The Greanville Post https://www.greanvillepost.com ANTI-IMPERIALIST TOOL • Vol. XXVII• WARS ARE CRIMES AGAINST HUMANS, ANIMALS AND NATURE Sun, 05 Jul 2026 21:28:03 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=7.0 Is Trump Truly Harebrained or is He Implementing Elite Policy? https://www.greanvillepost.com/is-trump-truly-harebrained-or-is-he-implementing-elite-policy/ https://www.greanvillepost.com/is-trump-truly-harebrained-or-is-he-implementing-elite-policy/#respond Sun, 05 Jul 2026 21:04:28 +0000 https://www.greanvillepost.com/?p=401512
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Billy Bob's Short Takes
Provocative discussions of contemporary events  
 by a remarkably astute observer

Trump bloviating his usual jingoist effluvia at Mt Rushmore (July 4, 2026)

Let me do my best to promote, summarize, and critique these superb presentations by Ben Norton on the question of oligarchy (and resultant fascism), a topic no free citizen concerned with justice and genuine democracy can remain indifferent to. 

In these videos, Ben elaborates on the oligarchs' perceived necessity to make changes to global economic relationships in a way which will continue to guarantee US global hegemony and maintain the US dollar as the global reserve currency throughout the rest of the 21st century.
 
Ben observes that the current system was put into place by the US in order to benefit the US and give them extreme power and privilege which they ultimately used to enrich themselves and to crush alternative and superior systems.
 
As the decades have gone by, the system the US created and benefitted from, has resulted in a situation where the US is no longer the system's prime beneficiary. Other countries, especially China, have analyzed the system, learned the game, and have played it so well that the US must now change the game if they are going to maintain their preeminence and avoid being usurped ("usurped" as much as a thief and a sociopath can be), and surpassed as the most important, influential, and powerful country on the planet.
 
Ben shares numerous clips of the oligarchs conceding this reality and explaining in no uncertain terms, the problems that they perceive themselves to be facing and the solutions that they propose.  These gangsters of capital are really no different than any criminal enterprise as they lack any concern whatsoever for principles of justice, morality, or  improvement, and are simply and solely concerned with destroying rivals and maintaining pre-eminence.

Democracy is dead: Elon Musk becomes world's first TRILLIONAIRE with SpaceX IPO

DATELINE—JUNE 13, 2026

The oligarchs tell themselves that their violently imposed and exploitative system has been a blessing (sic) to the world and they assert that the world should be thankful for the global economic system that the US has not only created, but which maintains through its 800+ overseas military bases. Like true narcissistic psychopaths, the US oligarchy sees itself as having sacrificed for the good of the planet, although recentlym the rest of the world has been taking advantage of US largesse and has not been paying its fair share. (This is a favorite complaint of demagog Trump against NATO members. Trump, of course, conveniently forgets NATO was created first and foremost to benefit the US, and to project offensive power against Moscow, which it continues to do till this day).

 
Instead of accurately perceiving themselves to be ruthless and violent exploiters that have created a rigged system that is incompatible with democracy and which perpetuates poverty, war, and unstable cycles of boom and bust which the elites are able to become even more obscenely wealthy from, the oligarchs treat the current system as ideal, optimal, and un-improvable.  And it certainly is, *IF YOU ARE AN OLIGARCH*.  This is the best possible system from the perspective of the oligarchs who are the primary beneficiary of the oligarchic system (known in the West as liberal democracy). 

Rule by the rich: Western governments are oligarchies, not democracies

So Trump tells his oligarch vassals that if they appreciate and value this system that the US maintains and guarantees through a system of violently imposed sanctions, assassinations, wars, regime change operations, genocides, a global military network that includes 800+ foreign military bases, and the greatest propaganda apparatus the world has ever seen, then they need to start paying more tribute, it is as simple as that.  And really, Trump is correct.  America's vassal oligarchs that have set themselves up as the legitimate government of all the capitalist states, truly have no alternative but to increase tribute to the Don. After all, no other country is remotely prepared to replace the US Don and the only other alternative to that is socialism and an end to the entire oligarch system.  This is the threat that China poses.

 
The US hegemon has correctly calculated that unless something is done, the Western imperial oligarchic dictatorship headquarterd in the US, is at risk of being significantly weakened and displaced by an infinitely superior system that does not put the interests of the oligarchs first and foremost.  This is an existential threat to the prevailing order and something must be done to end this threat once and for all.
 
Recently, we saw the truth of everything explained above borne out in real time, when the US suspended for 90 days, the tariffs against every other nation except for China. The Communist Party of China represents the existential threat to the Western oligarchy and Trump is doing his best, on behalf of the global oligarchy to sound the alarm, rally the oligarchs to this cause, get them to wake up to the seriousness of the threat, and to start sacrificing more in order to defeat this would be usurper.
 
