Civilizations 16: Chartism, Reformism, Police Origins, Irish Famine

Why didn’t Britain have an 1848 Revolution?

We investigate Britain around 1848. Why was there no revolution? We look at the Chartist and Reform movements in Britain and in Canada, Robert Peel and the origins of modern policing, Australia and the early debates about how to create misery in prisons, the Irish famines and their repercussions.

AEP 66: Lopez Obrador takes on the Zapatistas

Lopez Obrador vs. the Zapatistas in Chiapas

In Chiapas, Mexico, the Indigenous Zapatista rebels have raised the alarm about an intensification of paramilitary attacks on their communities. Manuel Rozental and I are joined by author John Gibler to talk about Mexican politics and how it is that a Mexican government led by a leftist president continues the historical pattern of dirty war against the Indigenous movement.

Civilizations 15: 1830-2 French Revolution, Algeria Colonization, Muhammad Ali of Egypt, and Slave Revolts in the Americas

French Revolution of 1830, Algeria colonization, Muhammad Ali of Egypt, Denmark Vesey, Nat Turner, and Sam Sharpe’s rebellions.

Your Western Civilization course covers the French Revolution of 1830. But the Civilizations Series gives you that and Muhammad Ali of Egypt, France’s colonizing Algeria, and the slave rebellions of Denmark Vesey in South Carolina, Nat Turner in Virginia, and Sam Sharpe in Jamaica. 

AEP 65: Thinking about teaching, through martial arts, with Shawn Zirger

Teaching and martial arts, with Shawn Zirger

A different angle this episode: my guest is my martial arts instructor, Shawn Zirger, who teaches Bruce Lee’s Jeet Kune Do and other martial arts at the Zirger Academy. We talk about Bruce Lee’s approach to knowledge, how martial artists think about cultural appropriation, the problem of trying to “find geniuses” when teaching, our own martial arts journeys, and quite a bit more.

AEP 64: Rwanda threatens Congolese doctor

A sixteen minute solo episode about James Kabarebe, special presidential advisor in Rwanda, and his recent threatening comments towards Congolese doctor Denis Mukwege.

Read my profile of Mukwege from 2013

Why is Rwanda so afraid of Dr. Mukwege? france-rwanda August 14, 2020

A petition from Bukavu – end impunity in Congo August 2020

The UN Mapping Report on human rights violations in DR Congo 1993-2003

AEP 63: Coffee, Tourism, and Lithium imperialism in Latin America with Yanis Iqbal

Commodity imperialism in Latin America

Independent journalist Yanis Iqbal, based in India, has written a series of articles about commodities and imperialism in Latin America. He presents some of his findings on coffee in Colombia, tourism and the displacement of Indigenous people in Honduras, and lithium imperialism in Chile and Bolivia.

AEP 62: Kashmir and Xinjiang, with Carl Zha

Kashmir and Xinjiang

Another one in the Kung Fu Yoga series, with Carl Zha. 

This time we’re comparing the situations in Kashmir and Xinjiang, reporting what we’ve studied about state violence, censorship, economy, freedom of religion, popular agendas and state agendas of India and China in Kashmir and in Xinjiang.

AEP 61: Men’s self-help and propaganda from Jordan Peterson to Jocko Willink – with Amish Patel

Where do you get your rules for life?

Why do Indian boys love Jordan Peterson? If war is hell, as Jocko Willink says, why do they keep doing it? And is it unfair to consider Joe Rogan conservative?

To debate these questions, I’m joined by screenwriter and comedian Amish Patel, who analyzes fake gurus on the coffeezilla podcast. This episode is kind of a continuation of the episode 57 discussion with Dan about “super wealth through the right mindset”. 

AEP 60: Colombian ex-president Alvaro Uribe Velez under house arrest

Alvaro Uribe Velez under house arrest

With Manuel Rozental. On August 4 2020, the Supreme Court of Colombia ordered ex-president Alvaro Uribe Velez, now a senator, under house arrest pending an investigation that he suborned witnesses in a case about paramilitarism.

Mayor of Medellin in 1982, governor of Antioquia from 1995-1998, and president of Colombia from 2002-2010, Alvaro Uribe Velez has been implicated in the “para-politica” scandal in which politicians from his party signed pacts with paramilitary organizations to commit crimes in their jurisdictions; in the “false positives” scandal in which the Colombian military killed perhaps 10,000 completely innocent people and dressed their corpses up as rebel fighters to inflate death counts; the “wiretapping” scandal in which he used Colombia’s intelligence agency to spy on his political opponents; and now the accusation that he has suborned witnesses on these and other cases.

What is behind this turn against such an all-powerful and seemingly untouchable politician? And what will he do next? Submit quietly? Agitate for a constitutional change to the judiciary? How much fight does this 68-year old politician have in him yet? We tackle these questions after a highly compressed timeline of Uribe’s career as one of the principal architects of Colombia’s endless war.

AEP 59: The American Trap sprung on Tiktok and Huawei, with Carl Zha

The American Trap is sprung on Tiktok and Huawei

Back with Carl Zha of Silk & Steel podcast, who we last saw in our episode on the India-China border conflict. 

We’re thinking of calling this the Kung Fu Yoga series. In this one, Justin has just finished reading the terrifying book The American Trap by Frederic Pierucci (which Carl notes has 100,000 reviews for the Chinese edition so far). Pierucci was jailed for 30 months in the US in a 5-year long ordeal that ended in his company, the French multinational Alstom, selling off its entire nuclear division to General Electric. 

We talk about Pierucci’s case in detail and its relevance to the kidnapping of Meng Wanzhou of Huawei and Trump’s ban of Tiktok: the use of the US’s judicial apparatus to seize billions in assets from other countries, including allied countries, and including entire businesses. 

Carl thinks China’s only possible response is to build its own tech stack from the bottom up.