00:00:00: This is the Urban Political.
00:00:03: The podcast on urban theory, research and activism
00:00:32: into a strategic gateway to the Indian Ocean.
00:00:35: Through this project, The Indian government claims it will be able to control and restrict the flow of goods through Malacca Strait A logistical choke point similar to the Strait of Ormuz.
00:00:45: As Piyush Sikh Saria writes in his book THE GREAT NIKO BARBET TRAIL The Project is not only going to be disastrous for the Shampana Nikogari tribe who are directly dependent on these forests with their livelihood but also wipe out the habitat of some of the most critically endangered megafauna for whom The Island is the only habitat.
00:01:06: Even if built, the project will have to reckon with regular earthquakes and tsunamis.
00:01:11: yet despite all this critique in these reports that are being published, the Indian government is going ahead with a project at full speed – it wants.
00:01:21: So in our cities and geopolitics mini-series so far we have looked at nodal cities, logistical corridors, border infrastructures and everyday geopolitics.
00:01:38: What has been missing however is the puzzle of geopolitical ecology which would like to explore this bonus episode where were joined by two excellent guests who published a wonderful editorial on that topic.
00:01:54: So we joined today by Garrett Grady Lovelace and Malini Ranganathan.
00:01:58: Thanks for being on the podcast!
00:02:00: Thank you so much for having us Nitin,
00:02:02: yes honored to be here
00:02:04: thank you I think the listeners probably know your work already but if you don't mind it'll be nice If he could maybe just introduce yourself And um Maybe point to some of your work first The uninitiated listeners.
00:02:21: Thanks a lot.
00:02:22: Yes, my name is Malani Ranganathan and I am a urban geographer by training and also political ecologists, a scholar of environmental justice.
00:02:32: Focused on South Asia in particular the processes through which cities are developing highly unequal ways and excluding the caste oppressed ethnic and racial minorities.
00:02:45: I do work also with United States on Environmental Justice particularly around climate vulnerability in Washington DC.
00:02:53: And overall, I think of myself as a traveling companion in struggles against imperialism and colonialism especially seen in the kinds of impunity that we see.
00:03:03: In Palestine today and so have had has been a core part of my scholar activism over the last three years.
00:03:10: Yes Thank you Nitin So honored to be here and to be in dialogue.
00:03:14: i teach an research agricultural policy an agrarian geography focusing on colonial histories and anti-colonial struggles related to land, labor and food systems.
00:03:26: So I have a particular focus in U.S.
00:03:29: agricultural policy and its international contexts and consequences—and that's everything from food aid to trade… …to commodity dumping... ...and broader seeds of agri-diversity and data power
00:03:43: dynamics.".
00:03:45: I'm trained as a geographer, also the theology background ethics bioethics and do all my work community-based research.
00:03:51: So working with and for frontline agrarian organizations in coalitions.
00:03:56: thank you Thanks
00:03:57: Malini thanks Gavit.
00:03:59: so just to reminder that this series is a collaboration between urban political podcast Urban Geography And The Second Cold War Observatory.
00:04:08: i really enjoyed by the way reading your editorial.
00:04:11: it sort of brought forward some of the things that have been thinking about and I was so, i'm so grateful you wrote this please.
00:04:20: So your editorial argues that geopolitical ecology reveals ecological formations on the pinning.
00:04:27: state-led territorial expansion militarized security an extractive accumulation could maybe begin by explaining what geopolitical ecology means to in the current conjuncture?
00:04:44: Yes, thank you for that.
00:04:45: I mean maybe i'll take a round of it and then Malani can jump in... And by the way it's been so generative and wonderful to co-think with Malani on these!
00:04:53: Well we're both trained as critical geographers.
00:05:06: security focus on into war mongering.
00:05:09: So we began that essay saying, this was back in twenty-twenty three were warning the world that the machinations of more explicit warmongering are coming where we're in DC when the belly of the beast and just thinking through how our colleagues are thinking and framing The World it's very much US versus Iran U S first China us vs Russia And This kind Of War meets.
00:05:30: War on Terrorism On steroids Was Already Percolating Even before the genocide, the Israeli-US genocide against Palestine.
00:05:37: The kind of hot violence version of this low violence got going in late twenty three I would say as we've been wrestling with this.
