Articles by Vijay Prashad

We found 88 results.


Violating Diplomatic Missions
Vijay Prashad | Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research – TRANSCEND Media Service, 15 Apr 2024

11 Apr 2024 – The Premises of the Diplomatic Missions Shall Be Inviolable – From Israel’s bombing of Iran’s embassy in Damascus to Ecuador’s raid on the Mexican embassy in Quito, leaders feel emboldened by the impunity granted by the Global North to disregard diplomatic norms and respect.

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How Israel Weaponizes Water
Vijay Prashad | Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research – TRANSCEND Media Service, 8 Apr 2024

4 Apr 2024 – Thousands Have Lived without Love, but Not One without Water – Israel is using water as a weapon in its war of aggression against Palestinians by denying access and destroying infrastructure.

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Conquest, War, Famine and Death Hit You Straight in the Heart
Vijay Prashad | Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research – TRANSCEND Media Service, 18 Mar 2024

14 Mar 2024 – In the face of looming famine, Biden’s promise to build a ‘temporary pier’ to allow aid into Gaza is hollow and  hypocritical, undermined by his country’s complicity in Israel’s genocide against the Palestinians.

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Israel’s War Crimes
Vijay Prashad | Peoples Dispatch – TRANSCEND Media Service, 1 Jan 2024

29 Dec 2023 – Every time the UN can get more aid into Gaza, the Israeli bombardment of civilian areas intensifies, and the civilian deaths increase.

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ExxonMobil Wants to Start a War in South America
Vijay Prashad | Globetrotter – TRANSCEND Media Service, 11 Dec 2023

4 Dec 2023 – In 2022, ExxonMobil [read Rockefeller] made a profit of $55.7 billion, making it one of the world’s richest and most powerful oil companies. Companies such as this exercise an inordinate power over the world economy and over countries that have oil reserves. It has tentacles across the world, from Malaysia to Argentina.

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The Savagery of the War against the Palestinian People
Vijay Prashad | Globetrotter – TRANSCEND Media Service, 16 Oct 2023

10 Oct 2023 – Who knows how many Palestinian civilians will be killed by the time this report is published? Among the bodies that cannot be taken to a hospital or a morgue, because there will be no petrol or electricity, will be large numbers of children that will have hidden in their homes listening to the sounds of the Israeli F-16 bombers coming closer and closer.

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Collaboration, Not Confrontation
Noam Chomsky and Vijay Prashad  | Peoples Democracy - TRANSCEND Media Service, 25 Sep 2023

24 Sep 2023 – Since a defeat of one side or the other is simply not possible, the only way forward is through a diplomatic settlement. The alternative, put simply, is collective suicide as both sides move up the escalation ladder until it is too late. 

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What’s Happening in Niger Is Far from a Typical Coup
Vijay Prashad | Independent Media Institute – TRANSCEND Media Service, 21 Aug 2023

16 Aug 2023 – Rather than send troops in response to the coup, France and the U.S. seem to favor a “Rwanda” type solution applied in Mozambique earlier this year. Only this time ECOWAS would apply force.

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The United Nations’ New Agenda for Peace
Vijay Prashad | Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research – TRANSCEND Media Service, 14 Aug 2023

3 Aug 2023 – The UN report–apart from identifying the conflict between the unipolar and multipolar worlds, and showing concern over the metastasizing weapons industry–throws moral scaffolding over hard realities it can’t directly confront.

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If Everybody’s Going to Join NATO, Then Why Have the United Nations?
Vijay Prashad | Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research – TRANSCEND Media Service, 24 Jul 2023

20 Jul 2023 – Since the year 2000, NATO used its military might to destroy several states, such as Afghanistan (2001) and Libya (2011), shattering societies with its aggressive alliance, and end the status of Yugoslavia (1999) as a unified state. It is difficult, given this record, to sustain that NATO is a ‘defensive alliance’.

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World Hunger and the War in Ukraine
Vijay Prashad | Independent Media Institute – TRANSCEND Media Service, 24 Jul 2023

The current food crisis is a price crisis, not a supply crisis. The end of the Black Sea Grain Initiative by Russia is not the leading cause of hunger in the world. Rather, it is the financial speculation in food markets the main culprit.

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Emergence of a New Non-Alignment
Vijay Prashad | Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research – TRANSCEND Media Service, 19 Jun 2023

15 Jun 2023 – A new mood of defiance in the Global South has generated bewilderment in the capitals of the Triad (USA, EU, Japan), where officials are struggling to answer why governments in the Global South have not accepted the Western view of the conflict in Ukraine in its efforts to ‘weaken Russia’.

