranian embassy in Syria, that Iran is going to then do something to Israel and the United States will come to protect our Israeli brothers and world peace and prevent the genocide that the Gazans are trying to do against Israel and that Iran is trying to do against the rest of the world and bomb Iran.
Back in 1970s, there were discussions of what do you do? What will Iran do to fight back? Well, there’s one thing that Iran can do, that it doesn’t have to bomb American troops in Syria or Iraq. It doesn’t have to bomb Israel. All it has to do is sink a ship in the Strait of Hormuz. That’s the big strait. You’ve seen what happened, what the Houthis have done with the Red Sea. The big traffic is the Strait of Hormuz. That’s where Saudi Arabian oil and we could call it the oil gulf. It’s called the Persian Gulf, but it’s really the oil gulf. That’s where all the oil trade is. If you sink a ship or two in the oil gulf, that’s going to push oil prices way, way up because that’s going to cut most of the world off for as long as Iran wants from the Middle Eastern oil supply.
Well, that’s what really terrifies Biden because he’s pretending that there’s no inflation in the United States and that the economy is quite heavy . The inflation that would follow from Iran sinking a ship in Hormuz will essentially be crowning the American opposition to Biden, which is growing.
It’s one thing to be against genocide and killing people, but much more important is if your gas prices go up, the American people think that that’s really much more important than the fact of genocide and crimes against humanity. That’s really what is frightening the US.
The question is right now, how do they make the Israeli provocation against Iran— an excuse for the United States to come in with all of NATO’s and European support and somehow prevent Iran from having the power to close down the Straits of Hormuz. That’s what they’re trying to figure out now. I don’t know what they’re going to do, but when Blinken has said, Israel has not broken any rules. It’s all okay. What the United States really is [saying], if they can get away with this, they can say there are really no rules at all for the whole world. We can do whatever we want. Right now is coming to a peak. It’s the follow-up that was all thought in advance of the whole Israeli movement against Gaza.
ANIA: Thank you, Professor Hudson.
Next question that is about targeting civilians, journalists, and workers. Again, you’ve addressed this already, but I will ask you this. Why is the Israeli army targeting all those groups?
MICHAEL HUDSON: Well, it’s targeting everyone. It’s targeting all civilians because it wants a land without Palestinian people. It’s targeting the most critical people necessary for a Gazan society to survive. It targets the journalists because it doesn’t want the world to see what it’s doing, because Israel has already lost its standing in the world. The United States tells them, especially, you’ve got to kill the journalists because if you don’t kill them, we, the Biden administration, are going to look bad. We already have the Americans turning against the war.
There’s only one anti-war candidate running in the presidential elections for this November. That’s Jill Stein. Every other candidate is completely backing Israel in the war, but the American people, the majority of Americans look at what’s happening in Israel as genocide and as a crime against humanity. They’re not going to vote for Biden. Biden is going to lose the election or certainly not win it. It may go into the House of Representatives if nobody wins it.
In order to drive the rest of the Gazan populations out, you have to, number one, get rid of the journalists. Number two, you want to get rid of the hospitals. As you’re bombing the people, a lot of them are going to get injured. You want all the injured people from the bombs to die. For that, you have to bomb the hospitals. You especially have to target the doctors for killing. Not only will there not be doctors to heal the wounded people, but other doctors, doctors without borders from other countries, will be afraid to go into Gaza because if you go there, you know that if you’re a food worker bringing aid or a doctor or an aid worker, you’re going to get shot because you’re at the top of the target list.
ANIA: It’s horrible. Just listening to this, you know, it’s very hard to…
MICHAEL HUDSON: Well, imagine how I used to feel sitting in meetings and all of this was just said as if this is part of a game and this is how we’re planning it all out. All of this was what was discussed. How do we do evil? I mean, this…
ANIA: Yeah, but those are not humans to me. They are not humans to me.
MICHAEL HUDSON: That’s right.
ANIA: Soulless beings that are not humans. That’s all I say here.
Professor Hudson, next question is about those Israeli developers who, as you said in your email, are already planning to turn Gaza into luxury beachfront properties. So what do you really know about this? They are already planning this? Like they have plans for those properties?
MICHAEL HUDSON: The Americans made a start. They began by building docks. You not only want beachfront property, you want docks for the buyers to have a place to tie up their yachts or their sailboats.
And so the United States is building these piers. One reason it’s doing it is it can pretend that it can say, we’re not building the piers for Israeli property owners to have yachts, we’re going to deliver food. But by the time we finish building the piers, there’ll be no more Gazans. I mean, that’s the whole point. By building the piers, they’ve enabled Israel to prevent the food trucks from coming in from the south. So building the piers is a means of pretending to help without doing anything at all to help actually [deliver] food to Israel.
So yes, all throughout the news, there have been statements by the Israeli real estate companies saying, Gaza could have been a nice place to live if there weren’t Arabs in it. And now if we can clear the land of Arabs, make it a land without those people, then this is a wonderful property. And it has natural gas to help the Israeli balance of payments. So the whole idea is to make this a center of Israel luxury development.
ANIA: Again, absolutely disgusting to me, just listening to this. I want to ask you now about, were Gaza [to cease] to exist completely, what will happen to all the Palestinians who survived?
MICHAEL HUDSON: Well, the land is going to be there, and it’ll be beachfront property. Alastair Crooke has been, I think, the clearest writer. He was one of the negotiators between Israel and the Palestinians. He’s explained that there cannot be a two-state solution anymore.
The Israelis say, we are going to kill all of the Palestinians. The Palestinians say, well, we can’t exist with the Israelis, and we have to defend ourselves. If we don’t kill them, they’re going to kill us. So Israel has to be either Palestinian or Israeli. It can’t be both. That is ended forever. So anyone who talks of a two-state solution, they’re just not looking it up.
So the question is, how is Gaza going to exist? Either it’s going to be all Israeli, and the Gazans will be forced to flee. The Israelis want them to flee by boats and to be sunk, most of them will be sunk in the Mediterranean, just like after America and France destroyed Libya. The Libyans tried to flee in boats, and they were sunk.
So either they will drown, or they will somehow work their way into a prison camp that Egypt and its leader is setting up for Gazan refugees. And then the Gazans will somehow try to gain entry into Europe or other countries. So you can expect a huge influx of Gazans into Europe.
Some people have suggested, well, now that Ukraine is turning into a land without a people, maybe either the Gazans can turn Ukraine over to the Palestinians, or we could give it to the Israelis, saying, well, this is your ancestral land, this is where all of the pogroms that started Zionism began. Now you can go back and there are no more Ukrainians. They have programs against you. Maybe the Israelis should go to Ukraine. One population or the other has to emigrate.
