Showing posts with label geopolitics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label geopolitics. Show all posts

Friday, December 20, 2024

Syria Is Free, Say Media—But That Shouldn’t Mean Free of US Occupation

 By Gregory Shupak 

Washington Post depiction of opposition fighters celebrating after the collapse of the Syrian government.
WaPo: Why the U.S. needs to help build a new Syria

The Washington Post (12/8/24) calls for “engaged diplomacy” from the incoming Trump administration to “help write a brighter next chapter for this strategically located, and long-suffering, country.”

Washington Post editorial (12/8/24), headlined “Why the US Needs to Help Build a New Syria,” said:

Syria might seem far removed from US interests. Before Mr. Assad’s fall, President-elect Donald Trump posted: “DO NOT GET INVOLVED!” But America is involved. Some 900 US troops and an undisclosed number of military contractors are operating in northeastern Syria near Iraq, battling the Islamic State and backing Kurdish forces fighting the Assad regime.

Monday, December 9, 2024

10 points on the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s Syria

By Vijay Prashad 

Vijay Prashad reflects on the latest developments in Syria and what they mean for the West Asia region

The development happens 14 months into Israel’s genocide in Gaza, and weeks after signing a ceasefire agreement with Hezbollah. Below are reflections from Vijay Prashad regarding the takeover and key elements to understand it.

1. The Syrian state had been devastated by the war which began 2011, and then by the sanctions placed on the country by the United States and its allies. The Syrian Arab Army (the official state army) had never fully recovered in the aftermath of the major fighting and was incapable of taking back the main cities of Hama, Homs, and Aleppo.

2. The Israeli bombardment of Syrian military facilities had weakened the Syrian armed forces’ logistical and ordinance capabilities. These attacks had been sustained and painful for the Syrian armed forces.

3. Israeli invasion of Lebanon and the assassination of Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah had weakened the ability of Hezbollah to operate even within Lebanon’s south, which forced the recent ‘ceasefire’ agreement with Israel. This demonstrated that Hezbollah was not in any position to enter Syria again to defend the Syrian government against any armed incursion on the Hama to Damascus road (highway M5).

4. The attacks on Iranian supply depots and military facilities in Syria as well as the attacks by Israel on Iran had prevented any build up of Iranian forces to defend the Syrian government. The weakening of Hezbollah also weakened Iran’s role in the region.

5. The nearly three years of conflict in Ukraine had certainly denied Syria the ability to call upon further Russian assistance for the protection of Damascus or for the Russian naval base in Latakia.

6. Therefore, Syria’s government no longer had its Iranian and Russian military allies for assistance against the reinforced rebels.

7. The Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, formed in 2017 out of the al-Qaeda formations, drew together various military forces from Turkey to the Uyghurs – with a large number of other al-Qaeda influenced fighters – and built up its forces in Idlib over the past decade. HTS has received aid and support from Turkey, but also covertly from Israel (this information came to me from a highly placed intelligence official in Turkey).

8. What will the new HTS-led government do regarding the many social minorities in Syria? What will the new HTS-led government do regarding the Golan Heights and Israel? How will the new HTS-government regard the Israeli military incursion in Quneitra?

9. This story is not over yet. There will be much further unrest in the country led by ISIS as well as the Kurdish groups in the north; already Turkish-backed groups are in combat against the Kurdish YPG (People’s Defense Units) and PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party) forces in Manbij; US forces are already in eastern Syria, where they say that they will remain as a buffer against ISIS (and will therefore retain control of the oil); Israel also announced that it took over the Golan buffer zone. There will be tension between the governments of Turkey and the US regarding what the new HTS-led government must, and must not do.

10. I hope very much that the statements made by Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, that retribution must not be the new culture, will come true. The real fear is regarding the treatment of the minority populations. There is no word yet if the militia groups in Iraq will enter Syria. Much of this depends on what happens to places such as the Sayyida Zaynab shrine in Damascus.