00:05:44: We're thinking of geopolitical ecology As sitting at the intersection of political ecology Which is a field that we both have deep roots in That interrogates the root causes and consequences of environmental inequities And critical geopolitics which we think rejects imperial legacies at work in dominant conceptions of security and world order.
00:06:03: So, we're bridging these two and really deepening that intersection drawing on feminist and decolonial geopolitics and critical agrarian studies.
00:06:12: so it's not just geopolitics plus ecology.
00:06:16: We are thinking through the root causes an historical approach to de-colonial thinking To unpack what is called Geopolitics the ecological plunder at work.
00:06:30: So when you see a description of a conflict prone region that is an obfuscation, land grab or water grabs which it's a discursive hiding and justification.
00:06:43: And we're at the heart of where that's happening intellectually, academically.
00:06:47: So we wanted to kind of get the word out that even just allegedly neutral descriptions of geopolitics as ideological struggles were a cover for the grab of land or food and water.
00:07:01: but Malani feel free jump in.
00:07:03: That was really comprehensive and I think gets to the heart of the project that we're trying to do here in this sort of nascent field of geopolitical ecology.
00:07:11: You know, there's no ready-made canon.
00:07:13: There is not large literature which one can fall back on but one can draw as We Do On Really Rich Theoretical Traditions Particularly feminist anti-colonial indigenous black radical traditions And thinking about how resource confiscation land grabbing But also multiple forms of dispossession can be often at the heart of state power.
00:07:37: These are not incidental to State Power, they're very mechanisms by which State Power
00:07:41: reproduces.".
00:07:42: The interesting thing about the word geopolitics is that it tends to be as Garrett said a mask for
00:07:49: wide
00:07:50: array things just taken for granted.
00:07:52: so sometimes you open with beautiful vignette on what's happening.
00:07:58: It's merely to consolidate India's geopolitical position, right?
00:08:02: In terms of oceanic trade and commerce.
00:08:05: And what that ends up doing is it kind of provides a gloss for political power across borders or sort of contests between states.
00:08:12: but then is the gloss over veneer-over in which ecological resources... I'm using this very broad sense too mean land resources water resources foodways other forms of ecological resources can often be at the very fulcrum of state power, and also ecological inequities can then result from these types of long-standing contestations between states.
00:08:40: So really to kind of pull the veneer off this very sort of colloquially almost used term geopolitics with an uncritically use term.
00:08:49: it's not merely just international relations right?
00:08:52: It is deeper than that.
00:08:53: its a production that serves a hegemonic status quo.
00:08:59: If we even think about the categorization of the world, historically first and third-world global south, global north... Even this notion of the geopolitics in the Middle East as if it's its own little bubble happening on its own terms or African geopolitics these processes have histories and part of critical geopolitics is to denaturalize these taken for granted geographical imaginaries, for one.
00:09:28: And second two kind of really expose what it's driving on par with the root causal analysis that Gareth spoke about in Politically Called What's Really Driving State Power and Consolidation Of All Power Across Borders Even I would just add.
00:09:44: then reiterate a description that was given earlier.
00:09:47: Thank you.
00:09:48: Thanks both.
00:09:49: in your essay, You don't focus on cities.
00:09:52: primarily it's um but the processes you describe are profoundly urbanizing.
00:09:59: so logistical corridors extracting infrastructures militarized redevelopment frontier organization securitize public spaces.
00:10:06: I have a question regarding what role do cities and urbanization play within geopolitical ecology?
00:10:13: being located in the Valley of The Beast, as Garrett here called it.
00:10:16: In DC.
00:10:17: so I wanted to maybe understand a little more about uh the role of cities perhaps?
00:10:24: I'll take a stab at that and then Garry can also broaden to think about the linkages between city and country side and city and rural.
00:10:31: At this point in time in twenty-twenty six i don't think its coincidence That the leader Of United States which is now not only one of the world's greatest war mongers, but is also unabashedly stealing resources from petroleum to land.
00:10:50: Is a real estate magnate?
00:10:53: How does Trump make his money?
00:10:54: if you look at Trumps history and he inherited this for his father they were racist real-estate dealers in brokers New York of Trump properties, on which I've written in my book Corruption Plot Story that picks up the late capitalist city.
00:11:14: That are essentially making it like windfall profits but often through backdoor deals with right wing political leaders and oligarchs in cities around the world including India.
00:11:24: so there is a particular way urban land and the accumulation of capital in cities is really concentrated, it also leaves a lot of room for machinations.
