Featuring Abdel Razzaq Takriti, this is the FIFTH episode of Thawra (Revolution), our rolling mini-series on Arab radicalism in the 20th century. Today’s installment lays out the early years of a struggle for Syria that would decisively shape the Arab world: the fight for independence from France, the first (CIA-backed) coup of 1949, and the rise of the Ba’ath and Communist movements. Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig Check out our newsletter and vast archives at thedigradio.com Buy The...

Robert Fatton explains Haiti’s further descent into poverty and chaos. Steve Fraser, author of a recent article for Jacobin, analyzes and mourns the death of any sense of a better future. Behind the News, hosted by Doug Henwood, covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex interactions, from the local to the global. Find the archive online: https://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/radio.html Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In 1991, over 100 of the the most famous singers, movie stars, an athletes in America got together to record a song for the troops in the first Gulf War. We take a visit to the consent-manufacturing factory and discuss the "apolitical" James Woods-hosted TV special VOICES THAT CARE: STAND TALL, STAND PROUD (1991). Watch the special here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJ1S_UNaWps Michael and Us is a podcast about political cinema and our crumbling world hosted by Will Sloan and Luke...

Vijay Prashad explains how the North American and European bourgeoisies have become a spent force with nothing to offer the world. Volodymyr Ishchenko, author of Toward the Abyss, talks about Ukraine during and after the USSR. Behind the News, hosted by Doug Henwood, covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex interactions, from the local to the global. Find the archive online: https://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/radio.html Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more...

Against the backdrop of the incredibly boring 2000 election, the late, great Philip Seymour Hoffman went on a cross-country journey to see if George W. Bush or Al Gore represented America. The result was THE PARTY'S OVER (2001), aka THE LAST PARTY 2000 — that's right, it's an official sequel to the Robert Downey Jr-hosted documentary. We found many resonances between this fossil from the turn of the millennium and our current moment. PLUS: The Democratic Party primary, the fascist Italian...

Suzi talks to Warren Montag, professor at Occidental College, who was recently targeted for his talk at a college forum about Israel’s war on Gaza and issues it has raised in the US. The specific topic was one Warren had spoken on numerous times since the first Intifada: Anti-Zionism is not anti-Semitism. In retaliation, the ADL (Anti-Defamation League) campaigned to get him fired. We hear Warren's personal testimony, his view on the history of Jewish opposition to Zionism, and his...

This final episode of Organize the Unorganized offers key lessons from the CIO moment. We asked all of our guests about this basic question, and these are their answers. The negative lessons—points where guests were keen to note the differences between the '30s and the present moment—focused on the changed economic situation and the issue of labor law. The more positive lessons dealt with union democracy, overcoming divisions in the working class, mass organizing, raising expectations, and...

Featuring Abdel Razzaq Takriti, this is the FOURTH episode of Thawra (Revolution), our rolling mini-series on Arab radicalism in the 20th century. Today’s installment lays out the politics surrounding the Zionist settler colonial destruction of Palestine, the Nakba of 1948, and the ground-shifting event that followed in its wake: the Nasser-led 1952 Egyptian Free Officers Movement coup that would set the tone for two decades of revolutionary nationalism across the region. Also: the Soviet...

From the HIV/AIDS crisis, to the opioid epidemic, to the COVID-19 pandemic, pharmaceutical corporations have been accused of profiteering at the expense of countless lives. Nick Dearden, director of Global Justice Now and the author of a new book called Pharmanomics: How Big Pharma Destroys Public Health, joins Long Reads to discuss an industry that exploits public research and denies crucial medicine to poor countries. Read another interview with Nick on the Jacobin website, "Big Pharma...

Historian Donna Murch, author of Living for the City, takes on some myths about the Black Panther Party. Saadia Toor and Rabia Mehmood discuss Pakistan. Behind the News, hosted by Doug Henwood, covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex interactions, from the local to the global. Find the archive online: https://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/radio.html Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The eighth, penultimate episode of Organize the Unorganized concludes the main story of the CIO. We cover the organization’s communist purge in the late 1940s and Operation Dixie, the failed campaign to organize workers in the south. We end with the merger with the AFL in 1955 and the afterlife of the CIO in the Industrial Union Department, which made important contributions to the civil rights movement. Organize the Unorganized: The Rise of the CIO is a limited-run history podcast telling...

Featuring Abdel Razzaq Takriti, this is the THIRD episode of Thawra (Revolution), our rolling mini-series on Arab radicalism in the 20th century. Today’s installment is a comprehensive overview of the Middle Eastern Arab state system that crystalizes with the end of British and French colonial rule. Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig Check out our newsletter and vast archives at thedigradio.com Buy Environmentalism from Below: How Global People’s Movements are Leading the Fight for our...