This article originally appeared in People's Dispatch on December 8th, 2024

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Tuesday, July 30, 2024

Venezuela’s far-right refuses to recognize electoral results, violent protests break out across Caracas

The day after the Venezuelan people voted in their presidential elections, a number of seemingly coordinated protests broke out across Caracas

Violent protests have broken out in places across the Venezuelan capital Caracas on July 29, in the aftermath of the country’s presidential election. Far-right mobs have attempted to block major roads, including the road next to the Simón Bolívar International Airport, and have attacked buses, police cars, and members of the country’s security forces. The protests seem to be in response to calls by the defeated far-right opposition that on Sunday evening refused to recognize the victory of Nicolás Maduro.

In response to these incidents, different Venezuelan officials have called for a return to peace and an end to the violent protests. The president of Venezuela’s National Assembly, Jorge Rodríguez declared in a press conference on Monday evening, that the proposal of the right-wing was always to provoke violence and disturb the rule of law faced with the impossibility of winning at the polls. He also stated that the Venezuelan government had foiled several attempts to attack vital infrastructure on Sunday.
                                                      

The right-wing opposition candidate Edmundo González and opposition leader María Corina Machado also held a press conference on Monday night to declare that they had their own data which confirms that they in fact won the elections with 73% of the votes. This supposed exclusive data that they collected comes from a New-Jersey based company Edison Research. According to a report by journalist Ben Norton, the company which did an exit poll on Sunday is “closely linked to the US government and does work for US state propaganda outlets that were founded by the CIA.” The apparent political nature of the exit poll company has led many to question the veracity of the data, especially given the wide difference with the official results and other leading pollsters.

Progressive organizations and platforms from across the world have denounced the destabilization attempts, with many alleging that the protests are coordinated and likely backed by the United States.

A statement released by the Party for Socialism and Liberation reads, “Nearly every major corporate media outlet based in the United States and other western countries covered the story based around the same basic narrative – a result that couldn’t possibly be true. If any evidence at all is being cited to back up the right-wing’s claims of fraud, it is ludicrously biased pre-election surveys conducted by opposition-aligned polling companies that suggested González had higher support. What we are witnessing is a familiar pattern in the U.S. campaign to overthrow the Bolivarian Revolution – the process of socialist transformation that began with the election of Hugo Chávez in 1998. When the U.S. government thinks that the right wing opposition has a chance of succeeding at the ballot box, then they participate in elections. When they lose the vote, they turn back to street violence and coup attempts.”

US-based organizations The People’s Forum and the ANSWER Coalition, wrote in a statement, “Democracy is under attack as the far-right mobilizes violent protests to attempt to overthrow President Maduro who won yesterday’s elections. History shows us that these coup attempts are often orchestrated directly by Washington and by allies of US imperialism. Stand on the side of the people and for democracy! HANDS OFF VENEZUELA!”

On Monday, Venezuela’s Foreign Minister Yván Gil announced that the country’s diplomatic personnel in Argentina, Chile, Costa Rica, Peru, Panama, Dominican Republic and Uruguay would be withdrawn in response to the attempts by the governments of these countries to attack and undermine the electoral process. The ministry stated, “Venezuela expresses its strong rejection to the meddling actions and declarations of a group of right-wing governments, subordinated to Washington and committed openly with the most sordid ideological positions of international fascism, attempting to revise the failed and defeated Lima Group, that are attempting to disregard the electoral results of the Presidential Polls carried out this Sunday July 28, 2024.”

Chavista movements and organizations have called for people to mobilize to the center of Caracas to defend their vote and peace in Venezuela.

This article originally appeared in People's Dispatch on July 29th, 2024

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Monday, July 29, 2024

Nicolás Maduro wins the presidential elections in Venezuela

 By People's Dispatch

As predicted, the right-wing opposition has refused to recognize the results and affirms that they won “with 70% of the vote”, the US government meanwhile has called for a recount

Nicolás Maduro was re-elected for a third term in Sunday’s presidential elections, winning 51.2% of the vote. In a press conference just past midnight on July 29, the president of Venezuela’s National Electoral Council, Elvis Amoroso, announced that with 80% of the ballots counted, there was an irreversible trend pointing towards a Maduro victory. Amoroso also announced that 59% of the electorate had participated in the elections. Right-wing candidate Edmundo González came in second place with 44% of the vote.

