The

The Hello and welcome to Behind the News. My name is Doug Henwood.

After a few instances of norm erosion,

standards reassert themselves. After a few instances of norm erosion, standards have reasserted

themselves, two guests, two segments. David Beer will look into the brutal anti-immigrant

agenda of Trump and his cronies, and Orally Dyer will explain how and why Israel has been brutalizing

Lebanon while the world's attention has been largely directed elsewhere. A couple of points about

goings on in Davos, where the global elite have been convening. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney

gave a speech that showed him as the last serious bourgeois leader in the world. There's a lot to say about it,

but I want to single out one thing, his emphasis on what Trump is doing to the middle powers,

as he called them. Trump's war and global institutions has undermined their role in the world,

and as Carney argues, they're going to have to band together to counter a go-it-alone U.S.

His analysis underscores Trump's dismantling of one of the most

ingenious aspects of the post-World War II American Empire, allowing second-tier powers like Canada

a generous share of the global distribution of income and return for deference to U.S. power.

As for the bottom tier, they never had much to say. Carney was silent on their role.

Trump sees this role for the middle powers as sponging and not a cornerstone of hegemony. That world is gone. Trump's posturing around Greenland came to an abrupt and mysterious end on Wednesday.

It looks like the negative reaction to the bond market in the days of ramped-up threats

concentrated at his mind.

Even a brutal ignoramus like Trump understands the power of the creditor class.

His treasury has a lot of debt to float in the coming months and years, and he can't afford

to alienate the bondholders.

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