Podcasts about algerians

France is opening its arms to foreign scientists, particularly from the US, as the Trump administration pulls back from climate research. French GPs and trainee doctors are up in arms over proposals to address 'medical deserts', which they say would make the problem worse. And as Europe marks the 80th anniversary of Europe Day, Algeria commemorates the 8 May, 1945 massacre of civilians by French colonial forces.  Ever since US President Donald Trump started defunding and dismantling US scientific institutions, France has made a push to get scientists to move. In March the French minister in charge of research asked universities to fund programmes to attract American scientists. In 2017, after Trump first pulled the US out of the Paris Climate Accords, Macron launched a recruitment drive aimed at climate scientists working in the US. Two of those grantees, Ben Sanderson and Philip Shulz, talk about the experience of leaving the US for France, and what the current environment is like for climate scientists today. (Listen @1'10)With 87 percent of France considered a "medical desert", lawmakers and the government are looking to tackle doctor shortages. But the proposals – to regulate when specialists can open their private practices and require health professionals to work two days a month in areas with chronic shortages – have met with strong opposition from GPs, trainee doctors and students. Yassine Bahr, vice-president of the French junior doctors union (ISNI), and Anna Boctor, president of France's Jeunes Medecins (young doctors) union, talk about why the proposals won't solve the problem and the sense of injustice at being held responsible for a situation that is not of their making. (Listen @20'20)On 8 May 1945, during a celebration of the end of WWII in Europe in the Algerian city of Setif, French colonial authorities shot at Algerians holding pro-independence signs. The ensuing riots then spread to neighbouring cities where the authorities  unleashed a campaign of reprisals to crush the unrest – indiscriminately killing tens of thousands of Algerian men, women and children. France has yet to officially acknowledge its role in the massacres. (Listen @15'00)Episode mixed by Cécile PompeaniSpotlight on France is a podcast from Radio France International. Find us on rfienglish.com, Apple podcasts (link here), Spotify (link here) or your favourite podcast app (pod.link/1573769878).

Good afternoon, I'm _____ with today's episode of EZ News. Tai-Ex opening The Tai-Ex opened up 96-points this morning from yesterday's close, at 19,609 on turnover of 4.4-billion N-T. The market bucked a regional upward trend on Monday and closed marginally lower after early gains eroded amid lingering investor concerns over the Trump administration's tariffs on semiconductors. MOFA slams Cambodia for sending Taiwan fraud suspects to China The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has lodged a protest with the Cambodia government after it deported a group of recently arrested Taiwanese telecoms fraud suspects to China. According to the ministry, some of a group of 180 recently arrested Taiwanese fraud suspects were deported to China late Sunday and early Monday in three groups along with arrested Chinese fraud suspects. The ministry says it doesn't know how many were sent to China over the past two days because the Cambodian government has refused to provide a full list of those who were deported. The foreign ministry is accusing the Cambodian government of bowing to Chinese pressure (壓力) by not providing that information and calling on Phnom Penh to released a list of all the deportees as soon as possible. Housing prices fell in foruth quarter of last year Housing prices declined in the fourth quarter of last year. According to Chinatrust Real Estate, the decline came after the housing market was hit hard following the central bank;s seventh round (輪) of credit controls - which were introduced in September. Data from the Ministry of the Interior's real estate information platform shows that averages housing prices fell to 338,600 N-T per ping in the fourth quarter and that was a 6.6-per cent decline from the third quarter. All six special municipalities registered falling housing prices in the September to December period. Kaohsiung's housing market saw the steepest decline at 10.4-per cent - while housing prices in Taipei City were down by 3-per cent in the fourth quarter. US Trump Bukele Rule Out Releasing Man MIstakenly Sent to Prison US President Donald Trump and El Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele have ruled out (排除…的可能性) releasing a man mistakenly sent to a maximum security prison in the Central American country. Nick Harper reports from Washington. Algeria Expels French Officials Algeria on Monday announced the expulsion of 12 French officials, shattering recent hopes of a diplomatic thaw and plunging relations between the two nations to a new low. The country's foreign affairs ministry said in a statement that French consular agents had been given 48 hours to leave the country, in response to the arrest of an Algerian consular official in France. French counterterrorism prosecutors said three Algerians were arrested Friday on preliminary charges of “kidnapping or arbitrary detention … in connection with a terrorist undertaking (任務),” including one that French media has said was an Algerian consular official. The group is allegedly involved in the April 2024 kidnapping of an Algerian influencer, Amir Boukhors, or Amir DZ, a known critic of the Algerian government with 1.1 million followers on TikTok. That was the I.C.R.T. EZ News, I'm _____. －－－－以下訊息由 SoundOn 動態廣告贊助商提供－－－－ ✨宏匯廣場 歡慶璀璨女王節✨

French Prime Minister François Bayrou recently announced that his government will be "re-examining" a 1968 migration pact which has historically made it easier for Algerians to settle in France. The announcement came after years of diplomatic friction, which seems to be escalating. What's going on?Also, Tanzania reverses the trend on maternal and newborn deaths. What are they doing differently? And why tobacco farmers in Malawi are finding it difficult to farm other cropsPresenter: Charles Gitonga Technical Producer: Philip Bull Producers: Yvette Twagiramariya and Bella Hassan in London Senior Journalist: Karnie Sharp Editors: Andre Lombard and Alice Muthengi