Thousands were gathered at the Miraflores Presidential Palace on Sunday evening to celebrate the birthday of the father of the Bolivarian Revolution, Hugo Chávez, and to wait for the results of the elections. After the results were announced, Maduro, accompanied by other leaders of chavismo, addressed the supporters to celebrate the victory.

“I can say before the people of Venezuela and the world: I am Nicolás Maduro Moros, re-elected president of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela,” he declared, adding, “There will be peace, stability and justice. Peace and respect for the law.”

Both Amoroso and Maduro mentioned that there had been a hacker attack on the country’s electoral system. “The Attorney General’s Office and the Public Prosecutor’s Office will investigate and prosecute those responsible. But we already know which country it came from.”

In his speech, Maduro thanked the various political, economic, and social sectors which came together under the Great Patriotic Pole electoral alliance to elect him and to carry out the grassroots struggle against right-wing, regressive forces in the country, represented by Machado and González.

Maduro also stated that his priorities are to advance the economic recovery of the country, to strengthen ongoing social projects, and to build spaces of national dialogue and unity amongst the diverse political and social forces in the country. Another key priority is to continue fighting for an end to the blockade and regime of sanctions imposed on the country by the United States and the European Union and to pass the Anti-Blockade Law.

Read more: Mainstream media scales up attacks against Maduro ahead of Sunday’s elections

Meanwhile, the far-right opposition led by the former presidential candidate Edmundo González and political leader María Corina Machado, has refused to recognize the results of the elections. Machado assured in a press conference that González had won the elections with 70% of the votes, and Maduro with 30%. She called on her supporters to mobilize in order to “continue affirming the victory of Edmundo in all of Venezuela…In the next few days we will continue announcing actions to defend the truth.”

Read more: Dozens of US-based organizations condemn media campaign against Venezuela

The US Embassy in Venezuela, which is not located in Venezuela but in Bogotá, Colombia, released a statement after the results were announced where it expressed “serious concern that the result that was announced does not reflect the will nor the vote of the Venezuelan people.” In the statement, the US called for a recount and for the ballots to be made public.

However, across Latin America and the Caribbean, political leaders and progressive movements have saluted Maduro’s victory.

Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel wrote on X, “Today the dignity and valor of the Venezuelan people triumphed over pressures and manipulation. I send to my brother President Nicolás Maduro our affectionate congratulations for this historic victory and the commitment of Cuba to being alongside the Bolivarian and Chavista Revolution. Brother Nicolás Maduro, your victory, which is of the Bolivarian and Chavista people, won cleanly against the pro-imperialist opposition unequivocally. In this way you also beat the regional, meddling, and Monroe-ist right wing. The people spoke and the Revolution won.”

Bolivian President Luis Arce joined fellow regional leaders in the congratulations. “We congratulate the Venezuelan people and President Nicolás Maduro for the electoral victory of this historic July 28. Great way to remember Commander Hugo Chávez. We have closely followed this democratic celebration and we salute that the will of the Venezuelan people has been respected at the polls.”

Honduran President Xiomara Castro who is also the pro-tempore president of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), stated, “Our special congratulations and Democratic, Socialist and Revolutionary greetings to President Nicolás Maduro and to the brave people of Venezuela for their unobjectionable triumph, which reaffirms their sovereignty and the historical legacy of the Commander Chávez.”

The Iranian Embassy in Venezuela also released a statement saying, “We congratulate the great people of Venezuela and His Excellency Nicolás Maduro on the successful holding of the presidential elections in a safe, peaceful, transparent, democratic and competitive environment with a massive and broad participation of the people.”

This article originally appeared in People's Dispatch on July 29th, 2024

Please support the news you can use and visit The Brooks Blackboard's website for more news!   

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Wednesday, July 17, 2024

Hundreds of Kenyan police arrive in Port-au-Prince, establishing the latest foreign military occupation of Haiti

June 26, 2024 by Pablo Meriguet

The Kenyan officers arrived to Port-au-Prince to establish the UN-authorized Multinational Security Support Mission to fight against gang violence in Haiti

400 Kenyan police officers arrived on June 25 in Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince. The deployment of 600 more is expected to follow in the coming days and weeks. The arrival of the Kenyan police force was authorized by the United Nations Security Council, which last year approved the dispatch of foreign law enforcement forces to the Caribbean country. The dispatch occurred the same day that Kenyan police killed eight protesters in Kenya who were protesting the unpopular neoliberal Finance Bill 2024.

