youssef bouchi

USAID has a complicated history. Its destruction represents an extension of, rather than a break with, decades of US foreign policy.

@uselessbouchi.bsky.social writes for RIGHT TURN (ISSUE #1)

it may be easy to discount the right as bigoted and therefore dismiss its complex beliefs and delusions… but doing so is dangerous because it is precisely in these complexities that we can find some exploitable cracks to win these people back, instead of pushing them farther away.

just finished reading @leninology.bsky.social’s Disaster Nationalism.
if you’re trying to wrap your head around the countless forces and contradictions that make up the not-yet fascism of our times, this book is an essential read. critical, sharp, yet somehow humble and self-reflective.

First Nation asks court to halt infamous B.C. mining site expansion | The Narwhal Xatśūll First Nation is challenging B.C.’s decision to approve Mount Polley mine’s tailings dam raising without its consent.

“We are on the front line of environmental harm caused by government decisions made without us.” Xatśūll First Nation challenges B.C.’s decision to approve the dam raising at Mount Polley mine, which had a catastrophic dam failure in 2014. New by @sevawood.bsky.social: thenarwhal.ca/xatsull-firs...

Issue 1 is HERE! 📖

Our first print issue launches on May 7 - join us for a LIVE podcast & party 🎉

Join @adriennebuller.bsky.social, @geoffmann.bsky.social & @quinnslobodian.com to discuss RIGHT TURN — on the afterlives of neoliberalism & climate politics in the age of the new right...

Turkey’s Political Crisis & Democratic Movement Since the stated goal is now an inclusive republic, it becomes necessary to reinvent a past that supports it.

Emre Öngün (@emreongun.bsky.social) writes about the revolt in Turkey, the “peace process” with Öcalan and the Kurds, the growing youth movement, and the resurgence of Kemalism.

newintermag.com/turkeys-poli...

The World Needs American Socialism When the American state makes our lives its business, we have to make its life our business.

Youssef Bouchi writes on the importance of American socialism from his perspective as an Arab immigrant in Canada:

"Grassroots movements in the U.S. already understand this [...] Our task from the outside is to support them."

newintermag.com/the-world-ne...

A state without borders; borders without states w/ Hicham Safieddine: zionist border regimes, tools of empire, and McCarthysim on campus geopolitical ecology · Episode

Hicham Safieddine and @uselessbouchi.bsky.social are two people I really enjoy listening to - especially when they talk about history, financial colonialism and (non)borders

open.spotify.com/episode/0Zdw...

Where to from here? Reflections of an Arab in the diaspora - Beirut Today We live in a world where crisis is here and now for some but elsewhere and not yet for others. Diasporic reality lives somewhere in between, suspended in a state of mourning and a state of survivor’s ...

happy to have contributed to Beirut Today. here are some reflections from the diaspora.

beirut-today.com/2025/03/15/w...

The Anti-Colonial Marxism of Mahdi Amel The Lebanese Marxist thinker Mahdi Amel was assassinated on this day in 1987. Amel developed a version of Marxism that was grounded in the experience of colonized societies, showing how class struggle...

Here's a piece he's written jacobin.com/2024/05/anti...

A state without borders; borders without states w/ Hicham Safieddine: zionist border regimes, tools of empire, and McCarthysim on campus geopolitical ecology · Episode

I interviewed the brilliant scholar Hicham Safieddine. Check out his insights here.

open.spotify.com/episode/0Zdw...

Fears of ‘famine, chaos’ in Gaza as Israel cuts off all aid during Ramadan Netanyahu says new weapons will help ‘finish the job’ as Israel blocks all ‘goods and supplies’ from reaching Gaza.

Palestinians in Gaza fear starvation during Ramadan after Israel blocked aid following Hamas’s rejection of extending the first phase of the ceasefire, which expired Saturday.

🔴 Follow our LIVE coverage:

Episode 18: Legacies of Empire w/ Kojo Koram The Break Down · Episode

brilliant discussion:

open.spotify.com/episode/7eCF...

