Kim Ives from Haiti Liberte joins me and Joe Emersberger to analyze Haiti two days after the assassination of President Jovenal Moise by Colombian and Haitian-American mercenaries. We talk about the new details that have emerged about their Nissan vehicles (from whose dealership?), the class antagonisms inside Haiti, and US interests in re-occupying the country. … Continue reading "AEP 89: Haiti Assassination Aftermath – Cherizier: Hero or Villain? With Kim Ives"...
Jul 11, 2021•58 min
On June 30, 2021, I was honored to be among the speakers on a panel for educators called “Say Palestine”. The entire panel, which was moderated by the wonderful Javier Davila (who I address directly at the beginning of the talk), is available on YouTube. I talk about the dilemmas faced by educators who want … Continue reading "AEP 88: My comments at the Teaching Palestine / Say Palestine event June 30, 2021"...
Jul 09, 2021•17 min
An emergency joint broadcast with The East is a Podcast about the assassination of Haiti’s president Jovenal Moise on July 7, 2021. Chris Bernadel is on the Haiti Committee of the Black Alliance for Peace. We talk a little bit about the assassination and the background of protests and massacres in Haiti that have gone … Continue reading "AEP 87: Haiti’s president Jovenal Moise assassinated, with Chris Bernadel"...
Jul 08, 2021•26 min
A complex multinational megaproject with layers of government corruption and massive government funds. A separatist movement created and sponsored by the US. A chunk of territory carved out of an existing country for imperialist use. Workers exploited to death. And a shining imperialist possession at the end. We talk about the creation of Panama and … Continue reading "Civilizations 37e: Yankee Imperialism pt5 – the theft of Panama out of Colombia"...
Jul 03, 2021•23 min
Through their own efforts, Puerto Rican revolutionaries won a charter of autonomy from Spain and were on their way to winning independence. Then Spain handed its colony over to the US, and the US has colonized it ever since. We talk about how the US invented the concept of “odious debt” to avoid paying Spain’s … Continue reading "Civilizations 37d: Yankee Imperialism pt4 – Puerto Rico’s thwarted autonomy"...
Jul 03, 2021•29 min
We tell the story of Cuba’s movement for independence from Spain following the remarkable career of Jose Marti from his teenage years to his unlucky demise. We pick up the story of the Spanish American War in Cuba from the USS Maine incident (“To Hell With Spain! Remember the Maine!”) and the possibility that it … Continue reading "Civilizations 37c – Yankee Imperialism pt3 – Cuban Independence vs the US Empire"...
Jul 03, 2021•1 hr 37 min
A Canada Day reckoning as Indian Residential School properties become crime scenes with the (re)-discovery of mass graves of Indigenous children. We are joined by author of Canada in the World, TYLER SHIPLEY to discuss Canada’s first foreign policy – its genocide of the Indigenous nations in the path of capitalist settlement. This broadcast is a co-production … Continue reading "Special Broadcast: Canada in the World with Tyler Shipley and The Brief"...
Jun 29, 2021•1 hr
Max Ajl has a new book, A People’s Green New Deal; Stan Cox, author of The Green New Deal and Beyond and the upcoming book The Path, joins me as a co-host as we talk about Green New Deals and imagine dealing with Climate Change as if the rest of the world existed (and mattered).
Jun 28, 2021•1 hr 28 min
Starting in earnest in the early 1880s the US embarked on a prototypical regime change operation: propaganda demonizing the targeted regime, financial control of the targeted state, suborning of key government officials, deactivation and destruction of the sovereign military force from within, a coup, followed by an invasion disavowing any US ambition or interest, and … Continue reading "Civilizations 37b – Yankee Imperialism pt2 – Regime Change 1893: The US overthrow of Queen Liliuokalani in Ha...
Jun 25, 2021•1 hr 13 min
At the end of the 19th century the US acquired a substantial overseas empire – Hawaii, Samoa, Guam, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Cuba, as well as imperialist relations all around the world. In this miniseries we look at this Yankee Imperialism, focusing on the Spanish-American War. But first, the post-Reconstruction domestic situation in the US … Continue reading "Civilizations 37a: Yankee Imperialism pt1 – the Robber Barons"...
