Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

F & D by Mazen Kerbaj The Lebanese worker finally finds his daily bread by Mazen Kerbaj Drawings by Mazen Kerbaj

" "Only nations which liberate themselves can be free." Malalai Joya "really is one of the bravest women in Afghanistan". She told the 300-strong audience at Conway Hall in central London last week that she has survived five assassination attempts and is still not safe with personal security guards or by wearing a burkha to cover her identity. Yet she continues to campaign against foreign occupation and fundamentalist warlords, and for women's rights and education. She believes all NATO troops must leave Afghanistan immediately. On July 16 thousands of quarry workers in Egypt went on strike in the central province of Al-Minya, in opposition to a decision by the authorities to impose a tax of E£40 on each ton of quarried rock. The tax had led some quarries to close and lay off their workers. The dispute is only one of several ongoing textile workers’ strikes since privatisation, despite the brutality with which last year’s strike at Mahalla al-Kubra was put...

Sunday between noon and 1pm on 104.4 FM (London) Or resonancefm.com (worldwide) An interview with Yasser Alwan about his work " The Liberty of Appearing - Photographs of Egyptian Working People " ( Peacock Imprint , 2008, edited by Richard Peacock with an introduction by John Molyneux, Senior Art theory Lecturer, University of Portsmouth). "Yasser Alwan's subjects are sometimes alone, always in a crowd, recognisably Egyptian, resembling everybody else ... Global struggle corralled into an Arab street corner. Still life speaking to the world of how it sees itself..."(Eamonn McCann, author of War and an Irish Town). "These are wonderful photographs. They are very simple, the subjects shine out, and here is humanity without any sentimentality." (Red Saunders, photographer & founder Rock Against Racism).

Sunday between noon and 1pm on 104.4 FM (London) Or resonancefm.com (worldwide) " The Good War? Afghanistan in the media ". Listen to columnist Seumas Milne from the Guardian newspaper (UK) speaking in a public meeting organised by Media Workers Against the War and Stop the War Coalition. (Friends Meeting House, London 13 July 2009). Ishmahil Blagrove, a filmmaker and public speaker, speaks about his recent attempt to enter Gaza, his arrest in an Isareli prison, and the aim of the trip which was organised by 21 activists from 11 countries including former US Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, Nobel Peace Prize Winner Mairead Maguire, in order to deliver a cargo of medical aid, toys and building supplies. Labour news from Egypt

Sunday between noon and 1pm on 104.4 FM (London) Or resonancefm.com (worldwide) Groundhog Day in Afghanistan : "Operation Panther's Claw" in Afghanistan and the British Media. Amy Goodman from "Democracy Now" in conversation with the journalist and film-maker John Pilger on Honduras, Iran, Gaza, health care in the US and "Obama's war" in Afghanistan-Pakistan.

Sunday between noon and 1pm on 104.4 FM (London) Or resonancefm.com (worldwide) Iran: Background article by Kaveh Ehsani Survival Through Dispossession: Privatization of Public Goods in the Islamic Republic More: Tehran, June 2009 by Kaveh Ehsani

Sunday between noon and 1pm on 104.4 FM (London) Or resonancefm.com (worldwide) Listen to Jonas, the youngest pro Israel Jew I ever met. He is 12 years old, but able to hold a meeting at Speakers' Corner, Hyde Park, London. Iran : Mourad Shirin from the Iranian Revolutionary Marxists' Tendency speaks on the current situation in the country. Articles: Iran Falls to US PSYOPS The New York Times and Iran The New York Times and the Iranian elections

Sunday between noon and 1pm on 104.4 FM (London) Or resonancefm.com (worldwide) Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould in conversation with C S Sung about Afghanistan's history pre-1960 in "Invisible History: Afghanistan's Untold Story" (City Lights, 2009). The show was first broadcast by Against the Grain on KPFA Radio, Berkeley, US.

An interview with Salaam Youssif on "The Decline of Leftist Intelligenstia in Iraq . Salaam Yousif received his B.A. in English from the University of Baghdad and taught in Iraqi and Algerian high schools for several years. In 1978 he left for the United States to pursue his graduate studies. He got his Ph.D. in Comparative literature from the University of Iowa and he currently teaches world literature at California State University...

Imran Aslam, veteran Pakistani journalist and President of Geo TV, Pakistan’s premier television news channel, and Kamran Ali, Associate Professor Anthropology and Middle Eastern Studies at University of Austin in Texas talked to Shahram Aghamir of Voices of the Middle East and North Africa on KPFA Radion in Berkeley in the United States. Imran Aslam and Kamran Ali discuss the U.S. policy in Afghanistan and Pakistan as well as the role of regional players such as Saudi Arabia, Iran and India in the war in Afghanistan.

Sunday between noon and 1pm on 104.4 FM (London) Or resonancefm.com (worldwide) Around 20 delegates, including envoys from the UK, France, and Finland stood up and left the room at what was considered an anti-Semitic remark by the Iranian leader in his speech at the UN Conference against racism. The Iranian president called Israel "racist". I asked Joel Kovel, author of "Overcoming Zionism" (Pluto Press 2007) whether the Israeli state (and society) is racist.