00:11:36: And not just the consolidation of wealth.
00:11:39: literally you could make such a profit today right?
00:11:42: In terms of urban man real estate.
00:11:44: but there's also this place where political power is consolidating so that economic role the urban areas play the ways in which they draw into other circuits and are also drawn commodities, right?
00:12:04: The flow of stocks and financial commodities as sort of theorists in critical geography.
00:12:09: And the importance of space is really important to capital and spatial kind of connection and the deployment.
00:12:16: some spaces are valued or devalued.
00:12:18: thus we have the pristine all white lilies suburb America and then we had the sacrifice zone where AI data centers are being built now which our black communities so even taking like within a region of literally delineating and demarcating difference in value, producing values through devaluing other spaces.
00:12:41: And have that within cities.
00:12:42: but also the city is doing it to other areas.
00:12:45: so for this purpose I think urban comes into view as a capital generator power excellence right?
00:12:52: It's sort.
00:12:54: And to that extent, I think it has a really important role to play in geopolitical ecology.
00:13:01: But we have not disconnectedly about studies but how they're really nodes inflows of capital transnationally and as small point like when you were writing this Geopolitical Ecology paper then our follow-on piece on Palestine right?
00:13:17: This whole peace plan for Gaza which essentially has real estate sharks from the United States circling around trying from the death and destruction over-the-dead bodies of Palestinians, right?
00:13:30: It is what's going on.
00:13:32: Like it's another real estate fantasy.
00:13:35: A lot my urban friends were saying like this is unreal The level rendering and Disneyfication that happening through This very grotesque form of real estate capital Touchdown in Gaza.
00:13:47: Now we have no idea whats gonna happen with that plan.
00:13:50: But the Riviera was a real estate fantasies for most.
00:13:53: So everything
00:13:56: Malini said, but I think going even further the geopolitical ecology lens points to The fact that binaries are how racial capitalism Profiteers.
00:14:10: it's the food of racial capitalism.
00:14:12: It feeds on the binaries.
00:14:13: and so the West versus the rest.
00:14:16: the developed first the underdeveloped the rural verse the urban.
00:14:19: That is all deliberate.
00:14:21: to dichotomize urban in rural.
00:14:23: Um, and so guess who wins when you've dichotomized urban rural?
00:14:27: You know the people who are literally gentrifying both.
00:14:30: The people who were grabbing the land-the real estate moguls in the urban um Who are working hand-in-hand with a neoplantation.
00:14:37: It's it's its same beast.
00:14:39: Its just A version of the world is a plantation ag industrial system which Israel is using all over the West Bank right now, and I can get to a more recent.
00:14:48: The USDA has funded Israeli ag tech since the seventies.
00:14:52: hundreds of millions Of dollars have funded that takeover And they just expanded it from Israel proper too Which you know obviously?
00:15:01: That's a very contested term but the current version of Israel To the web into Golan Heights to Syria Now All of the usda funding for Israel Ag Tech Is Right in the middle of the Golan heights as well As all the signatories of the Abraham Accords.
00:15:13: so What we're doing with geopolitical ecology is, there's no urban without rural and vice versa.
00:15:19: And it so important to connect... The land grabs at work in both, from an economic perspective.
00:15:25: From a spatial perspective and from a discursive perspective because the solidarity of urban rural could topple this.
00:15:32: so as long as Urban Rural are pitted against each other and classified as binaries then these same forces that are capturing value will proceed unabated.
00:15:41: Also there is like a lingering anti-agrarian or a denigration of agrarian realms in scholarship, and the sector that I'm in in academia.
00:15:51: And so even critical scholarship—critical geography, critical political ecology oftentimes favors or centralizes the power dynamics at work in cities and urban places —and sidelines the agrarians' struggles an agrarium agency-atwork.
00:16:07: So it's an intellectual blind spot, not to focus on agrarian and see how plantation economies are the same.
00:16:14: Political economy.
00:16:15: is financialization speculation or happening in urban?
00:16:18: And how connected these struggles are.
00:16:21: just one last thing to add.
00:16:22: you know It's really fascinating and disturbing at this point of time The way in which skyrocketing fertilizer prices You mentioned Hormuz at the beginning right as being very damaging to agriculture in India.