Well, Israelis already have been losing a huge chunk of their population, especially their working age population, especially those who have jobs in information technology or highly paying jobs. So, you’re already seeing a population outflow.
So, Gaza will exist geographically, but we have no idea about what is going to be the demographic composition.
And I think the Israeli Defense Forces Chief, Herzi Halevi, said just last Sunday that Israel, he announced Israel knows how to handle Iran, just as they’re handling Gaza, that they’ve prepared for this. They have good defensive systems. And he said, we are operating and cooperating with the USA and strategic problems partners in this region. So, the US is going to be putting pressure on Egypt to expand the concentration camps that it’s setting up and to pressure the Europeans. Maybe so many Germans are leaving their country now that there’s no more work for them. Maybe the Palestinians will go to Germany and other European countries, and wherever they can find some kind of refuge.
America was willing to give the Jewish population refuge as long as the Jewish population served European imperialist aims of controlling the Near Eastern oil. But what can Palestine offer to be protected? If the Palestinians don’t have anything to offer the Europeans or the Americans, their governments simply do not care. They’ve done absolutely nothing to protect the Palestinians because they don’t care if there’s no money in it for them. And the Arab countries with money, the Saudi Arabians, the United Arab Republics have not really lifted a hand to help this. Even though a large labor force in Saudi Arabia is already Palestinian, they don’t need more Palestinians there. So, that’s basically what’s happening.
ANIA: Thank you, Professor Hudson. You know, before I ask you my last question, you know, people’s beliefs that the governments care about them. This is the most… I don’t understand how people can still believe that any government really cares about them in the world, looking at the situation like this. It’s heartbreaking. Just listening to what you said is a lot for me to take in.
The last question is when the bombing will stop and who is going to rebuild Gaza Strip?
MICHAEL HUDSON: Well, the bombing will stop when there are no more Palestinians to bomb. Israel doesn’t have the money to rebuild it or the intention of rebuilding. And even if Israel wants to rebuild it with nice homes all the way to the beachfront, who is going to do the building?
Well, already Israel has made a deal with India to get a lot of Indian construction workers from the poorest provinces of India coming over there. But again, who’s going to pay them? You can give them work permits, but the answer is who will pay them will be the contractors who are given the contracts to rebuild homes and offices and the new Israeli compound in Gaza, unless the world works and says, no, the Israelis have to give back all the land and it’s Israel that will be a minority under a Palestinian government.
You cannot have an Israeli government that is over the whole region because its policy is to kill the Palestinians. So I don’t see that, again, you can’t have a two-state solution. It doesn’t look like anyone’s supporting the Palestinians right now.
Who would help rebuild it? Well, the Turkish builders might come in and build it. Other Middle Easterners would rebuild it. Saudi Arabia could finance huge developments there. The United Arab Republics could buy land. American investors, maybe Blackstone could help develop there, but it’ll be foreign investment.
And if you look at the fact that the foreign investors of all these countries are looking for what they can get out of the genocide against Palestinians, you realize why there’s no real opposition to the genocide that’s taking place.
And the great benefit to the U.S. of all this is that as a result of this absence of any kind of the moral feeling that you’ve just expressed, no claims can be brought against the United States for any of the warfare, any of the regime change, interference that it’s planning for Iran, China, Russia, and as it’s been doing in Africa and Latin America. So Israel and Gaza and the West Bank should be seen, I think, as an opening of the new Cold War. And whatever you see happening in Gaza after the Gazans are driven out, you see this is really the plan for what the United States wants to do in China, in Russia, in Africa, in the whole rest of the world. You’re seeing a plan for basically how to financialize and make money out of genocide and the destruction of society. And in order to do that, you have to prevent anything like the United Nations of having any authority at all.
And the irony in all this is that the United States is creating just the opposite of what it wanted to do. I mean, obviously, while this is happening in Gaza, most of the global majority that we’ve spoken before, the world outside of NATO, America and Europe, are appalled. And the only way of stopping what’s happening in Gaza happening in the rest of the world is to create an alternative to the United Nations, an alternative to the World Bank, to the IMF, an alternative to all the organizations that the United States has controlled to turn the whole rest of the world into Gaza, if it can.
ANIA: Dr. Hudson, Professor Hudson, I want to thank you for coming back. I want to thank you for telling me after our last live stream to address this, because you shared it with me and with the audience. And I really hope that you will spread this video, guys, you will share it.
So I personally believe that we are fighting evil. And the way that I feel I am in a small way contributing to this is to trying to seek the truth and bring people who have knowledge and understanding and can share the facts and the truth with the world. Because if you don’t know what you’re fighting against, what you’re fighting with, then you’re like Don Quixote. You have to know what is the problem. And I am immensely grateful for guests like yourself to be on my channel and to share your knowledge with the audience. I can only imagine knowing all of this, what you shared with us today, living with this for so many years and watching the [unfolding] of those events in the world. For someone who has feelings and emotions, it’s very hard to bear. I can only imagine. So thank you for your contribution.
MICHAEL HUDSON: I’m on your show, Ania, because you see that this is evil, and it is evil.
ANIA: Yes. Thank you so much. I know you have to go. And I want to invite you again, of course, in the near future. Hopefully, you find time for our next conversation. To everyone who’s watching, make sure to check all the links to Professor Hudson that are already attached down below this live stream. And like I said, please share the video. Hit this like. It’s free of charge, and it helps the channel also. And more people can hear this information in the world. Thank you, everyone. And until next time.
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Hudson doesn’t pull any punches when he gets onto political subjects.
“I’m on your show, Ania, because you see that this is evil, and it is evil”
He is doing his best in his own way to stop what is happening. At 84 I think!
Admirable.
Agreed. Like I.F. Stone who taught himself Greek in his late 80’s so as to write his splendid “The Trial of Socrates”
I’m amazed that Ania and Michael were even able to get this on the air. Thank you for posting. I’m wondering if it will be gone by morning.
Pepe’s going to follow it up. I asked him to hold off until it was posted here.
I believe Ania’s citations of her posts on multiple platforms are censorship insurance. Scott Ritter’s weekly series of interviews has been taken down from Youtube. While Alex Christoforou’s daily Duran post havent been censored that I know of, finding my way to them has become easier now that I look for them at Rumble, without lots of out-of-date, competing content (and ads) on Youtube showing up when I search.
Everything that Israel is doing to the Palestinians in Gaza and elsewhere throughout Israel was all pioneered in Vietnam.
Many — if not most — of what Israel is doing against Palestinians has a solid colonial tradition that predates the Vietnam war.
