The US blockade of Cuba leaves no part of Cuban society untouched. It intentionally causes shortages of food, medicine, and fuels and seeks to fracture society and undermine the progress of Cuba’s socialist revolution. Breakthrough’s Rania Khalek went to Havana to investigate.
Producer/Reporter – Rania Khalek
Cinematographer – William Whiteman
Editor – Matt Belen
The war in Ukraine has led to a closing of the ranks in the West, with media and politicians in lockstep united against Russia, and some self-described leftists have joined in. As with many recent conflicts the left has been riven by divisions over what is the correct position to take, with “Putinism” replacing “Assadism” as the new term used to excommunicate opponents of NATO and American intervention.
To understand the history of the Western left and how wars over the last century have caused divisions, Rania Khalek was joined by Ben Norton, an investigative journalist based in Latin America, and editor of the independent news website Multipolarista.
Follow Multipolarista here: https://multipolarista.com/
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For those who just discovered Ukraine two months ago, the fact that Ukrainian nationalism has been dangerously intertwined with fascism might sound like Russian propaganda. But is it? How powerful is the Ukrainian far right? Are they really linked to Nazis? Why is the corporate-owned media denying this?
To place this war and the Ukrainian far right in its historical context, Rania Khalek was joined by Tarik Cyril Amar, a historian from Germany, who is currently associate professor of history at Koc University in Istanbul, working on Russian, Ukrainian, and generally East European history.
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The war in Ukraine is turning geopolitics upside down, in a global order that already seemed brittle. We have an oil shock, a financial shock, a cold war, a hot war, an ongoing global pandemic all at the same time. Now global supply chains, upon which modern human life depends, have been severed. Supplies of food and fertilizer are threatened for those most dependent on it at a time when global warming curtails our agriculture. This makes urgent once again the so-called “agrarian question,” looking at the world through the perspective of what goes on in the countryside. All this brings into sharper focus the role of global capitalism in causing the conditions of peasants and workers to further deteriorate.
To place the current crisis in its context and bring it back to the essential questions facing the majority of humanity, Rania Khalek was joined by Paris Yeros, professor of international economics at the Federal University of ABC in São Paulo, Brazil, who recently wrote a paper calling for a “New Bandung,” referencing the famous 1955 convening of the Afro-Asian Conference.
Mainstream media are whipping up a frenzy against leftists who oppose US imperialism and NATO, smearing them as “Russian agents” for trying to analyze this conflict and its causes with nuance rather than emotion or jingoism. With Western media exclusively focused on Ukraine, simply reminding people that Afghanistan is being starved due to U.S. policies, that Yemen is still being bombed and besiged, and that Syria, Cuba, Iran and Venezuela are still being sanctioned leads to accusations of “whataboutism.” And daring to point out the NATO and US role in setting the stage for Russia’s intervention in Ukraine gets one labeled a “Russian apologist.”
To discuss these challenges, Rania Khalek was joined by Justin Podur,a Professor in Environmental and Urban Change at York U in Toronto, author of “Siegebreakers,” and host of The Anti-Empire Project podcast.
The fighting in Ukraine might be a European war but its consequences are global, and it may even cause changes in geopolitical balances, relations and multipolarity. How can we understand this war as anti-imperialists? What will its global economic consequences be? And what will be the result of the unprecedented sanctions imposed on Russia?
To help make sense of it all, Rania Khalek was joined by Marxist economist Prahbat Patnaik, professor emeritus at JNU and author of “A Theory of Imperialism” and the more recent “Capital and Imperialism: Theory, History, and the Present,” both co-authored with Utsa Patnaik.
Articles by Prabhat Patnaik that are discussed in the video:
How Countries Are Escaping Sanctions Under Neo-Liberalism: https://www.newsclick.in/How-Countries-Escaping-Sanctions-under-Neo-Liberalism
How IMF Is Closely Linked With the Ukraine Crisis: newsclick.in/how-imf-closely-linked-ukraine-crisis
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Mainstream media coverage of the war in Ukraine has sought to erase the U.S. and NATO role in setting the stage for the conflict, the Western history of attacking Russia, and Europe’s violent and racist past and present.
Joseph Massad, Professor of Modern Arab Politics and Intellectual History at Columbia University, joins Dispatches with Rania Khalek to remind us of the hypocrisy and history the West has attempted to erase as it escalates the war against Russia in Ukraine.
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BT’s Rania Khalek was on the ground in Havana, Cuba, and spoke to Dr. Vicente Vérez Bencomo, General director of the Finlay vaccine institute in Havana, which developed Cuba’s highly effective COVID-19 vaccine Soberana.
They discussed how the U.S. blockade hampered the country’s vaccine development, how Cuba managed to develop five covid vaccines while under siege, which countries helped, how Cuba became a world leader in biotechnology, and vaccine hesitancy in the West.
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The impacts of Russia’s war in Ukraine isn’t isolated to Europe. As the US and NATO pour weapons into a Ukrainian insurgency, the risk for confrontation between nuclear armed power is rising. Does this mark the end of unipolarity and the beginning of a multipolar world? If so, what does that mean? How will support for a Ukrainian insurgency feed into the rise of the global far right? What will be the impact of the war and sanctions on Russia, which are already causing wheat, fertilizer and gas prices to skyrocket? And what should be the anti-imperialist left’s position on these major developments?
To help us frame these events in a global context, Vijay Prashad, Executive Director of the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research and author of “Washington Bullets: A History of the CIA, Coups, and Assassinations,” joins Dispatches with Rania Khalek.
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BreakThrough coverage has emphasized the US and NATO role in instigating the violence in Ukraine, which is precisely what the Western media has tried to obscure in recent weeks. We’ve also hosted many voices from different segments of the left about the war. One of those voices joining Rania Khalek from the Russian left is Alexey Sakhnin, an anti-war activist, journalist and academic of the Soviet era.
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