00:16:37: And of course, you know the farmers have been very much at the forefront of demanding fair prices and ensuring that they don't bottom out in terms all their own livelihoods right now because of high cost-of inputs for fertilizers.
00:16:51: That's going to have such ratcheting effects on economy and it's going to actually lead to more people being pushed out, especially marginal farmers.
00:17:01: Being pushed out of agriculture if they cannot make ends meet the cannot pay debts back right?
00:17:06: And so that deep connection of what is happening transnational leaf with oil prices inputs to fertilizers how thats affecting food production, farmers livelihoods in a very important agricultural region of the world and then potentially leading to spin-off effects in urban areas.
00:17:24: These are real through lines that are very important to recognize in any kind of conceptualization
00:17:32: of geopolitical ecology.
00:17:33: Thanks I was also thinking about earlier Malini.
00:17:35: you were talking about how critical geopolitics is different than IR international relations racial capitalism feeding off binaries.
00:17:46: So what do you see as the limitations of the mainstream geopolitical analysis that is kind of dominant at the moment?
00:17:54: There's, uh...of course also newer approaches to talking about Second Cold War and some other sort-of novel approaches.
00:18:02: so I was kinda wondering How does geopolitical ecology perhaps relate to some of these existing approaches and how does it go beyond, perhaps?
00:18:12: And how does that unsettle some of this approach as well.
00:18:16: I think i already mentioned there are these tired tropes and Garrett mention binaries that divide the world up.
00:18:22: That is kind of a bread-and-butter of geopolitics.
00:18:26: It's deeply problematic.
00:18:27: you know These first versus third world, urban versus rural.
00:18:31: But I think there's other common sense terminology that sits within geopolitics such as failed states and this notion of conflict-ridden region.
00:18:40: And what this
00:18:40: does is it locates causality within the local.
00:18:45: Oh, as if somehow there's a state in Sudan that has just failed because it is backwards and it is uncivilized without understanding the deep colonial extractivism around minerals in the region.
00:19:01: The role of European imperialism and fueling issues they're continuing to have afterlife et cetera.
00:19:07: And our listeners will certainly get the point I'm trying make here about this really very problematic term But even the notion of conflict-ridden region, right?
00:19:17: There's this tendency to think about oh you know The Middle East is too complicated.
00:19:22: It's just a conflict written region like Israel and Palestine have a longstanding Conflict Right And so there's this way in which conf geopolitics gets chalked up to a complicated conflict Which then again does a gross disservice to that root.
00:19:37: causal analysis, I think is so important in political ecology.
00:19:41: Even with the media they're very complicit and these tired tropes of geopolitics reproduce rather than questioning
00:19:50: it.
00:19:51: All of this.
00:19:52: There's a book, Why Nations Fail?
00:19:53: And our response is like why fail nations?
00:19:56: who benefits?
00:19:57: when you get to sit back and give some another nation an F?
00:20:00: um that you somehow are innocent in the fact there was entire histories of colonialism much less ongoing extraction underdeveloped, uncivilized failed state conflict-pwn region.
00:20:17: and because we're in a sector where this is reproducing itself.
00:20:21: Where power reproduces itself discursively We see that when young person who has very good intentions for peace For you know well being of the world gets trained into a geopolitical imaginary That inscribes and enforces This idea that there are failed nations There are successful nations are innocent nations, then they go out and they enact that on the world.
00:20:46: So we're watching that happen!
00:20:48: The other thing is just nation-state as a dominant scale of reference?
00:20:51: It's so recent...so it's such an ahistorical—such an apolitical —such an erasure of colonialism to kind of lock in the current modern day nation state borders…and it lends itself to militarizing those borders because you know, literally with highly securitized borders.
00:21:11: And then I'll also say it lends itself to kind of a big man versus Big Man as if the entire diverse gorgeous humanity shenanigans are somehow like subsuit, we're all subsumed within that.
00:21:31: It gives them more power.
00:21:32: it lends itself to dictators taking the helm of.
00:21:35: you know there's such an ego To this big man politics.
00:21:39: That's a self-fulfilling prophecy.
00:21:41: So they only say kind of a psychopathic narcissism would want to take that role You know.
00:21:46: and so then we're stuck with...with With this geopolitical imaginary that We're all kind of suffering in.
00:21:51: There's so much more to say but I think i'll pass the mic.
00:21:56: In the discussion we've been having so far, you have been moving across stales and spacetimes from infrastructures and ballers to agrarian struggles and plant free transformation.
