Audio Selection - Articles - Books

Audio Selection - Articles - Books - Recent Shows

Middle East Panorama radio show on Resonance FM 104.4
or http://www.resonancefm.com/
Every Friday 14.00 - 15.00 London time (GMT)

"If one day the people will to live
Then destiny must reply;
The might must disappear,
And bonds must break" Abu al-Qasim al-Shabbi

Audio (mp3)

>> The show theme music
>> Overcoming Zionism: Interview with Joel Kovel, 04July 2007
>> The War Economy of Iraq, Christopher Parker, 15 June 2007
>> Joel Beinin on Workers Struggles in Egypt, 30 March 2007
>> Assaf Adiv on Arab Workers plight and struggle in Israel, 23 March 2007
>> "Iran on the Brink - Rising Workers and Threats of War", Part 1, Part 2, 16 March 2007
>> Lara Deeb on Hizballah, Part 1, Part 2, 09 March 2007
>> "The Logic of Withdrawal" by Anthony Arnove, 26 January 2007
>> The Blood Never Dried: The British Empire in the Middle East, John Newsinger, 01 December 2006
>> China Mieville on the Middle East and International Law, Part 1, Part 2, 10 November 2006
>> Ilan Pappe, 'The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine', part 01 - part 02, 27 October 2006
>> The Middle East, Alan Woods, 22 September 2006
>> Khaled Hroub on Hamas, 25 August 2006
>> Jeremy Deare (NUJ) on the British Media and Lebanon-Israel, 18 August 2006
>> Arthur Neslen on the Israeli psyche, 28 July 2006
>> Yossi Schwartz on Isreal-Hizbollah-Lebanon and beyond, 21 July 2006
>> Endless War? David Keen, 14 July 2006
>> Interview with Greg Palast, 07 July 2006
>> Interview with Michael Schwartz,02 June 2006
>> Interview with Ted Honderich, 12 May 2006
>> Listen to Sajjad Khan on 'The Case for Action against Iran', 13 April 2006
>> Sami Ramadani on the media, torture, sectarianism and Iraq, 07 March 2006
>> Beyond Chutzpah - On the misuse of anti-semitism and the abuse of history - by Norman G. Finkelstein - 09 December 2005
>> Listen to Suad Khiary, an Iraqi activist and writer, 27 October 2005
>> Lal Khan, Pakistani Trade Union Defence Campaign, 29 July 2005
>> Listen to Murad Shirin on Iran's 2005 Elections, 24 June 2005
>> Interview with Mordechai Vanunu, 1 April 2005
>> Interview with Yossi Schwartz - On Israel/Palestine - March 2005
>> Listen to 'the Origins of Islam', 15 February 2005
>> Muslim-Marxist discussion, June 2004, Listen to Part I, Listen to Part II

Articles:
"Newspapers have degenerated. They may now be absolutely relied upon." Oscar Wilde

>> Miss C. (Uri Avnery)
>> Egypt: Boxing in the Brothers and Comrades and Brothers
>> Palestinian Union Hit on all Sides (Al Jazeera)
>> White Elephants (Uri Avnery)
>> How Truth Slips Down the Memory Hole (John Pilger)
>> In Picture: The Work of Naji al-Ali
>> "Democracy for the Few"
>> Royal Dutch Shell and the Struggle for Iraqi Oil
>> Pakistan: The Storming of the Red Mosque (Adam Pal)
>> The Situation in the Middle East (Lal Khan, Pakistan)
>> "Overcoming Zionism": A book Review
>> Palestine in Suicide (Roni Ben Efrat, Challenge Magazine)
>> Read this or George W Bush will be President for the Rest of your Life (William Blum)
>> Welcome to 'Palestine' (Robert Fisk)
>> World Press Photo of the Year
>> Welcome to 'Palestine' (Robert Fisk)
>> Trail of CIA Agents for Abduction of Expatriate... (WSWS)
>> In Iraq's four-year looting frenzy (Simon Jenkins, the Guardian)
>> The Chosen Tool of the Weak against the Mighty (Eric Rouleau)
>> A Blanket Boycott of Israel or ... (Yossi Schwartz)
>> Israel: Myhtologizing a 20th Century Accident (Gabriel Kolko)
>> Wave of Repression against the Left in Morocco (Marxist.com)
>> Secret US Plot to Kill Al-Sadr (The Independent)
>> Pakistan - A State at War with itself (Lal Khan)
>> Strikes in Egypt Spread from Centre to Gravity (MERIP)
>> Turkey: NATO's Islamists (Cihan Tugal)
>> Revolution, Flashmobs and Brain Chips (the Guardian)
>> Soros Kicked AIPAC. Obama Kicks Soros. Let's Kick All Three (Lenni Brenner)
>> Intensify the Witch-hunt (David Keen)
>> Lebanon - What is behind the Conflict? (Yossi Schwartz)
>> Racism, Resistance and all that Jazz, Mamoon Alabbasi
>> A Trial Giving Kangoroos a Bad Name (Stephen Lendman)
>> US and British Imperialism Staring Defeat in the Face (Rob Lyon)
>> Lebanon II: The Wider Picture (Roni Ben Ifrat)
>> The Blair Docrtrine: blood and money (John Pilger)
>> The British Army is just Another Militia (Kamil Mahdi)
>> Governmnet Death Squads Ravaging Baghdad
>> Muhammad's Sword (Uri Avnery)
>> The First Post-Zionist War (Roni Ben Efrat)
>> "Every Generation of Arabs Hates Israel More Than the Last" (U. Avnery)
>> Protests against ban on Sindh Teachers' Union (PTUDC)
>> Nostalgic about the War (Qantara.de) and Starry Night (audio)
>> Hizballah: A Primer (Lara Deeb, Middle East Report)
>> Pakistan: Teachers Union banned (PTUDC)
>> How I Found Myself with the Islamic Fascists (J. Cook)
>> Misplaying the Islamic power game (Financial Times)
>> Beware! The Attack on Democracy and... (Marxist.com)
>> G. Galloway on Sky News (audio/video)
>> To Israel with Love (The Economist)
>> Empire: War and Propaganda (John Pilger)
>> Is it a War on Islam? (Pervez Hoodbhoy)
"Four hostile newspapers are more to be feared than a thousand bayonets." Napolean Bonaparte

