The Oh, Hello and welcome to Behind the News. My name is Dyke Henwood, the utterly

conventional two segments today. Conventional in number but not in content.

V.J. Pishad, we about bourgeois rot, and Vladimir Ischchenko will talk about Ukraine

during and after the USSR.

For many years I've been thinking, writing, and talking about the rot of the American ruling

class.

I've been meaning to turn these thoughts into a book for most of those years, but so far I've

lacked the self-discipline to do so, though I must summon the resolve.

I have written several articles for the socialist register on aspects of the topic, a piece

on the decline of the Wasps for Harpers, and a long essay called Take Me to Your Leader,

my notional title for my notional book, for Jacobin. So I'm always on the lookout for people

with smart perspectives on this issue. The other day I saw an essay by V.J. Parshad, written for a Globetrotter, an international syndication service, with the title,

The Remarkable Decline and the Global North's Leadership.

It's always good to hear from V.J. who is a remarkable breadth of interest and speaks about

them very well. He's making, if I'm counted correctly, his

13th appearance and behind the news. VJ grew up in India and then spent many years as a student in the

U.S. and then later as a professor at Trinity College at Hartford from 1996 to 2017.

Tired of the academic life, he threw it over to become director of the Tricontinental,

which describes itself as a People's Global Think Tank.

He's a prolific writer with over 20 books to his name. Most recently,

Struggle Makes Us Human, written with Frank Barat, and published by Haymarket, and the withdrawal,

Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, and the fragility of U.S. power,

...