This is no easy task.  Oligarchs are often non-ideological and have no concern for anything other than their own ability to exploit and profit. Trump has accepted the difficult task of waking up, cajoling, and uniting, the global oligarchs who take this system for granted and who are ignorant of the threat that the system is under, and who naively believe that the system will simply last forever without any kind of decisive effort to destroy the rising tide of democracy and socialism.
 
It is fascinating to listen to the actual messaging from the spokespeople charged with accomplishing this task.  They tell a story of benevolent virtuous rulers who are being taken advantage of by freeloaders who put everything at risk because of their refusal to give more in order to defeat the evil threat.
 
Ben Norton's presentations are a superb expose on this situation but it did not touch on one important issue.  Norton ignores the fact that the tariff war is only one minor aspect of the growing effort to "contain" (weaken) China and guarantee US preeminence throughout the rest of the 21st century.  Ben does not touch on how the US Marine Corps has been re-tooled over the last decade to specifically counter China by choking its maritime trade, thereby interdicting Chinese imports and exports, while manning forward assault bases, all of which would supposedly bring China's skyrocketing economy to a grinding halt. 
 
Ben focuses on the weaknesses of the US tariff strategy which he correctly points out, is highly unlikely to achieve any of its desired aims.  But what I think he should not have left out, is the fact raised above that the global oligarchy truly has no choice but to side with the US and go all-in on a combined effort to weaken and destroy China. This effort has barely gotten underway and we have yet to see the most dangerous aspect rolled out, which will be the violent imposition of a global trade embargo against China enforced by the US Marine Corps.  If necessary (probably inevitably) their newly formed anti-shipping units, stationed at all the strategically important choke points of global commerce, will utilize their anti-shipping missiles and autonomous drones, to enforce an embargo against China.  This is the sword of Damocles that folks like Mearsheimer believe provides the US likely victory in the security competition with China.
 
For the record, I believe that China won this security competition about ten to fifteen years ago and all of these efforts and plans by the global oligarchs will only result in global economic catastrophe and anacceleration of their own decline.  But it will be absolutely painful and devastating to the global economy and people need to understand that there is an obvious alternative than the global oligarchs fighting to their death to maintain their shitty exploitative system.  But history has seen this paradigm played out ad infinitum. Privileged elites will kill and die before they allow improvement to usurp their own wealth and power.  This is the Marxist dialectic and it will be once again playing out in real time, right before our eyes.

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]]> https://www.greanvillepost.com/is-trump-truly-harebrained-or-is-he-implementing-elite-policy/feed/ 0 Requiem for America on the Fourth of July https://www.greanvillepost.com/requiem-for-america-on-the-fourth-of-july/ https://www.greanvillepost.com/requiem-for-america-on-the-fourth-of-july/#respond Sun, 05 Jul 2026 18:15:44 +0000 https://www.greanvillepost.com/?p=408342
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Chris Hedges

A powerful, insightful analysis, marred, unfortunately, by Hedges anti-communist hatred and liberaloid tendency to attack Russia and Putin as an "authoritarian/dictatorial" state.

Requiem for America on the Fourth of July

Bread and Bullets – by Mr. Fish

Bread and Bullets – by Mr. Fish

in World
by Chris Hedges

Neoliberalism, better understood by its less sanitized term cutthroat capitalism, is the poison that destroyed our democracy. It gave the billionaire class and corporations the ideological cover to impoverish the working class, impose crippling austerity, hollow out democratic institutions, buy off our two ruling political parties and deform our courts into appendages of corporations and the rich.

Neoliberalism drove tens of millions of disenfranchised, desperate people into the arms of Christian fascists, who preyed on their despair and sold them the fantasy of magic Jesus. It drove them into the arms of conspiracy theorists and right-wing charlatans. It drove them down the self-destructive rabbit holes of alcoholism and opioid addiction, compulsive gambling, domestic and sexual violence. These were the inevitable consequences of personal stagnation, disempowerment and feelings of worthlessness, frustration and profound despair.

Neoliberalism ignores the cries of its victims. It dismisses their suffering and rage as irrational, ignorant and racist. It neuters liberal reforms, rendering them cosmetic and useless. Liberal apologists for neoliberalism, no longer concerned with economic justice, retreat into boutique activism. They mouth empty slogans about diversity and political correctness while pretending the relentless class war, unleashed globally since the 1970s, does not exist. The victims of neoliberal deindustrialization, 30 million of whom lost their jobs in the U.S. in mass layoffs, understand that the precarity of their existence does not concern their neoliberal masters.