Thus, at the same time the USA was implementing strategic hamlets in Vietnam, the Portuguese were proceeding with a “rural reorganization” of their colonies, concentrating the native population in “villages” (aldeamentos) — enclosed with barbed wire and with a small military post in the centre (so that the locals would act as a human shield in case of attacks by the guerrila).
But neither the American nor the Portuguese had invented anything: the French had already practiced the same policy with their “regrouping centres” (centres de regroupement) during the Algerian war — where they ended up parking 2.5 millions natives.
And they were not the first to have done something like that: the British created the “new villages” during the “Malayan emergency” — again, concentrating people in villages enclosed with barbed wire, watchtowers manned by guards with instructions to shoot to kill.
It’s been carved up into districts requiring electronic passes from one sector to another to go into Israel, to go to Jerusalem, or to go to Israel for jobs to work.
Again, a standard colonial practice.
In French colonies, the native population was assigned to districts, within which it could move freely. To travel to another district, it was necessary to get a written authorization, presenting a roadmap (where one wanted to go, when, and the route). Woe to those who, when presenting their laissez-passer, were found to be infringing its roadmap. In addition, the local population was subject to curfews.
A similar system (including curfews) existed in Belgian colonies, but it was possible to obtain a travel permit valid for a limited period (typically 2 months), renewable for a fee.
In Portuguese colonies, natives had to carry a “native booklet” with which they had to justify their presence in any place outside their district. It was basically a log book dated and signed by the employer or civil servant. Also curfews.
Other colonial powers also had a variety of comparable approaches for imposing the control of movement on local populations.
Even the segregation practices in occupied Palestine (roads reserved to Israelis, streets where one side is for Palestinians and the other for Israelis, settlements that Palestinians are not allowed to enter, hospitals where maternity wards are separated by ethnic background, etc) are actually inspired by colonial practices. Italians were the most extreme in that matter, followed by Portuguese, Belgians, British, Dutch, French. Apartheid itself was a colonial system in a post-colonial world — it did not invent anything that had not been already implemented in the colonial realm before (especially in Italian colonies under fascism).
Genocide? A typical colonial practice.
We could go on.
It is useful to realize that, if the zionist movement was led by, and the State of Israel created by Jews originating largely from Eastern Europe (Ben Gurion, Golda Meir, Jabotinski, Sharett, etc), the foundation and build-up of zionism was largely the work of Jews originating from Germany and the Austro-Hungarian empire (Herzl, Arthur Ruppin, Franz Oppenheimer, Davis Trietsch, Otto Warburg). And for them, the models to apply in order to build a state for the Jews were to be found in the German and French colonies.
Thank you, Vao and Yves.
Vao’s comment should be pulled into a post. I have the impression that Vao is from Mitteleuropa, but is well informed about colonies and the colonial / imperial origins of the ongoing genocide in Palestine.
With regard to controlling movement, France’s code noir forbad slaves from different plantations from congregating without their owner’s permission, even for mass. As the owner could be “en ville / in town” when permission or for when permission was sought, no permission would be given. The overseer would not (dare) give permission, either. In addition, house slaves and field slaves were discouraged from mixing.
Records in the Mascareignes detail how negriers from Africa (modern Senegal and the border area between Tanzania and Mozambique) and Madagascar would sail in a round about way to Isle de Bourbon and Isle de France, so that slaves would lose a sense of direction.
My father led a British government aid project in South Africa in 1991 – 2. He was based in Bloemfontein. In the university holidays, we used to visit and noticed the mass migration of Africans at dawn and dusk. They worked in Bloem, Welkom etc., but did not live there, a legacy of the Group Areas Act.
My family is Catholic. Many have gone on pilgrimage to Palestine and been outraged by the harassment of Palestinians, including children trying to get to and fro school or catechism, and the migration between bantustans. Many of the people harassing Palestinians are obese New Yorkers pretending to be soldiers.
This issue resonates with me. I’m descended from both slaves and slave owners. My slave owner (maternal) family are still around and wealthy. Some years ago, after a family bust up, the ones who did not cash out feared losing control of CIEL, so invited some of France’s oligarchs (Barriere, Dentressangle, Ladreit de la Charriere, Peugeot and Rothschild) and the French government (Proparco) to invest. The family is of French origin and left Mercoeur, Correze, in 1760. They have diversified into mainland Africa and the sub-continent with that new money.
Absolutely correct, and, has anyone yet mentioned that these colonial population “control” measures are being snuck into America now? An electronic “identity card” or a passport to fly within the United States soon. Political dissent becoming illegal. Speech becoming censored and siloed on the Internet.
The old chestnut is coming true yet again: Whatever happens overseas as a result of “policy” eventually comes home to be implemented in the Homeland.
Historically, it all ends with a bang.
The Gods help us.
I do not have the citation at hand, but Hannah Arendt remarked that the attitude and actions of Nazis were standard operation procedure in the colonial realm — and they caused horror and outrage in great part because they were inflicted upon Europeans instead of populations of dark-skinned or slanted-eyes savages overseas.
Yeah, i seem to recall reading that the initial idea of the camps came from British camps set up during the Boer Wars in South Africa.
Never mind that USA placed Japanese-Americans (BTW, that split “nationality” language seems almost unique to USA) in camps during WW2.
Thank you.
There was a camp at Forbach in the north of Mauritius. One of the women from the Orange Free State my great great grandfather in a sugar cane field near the camp. She did not return to what became SA after the Treaty of Vereeniging in 1902 and stayed to marry him. There were a few like that.
Trail of Tears in 1830. President Jackson’s friends made money buying cheap land.
Former president Rump’s first trip outside DC, if I recall correctly, after the inauguration in 2017, was to Jackson’s Hermitage to admire how he treated slaves and Native Americans.
https://news.utk.edu/2017/03/17/historian-recaps-trumps-speech-hermitage/
Vao, the US, as always, has been in the forefront of Indigenous genocide and control methods. Our various ‘Indian Wars’ conducted by the US Army, the forced relocations such as the infamous ‘Trail of Tears,’ carefully induced famine, by forcing the local peoples to agree to ceding their hunting territories for inadequate or never-delivered government food supplies, massacres of women and children, such as occurred at Wounded Knee and Sand Creek, and the final herding of the remnants of the population into ‘reservations.’ Plus, we honed the setting up of Quisling or Vichy-type local governments run by Natives, to keep ‘their People’ in check.
We had, as well, frequent instances of settler-conducted violence against the native population, usually in response to a ‘heinous massacre of helpless and innocent civilians’ who had moved into Indigenous territory, built houses and begun farming. Of course, the Papal Bull of 1493, known as The Doctrine of Discovery, gave Europeans the inalienable right to colonize all these ’empty,’ lands, inhabited only by pagans. Gee, reminds one of God giving Jews the right to those ’empty’ lands of Palestine.