Jun 12, 2021•1 hr 10 min
A strategically bankrupt expedition by a vindictive, racist, imperialist power to conduct a series of genocidal atrocities on a Muslim population solely because they dared to fight back. And no, we aren’t talking about last week – we conclude the Islam & Imperialism segment of Civilizations with the Anglo-Afghan wars starting with the Army of … Continue reading "Civilizations 36b: Islam & Imperialism 3b – the rest of the Anglo-Afghan Wars"...
Jun 05, 2021•1 hr 4 min
In early May 2021, I had the honor of being on a panel on the Rise of the Right with Prof. Apoorvanand of Delhi University (and some other great speakers as well). I asked Apoorvanand to have a follow-up discussion with me here to analyze how the far-right ecosystem of organizations and institutions infiltrated Indian … Continue reading "AEP 85: The Rise of the Right in India and Elsewhere, with Prof. Apoorvanand"...
May 28, 2021•1 hr 4 min
We reconvene the roundtable to discuss the ceasefire in Gaza. Nora Barrows-Friedman is an editor at the Electronic Intifada, Jon Elmer is a journalist who lived for years in Gaza, Justin Podur is the author of Siegebreakers, and Tarek Loubani is an emergency room doctor, often at Shifa, Gaza’s main hospital. This broadcast is a … Continue reading "Special Broadcast: Ceasefire in Gaza"
May 27, 2021•51 min
In the wake of Israel’s 2021 massacres in Gaza and violence elsewhere in Palestine, and a few days into the ceasefire, Carl Zha and I talk about the histories of India and China with Israel and Palestine. We speculate about what the future of a multipolar world with a stronger China might portend for the … Continue reading "AEP 84: Kung Fu Yoga – China, India, and Israel/Palestine with Carl Zha"...
May 25, 2021•50 min
Concluding the miniseries by Dan Freeman-Maloy. Gandhi’s slogan was “Do or Die”, following Byron’s poem about the (pointless) Charge of the Light Brigade during the Crimean War. He emphasized that he would prefer violent resistance to cowardice or surrender. So, the question arises: would Gandhi have supported armed resistance in Palestine?
May 22, 2021•17 min
The focus on Hamas is a product of the rolling amnesia of empire, as if the history of Israeli attacks on Palestinians can be narrowed to the last few decades, then distorted further. Against this tendency, this episode reviews the basic historical and geographic background to this crisis, showing the place of Palestine and the … Continue reading "Monsters in our Midst 3: What is the Gaza Strip? Why Support the Resistance?"...
May 21, 2021•21 min
Episode 2 of a mini-series on Israel/Palestine by Dan Freeman-Maloy. Sometimes the connections are obvious. The American-Israeli Meir Kahane, for example, worked as a white-backlash activist in the United States, targeting Black-led social movements, before moving to Palestine and coaching settlers to kill Palestinians, with what Jewish organizations across the world then denounced as racist … Continue reading "Monsters in our Midst 2: Anti-Black and Anti-Palestinian Racism are Connected"...
May 20, 2021•33 min
Episode 1 of a new mini-series by Dan Freeman-Maloy. Since the Israeli elections of March 2021, a political philosophy, Kahanism, that was once banned even by Israeli law is openly proclaimed in the Israeli legislature. To the quieter brutality of Israeli colonial rule have been added firebombing Israeli hate crimes against Palestinians – horribly reminiscent … Continue reading "Monsters in our Midst: Israel’s Descent into Fascism 1"...
