In this context, it is vital to locate sane and wise voices capable of sorting out what is truly happening in the world, people capable of empowering the mass public with the insights necessary to organise an effective self-defence. It hardly needs saying, but intelligence does not guarantee integrity and morality in social and political affairs, virtues which are today indispensable for our survival. The US, particularly, true to its cancerous capitalist ethos, is choke-full with ambitious figures in almost all realms of importance—the political class, academia, the corporate suites, the professions, the media, and, naturally, the largely invisible ruling elites. The vast majority of these think nothing of putting their careers, power, property and privileges well ahead of the public interest or the overall well-being of society and the planet at large. Indeed, most of these sectors have a downright parasitic and criminal posture in regard to the rest of society. Massive hypocrisy aside, the US has always been an overwhelmingly individualistic and selfish nation. Endemic corruption, reality avoidance, pervasive stupidity, privatism, hucksterism, and short-term thinking rule the culture. All of these traits inhere in unbridled US corporatism, the matrix of US imperialism, whose multitude of excesses, crimes and contradictions are finally catching up with it. Ironically, for more than a hundred years US imperialism's enormous muscle, narcissism and aggressiveness, concealed its weaknesses. Now it has reached the tipping point. As a result, riddled with a criminally inept and indifferent leadership, a political class that could care less about the lives and fate of the population in their care, America, the pathetic host to this awful parasite, is disintegrating right before our eyes. Even a casual stroll in a major American city offers ample proof of that. Unfortunately, the downfall of this society also threatens the survival of the world. As the Ukraine War grinds on, a conflict born of Washington's malice combined with appalling arrogance and stupidity, as the Hegemon and its Neocon crews flail around hoping to restore subservience through punishment and intimidation, nuclear Armageddon is no longer just a remote possibility but a very real prospect in our lives.

In Blowback, Billy Bob has created a platform where current events can be analysed in their rich and complex reality. Besides himself, his regular team of social critics, visionaries, and observers includes people like the passionate Carlo Parcelli (poet and lifelong iconoclast); Ben Tóth (Peace Land and Bread. 3rd generation Hungarian Communist); Regis Tremblay, (a dedicated anti-imperialist activist and documentarian now residing in Crimea); Ian Kummer (former Public Affairs Specialist at U.S. Army (2012-2021). living in Moscow, often traveling around the RF, a lover of animals, and blogging at The Reading Junkie). Plus other equally engaging voices that may join the roundtable as the topics of their interest and qualification arise.

I close this long-winded intro to say that am grateful to Billy Bob for putting this platform together, and for persisting despite the many pestiferous obstacles and underhanded attacks that always attend genuinely anti-capitalist information projects. (I personally know a great deal about that). In Blowback he has gathered people of impressive intellect and political acuity who have the added merit of being totally accessible and unpretentious.

—PG

ALSO RECOMMENDED: Garland Nixon, Jimmy Dore, The New Atlas (Brian Berletic), The Grayzone, Caleb Maupin, Sabby Sabs, Danny Haiphong, Scott Ritter, George Galloway, and The Revolutionary Blackout Network.