‘I watched every video to see my father’s face’: the woman who became the voice of Syria’s missing on why she isn’t giving up hope Assad’s notorious prisons may have been opened, but Wafa Mustafa and thousands of others feel abandoned in their struggle to find loved ones When insurgents threw open the doors of Aleppo central prison in northern Syria as they overran the city in…

‘I watched every video to see my father’s face’: the woman who became the voice of Syria’s missing on why she isn’t giving up hope

Sign the Petition Release Palestinian journalist Ali Abunimah from Swiss detention

Please sign and share the petition in solidarity with Palestinian journalist, @intifada.bsky.social executive director, and Haymarket author @aliabunimah.bsky.social, who is being held in administrative detention in Zurich

Anti-Establishment Positions in Lebanon and Beyond w/ Karim Safieddine geopolitical ecology · Episode

it was a follow up on a previous episode where we discuss anti-establishment politics over lebanon’s modern history. we decided to do this again because so much has changed in the month since then!
here’s the first episode:
(you can also find it on apple)

The Present Moment in Lebanon, Syria, Palestine w/ Karim Safieddine

I just sat down with a brilliant political thinker and activist, Karim Safieddine to discuss recent developments in our region. He’s a PhD student in sociology researching non-sectarian progressive movements in Lebanon after the end of the war in 1990. Here’s the episode:

so far, the israeli occupation forces have killed 22 people and injured 124, according to the lebanese ministry of health.

today zionist forces were supposed to have completed their withdrawal from lebanese soil according to the ceasefire agreement. citizens who had been displaced from their homes returned, only to face these occupiers with nothing but their bravery, putting their bodies in front of tanks.

he’s been reading samir amin

what musk said in a nutshell:
multiculturalism is a cancer you should embark on a mass deportation plan just like us and forget about that guilt thing your ancestors have passed on to you. superemacy is totally OK. your nation is above all else sieg heil and goobye. am i getting this wrong?

one tiny example of the long-lasting impacts of genocide/urbicide. in a year and a half they destroyed capacities to sustain generations into the future.

meanwhile, incursions into the west bank (further enabled by trump’s lifting of sanctions on settlers) are truly horrendous. & many (incl those who celebrated ceasefire in gaza) seem quieter, most likely out of exhaustion. to face a monster w/ an infinite appetite for blood is indeed exhausting.

an immediate israeli withdrawal from lebanon is and must be a crucial part of nation-building in lebanon, a project that neither capitulates to israel nor alienates the shi’ite community. their presence isn’t really helping w/ the next task of constructing a cabinet.

israel plans on keeping it forces in the south of Lebanon beyond 60 day ‘deadline’ after already violating the ceasefire 630+ times. this move adds pressure on the new lebanese president and PM in how they ‘deal’ with hezb & the broader issue of an abandoned shi’ite community across the country.

As they wait for Nazism to pass, “they hide the truth from themselves, that it is barbarism, the supreme barbarism, the crowning barbarism that sums up all the daily barbarisms; that it is Nazism, yes, but that before they were its victims, they were its accomplices..."

Israel's genocidal war orphaned 40,000 children Israeli forces besiege Jenin, settlers attack Palestinians across occupied West Bank.

“As a fragile ceasefire takes hold in Gaza, the Israeli military now turns its attention to Jenin, whose residents have been targeted with lethal force again and again," says accountability director of Defense for Children International-Palestine electronicintifada.net/blogs/nora-b...

This series is sooo good!

Policing the Crisis is trump saying ‘law and order’ and deploying troops to the border to orchestrate a mass deportation of ‘criminal aliens’. it’s when he refers to his victory as ‘revolution of common sense’ and creates all sorts of panics in the US and across the world.

not Gramsci crawling out of his grave to write Cemetery Notebooks after hearing Trump say ‘revolution of common sense’ 🫠

Anti-Establishment Positions in Lebanon and Beyond w/ Karim Safieddine geopolitical ecology · Episode

check out the latest episode of my dear comrade's @uselessbouchi.bsky.social podcast series 'geopolitical ecology'. It's about multifaceted anti-establishment movements in lebanon, palestine and syria w/ Karim Safieddine
open.spotify.com/episode/0F22...