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Podcast

U.S. Empire and Autocracy in the Middle East (5-24-22)

Join Haymarket Books and Internationalism From Below for a discussion of the relation between US imperialism and its regional alliances in the Middle East. ***Please note: This discussion was recorded on May 24, 2022 and while the situation on the ground has changed, we hope the background provided here remains informative.*** The US empire relies on regional alliances with countries whose interests don’t always align 100% with US interests. This panel will focus on the regional alliance among Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Israel and their role as partners of US imperialism. Speakers: Aslı Bâli is Professor of Law at the UCLA School of Law, Founding Faculty Director of the Promise Institute for Human Rights, and former Director of the UCLA Center for Near Eastern Studies. Her research focuses on public international law—including human rights and humanitarian law—and comparative constitutional law, with a focus on the Middle East. She co-chairs the Advisory Council for the Middle East and North Africa Division of Human Rights Watch and chairs the Middle East Studies Association Task Force on Civil and Human Rights and the MESA Global Academy. Jamie Allinson is a senior lecturer in Politics and International Relations at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, where he teaches courses in the politics of the Middle East. He is a member of the Salvage editorial collective and the author of The Age of Counter-Revolution: States and Revolutions in the Middle East (Cambridge University Press, 2022). His previous book, The Struggle for the State in Jordan: The Social Origins of Alliances in the Middle East (2016), was co-winner of the Jadaliyya Political Economy Book Prize. Allison McManus is the research director of the Freedom Initiative, where she leads a team of researchers in documenting prison-related abuses and advocating for detainees in the Middle East and North Africa. She is also a member of the steering committee of the U.S. Committee to End Political Repression in Egypt. Previously she was research director of the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy. Moderator: Joel Beinin is a member of the steering committee of the U.S. Committee to End Political Repression in Egypt. He is Donald J. McLachlan Professor of History and Professor of Middle East History, Emeritus at Stanford University. His many books include Workers and Peasants in the Modern Middle East (2001) and Workers and Thieves: Labor Movements and Popular Uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt (2015). --------------------------------------------------------- This event is sponsored by the US Committee to End Political Repression in Egypt, Internationalism from Below, Middle East Research and Information Project (MERIP), Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN), The Freedom Initiative, DSA International Committee, and Haymarket Books. While all of our events are freely available, we ask that those who are able make a solidarity donation in support of our important organizing, programming and publishing work. Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/sf30lzByj9c Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks

More Episodes

May 18, 2026

Ukraine’s Anti-Imperialist Struggle

February 24th marked the fourth anniversary of Russia’s imperialist invasion of Ukraine. Right now, it is bombing the country’s energy system, cutting off heat and electricity for millions in the depths of a bitterly cold winter. At the same time, the Trump administration is trying to bully Ukraine into a land for peace settlement that rewards Putin’s aggression and, with the willing collaboration of Ukraine’s oligarchs, puts the country up for sale to Western multinationals. Join this webinar to hear about Ukraine’s struggle.

Speakers:

Artem Chapeye is the author of Ordinary People Don’t Carry Guns (Washington Post 2025 best non-fiction) and The Ukraine. He is a writer, translator, activist, and, after the 2022 invasion, an enlisted member of the Armed Forces of Ukraine .

Tanya Vyhovsky is a Ukrainian American, Vermont State Senator, member of Vermont’s Progressive Party, and also a member of the Democratic Socialists of America.

Denys Bondar is a native of Ukraine and an associate professor of physics at Tulane University as well as a member of the Ukraine Solidarity Network and Physicists Coalition for Nuclear Threat Reduction.

May 18, 2026

We Are Each Other's Liberation: Black and Asian Feminist Solidarities

Join editors and contributors of We Are Each Other's Liberation, a major anthology that illuminates historical and contemporary solidarities between Black and Asian feminists.

A collaborative project between Black Women Radicals and the Asian American Feminist Collective, We Are Each Other's Liberation envisions a cross-racial and internationalist politics that explicitly addresses solidarity between Black and Asian feminists. Bringing together organizers, artists, journalists, poets, novelists, and more, this collection introduces readers to new ways of understanding and reflecting on race and feminism.

Drawing out lessons from the revolutionary work of movement forebearers—including the Combahee River Collective, Claudia Jones, Grace Lee Boggs, Yuri Kochiyama, and Third World Women’s Alliance as well as struggles today—We Are Each Other’s Liberation offers an urgent call for the just future we might build together.

Get a copy of We Are Each Other's Liberation from Haymarket: https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/2519-we-are-each-other-s-liberation

Speakers:

Rachel Kuo is an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and cofounder of the Asian American Feminist Collective, which engages intersectional feminist politics grounded within Asian diasporic communities.

Jaimee A. Swift is the creator and executive director of Black Women Radicals, dedicated to uplifting and centering Black women and gender-expansive people’s radical activism in Africa and in the African diaspora.

TD Tso is a feminist writer, editor, cultural organizer, and cofounder of the Asian American Feminist Collective.

Pratibha Parmar’s films have shaped the politics of feminist, queer, and diasporic visual cultures for over four decades. From experimental shorts to activist documentaries and feature-length works, Parmar’s cinematic language operates as an act of visual justice. Her practice engages the image as a site of struggle—challenging the power relations that determine who is seen, how they are represented, and what forms of visual expression are made possible. Her films are a site of narrative transformation, where memory, activism, and artistic expression converge to resist erasure and imagine new futures. Pratibha is a published author and editor of of several anthologies. The Institute of Contemporary Arts (London) and Sming Sming Books published, Our Eyes as Commonly Tender: Visual Justice in the Filmmaking of Pratibha Parmar in 2025.

Margo Okazawa-Rey is an activist-educator working on issues of militarism for over 30 years. She has long-standing activist commitments in South Korea and Palestine, with Du Re Bang and Women’s Centre for Legal Aid and Counseling, respectively. She is a founding member of the International Women’s Network against Militarism and Women for Genuine Security, its US group. She also hosts feminist radio program Women’s Magazine, broadcast on KPFA Berkeley California station of the Pacifica Radio network, and is known as DJ MOR Love and Joy, transnational feminist virtual dance party DJ.

Dr. Beverley Bryan is a lifelong educator and political activist, who is co-author of the classic book Heart of the Race: Black Women’s Lives in Britain (1985) which detailed the experiences of Black women and their fight for equality from post-war up to 1980s Britain. Dr. Bryan was a founding member of the Brixton Black Women’s Group and the Organisation of Women of African and Asian Descent (OWAAD); a Saturday school organiser, a mainstream primary school teacher who pioneered Black history teaching in her classroom in the 1970s and a member of the British Black Panther Movement. A lifelong educator, Dr. Bryan is a retired Professor of Language Education from the University of the West Indies, Jamaica.

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