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[UNLOCKED] Alliance of Sahel States Pt. 1: Burkina Faso – An Anti-imperialist Introduction w/ Prudence Iticka

Release Date: 06/05/2025

NATO Pt. 1: An Anti-Imperialist Introduction w/ Elina Xenophontos

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NATO—The North Atlantic Treaty Organization—far from being just a defensive alliance between the United States and Europe, is actually the spear tip of imperialism’s military arm. It’s the force used to discipline any global actor who dares to defy US hegemony and dominance on the world stage. From Greece to Libya to Ukraine—NATO is where we must look to understand how destabilization occurs and how defiant states across the globe are subjugated and opened up to Western markets and capital. And we’re lucky enough to have a terrific guest on today to tell us all about how it all...

[TEASER] Immigration, ICE, and Working Class Rebellion w/ Cecilia Guerrero

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This is a free preview of the episode "Immigration, ICE, and Working Class Rebellion w/ Cecilia Guerrero." You can listen to the full episode by subscribing to our Patreon here: As a Patreon subscriber you'll get access to at least one bonus episode a month (usually two or three), our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes, early access to certain episodes, and other benefits like stickers and bumper stickers—depending on which tier you subscribe to. access to bi-weekly bonus episodes ranging from conversations to readings and more. Signing up for Patreon is a great way to make Upstream a...

Iran Pt. 1: A Socialist Introduction w/ Séamus Malekafzali [BONUS]

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As seems to be the case with most of the countries that the United States goes to war with—much of the population here doesn’t know very much about those countries. And what they do know is usually Western propaganda, misinformation, or outright lies. This couldn’t be more true with Iran, where if it were up to our political leaders and corporate media, the story that Iran was a perfectly happy democracy that was abruptly and rudely destroyed by a rabid and power hungry group of Ayatollahs would never go unquestioned. They certainly wouldn’t want you to know about the Western backed...

Post Capitalist Parenting Pt. 3: A Dialectical Perspective w/ Breht O'Shea

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One of the most radical things you can do is live your life in direct opposition to the forces that control our society. Not just fighting for policies or organizing your community, although those are certainly important parts of it, but also living with values that oppose the values of our dominant society. And even more importantly, raising the next generation to embody those values—not in a coercive way, but through organic parenting and role modeling that make radicalism irresistible. This is how we raise revolutionaries: instilling community, love, egalitarianism, and a need for justice...

[TEASER] China Pt. 6: The Long Transition Towards Socialism w/ Gabriel Rockhill

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This is a free preview of the episode "China Pt. 6: The Long Transition Towards Socialism w/ Gabriel Rockhill." You can listen to the full episode by subscribing to our Patreon here: As a Patreon subscriber you'll get access to at least one bonus episode a month (usually two or three), our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes, early access to certain episodes, and other benefits like stickers and bumper stickers—depending on which tier you subscribe to. access to bi-weekly bonus episodes ranging from conversations to readings and more. Signing up for Patreon is a great way to make...

[UNLOCKED] Alliance of Sahel States Pt. 1: Burkina Faso – An Anti-imperialist Introduction w/ Prudence Iticka

Upstream

Imperialism is the primary contradiction facing the globe—and the split of the world into two poles, the imperialists and the anti-imperialists, is going to continue to shape our revolutionary struggles moving forward. This anti-imperialist struggle is occurring all over the Global South, and perhaps nowhere quite as prominently as in Africa's Sahel region, where the countries of Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger have been waging a struggle against neocolonialism and building a movement towards pan-Africanism through the Alliance of Sahel States—an alliance that has received the praise of...

How to Fall in Love with the Future w/ Rob Hopkins

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If you look around at the state of the world—and the despair that comes with the reality of climate change, fascism spreading its tentacles around the world, the ethnic cleansing of Gaza—it’s very difficult to feel hope. It begins to feel like the forces of destruction and death have colonized our futures, limiting our dreams and stifling our imaginations. It’s in these times specifically that it’s essential we remember that the future, our dreams, our imagination—that these things are political. And that exercising our hope for a just and beautiful future is an important, in...

[TEASER] Alliance of Sahel States Pt. 1: Burkina Faso – An Anti-imperialist Introduction w/ Prudence Iticka

Upstream

This is a free preview of the episode "Alliance of Sahel States Pt. 1: Burkina Faso – An Anti-imperialist Introduction w/ Prudence Iticka." You can listen to the full episode by subscribing to our Patreon here: As a Patreon subscriber you'll get access to at least one bonus episode a month (usually two or three), our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes, early access to certain episodes, and other benefits like stickers and bumper stickers—depending on which tier you subscribe to. access to bi-weekly bonus episodes ranging from conversations to readings and more. Signing up for Patreon...

Post Capitalist Parenting Pt. 2: Reimagining the Family w/ Kristen Ghodsee

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There is nothing natural about the way we arrange families under capitalism—in fact, there are many who would argue that there is something quite unnatural about narrowing the experience of romance and child-rearing into the rigid form of the nuclear family. That there are much better ways of arranging these things might come as a surprise to some—but for those who have researched it, it’s no shock: there are much better ways of arranging things, and there’s quite a bit of evidence to back this up. Kristen Ghodsee is Professor of Russian and East European Studies and a member of...

[TEASER] The Imperial Boomerang w/ Julian Go

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This is a free preview of the episode "The Imperial Boomerang w/ Julian Go." You can listen to the full episode by subscribing to our Patreon here: As a Patreon subscriber you will have access to bi-weekly episodes ranging from conversations to readings and more. Signing up for Patreon is a great way to make Upstream a weekly show, and it will also give you access to our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes along with stickers and bumper stickers at certain subscription tiers. You’ll also be helping to keep Upstream sustainable and allowing us to keep this project going. The imperial...

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In this episode, we've brought on Prudence Iticka, a Camaroonian pan-Africanist and member of United African Diaspora and The Coalition for the Elimination of Imperialism in Africa, to tell us more about the AES and the struggle it's currently undertaking.

We begin with a brief history of Burkina Faso during the colonial period, and explore the rise of Thomas Sankara and the anti-imperialist movement he lead, his assassination and the neocolonial puppet that replaced him for three decades, and the recent rise of the revolutionary leader Captain Ibrahim Traoré. We talk about the Alliance of Sahel States (AES)—Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger—and how they are the seeds for a pan-African future and the leading spear in the fight against imperialism and neocolonialism. We explore imperialism as the primary contradiction in the world, how imperialist propaganda infiltrates Africa and what the AES are doing to combat it, and much, much more.

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