I’m joined by Dock Currie with another episode on the gift that keeps on giving, the CSIS-leaking China panic in Canadian politics. We talk about the recent walk-back from the most ridiculous allegations against Han Dong, the pivot to more aggressive demonization of China in Canadian culture starting in 2018, the Meng Wanzhou case and … Continue reading "AER 123: The fruit of 5 years of demonizing China in Canada"...
Mar 26, 2023•1 hr 12 min
Waqas is back to keep us up to date on the Imran Khan file. The entire Pakistan establishment is united in trying to keep Imran Khan from returning to power in an election through court cases, violent repression, and electoral delay; but the people’s protests don’t seem to stop. Pakistan and Imran Khan at an … Continue reading "AER 122: Attempts to arrest Imran Khan and the Lahore High Court rallies"...
Mar 17, 2023•33 min
Sina’s back to talk to me about my latest Substack article, “Multiculturalism is over in Canada. It’s back to Sinophobia.” It’s about the scandal unfolding in the Canadian media since Fife & Chase broke their anonymous CSIS-leak-sourced story about Chinese interference in Canadian elections in February. I’m worried about racist incitement and scandal-mongering. Sina thinks … Continue reading "AER 121: Multiculturalism is over in Canada"...
Mar 16, 2023•44 min
First we announce Civ Books, where you can buy some of the best Civilizations Podcast transcripts in hard copy. Then, we reveal two of the most long-standing geopolitical disagreements that Dave and Justin have hitherto unresolved: one on the rights and wrongs of the Yugoslav war of 1999, and the other on the status of … Continue reading "World War Civ 13: The Bosnian Crisis 1908"
Mar 07, 2023•2 hr 1 min
Scott Ritter is back after a year as we build a chronology of events of the Russia-Ukraine war so far. What were Russia’s goals? Did they succeed or fail? What were NATO’s goals? Why did Russia’s initial offensive not bring a negotiation? Why did sanctions on Russia fail? How can we determine who is winning … Continue reading "AER 120: Russia Ukraine Year 1: Who is winning? Who is lying? With Scott Ritter"...
Mar 03, 2023•1 hr 59 min
Talking to Amaresh Mishra, author of the giant book India 1857: War of Civilisations about the immense scale of the Indian revolution against British imperialism that year: the scale of Hindu-Muslim unity, the class aspect of the revoution, the scale of the genocidal British massacres that followed (Mishra’s estimate is that the British killed 10 … Continue reading "AER 119: That time when Britain killed 10 million Indian people, with Amaresh Mishra"...
Feb 28, 2023•1 hr 10 min
I joined Nora and Jon from The Brief to talk about the new Resistance in the West Bank and Israel’s ongoing spiral out of control.
Feb 27, 2023
The Young Ottomans and then the Young Turks make a constitutional revolution in Turkey in 1908. We talk about them, the ideas (science, constitutionalism) that motivated them as well as the ideas that didn’t (socialism, equality). And of course how what’s happening in the Ottoman empire is an antecedent for WWI.
Feb 19, 2023•1 hr 22 min
We are back on the environment file with Stan Cox, to discuss his latest two dispatches. January’s on who is attacking the US electrical grid? February’s on the curious defense of gas stoves from the fearful lobby, Big Indoor Air Quality. Justin starts us off with some discussion on the growing body of evidence of … Continue reading "In Real Time 9: Attacks on the US electrical grid, defenses of US gas stoves"...
Feb 17, 2023•40 min
France’s incremental takeover of Morocco based on their colonization of Algeria; Germany declares that it will protect Morocco’s sovereignty, which it doesn’t actually do. See how Morocco’s colonization became another cause of World War 1. Also listen to Dave’s mic improve in the last half hour!
Feb 06, 2023•1 hr 56 min
The Austro-Hungarian Empire lasted hundreds of years but could not survive WWI. We look at its makeup, its economy, its socialist movement, at Franz Josef and the glamorous empress Sissi, and wonder whether the end of Austria-Hungary was inevitable.
