Category: Anti-Empire Project Podcast

The Anti-Empire Project podcast (formerly the Ossington Circle)

AEP 75: The Dec 6 Venezuelan Legislative Elections

Even with the sanctions and the US economic war, Venezuela at least now has a legislature that can legislate

Maria Victor and I talk about the December 6 legislative elections in Venezuela. Turnout was low at 31%, but that’s normal for legislative elections* in a pandemic (Romania had around the same turnout on the same day, as others have pointed out). We talk about the electoral system in Venezuela, why it’s more fair than you’ve been led to believe, the disgraceful role Canada continues to play in trying to foment a coup in Venezuela, and what the new legislature is likely to do.

*Correction: Maria refers to the previous legislative elections in Venezuela as having a turnout of 25% – the 2015 legislative elections actually had a turnout of 75%. The 2005 legislative elections, however, had a turnout of 25%.

AEP 74: The Fighting Intellectual, with Sayf Carman

The Fighting Intellectual, with Sayf Carman

Sayf Carman runs the Ummah Fight Camp martial arts youtube channel and has recently started Mindscrub, an intellectual channel.

Carman teaches martial arts in New Jersey. He has been in the Nation of Islam, the Communist Party, has studied Buddhism and Western Philosophy.

We talk about different approaches to thinking, teaching, and techniques and approaches in martial arts, and what it means to be an intellectual in the good and bad sense, using ideas from Noam Chomsky to Malcolm X to Amos Wilson.

Civilizations 23b: “This question is still to be settled”: John Brown and the Civil War pt2

John Brown and the US Civil War – pt2 of our series

John Brown routed 75 men with 14, defended Lawrence from raiders, wrote a manual for the Underground Railroad, and began the war that ended slavery.

Frederick Douglass, talking about Brown’s actions in Kansas, wrote that one could not read the history “without feeling that the man who in all this bewildering broil was least the puppet of circumstances – the man who most clearly saw the real crux of the conflict, most definitely knew his own convictions and was readiest at the crisis for decisive action, was a man whose leadership lay not in his office, wealth, or influence, but in the white flame of his utter devotion to an ideal.”

This episode of Civilizations is all about John Brown – relying on W.E.B. Du Bois’s 1909 biography. Du Bois’s maps of Harper’s Ferry and Brown’s strategy are on the Civilizations Resources page.

AEP 73: Pakistan’s Hybrid Civil-Military Regime, with Saadia Toor

A sweep of Pakistan’s history, including the Left this time

I’m joined by the Anti-Empire Project’s special correspondent for Pakistan, Saadia Toor, professor at CSI CUNY and author of the State of Islam: Culture and Cold War Politics in Pakistan. Saadia gives us a quick sweep of Pakistan’s history including the key role of the left in the many twists and turns. We get caught up all the way to Imran Khan’s hybrid civil-military regime and the inspiring youth-led Pashtun Tahafuz Movement (PTM).

Civilizations 23a – American Civil War Part 1: Abolition and distant causes

Abolition and the distant causes of the American Civil War

Civilizations begins our study (at least four parts) of the American Civil War. We start with the abolitionist movement in the decades before the war, and the conflict between the British Empire and the United States over abolition. This episode relies on (among other sources) Kellie Carter Jackson’s book Force and Freedom, and Gerald Horne’s book Negro Comrades of the Crown.

AEP 72: Artificial Whiteness with Yarden Katz

A discussion of the book Artificial Whiteness, by Yarden Katz

Step off of the Artificial Intelligence hype train with me and my guest Yarden Katz. Yarden is the author of Artificial Whiteness: Politics and Ideology in Artificial Intelligence. AI is a squishy concept, and under scrutiny it is full of imperialist and racial assumptions. We go over some of the many ideas in this idea-packed book, which I highly recommend.

AEP 71: The Colonial Determinist World View, with Sameer Dossani

Colonial Determinism

I’m joined by scholar and campaigner Sameer Dossani. A PhD student at the Institute for Economic Research on Innovation (IERI) in South Africa and an activist at PeaceVigil.net, Sameer wrote the paper “Ecological Catastrophe, Capitalist Excess or Ongoing Colonialism – How should we understand the crisis?” – which outlines what I call “colonial determinism“, a big-picture view that I hold. We discuss the paper and go freely off into tangents in what I hope will be one of several episodes with Sameer.