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The Vassalage at Heart of the G7
Vijay Prashad | Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research – TRANSCEND Media Service, 5 Jun 2023

1 Jun 2023 – Resurrecting the Concept of the Triad – Following the end of the Second World War, the United States built an international system that was premised on the subordination and integration of Japan and Europe.

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Can the Global South Build a New World Information and Communication Order?
Vijay Prashad | Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research – TRANSCEND Media Service, 29 May 2023

It is remarkable how the media in a few countries are able to set the record on matters around the world. The European and North American countries enjoy a near-global monopoly over information; their media houses vested with a credibility and authority inherited from colonial times plus their command of the neocolonialist structure of our times.

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You Are Reading This Thanks to Semiconductors
Vijay Prashad | Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research – TRANSCEND Media Service, 8 May 2023

27 Apr 2023 – On 7 Oct 2022, the US government implemented export controls to hinder the development of China’s semiconductor industry. ‘The whole point is to kneecap China’s AI and HPC efforts’. The next day, China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said:

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The World Bank and the BRICS Bank Have New Leaders and Different Outlooks
Vijay Prashad | Independent Media Institute – TRANSCEND Media Service, 10 Apr 2023

7 Apr 2023 – Joe Biden announced the nomination of Ajay Banga to be the next head of the World Bank. Banga will come from the world of international corporations. Dilma Rousseff, meanwhile, comes to the BRICS Bank with a different resume.

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What Follows US Hegemony
Vijay Prashad | Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research – TRANSCEND Media Service, 20 Mar 2023

Rebirth of the Dream of Global Peace and Mutual Respect – The USA remains a powerful country, but it has not come to terms with the immense changes taking place in the world order.

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Frankfurt Undermines Human Rights by Canceling a Concert by Roger Waters
Katie Halper and Vijay Prashad | Defend Democracy Press – TRANSCEND Media Service, 20 Mar 2023

Roger Waters will take his “This Is Not a Drill” tour to Europe. But on 24 Feb, Frankfurt’s city council cancelled the concert for “persistent anti-Israel behavior” calling Waters an antisemite. In response, Peter Gabriel, Julie Christie, Noam Chomsky, Susan Sarandon, Alia Shawkat, Glenn Greenwald and others signed a petition calling on the German government to uncancel the concert.

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Eight Contradictions of the Imperialist ‘Rules-Based Order’
Vijay Prashad | Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research – TRANSCEND Media Service, 20 Mar 2023

9 Mar 2023 – This is a qualitatively new phase of world history with significant global changes since the Great Financial Crisis of 2008, which can be seen in a new phase of imperialism. We hope to stimulate debate and discussion in our broader Battle of Ideas against toxic social philosophies that seek to suffocate rational thought about our world.

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Cuba Is Not a State Sponsor of Terrorism
Noam Chomsky and Vijay Prashad | Globetrotter – TRANSCEND Media Service, 20 Feb 2023

13 Feb 2023 – Cuba, with 11 million people, has been under an illegal embargo by the USA for over six decades. Despite this, Cuba’s people have been able to transcend the indignities of hunger, ill health and illiteracy, social plagues that still troubles much of the world.

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Burkina Faso Ejects French Troops
Vijay Prashad | Independent Media Institute – TRANSCEND Media Service, 30 Jan 2023

On 18 Jan 2023, the government of Burkina Faso made a decision to ask the French military to depart from the country. France entered the Sahel region in 2013. The ejection of France does not mean that there will be no NATO countries in the region. Both the US and UK have a large footprint from Morocco to Niger.

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The Bewildering Vote in Chile That Rejected a New Constitution
Taroa Zúñiga Silva and Vijay Prashad | Globetrotter – TRANSCEND Media Service, 12 Sep 2022

On 4 Sep 2022, more than 13 million Chileans voted on a proposal to introduce a new constitution in the country. As it happened, Pinochet’s constitution remains in place with more than 61 percent of voters rejecting the new constitution and only 38 percent of voters approving it.

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The Most Important Election in the Americas Is in Brazil
Vijay Prashad | Globetrotter – TRANSCEND Media Service, 5 Sep 2022

31 Aug 2022 – Both Bolsonaro and Lula face an electorate that either loves them or hates them. There is little room for ambiguity in this race. Bolsonaro represents not only the far right, whose opinions he openly champions, but he also represents large sections of the middle class, whose aspirations for wealth remain largely intact despite the reality that their economic situation has deteriorated over the past decade.

