Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

Middle East Panorama show on Resonance FM 104.4 or http://www.resonancefm.com/ Every Friday 14:00 - 15:00 London Time (GMT) The Workers Advice Center (or Ma'an in Arabic) in Israel provides an address for unorganised and neglected Arab workers in Israel. WAC is also committed to the struggle of Palestinian workers from the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza, for jobs and social rights. It cooperates with Palestinian Trade Unions in fighting the Separation Wall and Israel's policy of closure. They have a unique perspective on the struggles facing workers in the region. A delegation from WAC has met Britain's biggest tarde union, UNISON, and two representatives from the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (Britain). Here we listen to Adiv Assaf, national coordinator of WAC. >> Listen to the lead off . "ONLY Saudi diplomacy has succeeded in bearing the historical responsibility for all parties, gathering the warring brothers in Holy Mecca and extinguishing a fire that c...

Middle East Panorama show on Resonance FM 104.4 or http://www.resonancefm.com/ Every Friday 14:00 - 15:00 London Time (GMT) Aida Nadeem ( BBC World Music nominee) for an exculsive gig at the Spitz to showcase material for her forthcoming album on Sam Records, a follow up to the critically acclaimed 2005 release Out of Baghdad. Having fled her home country of Iraq due to her politics, she has sort refuge in Denmark where she has developed a unique style of dance/world music crossover. Dubbed 'ethnic synthetic', it combines aspects of ambient, trip hop and Arabesque blended together with traditional Iraqi poetry and topped off with her own unique vocal style. >> Interview with Aida . "Iran on the brink - Rising Workers and Threats of War" by Andreas Malm and Shora Esmailian (Pluto Press 2007). Questions and comments on the book and the situation in Iran. From a book launch that took place at the Housemans' Bookshop, London 06 March 2007. Listen here >> ...

Middle East Panorama show on Resonance FM 104.4 or http://www.resonancefm.com/ Every Friday 14:00 - 15:00 London Time (GMT) "Hizballah, the Lebanese Shi‘i movement has been cast misleadingly in much media coverage" during the last war last summer. Lara Deeb, a cultural anthropologist, assistant professor of women’s studies at the University of California-Irvine and author of An Enchanted Modern: Gender and Public Piety in Shi‘i Lebanon, joins the show to give a deeper analysis of Hizballah . Listen to the interview: >> Part 1 >> Part 2 While the world keeps its eyes riveted on Iran's nuclear programme, the Islamic Republic has gone through a crisis of its own; soaring unemployment and poverty has given way to social protest. A new labour movement has come to the fore. Although strikes are banned, workers are beginning to organise and underground networks are challenging the rule of the mullahs from within. Andreas Malm and Shora Esmailian, the first is a repo...

Middle East Panorama show on Resonance FM 104.4 or http://www.resonancefm.com/ Every Friday 14:00 - 15:00 London Time (GMT) Interview with Zakaria Ibrahim the founder and director of El Tanbura, a collective of master musicians, village singers, local fishermen and Sufi philosophers from Port Said, Egypt. >> Listen to the interview here 'Israel's demographic demons and their effects on its Palestine citizens' talk by Manal Hazzan, department of laws at University College London.

Middle East Panorama show on Resonance FM 104.4 or http://www.resonancefm.com/ Every Friday 14:00 - 15:00 London Time (GMT) Free lance journalist and author Stephen Grey on 'Our friends, the torturers: the secret story of the CIA's alliance with intelligence agencies of the Middle East and how they became America's jailer and interrogator'

Middle East Panorama show on Resonance FM 104.4 or http://www.resonancefm.com/ Every Friday 14:00 - 15:00 London Time (GMT) " As opposition grows in America to the failed Iraq adventure, the Bush administration is preparing public opinion for an attack on Iran, its latest target, by the spring [of 2007]." (John Pilger) Interview with Yassamine Mather, a member of the editorial board of Critique, a Journal of Socialist Theory, published by Centre for the Study of Socialist Theory and Movements at Glasgow University. Yassamine Mather works in the Departments of Aerospace Engieerning and Mechanical Engineering at Glasgow University. She has written articles on the Iranian revolution and Islamic fundamentalism. >> Listen here Interview with Salamah Kaileh spent 8 years in the Syrian prisons. Born in the town of Birzeit in Palestine, studied in Baghdad and became an activist within the Palestinian resistance. He wrote a number of books among them: "The Arab and The ...

Middle East Panorama show on Resonance FM 104.4 or http://www.resonancefm.com/ Every Friday 14:00 - 15:00 London Time (GMT) Conversation with Caoimhe Butterly, solidarity and anti-war activist who has lived with communities of resistance in Iraq, Labanon, Palestine (where she survived a bullet in the West Bank) and Mexico. Here she talks about her experience and struggles during the recent war in Lebanon and reports on the current humanitarian situation in the south. Listen here: >> Part 1 >> Part 2 Introducing AIWA , a collective founded in 1998 by Wamid and Naufalle, two Iraqi brothers brought up in France. They began mixing their musical practice (bass for Wamid and percussions and Arabic rap for his brother) to their growing interest for electronical music they were producing. Here we lsiten to some tracks from their album AIWA.

