thebarricade

"On the Barricades" - s04e17 "If wars were won by spreading memes, the Russians would have lost many times over," says the special guest on this episode of "On the Barricades," Mark Sleboda. He is a former US Navy specialist, a military expert, and an academic who attended the London School of Economics before becoming a senior lecturer at Moscow State University. He is still in Moscow, and he provides a very serious, sober, and specific evaluation of the current on the ground, analyzing all of the major events of the last three weeks that are directly or indirectly related to the ongoing military campaign. Together with the show's hosts, Maria Cernat and Boyan Stanislavski Mark discusses the evolving military and political situation and offers insights and comments that you are unlikely to ever see in the mainstream media anywhere in the Western world. We discuss the military errors made by Russian strategists, the unrealistic initial Russian expectations, and some of the rather inexplicable (at least by simple logic) moves made by both the official Ukrainian authorities and the Russian offensive forces. We also talk about the hopes that both sides of this horrifying war seem to have.

"On the Barricades" - s04e18 The diplomatic front of the war is discussed in the second part of the discussion with ex-US military man and scholar Mark Sleboda on the war in Ukraine. Some commentators argue that the Russians are implementing a strategy that Western politicians and even military personnel do not fully comprehend. Russians, for example, are mocked for suffering far more casualties than the US Army did in Iraq during the same time period. The Russian philosophy appears to be that they are willing to accept losses rather than bombing or shelling the cities, towns, or villages ahead of them to the ground to avoid casualties on their end. They are also conducting negotiations and making military advances at the same time. Again, something strange if viewed through Western eyes. What do Russia and Ukraine hope to gain from the talks? Moscow has stated unequivocally that it will not compromise on the terms it has proposed, and Ukrainian authorities have stated unequivocally that they will not back down from those terms. What exactly is there to discuss? Are we witnessing a replay of the Syrian scenario?

“On the Barricades” s05e30 Loud in the press this week has been the major development in the NATO-Russia proxy war in Ukraine, what is described as a massive “Russian defeat” in the Kharkov region of east Ukraine. Russia’s manpower-lite and artillery-heavy military formation was forced to organize a withdrawal from Kharkov, facing multi-axis and casualty-heavy attacks from the Kiev forces, which unlike the now-destroyed Ukrainian military of some months ago, are fully equipped and operated as a NATO army manned by Ukranians. Despite evacuation efforts, this leaves behind Eastern Ukranians who will pay brutally with their lives as the Kiev bureaucracy implements what it has already announced as cleansing for anyone deemed a Russia-collaborator. There is now a massive movement of both NATO-Ukrainian and pro-Russian military building up in the south and south-east, preparing for a storm in the next weeks. To assess this situation, “On the Barricades” has the pleasure of bringing repeat-guest Mark Sleboda onto the show for a two-part series this weekend. Mark is a former US Navy specialist, military expert, and academic who attended the London School of Economics before becoming a senior lecturer at Moscow State University. In this first episode, hosts Maria Cernat and Boyan Stanislavski enlist Mark’s military analytical expertise to help piece together interpretations of the events in Kharkov, and to dissect the big questions that follow. He tells us about what’s happening on the ground, what military entities are engaged, what the events represent in terms of the Moscow and Kiev-NATO strategy, and what changes to the dynamic could come out of this now unstable balance of forces. We also hear updates about the role of Belarus in the war, the relevance of the renewed Azerbaijan-Armenia conflict, as well as the general mood of the Russian population toward the Putin regime and their attitude toward escalating the conflict to a full-out mobilization for war with NATO.

“On the Barricades” s06e27 Lately the western media has been trying to press upon the public opinion that victory for Ukraine is around the corner, that Bakhmut is about to fall. Meanwhile Zelensky reinforces his failure. What is really around the corner and where is the war headed– there and globally? To assess the latest on what is actually going on in the war in Ukraine– on the ground, in the information wars, and with respect to international ramifications– “On the Barricades” has the pleasure of bringing back Mark Sleboda onto the show for a special mid-week, two-part release. Mark is a former US Navy specialist, military expert, and academic who attended the London School of Economics before becoming a senior lecturer at Moscow State University. The second part of the discussion, recorded Feb 10, covers: 01:00 Did the Russians learn their lesson that they have to invest more in soft power? 03:15 The fate of Odessa 8:45 Is Belarus likely to get involved in the conflict? 16:16 Israel attacking Iran, Iran aiding Russia 21:00 Can the West emerge stronger from the war in some ways, and as a threat to China? 24:45 Resurgence of Great Russian nationalism and power politics in Russia? 28:50 Psychological effects of those on the West 30:45 Mark’s decision to move to Russia 31:50 Trends in Bulgaria in opposition to the war? The Orban model