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Can We Please Have an Adult Conversation about China?
Vijay Prashad | Tricontinental Institute for Social Research– TRANSCEND Media Service, 15 Aug 2022

11 Aug 2022 – As the US legislative leader Nancy Pelosi swept into Taipei, people around the world held their breath. Her visit was an act of provocation. In December 1978, the US government – following a United Nations General Assembly decision in 1971 – recognised the People’s Republic of China, setting aside its previous treaty obligations to Taiwan.

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How Cuba Is Eradicating Child Mortality and Banishing the Diseases of the Poor
Vijay Prashad and Manolo de los Santos | Globetrotter - TRANSCEND Media Service, 11 Jul 2022

5 Jul 2022 – To move from 59 infant deaths out of every 1,000 live births to no infant deaths in the matter of a few decades is an extraordinary feat.

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Cuba Should Be Removed from the U.S. List of State Sponsors of Terrorism
Roger Waters, Vijay Prashad and Manolo De Los Santos | Globetrotter – TRANSCEND Media Service, 11 Jul 2022

8 Jul 2022 – There are currently four countries on that list: Cuba, North Korea, Iran and Syria. Cuba, rather than exporting weapons around the world, has a long history of medical internationalism with an international campaign for Cuban doctors to win the Nobel Peace Prize. Why would a country that floods the world with health care be targeted as a state sponsor of terrorism?

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The United States Contests the Chinese Belt and Road with a Private Corporation
Vijay Prashad | Independent Media Institute – TRANSCEND Media Service, 4 Jul 2022

At the G7 Summit in Germany, Joe Biden made a pledge to raise $200 billion for the Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment. It was made clear that this new G7 project was intended to counter the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative.

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Why Does the United States Have a Military Base in Ghana?
Vijay Prashad | Independent Media Institute – TRANSCEND Media Service, 20 Jun 2022

15 Jun 2022 – An interview with Kwesi Pratt Jr., a journalist and leader of the Socialist Movement of Ghana.

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The Rise of NATO in Africa
Vijay Prashad | Independent Media Institute – TRANSCEND Media Service, 30 May 2022

In 2001, NATO conducted an “out of area” military operation in Afghanistan, which lasted 20 years, and in 2011, bombed Libya– its first major military operation in Africa–and overthrew its government. These were the prelude to a “Global NATO.” Anxiety about NATO’s expansion toward the Russian border is one of the causes of the current war in Ukraine.

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Understanding the War in Ukraine
Vijay Prashad | Globetrotter – TRANSCEND Media Service, 14 Mar 2022

8 Mar 2022 – The United States wants “to organize chaos between Russia and the Europeans.” Peace in Ukraine “is a matter of reconciliation between NATO and the new global powers, Russia and China.”

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Ukraine: A Conflict Soaked in Contradictions and New Patterns in War and Media
Vijay Prashad | Independent Media Institute – TRANSCEND Media Service, 7 Mar 2022

2 Mar 2022 – The world has become used to military interventions by the United States. This is, however, not a U.S. intervention. That in itself is a surprise—one that has befuddled reporters and pundits alike. It is valuable to step back and look at how the rest of the world may perceive this conflict, starting with the West’s ethnocentric interests.

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The Western Allied Nations Bully the World While Warning of Threats from China and Russia
Vijay Prashad | Independent Media Institute – TRANSCEND Media Service, 21 Feb 2022

17 Feb 2022 – Why the chief of Germany’s navy, Vice Admiral Kay-Achim Schönbach, was sacked? Because while in India he said two things that are unacceptable in the West:
• That “the Crimean Peninsula is gone and never [coming] back” to Ukraine.
• That Putin should be treated with respect.

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Can Israel Stop the World from Saying ‘Apartheid’? Concealing the Suffering in Palestine
Vijay Prashad | Independent Media Institute – TRANSCEND Media Service, 14 Feb 2022

2 Feb 2022 – Statements by Israeli and Palestinian human rights groups (including B’Tselem, Al-Haq and Addameer) as well as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch—are a reflection of the facts witnessed on the ground, and no amount of Hasbara 2.0 can erase these facts.

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The Terrible Fate Facing the Afghan People
Vijay Prashad | Independent Media Institute – TRANSCEND Media Service, 14 Feb 2022

11 Feb 2022 – When the West fled the country at the end of August 2021, a large part of the foreign funding, which Afghanistan’s GDP is dependent on, also vanished with the troops: 43 percent of Afghanistan’s GDP and 75 percent of its public funding, which came from aid agencies, dried up overnight.

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Are Western Wealthy Countries Determined to Starve the People of Afghanistan?
Vijay Prashad | Globetrotter – TRANSCEND Media Service, 17 Jan 2022

14 Jan 2022 – A few days after the Taliban took power in Afghanistan in mid-August 2021, the U.S. government announced the seizure of $9.5 billion in Afghan assets that were being held in the U.S. banking system. Under pressure from the USA, the IMF also denied Afghanistan access to $455 million of its share of special drawing rights.

