Early this month, an Arab armed fighting force, called ISIS which stands for the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, begin to invade Iraq. As of today they have seized several major cities and are moving towards Baghdad. Iraq is a nation of 36 million people and is 169 square miles, which is the slightly larger than the total area of the United States city of Tampa, Florida.

The British established, the state of Iraq, through a 1920 mandate from the League of Nations. Since then imperialist have maintained a consistent instability in this region through the support of different religious and ethnic factions. Yeshitela will present the historical context of the imperialist attack on Iraq to control its oil reserves and production and address the reality of the US attack on Iraq in coming days.

China was a friend and has an extensive pedigree from its support of many African nations during and after their liberation struggles. It is a conservative estimate that more than 1 million Chinese live and work throughout Africa. In 2009, China surpassed the United States as Africa's largest trading partner.With a population of more than 1.3 billion people, heavily industrialized China has the second largest economy in the world and is considered a superpower. We will discuss with Yeshitela the troubling implications of the rise of China as the third superpower on the continent of Africa and the recent intervention of their military to protect its economic interest. He will explain the relationship between these two events and the thesis of his new book,An Uneasy Equilibrium: The African Revolution versus Parasitic Capitalism.