Don’t mean to boast about the US. The Canadians, the Australians and the New Zealanders did a pretty good job of eliminating most of the Indigenous population as well.
the new zealenders less so as the maori could and did fight back. they remain an important block in NZ society today. But the common thread is the British Empire, which genocided the local population to take their land, be it in North America, Australia, or elsewhere where they were less successful. To think in school our teachers were more critical of the Spanish conquitadores. Despite their brutality, the natives in their former colonies still exist.
Dieu et Mon Droit.
Given additional meanings in Britain and around the world as history plays out.
Arrogance gives way to misanthropy to psychopathology to what next?
Exactly, vidimi. A couple of years ago, while visiting San Antonio, Texas (home of The Alamo, but that’s another story, ) we visited the site of one of the old Spanish missions in the area. The NP Ranger pointed out the difference between the Spanish and the English invaders: the English killed the Indigenous populations; the Spanish married them.
Indeed – and Robert Thompson, who had worked under Gerald Templer and Harold Briggs in Malaya to construct ‘new villages’ (the Briggs Plan), subsequently provided advice to the Ngo Dinh Diem and the US in South Vietnam in 1961-63, although it proved largely abortive because US officials did not think it a sufficiently credible technique.
The British had also applied similar techniques in their infamous suppression of the largely imagined Mau Mau threat in Kenya under Evelyn Baring and George Erskine at roughly the same time Templer was attempting to crush Chin Peng’s MCP.
In effect, the technique adopted by Briggs and Thompson was a more sanitary and somewhat less inhumane refinement of the concentration camp policy pioneered by Valeriano Weyler in Cuba, and copied by Alfred Milner and Hubert Kitchener during the second Boer War.
thanks for this background. society functions by transmitting past knowledge to future generations but so much is forgotton and new generations often have to relearn what the past already knew
Unfortunately, most of what Americans know of their history is abjectly false. (But they don’t know that.)
Thanks. No offense to the esteemed Hudson but colonial tactics are much older than America in Vietnam.
As to why the US supported Israel in the first place, Gore Vidal said JFK told him that some wealthy Jewish supporters gave Truman 2 million dollars for his 1948 campaign. The people in Truman’s state department were all against it. And ss Diana Johnstone has pointed out Israel is an American “aircraft carrier” that no American airplane ever flies from. This so called alliance is very much a one way street.
Hudson was giving a personal perspective on the development of Zionist genocide policies, not a complete history of colonialism.
We consider that Michael Hudson was speaking to the American audience, in that regard.
What happens when the likes of Hudson and Crooke die? Where are the next generation of people who have the real experience of how things work? The practitioners willing to speak out?
Has everyone been ‘bought’?
It is really a race between Israel eliminating every last Palestinian with US support, and the US itself collapsing and therefore no longer able to provide such support. If the former, Israel may well be able to survive on its own, if the latter, there will likely be mass emigration from Israel and a one state solution with equal rights for all.
Hudson is too pessimistic. What he’s describing is the fever dream of Israeli and American Zionists but they have very little chance of pushing it through. Militarily, Israel is losing badly even against Hamas and Iran just demonstrated how much its air superiority has eroded by advances in drone and missile technology.
Even if it somehow manages to crime against humanity the Gazan population (at the price of fully unmasking itself and its Western backers, even more than it already is), there are greater numbers of Palestinians in the West Bank and nearby diasporas, plus Hezbollah, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Yemen, and likely a post-Hashemite Jordan. Even the US at the height of its power couldn’t beat down Vietnam or DPRK, thinking that Israel 2024 can keep its settler colony in a sea of rightfully outraged Arabs US just a Zionist fairytale.
Emma, I like your optimism. This morning’s comments at Moon of Alabama, included one from a Norwegian, who spoke of the darkness of winter and the very slow moving spring in northern Norway. To survive, he said, we must always believe in Spring.
What Michael Hudson has done here is to place the entire Zionist / Gaza / Hamsas / Middle Eastern mess, into a much larger context. It is following a well-traveled pattern of colonization and conquest. But, knowing this, we can counter it. Just keep believing in Spring.
The “Jocker in the Pack” here is that the ruling clique in Israel now is a fanatical religious “community.” To such people, there are no rules, and, with the backing of the Supreme Being, victory is assured. These people are quite capable of using their nuclear weapons against the “seething hordes” surrounding them. G-d is on their side. Therefore, none can withstand them.
Of interest will be when Pakistan transfers some of their nuclear weapons to Turkey. Such has been promised, and Sultan Erdogan is the perfect ‘leader’ to reply to the Israelis in kind.
WW-3 might just be a regional religious war. If we are really, really lucky, the “major” powers will stay out of it.
I don’t think the Israeli ruling-class wants to commit suicide. Iran graphically showed Israel’s vulnerability. When push comes to shove the realists win out. The Israeli religious fanatics who are in power will be run over by the realists in the IDF and Mossad who have to deal with the world as it is.
As Alastair Crooke has pointed out, the IDF is now significantly a settler army. H described the settlers as “rabid” which is a striking contrast with his normally measured tone. So I would not be so sure.
The show of force by Iran has put us in a new historical situation that has been building for years. Those who oppose the Empire and its minions will take heart and move more rapidly along the lines we have seen BRICS and other initiatives. When Ukraine visibly falls that will cause a completely new set of alliances and policies within the Empire. People who actually know the world rather than believe their own propaganda and lies.
I don’t see that Prof. Hudson is being pessimistic – he’s describing the unfolding of a plan, and providing background to the design of that plan – which we are all seeing as it unfolds in real time. The plan’s implementation is ongoing. The bombing of Gaza has resumed. Jared Kushner has been videotaped discussing the future and value of Gaza’s beachfront property. The horror of all of this is the plan itself, the US’ participation/agenda, and the success so far of its implementation. It’s important to understand that the plan has not been abandoned. Biden has told Israel to “slow down” at this point. Optics are now going to be managed, but the plan continues.
But, but, but… we weren’t allowed to win in Vietnam. /s
We have Max Blumenthal, Aaron Mate, Katie Halper, Caitlin Johnstone, Matt Ho etc. But unfortunately you are right in one way, nobody of the caliber and valuable insider experience of Crooke and Hudson. We just have to believe in that thing about “cometh the hour, cometh the man (or woman)
jeffrey sachs, craig murray are former insiders who come to mind. you can add col. wilkerson and ed snowden
I think a lot of Rob Urie. His analysis of politics and economics is exciting, for me, and I always seem to learn something from reading him. I’m glad that Yves is posting his work.