Jan 28, 2023•1 hr 1 min
It’s just me on this emergency broadcast in the spirit of “do a coup, get a pod”. Angry opponents of the Lula’s newly elected government in Brazil (with some security forces help) stormed government buildings on January 8 claiming fraud. Lula’s government survived and is now taking measures against future coups. These are being called … Continue reading "AER 118: Emergency broadcast on the Attempted Coup in Brazil!"...
Jan 16, 2023•27 min
Of all the mysteries of the World Wars, Germany’s is perhaps the most mysterious. We discuss this country with the fastest growing industrial power, the largest and most powerful socialist movement, and (perhaps) the most arrogant imperialist at the helm. We conclude with some notes on some interesting (but not especially well liked by us) … Continue reading "WWCiv 9: Imperial Resentment, Industrial Power, Inevitable Socialism: Germany before WW1"...
Jan 07, 2023•2 hr 39 min
The 1905 Russian Revolution was, though no one knew it at the time, the rehearsal for the 1917 Russian Revolution. Dave takes us from Bloody Sunday to the calculations and miscalculations of the Tsar; Justin uses everyone from Lars Lih to Isaac Deutscher to Simon Sebag Montefiore to draw some pictures of what Lenin, Trotsky, … Continue reading "World War Civ 8: The 1905 Russian Revolution"
Dec 27, 2022•1 hr 45 min
The earth-shaking event where an Asian power defeated a European power in a war, leading to a revolution in Russia and a major shakeup in world affairs. We talk about the role education played in Japan’s victory; the Russian fleet that had to sail around the world; and the qualities of Tsar Nicholas that made … Continue reading "World War Civ 7: The Russo-Japanese War 1905"
Dec 16, 2022•1 hr 5 min
Peru’s president Pedro Castillo has been overthrown in a coup and is in Peruvian jail while the former Vice President Dina Boluarte has taken over, vowing NOT to hold an election any time soon. People have taken to the streets in Lima to protest and demand new elections and a constitutional referendum. Meanwhile in Argentina, … Continue reading "AER 117: Peru’s President Pedro Castillo overthrown in a coup"...
Dec 10, 2022•24 min
First one of a mini-series about the 1905 Russian Revolution, we talk about the economic, political, and social conditions of Russia on the eve of the Russo-Japanese War. Foreign investment, infrastructural deficits, the question of nationalities. We also talk about the disastrous summer of 1874 when the revolutionaries went down to the countryside, debates about … Continue reading "World War Civ 6: Russia in 1900"
Dec 03, 2022•1 hr 2 min
Stan Cox is back with his November dispatch about the US midterm elections, in which the feared Red Wave didn’t materialize — but Stan wastes no time in warning us that 2024 is also going to be scary. We geek out on the election results, look at a shocking admission by a conservative that big … Continue reading "In Real Time with Stan Cox 8: No Red Wave, Plenty of Red Flags"
Nov 27, 2022•40 min
There is no better entree into pre-WWI France than the sordid Dreyfus Affair. The whole story in all its gory detail including its implications for the France-Russia alliance and the echoes of 1871 casting a cloud over 1895 France. Anti-semitism, frame ups, spies, corruption, incompetence, trials, retrials, people of conscience, and echoes a century later.
Nov 17, 2022•2 hr 1 min
Waqas is back to talk about the Nov 3 attempt on Imran Khan’s life; the assassination in Kenya of journalist Arshad Sharif; Similarities and differences between the assassination of Benazir Bhutto and the attempt on Imran Khan; the possibility that the Pakistani military might find a way out of this (by having Bajwa step down … Continue reading "Anti-Empire Radio episode 116: The Assassination Attempt on Imran Khan"...