00:22:06: So I had a question regarding the methodology and conceptual freshness that also geopolitical equality brings?
00:22:15: So i wanted maybe hear more about like how can geopolitical ecology help us think across these different spatial and temporal scales
00:22:26: going far beyond the nation state is so important for the project of geopolitical ecology.
00:22:32: And if you think about movements for agrarian injustice or movements around as we are now seeing more and more against oligarchy, or against forms of deepening inequality even mineral resource grabs that were seen right?
00:22:47: I think these all cross-border grassroots movements, they're coalitional.
00:22:52: I think what international relations does and i know that it's come a long way is really start at the unit of analysis on this state nation-state right?
00:23:00: And geopolitics do as well to study up geopolitics whereas geopolitical ecology might you know, ecologically rooted land-based analysis right of what really is going on the ground and then work up from there to understanding power.
00:23:19: Of course across scales, across borders, across time.
00:23:23: historical analysis it's very important.
00:23:25: so I think your methodological entry point is different.
00:23:29: if all you're doing is reading speeches of strong men or you're reading tweets And you're kind of thinking about great power rivalry through statements put out by federal governments or whatever.
00:23:44: How are you getting at that?
00:23:46: really the people, energies that come from the grassroots and even historicizing some of the terms much more?
00:23:56: And so methodologically I think it's very important for geopolitical ecology to turn into diverse languages to understand power right?
00:24:07: And this is one of the issues with academia, it's over-reliance on English language which I think has certain myopic outcomes.
00:24:16: Which you don't get that full spectrum off those who have historically been left out of an Anglophone sphere.
00:24:23: so methodologically even we made a pitch for that and in our Palestine work There's so many accounts by Palestinian journalists, academics students, farmers union workers that are describing the genocide in real time and this describing exactly what is going on.
00:24:44: And I think one of the benefits to social media.
00:24:46: you were seeing very immediate ground level reports like how do we build narratives even an agenda for for change based on those unlikely sources rather than relying on this sort of media industrial complex.
00:25:01: So that's, I think an important way of de-centering whose voice counts in the field of geopolitical ecology?
00:25:08: Yes so again everything Malini said...I will also say there is a discourse analysis.
00:25:15: what geopolitology?
00:25:16: it's counter narrative and saying its urgent to unpack dominant discourses because they're genocidal in impact and that seemed like a very bold statement to make.
00:25:29: A few years ago, you know as we were kind of saying... We didn't use the word genocide in the twenty-twenty three paper until deeper into twenty twenty three when the Israeli forces and the deliberate starvation of Palestine became so evident?
00:25:42: And we had so many ground reports So many Amnesty International United Nations reports UN special upturns.
00:25:47: but on The Right To Food Oxfam and these On The Ground report saying It's deliberate.
00:25:53: The food is in the truck, it's blocked!
00:25:56: The children are dying with their food meters away.
00:26:00: This isn't a humanitarian crisis?
00:26:02: this not just sad thing.
00:26:04: and to watch international liberal order unable
00:26:09: to
00:26:10: enact accountability All of a sudden, the urgency.
00:26:15: why wasn't there accountability for that?
00:26:17: What about all of well-meaning human rights organizations.
00:26:20: The entire sector does food security.
00:26:23: Famine was declared and it's right here!
00:26:26: So the urgency to unpacking words that are deflecting accountability becomes very important.
00:26:32: because if there is no accountability for Gaza... Guess
00:26:34: what?!
00:26:34: There will not be any for Lebanon and West Bank and Iran, and Yemen.
00:26:40: It's gonna keep going unless there is accountability in Cuba or Venezuela.
00:26:44: so the urgency isn't watching the dominant framework unable to even on its own terms provide for food for children you know?
00:26:54: And basic kind of liberal goals
00:26:57: yeah picking up from that guy I I really enjoyed the final section in your tutorial on geopolitical agroecology, where you talk about or introduce a more reparative and hopeful horizon.
00:27:14: So could you perhaps elaborate what geopolitical agriculture means both analytically and politically?
00:27:21: And what kind of alternative socio-economic and geopolitical futures does it open up?
00:27:27: Yes, thank you for that so much Nathan.
00:27:29: I appreciate it and i'll say um You know we as scholars?
00:27:33: I feel like our work is to unpack the terms.
