Voices of the Middle East and North Africa

Israeli' assault on Jenin refugee camp & 'Sinbad Voyage' mural in Berkeley by VOMENA Team at KPFA

In recent months, Fondomonte Arizona, a subsidiary of Saudi Arabia-based Almarai dairy Company has been getting renewed attention for growing alfalfa in drought-prone Arizona, and sending it to Saudi Arabia to feed the country’s cows.

Despite a worsening drought, several factors including Political influence and lack of regulations have allowed the company to draw an unlimited amount of groundwater from the wells it operates in the area.

According to the Associated Press, the two new wells would have pumped in just three minutes what a family of four uses in a month.

Why did Saudi Arabia choose Arizona for its crop production?

In her new book Arid Empire: The Entangled Fates of Arabia and Arizona. University of Syracuse political geographer professor Natalie Koch explores the exchange of colonial technologies between the Arabian Peninsula and the United States over the last two centuries,

On May 28th, Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was re-elected for a third term by winning 52% of the popular vote- His main rival Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu garnered 48%.

Two weeks earlier, the right wing islamist-nationalist coalition consisting of Erdogan’s rullingJustice and development party AKP and its allies had won the majority in the parliamentary election.

we spend the hour discussing how and why Erdogan was able to secure a third term in office despite a worsening economy and now chronic hyperinflation, the government's disastrous response to the deadly earthquakes, as well as his increasingly authoritarian rule. What happened?

In his new article in the new left review, our today’s guest, UC Berkeley sociologist Cihan Tugal writes “There are obvious institutional reasons for the resilience of Erdoğanism. The government has spent years monopolizing the mainstream media and judiciary. Prisons are overflowing with activists, journalists and politicians. The Kurdish opposition, the only truly organized non-right-wing force in the country, has seen its democratically elected mayors replaced with state-appointed officials, who have consolidated the government’s rule over the eastern and southeastern provinces. Yet this is only the tip of the iceberg. The regime’s endurance is not simply a result of its authoritarianism; its popularity runs much deeper than that. Shahram Aghamir spoke with professor Tugal about the outcome of the recent general election in turkey

Part 1- Professor Khahlid Medani discusses the root cause of the ongoing crisis in Sudan by VOMENA Team at KPFA

The 2003 invasion and occupation of Iraq resulted in massive death and destruction, and fueled sectarian tensions, which culminated in a violent civil war. More than 300,000 Iraqis have died from direct war violence and 9.2 million people have been internally displaced, according to Brown University's Costs of War Project.

The Brutal invasion and occupation of Iraq entrenched the country in a cycle of sectarian violence and impacted every aspect of life in Iraq, from governance to health care, infrastructure, economy and the environment and long term trauma

In a recent piece in the Guardian, one of today’s guests Professor sinan antoon writes, “ I had always hoped to see the end of Saddam’s dictatorship at the hands of the Iraqi people, not courtesy of a neocolonial project that would dismantle what had remained of the Iraqi state and replace it with a regime based on ethno-sectarian dynamics, plunging the country into violent chaos and civil wars.

This week, we bring you the first part of our conversation about the reasons behind the catastrophic invasion of Iraq- we are joined by guests

Sinan Antoon is an award winning Iraqi poet and novelist, and an Associate Professor at New York University's Gallatin School and co-founder and co-editor of Jadaliyya. His most recent novel is The Book of Collateral Damage

Dr. Omar Sirri is a research associate in the Department of Politics and International Studies at SOAS, University of London. His doctoral dissertation, Scarecrows of the State: An Ethnography of Security Checkpoints in Contemporary Baghdad, was named co-winner of the 2022 Malcolm H. Kerr Dissertation Award in the Social Sciences from the Middle East Studies Association.

They spoke with shahram aghamir

Even by Israel’s abysmal standards, provocations against the people of Palestine have seen a dramatic

escalation since the arrival of Bibi Netanyahu’s new government three months ago: Hundreds of innocent civilians

murdered, including many children, an outright anti-Palestinian pogrom in the west bank that was cheered on

by the minister of interior, a brutal attack on worshippers inside one of Islam’s holy sites in the middle of Ramadan,

as well as statements by a key government official declaring that the Palestinian people simply does not exist.

At the same time, a historic wave of protests contesting the new government’s attempts to temper with the role

of the judiciary claims to defend democracy in the holy land without a single mention of the central question of Palestinian civil

and human rights. We asked asked prominent Israeli historian Ilan Pappe for his take on these recent developments.

Guest:

Cihan tugal, professor of sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author The Fall of the Turkish Model: How the Arab Uprisings Brought Down Islamic Liberalism, and Passive Revolution: Absorbing the Islamic Challenge to Capitalism

Guest:

shahrazad Mojab, professor of Adult Education and Community Development and Women and Gender Studies at the University of Toronto

Her most recent books are Marxism & Migration; Women of Kurdistan: A Historical and Bibliographical Study; and Revolutionary Learning: Marxism, Feminism and Knowledge.

Now approaching seventy tons annually, gold has replaced cotton as Mali’s leading export, turning that country into Africa’s third-largest gold producer. The primary destination of artisanal gold seems to be the United Arab Emirates. By all evidence, the gold that shines in the souks of Dubai is the product of a complex web of criminal networks, terrorist groups and internationally sanctioned regimes, who use this non-industrially mined gold to launder their money. The Emirates have long been a global hub for transnational African merchants, who travel to Dubai to purchase imported goods such as Japanese-made auto parts or Chinese-made garments. Emirati authorities and commercial players are now exploiting their country’s existing commercial status to make the UAE an important node for the trade in precious metals, especially gold. These buyers are actively financing associates in Mali and throughout the Sahel and Sahara regions, driving the expansion of artisanal mining into new areas."

Bruce Whitehouse is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Lehigh University- HIS WORK and research have concentrated on postcolonial sub-Saharan Africa, anthropological demography, development, with a special emphasis on transnational migration.

I spoke with him about the reasons why Mali is emerging a the main production hub for Sahelian countries and why Dubai is the number one destination for artisanal gold trade.

Guest:

Bruce Whitehouse, associate professor of anthropology at Lehigh University

The country of Lebanon has been in social and economic upheaval over the past few years,

sending many of its beleaguered citizens into international exile in search of basic economic survival.

We speak with Lebanese activist and academic Rayan El-Amine who, after a decade

in his native land, has returned to the Bay area with his family, about the travails of a country that is geographically diminutive but has always loomed large in the conscience of the world.

Guest:

Rayan El- Amine, activist and scholar