“On the Barricades” s06e26 Lately the western media has been trying to press upon the public opinion that victory for Ukraine is around the corner, that Bakhmut is about to fall. Meanwhile Zelensky reinforces his failure. What is really around the corner and where is the war headed– there and globally? To assess the latest on what is actually going on in the war in Ukraine– on the ground, in the information wars, and with respect to international ramifications– “On the Barricades” has the pleasure of bringing back Mark Sleboda onto the show for a special mid-week, two-part release. Mark is a former US Navy specialist, military expert, and academic who attended the London School of Economics before becoming a senior lecturer at Moscow State University. This first part of the discussion, recorded Feb 10, covers: 1:00 What’s happening on the ground, around Bakhmut? 10:48 Updates on the info war front 13:15 Western Europe and US relations, global economic reconfigurations 30:03 The way out of the war, partitioning Ukraine 45:15 National identity partition of Ukraine

“On the Barricades” s05e31 To assess the changing balance of forces and situation in Ukraine, “On the Barricades” has the pleasure of bringing repeat-guest Mark Sleboda onto the show for a two-part release. Mark is a former US Navy specialist, military expert, and academic who attended the London School of Economics before becoming a senior lecturer at Moscow State University. After our first episode’s dissection of events on the ground in Ukraine, in this second episode, hosts Maria Cernat and Boyan Stanislavski take a dive with Mark into some broader philosophical and human-existential questions raised by the current reality in Ukraine and globally. We begin with the question of whether peace is possible in the long or short term – the chances that the conflict will freeze any time soon at a bargaining table. With war as with peace, the question is on whose terms? And what drives war and the mass support we see for it anyway– the system enslaving us to the profit motive or some more basic human condition and prone-ness to othering? Speaking on existential-scale problems humanity faces and what they actually look like: there is not only the potential of World War 3, but also the looming threat of climate crisis, another area of Mark’s interest. War and added impacts of climate change will make the current energy crisis and impending food crisis in Europe and elsewhere a drastically dire, prolonged situation. But is it hopeless?

“On the Barricades” s06e44 In this two-part release of “On the Barricades,” hosts Boyan Stanislavski and Maria Cernat speak with a pair of academics inside Russia to get at some truth about the figure so well heralded by the West, the “oppositionist” and “honest” challenger to Putin, Alexei Navalny. There’s been some backlash after the Navalny extravaganza and misportrayal went perhaps too far in the Oscar-winning documentary with his name. It’s time to get a better grip on the Russian political system as a whole and Navalny’s role in it. In this first episode of two, we speak again with Dr. Stanislav Byshok, who is a Russian political scientist living in Moscow. He is frequently described as a scholar deconstructing nationalism and populism in international researcher databases. He's written a number of books and reports on current Russian, Ukrainian, and European politics, including one called “Navalny: the man who stole the forest.” We discuss the Russian political system and whether Putin has any genuine threats to leadership in the party system. Is Navalny indeed a threat to Putin, and does Putin see it that way? Then we hear an overview of Navalny’s political career and changing way of branding himself and rhetoric: to what extent is/was he a nationalist, or anti-immigration, in his politics at different points? To what extent can we say he is a liberal democrat, and how does that look in Russia? Navalny also wrote a memorandum about the Russia-Ukraine war about a month ago from jail, saying that Ukraine should return to its 1991 borders, which included Crimea. What to make of this while the war continues?