00:27:36: They're doing so much damage, you know because we're in The belly of a beast or in the heart Of where they were producing itself.
00:27:40: but We are learning from global movements which have been Doing the work of connecting struggles for generations.
00:27:47: So the agroecology movement in the world with the food sovereignty movement and anti-colonial movements are so brilliant analytically, and doing such amazing political analysis.
00:27:59: I'm thinking of via Campesina...I am thinking about various kind seed networks The UN Declaration on the Rights Of Indigenous People And then later the UN Declaration On the Rights of Peasants In those working rural areas.
00:28:09: Those were examples of international and transnational coalitions of place based anti colonial analyses already happening.
00:28:17: And so I think our job is to say, look at how this incredible set of movements is intellectually sidelined in academia and indomitant geopolitical imaginaries an indomitable political analysis much less than like dominant geopower power.
00:28:31: So Our work is kind of connect the extraordinary grassroots movement that are already happening That a very transnational already been very politically conscious and know The whole time it's a land grab?
00:28:41: they're like, our land was captured.
00:28:47: We know it's all a water grab you know?
00:28:49: So our job is to kind of take the knowledge that has already been happening in movements around the world and bring those two places.
00:29:01: No, I think that's very powerful.
00:29:03: is this notion that academic theory often comes limping behind what's actually going on the ground in terms of social movements and these sort of libertary spaces.
00:29:12: And even narratives right?
00:29:14: There's a way in which even academic discourse the focus to learn from different constituents who we need to also think of as experts.
00:29:30: I think one of the problems with academia is really have this sort of obsession in these very, very prominent public and private institutions rather than experts being those who are closest to the land.
00:29:43: Those were actually witnessing ecocide and the kind of depletion of soils and the depletions water resources
00:29:50: etc.,
00:29:51: And that's where politically called is always been powerful right?
00:29:54: It's like an analysis on land-based attachments movements human experiences certainly water as part but I'm really talking about resource at the center.
00:30:06: So there's that part about too, so it is almost like an agenda to both problematize hegemonic narratives and follow foot steps of people who are closer to land in trying understand power on this larger scale.
00:30:22: To understand power you don't necessarily have work at levels experiencing that power firsthand in their everyday lives and not take as gospel truth, right?
00:30:37: The narratives of hegemonic groups.
00:30:40: And so that's part of the agenda I think too In terms of ethics and methodology.
00:30:48: Thank you Thanks Mandini.
00:30:51: So i wanted to maybe enter into a final question That I had You talked about your forthcoming paper which sounds really interesting and I would love to read it.
00:31:03: i wanted to also ask if you're developing a book on geopolitical ecology because,i think It Would Be A Very Useful Entangue Book.
00:31:11: um...I'm Really Interested In Because.. I-I Would Like To use Geopolitical Ecology in My Research And Im-Im Sure A Lot Of Listeners Would Also like To Use It.
00:31:20: So I Wanted To Check As To What Kind of Research Agendas Political Practices An Intellectual Collaboration That The Framework of Geopolitic Ecology might enable moving forward.
00:31:33: Well, I can talk just briefly about our paper and then maybe Garrett could explain some of the directions we're hoping to chart around this field very collaborative in you know... In best case scenario it would be a transnational endeavor right?
00:31:46: And not just located at single university or just only among academics but our paper that is under review, and we've submitted revisions as well at Political Geography is titled Food As Necropolitics The Starvation of Palestinian Sovereignty And the Stakes Of Geopolitical Ecology.
00:32:08: It's for a special issue on geopolitical ecology.
00:32:11: We very much get that this issue was bringing up earlier.
00:32:15: Why has the liberal international order seemed to have so spectacularly failed to avert this acute forced starvation, um...to the point where we did reach level five.
00:32:30: of the famine barometer, and one of very raison d'etre's of the liberal order post-World War II was to avert this kind of massive humanitarian catastrophe by states signing on just sort basic humanitarian principles of cooperation and multilateralism.
00:32:48: And so in some ways we almost asked this question historical question that many have been asking there.
00:32:55: Gaza reveals system, right?
00:33:00: The liberal order.
00:33:01: And it's sort of failed in its own terms.
00:33:03: and is the failure?
00:33:05: or perhaps that the system was never intended to actually work for those who are considered the most devalued and dispossessed of the Earth—the wretched of the earth as Fanon would call it with a liberal order —never really designed to protect them because it is in fact a long shadow of imperialism by the very architects and their descendants order.
