LE BREAKDOWN With Yasser Louati

French elites easily call out racism and police brutality in the US or elsewhere but they have no lessons to give when we see what’s going on here.

As thousands tool to the street to call out police brutality in France and as anger is being expressed across the United States following the death of George Floyd, this podcast analyzes the deep roots of police brutality in France.

Blacks and arabs are 20 times more likely of being racially profiled by the police. Police brutality has been called out for decades and for generations. From the birth of the “Police Nationale” under the antisemitic government of Vichy which had collaborated with the Nazis to the racist violence exercised by against blacks, arabs, Muslims in the so called “Banlieues”, we see how racist ideologies have remained deeply engrained in the police.

“The war was just paused”, this is how my guest today, journalist Mersiha Gadzo describes the situation in Bosnia as the Serbian far right is again beating the drums of war.

With the release of the Srebrenica Memorial’s report on the SREBRENICA GENOCIDE DENIAL REPORT (2020), it is shocking for many that the horrific massacres of Muslims in Srebrenica leaving 8000 civilian dead at the hands of serbian forces 25 years ago are so contested that a report had to be written.

In order to discuss current events in Bosnia in light of the the resurgent threat of Serbian nationalism against Muslims, journalist and producer Mersiha Gadzo (Al Jazeera English) joined me for this special edition of Le Breakdown.

As a Bosnian who had to leave her country and who’s been covering the region for years, Mrs Gadzo gave her analysis of why serbian nationalism is again threatening to repeat to what happened in the 1990’s, the state of islamophobia in the region and how the dayton accords which had put an end to the war in 1995, actually only paused the mass killings.

“The war was just paused”, this is how my guest today, journalist Mersiha Gadzo describes the situation in Bosnia as the Serbian far right is again beating the drums of war.

With the release of the Srebrenica Memorial’s report on the SREBRENICA GENOCIDE DENIAL REPORT (2020), it is shocking for many that the horrific massacres of Muslims in Srebrenica leaving 8000 civilian dead at the hands of serbian forces 25 years ago are so contested that a report had to be written.

In order to discuss current events in Bosnia in light of the the resurgent threat of Serbian nationalism against Muslims, journalist and producer Mersiha Gadzo (Al Jazeera English) joined me for this special edition of Le Breakdown.

As a Bosnian who had to leave her country and who’s been covering the region for years, Mrs Gadzo gave her analysis of why serbian nationalism is again threatening to repeat to what happened in the 1990’s, the state of islamophobia in the region and how the dayton accords which had put an end to the war in 1995, actually only paused the mass killings.

With the release of the Srebrenica Memorial's report on the SREBRENICA GENOCIDE DENIAL REPORT (2020), it is shocking for many that the horrific massacres that took place barely 25 years ago are so contested that a report had to be written. 

In order to discuss current events in Bosnia in light of the the resurgent threat of Serbian nationalism against Muslims, journalist and producer Mersiha Gadzo (Al Jazeera English) joined me for this special edition of Le Breakdown. As a Bosnian who had to leave her country and who's been covering the region for years, Mrs Gadzo gave her analysis of why serbian nationalism is again threatening to repeat to what happened in the 1990's, the state of islamophobia in the region and how the dayton accords which had put an end to the war in 1995, actually only paused the mass killings. 

In this first episode of The Breakdown, we analyse France's inability to cope with the covid19 crisis and how a combination of ideological blindness, political cynicism, greed and incompetence lead to the death of over 25,000 people as of May 2nd.  From the declaration of a WHO expert's that "there will be no epidemic in France" despite all evidence to maintaining the first round of the municipal elections, a series of wrong decisions were taken by the Macron administration with a complete disregard to the opinions of experts whom have been warning for months. 

We further analyse how decades of ausrerity based economic policies imposed by the European Union and sanctionned by member states litterally ripped the safety nets between people and death. Chief among those nets were public hospitals that saw drastic budget cuts, at leat 11 billion euros in 10 years. France alone was asked 63 times to cut spendings on health services. But this pandemic did not come without any warning. In 2003, a heatwave had killed over 15 000 people as hospitals were unable to cope with the influx of patients, most of whom were senior citizens.