Right-wing pundits and politicians, such as Donald Trump, who issue crude, vulgar and expletive-laden insults against the traditional neoliberal establishment are celebrated by the disenfranchised for exposing the political charade. These demagogues promise moral and economic renewal for the betrayed, albeit grounded in magical thinking.

Neoliberals peddle their own form of magical thinking. Neoliberalism is as absurd and infantile as the Christian Rapture and Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement. Trump lies like he breathes, but so did previous presidents including Joe Biden, Barack Obama and Bill Clinton. Trump embraces fantasies, but so did they. Trump, like his Democratic predecessors, enriches himself and his family, although with far more ostentation and greed. He, like them, facilitates the ongoing pillage by the billionaire class. Trump is the fascist iteration of the neoliberal con.

Concentrating wealth in the hands of a global oligarchic elite — the twelve richest billionaires own more wealth than the poorest half of the world — is designed to create massive income inequality and monopoly power. It is the antithesis of democratic equality. It is designed to fuel political extremism and foster social and cultural divisions. It is designed to hollow out democratic institutions. Economic rationality is not the point. David Harvey calls neoliberalism “accumulation by dispossession.”

As a ruling ideology, neoliberalism is a brilliant success. Starting in the 1970s, its Keynesian mainstream critics were marginalized or pushed out of academia, state institutions and financial organizations such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. The same is true of the media. Compliant courtiers and intellectual poseurs such as Milton Friedman or New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman were given prominent platforms and lavish corporate funding. They slavishly disseminated the official mantra of fringe, discredited economic theories popularized by Friedrich Hayek and the third-rate writer Ayn Rand.

Once the country was forced to kneel before the dictates of the marketplace, once government regulations were abolished, once taxes on the rich were slashed, once money was permitted to flow across borders, once unions were crushed and once trade deals were signed that sent jobs to sweatshops in Mexico and China, the world, these poseurs assured us, would be happier, freer and wealthier. It was a scam. But it worked. And it fueled the rival con game of the demagogues and fascists who were vomited up out of the moral and political morass.

The media bears much of the blame. In the name of objectivity, better understood as neutrality, it absented itself from the class war. It did not investigate the mounting abuses of the rich, corporations or its bought-and-paid-for political class. It did not expose the absurdity of neoliberalism. It rendered the victims invisible. By shutting themselves out of the debate, the media, a vital pillar of any democracy, neutered itself. It too became despised.

Individual freedom, which neoliberalism holds up as the highest good, and social justice are not compatible. Social justice, Harvey writes in “A Brief History of Neoliberalism,” requires social solidarity and “a willingness to submerge individual wants, needs, and desires in the cause of some more general struggle for, say, social equality and environmental justice.” Neoliberal rhetoric is able to “split off libertarianism, identity politics, multiculturalism, and eventually narcissistic consumerism from the social forces ranged in pursuit of social justice through the conquest of state power.”

Neoliberalism, as Ece Temelkuran writes in “How to Lose a Country: The 7 Steps From Democracy to Fascism,” exiles morality from public life. It isolates it in the private space of the individual. It corrals it into “the holding pen of religion” while religion is “clipped and cropped into market-friendly ‘spiritualities.’” Justice and mercy are no longer shared concepts. Personal and public morality are severed. How, she asks, “can we convince people not to commit evil in those realms of public life from which law enforcement is absent?”

“Humans,” she writes, “are incapable of functioning and living together without a good story to bind them and keep a certain set of values intact. That’s why the lack of a story in neoliberalism, the lack of meaning and cause, can be unbearable for the human mind. Since humans are forced to live in a state of mild antipathy — an acceptable amount of antipathy that is crucial to the neoliberal system — they are forever in dire need of a cause, a central triangulation point that they can use to orient themselves in relation to what’s good and what’s bad. The ethical vacuum of neoliberalism, its dismissal of the fact that human nature needs meaning and desperately seeks reasons to live, creates fertile ground for the invention of causes, and sometimes the most groundless or shallowest ones.”

Karl Polanyi in “The Great Transformation” distinguishes between bad freedoms and good freedoms. Bad freedoms are sacrosanct under neoliberalism. They permit the powerful to exploit workers and the natural world until exhaustion or collapse. Pharmaceutical and health care corporations, for example, jeopardize the lives of those who cannot afford their exorbitant prices. The fossil fuel industry is driving us towards extinction.

Good freedoms — freedom of conscience, freedom of speech, freedom of meeting, freedom of association, freedom to choose one’s job — are snuffed out by bad freedoms. The freedom of the many is transformed into the freedom of the few. The result is fascism.

Fascism uses the blunt instruments of fear, intimidation and violence to curb the mounting disquiet. It divides the country into warring factions — the patriots vs. the enemies of the state. It obliterates shared values. It champions the cruelty of hypermasculinity. Those who dissent are branded domestic terrorists. Civil liberties are abolished in the name of national security.