00:33:28: So we ask very provocative questions in that piece, but we essentially put at the heart these stories, the empirics... The endless endless.
00:33:36: I mean.
00:33:37: it is a data bomb that article because we've drawn so many different human rights articles and humanitarian reports to really painstakingly potentially even like disturbing way of food related atrocities you know from from the sort of bombing, of those who were going to seek flour when they were
00:34:01: hungry.
00:34:01: Right?
00:34:02: To... The atrocious Gaza humanitarian fund where literally Madsen Sonfonte said this is orchestrated killing.
00:34:09: you know.
00:34:10: so how does even food and humanitarianism serve as a vehicle of death dealing?
00:34:15: it's no coincidence that they were targeting agricultural workers and farmers, and foodways.
00:34:22: And the land now is untillable right?
00:34:25: So again like even though you know The Great Green Revolution all this advancement in addressing famine right?
00:34:34: Colonial famine was behind us starts the whole Bretton Woods institutions kind of thing where we have to sort cooperate to lift people out of poverty, because never again do we want the kind of fascism that we saw in Europe's Nazism.
00:34:49: And what
00:34:49: happens then?
00:34:50: is you see this pattern of genocide and repeating right at the twenty-first century?
00:34:57: Of course there are other very atrocious things happen when it comes up for starvation.
00:35:02: The paper about how liberal order has failed That is to say, and sorry for not defining it earlier.
00:35:12: It comes from the term NACRO which literally means death And Ashil Mbembe has theorized The politics of deaf dealing as opposed to biopolitics.
00:35:23: what Foucault talked about the politics and reproducing life, right?
00:35:28: Which was also a nineteenth century onwards.
00:35:31: Eighteenth-century kind of project of liberal government really that the necropolitical lived on through colonialism.
00:35:38: And we're saying it not just lived onto European colonialism as having particular end date but has continues reverberations in today's political world order.
00:35:48: Nitin thank you so much for that great question.
00:35:51: I have been working with agriecologists in Cuba and learning from agriacology.
00:35:56: In Cuba, I've had the honor of working with them and learning form them for about a decade, decade-and-a half.
00:36:01: And so um...I have been writing and have paper under review About U.S.-Cuba geopolitics as a land grab And as agricultural and the weaponization of hunger, which was the entire blockade for all these years.
00:36:17: The tightening up most recently so that there's active food insecurity on an island very well educated committed to everybody not going hungry.
00:36:25: this is a strangulation Cuban economy but failure policy endorphin academia who says like, oh this is an ideology.
00:36:33: This is communist first capitalism at the end of Cuba for another Puerto Rico, you know in the neo-colonies.
00:36:44: So this is an agribusiness capture just like it always was You know.
00:36:47: so they a historical dimension of cuba was uh Was a plantation?
00:36:51: It wasn't a banana Republic.
00:36:53: all those years until The Revolution which was not communist at first it was actually agrarian uprising Cuban afro-cuban black you know, agrarian many female leaders and then Fidel got the glory.
00:37:07: but the erasure of agrarians.
00:37:09: power is everywhere.
00:37:11: I'm thinking about Cuba as a classic case getting distracted by heads-of state when in fact it's a land grab.
00:37:17: food is the weapon, but also I think it's urgent for us particularly in the US based you know institutions to talk about the extreme funding of military.
00:37:28: Trillions of dollars nithin!
00:37:30: It's unbelievable how much the Iran attacks on Iran are costing like public funds are being plundered by military contractors right now.
00:37:42: And AI and big tech, you know?
00:37:44: which has this kind of fascistic crazy really eugenic origin story?
00:37:49: some of the big billionaire tech bros.
00:37:51: so it is urgent for us to call out The extreme militarization in the extreme capture of water through data centers and point To how the terms geopolitics get used to justify everything but in fact just a capture of water and land for our generations, people on the front line in these inequities.
00:38:13: There are so many ways to apply it!
00:38:16: That's actually a tragic part that is so relevant.
00:38:29: Just calling it geopolitical inequality also is so powerful in itself, but the way you unpacked for our listeners today was so-so powerful.
00:38:37: Thanks thanks for being so generous and sharing on this.
00:38:41: Thank
00:38:42: You So Much!
00:38:43: I'd love to stay in contact with you and those who
00:38:53: are working.