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How U.S. Interference in Cuba Creates a False Picture of Its Society
Manolo De Los Santos and Vijay Prashad | Globetrotter – TRANSCEND Media Service, 1 Nov 2021

26 Oct 2021 – The atmosphere is charged. The U.S. government and right-wing Cubans who are in the U.S. Congress have tried to define the terrain for events in mid-November in Cuba. They will ramp up pressure to overthrow the government.

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Clear Away the Hype: The U.S. and Australia Signed a Nuclear Arms Deal, Simple as That
Vijay Prashad | Globetrotter – TRANSCEND Media Service, 27 Sep 2021

On 15 Sep 2021, the heads of government of Australia, UK and USA announced the formation of AUKUS, “a new enhanced trilateral security partnership” between the three countries. While not explicitly mentioned, countering China is the unstated motivation for the new partnership.

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The United States Tries to Take Advantage of the Price Cubans Are Paying for the Blockade and the Pandemic
Manolo De Los Santos and Vijay Prashad | Globetrotter – TRANSCEND Media Service, 19 Jul 2021

13 Jul 2021 – Yesterday Cuba’s President Miguel Díaz-Canel told a press conference that Cuba is facing serious shortages of food and medicine. “What is the origin of all these issues? It is the blockade.” If the U.S.-imposed blockade ended, many of the great challenges facing Cuba would lift. Meanwhile, the United States hardens a cruel and illegal blockade of the island, a medieval siege that has been in place for six decades.

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China Pulls Itself Out of Poverty 100 Years into Its Revolution
Vijay Prashad and John Ross | Globetrotter – TRANSCEND Media Service, 5 Jul 2021

1 Jul 2021 – On 25 Feb China’s President Xi Jinping announced that his country of 1.4 billion people had pulled them out of poverty as it is defined internationally. Since 1981, 853 million Chinese have lifted themselves out of poverty thanks to large-scale interventions from the Chinese state and the Communist Party; according to the data of the World Bank, three out of four people worldwide who were lifted out of poverty live in China.

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United States Withdraws from Afghanistan? Not Really!
Noam Chomsky and Vijay Prashad | Independent Media Institute – TRANSCEND Media Service, 10 May 2021

5 May 2021 – The U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001 was criminal. It was criminal because of the immense force used to demolish Afghanistan’s physical infrastructure and to break open its social bonds. Now, 20 years later, the gulf between the Taliban and the others has widened. Appetite for negotiations simply does not exist any longer.

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Why Ukraine’s Borders Are Back at the Center of Geopolitics
Vijay Prashad | Independent Media Institute – TRANSCEND Media Service, 12 Apr 2021

6 Apr 2021 – On Twitter, President Zelensky used the hashtag #CrimeaIsUkraine to send a clear signal that he is prepared to escalate conflict with Russia over Crimea. He set up a Crimean Platform Initiative to coordinate strategy alongside the USA and NATO to pressure Russia over both Crimea and the conflict in the Donbass region of eastern Ukraine.

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Despite U.S. Dirty Tricks, Bolivia Is Finding a Way to Stay Independent
Vijay Prashad | Independent Media Institute – TRANSCEND Media Service, 5 Apr 2021

29 Mar 2021 – Bolivia has decided to act against the coup makers. The U.S. government is now using that action to delegitimize the government of President Arce. Platforms such as TMS might turn out to be essential as a conduit for Bolivia to tell its story and not be suffocated by Washington’s information war, a vital part of the regime change strategy.

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Biden Continues the U.S. Conflict with China through the Quad
Vijay Prashad | Independent Media Institute – TRANSCEND Media Service, 29 Mar 2021

16 Mar 2021 – On March 12, the heads of government of four countries, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga, and the United States President Joe Biden, met for a virtual meeting of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, better known as the Quad. The goal of the Quad is to deepen the military and economic pressure against China.

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How India’s Farmers’ Protests Could Upend the Political Landscape
Vijay Prashad | Independent Media Institute – TRANSCEND Media Service, 8 Mar 2021

3 Mar 2021 – For the past three months, Indian farmers and agricultural workers have been in the middle of a difficult struggle against the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Tens of thousands of them have gathered around the capital city of New Delhi; they say that they will not disband unless the government […]

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How ExxonMobil Uses Divide and Rule to Get Its Way in South America
Vijay Prashad | Independent Media Institute – TRANSCEND Media Service, 8 Feb 2021

3 Feb 2021 – Tensions rise between neighboring Guyana and Venezuela over a piece of land that has been disputed since at least 1835. ExxonMobil sits on the sidelines, smiling. The distraction suits the oil giants. They make their money whether there is peace or war.

