Security in Context

Khaled Barakat is a Palestinian-Canadian activist and writer, currently based in Vancouver, who was recently subjected to a media and political campaign aimed at silencing him and those fighting for Palestinian rights in Canada. Attempts to criminalize Barakat originated in an article published in the right-wing newspaper The National Post, and quickly became subject of debate in the Canadian Senate, with a conservative senator going so far as to asking the government to expel Barakat, a Canadian citizen, from the country. The campaign against Khaled Barakat is one of many smear campaigns being launched against pro-Palestinian voices, a phenomenon that seems to be increasing nowadays.

According to the late Pakistani writer and revolutionary activist Eqbal Ahmad, the Palestinian struggle for self-determination stirs the emotions of the entire world, particularly the nations and societies of the formerly colonized world. In this episode we explore the Palestinian struggle for liberation from the perspective of solidarity movements.

Our guests include: Mouin Rabbani, an independent analyst specialized in Palestinian affairs and the Arab-Israeli conflict; Noura Erakat, a human rights attorney and associate professor at Rutgers University; Lina Meruane, an author and professor at the Madrid branch of the New York University; and Yara Hawari, an academic, writer, and senior policy analyst at Al-Shabaka.

In this episode we explore two issues that are frequently ignored in discussions about the climate crisis: first, how the impacts of climate change will be unequally felt around the world, and second, the negative side of the politics of the climate movement in the global North.

Our guests include: Betsy Hartmann, author of “The America Syndrome: Apocalypse, War, and Our Call to Greatness” (2017, Seven Stories Press), Anne Hendrixson, senior policy analyst at Challenging Population Control; Max Ajl, author of “A People’s Green New Deal” (2021, Pluto Press); Fikret Adaman, professor of economics at Boğaziçi University; and Kasia Paprocki, author of “Threatening Dystopias: The Global Politics of Climate Change Adaptation in Bangladesh” (2021, Cornell Press). In addition to these interviews, the episode includes some excerpts from Jame K. Boyce’s lecture titled “Climate Change in an Unequal World,” available on Security in Context’s YouTube channel. James K. Boyce is the author of books, such as “The Case for Carbon Dividends” (2019, Polity Press) and “Economics for People and the Planet: Inequality in the Era of Climate Change” (2019, Anthem Press).

In this episode we explore the socioeconomic impact of Covid-19, paying special attention to its implications for gender and North-South inequalities. Our guests include Mark Weisbrot, Co-director of the Center for Economic & Policy Research; Mehrinaz El Awady, Leader of the Gender Justice, Population and Inclusive Development Cluster at the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia; and Julio Gambina, Professor of Political Economics at the National University of Rosario and member of partner research network CLACSO. As a bonus, this episode includes excerpts from interviews with leaders of partner grassroots women’s organizations in Gulu, Uganda, conducted by a team of researchers from the University of Oklahoma and West Virginia University. At the end of the episode, Security in Context's Omar Dahi and Firat Demir discuss the main highlights of the interviews and share their own takes on the content.

In this episode, we investigate the implications of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan from different angles with the help of our guests. Rafia Zakaria tells us about her new book, Against White Feminism, and how it ties into Western media coverage of Afghan women. We also speak to Professor Michael Klare, defense correspondent at The Nation magazine, about his take on the US withdrawal from Afghanistan; a very different one to those being portrayed in mainstream media. The episode ends with our September media roundup, a brief section in which we discuss news articles, reports, and other materials focusing on (in)security issues.