"On the Barricades" - s04e40 🙏💰 Please, support us via PayPal at https://paypal.me/thebarricade or by becoming a Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/thebarricade 🙏💰 This week's episode of "On the Barricades" is divided into two parts, with our special guest being show friend and Eastern-Europe affairs expert Malgorzata Kulbaczewska-Figat in both. She is a Polish journalist who was previously the deputy editor of the Polish leftist platform Strajk.eu. She is now an independent journalist and one of the founders of the podcast Cross-Border Talks, which can be found at this link: https://crossbordertalks.wordpress.com/ In this first installment, we discuss the rather unexpected crossover between LGBT advocacy, queer culture, and the issue of the 'Collective West' arming Ukraine's official authorities. We now have a new White House spokesperson, who is said to be a daring queer figure who could be a competent speaker for the American president. However, this is clearly some sort of virtue signaling, which of course has no bearing on reality, particularly political or military reality. It provides a strange veneer of morality and correctness to the well-oiled American killing machine. Ukrainian flags are carried alongside rainbow flags on demonstrations in Eastern Europe, as if this country is a haven for nonheteronormative people. What is causing this? And why isn't the LGBT community protesting this rather obvious use of their symbols and legitimate struggles to support Western imperialism and other similar phenomena? At the end of the discussion, we also address a critical issue raised by Sergey Naryshkin, the head of Russian foreign intelligence, that the Polish authorities are considering invading Ukraine from the West and occupying a significant portion of its territory in order to fulfill its allegedly never-ending expansionist dream and reclaim some of the lands that belonged to the Polish state prior to WWII. Is there any truth to this?

The Indian version of the Corona Virus was covered extensively during the past weeks in the mainstream media. The terrible images of people being cremated in the fields because the Indian crematoriums were no longer coping with the high death toll made it to the front pages of all major journals across the world. Barring a few exceptions, there were no articles that tried to take a closer look at India to discover how the largest producer of vaccines faced such a tragedy. India was not only notorious this year for the catastrophic management of the pandemic. The largest strike ever recorded in human history started last November when more than 250 million people joined a protest that marked their opposition against the cutting of farming subsidies by the right-wing government of Narendra Modi. Little has been said about the structural causes of these extraordinary events taking place in the second-largest country in the world by population. We invited On the Barricades, Vijay Prashad, renowned activist, scholar, and political commentator, to explain to our viewers in Eastern Europe and across the world how it was possible to have 250 million people on strike at the beginning of the year and how the largest producer of vaccines in the world failed so miserably in dealing with the pandemic.

"On the Barricades" - s04e16 The second part of this conversation with Pat Byrne, a political analyst, author, and historian of the European left, is about the leftist media and their coverage of the ongoing conflict in Ukraine. Since Russia's invasion on February 24th, only a few leftist outlets with large audiences have been able to defend themselves against an unprecedented avalanche of Western propaganda, which is clearly becoming a global craze. Many people have unfortunately fallen for it, and we're trying to figure out why in this discussion. What is it that is causing the authors and hosts of many leftist platforms to applaud more war and join the Western jingoistic campaign? Is this an indication of ideological frailty? Is this a result of a lack of journalistic training? Or is it just another opportunistic moment?

“On the Barricades” s06e19 This weekend we have the military analyst Scott Ritter on the show– the man now widely credited and famed for his ability to make sense of the concrete reality and geopolitics of the NATO-Russia proxy war in Ukraine, cutting across the Western media narrative. Moreover, Scott’s background and expertise can bring us closer to grips with the meaning of war in terms of its socio-moral dimensions, which is an angle the hosts could not wait to discuss with Scott on this recording. The hosts of “On the Barricades,” Maria Cernat and Boyan Stalinslavsky, begin with Scott on what’s coming next in Ukraine: some conditional predictions for how the dynamics of the war in Russia could evolve, and the latest view on what the endgame is. Since we last spoke with Scott in September, there have been some significant turns– for instance Putin’s decisive break with attempts to integrate Russia with the West, and it becoming an open fact that the prospect of the Minsk Agreements was a sham from the start. Will there be a major Russian escalation to secure a Russian victory, and if so when and how could that look? How far has Russia gone towards destroying the Ukrainian state and military, and is it prepared to do so? What kind of partitioning of Ukraine or state formation could be conceivably established, under Russia’s thumb, for Western Ukraine? Then there are the concerns raised about the impact of the war on the rest of Europe and the huge cost that would be paid if Romania and Poland acted on their illusions of military might and mobilized against Russia. On the other side of the analysis, there is the philosophical but also practical question of humanity and war– whether the two are not diametrically opposed. Scott explains the sense in which honour might exist on the battlefield and in military conduct, as well as the sense in which the Ukrainian general Valery Zaluzhny, who is suspected as the Putin regime’s pick for future leadership in West Ukraine leadership, is “honourable” in contrast to the politicians. Scott Ritter became a critic of US foreign policy after serving as US Marine intelligence officer and a UN weapons inspector. He recently authored a book called “Disarmament in the Time of Perestroika: Arms Control and the End of the Soviet Union”: https://bit.ly/3UtTmm7

