Office Hours with J &L

Given the war, we discussed Iran again this week, with the emphasis more on the longer-term relations that country has with the US and Europe, and the rôle of imperialism in shaping its politics and outlook, as well as the wilful blindness that Americans often have about our government's foreign policy.

Iran, Israel, and nuclear weapons are the subject of this week's episode, and given its complexity we may return to this another day as well, but we chat here about the logic of deterrance, Iran's stated and in some ways proven positions on nukes, and the current war against Iran by the US and Israel.

In our second episode back from hiatus we rapped about the Gaza atrocities, the difficulty some folks have with calling this a genocide, and what it is that motivates so much intellectual dishonesty about these events (i.e., the structural and cultural features).

Back after a long break, necessitated by Liam's insane schedule (and inssanity!), Jamal and Liam catch up on life, then talk a bit about Trump's Big Beautiful Bill, i.e., the budget act that means to rewrite the social contract and undermine our remaining constitutional safeguards.

In this episode of Office Hours with Jamal and Liam, our guest Riley Livermore discusses resigning his commission in the US Air Force over the government's support for Israel's genocide in Gaza, as well as his time living in Israel and his observations there, and thoughts on the military-industrial complex.

In this episode, Jamal and Liam talk about the results of the 2024 US presidential election, how this will affect the Palestine/Israel situation, and how people can organize for real change in a country rapidly drifting into neofascism.

This week we interviewed and chatted with Dr Jonathan Bilal Abdullah, an EdD and LFMT, where we talked about the stigmatization of mental illnesses, the value of therapy as health care, and the difficulties in finding the kind of treatment that works best for each individual.

In this episode, Liam dives into the origins of racism and its links to power, capital, and the state. At the start, Jamal also recaps a recent book he did in his TikTok book club.

This week Jamal interviewed Palestinian-German filmmaker and martial artist Lexi Alexander. Liam was sick and left after the introductions, but Jamal and Lexi had a great conversation and we hope you enjoy it.

This week, on a fun impulse, Liam set the Wayback Machine for his days in IT, and talked about operating systems, especially GNU/Linux and its relation to Windows and MacOS X, and a bit about the free software / open source revolution.