Why is Iran under constant US attack? Is it really about women’s rights and democracy? Or is it because Iran, since its revolution, has been a staunch supporter both ideologically and materially, of resistance to US imperialism across the Middle East? To discuss this and more, Rania Khalek was joined by Nina Farnia, Assistant Professor of Law at Albany Law School, a longtime activist and a scholar of Critical Race Theory, with a focus on US imperialism and its impact on domestic law. This is jus...
Jun 08, 2023•41 min
Full episode on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/posts/full-audio-how-w-83919972 After Jeremy Corbyn became leader of the British Labour Party, the right wing of the party joined with the Israel lobby and the Israeli state to bring down Corbyn and purge the party of leftists using false accusations of anti-semitism. The witch-hunt continued even after Corbyn’s downfall. No reporter has covered the weaponization of anti-semitism in British politics as rigorously as Asa Winstanley, associate edito...
Jun 01, 2023•39 min
It’s a new era of global power dynamics where countries sometimes have the option to say no to the U.S. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the Middle East. Almost 12 years after being kicked out of the Arab League, Syria has been welcomed back into the fold by many of the U.S.-allied countries that tried to destroy it. All this time Israel was banking on normalization with Saudi Arabia and the opposite happened, with China overseeing a Saudi peace deal with Iran. Why? What does this multipola...
May 26, 2023•45 min
According to U.S. politicians, military leaders and the media, everything China does on the international stage – brokering peace deals, expanding economic initiatives, building ports — is part of an aggressive campaign to weaken the United States. While China is becoming more assertive diplomatically, is the U.S. interpretation of why accurate or is it projection and delusion? And how does it relate to China’s internationalist past? What does it mean for the future of the Global South and the w...
May 23, 2023•35 min
See full episode on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/posts/83205814 Collaboration between the US and fascists is a pattern that stretches back to the end of World War II and NATO’s founding, when the US and British intelligence services established secret far-right terror network armies across NATO countries made up of fascists, Nazi collaborators and actual Nazis. This is just the first half of this episode. The second half is available for Breakthrough News Members only. Become a member at htt...
May 18, 2023•51 min
In the U.S. we’re taught that North Korea is a horrible backwards dictatorship where every person is captive to an evil regime run by a mad man who has an inexplicable hatred of the U.S., freedom and democracy – and is always on the edge of launching a nuclear missile to destroy the world. This, we’re told, is the reason we have to isolate the country and occupy South Korea with thousands of U.S. soldiers. The purpose of such a simplistic narrative is to prevent Americans from getting curious ab...
May 10, 2023•49 min
Last April, Pakistan’s Imran Khan was ousted as Prime Minister, which he blamed on an American-backed coup due to his non-aligned foreign policy. His removal has been followed by political instability that continues to roil the country with some of the largest protests in Pakistan’s history, both in support of him but also in opposition to the traditional ruling elites. The current government has responded by cracking down on Khan and his supporters, and preventing new elections. To help us unde...
May 05, 2023•33 min
Since taking office in 2018, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, or AMLO, has reasserted more state control over Mexico’s natural resources, nationalizing its lithium reserves, while vocally opposing US interference in Mexico. So it’s no surprise that the corporate media in Washington is following along with the program of labeling him a strongman, an authoritarian, and anti-democratic. while U.S. politicians like Lindsay Graham invoke drugs and violence to threaten military intervent...
Apr 27, 2023•37 min
With Saudi Arabia and Iran making peace as part of a deal brokered by China, much has been made about the absence of the U.S. and what it means for U.S. hegemony. But what about the implications for the region? What might it look like in practice? Who are the potential spoilers? And why did this happen now? Also, what does it mean for the U.S. empire's greatest global partner, Europe? To discuss this and more, Rania Khalek was joined by Adnan Tabatabai, the co-founder and CEO of the Germany-base...
Apr 21, 2023•32 min
The historic deal brokered by China for a Saudi-Iran rapprochement reflects not only a changing region, but a shifting world order. While the US focuses on its proxy war in Ukraine, with US officials essentially blocking meaningful peace discussion both there and in Yemen, its “strategic competitor” China now looks like the adult in the room. Its diplomatic initiatives have become a force for stability in the biggest conflict regions, from Yemen to Syria. To better understand what's going on and...
