Status/الوضع

This week, we speak with Jody Sokolower about her new book Determined to Stay: Palestinian Youth Fight for Their Village.

Later in the program, Madhdis Keshavarz of the Arab and Middle Eastern Journalists Association joins us to talk about the organization's recent statement in response to the biased coverage of the Ukraine crisis.

Courtesy of Voices of the Middle East & North Africa (VOMENA).

We discuss green energy and its relationship to colonialism in North Africa with Hamza Hamouchene.

Courtesy of Voices of the Middle East & North Africa (VOMENA).

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Hamza Hamouchene is a London-based Algerian researcher-activist, commentator and a founding member of Algeria Solidarity Campaign (ASC), and Environmental Justice North Africa (EJNA). He previously worked for War on Want, Global Justice Now and Platform London on issues of extractivism, resources, land and food sovereignty as well as climate, environmental, and trade justice. He is the author/editor of two books: "The Struggle for Energy Democracy in the Maghreb" (2017) and "The Coming Revolution to North Africa: The Struggle for Climate Justice" (2015). He also contributed book chapters to "Voices of Liberation: Frantz Fanon" (2014) and "The Palgrave Encyclopaedia of Imperialism and Anti-Imperialism" (2016). His other writings have appeared in the Guardian, Middle East Eye, Counterpunch, New Internationalist, Jadaliyya, openDemocracy, ROAR magazine, Pambazuka, Nawaat, El Watan and the Huffington Post.

From 2011 on, Professor Natasha Iskandar documented labor practices on Qatari construction sites. In her new book, "Does Skill Make Us Human? Migrant Workers in 21st Century Qatar and Beyond," Prof. Iskandar explores how migrants are recruited, trained and used.

Listen to the second part of her conversation with VOMENA host Malihe Razazan.

Courtesy of Voices of the Middle East & North Africa (VOMENA)

From 2011 on, Professor Natasha Iskandar documented labor practices on Qatari construction sites. In her new book, "Does Skill Make Us Human? Migrant Workers in 21st Century Qatar and Beyond," Prof. Iskandar explores how migrants are recruited, trained and used.

Listen to the first part of her conversation with VOMENA host Malihe Razazan.

Courtesy of Voices of the Middle East & North Africa (VOMENA).

A conversation with well-known South African peace and justice activist Na'eem Jeenah about the erasure of Desmond Tutu's support for Palestinian rights from obituaries in mainstream media.

In the second part of this episode, we speak with Tara Sepehri Far, Senior Iran Researcher at HRW about the death of jailed Iranian poet and filmmaker Baktash Abtin.

Courtesy of Voices of the Middle East & North Africa (VOMENA).

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.

Security in Context is a podcast project from the research network of the same name, aimed at promoting new thinking on security from a global perspective.

The Security in Context podcast features discussions about key questions on peace and conflict, the political economy of security and insecurity, militarism, and geopolitics particularly as they intersect with the processes of climate change, population movement, and the reorganization of global powers. In order to delve into these topics, we interview writers, researchers, activists and professionals from inside and outside the Security in Context network. Our ultimate goal is to provide a critical representation of security related issues, paying special attention to the Global South, often misrepresented in mainstream media coverage.

In early April 2022, president Kais Saied dissolved the parliament after parliament members challenged the autocratic powers he exercised since his self-coup last July. Lawmakers held an online meeting, defying Saied's warning that the session was illegal, and a majority voted against his power grab, which they said violated the country's Constitution.

Elected in a landslide in 2019, the president has been ruling by decree since July, jailing opponents, suspending parts of the Constitution, dismissing the Supreme Judicial Council and restricting press freedom.

Khalil Bendib spoke with Tunisian correspondent Mohammed-Dhia Hemmami about the current political situation in Tunis.

Courtesy of Voices of the Middle East & North Africa (VOMENA).

At the end of March 2022, in a bold and historic step backwards for the cause of peace in the Middle East, Morocco was one of four Arab countries meeting in a special summit with Israel and the US.

Although distant Iran was central to the discussions held during this meeting, the central issue of Palestine never broached during this summit, which took place in the heart of historic Palestine.

Khalil Bendib spoke with Samia Errazouki, a journalist formerly based in Morocco and a PhD candidate in early modern Northwest African history at UC Davis, about Morocco's participation in this summit and what might be motivating the Moroccan regime to go against the wishes of its own people.

Courtesy of Voices of the Middle East and North Africa (VOMENA).

VOMENA host Shahram Aghamir speaks with writer and journalist Neda Toloui-Semnani about her memoir "They Said They Wanted Revolution: A Memoir of My Parents" and the journey of writing her family's story before and after the 1979 Iranian Revolution.

Courtesy of Voices of the Middle East & North Africa (VOMENA)

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.