BELOW: A good example of a modern fascist event, starring Donald Trump, who relishes flag-waving, exceptionalist blood-curdling prose, the kind adored by poor-self-esteem rubes, the core of MAGA, while hamming the role of President, regardless of the innumerable lies and self-serving distortions packed in the screed.

The 30- to 100-year sentences meted out to eight anti-ICE protesters in Texas, who were portrayed in court as an “antifa terror cell,” are being normalized. A ninth defendant, David Rolando Sanchez Estrada, was not present at the protest, but was sentenced to 30 years after being convicted of concealing documents when he moved a box of political zines and other materials. A second group of defendants in the broader Prairieland case were sentenced on July 1. Six who accepted plea agreements received prison terms ranging from nearly two years to 15 years, while Ines Soto, who rejected a plea agreement and went to trial, received 50 years.

The equation of civil disobedience with terrorism is routine in countries such as Turkey, Russia and India. It is being cemented into place in Europe. A British judge, in a ruling that mirrors what took place in Texas, recently sentenced four members of Palestine Action as terrorists, sending them to prison for five to nine years, even though they were neither charged nor convicted of terrorism offenses.

It does not matter if Donald Trump, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Narendra Modi, Vladimir Putin or Nigel Farage disappear. The tens in of millions of people “fired up by their message will still be there, and will still be ready to act upon the orders of a similar figure,” Temelkuran writes. “And unfortunately, as we experienced in Turkey in a very destructive way, even if you are determined to stay away from the world of politics, the minions will find you, even in your own personal space, armed with their own set of values and ready to hunt down anybody who doesn’t resemble themselves.”

Our country, as we once knew it, no longer exists. It was methodically destroyed by neoliberal con artists. The institutions and legal protections that once shielded us from tyranny no longer function. Those who champion an open society are orphans, smeared as traitors, excoriated as the “radical left.” I mourn what we have lost. I mourn what we are about to lose. This social isolation will soon be physical isolation. We will be criminalized or driven into exile.

Trump and his fascistic cabal, epitomized by billionaires such as Peter Thiel and Elon Musk, are constructing a mafia state. A nation of gangsters and marks. A nation where they alone have unlimited freedom to pillage and exploit. A nation where the government is privatized. A nation where we are enslaved to corporate technology. A nation where we have no place.
We must name our enemies this Fourth of July. They are the fascists who have seized power. And they are those who, selling us the con of neoliberalism, put them there.

PLUS—

SPECIAL ADDITIONAL FEATURE

How the Democratic Party Captures and Subverts Revolutionary Energy (w/ Kshama Sawant)

The video transcript reveals a detailed discussion about the antagonistic relationship between the Democratic Party and revolutionary socialist candidates who challenge the political and economic status quo from within left-leaning cities like Seattle. The speaker outlines the inherent contradictions in American politics: while millions of working-class voters disdain both major parties, incumbency rates remain extraordinarily high due to systemic barriers and gatekeeping. The Democratic Party, often aligned with corporate interests and labor leadership, actively works to undermine socialist insurgents by running competing candidates, obstructing progressive policy demands, and employing psychological and social ostracization tactics. Using the $15 minimum wage campaign as a case study, the video illustrates how grassroots movements that refuse to compromise with establishment actors can achieve substantial victories despite entrenched opposition. The speaker underscores that true working-class leadership must reject careerism and embrace being an enemy of the system’s ruling class, including the Democratic Party, which routinely punishes those who seriously fight for the working class. The transcript includes a critique of nominally progressive Democrats, such as AOC, who have capitulated to party priorities to avoid political harm, contrasting their approach with the speaker's honest, combative socialist politics.

Highlights

  • [00:50] 🔥 The contradiction between widespread voter disgust for Congress and the high reelection rates of incumbents like 29-year Congressman Adam Smith.
  • [03:03] 💰 Seattle’s Democratic Party represents corporate interests like Amazon and Starbucks, showing how left-leaning cities still have capitalist gatekeeping.
  • [04:44] ✊ Victory in the 2013 $15 minimum wage campaign was a revolutionary demand, representing a grassroots movement challenging party politics and corporate power.
  • [06:52] 🎭 The Democratic Party attempts to defeat revolutionary socialists by running establishment Democrats and ensuring the presence of a Republican spoiler candidate.
  • [08:44] 🚫 Labor leadership often acts as gatekeepers opposing militant worker demands, collaborating with Democratic Party elites to suppress radical change.
  • [11:01] 👑 Social and political ostracization within elected offices serves as a tactic to isolate and weaken working-class representatives.
  • [13:40] 🤐 “Relational and reputational harm” prevents nominal progressives, like AOC, from taking the most radical stances and challenging the party line effectively.