Books (in English)
Overcoming Zionism, Joel Kovel
Myth and Reality in the Contemporary Islamist Movement, Fouad Zakariyya.
Iran on the Brink - Rising Workers and Threats of War, Andreas Malm & Shora Esmailian.
Filming the Modern Middle East - Politics in the Cinemas of Hollywood and the Arab World, Lina Khatib.
Occupied Minds - A Journey through the Israeli Psyche, Arthur Neslen.
Contemporary Arab Thought, Ibrahim Abu Rabi.
The Blood Never Dried: People's History of the British Empire, John Newsinger.
Merchant Capital and Islam, Mahmood Ibrahim.

See below and archive for previous shows content

The Qarmatians (Al-Qaramita)

By Nadeem Mahjoub Documentary film-makers G. Troeller and M. C. Defarge once asked a cabinet minister in South Yemen, why socialistic ideas were so readily acceptable in that part of the Arab world. He replied: “Because we have been communists for a thousand years! My mother was Qarmatian.” Official Muslim scholars and clerics, and many so-called moderates (whether individuals or groups) oppose sedition ( fitna ). Tensions and contradictions in society should be solved peacefully and even if the ruler was unjust and impious, it is generally accepted he should still be obeyed, for any kind of order is better than anarchy and sedition. “The tyranny of a sultan for a hundred years causes less damage than one year’s tyranny exercised by the subjects against one another.” Revolt was justified only against a ruler who clearly went against the command of God and His prophet.” 1 Here we look at not what happened in the minds of people who call for calm, oppose dissent and preach the re...

Capitalism

Some of this reminds me of how five or six years ago in a class of seven students in a UK elite university three of them (two Germans and one British) were in favour of a "benevolent dictator" (in the Arab context). The bloody horrors of Pinochet showed how capitalism will react when it's threatened

Cairo C. 1900-1934 The accurate translation for Arabic meaning of Cairo is "the invincible".

"If you don't attack the economic power of the elite, soon or later it will attack you." That's what the Arab uprisings, for instance, were unable/failed to do. K for Karl – Revolution (episode 3)

"A second position argues against transition, which is transitology itself. It is well known—especially among economists—as the sudden mobilization of a considerable mass of experts who are generally foreigners,generally Western, who come to preach the good word and to propose ready-made models of democracy. The science of the transition has become a financial windfall, a market. And the word transition has of course become a reflex of language, a term of reference, a call for tenders ( appel d’offres ) to which the whole society was supposed to respond. Consequently, the reticence that one can express is the following: our history is framed, transition is a heteronomy. Every democratic revolution is henceforth supposed to take a unique, imposed path, which is, at the same time, indistinctly democratic and liberal (or neoliberal). A more or less non-“negotiable” package. It is necessary to highlight the imposed character (and imposed from the outside) of this coming to t...

"In the same way that Robinson [Crusoe] was able to obtain a sword, we can just as well suppose that [Man] Friday might appear one fine morning with a loaded revolver in his hand, and from then on the whole relationship of violence is reversed: Man Friday gives the orders and Crusoe is obliged to work. . . . Thus, the revolver triumphs over the sword, and even the most childish believer in axioms will doubtless form the conclusion that violence is not a simple act of will, but needs for its realization certain very concrete preliminary conditions, and in particular the implements of violence; and the more highly developed of these implements will carry the day against primitive ones. Moreover, the very fact of the ability to produce such weapons signifies that the producer of highly developed weapons, in everyday speech the arms manufacturer, triumphs over the producer of primitive weapons. To put it briefly, the triumph of violence depends upon the production of a...

Varoufakis "speaks of how great it was to have the support of Larry Summers, Norman Lamont, and other figures on the Right, but it was support for whom, for what, and in whose class interests? Class analysis is far from the foreground of the picture sketched out here. Closed rooms and class war

"Egypt is no longer the heart of the Arab world"

US

Written in June: The candidate who emerged from this jumble of discontent was the man who promised to do the least. His party is now preparing to give us a national election that will be little more than a referendum on the hated Donald Trump. Finally we have a climate in which the American public would unquestionably choose dramatic change were it offered to them, and the party of change has contrived to ensure that it will not be offered. Instead our choice is between two elderly and conservative white men, both with a history of stretching the truth, both with sexual harassment accusations hanging over them, and neither representing any possibility of energetic democratic reform. The old order has been miraculously rescued once again. Such is the climate of opinion in America that, with the right leader, remarkable things would be possible. Instead we are presented with Joe Biden, an affable DC veteran with a hand in many of the defining disasters of the last 30 years: worker-c...

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