From Afghanistan To Haiti, US Imperialism is Inseparable From Racism and Capitalism
In this episode of By Any Means Necessary, hosts Sean Blackmon and Jacquie Luqman are joined by Dr. Mike Pappas, a family medicine physician, activist, and frequent contributor to LeftVoice.org to discuss the Biden administration’s recommendation of a booster shot for the COVID-19 and whether these vaccines are effective against variants, the extreme disparity in vaccine availability between rich and poor countries, why public health systems are so dependent on vaccination, and how the gutting of public health systems and capitalist neoliberal regimes have exacerbated the COVID-19 crisis.
In the second segment, Sean and Jacquie are joined by John Ross, the senior fellow at the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies at the Renmin University of China and author of the new book, “China's Great Road: Lessons for Marxist Theory and Socialist Practices” to discuss China’s recent push for redistribution of wealth, the gulf in responses between US and Chinese economic elite to income inequality, and the development of common prosperity in China and how China’s socialist system can facilitate that.
In the third segment, Sean and Jacquie are joined by Anthony Rogers Wright, Director of Environmental Justice with New York Lawyers for the Public Interest to discuss the legacy of white supremacy in environmentalism and its manifestation at the Sierra Club, how anglocentrism obfuscates the culpability of the Global North in the climate crisis, and how white-led environmental activism tends to only target the symptoms, rather than the structural root causes, of climate change.
Later in the show, Sean and Jacquie are joined by Dr. Jemima Pierre, Haiti/Americas Coordinator for the Black Alliance for Peace to discuss the racism that US imperialism and occupation are founded upon and how that, combined with US hubris, contributed to the rapid fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban, the intrinsic connection between imperialism, racism, and capitalism, the cooperation of Caribbean governments in military exercises with US Southern Command, and the disgusting contradictions and disparity supported by so-called “humanitarian” imperialism in Haiti.