Middle East Panorama show on Resonance FM 104.4 or http://www.resonancefm.com/ Every Friday 14:00 - 15:00 London Time (GMT) Question and Answer session from 'Syria - cockpit of Middle East Politics' , leture by Dr Sami Khiyami, Syrian ambassador to London, School of Oriental and African Studies, London 30 January 2007. Books reviews: two Syrian writers. Menstruation by Ammar Abdulhamid and Sun on a Cloudy Day by Hanna Mina.

Middle East Panorama show on Resonance FM 104.4 or http://www.resonancefm.com/ Every Friday 14:00 - 15:00 London Time (GMT) Iraq: The Logic of Withdrawal , a new book by Anthony Arnove, editor of Iraq Under Siege: The Deadly Impact of Sanctions and War and, with Howard Zinn, of Voices of a People's History of the United States . Arnove joins Middle East Panorama online from New York. >> Listen to the interview Lebanon: General strike, violent clashes and more threats from the Lebanese opposition to carry on its protests untill the resignation of the government. So far, six people have been killed and more than 100 injured.

Middle East Panorama show on Resonance FM 104.4 or http://www.resonancefm.com/ Every Friday 14:00 - 15:00 London Time (GMT) ' Perdition '. The announcement by the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign that it will stage January performances of Jim Allen's celebrated 1987 anti-Zionist play, "Perdition," triggered off enraged response by the British Jewish establishment. Interviews with: David Cesarani , Research professor at Holloway University, London, Roland Rance (Jews Against Zionism, UK) and Lenni Brenner , author of 51 Documents - Zionist Collaboration with the Nazis . On the 11th of January 2007 Human Rights activists gathered outside the US embassy in London as part of an international day of protest marking the 5th anniversary of the opening of Guantanamo Bay concentration camp. The execution of Saddam Hussein. Was the trial a 'Kangoroo trial' as Stephen Lendman calls is? Why is it that the manner in which Saddam was executed is 'unaceptab...

Middle East Panorama show on Resonance FM 104.4 or www.resonancefm.com Every Friday 14:00 - 15:00 London Time (GMT) 'The vision of the East and the heritage of the West: the ideological dialectics in the art music of the Jewish community in Palestine and Israel' by professor Jehoash Hirshberg.

Interview with Paul Rogers , author of A War Too Far: Iraq, Iran and the New American Century (Plutobooks 2006) and A war on Terror Afghanistan and After (Pluto Books 2004) . >> Listen to the interview Lebanon - What is behind the Conflict? This week quote: "Society cannot share a common communication system so long as it is split into warring factions." Bertolt Brecht, German playwright

Middle East Panorama show on Resonance FM 104.4 or http://www.resonancefm.com/ Every Friday 14:00 - 15:00 London Time (GMT) "The Financial War on Terror". Ibrahim Warde , adjunct professor at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, Massachusetts, and journalist for Le Monde Diplomatique, speaks about The Price of Fear: Al Qaeda and the Truth Behind the Financial War on Terror (IB Tauris. 2006). 4th London Kurdish Film Festival. This year's festival will run for one week and will present an extraordinary variety of films made by Kurdish film makers or about Kurdish issues: features, documentaries, shorts and, for the first time, animated films, from all over the world. For more deails visit: www.riocinema.org.uk Sherif Abdel Samad on the Internet portal Qantara.de wrote about the Egyptian band Wust EL Balad saying there is "a touch of religion, politics, love, and revolution."

Middle East Panorama show on Resonance FM 104.4 or resonancefm.com Every Friday 14:00 - 15:00 London Time (GMT) "I can definitively say that what Al-Jazeera is doing is vicious, inaccurate and inexcusable," Rumsfeld told reporters on 15 April, 2004 after Al-Jazeera showed the bodies of women and children killed by U.S. bombs in Fallujah. "...Al-Jazeera has been ragarded with suspicion by Arab governments who complain that its programs bruise their sensitivities and threaten the stability of their regimes," wrote Mohamed Zayani in Al-Jazeera Phenomenon, Critical Perspectives on New Arab Media ( 2005) Jon Anderson and Dale Eikelman argue that "Al-Jazeera plays a role, jejune as it may be, in the pacification of Arab public opinion."  The Blood Never Dried: A Peoples' History of the British Empire (Bookmarks 2006). Part of a book launch speech by the author John Newsinger: >> The British Empire in the Middle East   Friday 8 December : "The...