The armed mission in Haiti supposedly to stop the advance of gangs, which in recent months have controlled, according to some estimates, up to 80% of the territory of the capital and many other surrounding areas. Foreign police agents will be allowed to detain Haitian citizens with the local police.

Kenyan President William Ruto said a day before their deployment, “Our police officers’ presence in Haiti will give relief to the men, women and children whose lives have been broken by gang violence. We will work with the international community to bring lasting stability in Haiti.”

The mission was announced in a White House communiqué, which affirmed that the mission is fully supported by the United States and several other countries. The new military intervention in Haitian territory is intended, according to the same statement, to bring into Haitian territory about 2,500 police and security personnel: “I congratulate, and am deeply grateful to all the countries that have committed personnel and financial support for this mission that will eventually have a multinational staff of 2,500, led by Kenya and including Benin, Jamaica, Bahamas, Belize, Barbados, Antigua and Barbuda, Bangladesh, Algeria, Canada, France, Germany, Trinidad and Tobago, Turkey, the United Kingdom and Spain. For our part, the United States is the largest financial contributor to this mission, providing more than USD 300 million and up to USD 60 million in equipment. And we will continue our diplomatic outreach to encourage more countries to join this effort because what happens in Haiti is in the interest of its neighbors, the region, and the world.”

Following the resignation of Haiti’s de facto president and prime minister Ariel Henry, who took over after the assassination of Jovenel Moïse, Ruto’s government had announced a temporary halt to the deployment but continued ahead shortly after.

Ruto challenged Kenyan courts to achieve deployment


Kenya’s president, William Ruto, who engineered the agreement, had to maneuver through several major legal obstacles to achieve the troop deployment yesterday. Diverse sectors in Kenya, especially the judiciary, had lodged serious challenges to his unilateral agreement. At the end of January, the High Court in Kenya declared the deployment of personnel to Haiti unconstitutional, ruling that the country’s National Security Council did not have the authority to deploy police officers outside the country. The order was the extension of interim measures first issued by the court in October, which Kenya’s parliament defied to authorize the mission. Ruto’s government obtained such authorization, but the Kenyan High Court stated that a “reciprocal agreement” is required for the sending of troops not to be considered a unilateral “invasion.” In the end, Kenya reached an agreement with Haiti on March 1, 2024.

Kenyan Lawyer Wallace Nderu, a member of the International Commission of Jurists (CIJ), had told VOA that despite having an agreement between the two countries, the act is problematic, as there are questions about the legitimacy of the President of Haiti: “The reason for this request is that when the then Prime Minister of Haiti was signing this agreement with Kenya, there was no recognized government in Haiti. The president [Jovenel Moïse] had been assassinated, there were no elected leaders in Haiti. So where does this lead, the mandate to negotiate an agreement on behalf of your country, Haiti, is in question.”

Set up to fail?

Another concerning aspect of the deployment raised by analysts is whether the Kenyan police will even be able to carry out effective operations in Haiti. The Kenyan officers do not know the territory and do not speak the language spoken by the local population. The gangs now have very established positions in the capital and other areas and it is possible that openly confronting the armed groups could lead to an exponential increase in violence and increased hardship for the civilian population. Notably, the vast majority of the weapons used by the gangs are smuggled from the United States.

In addition, the Kenyan police have been singled out and accused by several human rights organizations such as Human Rights Watch, of having committed excessive acts of repression and extrajudicial executions in Kenya. The police carried out brutal repression against the ongoing anti-government protests on the same day that the first units landed in Port-au-Prince. According to the International Peoples’ Assembly, “The deployment of the Kenyan police force, who are trained by Israel, comes at a moment when the people of Kenya are mobilizing against the neoliberal policies of the US-backed government in the country.”