Chilean writer and activist Pablo Abufom spoke at UCLA on February 23, 2024 about how the October 2019 social revolt in Chile propelled Gabriel Boric to power, created a Constituent Assembly to write a new Constitution, but was then defeated, with reactionary neo-fascist forces now ascendant. Pablo Abufom was deeply involved in the social protest movement of October 2019, and has been on this podcast many times to discuss and analyze the revolt, the failure of the constitutional process, and...

Featuring Abdel Razzaq Takriti, this is the second episode of Thawra (Revolution), our rolling mini-series on Arab radicalism in the 20th century. Today’s installment lays out early 20th-century anti-colonialism: from the Iraqi, Syrian, and Palestinian Great Revolts, to the birth of Arab nationalism, Islamic resistance, Ba'athism, and communism. Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig Check out our newsletter and vast archives at thedigradio.com Subscribe to a year of Jewish Currents at 50% off...

The early period of the CIO arguably ended with the Little Steel strike in 1937. The strike's brutal repression and failure dramatically illustrated the limits of the New Deal order. But the CIO continued to grow through the 1940s during the war escalation. Episode seven of Organize the Unorganized is devoted to the CIO's role in and relation to the war effort, and what it meant for this labor upsurge. Organize the Unorganized: The Rise of the CIO is a limited-run history podcast telling the...

Jeet Heer, author of a recent article for The Nation, discusses Indian Americans in politics and society. Stephen Maher and Scott Aquanno, authors of The Fall and Rise of American Finance, takes on the new finance capital. Behind the News, hosted by Doug Henwood, covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex interactions, from the local to the global. Find the archive online: https://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/radio.html. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more...

In 1987, America was ready to look back on the Vietnam War... with laughter. We discuss GOOD MORNING VIETNAM (1987) and why it is one of the quintessential "boomer liberal" texts. PLUS: We check in on the state of Canadian politics (it's not good, folks). Michael and Us is a podcast about political cinema and our crumbling world hosted by Will Sloan and Luke Savage. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Over the last four months, the Israeli war on Gaza has spilled over into the rest of the Middle East, from Lebanon to Iraq. But the most dramatic example has been the link between events in Palestine and Yemen. Ansar Allah, the movement known as the Houthis, imposed a blockade on ships going to Israel until there was a ceasefire. In response, the US and the UK have carried out air strikes on Houthi positions in Yemen. The Houthis say they won’t be deterred by military action. Helen Lackner,...

There are many markers showing February 2024 to be a landmark month of cruelty — not least in Gaza, but also in Russia, where we turn our focus today. The slow murder of opposition leader Alexei Navalny in the Arctic Circle penal colony Kharp on Friday, February 16, signals a turning point for Putin’s Russia and underscores both the Kremlin’s power and weakness. We cover the turmoil in Russia in the lead-up to the March 2024 rubber-stamp presidential election. We were scheduled to speak to...

Featuring Abdel Razzaq Takriti, this is the first episode of Thawra (Revolution), our rolling mini-series on Arab radicalism in the 20th century. Today’s installment sets the stage: European imperialism in the Arab Mashriq from the late 18th century through the early 20th. Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig Check out our newsletter and vast archives at thedigradio.com Subscribe to a year of Jewish Currents at 50% off with special code DIG2024 secure.jewishcurrents.org/forms/subscribe Buy A...

Gerald Epstein, author of Busting the Bankers’ Club, discusses the finance racket and how to transform it. Anna Kornbluh, author of Immediacy, examines our sped-up, unmediated cultural eternal present. Behind the News, hosted by Doug Henwood, covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex interactions, from the local to the global. Find the archive online: https://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/radio.html. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On episode six of Organize the Unorganized: The Rise of the CIO, we go deeper into some of the key CIO unions: the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE), the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU), the Textile Workers Organizing Committee (TWOC), and the Packinghouse Workers Organizing Committee (PWOC). There were many other unions that formed the CIO — in oil, printing, transport, and other areas — but these four were some of the biggest and most...

We discuss THE MENU (2022) and its place in the context of the current wave of "eat the rich" cinema. PLUS: we discuss Walter Isaacson's new hagiography of Elon Musk, and Joe Biden's wildly successful "I'm fit for office" press conference. Michael and Us is a podcast about political cinema and our crumbling world hosted by Will Sloan and Luke Savage. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Ajay Singh Chaudhary talks about his new book, The Exhausted of the Earth: Politics in a Burning World. Matt Notowidigdo, co-author of a recent NBER paper, examines how recessions increase life expectancy. Behind the News, hosted by Doug Henwood, covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex interactions, from the local to the global. Find the archive online: https://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/radio.html. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

If you think about the French revolutionary tradition, you’re most likely to picture the storming of the Bastille and the overthrow of the monarchy. But that wasn’t the first time there was a major uprising against the established order in France. In the second half of the fourteenth century, there was a popular revolt known as the Jacquerie, which terrified the French ruling class. They drowned the revolt in blood and set about demonizing the peasants who took part in it. It was only in the...