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Why Neoliberal Leaders Who Failed to Protect Their Countries from COVID-19 Must Be Investigated
Noam Chomsky and Vijay Prashad | Independent Media Institute – TRANSCEND Media Service, 25 Jan 2021

21 Jan 2021 – It is time to impanel a citizens’ tribunal to investigate the utter failure of the governments of Boris Johnson, Donald Trump, Jair Bolsonaro, Narendra Modi, and others to break the chain of the infection of COVID-19. The tribunal would provide the ICC with a firm foundation to do a forensic investigation of this crime against humanity. We should all be outraged. But, outrage is not a strong enough word.

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The U.S.’s Idea of Diplomacy with Ecuador Is a Multibillion-Dollar Loan Trap
Vijay Prashad | Independent Media Institute – TRANSCEND Media Service, 25 Jan 2021

22 Jan 2021 – The deal with Ecuador is not seen as a one-time arrangement to “eject” China from the hemisphere. If Arauz becomes the next president of Ecuador, he will face the challenge of this U.S.-imposed conflict against China as one of his first obstacles. President Moreno and former president Trump have already begun the sabotage.

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How a Lawbreaking International Coalition Failed to Overthrow Venezuela’s Government
Vijay Prashad and Carlos Ron | Independent Media Institute – TRANSCEND Media Service, 18 Jan 2021

12 Jan 2021 – Last 15 Jan the newly elected National Assembly took its seats in Venezuela. That day the Lima Group released a statement saying they did not recognize it and called upon countries to “disregard” it and recognize a former member, Juan Guaidó. The Group called for a “transition process” in Venezuela; in other words, the overthrow of President Nicolás Maduro and the Bolivarian Revolution.

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Chomsky and Prashad: Three Major Threats to Life on Earth That We Must Address in 2021
Noam Chomsky and Vijay Prashad | Globetrotter – TRANSCEND Media Service, 11 Jan 2021

5 Jan 2021 – Although the pandemic is the principal issue on all of our minds, other major issues threaten the longevity of our species and of our planet. These include:

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You Don’t Want to Imagine an Ocean without Coral Reefs—but You Might Have to
Vijay Prashad | Globetrotter – TRANSCEND Media Service, 11 Jan 2021

5 Jan 2021 – Scientists call the coral reefs the “rainforests of the sea,” because they are highly diverse ecosystems; their destruction would lead to the extinction of a large number of species. There is even a name used to describe this period of history—the Anthropocene. This term obscures the fact that it is the productive powers of capitalism that generated carbon emissions. It is not some vague term such as Anthropocene, but it is the social formation called capitalism that is central to global warming.

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The U.S. Is Determined to Make Julian Assange Pay for Exposing the Cruelty of Its War on Iraq
Vijay Prashad | Independent Media Institute – TRANSCEND Media Service, 7 Sep 2020

On September 7, 2020, Julian Assange will leave his cell in Belmarsh Prison in London and attend a hearing that has nothing to do with the reasons for his arrest from the embassy of Ecuador. On April 11, 2019, the UK Home Office spokesperson said, “We can confirm that Julian Assange was arrested in relation to a provisional extradition request from the United States of America. He is accused in the United States of America of computer-related offenses.”

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Why Iran’s Fuel Tankers for Venezuela Are Sending Shudders Through Washington
Vijay Prashad | Independent Media Institute – TRANSCEND Media Service, 1 Jun 2020

26 May 2020 – Why the United States did not block the Iranian vessels does not have to do with Iran or Venezuela alone. It has to do with the presence of China behind both countries.

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COVID-19: How China Broke the Chain of Infection
Vijay Prashad, Weiyan Zhu and Du Xiaojun | Independent Media Institute – TRANSCEND Media Service, 20 Apr 2020

As information about coronavirus emerged, the Chinese government and Chinese society began to organize an immense campaign against its spread.

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Trump Sends Gun Boats to Venezuela While the World Partners to Fight a Deadly Pandemic
Vijay Prashad, Paola Estrada, Ana Maldonado, and Zoe PC | Independent Media Institute – TRANSCEND Media Service, 13 Apr 2020

3 Apr 2020 – On April’s Fools Day, U.S. President Donald Trump gave a press conference where he announced a new “counter-narcotics effort” by U.S. Southern Command. “We’re deploying additional Navy destroyers, combat ships, aircrafts and helicopters, Coast Guard cutters…doubling our capabilities in the region,” he said. On 26 March, less than a week before Trump’s announcement, the U.S. Department of Justice indicted several members of the Venezuelan government for narco-trafficking. An indictment is not a verdict of guilt, merely a note—in this case – prepared by the U.S. government against an adversary.

