Margaret Flowers: You’re listening to Clearing the FOG, speaking truth to expose the forces of greed, with Margaret Flowers. And now I turn to my guest, Michael Hudson. Michael is the president of the Institute for the Study of Long-term, Economic Trends, ISLET. He’s a Wall Street financial analyst and a distinguished research professor of Economics at the University of Missouri, in Kansas City. He’s also the author of numerous books and recently updated his book, “Super Imperialism: The economic strategy of American Empire.” Thank you for taking time to speak with me today, Michael.

Michael Hudson: Well, thanks for having me on Margaret.

I’ve yet to see anyone other than leftists, Jews, neocons, and satanic neo-Nazis actually “Standing with the Ukraine.*”

I’ve seen some allegedly “nuanced” takes on the Ukraine intervention. People seem to want to make themselves feel smart by saying “I understand Putin’s motivations, but I’m not going to support either side.” This isn’t really nuanced, it’s just someone who is either milquetoast, or wants to feel like he’s smart because he doesn’t just “automatically take the opposing position.”

Had Hillary Rodham Clinton won the presidential elections in 2016, by now we would be living in caves, eating raw flesh from bats, that would be shitting on us to make us leave… The Cloons, us, would have barely survived a nuclear war. 

The advent of Trump shook the fundament of the Establishment. He was a loose cannon, impossible to know what he was going to say or do, which was hopefully not much and always countered by his “military advisors” — the warriors of the Empire. 

The New World Order that is being prepared under the pretext of war in Ukraine

by Thierry Meyssan

The conflict in Ukraine was not opened by Russia on February 24, but by Ukraine a week before. The OSCE is a witness to this. This peripheral conflict had been planned by Washington to impose a New World Order from which Russia, then China, were to be excluded. Don’t be fooled!

The well known “divide and conquer” tactic of any invader is being actively used by Washington in its policies.

The idea of the need to partition the Middle East was promoted in the US by the famous American “strategist” Ralph Peters in 2006, who published a map on which the borders of all the Middle Eastern states were redrawn.

The Coalition’s latest environmental fraud supported by Murdoch Media again. No surprise there!

If no one has noticed a central pillar of Australia’s risibly inadequate GHG reduction commitment of 26-28% by 2030 has recently been demolished by our own scientists.

They have been led by ANU’s Professor Andrew Macintosh whose job until 2 years ago was chair of the Emissions Reduction Assurance Committee – set up to validate the authenticity of carbon emission credits derived from carbon farming abatement schemes. Macintosh now says bluntly the scheme is a fraud, a waste of money and has outlined these assertions in no less than three academic papers. To quote his extraordinarily scathing and brutally frank assessment verbatim:

The well known “divide and conquer” tactic of any invader is being actively used by Washington in its policies.

The idea of the need to partition the Middle East was promoted in the US by the famous American “strategist” Ralph Peters in 2006, who published a map on which the borders of all the Middle Eastern states were redrawn.

For 19 years, since the 2003 invasion of Iraq by an international coalition led by the United States, Washington has been working hard to dismember what once was a highly influential country that disagreed with White House policy. The Kurdish part was supposed to secede with the proclamation of an independent Kurdistan. The Shia in the south and the Persian Gulf were to be separated. And the Sunnis were to be left with Baghdad.

Over the past week, the White House had to clarify statements made by the president on at least five occasions, sometimes presenting an official position radically different from what Biden said in his speeches. His apparent call for ousting the Russian president was no exception last week.

A US national security official will travel to India to discuss New Delhi’s response to Russia’s attack on Ukraine, the White House said, noting that the two sides would also review their economic ties as Washington pressures allies to take tougher action against Moscow.

Deputy national security adviser for international economics Daleep Singh is set to visit the Indian capital this week, where he will meet with officials to“advance a range of issues in the US-India economic relationship and strategic partnership,” National Security Council spokesperson Emily Horne announced on Tuesday.

The West will not agree to a Russia request to pay gas bills in rubles, French President Emmanuel Macron has told President Vladimir Putin, according to news agency Reuters.

Macron told Putin it was impossible for Western clients to pay for gas in Russian currency, the news agency reported on Tuesday, citing an Elysee official.

“France is against paying in rubles,” the official said, as quoted by the media.

In its own readout of the call between the two leaders, the Kremlin confirmed that Moscow’s proposal on ruble payments had been discussed, but it did not provide details on the positions of both sides.

READ MORE:

https://www.rt.com/russia/552940-france-russia-gas-rubles/

As the ISS floats 417 kilometres above planet earth, at about 27,594 km/h, politics seems to have reached beyond the stratosphere. The YouTube ISS channel, interrupted from time to time with adverts for tampons, insurance and Clive Palmer's Dinosaur Party, has comments on the views of the Russian cosmonauts BUT NONE ON THE US ASTRONAUTS saying something like "We support Hunter Biden". How weird is this. My understanding is that there is no politics up-there in space, but the Earthlings at YouTube chose to push a shit barrow. I don't really know. But my guess is that should the Russian Cosmonauts really support Ukraine, they would end up digging potatoes in frozen Siberia after their return to planet earth...

The ABC’s Leigh Sales has wasted no time in grilling the Treasurer, suggesting the new budget hides a sneaky, so-called “dirty bomb”.

The budget is finally here – and it’s fair to say the government is hoping there’s enough sweeteners in there to score some extra votes as the election looms.

Among the highlights is a $250 payment for pensioners and other welfare recipients, a one-off tax cut of up to $1500 for millions of Aussies and some much-needed relief at the bowser.

Read on for the latest budget updates.

The overriding fact of federal government finances in 2022, and everything about Tuesday night’s budget, is that Treasury got the pandemic entirely wrong.

It’s perhaps hard to blame the spreadsheet jockeys too much – no one was alive during the previous pandemic and in the depths of the 2020 panic, forecasts about what this one might do to the economy and government income and expenses were a complete guess.

But let it be recorded, and not forgotten, that Treasury, and therefore the Treasurer, guessed wrong, with the result that they over-compensated and under-forecast – by a lot.

Few normal people were thinking about the Oscars before Will Smith struck. (I didn’t know it was happening until I saw the slap on Twitter.) However, even if it was a stunt, it’s hard to imagine that a white man who slapped someone on stage would get a standing ovation instead of a lecture about “toxic masculinity” and a back seat in a police car. When an antifa thug sucker-punched Richard Spencer at President Trump’s inauguration, media celebrated. I find it hard to believe they are suddenly worried about violent reactions to speech.

The Ukrainian events have been a constant item on the agenda for media outlets of Middle Eastern countries since the start of Russia’s special operation. Observers note a never before seen information onslaught against Moscow coming from the West, when it comes to covering the Ukrainian crisis.

According to many estimates, this torrent of content is notably prejudiced and biased, intended to add fuel to the fire, overshadow the reason, hold Russia accountable for the conflict and its causes, and silence all contrary opinions in the media and social networks.

The onslaught is vigorous. Nevertheless a number of local analysts view these events as a part of the historical background as well as real experience of relations between Arabs and the West.