jQuery(document).ready(function(){ cab.clickify(); }); Original Podcast with clickable words https://tinyurl.com/23r77m8z Contact: irishlingos@gmail.com Over €1bn spent on accommodation Breis agus €1bn caite ar lóistín d'iarratasóirí tearmainn i 2024. For the first time ever, the state spent over €1bn in 2024 on providing accommodation for applicants for international protection. Den chéad uair riamh, chaith an stát breis agus €1bn i 2024 ar lóistín a chur ar fáil d'iarratasóirí ar chosaint idirnáisiúnta. New figures, provided by the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth, Norma Foley, show that on average, the state spends €2.75m per day on accommodation for people applying for international protection. Léiríonn figiúirí nua, atá curtha ar fáil ag an Aire Leanaí, Comhionannais, Míchumais, Lánpháirtíochta agus Óige, Norma Foley, gur ar an meán, go gcaitheann an stát €2.75m in aghaidh an lae ar lóistín do dhaoine atá ag cur isteach ar chosaint idirnáisiúnta. The figures were provided to Aontu leader, Peadar Tóibín. Cuireadh na figiúirí ar fáil do cheannaire Aontú, Peadar Tóibín. They show that €1.005bn euros was spent last year on applicants for international protection. Léiríonn siad gur caitheadh €1.005bn euro anuraidh ar iarratasóirí ar chosaint idirnáisiúnta. This represents a 54% increase in the amount of money spent on them in 2023. Is ionann sin agus ardú 54 faoin gcéad ar an méid airgid a caitheadh orthu in 2023. The state has spent €2.5bn on providing accommodation for applicants since 2019. €2.5bn atá caite ag an stát ar lóistín a chur ar fáil d'iarratasóirí ón mbliain 2019. Minister Foley indicated that on average the state spent €84 per day on each applicant for international protection during 2024. Thug an tAire Foley le fios gur ar an meán gur chaith an stát €84 in aghaidh an lae ar gach iarratasóir ar chosaint idirnáisiúnta i rith 2024. This represents a 9% increase on the €76.80 spent on each applicant per day during 2023. Is ionann sin agus ardú 9 faoin gcéad ar an €76.80 a caitheadh ar gach iarratasóir in aghaidh an lae le linn 2023. Included in this expenditure are accommodation costs, facilities management and other costs. San áireamh sa chaiteachas sin, tá costais lóistín, bainistiú áiseanna agus costais eile. The largest proportion of international protection applicants currently staying in state-provided accommodation are of Nigerian origin, according to the latest figures provided by IPAS, the agency responsible for providing accommodation for asylum seekers. Is de bhunadh na Nigéire iad an sciar is mó de na hiarratasóirí cosanta idirnáisiúnta atá ag fanacht i lóistín atá curtha ar fáil ag an stát i láthair na huaire, de réir na bhfigiúirí is déanaí atá curtha ar fáil ag IPAS, an áisíneacht atá freagrach as lóistín a chur ar fáil d'iarratasóirí tearmainn. There are currently 6,914 Nigerians in the system. 6,914 Nigéarach atá sa chóras i láthair na huaire. There are 3,072 Georgians, 2,733 Algerians, 2,388 Somalis, 2,209 Zimbabweans, 2,157 Jordanians, 1,715 Afghans, 1,656 Pakistanis, 1,373 Bangladeshis and 1,249 South Africans. Tá 3,072 Seoirseach ann, 2,733 Ailgéarach, 2,388 Somálach, 2,209 ón tSiombáib, 2,157 Iordánach, 1,715 Afganastánach, 1,656 ón bPacastáin, 1,373 ón mBlanglaidéis agus 1,249 ón Afraic Theas. There are 694 from the Occupied Territories in Palestine. 694 atá ann ó na Críocha Gafa sa Phailistín. South Africa, Algeria and Georgia are currently classified as safe countries. Tá an Afraic Theas, an Ailgéir agus an tSeoirsia rangaithe ina dtíortha sabháilte i láthair na huaire.

In Partnership with God(Philippians 2:12-18) For the bulletin in PDF form, click here. Message SlidesSalvation as a Process - George GuthrieWork Out Your Salvation - F.F. BruceINTRODUCTION: Major Themes in PhilippiansSpiritual Formation(The Elements of Spiritual Growth)Personal Responsibility: Constant Growth without Supervision (2:12a)Intentional Effort: Constant Effort with Awe and Reverence (2:12b)Supernatural Aid: Constant Grace to Empower and Guide (2:13)Spiritual Hindrances(The Obstacles to Spiritual Growth)Bad Attitudes: Negativity Under Your Breath and Out Loud (2:14-15a)Societal Decay: Not Standing out in a Corrupt World (2:15b-16a)Spiritual Reward(The Joy of Spiritual Growth)Personal Satisfaction: The Reward of a Purposeful Life (2:16b)Community Celebration: Serving for the Sake of Others (2:17-18)Spiritual growth demands constant grace and effortwith a relentless attention to attitudes and lifestyle.“Work Out Your Salvation”(Philippians 2:12-18) To put it very simply,“Make salvation operational in your life.” Allen RossIn short, those who are part of the new covenant inaugurated through Jesus Christ by placing their faith in the finished work of Jesus Christ on the cross, validated by his resurrection have been saved from the penalty of sin, are being saved from the power of sin, and will be saved from the presence of sin.Home Church QuestionsRead Philippians 2:12-18.What immediate application did you gain from the passage or the message?Paul acknowledged their past obedience in verse 12 but pressed them on toward continued obedience in his absence (cf. his prayer in 1:9-11). Why is it easier to relax in your obedience when you are alone? Or when you are facing a stranger who frustrates you?Paul continues in verse 12 with how they are to continue in their obedience, with “fear and trembling.” What is the “fear” that would cause you to “tremble” about disobedience in those situations?Verse 13 conveys an active participation between you and God that results in spiritual growth. At what times and situations do you find your will to obey the weakest? What does this passage teach you to do in these situations?In verses 14 and 15, Paul relates that living as a Christian blamelessly and without fault (NIV) means doing everything without complaining or arguing. When and with whom is it easy to disobey this command? Why does doing everything without complaining or arguing make you “shine as lights” in the dark places of this world?Shining as lights in a warped and crooked generation requires that you “hold firmly to the word of life” (verse 16). In what ways does radical obedience to God's word bring light into our messed up world?Pray for the Unreached: Arabic-speaking Algerians are descendants of Berbers who converted to Islam after the Arab invasions. They form the majority population, speaking Algerian Arabic and following Sunni Muslim traditions. Many face unemployment, prompting migration to France and elsewhere for work. Less than 0.1% identify as Christians, with no movement toward Christ. Pray for the Holy Spirit to soften hearts toward the gospel and for believers to share Christ's love in Algeria. Ask for boldness among Kabyle Christians to inspire Jesus movements among these peoples.FinancesWeekly Budget 35,297Giving For 01/26 25,826Giving For 02/02 67,719YTD Budget 1,094,212Giving 1,096,775 OVER/(UNDER) ( 2,563)Souper Bowl SundayFellowship families, if you were able to bring hearty soups, canned chili, spaghetti sauce, tuna helper, canned meats, and Knorr brand pastas to restock the Bethlehem House shelves, thank you! If you forgot, there is still time to run by the store, grab some items, and have them back to Fellowship by 1:00 p.m. and we'll take them to Bethlehem House. If you aren't able to bring them today by 1:00 p.m., please feel free to drop them off at The Bethlehem House, 930 Faulkner St.New to Fellowship?We are so glad that you chose to worship with our Fellowship Family this morning. If you are joining us for the first time or have been checking us out for a few weeks, we are excited you are here and would love to meet you. Please fill out the “Connect Card” and bring it to the Connection Center in the Atrium, we would love to say “hi” and give you a gift. Getting Equipped at FellowshipFellowship, below are some great classes to get equipped in the New Year. For more information and to register go to fellowshipconway.org/equipping. • Apologetics for Everyone - February 9 - March 2 Men's Fellowship BreakfastMen, join us for a great breakfast and fellowship on Wednesday, February 12, at 6:00 a.m. here in the Fellowship atrium. No sign-up is needed. Come with your Bible ready to eat, fellowship with other men, and start your day off right through prayer and Biblical insight. Contact Michael at mharrison@fellowshipconway.org.Men's Muster 2025 - Men don't retreat. They muster. Will you muster with us? Mark your calendars for April 25-27! Men's Muster is heading to a NEW location—Ferncliff Camp & Conference Center in Little Rock. It's the perfect weekend to connect, have fun, and be challenged to relentlessly pursue Christ together. Chris Moore will lead the teaching, and you won't want to miss it. Registration is $150, with scholarships available. Register at fellowshipconway.org/register. Middle School Retreat | February 28-March 2Parents, our new student pastors are taking the Middle School group (5th-7th) to Ferncliff (in Little Rock) the last weekend in March. This is a great opportunity for your students to get to know our new pastors and connect deeper with the students their age. The weekend features Biblical teaching, meaningful small group time, and a ton of fun! To register your student for the retreat, go to fellowshipconway.org/fsm. Silent Auction | April 6thYouth and College Mission Teams will host a Silent Auction on Sunday, April 6th, at 4 PM. We are asking for you to participate in one of three ways. First, do you have a service, item, or experience you can donate to be auctioned off? We would love to have it. Second, we would love for you to show up and support the students and adults on the trip. Finally, if you cannot make it, please consider donating to the event. To donate an item or for any questions, please get in touch with our College Pastor, Andrew Stauffer at astauffer@fellowshipconway.org.