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Why Sanctions against Iran and Venezuela during a Pandemic Are Cruel
Vijay Prashad and Paola Estrada | Independent Media Institute – TRANSCEND Media Service, 23 Mar 2020

In the midst of a pandemic, one would expect that all countries would collaborate in every way to mitigate the spread of the virus and its impact on human society. One would expect that a humanitarian crisis of this magnitude would provide the opportunity to suspend or end all inhumane economic sanctions and political blockades against certain countries. Is this not the time for the imperialist bloc, led by the United States of America, to end the sanctions against Cuba, Iran, Venezuela, and a series of other countries?

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IMF Refuses Aid to Venezuela in the Midst of the Coronavirus Crisis
Vijay Prashad, Paola Estrada, Ana Maldonado and Zoe PC | Independent Media Institute – TRANSCEND Media Service, 23 Mar 2020

18 Mar 2020 – The chief of the International Monetary Fund Kristalina Georgieva’s policy to provide special assistance to countries should have been sufficient for the IMF to provide the assistance that the Venezuelan government had requested. But, very quickly, the Fund declined the request from Venezuela. It is important to underline the fact that the IMF made this denial at a time when the coronavirus had begun to spread in Venezuela.

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Bolivia: An Election in the Midst of an Ongoing Coup
Vijay Prashad | Independent Media Institute – TRANSCEND Media Service, 17 Feb 2020

10 Feb 2020 – On May 3, 2020, the Bolivian people will go to the polls once more. They return there because President Evo Morales had been overthrown in a coup in November 2019. Morales had just won a presidential election in October for a term that would have begun in January 2020. The Organization of American States claimed that there was fraud in the election and Morales was prematurely removed from office.

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Libya Is Being Torn Apart by Outsiders
Vijay Prashad | Independent Media Institute – TRANSCEND Media Service, 10 Feb 2020

4 Feb 2020 – Six years after the catastrophic NATO war on Libya, it remains a country torn into shreds: two governments in place—one in Tripoli and one in Tobruk—and a civil war that has too many factions to name; several foreign countries intervene for their own narrow ends making peace impossible. Last year, it became clear that the already chaotic Libya would slip into disaster.

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What the Right Wing in Latin America Means by Democracy Is Violence
Vijay Prashad | Independent Media Institute – TRANSCEND Media Service, 27 Jan 2020

22 Jan 2020 – The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights—a body of the pro-U.S. Organization of American States—reported in December 2019 that there have been a series of massacres conducted by the armed forces of the current interim government in Bolivia. The use of the word “massacre” in this report is significant; these were not clashes or conflicts, but the targeted murder of civilians who supported MAS and Morales.

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The People of India Are Taking It to the Streets to Challenge Modi’s Bigoted and Dishonest Government
Vijay Prashad | Independent Media Institute – TRANSCEND Media Service, 30 Dec 2019

23 Dec 2019 – Every day and in every part of India, hundreds of thousands of people—mainly young people—gather on the streets to express their anger at the government. Their protests, like those of the protests in Chile, emerged out of one particular grievance but then have cascaded outward.

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India’s Government Is Going to War against Its Own People
Vijay Prashad | Independent Media Institute – TRANSCEND Media Service, 23 Dec 2019

18 Dec 2019 – On December 13, the United Nations high commissioner for human rights released a powerful statement that criticized India’s new citizenship law. The UN said that not only does this law violate India’s obligations to conventions, treaties, and compacts that it has signed at the global level, but also that it is in violation of its own Constitution.

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After Evo, the Lithium Question Looms Large in Bolivia
Vijay Prashad | Peoples Dispatch – TRANSCEND Media Service, 25 Nov 2019

The overthrow of the elected leader cannot be understood without a glance at the nation’s massive reserves of this crucial mineral.

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Brazil: Lula Is Free!
Ana Paula Vargas and Vijay Prashad | Brasil de Fato – TRANSCEND Media Service, 11 Nov 2019

9 Nov 2019 – Just before 6 p.m. on 8 Nov, Brazil’s former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva walked out of prison. Lula was imprisoned in April 2018 on a 12-year sentence. 580 days of prison are now over, as the Federal Supreme Court ruled that inmates who have not yet exhausted their appeals should not be held behind bars. –The Verdict Was Not Directed at Lula, but at the Undemocratic Nature of the Judicial System in Brazil

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R2P – All Member States
Vijay Prashad | The Beirut Forum – TRANSCEND Media Service, 8 Jul 2019

In abstraction, the R2P doctrine is of great interest. But, in concrete terms, it is merely an instrument of Western power and has been used entirely to extend Western interests on the world stage. To believe that R2P can be harnessed to the cause of the Palestinians is illusionary. The doctrine of R2P needs to be withdrawn. ‘All member states’ need to find another instrument to tackle the destruction of the planet and its peoples.