Olena Lyubchenko, a PhD candidate in political science at York University in Toronto, is the author of the brilliant piece “On the Frontier of Whiteness? Expropriation, War, and Social Reproduction in Ukraine.” She came on the Barricades to discuss Ukraine as a militaristic capitalist state. Hers is a perspective absent from the mainstream press: what is the nature of the Ukrainian capitalist state? In the first section of our show, Olena Lyubchenko and Maria Cernat talk about Ukrainian working-class people and how the militarization that started years ago affected them. The burden of a hyper-militarized society was especially detrimental to Ukrainian women working underpaid jobs and dependent on a defunded public sector. They were also the ones who had to take care of children, go to work in menial jobs in the Global North, and remit money back to Ukraine. Europe and its leaders praise the brave and heroic Ukrainians fighting to preserve European values, but they seem to completely ignore the fact that it was the hard labor of Ukrainian women over the decades that made it possible for the state to function. And, as Olena points out, there were no hot bowls of soup or lionizing articles awaiting them when they had to flee the economic war waged against them by the capitalist state. Olena Lyubchenko is, of course, a very articulate intellectual, but she is also a person whose grandmother still lives in Eastern Ukraine - near the zones where heavy fighting is now taking place. She offers the perspective of someone who’s been directly affected by the Ukrainian state’s capitalist laws which act, for instance, to make it difficult for citizens in separatist areas to collect their pensions. But she is also a person who can take these experiences and put them into the context of class, race, and gender-based oppression.

"On the barricades" — s02e55 You have most likely not heard about the humanitarian crisis on the borders of Belarus and Poland, as well as Belarus and Lithuania and Latvia. This is because, as soon as the news went viral, the Polish government declared a state of emergency along the border between the two countries, and the entire area was immediately cleared of all journalists and activists. This is what emergency laws permit. The migrants are trapped on a small sliver of no man's land between Poland and Belarus, with border guards and the military preventing them from crossing. Before the state of emergency was declared, activists and politicians were physically prevented from assisting them with water, food, and blankets. The Polish government's policy is to starve those people or let them die of hypothermia. And it began to happen. At least five people have died in the last few days. Warsaw rushed to accuse Lukashenko of waging a hybrid war against Poland and the EU. There is little doubt that the Belarussian authorities are behind this, but no one is asking why they would do so or why this hybrid war is taking place. Additionally, you'll learn about a pretty famous or rather infamous birthday party of a well-known Polish journalist that was leaked to the press. It's quite amazing what happened there.

"On the Barricades" - s04e10 #onthebarricades Mihnea Teodor Popescu is one of the most vocal members of a Romanian initiative seeking to oppose war and fight imperialism by denouncing both Russia and NATO. This initiative was formed by a group of undergraduate and graduate collegians–the Union of Militant Students–and it advances progressive ideas and values such as anti-imperialism and social justice. The members of this organization recently attended a pro-Ukraine protest in Bucharest organized by Remus Cernea, a former MP, where they were met with violence simply because they held banners condemning Russia and NATO. Pro-NATO organizers demanded that police remove the group from the protest. It's becoming harder and harder to oppose both Russia and NATO, especially in today's ultra-tense environment with accusations of treason and collaboration with Russia so predominant in the public discourse. It's the ultimate cancellation attempt! Maria Cernat and Boyan Stanislavski invited Mihnea Teodor Popescu to discuss this initiative and his role in it and also to talk about the incident at the pro-Ukraine protest. Join the conversation to find out more and also to learn about possible ways forward for actual pacifists!