La storia dell'uomo giapponese assolto dopo 46 anni (un record) vissuti nel braccio della morte di un carcere in Giappone e del giudice che l'ha condannato nel 1968. Quella di Boualem Sansal, lo scrittore franco-algerino arrestato il 16 novembre all'aeroporto di Algeri, quella di Imran Khan, ex premier pakistano, in carcere accusato di oltre 100 reati (e quelle dei suicidi in carcere).

 Gli articoli citati nella puntata sono i seguenti: He was the world's longest-held death row inmate. He was also innocent, https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2024/12/iwao-hakamada-acquittal-japan-death-row/680393/, 18 novembre 2024; Japanese man who spent 46 years on death row cleared of murders, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/sep/26/iwao-hakamada-acquitted-murder-japan-death-row, 26 settembre 2024; Pakistan security forces accused of pushing man off containers, https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cm2md1jvrnvo, 27 novembre 2024; Algeria holds writer Boualem Sansal on national security charges: lawyer, https://www.rfi.fr/en/middle-east/20241126-algeria-holds-writer-boualem-sansal-on-national-security-charges-lawyer, 26 novembre 2024; Le silence pesant des aspirations démocratiques de l'Algérie, cinq ans plus tard, https://www.ledevoir.com/monde/afrique/807585/moyen-orient-silence-pesant-aspirations-democratiques-algerie-cinq-ans-plus-tard, 21 febbraio 2024. Gli inserti audio della puntata sono tratti da: World's longest-serving death-row inmate to hear fate, canale Youtube South China Morning Post, 20 maggio 2024; Former Japanese judge against Death Penalty, canale Youtube danielgrynines, 24 ottobre 2009; Jeremy Irons Talks About His Life In Support of Hakamada Iwao, canale Youtube Amnesty International, 1 novembre 2012; A police chief in Japan apologizes to a man acquitted after 50 years on death row, AP, 21 ottobre 2024; Arrestation de Boualem Sansal en Algérie: l'interview de son avocat en intégralité, Bfmtv, 25 novembre 2024; Algerians protest against Bouteflika in the capital Algiers, Afp News Agency, 15 marzo 2019; Boualem Sansal : "La mosquée est un lieu de gouvernement !”, canale Youtube Frontieres, 2 ottobre 2024; Imran Khan supporters call off protest after crackdown in Pakistan, BBC, 27 novembre 2024. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Notes and Links to Chris Knapp's Work      For Episode 255, Pete welcomes Chris Knapp, and the two discuss, among other topics, a fascination with Elena Ferrante, James Joyce, and other dynamic writers, the interplay between journalism and fiction writing, seeds for his debut novel, the significance of its title, the drawbacks and benefits of writing about such recent times, and salient themes and issues in his novel like colonialism, marital alienation and connection, ennui, and the creep of dystopian mores.      Christopher Knapp's work has appeared in print in the Paris Review and the New England Review, and online at Granta and n+1, among others. He's been a work-study scholar at the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, and earned an MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Virginia. His novel, States of Emergency, was published on September 3 by Unnamed Press. He lives in Paris with my wife, and teaches in the journalism program at the Sorbonne.     Buy States of Emergency   Chris Knapp's Website   At about 2:50, Chris talks about what it's been like in the run-up to publication  At about 4:00, Chris describes his early literary life and battles with spoilers At about 7:10, Pete and Chris discuss and cite the greatness of Faulkner and Joyce's work At about 9:30, Pete highlights a wonderfully Joycean sentence (one of many) from Chris' novel At about 10:25, Chris shouts out inspiring and thrilling writers, including Rachel Cusk, Don DeLillo, and Sebald, and Elena Ferrante At about 14:10, The two discuss Paris and Naples and prices and experiences At about 16:30, Chris responds to Pete's questions about the interplay between his journalistic background and his fiction writing At about 19:45, Pete and Chris reflect on the interesting ways in which the book's narrator functions in the book and connects to  At about 21:15, Chris speaks about seeds for his novel  At about 22:20, The two discuss Chris deciding to start the book with a heat wave and political and cultural  At about 24;45, Chris talks about the fertility procedures that run throughout much of the book and the way waiting relates At about 27:00, Chris delineates between hope and optimism and how these two qualities characterize the narrator and his wife Ella At about 29:20, The two discuss ideas of sympathy and empathy and comfort and shared pain At about 31:50, Chris responds to Pete's questions about the narrator's writing and charting his and Ella's experiences  At about 32:45, Chris reflects on the narrator's writing and the way that Ella sees him and his writing; he references Raven Leilani and writing on grief At about 34:45, The two discuss the ways in which French colonialism and racism is seen (or not) in the book and in the world At about 36:40, Pete highlights the dark humor of the book, and Chris expands on some of the humor and how it flows for him At about 39:35, The two discuss the “carnality” of a climatic scene in Ella and the narrator's relationship  At about 42:20, Chris charts the importance of a getaway for Ella in Skopje At about 44:20, Pete cites a period of separation between the two main characters and asks Chris about the significance of the book's title At about 49:00, Chris responds to Pete's questions about the drawbacks and benefits and vagaries of perspective in the novel At about 55:25, Chris reflects on narrative and its connections to history and to the novel At about 57:00, Pete compliments two anecdotes/scenes from the book, compares Ella's story of the French and Algerians to Wolff's “In the Garden of the North American Martyrs,” and Chris expands on the views of the narrator's family At about 1:02:50, Chris gives contact information, book purchasing info, and social media info At about 1:04:20, Chris talks about what he's working on and wants to write about in the future          You can now subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts, and leave me a five-star review. You can also ask for the podcast by name using Alexa, and find the pod on Stitcher, Spotify, and on Amazon Music. Follow me on IG, where I'm @chillsatwillpodcast, or on Twitter, where I'm @chillsatwillpo1. You can watch this and other episodes on YouTube-watch and subscribe to The Chills at Will Podcast Channel. Please subscribe to both my YouTube Channel and my podcast while you're checking out this episode.       I am very excited about having one or two podcast episodes per month featured on the website of Chicago Review of Books. The audio will be posted, along with a written interview culled from the audio. A big thanks to Rachel León and Michael Welch at Chicago Review.    Sign up now for The Chills at Will Podcast Patreon: it can be found at patreon.com/chillsatwillpodcastpeterriehl     Check out the page that describes the benefits of a Patreon membership, including cool swag and bonus episodes. Thanks in advance for supporting my one-man show, my DIY podcast and my extensive reading, research, editing, and promoting to keep this independent podcast pumping out high-quality content!    This month's Patreon bonus episode features segments from conversations with Deesha Philyaw, Luis Alberto Urrea, Chris Stuck, and more, as they reflect on chill-inducing writing and writers that have inspired their own work.       This is a passion project of mine, a DIY operation, and I'd love for your help in promoting what I'm convinced is a unique and spirited look at an often-ignored art form.    The intro song for The Chills at Will Podcast is “Wind Down” (Instrumental Version), and the other song played on this episode was “Hoops” (Instrumental)” by Matt Weidauer, and both songs are used through ArchesAudio.com.     Please tune in for Episode 256 with Andrew Maraniss, a New York Times-bestselling author of narrative nonfiction. His first book, Strong Inside, about Perry Wallace, the first African-American basketball player in the SEC, won the 2015 Lillian Smith Book Award. Andrew recently launched a series of early chapter books for young readers, BEYOND THE GAME: Athletes Change the World, which highlights athletes who have done meaningful work outside of sports to help other people.    The episode will air on October 1.    Lastly, please go to ceasefiretoday.com, which features 10+ actions to help bring about Ceasefire in Gaza.