Key Insights

  • [01:26] 🔍 Incumbency and Voter Discontent: The Systemic Paradox
    Despite democratic disillusionment—where both major parties have low approval ratings—the high reelection rates of incumbents such as Adam Smith reveal structural barriers. These include ballot access restrictions, partisan control over primaries, and strategic deployment of spoiler candidates. This paradox is a mechanism that preserves the political establishment and prevents genuine working-class challengers from gaining ground. It highlights how democracy is limited in practice by institutional designs that favor entrenched interests.

  • [03:36] ⚔️ Class War Manifest in Local Politics
    Seattle, though a liberal bastion, is politically controlled by the Democratic Party, which aligns with chambers of commerce and large corporations like Amazon, Starbucks, and T-Mobile. This underscores that left-leaning urban areas are not immune to capitalist control; instead, the Democratic Party acts as a conduit for corporate interests, maintaining the capitalist status quo by co-opting progressive language but opposing radical structural change.

  • [05:46] 💣 Militant Socialist Campaigns as Unique Political Forces
    The speaker’s campaign contrasts starkly with conventional Democratic campaigns by focusing on solid, popular demands like $15/hour minimum wage, taxing the rich, and rent control, rather than personal narratives or personality politics. This militant platform aligns with working-class interests and leads to genuine electoral breakthroughs, exemplified by the 2013 Seattle City Council victory and the broader 15 Now movement. Such campaigns disrupt the bipartisan hegemony and signal the potential for revolutionary socialism to thrive electorally.

  • [06:27] 🎭 Establishment Tactics: Dual Democrat Candidacies and Spoiler Republicans
    The Democratic Party runs multiple Democratic candidates, attempting to split left-wing votes and prevent revolutionary socialists from advancing. They also tacitly support a Republican candidate, expressly recruited to block socialist progress rather than defeat entrenched Democrats. This reveals a bipartisan alliance at the systemic level to maintain capitalist-friendly governance by neutralizing insurgent left-wing voices.

  • [08:44] 🔐 Labor Leadership as Political Gatekeepers Against Working-Class Gains
    The labor movement leadership often aligns with Democratic Party interests, resisting progressive agendas such as the $15 minimum wage. Rather than being a genuine working-class ally, the labor elite tends to function as gatekeepers whose concerns focus on preserving existing power structures within capitalist politics. This alliance poses a significant obstacle to radical change and necessitates grassroots defiance to achieve workers’ victories.

  • [11:01] 🧟 Social Isolation as a Weapon in Capitalist Institutions
    Within elected institutions, left-wing radicals face deliberate social ostracization, a tactic meant to marginalize, demoralize, and fracture collective resistance. Political isolationism alienates socialist representatives from potential allies and sustains the bourgeois political culture where capital’s interests dominate. Overcoming these psychological and social barriers is essential for sustaining militant movements within capitalist political frameworks.

  • [13:40] 😶 Progressive Democrats’ Limitations Under Party Pressure
    Figures like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have demonstrated how progressive politicians often avoid confrontational politics, choosing reputation management over militant demands like forcing votes on Medicare-for-All. Confession of fearing “relational and reputational harm” exposes the deep-seated control the Democratic Party exerts over even its left-wing members, discouraging genuine working-class advocacy in favor of preserving party unity and career stability.

 

 

]]> https://www.greanvillepost.com/requiem-for-america-on-the-fourth-of-july/feed/ 0 ABSOLUTE MUST WATCH: Richard Wolff & Michael Hudson: Iran Just Shattered America’s Strategic Advantage https://www.greanvillepost.com/absolute-must-watch-richard-wolff-michael-hudson-iran-just-shattered-americas-strategic-advantage/ https://www.greanvillepost.com/absolute-must-watch-richard-wolff-michael-hudson-iran-just-shattered-americas-strategic-advantage/#respond Sat, 04 Jul 2026 23:02:33 +0000 https://www.greanvillepost.com/?p=408333
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Richard Wolff & Michael Hudson: Iran Just Shattered America's Strategic Advantage
Dialogue Works

Dialogue Works
Streamed live on Jul 2, 2026

Precis

The video features a detailed discussion on the geopolitical dynamics surrounding the United States, Iran, and the broader Middle East, set against the backdrop of ongoing conflicts and negotiations. Richard Wolff and Michael Hudson analyze the implications of a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the U.S. and Iran, suggesting it is less a genuine resolution and more a temporary ploy to stabilize the global oil economy amid escalating tensions.