Irina Slav is a Bulgarian specialist in the production and trade of energy. In addition to being an author at OilPrice.com, she is also the proprietor of an independent blog, which can be found on Substack: https://irinaslav.substack.com/ Irina sat down with Boyan Stanislavski to discuss the latest anti-Russian rage displayed by so-called "European leaders," which translates (among other things) into some really convoluted politics regarding the purchase of gas and oil from Russia. "It's almost as if Europe is running after having shot itself in both legs," Irina Slav concluded at one point. She discusses and explains the EU's top politicians' wishful thinking about supplying gas from Qatar, the United States, or Azerbaijan rather than the morally corrupt Russian. Follow us on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and Twitch, as well as our Substack (https://thebarricade.substack.com/) newsletter and our newly opened Odysee channel. The video will be released on Friday, May 20th, at 6 p.m. CEST. Check out the hosts' channels on Telegram 📨📩📝 Maria ➡️ https://t.me/maria_cernat Boyan ➡️ https://t.me/BoyanStanislavski 📺Odysee: https://odysee.com/@TheBarricade 📺 Rumble: https://rumble.com/user/thebarricade 📻 Spotify: http://bit.ly/Barricade_SF 📻 SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/baricada 📃 Facebook: https://facebook.com/EnBaricada/ 📃 Twitter: https://twitter.com/_the_barricade_ 🙏💰 Please, support us via PayPal at https://paypal.me/thebarricade or by becoming a Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/thebarricade 🙏💰

“On the Barricades” s06e45 In this two-part release of “On the Barricades,” hosts Boyan Stanislavski and Maria Cernat speak with a pair of academics inside Russia to get at some truth about the figure so well heralded by the West, the “oppositionist” and “honest” challenger to Putin, Alexei Navalny. There’s been some backlash after the Navalny extravaganza and misportrayal went perhaps too far in the Oscar-winning documentary with his name. It’s time to get a better grip on the Russian political system as a whole and Navalny’s role in it. In this first episode of two, we have Maria Ananyeva back with us. She is an academic and analyst living in Moscow who is able to share her critical perspective on questions such as: how popular is Navalny in Russia? How progressive is Navalny, really– does his political program go beyond mere opposition to Putin? What function does he play in the political system and society? What is his main purpose according to his backers and in relation to the current ruling regime? Maria explains some of the propaganda circulating that casts Navalny as everything from a saviour, anti-Christ, a horseman of the apocalypse, and more. Less publicized and present in the media is another, perhaps more serious voice of dissent in Russia: Murza Khan, recently jailed and who delivered a speech in the US.

Welcome to the Barricades! Join us for this special edition of our show, where we discuss an exceptional and yet extremely ridiculous event that recently took place in Romania. On December 13, Romania set a new record for violent politicians acting insanely. Lucia Gorraci, an Italian journalist, wanted to interview Romanian MP, Diana Șoșoacă, about the vaccination campaign. They began the interview, but Diana Șoșoacă interrupted the discussion and told them they were not who they claimed to be, and she asked them to leave her office. Șoșoacă obstructed the journalists' exit by positioning herself in the doorway, seconds after they attempted to leave. Lucia Gorraci was able to escape, but Diana Șoșoacă locked the door of her office, preventing the rest of Gorraci's crew from leaving. Diana Șoșoacă began filming and dialed 112, the Romanian emergency number, claiming that people in her office were harassing her. The police arrived minutes after the call was placed. Lucia Gorraci met with the police officers and attempted to explain why her crew was imprisoned in Șoșoacă‘s office. When Gorraci returned with the police officers, Silvestru Șoșoacă, Diana Șoșoacă’s husband, grabbed the Italian journalist's hand, punched her, and bit her hand! But wait, there's more! The police officers took the journalists to the station, searched them, and detained them for several hours. They were only released from police custody after the Italian embassy intervened. What is even more troubling is that important mainstream Romanian media amplified the narrative that Diana Șoșoacă was actually a victim. The Russian state media platform, Sputnik, ran stories presenting senator Șoșoacă as a victim of Western imperialism! Such blatant lies have started to gain traction in Romanian society.

"On the Barricades" - s04e09 #onthebarricades Social media and the constant commercialization imperatives of journalistic discourse have made the public receptive to very simplistic narratives. The war is no exception. The media narrative pushed in the public arena is that of the “real” man—advancing his agenda (Vladimir Putin) or bravely defending his country (Zelensky). As the violent invasion of Ukraine continues, the Romanian public sphere is dominated by narratives in which we have a powerful hero or anti-hero. In this episode of On the Barricades, Maria Cernat presented some of these narratives, showing how Romanian right-wingers are ready to project onto Vladimir Putin the kind of masculinity they aspire to, displaying a love/hate relationship with the Russian leader, while progressive and liberal circles seem quite taken by the image of Zelensky, the hero that is supposed to save not just Ukraine, but the whole world from the Russians! Watch the show to learn more about this very interesting dynamic!