The Algerian War of Independence constituted a major turning point of 20th century history. The conflict exacerbated divisions in French society, culminating in an unsuccessful coup attempt by the OAS in 1961. The war also launched the Third Worldist movement, delegitimized colonial rule because of its brutality, and it gave us one of the towering anti-colonial intellectual figures, the pro-FLN Martinican psychiatrist Frantz Fanon. Today's episode focuses on another important development that occurred as a result of the Algerian War: the transformation of modern warfare. Revolutionary Warfare: How the Algerian War Made Modern Counterinsurgency (Cornell UP, 2024) shows how French generals, officers, and civil officials sought to counter Algerian independence with their own project of social transformation. My guest, Terrence Peterson, argues that the French military effort in Algeria never exclusively focused on repression. Instead, military leaders fashioned new forms of surveillance and social control that its proponents hoped would capture the loyalty of Algerians and transform Algerian society. Although ultimately unsuccessful in its attempt to ‘keep Algeria French,' the new strategy of counterinsurgency became a model for anti-communist military and intelligence officers around the world. Terrence Peterson is an Associate Professor of History at Florida International University, where he teaches on modern Europe and European empires. He holds a PhD from the University of Wisconsin at Madison.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

The Algerian War of Independence constituted a major turning point of 20th century history. The conflict exacerbated divisions in French society, culminating in an unsuccessful coup attempt by the OAS in 1961. The war also launched the Third Worldist movement, delegitimized colonial rule because of its brutality, and it gave us one of the towering anti-colonial intellectual figures, the pro-FLN Martinican psychiatrist Frantz Fanon. Today's episode focuses on another important development that occurred as a result of the Algerian War: the transformation of modern warfare. Revolutionary Warfare: How the Algerian War Made Modern Counterinsurgency (Cornell UP, 2024) shows how French generals, officers, and civil officials sought to counter Algerian independence with their own project of social transformation. My guest, Terrence Peterson, argues that the French military effort in Algeria never exclusively focused on repression. Instead, military leaders fashioned new forms of surveillance and social control that its proponents hoped would capture the loyalty of Algerians and transform Algerian society. Although ultimately unsuccessful in its attempt to ‘keep Algeria French,' the new strategy of counterinsurgency became a model for anti-communist military and intelligence officers around the world. Terrence Peterson is an Associate Professor of History at Florida International University, where he teaches on modern Europe and European empires. He holds a PhD from the University of Wisconsin at Madison.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

The Algerian War of Independence constituted a major turning point of 20th century history. The conflict exacerbated divisions in French society, culminating in an unsuccessful coup attempt by the OAS in 1961. The war also launched the Third Worldist movement, delegitimized colonial rule because of its brutality, and it gave us one of the towering anti-colonial intellectual figures, the pro-FLN Martinican psychiatrist Frantz Fanon. Today's episode focuses on another important development that occurred as a result of the Algerian War: the transformation of modern warfare. Revolutionary Warfare: How the Algerian War Made Modern Counterinsurgency (Cornell UP, 2024) shows how French generals, officers, and civil officials sought to counter Algerian independence with their own project of social transformation. My guest, Terrence Peterson, argues that the French military effort in Algeria never exclusively focused on repression. Instead, military leaders fashioned new forms of surveillance and social control that its proponents hoped would capture the loyalty of Algerians and transform Algerian society. Although ultimately unsuccessful in its attempt to ‘keep Algeria French,' the new strategy of counterinsurgency became a model for anti-communist military and intelligence officers around the world. Terrence Peterson is an Associate Professor of History at Florida International University, where he teaches on modern Europe and European empires. He holds a PhD from the University of Wisconsin at Madison.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

The Algerian War of Independence constituted a major turning point of 20th century history. The conflict exacerbated divisions in French society, culminating in an unsuccessful coup attempt by the OAS in 1961. The war also launched the Third Worldist movement, delegitimized colonial rule because of its brutality, and it gave us one of the towering anti-colonial intellectual figures, the pro-FLN Martinican psychiatrist Frantz Fanon. Today's episode focuses on another important development that occurred as a result of the Algerian War: the transformation of modern warfare. Revolutionary Warfare: How the Algerian War Made Modern Counterinsurgency (Cornell UP, 2024) shows how French generals, officers, and civil officials sought to counter Algerian independence with their own project of social transformation. My guest, Terrence Peterson, argues that the French military effort in Algeria never exclusively focused on repression. Instead, military leaders fashioned new forms of surveillance and social control that its proponents hoped would capture the loyalty of Algerians and transform Algerian society. Although ultimately unsuccessful in its attempt to ‘keep Algeria French,' the new strategy of counterinsurgency became a model for anti-communist military and intelligence officers around the world. Terrence Peterson is an Associate Professor of History at Florida International University, where he teaches on modern Europe and European empires. He holds a PhD from the University of Wisconsin at Madison.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/middle-eastern-studies

The Algerian War of Independence constituted a major turning point of 20th century history. The conflict exacerbated divisions in French society, culminating in an unsuccessful coup attempt by the OAS in 1961. The war also launched the Third Worldist movement, delegitimized colonial rule because of its brutality, and it gave us one of the towering anti-colonial intellectual figures, the pro-FLN Martinican psychiatrist Frantz Fanon. Today's episode focuses on another important development that occurred as a result of the Algerian War: the transformation of modern warfare. Revolutionary Warfare: How the Algerian War Made Modern Counterinsurgency (Cornell UP, 2024) shows how French generals, officers, and civil officials sought to counter Algerian independence with their own project of social transformation. My guest, Terrence Peterson, argues that the French military effort in Algeria never exclusively focused on repression. Instead, military leaders fashioned new forms of surveillance and social control that its proponents hoped would capture the loyalty of Algerians and transform Algerian society. Although ultimately unsuccessful in its attempt to ‘keep Algeria French,' the new strategy of counterinsurgency became a model for anti-communist military and intelligence officers around the world. Terrence Peterson is an Associate Professor of History at Florida International University, where he teaches on modern Europe and European empires. He holds a PhD from the University of Wisconsin at Madison.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