Sunday between noon and 1pm on 104.4 FM (London) Or resonancefm.com (worldwide) Obituary : the Arab Sundanese novelist Tayib Salih. "How the Jewish people were invented , from the Bible to Zionism" is the provocative title of the most recent book to be published in Israel by Shlomo Sand, a professor at Tel Aviv University. Khalil Bendib talked to Sand (from Voices of the Middle East and North Africa on KPFA Radio, Berkeley). The BBC, Jeremy Bowen and the pro-Israeli lobby .

The United States and its allies oppose North Korea and Iran having nuclear weapons. The argument against North Korea may well be the same argument used against Iran. The non-prolifeartion treaty was signed in1962, i.e. after the most powerful states, the richest and of the so-called “free-world”, had already acquired nuclear weapons. Many people in the richest capitalist countries believe that since their countries are free and democratic, inherently, when their governments intervene abroad, that intervention is aimed for “the greater good.” If on the other side these governments make “mistakes”, future elected governments would correct later “correct” those “mistakes”. Other people go further by arguing that their goverments have a sort of a historical duty to some countries that they had occupied in the past. But to what extent does the historical record of the Western states support such argument? The asnwer to these questions comes from a meeting that took place at Speakers’ Corne...

Sunday between noon and 1pm on 104.4 FM (London) Or resonancefm.com (worldwide) The presidential elections in Algeria. Review of the animated documentary Waltz with Bashir . Obituary: The violinist and composer Abboud abdel Aal.

Eyal Weizman, author of Hollow Land: Israel's Architecture of Occupation , talking to C S Sung. The interview was first broadcast on Against the Grain show on KPFA Radio.

History Professor Beshara Doumani will be in conversation with Columbia University Professor Rashid Khalidi about his new book entitled Sowing Crisis: The Cold War and American Hegemony in the Middle East. In his new work, Professor Khalidi dissects the crucial dynamics of power in the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union as it played out in the Middle East, compellingly arguing that the intense rivalry between the U.S. and the USSR in the region set the stage for the tragic conflicts that have followed in its long wake. The full conversation was first broadcast by Voices of North Africa and the Middle East East on KPFA Radio, Berkeley, United States, on 4 February 2009.

Sunday between noon and 1pm on 104.4 FM (London) Or resonancefm.com (worldwide) The class nature of the Iranian Revolution. According to Edward Mortimer of the Spectator the Iranian Revolution was "a genuine popular revolution in the fullest sense of the word: the most genuine, probably since 1917." But was it an Islamic revolution? Interviews with Torab Saleth from the journal Critique and member of Hands off the People of Iran (hopi) and Chris Moore from The Socialist Party (Britain). Listen to Torab Saleth Listen to Chris Moore

Sunday between noon and 1pm on 104.4 FM (London) Or http://www.resonancefm.com/ (worldwide) The Iranian Revolution: Thirty Years on. In this first part two Iranians talk about the student movement and their experience. Dissection of Hillary Clinton's first visit to the Middle East as Barack Obama's Secretary of State.

Sunday between noon and 1pm on 104.4 FM (London) Or http://www.resonancefm.com/ (worldwide) Interview with Pervez Amirali Hoodbhoy , Professor of Nuclear Physics, Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad, Pakistan. Dr. Pervez Hoodbhoy has been a faculty member at the Quaid-e-Azam University since 1973. In 1984 he received the Abdus Salam Prize for mathematics and is the author of 65 scientific research papers. He is chairman of Mashal, a non-profit organization which publishes books in Urdu on women’s rights, education, environmental issues, philosophy, and modern thought. Dr. Hoodbhoy has written and spoken extensively on topics ranging from science in Islam to education issues in Pakistan and nuclear disarmament. He produced a 13-part documentary series in Urdu for Pakistan Television on critical issues in education, and two series aimed at popularizing science. He is author of ’Islam and Science: Religious Orthodoxy and the Battle for Rationality’, now in 5 languages. In 2003, Dr. Hoodbh...

Sunday between noon and 1pm on 104.4 FM (London) Or www.resonancefm.com (worldwide) An interview with Richard Seymour about his book "The Liberal Defence of Murder" (Verso, May 2008). "Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, a number of prominent thinkers on the Left found themselves increasingly aligned with their ideological opposites. Over the last decade, many of these thinkers have become close to Washington; forceful supporters of the War on Terror, they help frame arguments for policymakers and provide the moral and intellectual justification for Western military intervention across the globe. From Kanan Makiya, one of the chief architects of the US invasion and occupation of Iraq, to Bernard Henri-Levy’s advocacy of “humanitarian” intervention, The Liberal Defence of Murder traces the journey of these figures from left to right and explores their critical role in the creation of the new American empire. With wide-ranging testimony from many key figures on the...