Apr 18, 2023•40 min
Rania Khalek of Breakthrough News and Zoe Alexandra of Peoples Dispatch sat down with Dr. Claudia Sheinbaum, the head of government in Mexico City and one of the founders of Morena, the party of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. She is a rising figure in Mexican national politics and a leading contender for the 2024 presidential elections.
Apr 15, 2023•28 min
Before 2011, Syria was a relatively stable country that had decent electricity, one of the best medical sectors in the region and produced much of its own food and medicine. Today Syria has collapsing infrastructure, dire food insecurity, crippling fuel shortages, severe brain drain and only has control over part of the country’s territory. Mainstream US media places all the blame on President Assad while covering up the role of US sanctions. To discuss the decades-long US war on Syria, Rania Kh...
Apr 10, 2023•1 hr 17 min
When most people in the West think of the war in Ukraine, they think of February 24, 2022 when Russia launched its invasion. But for 8 years prior, there had been a war raging in the eastern part of the country that received little attention because its reality was inconvenient for mainstream Western narratives. In the Donbas region, an estimated 15,000 people had died following what many there described as a US-backed coup in 2014 that gave rise to an anti-Russia government and helped empower f...
Mar 28, 2023•1 hr 4 min
To discuss the war on whistleblowers, the U.S. government’s prosecution of Julian Assange and how the case against him poses a threat to journalism everywhere, Rania Khalek spoke to Kevin Gosztola, managing editor of Shadowproof, co-host of the Unauthorized Disclosure podcast and author of the newly published book “Guilty of Journalism: The Political Case Against Julian Assange.” You can purchase Kevin’s book here: https://www.project-censored.org/shop/p/guilty-of-journalism-the-political-case-a...
Mar 24, 2023•1 hr 7 min
Whatever happened to Ukraine’s foreign fighters? What are the parallels between Syria and Ukraine? And where does the Cold War against China fit into it? To discuss this and more, Rania Khalek was joined by investigative journalist Seth Harp, a contributing editor for Rolling Stone and author of the forthcoming book The Delta Force Murders, which will be published by Viking Press. Seth’s articles discussed in the episode: https://theintercept.com/2022/06/30/ukraine-azov-neo-nazi-foreign-fighter/...
Mar 17, 2023•59 min
Africa’s Sahel region is experiencing historic shifts as anti-colonial sentiment sweeps across the region, with the French military being kicked out of one country after another after failing to rout insurgencies fueled by their own policies. France and its allies have responded by blaming disinformation, authoritarianism, and the west’s favorite boogeyman: Russia. Meanwhile the security situation in the Sahel continues to deteriorate. To help break it all down, Breakthrough News journalist Euge...
Mar 17, 2023•1 hr 9 min
The Middle East is drowning in anti-Iran propaganda emanating from Western, Gulf and oligarch-funded outlets that seek to turn the populations in the region against Iran and other institutions deemed to be “backed by Iran.” In Lebanon this plays out in a sectarian narrative that portrays Hezbollah as an Iranian proxy and depicts Shias as agents of an Iranian occupation of the country. This pattern has also been replicated in neighboring countries in an attempt to turn people against the regional...
Mar 07, 2023•59 min
Award-winning investigative journalist Seymour Hersh joined Rania Khalek on Dispatches to discuss his latest bombshell on how the Biden administration destroyed the Nord Stream pipeline using remotely triggered explosives with the help of the CIA, US Navy divers, and NATO member Norway. This means the US targeted the critical energy infrastructure of its most important European ally, a major violation of sovereignty in what essentially constitutes objectively an act of war against Germany. But G...
Mar 02, 2023•59 min
Two years into his presidency, Biden’s foreign policy has been defined by the war in Ukraine and a weakening American hegemony, one that also characterized Trump’s time in office. Some argue the American empire is in decline no matter which party is in control. So where will U.S. foreign policy go from here as the new Cold War era drags on? Does it even matter which party is in charge anymore? How are anxieties of a U.S. decline playing out in the media and in popular culture? And where does tha...
Feb 23, 2023•1 hr 2 min
With the United States hyper focused on Russia and China, it’s easy to forget that the empire is still up to its old tricks in the rest of the Global South. What does the insatiable U.S. imperialist appetite mean for the resource-rich countries of Latin America? After all, that copper, gold, zinc, silver, lead, iron, and natural gas in Peru, the lithium in Bolivia, Chile and Argentina, and the oil in Venezuela isn’t gonna steal itself. How is the Cold War with Russia and China playing out throug...