The Algerian War of Independence constituted a major turning point of 20th century history. The conflict exacerbated divisions in French society, culminating in an unsuccessful coup attempt by the OAS in 1961. The war also launched the Third Worldist movement, delegitimized colonial rule because of its brutality, and it gave us one of the towering anti-colonial intellectual figures, the pro-FLN Martinican psychiatrist Frantz Fanon. Today's episode focuses on another important development that occurred as a result of the Algerian War: the transformation of modern warfare. Revolutionary Warfare: How the Algerian War Made Modern Counterinsurgency (Cornell UP, 2024) shows how French generals, officers, and civil officials sought to counter Algerian independence with their own project of social transformation. My guest, Terrence Peterson, argues that the French military effort in Algeria never exclusively focused on repression. Instead, military leaders fashioned new forms of surveillance and social control that its proponents hoped would capture the loyalty of Algerians and transform Algerian society. Although ultimately unsuccessful in its attempt to ‘keep Algeria French,' the new strategy of counterinsurgency became a model for anti-communist military and intelligence officers around the world. Terrence Peterson is an Associate Professor of History at Florida International University, where he teaches on modern Europe and European empires. He holds a PhD from the University of Wisconsin at Madison.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/national-security

The Algerian War of Independence constituted a major turning point of 20th century history. The conflict exacerbated divisions in French society, culminating in an unsuccessful coup attempt by the OAS in 1961. The war also launched the Third Worldist movement, delegitimized colonial rule because of its brutality, and it gave us one of the towering anti-colonial intellectual figures, the pro-FLN Martinican psychiatrist Frantz Fanon. Today's episode focuses on another important development that occurred as a result of the Algerian War: the transformation of modern warfare. Revolutionary Warfare: How the Algerian War Made Modern Counterinsurgency (Cornell UP, 2024) shows how French generals, officers, and civil officials sought to counter Algerian independence with their own project of social transformation. My guest, Terrence Peterson, argues that the French military effort in Algeria never exclusively focused on repression. Instead, military leaders fashioned new forms of surveillance and social control that its proponents hoped would capture the loyalty of Algerians and transform Algerian society. Although ultimately unsuccessful in its attempt to ‘keep Algeria French,' the new strategy of counterinsurgency became a model for anti-communist military and intelligence officers around the world. Terrence Peterson is an Associate Professor of History at Florida International University, where he teaches on modern Europe and European empires. He holds a PhD from the University of Wisconsin at Madison.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/french-studies

The Algerian War of Independence constituted a major turning point of 20th century history. The conflict exacerbated divisions in French society, culminating in an unsuccessful coup attempt by the OAS in 1961. The war also launched the Third Worldist movement, delegitimized colonial rule because of its brutality, and it gave us one of the towering anti-colonial intellectual figures, the pro-FLN Martinican psychiatrist Frantz Fanon. Today's episode focuses on another important development that occurred as a result of the Algerian War: the transformation of modern warfare. Revolutionary Warfare: How the Algerian War Made Modern Counterinsurgency (Cornell UP, 2024) shows how French generals, officers, and civil officials sought to counter Algerian independence with their own project of social transformation. My guest, Terrence Peterson, argues that the French military effort in Algeria never exclusively focused on repression. Instead, military leaders fashioned new forms of surveillance and social control that its proponents hoped would capture the loyalty of Algerians and transform Algerian society. Although ultimately unsuccessful in its attempt to ‘keep Algeria French,' the new strategy of counterinsurgency became a model for anti-communist military and intelligence officers around the world. Terrence Peterson is an Associate Professor of History at Florida International University, where he teaches on modern Europe and European empires. He holds a PhD from the University of Wisconsin at Madison.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/book-of-the-day

On Daybreak Africa: Around 24 million Algerians are poised to head to the polls this Saturday for a vote in which experts say incumbent President Abdelmadjid Tebboune faces no real risk to his rule as he seeks a second term. Plus, Kenyan gender activists demand action against femicide following the death of runner Rebecca Cheptegei. The China-Africa Cooperation Summit Forum concludes Friday as leader Xi Jinping pledges more than $50 billion in financing for Africa. The Zimbabwe Teachers Union supports a school head convicted of misusing a program for vulnerable students. Botswana police and protesters clash over a failed bill. Kamala Harris bets on stricter guns laws while Donald Trump pledges to roll back restrictions. For these and more, tune in to Daybreak Africa!

