Rania Khalek Dispatches

Lebanon can’t catch a break.  Amidst the worst economic collapse in the modern era, the Saudis and their regional allies are punishing the tiny country over comments criticizing the war on Yemen. To make matters worse, October saw clashes in Beirut on a front line that dates back to the civil war of the 1980s, with a Saudi and U.S.-backed Christian militia opening fire on Shia protesters affiliated with Hezbollah. Why is all this happening now? Does it have anything to do with the Lebanese civil war? What was that war even about? Was it really just a sectarian bloodbath or an international attack on the Arab left? And how does it relate to the economic collapse and ongoing foreign meddling wreaking havoc on Lebanon today? Here to put it all in its historical context is As’ad AbuKhalil, a professor of political science at California State University Stanislaus.

As tensions heat up over Taiwan, everything the U.S. does is depicted as defensive while everything China does is framed as menacing, aggressive and authoritarian. But the island’s history has been totally left out of the coverage.How did Taiwan come to be? Is it part of China? How has the U.S. used Taiwan as a weapon against China both historically and today? Is there a similar situation with Tibet? With Xinjiang? With Hong Kong? Is this really about supporting self-determination and independence or part of a strategy by the U.S. to break up and weaken its greatest adversary?To discuss this, Rania Khalek was joined by Ken Hammond, Professor of East Asian and Global History at New Mexico State University and an activist with the organization Pivot to Peace. 

Is there a growing resistance to the unipolar imperial order? Is the US an empire in decline? Will the future be a multipolar one? If so, what does that mean ans how should the left in the imperialist core respond? To discuss this and more, Rania Khalek was joined by Vijay Prashad, Executive Director of the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research and author of “Washington Bullets: A History of the CIA, Coups, and Assassinations.”

Venezuela’s special diplomatic envoy, Alex Saab, was extradited to the U.S. on Oct. 16 after 491 days of detention and imprisonment in Cape Verde. His alleged crime? Helping the Venezuelan government evade crippling US sanctions to procure fuel, medicine and food. His detention sets a dangerous precedent in violation of all diplomatic protocol and kicks off a new, disturbing phase of the US hybrid war on Venezuela.

The U.S. and EU have accused Ethiopia of every atrocity imaginable and now they’re preparing sanctions. The Ethiopian government insists that it’s legitimately fighting a separatist group, the formerly ruling TPLF, which is attempting to regain power through violence and terrorism.Who’s telling the truth? What explains the one-sided media coverage? How do Eritrea and Sudan fit into it all? What’s driving Washington’s destabilizing policies in the Horn of Africa, which have alienated a longtime U.S. ally?To help cut through the fog of war, Rania Khalek was joined by Eugene Puryear, a journalist for Breakthrough News and host of The Punch Out podcast. 

In the American mind, Russia is associated with the Soviet Union — the red menace — and long standing Russophobia clearly echoes in the coverage of Putin today. The Communist Party of the Russian Federation (KPRF) officially received 19 percent of the vote, but the KPRF claims their vote totals were suppressed. What explains the recent election results, does Putin remain popular, and how does American interference influence Russian politics? Rania Khalek was joined by Russian leftist, journalist and activist Alexey Sakhnin, whose work has appeared at Jacobin and New Left Review.

It’s been 20 years since the US invaded Afghanistan. As the US finally withdrew, Taliban control over Afghanistan has been portrayed as inevitable. But what happened to the other political forces in the country?The war on Afghanistan didn’t really start in 2001. US meddling goes back to the 1970s and British meddling even further. Most people don’t know that there have been liberal, secular nationalist, and communist Afghan forces who tried to transform their country but were prevented from doing so by Western imperial powers who supported religious and tribal conservatives to maintain control.To make sense of it all and to uncover some of this buried history, Rania Khalek was joined by Vijay Prashad, Executive Director of the Tricontinental Institute for Social Research and author of the book "Washington Bullets: A History of the CIA, Coups, and Assassinations.” 

Western governments along with their loyal media and think tanks warn that China is colonizing, exploiting, and forcing Africa into a debt trap. Is this true? Or is it Cold War propaganda? What is China’s actual role in Africa and how does it compare with the West’s? To help us understand what's really happening, Rania Khalek was joined by two leading African leftists: Mikaela Nhondo Erskog, an educator and researcher with Pan Africanism Today, a researcher at the Tricontinental Institute, and a member of the organizing committee of No Cold War. And Kambale Musavuli, an activist, writer, and analyst with the Center for Research on the Congo.  Read the report Erskog worked on, “Defending Our Sovereignty: US Military Bases in Africa and the Future of African Unity”, here: https://thetricontinental.org/dossier-42-militarisation-africa/ 

Anti-scientific conspiracy theories are spreading, not just among the right, but even among some segments of the left. To address this issue from a Marxist perspective, Rania Khalek spoke with Rob Wallace, an evolutionary epidemiologist at the Agroecology and Rural Economics Research Corps in St. Paul and author of “Dead Epidemiologists: On the Origins of COVID-19.”

The Saudis, backed by the Americans, have been waging a war against Yemen since 2015, causing massive civilian casualties as well as famine and a cholera epidemic. How did Yemen get here? Yemen’s modern history is fascinating and overlooked, and few are aware of the Marxist republic that existed in South Yemen from 1967 to 1990. To help place recent events in their historical context, Rania Khalek was joined by Helen Lackner, a research associate at SOAS, visiting fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations and the author of several books, including, “Yemen in Crisis: The Road to War.” And she has a forthcoming book “Yemen: Poverty & Conflict” (Routledge).