Nov 11, 2022•49 min
On October 30, Lula was elected to the presidency after surviving a political persecution that threw him behind bars and kept him from running in 2018, paving the way for Bolsonaro’s disastrous term. Brazilian scholar-activist Diana Aguiar is back to answer questions like: is Lula’s government coup-proof? What will he be able to do in … Continue reading "AER 115: Lula’s back! Will there be another coup?"
Nov 03, 2022•47 min
Reading Corelli Barnett, David Cannadine, and others, our stop today on the pre-WWI Europe tour is Britain, which has reached the very heights of world domination only to discover that they are being out-innovated and out-educated by rising imperial rivals. While social imperialists begged for consolidation of the white Anglosphere, a strategy given the old … Continue reading "WWC 4 – Causes of WWI – Britain’s slow and gentle decline"...
Oct 29, 2022•1 hr 30 min
In this long episode we ask the question: what in the intellectualism of the early 20th century may have contributed to the climate that led to WW1? After reading Losurdo’s long book about Nietzsche, Justin does a deep dive into Nietzschean thinking about Great Men and genius and mediocrity; Dave covers militarism and nationalism; Justin … Continue reading "WWC 3 – Causes of WW1 pt 3 – Life & Ideas"
Oct 22, 2022•2 hr 32 min
Stan Cox is back for In Real Time episode 7, where we track the climate crisis and do other environmental talk. Stan reports back from some interviews he did with activists who are working locally on the climate crisis as we head towards two touchstones in November – the COP 27 conference in Egypt, from … Continue reading "In Real Time with Stan Cox 7: A Thousand Rebellious Communities"
Oct 19, 2022•39 min
How do you turn a local conflict into a world war? Create an intricate set of alliances that guarantees it! Dave takes us on a tour of the construction of the alliance system from the Emperors’ Leagues to the Congress of Berlin to the Triple Alliance to the Reinsurance Treaty and more. How British and … Continue reading "WWC 2 – Causes of World War 1 pt2 – The Alliance System"
Sep 26, 2022•1 hr 16 min
CO2 pipelines are proof of the principle that “the greatest source of problems is solutions”. Stan Cox is back to shoot down the notion that CO2 pipelines are going to save us. Justin, meanwhile, has finally read Rachel Carson’s 1962 classic Silent Spring, which as an environmental prof he should have read decades ago. Find … Continue reading "In Real Time with Stan Cox 6: Challenging CO2 Pipelines"...
Sep 21, 2022•35 min
The Scramble for Africa is over. Greedy European powers can now only expand at one another’s expense. Du Bois and Lenin both thought this made a big European war inevitable. But others at the time thought it impossible. After two years we are ready to begin the 20th century with something your history classes never … Continue reading "World War Civ 1: The Intro"
Sep 09, 2022•1 hr 3 min
Democracy means “the people rule”. But do the people rule in the “democratic” systems that form governments all over the world? Are these democratic governments less repressive or authoritarian than those without the democratic certification? And does the democratic system of frequent multiparty elections deliver the developmental goods? Talking to Vik Sohonie, former journalist who … Continue reading "AER 114: Why Democracy (TM) Fails the Global South"...
Sep 05, 2022•1 hr 36 min
An update on the unfolding post-coup in Pakistan. Talking to Waqas Ahmad again about the threat to arrest Imran Khan, the remarkable result of the election in Punjab where PTI won 15/20 seats, the arrest and torture of Shehbaz Gill and many others, the articles in the NYT and Time Magazine about how the coup … Continue reading "AER 113: Pakistan government threatens to arrest Imran Khan"
Aug 26, 2022•40 min
At the peak of global colonialism no island however small was exempted from European greed. We conclude our Scramble for Oceania series with the scrambles for the many islands in the Pacific. Many of these are still colonies today, given names like “special overseas territory” to hide the fact. ALSO: I’m trying to do loudness … Continue reading "Scramble for Oceania 3: Polynesia, Melanesia, Micronesia"...
Aug 16, 2022•1 hr 54 min