Listen to the premiere episode of the second season of The Forgotten Exodus, the multi-award-winning, chart-topping, and first-ever narrative podcast series to focus exclusively on Mizrahi and Sephardic Jews. This week's episode focuses on Jews from Tunisia. If you like what you hear, subscribe before the next episode drops on September 3. “In the Israeli DNA and the Jewish DNA, we have to fight to be who we are. In every generation, empires and big forces tried to erase us . . . I know what it is to be rejected for several parts of my identity... I'm fighting for my ancestors, but I'm also fighting for our future generation.”  Hen Mazzig, a writer, digital creator, and founder of the Tel Aviv Institute, shares his powerful journey as a proud Israeli, LGBTQ+, and Mizrahi Jew, in the premiere episode of the second season of the award-winning podcast, The Forgotten Exodus. Hen delves into his family's deep roots in Tunisia, their harrowing experiences during the Nazi occupation, and their eventual escape to Israel. Discover the rich history of Tunisia's ancient Amazigh Jewish community, the impact of French colonial and Arab nationalist movements on Jews in North Africa, and the cultural identity that Hen passionately preserves today. Joining the conversation is historian Lucette Valensi, an expert on Tunisian Jewish culture, who provides scholarly insights into the longstanding presence of Jews in Tunisia, from antiquity to their exodus in the mid-20th century. ___ Show notes: Sign up to receive podcast updates here. Learn more about the series here. Song credits:  "Penceresi Yola Karsi" -- by Turku, Nomads of the Silk Road Pond5:  “Desert Caravans”: Publisher: Pond5 Publishing Beta (BMI), Composer: Tiemur Zarobov (BMI), IPI#1098108837 “Sentimental Oud Middle Eastern”: Publisher: Pond5 Publishing Beta (BMI), Composer: Sotirios Bakas (BMI), IPI#797324989. “Meditative Middle Eastern Flute”: Publisher: Pond5 Publishing Beta (BMI), Composer: Danielyan Ashot Makichevich (BMI), IPI Name #00855552512, United States BMI “Tunisia Eastern”: Publisher: Edi Surya Nurrohim, Composer: Edi Surya Nurrohim, Item ID#155836469. “At The Rabbi's Table”: Publisher: Pond5 Publishing Beta (BMI), Composer: Fazio Giulio (IPI/CAE# 00198377019). “Fields Of Elysium”; Publisher: Mysterylab Music; Composer: Mott Jordan; ID#79549862  “Frontiers”: Publisher: Pond5 Publishing Beta (BMI); Composer: Pete Checkley (BMI), IPI#380407375 “Hatikvah (National Anthem Of Israel)”; Composer: Eli Sibony; ID#122561081 “Tunisian Pot Dance (Short)”: Publisher: Pond5 Publishing Beta (BMI); Composer: kesokid, ID #97451515 “Middle East Ident”; Publisher: Pond5 Publishing Alpha (ASCAP); Composer: Alon Marcus (ACUM), IPI#776550702 “Adventures in the East”: Publisher: Pond5 Publishing Beta (BMI) Composer: Petar Milinkovic (BMI), IPI#00738313833. ___ Episode Transcript: HEN MAZZIG: They took whatever they had left and they got on a boat. And my grandmother told me this story before she passed away on how they were on this boat coming to Israel.  And they were so happy, and they were crying because they felt that finally after generations upon generations of oppression they are going to come to a place where they are going to be protected, and that she was coming home. MANYA BRACHEAR PASHMAN: The world has overlooked an important episode in modern history: the 800,000 Jews who left or were driven from their homes in the Middle East and North Africa in the mid-20th century. Welcome to the second season of The Forgotten Exodus, brought to you by American Jewish Committee. This series explores that pivotal moment in history and the little-known Jewish heritage of Iran and Arab nations. As Jews around the world confront violent antisemitism and Israelis face daily attacks by terrorists on multiple fronts, our second season explores how Jews have lived throughout the region for generations–despite hardship, hostility, and hatred–then sought safety and new possibilities in their ancestral homeland. I'm your host, Manya Brachear Pashman. Join us as we explore untold family histories and personal stories of courage, perseverance, and resilience from this transformative and tumultuous period of history for the Jewish people and the Middle East.  The world has ignored these voices. We will not. This is The Forgotten Exodus.  Today's episode: leaving Tunisia. __ [Tel Aviv Pride video] MANYA BRACHEAR PASHMAN: Every June, Hen Mazzig, who splits his time between London and Tel Aviv, heads to Israel to show his Pride. His Israeli pride. His LGBTQ+ pride. And his Mizrahi Jewish pride. For that one week, all of those identities coalesce.  And while other cities around the world have transformed Pride into a June version of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, Israel is home to one of the few vibrant LGBTQ communities in the Middle East. Tel Aviv keeps it real. HEN: For me, Pride in Israel, in Tel Aviv, it still has this element of fighting for something. And that it's important for all of us to show up and to come out to the Pride Parade because if we're not going to be there, there's some people with agendas to erase us and we can't let them do it. MANYA: This year, the Tel Aviv Pride rally was a more somber affair as participants demanded freedom for the more than 100 hostages still held in Gaza since October 7th.  On that day, Hamas terrorists bent on erasing Jews from the Middle East went on a murderous rampage, killing more than 1,200, kidnapping 250 others, and unleashing what has become a 7-front war on Israel. HEN: In the Israeli DNA and the Jewish DNA we have to fight to be who we are. In every generation, empires and big forces tried to erase us, and we had to fight. And the LGBTQ+ community also knows very well how hard it is. I know what it is to be rejected for several parts of my identity. And I don't want anyone to go through that. I don't want my children to go through that. I'm fighting for my ancestors, but I'm also fighting for our future generation. MANYA: Hen Mazzig is an international speaker, writer, and digital influencer. In 2022, he founded the Tel Aviv Institute, a social media laboratory that tackles antisemitism online. He's also a second-generation Israeli, whose maternal grandparents fled Iraq, while his father's parents fled Tunisia – roots that echo in the family name: Mazzig. HEN: The last name Mazzig never made sense, because in Israel a lot of the last names have meaning in Hebrew.  So I remember one of my teachers in school was saying that Mazzig sounds like mozeg, which means pouring in Hebrew. Maybe your ancestors were running a bar or something? Clearly, this teacher did not have knowledge of the Amazigh people. Which, later on I learned, several of those tribes, those Amazigh tribes, were Jewish or practiced Judaism, and that there was 5,000 Jews that came from Tunisia that were holding both identities of being Jewish and Amazigh.  And today, they have last names like Mazzig, and Amzaleg, Mizzoug. There's several of those last names in Israel today. And they are the descendants of those Jewish communities that have lived in the Atlas Mountains. MANYA: The Atlas Mountains. A 1,500-mile chain of magnificent peaks and treacherous terrain that stretch across Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia, separating the Sahara from the Mediterranean and Atlantic coastline.  It's where the nomadic Amazigh have called home for thousands of years. The Amazigh trace their origins to at least 2,000 BCE  in western North Africa. They speak the language of Tamazight and rely on cattle and agriculture as their main sources of income.  But textiles too. In fact, you've probably heard of the Amazigh or own a rug woven by them. A Berber rug. HEN: Amazigh, which are also called Berbers. But they're rejecting this term because of the association with barbarians, which was the title that European colonialists when they came to North Africa gave them. There's beautiful folklore about Jewish leaders within the Amazigh people. One story that I really connected to was the story of Queen Dihya that was also known as El-Kahina, which in Arabic means the Kohen, the priest, and she was known as this leader of the Amazigh tribes, and she was Jewish.  Her derrogaters were calling her a Jewish witch, because they said that she had the power to foresee the future. And her roots were apparently connected to Queen Sheba and her arrival from Israel back to Africa. And she was the descendant of Queen Sheba. And that's how she led the Amazigh people.  And the stories that I read about her, I just felt so connected. How she had this long, black, curly hair that went all the way down to her knees, and she was fierce, and she was very committed to her identity, and she was fighting against the Islamic expansion to North Africa.  And when she failed, after years of holding them off, she realized that she can't do it anymore and she's going to lose. And she was not willing to give up her Jewish identity and convert to Islam and instead she jumped into a well and died. This well is known today in Tunisia. It's the [Bir] Al-Kahina or Dihya's Well that is still in existence. Her descendants, her kids, were Jewish members of the Amazigh people.  Of course, I would like to believe that I am the descendant of royalty. MANYA: Scholars debate whether the Amazigh converted to Judaism or descended from Queen Dihya and stayed.  Lucette Valensi is a French scholar of Tunisian history who served as a director of studies at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences in Paris, one of the most prestigious institutions of graduate education in France. She has written extensively about Tunisian Jewish culture.   