"On the Barricades" - s04e41 #UkraineRussiawar #Russia #Ukraine #Poland #Lviv #KresyWschodnie #OntheBarricades This is the second installment of "On the Barricades," which was released this week. Boyan Stanislavski and Maria Cernat sat down with Malgorzata Kulbaczewska-Figat to discuss another bizarre propaganda talking point: Poland is considering invading Ukraine from the west, occupying large portions of its territory under the guise of a "peacekeeping mission," and then integrating the areas around Lviv and Tarnopol into the current Polish state. On its face, the claim is absurd. Despite this, many people, including some very intelligent journalists and podcasters, have fallen for Sergey Naryshkin's bogus claim, which he first made two weeks ago. Naryshkin is the head of Russia's foreign intelligence service, and it appears to be little more than a propaganda talking point. Why isn't Poland intervening in Ukraine right now? Is it capable of carrying out such an action on its own? How could it possibly handle such a job? This and more will be covered in our conversation with Malgorzata Kulbaczewska-Figat at 3 p.m. Central European Summer Time. That is not all. We're also talking about the looming plight of Ukrainian refugees in Poland, as the government has completely privatized (outsourced?) the problem. Nothing has been done to help the millions of people who have arrived in Poland in the last two months; they have been distributed to private citizens' homes and a few hotels. The government promised financial assistance, but no money has been delivered. In the meantime, tensions are rising not only between Poles and Ukrainians, but also within the Ukrainian diaspora.

”On the Barricades” - s04e11 #onthebarricades When we first tried to record this interview, the Kyiv-based sociologist and activist Oksana Dutchak had to quickly exit her home because of an air raid alarm. The ongoing war in her country had a dramatic effect on her life since she was forced to flee Kyiv with her family and move to the Western part of the country. Despite these dire circumstances, Oksana Dutchak sat down with Maria Cernat and tried to explain the current situation in Ukraine, how the situation is evolving, and most importantly, how ordinary people are coping with the situation. We discussed the tragedy of a war between very close people since the Ukrainian and Russian language are very similar and a significant proportion of the country’s population live in mixed families. Oksana Dutchak studied gender inequality in male-dominated professions in the Center for Social and Labor Research, a Kyiv-based NGO. She was a staunch anti-militarist feminist who criticized the Ukrainian government’s tendency to militarize the country. We discussed how her feminist ideals was challenged by the Russian military invasion and how life changed after this dramatic event.

“On the Barricades” s05e45 On October 2 Bulgaria held its fourth round of parliamentary elections in 18 months, seeing the previously-ousted mafia-profiled Boiko Borisov and his GERB party back to power with 25% of the votes, just ahead of the previously-governing liberal party of pro-NATO hard-liners. However the voter turnout was record low, despite the rift between popular sentiment and the previous government's pro-NATO inclinations on Bulgaria’s involvement in the war in Ukraine– and some appearance of this in the pre-election debate, for instance with the anti-NATO “pro-Russian” party Revival taking 10% of the votes. The parliamentary crisis continues with elected representatives’ unwillingness to form a governing coalition. But likely it will be forced by imperialist influences as needed for a war the West can’t afford to lose. Reflecting on the current situation in Bulgaria and just why the political system is a complete failure, and how the liberal economic order completely undermines any chance at democracy in Bulgaria, we have repeat-guest Arto Artinian on this week’s release of “On the Barricades.” Arto is a Bulgarain leftist and professor of sociology at the Borough of Manhattan Community College, City University of New York. Arto and hosts Boyan Stanislavski and Maria Cernat discuss: 1:00 The election results and why parliamentary democracy is a complete failure in Bulgaria 6:50 Why did 60% of the population not show up to vote? Why did all electoral attempts at real change lead nowhere? 17:42 Who to blame: the politicians? How was this process of decline possible from the start 50:22 How Russiaphobia/ Russiaphilia operates in Bulgaria and Romania, and what it’s based on.