Feb 13, 2023•1 hr 13 min
To understand how this new Cold War might play out, we have to understand the foundations of the original Cold War of the 20th century. What was NATO’s role? What did it mean for the Third World back then? What does it mean for the Third World today, particularly those countries that seek an independent, sovereign path? What is the danger of rising fascist movements? And what are the lessons for anti-imperialists who live and organize in the imperial core? To discuss this and more, Rania Khalek ...
Feb 09, 2023•1 hr 15 min
It’s widely accepted that humans are driving climate change and environmentalism has become mainstream. But what if “humanity” in the abstract isn’t to blame? Is it true that humans are inherently bad for nature? What if the real culprit is the systems we’re forced to operate under — capitalism, imperialism, colonialism— perpetrated by particular sections of humanity over others? So who, or what is to blame is really to blame for climate change? What are the limitations of the mainstream environ...
Feb 03, 2023•1 hr 33 min
Bitcoin, Stablecoin, Tether, Blockchain, Coinbase, Binance, Etherium, Luna, Celsius, Circle, FTX, NFTs: What’s all this crypto jargon really about? What stage of capitalism does it mean we’re in? How has digital currency been impacted by the pandemic and the war in Ukraine? What are the geopolitical implications for the US cold war with China? And what’s the significance of the downfall of Sam Bankman-Fried? Could we see an even more dramatic unraveling in the crypto world in the future, one tha...
Jan 27, 2023•58 min
The year 2022 was defined by the war in Ukraine, the expansion of NATO, and continued encirclement of China as the U.S. prepares for “great power conflict.” But the US empire is so overstretched, that sanctions have become the favorite form of warfare— to disrupt and isolate many countries at once. Could they backfire in 2023? To discuss this and more Rania Khalek was joined by Bikrum Gill, who teaches at the department of political science at Virginia Tech. Mentioned in the episode: https://dev...
Jan 24, 2023•1 hr 16 min
According to Western media, China can’t do anything right. First it was doing too little to address COVID, then it was doing too much and needed to reopen, and now it’s wrong to open up as it is. But if you look at things objectively, and take off the Western-colored glasses, is all the criticism really warranted? While the rest of the world rushed to fully reopen, it took three years to study and trace the virus, build medical infrastructure, train workers, and wait until a much less deadly str...
Jan 19, 2023•1 hr 7 min
Why is the US willing to risk a nuclear apocalypse to weaken Russia and China? Our leaders say it’s about protecting the international rules based order from an authoritarian axis of evil. But this is just a guise. It’s actually about maintaining US unipolar hegemony over the world, which requires preventing or at the very least delaying the integration of Europe and Asia, an integration that is logical, both economically and geographically. To discuss this and more Rania Khalek was joined by Vi...
Jan 03, 2023•58 min
It’s springtime for fascists in Israel as the secular war criminals are being replaced by an alliance of the far-right, with religious extremists and organizers of racist mob violence. The head of America’s Union for Reform Judaism called the appointment of Itamar Ben Gvir as public security minister akin to “appointing David Duke, one of the heads of the KKK, as attorney general.” To discuss this and more, Rania Khalek was joined by Ali Abunimah, director of The Electronic Intifada and author o...
Dec 19, 2022•1 hr 19 min
The US-dominated unipolar world has rapidly eroded, and the recent victory of Lula in Brazil provided a new lift for those struggling against imperialism in the Global South. Are imperialist powers less able to impose themselves on the Global South with past tools of invasion, coups, assassinations? To discuss the past and present tools used by the United States against popular movements and revolutionary struggles seeking self determination, Rania Khalek was joined by Vincent Bevins, author of ...
Dec 16, 2022•53 min
BT’s Rania Khalek sat down with Palestinian icon and revolutionary Leila Khaled in Beirut, Lebanon to discuss her life and participation in the Palestinian struggle for liberation.
Dec 12, 2022•51 min
The US and Europe have tried to make Africa a battleground in their Cold War against Russia and China. They‘ve even labeled Africa as NATO’s “Southern Neighborhood” and are using AFRICOM as a mechanism to control the continent under the guise of protecting it from malign Chinese and Russian influence. What does this mean for sovereignty and independence across Africa and how are African countries pushing back? To help break it all down Rania Khalek was joined by Mikaela Nhondo Erskog, a research...
Nov 30, 2022•44 min
