Greetings Guerrilla History listeners!
Another great week at Guerrilla History, with several future episodes being recorded, and a big new episode just having been dropped. Our latest has been getting an excellent response already, and it’s no wonder why! The episode is The Fragility of US Power with Noam Chomsky and Vijay Prashad. Two excellent guests, and a great discussion! The book we based the conversation around, The Withdrawal: Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, and the Fragility of US Power, is due to come out on August 30, and we highly recommend checking it out once it is available. A concise and interesting survey of recent US interventions abroad, as well as discussion of the downward spiral of US hegemony. Essentially an edited transcript of conversations between Noam and Vijay, it is a book that will be fun and useful for everyone.
As for what the hosts have been working on individually, we have some more interesting content for you! Henry and his wife Safie released a new episode of What the Huck?! at the end of last week, with guest Dr. Harriet Fraad from Democracy at Work to talk about the American Culture of Mass Murder. It is available as both a podcast and a YouTube video. Breht, meanwhile, has put out several things this week. On Revolutionary Left Radio, the first episode this week was Feminist Analysis: The Sexual and Gender Politics of Fascism with special guest Tai Lee, while the second was Taiwan: Pelosi's Visit, Xi's Response, and US Brinkmanship with our friend (and former Guerrilla History guest) Danny Haiphong. We highly recommend checking these other episodes out after (or before, why not?) listening to our Chomsky/Prashad episode.
The Reading List
Moving onwards to this week’s reading/listening list! To find the article/episode, just click on the name and the link will take you to it! If you want to go back to the episode(s) of Guerrilla History that the guests have appeared on, simply click on their name and you will be directed straight to the episode
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Guerrilla History:
In addition to our new episode, we also want to recommend everyone check out The Cadre Journal, a student-run anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist media project. We just recorded an upcoming episode with them, and it was loads of fun, but they have some outstanding content in their own right. Their podcast has many great episodes already, with many of them highlighting anti-imperialist voices from the Global South, as well as tremendous episodes discussing facets of Dependency Theory and World Systems Theory. Stay tuned for that episode, which should be coming out in a few weeks, and in the meantime, check out their own work!
Adnan Husain:
Robin D. G. Kelley on Letters and Politics w/ Mitch Jeserich discusses the 20th anniversary edition of his outstanding 2002 book Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination
Ali Abunimah of Electronic Intifada has two things that everyone should check out this week. The first is Palestinians Have Tried Surrender and Collaboration - Only Resistance is Left, an interview on Breakthrough News w/Eugene Puryear and Rania Khalek. The second is an article on Electric Intifada titled Palestinians Have Had Enough of Europe’s Holocaust Hypocrisy . We will certainly be trying to bring Ali onto the show in the near future!
Breht O’Shea:
Our friends and comrades at the Millennials Are Killing Capitalism Podcast released an excellent episode featuring Ruth Wilson Gilmore on Abolition Geography, with discussion of consciousness, conjunctural analysis, the horizon of abolition, various modes of organizing against premature death, and forms of struggle in which we may see hope. Be sure to listen and support them!
The special guest from the recent episode of RevLeft on Feminist Analysis, Tai Lee (alongside several comrades) have recently started the Private Life podcast, which explores political philosophy, feminist consciousness raising, the history of feminist thought and Marxism. Another great resource!
Henry Hakamaki:
Our friend (and upcoming guest) Max Ajl wrote a fascinating essay for the Review of African Political Economy (ROAPE) titled The Hidden Legacy of Samir Amin: Delinking's Ecological Foundation. The essay acts as a summary of Amin’s criticism of Bandung-era postcolonial states - here’s a bit from the abstract will give you a good idea of what to expect: “This paper considers the relationship between Samir Amin’s programme for delinking, smallholder agriculture, his theories of ecology, and the current of ecological dependency that developed out of North African dependency analysis”. Max is one of our sharpest thinkers today, and we’re really looking forward to bringing him on the show soon!
In continuing to go through old documents related to Crimea, here we see a law (in Ukrainian) passed by the Verkhovna Rada (parliament) of Ukraine and signed by the then-President Leonid Kuchma on 17 March 1995 that abolished the Constitution of Crimea, removed the President of Crimea (Yuri Meshkov) from office, and abolished the office of the President of Crimea altogether. Not only did officials from Kiev unilaterally abolish the existing Constitution of Crimea and remove the President of Crimea from office, the Ukrainian National Guard even occupied Meshkov’s office and forced him onto a plane to Moscow. Governance of Crimea was then directed straight from Kiev for decades after.
Richard Wolff:
Professor Wolff recently appeared on The Socialist Program and took part in the episode Evictions, rising rents and unaffordable homes: Capitalist housing market a total failure. In this episode, Walter Smolarek and Prof. Richard Wolff discuss the housing market as the Federal Reserve-induced economic downturn takes shape. The situation is rapidly deteriorating for both renters and prospective home buyers, with evictions on the rise, prices rising and interest rates spiraling out of control.
Amanda Yee of Radio Free Amanda:
Radio Free Amanda ep. 43 - Yemen Under Assault w/ Shireen Al-Adeimi - “According to the UN, Yemen is currently the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, killing 377,000 people so far and leaving over 23 million in need of aid. Despite the tragedy unfolding, the war on Yemen has received little media attention. For this episode, Shireen Al-Adeimi drops by to provide some much-needed historical context to the war: from colonialism, to North-South Yemen unification and secession, to the 2011 protests against Saleh’s corruption, up to the 2015 Saudi-led intervention. We also talk about the critical role that the US plays in supporting this war, from arms sales to training Saudi personnel. And we end on a discussion of the ceasefire extension and prospects for a negotiated peace process.”
The Cadre Journal (episode forthcoming):
“In an article, Reading Walter Rodney in Occupied Azania , for the Review of African Political Economy (ROAPE), we reflect on a recent symposium in South Africa/Occupied Azania commemorating 50 years of "How Europe Underdeveloped Africa" by legendary Pan-African Marxist Walter Rodney.”
“In an article, A Prologue to the Swazi Revolution, One Year in the Making, for Monthly Review Online, we reflect on lessons from one year of struggle in Swaziland against a neo-colonial, Western backed absolute monarchy.”
“We conduct an interview on Arghiri Emmanuel's seminal work of political economy, "Unequal Exchange and the Imperialism of Trade”, which can be watched on YouTube at Unequal Exchange and the Political Economy of Arghiri Emmanuel.”
Many thanks to our hosts and guests once again, as they provide the materials for this free resource for political education simply for your benefit. If you do find this resource useful, please consider sharing it with friends, family, comrades, and/or on social media. You can help support the show at Patreon, but the most important thing is that we help educate as many people as we can. Use the button below to get this newsletter into your inbox, and until next time, solidarity.