Prof. Michael Hudson’s new book, The Collapse of Antiquity: Greece and Rome as Civilization’s Oligarchic Turning Point” is a seminal event in this Year of Living Dangerously when, to paraphrase Gramsci, the old geopolitical and geoeconomic order is dying and the new one is being born at breakneck speed.
Prof. Hudson’s main thesis is absolutely devastating: he sets out to prove that economic/financial practices in Ancient Greece and Rome – the pillars of Western Civilization – set the stage for what is happening today right in front of our eyes: an empire reduced to a rentier economy, collapsing from within.
And that brings us to the common denominator in every single Western financial system: it’s all about debt, inevitably growing by compound interest.
Ay, there’s the rub: before Greece and Rome, we had nearly 3,000 years of civilizations across West Asia doing exactly the opposite.
These kingdoms all knew about the importance of canceling debts. Otherwise their subjects would fall into bondage; lose their land to a bunch of foreclosing creditors; and these would usually try to overthrow the ruling power.
Aristotle succinctly framed it: “Under democracy, creditors begin to make loans and the debtors can’t pay and the creditors get more and more money, and they end up turning a democracy into an oligarchy, and then the oligarchy makes itself hereditary, and you have an aristocracy.”
Prof. Hudson sharply explains what happens when creditors take over and “reduce all the rest of the economy to bondage”: it’s what’s called today “austerity” or “debt deflation”......more below
https://sputnikglobe.com/20230515/pepe-escobar-us-empire-of-debt-headed-for-collapse-1110374196.html
Islamic Republic inflicted “heavy” and “extensive” damage on Israel during its US-backed aggression of June against Iran.
Speaking on Monday, Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister for Legal and International Affairs, Kazem Gharibabadi, said in the course of the aggression, Iran dealt a “severe blow” to Israel, which had remained arrogant since the wars in the 1960s, particularly the Six-Day War and subsequent conflicts with Arabs.
“During the war, we inflicted very heavy losses upon the Zionist regime, only a portion of which was made public. Israel itself prevented the full disclosure of the extent of damage caused by Iran’s missile attacks.”
“The reports and images we received from various satellites, together with information obtained from multiple sources in the Israeli-occupied territories, all indicated that the damage sustained [by the regime] was absolutely extensive.”
He said Iranian missiles penetrated through the host of defense systems deployed by several ...
Israeli forces stormed the sealed headquarters of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) in occupied East al-Quds, raiding the long-standing compound in Sheikh Jarrah just days after the UN General Assembly overwhelmingly renewed the agency’s mandate.
In a statement on Monday, the al-Quds Governorate, affiliated with the Palestinian Authority (PA), said Israeli police entered the compound, detained its security guards, and confiscated their phones.
“Israeli police cut off communication, making it impossible to know what is happening inside the compound,” the statement said.
Officials added that the raid was carried out “alongside a complete closure of the surrounding area and extensive searches across all facilities of the building.”
The compound, used as an UNRWA office since 1951, had been vacated earlier this year following a decision by Israel......more below
https://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2025/12/08/760269/Palestine-UN-UNRWA--al-Quds--
The document’s dismissal of Europe “as a power of no significance signals that there are three truly great powers left: the United States, Russia and China,” military expert Alexei Borzenko told Sputnik.
The US is also “well aware that we’ve outpaced them on certain types of weapons,” the observer said, citing Russian advances in hypersonics, and the depletion of US and European weapon stocks in Ukraine.
The US is eager to end the crisis in Ukraine, which has proven “a dead-end situation" for NATO "from which the only way out is peace,” Borzenko said, citing the document’s conciliatory language on the conflict and on Russia.
Furthermore, “during negotiations, the Americans figured out what the Kiev junta represents, and how difficult it is to negotiate with it. They understand what kind of crooks they are dealing with” and are tired of it, Borzenko argues.
That’s why various leaders’ recent claims that the Ukrainian crisis could end abruptly seems like a real ...