Read more: “We will fight in the streets of Nairobi for our brothers and sisters in Haiti” 

In August 2023, Amnesty International wrote an an open letter to the Security Council, expressing its concern: “There is a troubling record of abuses and impunity associated with previous multinational or foreign interventions in Haiti, such as the cholera epidemic, unaccountable sexual exploitation and abuse, and excessive use of force.”

No to foreign military occupation

The mission has also been widely condemned by movements and organizations in Haiti, Kenya, and across the world as another instance of foreign intervention in the Caribbean country.

In a statement released by ALBA Movimientos, they said, “All of the missions that entered Haiti have left negative results. They brought economic setbacks and deepened the social crisis of the Haitian people. Only the Haitian people will decide the solution to the current situation and only a democratic and sovereign resolution to the crisis, without meddling, can guarantee peace, stability, and well being for the majority. We make an international call for the defense of Haiti and respect to the self determination of its people: out with any ‘mission’ of occupation.”

Haiti has a long history of foreign invasions that have failed to solve the serious problems the country has faced since it was isolated and forced into debt by western powers, such as France and the United States, immediately after its anti-slavery and independence struggle (1791-1804).

Almost a century later, in 1915, Woodrow Wilson, president of the United States, ordered the invasion of Haiti to protect the interests of the companies that invested money in the Caribbean country. The presence of the Marines lasted until 1934, a period during which the occupying US armed forces carried out several massacres of peasants and anti-colonial political leaders.

Between September 28 and October 8, 1937, around 15,000-20,000 Haitians were killed by the army of the neighboring Dominican Republic under the rule of Rafael Leonidas Trujillo. From 1957 to 1971, Francios Duvalier, better known as Papa Doc, governed Haiti as a dictator with the open support of the United States. His son, Jean-Claude Duvalier, Baby Doc, succeeded him in office until 1986.

In 2004, former US Attorney General, Ramsey Clark, proved that the US and Dominican Republic governments were involved in supplying weapons and military training to several Haitian rebels, which would provoke political and social chaos that served as a pretext for the 2006 UN Blue Helmets occupation of the country until 2017. The United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) was responsible for grave atrocities, including massacres, mass rape and the introduction of cholera into the country, leading to the death of 30,000 people.

Read more: International Colloquium denounces crimes of UN Mission in Haiti

In the coming weeks and months, more Kenyan police as well as troops from other countries will continue to arrive in Haiti and the “security mission” will begin to embark on its uncertain fight against gang violence. Faced with this reality, the people of Haiti have vowed to continue their struggle against foreign occupation and for true national sovereignty and respect.


This article originally appeared in Peoples Dispatch on June 26th, 2024

Please support the news you can use and visit The Brooks Blackboard's website for more news!   

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Tuesday, April 11, 2023

The World Bank and the BRICS Bank have new leaders and different outlooks

The records and priorities of the new heads of the World Bank and the New Development Bank – Ajay Banga and Dilma Rousseff – represent two different perspectives on addressing the world’s problems

April 08, 2023 by Vijay Prashad
In late February 2023, US President Joe Biden announced that the United States had placed the nomination of Ajay Banga to be the next head of the World Bank, established in 1944. There will be no other official candidates for this job since—by convention—the US nominee is automatically selected for the post. This has been the case for the 13 previous presidents of the World Bank—the one exception was the acting president Kristalina Georgieva of Bulgaria, who held the post for two months in 2019. In the official history of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), J. Keith Horsefield wrote that US authorities “considered that the Bank would have to be headed by a US citizen in order to win the confidence of the banking community, and that it would be impracticable to appoint US citizens to head both the Bank and the Fund.” By an undemocratic convention, therefore, the World Bank head was to be a US citizen and the head of the IMF was to be a European national (Georgieva is currently the managing director of the IMF). Therefore, Biden’s nomination of Banga guarantees his ascension to the post.

A month later, the New Development Bank’s Board of Governors— 
which includes representatives from Brazil, China, India, Russia, and South Africa (the BRICS countries) as well as one person to represent Bangladesh, Egypt, and the United Arab Emirates—elected Brazil’s former president Dilma Rousseff to head the NDB, popularly known as the BRICS Bank. The BRICS Bank, which was first discussed in 2012, began to operate in 2016 when it issued its first green financial bonds. There have only been three managing directors of the BRICS Bank—the first from India (K.V. Kamath) and then the next two from Brazil (Marcos Prado Troyjo and now Rousseff to finish Troyjo’s term). The president of the BRICS Bank will be elected from its members, not from just one country.

