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) 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

Middle East Panorama show on Resonance FM 104.4 or www.resonancefm.com Every Friday 14:00 - 15:00 London Time (GMT) Featured in The Independent , 'Critic's Choice', 20 October 2006 Interview with Daniel Dor , author of The Suppression of Guilt . A former journalist, Daniel Dor teaches at the Department of Communication,Tel Aviv University, and is a graduate of Stanford University. A revised translation of an earlier book, Intifada Hits the Headlines , was published by Indiana University Press in 2003. He has worked as a senior news editor in two of Israel's leading newspapers. "Dor's book," commented Amira Hass, journalist for the Israeli daily Ha'aretz, "gives ample evidence of how the Israeli free press easily turned into an instrument of propaganda. ... Personally, the book helped me get over the frustration of seeing the reality I described totally marginalised in print." >> Listen here Also joining the show Lina Khatib to

Middle East Panorama radio show on Resonance FM 104 or http://www.resonancefm.com/ Every Friday 14.00 - 15.00 London time (GMT) Uri Avnery argues , "True, Muhammad called for the use of the sword in his war against opposing tribes - Christian, Jewish and others - in Arabia, when he was building his state. But that was a political act, not a religious one; basically a fight for territory, not for the spreading of the faith... When the Catholics re-conquered Spain from the Muslims, they instituted a reign of religious terror. The Jews and the Muslims were presented with a cruel choice: to become Christians, to be massacred or to leave. Not for the first time in history, a religious robe is spread to cover the nakedness of economic interests; not for the first time, a robbers' expedition becomes a Crusade. Interview with Uri Avnery in Israel. >> Listen to the interview Interview with a representative from Pakistan Trade Union Campaign in Pakistan about the ban of the Sin

Middle East Panorama radio show on Resonance FM 104 or http://www.resonancefm.com/ Every Friday 14.00 - 15.00 London time (GMT) Interview with Lawrence Pintak , author of Reflections in a Bloodshot Lens - America, Islam and the War of Ideas ( Pluto Books , January 2006). Journalist-scholar Lawrence Pintak, a former CBS News Middle East correspondent, argues that the Arab media revolution and the rise of 'patriot-journalists' in the US marginalized voices of moderation, distorting perceptions on both sides of the divide with potentially disastrous results. >> Listen From Don't Attack Iran , a joint public meeting of Action Iran and CASMII UK in London, University London Union, September 19, 2006. As the United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq, Hans von Sponeck provoked anger in Washington and London by calling for an end to UN sanctions on Iraq, imposed for its 1990 invasion of Kuwait. He finally resigned from his position in protest against the continuati

Middle East Panorama radio show on Resonance FM 104 or http://www.resonancefm.com/ Every Friday 14.00 - 15.00 London time (GMT) Featured in The Independent 's 'Critics Choice', 22 September 2006 Hisham Matar , a Libyan living in the UK, speaks about his experience as a writer and his first novel In the Country of Men (Viking, July 2006). "I would have liked to write a book that had nothing to do with politics," he says. "I think ultimately I am a sensualist and an aesthete. I'm not really interested in politics, but politics was part of the canvas. I had to say something about it, otherwise all the different forces that are shaping these characters would be abstract," said Matar. >> Listen here Interview with Alan Woods , a leading founder of the International Marxist Tendency and editor of In Defence of Marxism website. Alan will be speaking about the Middle East (from Israel-Palestine to Pakistan and Afghanistan). “The situation in the Mi

Middle East Panorama radio show on Resonance FM 104 or http://www.resonancefm.com/ Every Friday 14.00 - 15.00 London time (GMT) Interview with Yoel Cohen , a British-born academic currently living in Jerusalem, where he is Senior Lecturer at the School of Communications, Netanya Academic College; and The Holon Academic Institute of Technology and at Holon Institute of Technology, Israel. He has written several books and articles concerning the news media and the Middle East, including The Whistleblower of Dimona: Israel, Vanunu and the Bomb (Holmes and Meier, 2003) and Nuclear Ambiguity (Sinclair Stevenson, 1992), Whistleblowers and the Bomb: Vanunu, Israel and Nuclear Secrecy (Pluto Books, new edition, 2005). >> Listen here 9/11 - 'The War on Terror'. We asked some people to comment on the following statement: “Capitalism and the ‘war on terror’ not only help to sustain one another but they have this in common: they worship success but are nourished by failure.” (David