The conversation highlights the United States’ desperate attempt to preserve the petrodollar system by controlling oil trade routes, notably the Strait of Hormuz. However, the regional reality reveals declining U.S. influence, with Gulf states seeking closer ties with China and Russia. The speakers propose a transformative, albeit imaginative, vision where China and Russia guarantee security in the Gulf, establish a Palestinian state, and shift control over key strategic assets away from Western powers.

The panel emphasizes the erosion of U.S. trust, citing instances of extrajudicial killings of fishermen and illegal seizures of financial assets that contravene international law. This signals a broader collapse of established norms and Western colonial-style domination. The unfolding crisis parallels historical precedents, drawing comparisons to the pre-World War I colonial struggles and the eventual disintegration of imperial powers.

The speakers point out that the current geopolitical fragmentation and economic desperation, exemplified by U.S. attempts to control global trade routes and financial markets, mark the decline of the Western empire. They foresee increased instability in the Middle East, including potential civil wars in Lebanon and the Emirates, and a reconfiguration of global alliances, especially with countries like India siding with the U.S. while others gravitate toward the new powers, China and Russia.

The discussion culminates in a historical reflection on the nature of imperial decline, warning that unresolved colonial legacies and competitive ambitions may push the world toward broader conflict or force the creation of a new international order.

Highlights

  • [03:00] 🛢️  The U.S. aims to use the MOU with Iran primarily to stabilize the global oil economy, not to solve underlying problems. [05:00] 🌏 A hypothetical solution envisions China and Russia guaranteeing security in the Gulf and creating a Palestinian state, shifting regional control. [10:00] ⚖️ The systematic extrajudicial killings of fishermen by the U.S. reveal disregard for international law and are seen as a form of state terror. 
  • [15:00] 💵 The U.S. enforces control over global oil trade to uphold the petrodollar but this is causing countries like Saudi Arabia and the UAE to seek alternatives.
  • [26:00] 🌐 Gulf states are pivoting away from the U.S. toward China and Russia to escape American dominance and economic control.
  • [39:30] 🔥 Saudi Arabia reportedly refused U.S. permission to use its airbases for an attack on Iran, highlighting declining U.S. influence.
  • [44:00] ⚔️ The current situation resembles the buildup to World War I, with imperial powers edging closer to conflict amid collapsing colonial orders.

Key Insights

  • [03:45] 🛢️ Temporary Stability Through MOU: The Memorandum of Understanding between the U.S. and Iran is less a peace agreement and more a tactical move to "refill" oil reserves amid supply disruptions, reflecting a temporary stabilization tactic rather than a lasting diplomatic solution. The U.S. aims to maintain its grip on the global oil economy, signaling that the underlying conflict remains unresolved, especially as Iranian trust in U.S. commitments has eroded due to ongoing military actions during negotiations.
  • [06:00] 🌏 Rise of Sino-Russian Influence in the Gulf: Richard suggests that the real solution to the regional chaos might be the entrance of China and Russia as security guarantors and infrastructure developers, including a new Mediterranean port and Palestinian state, which would disrupt the current U.S.-led order. This vision indicates a potential multipolar shift in global governance, challenging Western dominance and colonial legacies in the Middle East.
  • [10:15] ⚖️ Erosion of International Law Norms: U.S. extrajudicial killings of fishermen without due process reveal a broader trend of abandoning international legal norms, paralleling Israeli military actions in Gaza, which undermines global order and trust. This shift towards lawless state behavior raises questions about the future of international diplomacy and conflict resolution.
  • [15:45] 💵 The Petrodollar’s Declining Hegemony: The U.S. insistence on pricing oil in dollars and controlling the financial assets of countries like Iran, Venezuela, and Russia underscores the petrodollar system’s centrality to America’s global financial hegemony. Yet, this aggressive control breeds resistance, leading key Gulf states to seek partnerships with China and Russia, threatening the sustainability of the dollar-centric order.
  • [26:50] 🌐 Gulf States’ Strategic Realignment: Saudi Arabia’s pivot to China and refusal to allow U.S. military use of its bases for attacks on Iran signal a pragmatic rejection of the American security umbrella. This realignment indicates a critical erosion of U.S. influence in a region long dominated by Washington, with implications for U.S. military and economic strategy.
  • [39:30] 🔥 Military and Economic Constraints Limit U.S. Actions Against Iran: The abortive U.S. attack on Iran reflects logistical and political limitations that hinder U.S. efforts to maintain dominance via military force. This failure underscores the limits of U.S. military power projection and the growing assertiveness of regional actors in contesting U.S. strategies.
  • [43:45] ⚔️ Historical Parallel to Pre-World War I Colonial Rivalries: The geopolitical tensions over control of trade routes, resources, and alliances closely resemble colonial struggles and imperial jockeying before World War I. This comparison warns that ongoing global rivalry and unresolved imperial ambitions could escalate into wider conflicts unless new cooperative international frameworks are devised.
  • [52:00] 📉 The Decline of Western Colonial Empire and Capitalism: The discussion frames the current chaos as part of the terminal decline of Western imperialism and capitalism, characterized by desperation among elites attempting to cling to lost power. This transition portends a period of instability, in which old structures collapse and new orders emerge, possibly driven by non-Western powers such as China, Russia, and Iran.
  • [56:30] 🌍 Need for a New International Order: Both speakers emphasize the necessity for radically redesigned global governance that transcends outdated colonial frameworks, recognizing the new geopolitical realities. The inability of the U.S. and its allies to manage the Middle East effectively and peacefully obligates the world to look for alternative arrangements to establish sustainable peace and economic development.