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The Plot to Kill Venezuela
Vijay Prashad | Globetrotter – TRANSCEND Media Service, 20 May 2019

13 May 2019 – Weisbrot and Sachs say that these illegal sanctions “fit the definition of collective punishment,” as laid out in the Hague Convention (1899) and in the Geneva Convention (1949). Tens of thousands of Venezuelans are dead. Tens of thousands more are under threat of death. Yet, no one has stood up against the grave breach of the convention in terms of collective punishment. There is not a whiff of interest in the UN Secretary General’s office to open a tribunal on the accusations of collective punishment against Venezuela.

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The Rightful Owners of a Key Island US Military Base Would Like It Back, and the UN Agrees
Vijay Prashad | Independent Media Institute – TRANSCEND Media Service, 25 Mar 2019

The Chagos Archipelago belongs to the country of Mauritius; it’s not a bargaining chip for the American empire.

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Disaster Capitalism in Brazil: Mining Greed Produces a Horrific Death Toll
Vijay Prashad | Independent Media Institute – TRANSCEND Media Service, 11 Feb 2019

7 Feb 2019 – On January 25, 2019, a dam burst in the town of Brumadinho, north of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The dam was built by the iron-ore company Vale to store residue after the iron ore had been extracted. Once the dam began to crumble, it did not take long for its 13 million cubic meters of iron waste to sweep down onto the workers and into their town.

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How Today’s Crisis in the Congo Began
Vijay Prashad and Kambale Musavuli | Independent Media Institute – TRANSCEND Media Service, 4 Feb 2019

30 Jan 2019 – The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is both one of the richest countries in the world, and one of the poorest. It is one of the richest countries in terms of raw materials—essential goods such as cobalt and coltan, which make electric cars and smartphones work. The current estimate of the DRC’s raw materials is $24 trillion. This is a mind-blowing number. It is probable that the DRC is the richest country in the world in terms of its natural wealth.

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The Cuban Revolution, 60 Years On
Vijay Prashad | Independent Media Institute – TRANSCEND Media Service, 7 Jan 2019

3 Jan 2019 – Early on New Year’s Day 1959—60 years ago—Cuba’s dictator Fulgencio Batista boarded a flight for the Dominican Republic. The previous day, Batista had bragged that his forces had won the decisive Battle of Santa Clara. The morning newspapers printed his side of the story. It was false. Che Guevara’s band of troops in Column 8 had taken the town and derailed a train filled with Batista’s U.S.-backed forces.

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G20: You Can Smell Tear Gas in the Streets as the Oil Industry Squabbles
Vijay Prashad | Independent Media Institute – TRANSCEND Media Service, 10 Dec 2018

4 Dec 2018 – Last week, two important meetings took place—one, in Buenos Aires, of the G20 nations, and two, in Vienna, of the OPEC. The two meetings did not produce any resolution to the major economic challenges in the world. But they did soothe the nerves of financial markets… From the air-conditioned rooms of the oligarchy, we go to the tear gas of the streets.

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Big Pharma Greed and Bad Government Policy Are Keeping the World from Ending AIDS
Vijay Prashad | Independent Media Institute – TRANSCEND Media Service, 3 Dec 2018

December 1 marks the 30th World AIDS Day—and despite leaps forward in medicine and awareness in affluent parts of the world, it’s still a big problem elsewhere.

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The International Monetary Fund Flexes Its Muscles in Latin America
Vijay Prashad | Independent Media Institute – TRANSCEND Media Service, 19 Nov 2018

Thanks to the IMF, the pockets of the forgotten from Argentina to Mexico will suffer so that finance is left intact.

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There’s a Growing International Alliance of Right-Wing Demagogues
Vijay Prashad | Independent Media Institute – TRANSCEND Media Service, 29 Oct 2018

From Brazil’s Bolsonaro to the Philippines’ Duterte to the leader of them all, Trump.

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Saudi Arabia Falls Apart
Vijay Prashad | Independent Media Institute – TRANSCEND Media Service, 22 Oct 2018

Could Khashoggi’s disappearance bring attention back to the devastating Saudi war on Yemen?