Generations of her family lived in Tunisia. She says archaeological evidence proves Jews were living in that land since Antiquity. LUCETTE VALENSI: I myself am a Chemla, born Chemla. And this is an Arabic name, which means a kind of belt. And my mother's name was Tartour, which is a turban [laugh]. So the names were Arabic. So my ancestors spoke Arabic. I don't know if any of them spoke Berber before, or Latin. I have no idea. But there were Jews in antiquity and of course, through Saint Augustin. MANYA: So when did Jews arrive in Tunisia? LUCETTE: [laugh] That's a strange question because they were there since Antiquity. We have evidence of their presence in mosaics of synagogues, from the times of Byzantium. I think we think in terms of a short chronology, and they would tend to associate the Jews to colonization, which does not make sense, they were there much before French colonization. They were there for millennia. MANYA: Valensi says Jews lived in Tunisia dating to the time of Carthage, an ancient city-state in what is now Tunisia, that reached its peak in the fourth century BCE. Later, under Roman and then Byzantine rule, Carthage continued to play a vital role as a center of commerce and trade during antiquity.  Besides the role of tax collectors, Jews were forbidden to serve in almost all public offices. Between the 5th and 8th centuries CE, conditions fluctuated between relief and forced conversions while under Christian rule.  After the Islamic conquest of Tunisia in the seventh and early eighth centuries CE, the treatment of Jews largely depended on which Muslim ruler was in charge at the time.  Some Jews converted to Islam while others lived as dhimmis, or second-class citizens, protected by the state in exchange for a special tax known as the jizya. In 1146, the first caliph of the Almohad dynasty, declared that the Prophet Muhammad had granted Jews religious freedom for only 500 years, by which time if the messiah had not come, they had to convert.  Those who did not convert and even those who did were forced to wear yellow turbans or other special garb called shikra, to distinguish them from Muslims. An influx of Jews expelled from Spain and Portugal arrived in the 14th Century. In the 16th Century, Tunisia became part of the Ottoman Empire, and the situation of Jews improved significantly. Another group who had settled in the coastal Tuscan city of Livorno crossed the Mediterranean in the 17th and 18th centuries to make Tunisia their home. LUCETTE: There were other groups that came, Jews from Italy, Jews from Spain, of course, Spain and Portugal, different periods. 14th century already from Spain and then from Spain and Portugal. From Italy, from Livorno, that's later, but the Jews from Livorno themselves came from Spain.  So I myself am named Valensi. From Valencia. It was the family name of my first husband. So from Valencia in Spain they went to Livorno, and from Livorno–Leghorn in English–to Tunisia. MANYA: At its peak, Tunisia's Jewish population exceeded 100,000 – a combination of Sephardi and Mizrahi. HEN: When we speak about Jews from the Middle East and North Africa, specifically in the West, or mainly in the West, we're referring to them as Sephardi. But in Tunisia, it's very interesting to see that there was the Grana community which are Livorno Jews that moved to Tunisia in the 1800s, and they brought the Sephardi way of praying.  And that's why I always use the term Mizrahi to describe myself, because I feel like it encapsulates more of my identity. And for me, the Sephardi title that we often use on those communities doesn't feel accurate to me, and it also has the connection to Ladino, which my grandparents never spoke.  They spoke Tamazight, Judeo-Tamazight, which was the language of those tribes in North Africa. And my family from my mother's side, from Iraq, they were speaking Judeo-Iraqi-Arabic.  So for me, the term Sephardi just doesn't cut it. I go with Mizrahi to describe myself. MANYA: The terms Ashkenazi, Sephardi, and Mizrahi all refer to the places Jews once called home.  Ashkenazi Jews hail from Central and Eastern Europe, particularly Germany, Poland, and Russia. They traditionally speak Yiddish, and their customs and practices reflect the influences of Central and Eastern European cultures.  Pogroms in Eastern Europe and the Holocaust led many Ashkenazi Jews to flee their longtime homes to countries like the United States and their ancestral homeland, Israel.  Mizrahi, which means “Eastern” in Hebrew, refers to the diaspora of descendants of Jewish communities from Middle Eastern countries such as: Iraq, Iran, and Yemen, and North African countries such as: Tunisia, Libya, and Morocco. Ancient Jewish communities that have lived in the region for millennia long before the advent of Islam and Christianity. They often speak dialects of Arabic. Sephardi Jews originate from Spain and Portugal, speaking Ladino and incorporating Spanish and Portuguese cultural influences. Following their expulsion from the Iberian Peninsula in 1492, they settled in regions like North Africa and the Balkans. In Tunisia, the Mizrahi and Sephardi communities lived side by side, but separately. HEN: As time passed, those communities became closer together, still quite separated, but they became closer and closer. And perhaps the reason they were becoming closer was because of the hardship that they faced as Jews.  For the leaders of Muslim armies that came to Tunisia, it didn't matter if you were a Sephardi Jew, or if you were an Amazigh Jew. You were a Jew for them. MANYA: Algeria's invasion of Tunisia in the 18th century had a disproportionate effect on Tunisia's Jewish community. The Algerian army killed thousands of the citizens of Tunis, many of whom were Jewish. Algerians raped Jewish women, looted Jewish homes. LUCETTE: There were moments of trouble when you had an invasion of the Algerian army to impose a prince. The Jews were molested in Tunis. MANYA: After a military invasion, a French protectorate was established in 1881 and lasted until Tunisia gained independence in 1956. The Jews of Tunisia felt much safer under the French protectorate.  They put a lot of stock in the French revolutionary promise of Liberté, égalité, fraternité. Soon, the French language replaced Judeo-Arabic. LUCETTE: Well, under colonization, the Jews were in a better position. First, the school system. They went to modern schools, especially the Alliance [Israélite Universelle] schools, and with that started a form of Westernization.  You had also schools in Italian, created by Italian Jews, and some Tunisian Jews went to these schools and already in the 19th century, there was a form of acculturation and Westernization.  Access to newspapers, creation of newspapers. In the 1880s Jews had already their own newspapers in Hebrew characters, but Arabic language.  And my grandfather was one of the early journalists and they started having their own press and published books, folklore, sort of short stories. MANYA: In May 1940, Nazi Germany invaded France and quickly overran the French Third Republic, forcing the French to sign an armistice agreement in June. The armistice significantly reduced the territory governed by France and created a new government known as the Vichy regime, after the central French city where it was based.  The Vichy regime collaborated with the Nazis, establishing a special administration to introduce anti-Jewish legislation and enforce a compulsory Jewish census in all of its territories including Tunisia. Hen grew up learning about the Holocaust, the Nazis' attempt to erase the Jewish people. As part of his schooling, he learned the names of concentration and death camps and he heard the stories from his friends' grandparents.  But because he was not Ashkenazi, because his grandparents didn't suffer through the same catastrophe that befell Europe, Hen never felt fully accepted.  It was a trauma that belonged to his Ashkenazi friends of German and Polish descent, not to him. Or so they thought and so he thought, until he was a teenager and asked his grandmother Kamisa to finally share their family's journey from Tunisia. That's when he learned that the Mazzig family had not been exempt from Hitler's hatred. In November 1942, Tunisia became the only North African country to come under Nazi Germany's occupation and the Nazis wasted no time. Jewish property was confiscated, and heavy fines were levied on large Jewish communities. With the presence of the Einsatzkommando, a subgroup of the Einsatzgruppen, or mobile killing units, the Nazis were prepared to implement the systematic murder of the Jews of Tunisia. The tide of the war turned just in time to prevent that. LUCETTE: At the time the Germans came, they did not control the Mediterranean, and so they could not export us to the camps. We were saved by that. Lanor camps for men in dangerous places where there were bombs by the Allies. But not for us, it was, I mean, they took our radios. They took the silverware or they took money, this kind of oppression, but they did not murder us.  They took the men away, a few families were directly impacted and died in the camps. A few men. So we were afraid. We were occupied. But compared to what Jews in Europe were subjected to, we didn't suffer.  