Welcome to The Socialist Program. This is the audio of our monthly seminar. Subscribe and support

this programming at patreon.com slash the Socialist Program to join live once a month and ask

Brian Becker your questions and listen to them as soon as they come out. Thanks so much for your help

in keeping this independent show going. We can make this program with you,

but not without you. I do want to say a couple of things before we get started, and we had

decided to devote most of this monthly seminar to answering questions. So I'm not going to give

a long introduction. But it's noteworthy that the U.S. government in its effort to isolate Russia,

weaken Russia, destroy Russia, topple the government in Russia,

is compelled because of the oil and gas embargoes and sanctions.

And those sanctions are gonna deepen

where Russian oil won't be able to set sell

on any international shipping

because all international shipping will be denied insurance

if they take transport of any type from Russia.

So there's going to be an additional shortage in shortages or pressures,

supply pressures for oil and gas and other petroleum products.

So Biden is off to Saudi Arabia, you know, in his great quest for freedom and against autocracy,

reaching out MBS and the Saudi royal family once again to make sure that they keep the production at a higher level.

So you see the Biden administration is going over time to repair any earlier sort of schism between the U.S. and the Saudi royal family.

It says so much about their much touted concern and embrace for democracy and the needs for democracy as if the struggle between the U.S. and NATO and Russia is a struggle between the world's

democracies and the autocracies. The other thing that I wanted to mention, you probably saw it or

heard it or you will, but we were very happy to have John Bellamy Foster, the editor of Monthly Review magazine, where we were able to have

...