While many are suppressed, there are breakthroughs we can share and – when optimistic or determined – can send to the mainstream media. One sad and important flash of reality is found in the voices of two surgeons just back from Gaza, who wrote to Common Dreams and were interviewed on DemocracyNow.org.
https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/surgeons-cruelty-israel-gaza
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/4/11/surgeons_in_gaza
“We walked through the wards and immediately found evidence
of horrifying violence deliberately directed at civilians and even children.
A three-year-old boy shot in the head, a 12-year-old girl shot through the chest,
an ICU nurse shot through the abdomen, all by some of the
best-trained marksmen in the world. ”
and
“As we got to work we were shocked by the violence inflicted on people.
Incredibly powerful explosives ripped apart rock, floors, and walls and
threw them through human bodies, penetrating skin with waves of dirt and debris.
With the environment literally embedded in our patients’ bodies we have
found infection control to be impossible. No amount of medical care
could ever compensate for the damage being inflicted here.”
Michael Hudson’s words clearly affirmed.
There are plenty of good people, though must still have a very poor understanding of scientific socialism, they can learn quickly enough from more successful examples elsewhere in the world.
America will go the way of all empires. The internal contradictions will become unbearably extreme and then it’ll implode. Then assuming that we haven’t been irradiated to death or killed by roving Mad Max war bands during “the troubles”, perhaps we can pick up the pieces and start building a better world.
Terran humans have always “picked up the pieces,” so far. But our history shows that we keep falling into the same old traps and errors.
To date, Terran human nature has remained remarkably consistent.
I admit that I’ve never understood what the U.S. gets out of our relationship with Israel, other than the votes of pro-Israel Americans. Who cares who runs the Middle East, as long as we can buy the oil? In what sense do we “control” the place, and for what? It doesn’t seem to make the oil any cheaper. From a cold-blooded strategic perspective it would make far more sense to wash our hands of the whole thing and let the chips fall where they may, as long as the oil flows.
Could it be that our middle east presence once established to control the oil flow has now morphed into ‘being there for protecting Israel’?
There is no telling how things might have gone from the 1970s onwards if we had disengaged?
I am increasingly convinced that the strategic character of Israel — not just for the USA, but also for European countries — lies in Israel as such.
Israel does not have any mineral or agricultural resources of strategic importance. It does not control some strategic strait like Gibraltar, the Dardanelles, Hormuz, Bab-el-Mandeb, Malacca. It does not have an industry that is of worldwide strategic importance (like TSMC in Taiwan or AMSL in the Netherlands). It is not a cultural or scientific center of universal significance like Italy or France were in the distant past. The only time its military allied with Western powers to tame a Near-Eastern country was in 1956 during the Suez crisis; its possible joining a Western military endeavour was even viewed as a hindrance during the first Gulf war. The supposedly strategic handle it provides to control hydrocarbons appears to be elusive — witness Iran and Iraq, and at a small scale, Syria and Yemen.
Lord Balfour is very well-known to have promised a homeland to the Jews in his historic 1917 declaration. He is less well-known to have been the Prime Minister of a government that 12 years earlier edicted a law preventing Jews to immigrate into the UK.
I suspect that this kind of hypocritical, latent anti-semitism is what drives Western rulers to stand so demonstratively with Israel: they are satisfied to see Jews away, and do not want to see millions of them coming back — especially if they are Sephardims, Mizrahis, or Falashas.
Does anybody see any other cogent argument for why Israel is so “strategic”?
I think it was Tom Friedman who had a very racist, orientalist oped in the NYT a few months ago in which he compared Iran to a parasitic wasp. I think that metaphor fits Israel better. Israel is the parasitic wasp which has commandeered the giant tarantula that is the US, which is now little more than a zionist thrall happy to sacrifice itself for the benefit of the wasp. In turn, Europe are thralls to the US, and that’s where the metaphor ends.
So it may be that what started out as a mutually beneficial relationship in the 40s turned into Israeli dominance of American polity. It was probably Kissinger who started minting Jewish-Zionist billionnaires beginning with Soros but continuing with Adelson, Epstein, Weinstein, Saban, Ackman, etc, etc and taking over all aspects of political influence. To rule the world you only need to control the country that rules the world.
The last six months have forced me to no longer see Israel as America’s unsinkable aircraft carrier in the middle east, but as America as Israel’s death star over the whole world. I can”t make sense of what I have seen otherwise.
That may well describe the relation between Israel and the USA, but does not explain the attitude of European governments, including those of countries (such as the UK) that historically were not involved in the WWII extermination of Jews. As I said, I suspect the undisclosable motive of hidden anti-semitism — “great that the Jews can keep to themselves in some far away place.”
Perhaps a clue to the UK’s attitude can be found in Halford Mackinder’s ‘Democratic Ideals and Reality’, published in 1919 after the end of the Great War. This is a picture of the errant Jew as universal troublemaker who needs to be reined in, or “ranged” as Mackinder has it. A Jewish homeland would have the twin benefit of disciplining both the Jews in the homeland and those who remained in the diaspora:
“The Jewish national seat in Palestine will be one of the most important outcomes of the war. That is a subject on which we can now afford to speak the truth. The Jew, for many centuries shut up in the ghetto, and shut out of most honorable positions in society, developed in an unbalanced manner and became hateful to the average Christian by reason of his excellent, no less than his deficient, qualities. German penetration has been conducted in the great commercial centers of the world in no small measure by Jewish agency, just as German domination in southeastern Europe was achieved through Magyar and Turk, with Jewish assistance. Jews are among the chief of the Bolsheviks of Russia. The homeless, brainful Jew lent himself to such internationalist work, and Christendom has no great right to be surprised by the fact. But you will have no room for these activities in your League of independent, friendly nations. Therefore a national home, at the physical and historical center of the world, should make the Jew ‘range’ himself. Standards of judgment, brought to bear on Jews by Jews, should result, even among those large Jewish communities which will remain as Going Concerns outside Palestine.”
In addition, Mackinder saw Jerusalem as the centre of the World-Island, its hill citadel position being of key strategic importance, both in terms of the Suez Canal and the position of this part of the world as the transit point of north and south, east and west, Asian Heartland and African Heartland. Control of this position was vital to free trade, as was control of Damascus, which gave “flank access” to the alternative trade route through the Euphrates Valley. It’s worth pointing out that Mackinder was writing long before the real exploitation of oil began in the Middle East as well.