 

]]> https://www.greanvillepost.com/absolute-must-watch-richard-wolff-michael-hudson-iran-just-shattered-americas-strategic-advantage/feed/ 0 Trump’s Great American State Fair is a Potemkin Village for Rubes https://www.greanvillepost.com/trumps-great-american-state-fair-is-a-potemkin-village-for-rubes/ https://www.greanvillepost.com/trumps-great-american-state-fair-is-a-potemkin-village-for-rubes/#respond Sat, 04 Jul 2026 22:37:16 +0000 https://www.greanvillepost.com/?p=408324
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Tommy Campbell

Trump’s Failed State Fair Is Comedy Gold

Tommy Campbell

Tommy Campbell

Jul 4, 2026 #politicalcomedy #newssatire #politicalsatire
Donald Trump’s Freedom 250 State Fair gets trolled worldwide after his National Mall celebration turns into a global punchline and a sweltering empty tent disaster. I have a laugh joining in with the latest viral clips, mockery, and photos calling out the crumbling Trump Arch, Ferris wheel power cuts, missing crowds, no AC, RFK Jr.’s pull-ups, the $100K cover charges, and more. I also roast Donald’s bizarre “golden gift” post and offer up some funny memes of my own. The Reflecting Pool swamp remains shut while Trump’s DOJ indicts an Olympic canoeist and turns America’s 250th into another corporate grift.
Tommy Campbell is a 47-y/o Canadian–Irish actor, stand-up comedian and writer.
]]> https://www.greanvillepost.com/trumps-great-american-state-fair-is-a-potemkin-village-for-rubes/feed/ 0 Trump’s disastrous speech at Mt. Rushmore https://www.greanvillepost.com/trumps-disastrous-speech-at-mt-rushmore/ https://www.greanvillepost.com/trumps-disastrous-speech-at-mt-rushmore/#respond Sat, 04 Jul 2026 22:10:06 +0000 https://www.greanvillepost.com/?p=408310
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Peter Man

Dear Friends,

Trump McGa (Make China Great Again), or in Chinese, 川建國, is doing communism a great service by directly attacking it in his Mount Rushmore US semiquincentennial speech. He obviously hasn't learned.

Trump's disastrous speech at Mt. Rushmore

Some years ago, Trump started America's trade and tech wars against China (which, by the way, Biden redoubled). He blamed China for everything going wrong in America. He named China America's gravest threat. He wantonly slapped exorbitant tariffs and sanctions on everything coming out of China. It is proper to mention his Democratic opponents, to this day, fully support his belligerence toward China and only criticize him for not being more extreme in his measures.

Trump has DISASTER SPEECH at MT RUSHMORE and LOOKS AWFUL!!!
Jul 4, 2026 The MeidasTouch Podcast
NOTE: We are NOT great admirers of Meiselas, a longtime Democrat apparatchik, and card-carrying, status quo supporting liberal. His opposition to Trump does not translate as opposition to the criminal duopoly and its enablers in the Democrat club. 

As we all know by now, Trump's war on China has made China great again. Despite incessant bald-faced media lies smearing China, even the blind can see the nation's unstoppable and accelerated rise under Trump's attacks.

Everyone, except for the hopelessly delusional and excerebrose moron (who, unfortunately, continues to exist in small though significant numbers), knows what a shameless, lying scammer Trump is. His strident attack on communism may end up making communism great again. This is the unpredictable and ironic blowback.

—Peter Man

Below the complete, painful speech by the biggest and most pathological liar and ignoramus in history, on the occasion of the 4th of July.

WATCH: Trump speaks at Mount Rushmore to kick off America’s 250th anniversary

PBS NewsHour

PBS NewsHour
Jul 4, 2026

 

 

]]> https://www.greanvillepost.com/trumps-disastrous-speech-at-mt-rushmore/feed/ 0 The Wake https://www.greanvillepost.com/the-wake/ https://www.greanvillepost.com/the-wake/#respond Sat, 04 Jul 2026 18:41:24 +0000 https://www.greanvillepost.com/?p=408298
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By Paul Edwards

THE WAKE

A wake is a traditional gathering of family and friends held after the death of a loved one and before the funeral.  Though it has never yet been held for a dead nation, the time for that has come.