Middle East Panorama show on Resonance FM 104.4 or http://www.resonancefm.com/ Every Friday 14:00 - 15:00 London Time (GMT) Patrick Cockburn's 'The Occupation: War and Resistance in Iraq ' (Verso Books 2006). Part from the book launch event that took place at the London Review of Books on 21 of November 2006 in London. Cockburn has been Middle East correspondent since 1979 and writer for the British newspaper 'The Independent'. He considers the invasion of Iraq and its aftermath as 'a catastrophic failure'. Part from a talk given by Yakov M Rabkin , Professor of History at the University of Montreal, on ' A Threat from Within - A History of Jewish Opposition to Zionism ' (Zed Books, 2006), School of Oriental and African Studies, 16 Novemeber 2006. >> Listen here

Gaza Burns: "Nineteen inhabitants of Beit Hanun were killed with malice aforethought. There is no other way of describing the circumstances of their killing. Someone who throws burning matches into a forest can't claim he didn't mean to set it on fire, and anyone who bombards residential neighborhoods with artillery can't claim he didn't mean to kill innocent inhabitants.," wrote Gideon Levy in Haaretz, 14 November. " The IDF has been behaving like this for months now," Levy added. Related articles: >> Ali Abuminah's letter ( Electronic Intifada ) >> 'No One is Guilty in Israel' by Gideon Levy ( Haaretz ) >> Listen to Rabbi Ahron Cohen >> 'Résistances irakiennes' by Nicolas Dessaux. Dessaux is an archeologist and president of the organization 'Iraq Solidarity', which since 2003 works for and supports women and social struggle in the occupied Iraq. His newly-released book raises the following ques...

The First World War Poppy Day: ‘What did our Boys Fight and Die for’? Nadim Mahjoub We are hearing and reading a lot just now about a war for civilization. In some vague, ill-designed manner we are led to believe that the great empires of Europe have suddenly been seized with chivalrous desire to right the wrongs of mankind, and have sallied forth to war, giving their noblest blood and greatest measures to the task of furthering the cause of civilization. James Connolly, A War for Civilization, 1915 ‘The Great War’ saw millions of people join the trenches and be slaughtered, up until that time, in the bloodiest carnage in human history? Poppy Day in Britain is a remembrance day that World War I ended in 11 November 1918. Initially, the war was expected to be short and by Christmas of 1914 it would be over and things return to ‘business as usual’. At the beginning there was a big patriotic enthusiasm of the masses in the streets of Paris, London and Berlin. The patriotic speec...

Middle East Panorama show on Resonance FM 104.4 or http://www.resonancefm.com/ Every Friday 14:00 - 15:00 London Time (GMT) Nizar al-Issa: singer, songwriter and Oud (Arabic lute) player, accompanied on tabla by Kayed Hussien. Nizar's powerful vocals, skillful mastery of the Oud and passionate, original songs create a breathtaking soundscape. 'Authentic voice, masterful performance' – Al Arabia . The Middle East and international law by China Mieville. His last book 'Between Equal Rights' (2006) delves into the nature of law. Mieville joins the show to explore how the international law is applied to the Middle East context. "Miéville argues that "law is structurally indeterminate as applied to particular cases, and so the interpretation which becomes official is always a matter of force; the stronger of the contesting parties in each legal dispute will ultimately obtain the sanction of law. International law, therefore, is not only genuine law despite the ...

Middle East Panorama show on Resonance FM 104.4 or http://www.resonancefm.com/ Every Friday 14:00 - 15:00 London Time (GMT) Kamil Mahdi , an Iraqi political exile and lecturer in the economics of the Middle East at Exeter university, England, director of MA Arab Gulf Studies, ME Studies and ME Policy Studies, argues that in Iraq 'The British army is just another militia' and that while "daily the media tells us about clashes between "insurgents" and Western troops in Iraq, we hear less about the unarmed resistance which is fighting the occupation with strikes and workplace walkouts. The General Union of Oil Employees in Basra (GUOE), or Basra Oil Union as it is commonly referred to, is in many respects leading in that struggle - continuously opposing international corporations that want to take over the national oil industry." By Friday 03 November Mohammad Khatami , Iran's 'President' from 1997 to 2005, would have visited to Britain and receive...

“I support compulsory transfer. I do not see in it anything immoral . . . The Arabs will have to go, but one needs an opportune moment for making it happen, such as a war.” David Ben-Gurion writing to his son, 1937. The 1948 Palestine-Israel War is known to Israelis as 'The War of Independence', but for Palestinians it will forever be the Nakba, the 'catastrophe'. Around a million people were expelled from their own country at gunpoint, civilians were massacred and hundreds of Palestinian villages were deliberately destroyed. Denied for almost six decades, had it happened today it could only have been called "ethnic cleansing." Ilan Pappe is an Israeli Jew, a world-renowned expert and author of The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (2006) joins Middle East Panorama for an exclusive interview.  Don't Shoot the Clowns - Taking a circus to the children of Iraq . But what was a bunch of clowns doing in Iraq in the first place? What possible use could they be t...