[1] Russell Davies: Perhaps a clue to the UK’s attitude can be found in Halford Mackinder’s ‘Democratic Ideals and Reality’, published in 1919 … It’s worth pointing out that Mackinder was writing long before the real exploitation of oil began in the Middle East as well.
Not really. In 1911-12, Lord Jackie Fisher and Winston Churchill had already made the Royal Navy move from coal to completely oil-powered warships.
So long before 1919 when MacKinder wrote what you quote, it was very clear that oil and, therefore, control of the Middle East as a source of oil was of central strategic importance to the Great Powers.
For that matter, in 1908 Henry Ford had introduced his Model T. So it was clear that oil use would be increasingly central in ordinary daily social life, too.
[2] Russell Davies: …(a) picture of the errant Jew as universal troublemaker who needs to be reined in, or “ranged” as Mackinder has it.
This also seems a little reductive, though it may be representative of MacKinder’s views. (He wasn’t a nice man.)
After all, for example, the Duke of Wellington had used the Rothschilds as his paymasters and intelligence network to win the Napoleonic Wars. Later in the century Benjamin Disraeli had twice been Prime Minister. So Jews had played instrumental roles in 19th century Britain and its empire.
As vao suggests, the strategic value of Israel to the fascist WWII allies was purely the propaganda value of the myth that it was the West that defeated Hitler and saved the Jews from Stalin.
Just this morning, even my TDS-afflicted wife finally conceded that maybe what the US and Israel are doing in Gaza isn’t so virtuous.
It does not make oil cheaper for you, but it does influence where that money goes. There is an infamous video of Madeline Albright saying that killing 500,000 Iraqi kids was “worth it”. You probably have different perspective, but in order to undestand decisions you have to understand the perspective of those that make them. “You” and “them” are not in the same “we”
Yeah, increasingly world events seems to be all about maintaining Wall Street and City of London as the brokerages of the world. This so that they can keep extracting a fee/rent on every transaction.
Smedley Butler wrote “War Is a Racket” in 1935.
Can’t say much has changed since. Cuba is doing better than Haiti, though.
Yep. Butler, Sinclair, so many that put a spotlight on all the wrongs of USA. But then came WW2 and the Cold War to distract from it all and thus nothing changed.
They did not come, but were caused, because those two wars were a racket too.
P.S. Distraction is what a magician is doing with one hand, while the other takes your wallet.
The US gives Cuba a break because Castro and company are almost white.
I dunno bout that. Many of the “white” elites of old Cuba came over to the US in 1959-60, after the Cuban Communist Revolution. What was left in Cuba proper was an almost “mestizo” people. Don’t forget that Cuba was a slave state for centuries before 1886! Spain only abolished slavery there at that late date.
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_colonial_Spanish_America
It is no wonder that people from the Latin Americas speak about “La Layenda Negra,” ‘The Black Legend.’
I thought it was because Cuba is too close to Florida to nuke.
Or the mafia want’s their offshore speakeasy back.
Besides Epstein and religious explanations, there is some variance.
-Jewish vote in Florida and New Jersey. Decades of worrying over a single issue has simply rotted brains. They simply don’t understand why they support these positions. It’s inertia at this moment. If you dont appease AIPAC you lose Florida and the election.
-in the case of Europe, this goes hand and hand with France in Africa and the Ukraine problems. Euro elites want a colonialism 3.0 and are terrified of a new world order where they have to treat the little peoples as people. Borrell puts out the European view on a fairly regular basis. The deranged break up Russia plans are no different than 19th century colonization plans. Much of thing is applies to the US too. The control of trade routes is at risk. Everyone has an interest in trade routes, but it’s much harder for Euro and US elites to engage in rent seeking behavior.
-American arrogance. Biden et al are dumb but believe in their righteousness, and because Biden knows so little, what he does know he will hold onto. “Israel is our unsinkable aircraft carrier.” In Biden’s pea brain, this is the kind of understanding that made him fit to be President.
-also, there has been little consequences for kowtowing to Netanyahu. Hillary Clinton ran on knowing new husband, and he was awful. Netanyahu particularly has been a known commodity to casual observers since the mid-90’s. Backing Israel Nas had little consequences. The last Israeli “misstep” happened during the end of the Bush Era (the crimes since then being held behind walls or done in small actions), and as we go back, it was much harder to share information relative to today. Any criticism of Obama was shouted down. Finally, despite Trump being worse than 47 Addie H’s (I did the math), Biden not only didn’t take steps to reverse Trump’s policies such as moving the embassy, he made a mockery of one of the four decent things Obama did, the Iran deal.
Florida is very much a whacked place by now. It is seemingly critical for the POTUS election, and teeming with single issue sub-groups. Thus in order to win Florida one has to be supportive of Israel, hard on Cuba, and more that i am blanking on right now.
As for Europe, it is all about the shame of the Holocaust (i see a different term has started to become “popular” lately, BTW). Say anything negative about Israel and you are automatically a anti-Semitic Holocaust supporter.
In my limited readings, two statements appear to be stated as obvious truisms to garner support for Israel:
1. “Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East”
2. “Israel is our unsinkable aircraft carrier.”
For statement number 1, I fail to understand why a foreign country’s alleged form of “democratic” government actually benefits struggling/taxpaying/military serving Joe/Josephine Blow in the USA.
I also don’t see why displacing an indigenous population in order to install a government in the Middle East that does not get along with their neighbors has produced an “aircraft carrier” to protect USA interests and USA oil interests..
The USA/UK did install a government (The Shah of Iran) that did serve USA oil interests for many years, but our Israel Aircraft carrier did not prevent Iran from breaking away from USA control.
Can someone explain why the Israel as USA’s Aircraft Carrier is even “floated” as benefitting the USA?
George Marshall’s Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_C._Marshall) entry has this:
“Truman repeatedly rejected Marshall’s advice on Middle Eastern policy. As Secretary of State, Marshall strongly opposed recognizing the newly formed state of Israel. Marshall felt that if the state of Israel was declared, a war would break out in the Middle East (which it did when the 1948 Arab–Israeli War began one day after Israel declared independence). Marshall saw recognizing the Jewish state as a political move to gain American Jewish support in the upcoming election, in which Truman was expected to lose to Thomas E. Dewey. He told President Truman in May 1948, “If you recognize the state of Israel] and if I were to vote in the election, I would vote against you.”
Where are the George Marshall’s in today’s USA State Department?
The old ones were purged in the 00’s. The newer ones tend to be careerists who simply want to be told what to do and do it better than expected.
“Can someone explain why the Israel as USA’s Aircraft Carrier is even “floated” as benefitting the USA?”