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How the Tentacles of the US Military Are Strangling the Planet
Vijay Prashad | Globetrotter – TRANSCEND Media Service, 8 Oct 2018

4 Oct 2018 -The overreach of the US military provides incentive for it to treat every conflict as a potential war. The US military has a staggering 883 military bases in 183 countries. In contrast, Russia has 10 such bases – eight of them in the former USSR. China has one overseas military base. These US-NATO bases provide instability and insecurity rather than peace. Tensions abound around them. Threats emanate from their presence.

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(Français) Crise humanitaire au Yémen: des millions de personnes sont concernées
Vijay Prashad | Investig’Action – TRANSCEND Media Service, 7 May 2018

La population du Yémen a désespérément besoin de signes que cette guerre va bientôt prendre fin.

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(Français) Comment faire des reportages à Gaza
Vijay Prashad | Investig’Action – TRANSCEND Media Service, 9 Apr 2018

Si vous êtes un journaliste occidental et que vous devez faire un reportage à Gaza, la meilleure chose à faire est de traiter les Palestiniens comme une menace. Leurs corps sont des armes, leur existence est dangereuse. Si un Palestinien est tué par un soldat israélien, le terme le plus approprié pour qualifier cela est “affrontement”. Normalement, des affrontements se produisent lorsque deux forces armées entrent en confrontation.

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Concentration Camps for African Migrants Blocked from Entering Europe Are Popping Up Across Libya
Vijay Prashad | Black Agenda Report – TRANSCEND Media Service, 8 Jan 2018

“The Europeans want to move their southern border from the northern edge of the Mediterranean Sea to the southern rim of the Sahara Desert.”

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(Français) Un million d’enfants sur le point de mourir du choléra. Qui va bouger le petit doigt?
Vijay Prashad | AlterNet – TRANSCEND Media Service, 11 Sep 2017

Depuis 2015, l’Arabie saoudite bombarde le pays le plus pauvre de la péninsule arabique. D’après l’UNICEF, un enfant meurt toutes les dix minutes au Yémen. Ces morts ne sont pas des tragédies, ce sont des crimes dont l’Occident est complice.

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(Français) Une crise globale massive : 201 millions de personnes sans emploi
Vijay Prashad | Investig’Action – TRANSCEND Media Service, 24 Jul 2017

Ni Miguel, ni Isabel ou Mohammed ne prospéreraient ici. Il n’y a pas de futur ici, mais seulement un présent tortueux et sans fin…

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Why NATO Has Become One of the Most Destructive Forces on the Planet
Vijay Prashad - AlterNet, 2 May 2016

Actions in Afghanistan, Europe, and Libya have created insecurity rather than order.

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Sanders, American Socialism and the Legacy of the Occupy Movement
Vijay Prashad - Frontline (India), 22 Feb 2016

Socialism is not typically associated with the United States. In fact, the U.S. is seen generally as antithetical to socialism.

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Libya’s Oil and ISIS
Vijay Prashad – al-Araby, 14 Dec 2015

Why the Islamic State is a secure investment.

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ISIS Oil
Vijay Prashad - CounterPunch, 7 Dec 2015

ISIS controls Iraqi oil fields near Mosul. They have been making millions of dollars each day by selling oil from these fields. How does ISIS get the oil from the fields in Mosul to the market? Vijay Prashad unravels the allegations that Turkey is in cahoots with ISIS.

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Regime Change Refugees: On the Shores of Europe
Vijay Prashad - CounterPunch, 7 Sep 2015

The West believes that it is acceptable for it to overthrow governments and bomb its enemies in the lands of the Third World. It sees this as the limit of its humanitarian interventionism or, in the language of the UN, “responsibility to protect” (R2P). When it breaks states, as it did in Libya, the West takes no responsibility for the broken lives of the people in those zones.

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The Nuclear Club: India Welcomed, Iran Shunned
Vijay Prashad - al-Araby, 9 Mar 2015

The parallel between the treatment of India and Iran demonstrates that the entire “Iran nuclear crisis” is a geo-political game. Despite all the fine language about proliferation and international law, the nuclear scofflaw finds the door open while the country that has adopted the established pathway is denied.

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Scarlett Johansson Is Right – The Face of SodaStream Doesn’t Fit with Oxfam
Vijay Prashad – The Guardian, 3 Feb 2014

Thanks to the star’s involvement with the Israeli company, illegal settlement activity is under increased scrutiny. This debate is better than silence, or than celebrity airbrushing of deep-seated problems. I welcome it.

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Habits of French Colonialism
Vijay Prashad – Newsclick, 4 Feb 2013

François Hollande’s claim that French military intervention in Mali will protect the country from Islamism is deceitful.

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