"On the barricades" — s03e19 #onthebarricades !!!SPECIAL EDITION!!! This is part one of a special edition of our show this month, hosted by Canadian-American journalist and filmmaker Paul Jay, as part of a co-production between "The Analysis" and "The Barricade." ➡ https://theanalysis.news/ ➡ https://thebarricade.online/ In this episode, we discuss and deconstruct the ongoing, rather irrational fearmongering about Russia allegedly preparing to invade Ukraine 🇷🇺 🇺🇦 The entire story appears to be a hoax concocted by 'anonymous sources' who 'leaked intelligence' to the Washington Post in early November 2021. While the story received widespread coverage in the international media, there is no evidence that the Russian military made such preparations. We also examine the historical context of the current conflict in the Donbass, the emergence of the two breakaway republics, and the overarching reasons for the major conflict in which the Kiev authorities have been embroiled with the Russian administration since 2014.

Olena Lyubchenko, a PhD candidate at York University in Toronto, came On the Barricades to discuss how she experienced some of the reactions that followed the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Olena is the author of the brilliant article “On the Frontier of Whiteness? Expropriation, War, and Social Reproduction in Ukraine” in which she first tackled the issue of the hypocritical reactions to the severe crisis in her country. She was brave enough to denounce the theatrics of the Housing Corporations in Canada. Just months ago, they were evicting migrants who were unable to pay rent due to the Covid pandemic. However, they suddenly discovered their humane side in offering shelter to Ukrainian refugees. Olena Lyubchenko and Maria Cernat debate the booming Ukrainian surrogacy business and its political economy. Why did Ukraine become such a hub for wealthy Westerners in search of surrogate mothers? How do race, gender, and class contribute to this situation?

“On the barricades” — s02e43 #academia #intellectual_laborers #censorship Arto Artinian is a Bulgarian-born US academic teaching at the City University of New York. Maria Cernat invited Arto Artinian to On the Barricades to discuss his experiences as an intellectual laborer in the educational system in the United States. Arto has long experience of teaching in high school and college, so it is fascinating to hear him explain what it was like to become a high school teacher and what it means to be a teacher in college. Much of the academic experiences are glamorized, but, as our discussion will show, this is only a reflex of the era when college professors enjoyed a different social status. Nowadays, university is all about money and producing obedient workers. All this and plenty more on this edition of "On the Barricades".

"On the barricades" — s03e06 #onthebarricades As the fourth wave of the global pandemic hits Eastern Europe, the failure of Romanian statehood becomes more apparent. While the police, military, and intelligence services are flush with cash, hospitals are in disrepair. Recently, two major medical facilities burned down as a result of no one taking care of the electrical grid, which had never been repaired or renovated in the previous 30 years. Those hospitals were, of course, all built before 1989, but they are still considered part of Romania's "sad communist legacy" (sic!). On top of that, those hospitals are completely overcrowded as a result of a massive anti-vaccination campaign in Romania led by right-wing lunatics and the Romanian Orthodox Church. Patients are now being transported to Hungary for treatment. Not only that, but it's all taking place in the midst of a major political crisis. The state is in utter disarray. See Maria Cernat's intervention for more information and a competent commentary! Boyan Stanislavski describes the situation in Poland, or more specifically, on the Polish-Belarusian border. The Polish government is clearly involved in criminal activity. Many people have died as a result of the actions of the Polish police, border guards, and military, and many more are suffering incredible hardships as a result of the emergency state declared along that border over a month ago. No journalists are permitted to do their jobs, but many do. It's only because of them that we know anything about what's going on there. Unfortunately, the Left's behavior in this situation is also very ignorant, as it does not appear to want to challenge the government politically, but instead creates a moral outrage. While the Polish government's actions are morally repugnant, the public sees them as "border protection" rather than an act of war on a few hundreds or thousands of people who will all die like flies from the cold weather, a lack of food, or medicine. This, however, is of no concern to the West, which is to blame for the crisis. The Western establishment, along with the so-called "democratic opposition" in Poland, are hallucinating about Poland leaving the EU. Boyan Stanislavski's intervention provides all of this and more. This episode is part of our monthly "On the barricades" thumbs-up and thumbs-down series. Youri Smouter, a Euro-Afro-American Marxist and "1+1" youtuber, hosts it.