MIC
Price stability and consistent delivery are more important to worldwide economic health than price level, as has been demonstrated since the 1970s agreement with the Saudis. Elsewhere, other mineral-rich areas have similar patterns. Another type of taxation.
We protect and sell you arms.
You keep the taps open.
Quantity has a quality of its own.
Don’t forget, the Saudis and their neighbors promised Kissinger/Nixon to price their oil in our dollars, and to stash their cash in American banks and notes, which has enabled our money-printing ever since. (And they quadrupled oil prices to boot, win-win!) Without Nixon’s petro-dollars we’d be broke regardless of their oil.
What the US gets out of the relationship is a world of headaches. But our Congressional and Executive branches of government have been thoroughly infiltrated by agents of Israeli influence. Through campaign contributions from front organizations like AIPAC and through blackmail and other dirty tricks, the American political class and the big media outfits are kept totally subservient to Israel’s interests. It’s a misconception to think that the American people get any benefit from this relationship.
Not quite. They are subservient to the interests of many groups. You will see a gradual drift from Israeli-centric foreign policy in the next few years because the finance oligarchs don’t like the way things are going–they seek stability in markets and general war isn’t going to help make money for the finance oligarchs who always hold the whip hand.
I would not be so sure. I received a very deranged e-mail from a finance oligarch, who assumed I was a French man and went on about how I was obviously a Nazi collaborator. I could not write something sustained at that level of unhinged vituperation if I tried. I really wanted to post it, it was SO self-discrediting. But I was advised he had a copyright interest in his messages and could mess with me.
On the contrary, I think a lot of finance oligarchs profit from volatily
pretty sure that Trita Parsi is not an Israeli political leader, but good interview
And “Oregon recruited Sunni terrorists from Tajikistan” puzzled me as well.
yeah, i think that was a bad transcription. Pr. Hudson stutters a bit and it seems he said organ, maybe going to say organisation but stopped in his track.
No, I said Ukraine. that came out as “Oregon.”
Also, I made a mistake. It was General Clark that said “7 countries in 7 years, ending with Iran,” Not Petreus.
Thank you. Your work has opened a lot of eyes, including mine.
Yes, I found it was very much like the wacky suggestions that automatic spell-checkers sometimes come up with.
The automatic captions on a recent interview with Kier Starmer translated his name as ‘Pierced Armor’. So AI is good for something!
Also there were a few “Lincolns” that I suspect were intended to be “Blinkens.” Talk about going from the sublime to the ridiculous!
While Jill Stein is the most serious and sound of the anti-genocide presidential candidates, Claudia de la Cruz and Cornel West are still running.
another quibble is saying that in 1947 anti-semitism in Europe was passé. I’m not sure that those who survived after 1945 were able to just get over it in 2 years.
Hudson sometimes gets a lot wrong. Appreciate his experience but not everything can get wrapped in a nice little “America is behind everything” bundle
This has been known for so long, but maybe the emos need to find it?
Also to explain why what will happen, has to happen.
Millions will die.
Still, just a drop in the ‘ocean’, hint, when compared to the big one
Israel already has it claws into Syria. Allowed to, I can see Israel swallowing all of Syria over time. One might say she already is well on her way of assimilating Syria as Hudson describes. Might we call that “Greater Israel”? Does the world really want to see a Greater Israel on our borders doing what she is doing to her neighbors today? She might make todays US look like a stoned hippie peace maker. To borrow a phrase, “to be Israel’s neighbor is fatal, to be her enemy is fatal, and to be her friend is fatal.”
We just watched the Biden team essentially admit they can’t cope with a war w/Iran because as China notes “US is stuck” (the West would say bogged down) in Ukraine and Gaza, and it’s weapons are low and it can’t manufacture them as fast as they need them.
Now might be a really good time to throw kitchen sink at weakened, stuck, bogged down collapsing Empire America. I am god smacked were not seeing more attacks on US bases in Syria and Iraq with those drones in China and Russia floating all over the world.
With the undisciplined genocidal army that is losing badly against isolated and lightly armed Hamas militiamen after 190 days?
Not what you refer to. So will guess: No, with the method Micheal Hudson describes in the video that was applied unsuccessfully in Vietnam but successfully in Palestine over many decades.
That’s a lot of evil to absorb, in one sitting. Micheal Hudson’s mind like a machete. So was John Pilger’s.
But I do wonder why Hudson thinks,
No money or intention? Who cleaned up the mess, after 2009? Are they blowing up Gaza for the foreign investment? I thought Israel wanted (deserved) the land for themselves. We give billions. I’m confused.
Hudson believes,
OK, that might help explain why Arabs buried the hatchet in 2020.
But why would Hudson say,
Why say that? Makes him sound like loon.
I dunno. I’m keeping my eye on the Strait of Hormuz.
“Whatever you see happening in Gaza after the Gazans are driven out, you see this is really the plan for what the United States wants to do in China, in Russia, in Africa, in the whole rest of the world.”
Not loony. It’s a reference to the age old trick of exacerbating tensions in a region in order to make a way for profiteering.
I do see your point, regarding context
He seems oddly spedific,
Is Genocide is part of the plan?
Even if he meant plain old dirty tricks. No way in hell, BRICS+.
He’s a fascinating.fella. How about 2% loon.
See above:
vao
April 15, 2024 at 4:19 am
Ah, ok. Good, thank you.
This interview by Ania of Michael Hudson is rich in content that will take a second, at least, reading. I’m curious though whether the U.S. is using Israel or the reverse? Is it mainly oil or is it Zionism that propels people in power to throw-out all pretentions of decency and engage in bloody butchery?
I’m sure that Mr. Hudson’s use of “Biden” is a convenient short hand. Did Herman Kahn discuss a “system’s” analysis of political power, one that is theoretically grounded, like Guido Preparata’s The Dual State: Parapolitics, Carl Schmitt and the National Security Complex
I could see that the intention from the very beginning was to get rid of the Palestinians and indeed to use Israel as the basis for U.S. control of Near Eastern oil. That was the constant discussion of that from the American point of view. It was Israel as a part of the oil.
But the Zionists who were in charge of Israel, the Stern Gang leaders, were obsessed with the old antagonisms. And in a way, they were obsessed with Nazism and said, well, we want to do to them what they did to us.
It may well be that initially it was seen as a convenient base of operations, but by now the tail is wagging the dog thanks to there being too much money and reputation at stake if one walked away.
A realization that crept up on me this morning (I am often late to the game,) reflecting on the conflicts of the past two years: A modern Empire needs fossil fuels to maintain an adequate military force. How do you build bombs and drones and missiles and fighter jets without a cheap, reliable source of energy? Just look what has happened to a highly industrialized Germany since the destruction of the Nordstream.