Banga will come to the World Bank, whose office is in Washington, D.C., from the world of international corporations. He spent his entire career in these multinational corporations, from his early days in India at Nestlé to his later international career at Citigroup and Mastercard. Most recently, Banga was the head of the International Chamber of Commerce, an “executive” of multinational corporations that was founded in 1919 and is based in Paris, France. As Banga says, during his time at Citigroup, he ran its microfinance division, and, during his time at Mastercard, he made various pledges regarding the environment. Nonetheless, he has no experience in the world of development finance and investment. He told the Financial Times that he would turn to the private sector for funds and ideas. His resume is not unlike that of most US appointees to head the World Bank. The first president of the World Bank was Eugene Meyer, who built the chemical multinational Allied Chemical and Dye Corporation (later Honeywell) and who owned the Washington Post. He too had no direct experience working on eradicating poverty or building public infrastructure. It was through the World Bank that the United States pushed an agenda to privatize public institutions. Men such as Banga have been integral to the fulfillment of that agenda.

Dilma Rousseff, meanwhile, comes to the BRICS Bank with a different resume. Her political career began in the democratic fight against the 21-year military dictatorship (1964-1985) that was inflicted on Brazil by the United States and its allies. During Lula da Silva’s two terms as president (2003-2011), Dilma Rousseff was a cabinet minister and his chief of staff. She took charge of the Programa de Aceleração do Crescimento (Growth Acceleration Program) or PAC, which organized the anti-poverty work of the government. Because of her work in poverty eradication, Dilma became known popularly as the “mãe do PAC” (mother of PAC). A World Bank study from 2015 showed that Brazil had “succeeded in significantly reducing poverty in the last decade”; extreme poverty fell from 10 percent in 2001 to 4 percent in 2013. “[A]pproximately 25 million Brazilians escaped extreme or moderate poverty,” the report said. This poverty reduction was not a result of privatization, but of two government schemes developed and established by Lula and Dilma: Bolsa Família (the family allowance scheme) and Brasil sem Misería (the Brazil Without Extreme Poverty plan, which helped families with employment and built infrastructure such as schools, running water, and sewer systems in low-income areas). Dilma Rousseff brings her experience in these programs, the benefits of which were reversed under her successors (Michel Temer and Jair Bolsonaro).

Banga, who comes from the international capital markets, will manage the World Bank’s net investment portfolio of $82.1 billion as of June 2022. There will be considerable attention to the work of the World Bank, whose power is leveraged by Washington’s authority and by its work with the International Monetary Fund’s debt-austerity lending practices. In response to the debt-austerity practices of the IMF and the World Bank, the BRICS countries—when Dilma was president of Brazil (2011-2016)—set up institutions such as the Contingent Reserve Arrangement (as an alternative to the IMF with a $100 billion corpus) and the New Development Bank (as an alternative to the World Bank, with another $100 billion as its initial authorized capital). These new institutions seek to provide development finance through a new development policy that does not enforce austerity on the poorer nations but is driven by the principle of poverty eradication. The BRICS Bank is a young institution compared to the World Bank, but it has considerable financial resources and will need to be innovative in providing assistance that does not lead to endemic debt. Whether the new BRICS Think Tank Network for Finance will be able to break with the IMF’s orthodoxy is yet to be seen.

Rousseff chaired her first BRICS Bank meeting on March 28. Banga will likely be appointed at the World Bank-IMF meeting in mid-April.

Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian, editor, and journalist. He is a writing fellow and chief correspondent at Globetrotter. He is an editor of LeftWord Books and the director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. He is a senior non-resident fellow at Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies, Renmin University of China. He has written more than 20 books, including The Darker Nations and The Poorer Nations. His latest books are Struggle Makes Us Human: Learning from Movements for Socialism and (with Noam Chomsky) The Withdrawal: Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, and the Fragility of US Power.

This article was produced by Globetrotter.

Originally published on PeoplesDispatch.org on April 8th, 2023


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