US declaration of independence

A nation’s death is not physical and instantaneous, but it is the result of similar processes.  The germ of debility or disease, the invisible infection, the attrition of vitality, and the final collapse of the life force: they work the same in Man and state.

The Wake we hold now is not due to the brutal, unanticipated shock of a death unforeseen.  We know and recognize the onset of the end in a person we love.  And we have understood and accepted the same indicators in what we have always called The Land Of The Free.  We have watched the spread of fatal toxins that long undermined the health and viability of the Republic.

Most of us are born with a genetic mix that arms us for the long normal journey of life, but there are many who, from birth, carry a pernicious gene that will untimely destroy them.  Our nation was born with the virulent, aberrant factors that fated its demise.

An enthusiastically profit oriented enterprise controlled from the beginning by a wealthy elite, it founded itself openly on the reign of capital, and on genocide and human slavery, all the pathogens that were destined to destroy it.

Given the natural, benighted, human vices of avarice and power lust, those fatal elements were disguised and denied by the ruling clique, and left untreated in the body politic.  Being the deadly pathogens, the rampant cancers, they are sociologically, they have been steadily metastasizing for two hundred and fifty years.

On this symbolically touted anniversary of our Independence, we are asked by our current rulers to celebrate the nation that their falsity, cynicism and villainy has destroyed.  We who recognize death when we see it, cannot comply.  But we can mourn.

All life ends in the individual and persists in the mass, in nations as in people, and in both a life is judged on what it verifiably did in its brief mortal span.  The function of a wake, and its chief purpose, is to laud the best in the deceased as consistently as possible without denying established fact, and to assuage, to some degree, the grief that is the inevitable result of the loss.

Our nation’s wake must begin with its aspirational intent.  There is no doubt that those who designed our foundational document had, in the majority, decent and honorable hopes for its social success, and for a good and worthy outcome for our people.

Though it was crafted with greed, control, and injustice deep in its DNA, that reality was not uppermost in their stated purpose, and it was done virtually unconsciously on the basis of the ruling prejudices of their time.  They did not set out to create an engine of exploitation to betray their countrymen.  Their prejudices were strongly held, refined by the best liberal thinking of the era and—as we surely are—they were largely selfishly blind to their flaws.

As the founders did what seemed to them their moral best in our enabling act, so throughout our history, the best values have had brave, sincere defenders.  They are easily identified because they were strong, lonely voices against the rule of vice, injustice, and cruelty.  Inevitably they were few, vilified by the financial power, and forced to make their fights alone.  There is nothing unique in this: it is the story of all human history.

To them we owe what small progress has been made in redress of  the evils of sex, ethnic, and color persecution, of suppression of labor, of institutionalized poverty, and of denial of indisputable human rights.  Their heroic efforts have been violently opposed by the massed forces of Capitalist Power, and their successes relentlessly, systematically diluted, diminished, often eradicated.

As persons can be overwhelmed in life by dark forces that beset them, so with nations, and a wake is where that must be grieved.   Abe Lincoln called America ‘the last best hope of earth”, to be ‘nobly won or meanly lost’.  To our deep grief it was meanly lost.  Our wake today mourns all the promise that might have been.

For, despite the contradictions of our establishment, that loss was not inevitable.  Those who struggled for the highest, most generous goals gave America repeated chances to grow ethically toward potential glory.  Those, in Stephen Spender’s words, ‘who fought for life, who wore at their heart’s core the fire’s center’, lit and carried, again and again, the moral torch our rulers rejected.

Our country’s death was neither sudden nor surprising.  It came in the long, terrible agony that only those who have had to see a loved one stricken randomly with a slow, inexorably fatal affliction ever suffer.  It was the culmination of an extended, irresistible invasion and overthrow of all the body politic’s defensive powers and resources until, one by one, they faltered and winked out.

Unlike physical life, a nation that is ethically, politically dead does not cease to exist.  It goes on autonomically, operating without reason or purpose beyond maintaining its mechanical function.  Robinson Jeffers saw our betrayal and dissolution when it was well under way a hundred years ago, and in his irremediable grief, he wrote, his hail and farewell, “Shine, Perishing Republic”.

The monstrous, mindless, nightmare entity we live in now is not the Republic that Franklin told us that we had if we could keep it.  It is an automated remnant, as pathetically dysfunctional as all empires are in the colossal chaos of their implosion.  We are like the derelict Voyager, its mission over, wandering blind, lost in infinity.

Men and nations die; ideals, although scorned and abandoned, never.  We mourn, and celebrate that.

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