No government, not the US, not Russia, not China, will agree to de-carbonize. We might have to get peaceful! So, we’re locked in the embrace of a climate-change death spiral. Is this inevitable?
No need to worry. World War IV would be fought with sticks and stones.
Before World War 3 breaks out, do they sell sunscreen with an SPU rating of one million?
I recommend investing in lead lined long johns…
No. Apparently Climate Change is inversely proportional, when it involves the Military. Same goes for John Kerry.
Looks like the Israelis are applying another strategy from the Vietnam war called Kill Anything That Moves as described in a book of the same name by Nick Turse. My Lai was actually the norm. Now at this point I am going to have to put on my Mark One Tin Foil Hat to make a few observations. So a major talking point was the balkanization of the people’s land and communities. Did anybody else think of the 15 minute cities that are being introduced around the world? Potentially the people that live in one of those “Communities” may not be able visit people in another without an application or permission. And cameras could watch for license plated of cars that are not within their communities. Tell me that it will never happen.
A few more comparisons. Palestinians were and are surveilled within an inch of their lives, just like us in the modern world. Palestinians steadily lose whatever political and human right that they have and in the US wee see the FISA Act has been renewed. Israelis go after journalists. Here in the west they promote stenographers but they harass independent journalist. I am sure Julian Assange would back me up on that. Israelis intend to keep the Gaza economy on the brink of collapse without quite pushing it over the edge. Do, how are western economies going these days? Enough said but it looks like sooner or later we will all be Palestinians.
Turse’s book was a real eye-opener to me. It showed me that no matter how bad I already thought things were, they were a lot worse. But even the American war in Vietnam I wouldn’t call genocidal. They were happy to kill as many Vietnamese (and Cambodians and Laotians) as they could, but I don’t believe there were ever any plans to get rid of them, to replace them, unlike what senior Israeli figures have been saying openly about the Palestinians.
interesting perspective on 15 minute cities. ive been a proponent of them purely because i hate driving a car (haha) and have a vested interest in efficient transportation. but it is true that diversity creates resiliency and packing everyone into one space would reduce types of living. however, 15 minute cities are more of a movement originating from the suburbs where one has to drive to get resources. they are, in a way, a city dweller’s attack upon being corralled into supermarkets to purchase everything instead of numerous local suppliers. with the condition that people are not being ‘forced’ into them, i think they are increasing the relative freedom of urbanites. allowing for movement that doesn’t require cars, with trackable license plates, etc.
i think i see your point, and i think imagining these restrictive systems as applied to my own american community is a good thought exercise. but also the origins of 15 minute cities are based in suburbanites wanting to walk fifteen minutes to the store to buy an onion to chop up for dinner instead of driving 30 minute for the same purchase, not a dampening of freedom.
I remember reading an analysis some 15-20 years ago that said that Israel’s national security is predicated on control of West Bank. Not for military reasons, but because this is the main source of water in the region, with extensive aquifers and access to Jordan river. Should West Bank ever leave Israeli control, Israel’s economy would be ruined and Israel as a state would become non-viable. The analyst interviewed a number of Israeli government officials at the time and all of them were acutely aware of Israel’s dependence on West Bank’s water.
To me this was an eye opener, you always hear people talking about how future wars will be fought over water, but here was a real example. The conclusion of the analysis was that the peace process is just a sham and that there could never be a peace settlement because Israel would never give up control of the West Bank.
You have the same reasons at play in how Israel wants to take southern Lebanon right up to the Litani river so that once again, they can divert the waters of that river back home. In discussions about invading Lebanon, it is always the subject of the Litani river that keeps coming up I have noticed.
“They were happy to kill as many Vietnamese (and Cambodians and Laotians) as they could, but I don’t believe there were ever any plans to get rid of them…”
The Asians, in spite of being an inferior race, are known to be intelligent (in their own inferior way,) wily, hard-working and, most importantly, equipped with small fingers, ideal for assembling iPhones, and other intricate devices so necessary for modern Western life. (/s, just in case you’re about to castigate me for unbridled racism.)
I do remember reading somewhere, in the time of the Vietnam war or slightly thereafter, that Asians, women especially, had these little nimble fingers that made them ideal for electronics assembly work. This bit of information, in case y’all are not depressed enough this morning.
Pepe just wrote his commentary on what is posted above:
Masterful – as usual. All the best! Pepe
https://strategic-culture.su/news/2024/04/15/the-gaza-genocide-as-explicit-policy-michael-hudson-names-all-names/
Thank you for this link. I couldn’t find it yesterday.
Thank you, Yves, for publishing this conversation. Hudson reveals how Mossad/Zionists helped to lay the foundation for what is now occurring.
Hudson, also, reminded us of the schism between the Sunnis and Shiites. An important split that still holds firm even today. Obviously, US/Israel plays on that split.
As far as we know, there’s no one on Twitter that is revealing these two important facts. Certainly, not, the armchair warlords.
Thanks for posting this fine, revealing discussion.
Triti Parsi is the founder of the National Iranian American Council, not an official from Israel as stated by Hudson.
Right. I misread her name as being close to that of a politician. Sometimes in the pressure of an interview I talk before I think. (I think Yves has noticed this quality in me.) :)-
The US fought a colonial war in Vietnam, half a century ago. When the Communists convinced the Vietnamese that the Americans were there to restore the French Colony, it became unwinnable. The conscript US Army’s silent revolt forced the withdrawal and adoption of a mercenary volunteer army. With the oligarch’s seizure of the government in the 1990s, the US military became the Praetorian Guard of the corporate-state Western Empire.
The Democrats will try to blame Bibi Netanyahu, for the inevitable escalation of the Middle East war, but behind the curtain, the Pentagon, Jake Sullivan, and Antony Blinken, are fighting the already lost battle to remain the global hegemon. This is a multi-polar world once again. But both the NATO-Russian and the Iran-Israel conflicts will continue to escalate. Clearly WWIII started with the Coup in Ukraine in 2014 and went hot with Russia’s invasion two years ago.
Israel is an obvious example of the collapse of the West’s rule-based order. What it is doing is quickening the fall of the Empire. Human evil has been unleashed on the world. This will end in a nuclear Armageddon unless Armistices are signed, and a Second Cold War with a stalemated peace commences between the West and Eurasia. Except this time the Axis of Resistance has industry, engineers, scientists, workers, raw materials, and fossil fuel to power it all. Western Europe becomes a global backwater without access to Russia’s cheap natural gas energy. Without planning, sharing and empathy, ultimately pollution, famine and illness will overwhelm the earth even if somehow a global nuclear war is avoided.
agree with every word.