May 19, 2021•29 min
Recorded on Day 7 of the war in Palestine, this roundtable brings together decades of experience working in Palestine. Nora Barrows-Friedman is an editor at the Electronic Intifada, Jon Elmer is a journalist who lived for years in Gaza, Justin Podur is the author of Siegebreakers, and Tarek Loubani is an emergency room doctor, often … Continue reading "Special Broadcast: War in Palestine 2021"
May 18, 2021•1 hr
The British imperialists made much of the bad experiences they had invading and pillaging Afghanistan beginning in 1839, coining terms like the “Graveyard of Empires” and inspiring racist poets like Kipling. We tell the story straight – a bloody imperialist aggression designed to set back Afghan society. Still, the story has some unforgettable characters – … Continue reading "Civilizations 36a: Islam & Imperialism pt3 – The First Anglo Afghan War aka the Invasion of Afghanistan"...
May 15, 2021•2 hr 40 min
An urgent update on the massive protests in Colombia andAn urgent update on the massive protests in Colombia and the criminal response by the regime, which has massacred dozens of protesters and disappeared hundreds of people. Nonetheless, protesters have returned to the streets day after day in spite of every attempt to terrorize them into … Continue reading "AEP 83: Update on #ColombiaResiste with Manuel Rozental"...
May 08, 2021•35 min
A briefing about India’s COVID-19 crisis – its immediate causes in the premature declaration of victory, and its longer-term causes in the privatized and underfunded health system and the global system of vaccination production and distribution for private profit.
May 06, 2021•19 min
Part 2 of our series on Islam and Imperialism in the 19th century: the Persian Empire’s struggles with the imperialists. In this period Persia was dominated by the Qajjars. We talk about their rise, the multiple wars with Russia, the attempts to modernize, the unequal treaties. We tell the story of Griboyedev’s demise from both … Continue reading "Civilizations 35: Islam and Imperialism pt2 – Persia’s wars with Russia"...
May 01, 2021•1 hr 13 min
A podcast event! I teamed up with a co-host, Sina Rahmani of The East is a Podcast, to interview Manan Ahmed, author of The Loss of Hindustan – The Invention of India. The interview is about history, identity, imperialism – the usual! – but all centered on the concept of Hindustan and the way history … Continue reading "AEP 81: The Loss of Hindustan – with Manan Ahmed and Sina Rahmani"
Apr 29, 2021•52 min
For however long the construct of “Modern Western Civilization” has existed, its Eastern foil has been the Ottoman Empire. And for as long as we’ve been taught the glories of the West, we’ve been taught about Ottoman “decline”. We talk about the Ottoman Empire, show that the history is a little bit more complicated than … Continue reading "Civilizations 34: Islam & Imperialism pt1 – The Ottoman Empire and “decline”"...
Apr 24, 2021•1 hr 23 min
Justin reads the Afrocentrists and makes a pitch; David hangs on to the universalist perspective, as we talk about all the racist rewriting of history, the famous racist literature of imperialism, and the stunningly racist statements by public figures of the 19th century, from Kipling to Roosevelt and more.
Apr 17, 2021•59 min
I was a guest on the fantastic podcast, In the Context of Empire, where I spoke with co-host Matt McKenna about lots of things, but mainly about how imperialist propaganda works.
Apr 12, 2021•1 hr 30 min
The old saying goes that Science ain’t an exact science, and nowhere is that more true than with the Scientific Racism of the 19th century. From its predecessors in the 18th century, we get into the unholy trinity of Pearson, Galton, and Fisher. We talk about craniometry, phrenology, IQ testing, “race development” (now called International … Continue reading "Civilizations 33b: Scientific Racism"
Apr 10, 2021•1 hr 20 min
Charles Darwin’s book On the Origin of Species was read by Lord Elgin before he burned down the palace in Beijing and by Marx, who was so excited he asked Darwin if he could dedicate a volume of Capital to him (Darwin politely declined, not wanting to offend religious sentiment). We talk Darwin and the … Continue reading "Civilizations 33a: Darwin and 19th century scientific advances"
Apr 06, 2021•1 hr 31 min
Racism, imperialism, repression of sexuality, hypocrisy, pugilism, world fairs, parades, animals on display, worship of a royal family… we look at the Victorian era and the Queen herself. Good thing we’ve come so far since those days… right?
Mar 27, 2021•1 hr 43 min