MANYA: Almost 5,000 Jews, most of them from Tunis and from certain northern communities, were taken captive and incarcerated in 32 labor camps scattered throughout Tunisia. Jews were not only required to wear yellow stars, but those in the camps were also required to wear them on their backs so they could be identified from a distance and shot in the event they tried to escape. HEN: My grandmother never told me until before she died, when she was more open about the stories of oppression, on how she was serving food for the French Nazi officers that were occupying Tunisia, or how my grandfather was in a labor camp, and he was supposed to be sent to a death camp in Europe as well. They never felt like they should share these stories. MANYA: The capture of Tunisia by the Allied forces in May 1943 led the Axis forces in North Africa to surrender. But the country remained under French colonial rule and the antisemitic legislation of the Vichy regime continued until 1944. Many of the Vichy camps, including forced labor camps in the Sahara, continued to operate.  Even after the decline and fall of the Vichy regime and the pursuit of independence from French rule began, conditions for the Mazzig family and many others in the Tunisian Jewish community did not improve.  But the source of much of the hostility and strife was actually a beacon of hope for Tunisia's Jews. On May 14, 1948, the world had witnessed the creation of the state of Israel, sparking outrage throughout the Arab world. Seven Arab nations declared war on Israel the day after it declared independence.  Amid the rise of Tunisian nationalism and its push for independence from France, Jewish communities who had lived in Tunisia for centuries became targets. Guilty by association. No longer welcome. Rabbinical councils were dismantled. Jewish sports associations banned. Jews practiced their religion in hiding. Hen's grandfather recounted violence in the Jewish quarter of Tunis.  HEN: When World War Two was over, the Jewish community in Tunisia was hoping that now that Tunisia would have emancipation, and it would become a country, that their neighbors and the country itself would protect them. Because when it was Nazis, they knew that it was a foreign power that came from France and oppressed them. They knew that there was some hatred in the past, from their Muslim neighbors towards them.  But they also were hoping that, if anything, they would go back to the same status of a dhimmi, of being a protected minority. Even if they were not going to be fully accepted and celebrated in this society, at least they would be protected, for paying tax. And this really did not happen. MANYA: By the early 1950s, life for the Mazzig family became untenable. By then, American Jewish organizations based in Tunis started working to take Jews to Israel right away.  HEN: [My family decided to leave.] They took whatever they had left. And they got on a boat. And my grandmother told me this story before she passed away on how they were on this boat coming to Israel.  And they were so happy, and they were crying because they felt that finally after generations upon generations of oppression of living as a minority that knows that anytime the ruler might turn on them and take everything they have and pull the ground underneath their feet, they are going to come to a place where they are going to be protected. And maybe they will face hate, but no one will hate them because they're Jewish.  And I often dream about my grandmother being a young girl on this boat and how she must have felt to know that the nightmare and the hell that she went through is behind her and that she was coming home. MANYA: The boat they sailed to Israel took days. When Hen's uncle, just a young child at the time, got sick, the captain threatened to throw him overboard. Hen's grandmother hid the child inside her clothes until they docked in Israel. When they arrived, they were sprayed with DDT to kill any lice or disease, then placed in ma'abarot, which in Hebrew means transit camps. In this case, it was a tent with one bed. HEN: They were really mistreated back then. And it's not criticism. I mean, yes, it is also criticism, but it's not without understanding the context. That it was a young country that just started, and those Jewish communities, Jewish refugees came from Tunisia, they didn't speak Hebrew. They didn't look like the other Jewish communities there. And while they all had this in common, that they were all Jews, they had a very different experience. MANYA: No, the family's arrival in the Holy Land was nothing like what they had imagined. But even still, it was a dream fulfilled and there was hope, which they had lost in Tunisia. HEN: I think that it was somewhere in between having both this deep connection to Israel and going there because they wanted to, and also knowing that there's no future in Tunisia. And the truth is that even–and I'm sure people that are listening to us, that are strong Zionists and love Israel, if you tell them ‘OK, so move tomorrow,' no matter how much you love Israel, it's a very difficult decision to make.  Unless it's not really a decision. And I think for them, it wasn't really a decision. And they went through so much, they knew, OK, we have to leave and I think for the first time having a country, having Israel was the hope that they had for centuries to go back home, finally realized. MANYA: Valensi's family did stay a while longer. When Tunisia declared independence in 1956, her father, a ceramicist, designed tiles for the residence of President Habib Bourguiba. Those good relations did not last.  Valensi studied history in France, married an engineer, and returned to Tunisia. But after being there for five years, it became clear that Jews were not treated equally and they returned to France in 1965. LUCETTE: I did not plan to emigrate. And then it became more and more obvious that some people were more equal than others [laugh]. And so there was this nationalist mood where responsibilities were given to Muslims rather than Jews and I felt more and more segregated.  And so, my husband was an engineer from a good engineering school. Again, I mean, he worked for another engineer, who was a Muslim. We knew he would never reach the same position. His father was a lawyer. And in the tribunal, he had to use Arabic. And so all these things accumulated, and we were displaced. MANYA: Valensi said Jewish emigration from Tunisia accelerated at two more mileposts. Even after Tunisia declared independence, France maintained a presence and a naval base in the port city of Bizerte, a strategic port on the Mediterranean for the French who were fighting with Algeria.  In 1961, Tunisian forces blockaded the naval base and warned France to stay out of its airspace. What became known as the Bizerte Crisis lasted for three days. LUCETTE: There were critical times, like what we call “La Crise de Bizerte.” Bizerte is a port to the west of Tunis that used to be a military port and when independence was negotiated with France, the French kept this port, where they could keep an army, and Bourguiba decided that he wanted this port back. And there was a war, a conflict, between Tunisia and France in ‘61.  And that crisis was one moment when Jews thought: if there is no French presence to protect us, then anything could happen. You had the movement of emigration.  Of course, much later, ‘67, the unrest in the Middle East, and what happened there provoked a kind of panic, and there were movements against the Jews in Tunis – violence and destruction of shops, etc. So they emigrated again. Now you have only a few hundred Jews left. MANYA: Valensi's first husband died at an early age. Her second husband, Abraham Udovitch, is the former chair of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University. Together, they researched and published a book about the Jewish communities in the Tunisian island of Djerba. The couple now splits their time between Paris and Princeton. But Valensi returns to Tunisia every year. It's still home. LUCETTE: When I go, strange thing, I feel at home. I mean, I feel I belong. My Arabic comes back. The words that I thought I had forgotten come back. They welcome you. I mean, if you go, you say you come from America, they're going to ask you questions. Are you Jewish? Did you go to Israel? I mean, these kind of very brutal questions, right away. They're going there. The taxi driver won't hesitate to ask you: Are you Jewish? But at the same time, they're very welcoming. So, I have no trouble. MANYA: Hen, on the other hand, has never been to the land of his ancestors. He holds on to his grandparents' trauma. And fear.  HEN: Tunisia just still feels a bit unsafe to me. Just as recent as a couple of months ago, there was a terror attack. So it's something that's still occurring.  MANYA: Just last year, a member of the Tunisian National Guard opened fire on worshippers outside El Ghriba Synagogue where a large gathering of Jewish pilgrims were celebrating the festival of Lag BaOmer. The synagogue is located on the Tunisian island of Djerba where Valensi and her husband did research for their book. Earlier this year, a mob attacked an abandoned synagogue in the southern city of Sfax, setting fire to the building's courtyard. Numbering over 100,000 Jews on the eve of Israel's Independence in 1948, the Tunisian Jewish community is now estimated to be less than 1,000.  There has been limited contact over the years between Tunisia and Israel. Some Israeli tourists, mostly of Tunisian origin, annually visit the El Ghriba synagogue in Djerba. But the government has largely been hostile to the Jewish state.  In the wake of the October 7 attack, the Tunisian parliament began debate on a law that would criminalize any normalization of ties with Israel. Still, Hen would like to go just once to see where his grandparents lived. Walked. Cooked. Prayed.  But to him it's just geography, an arbitrary place on a map. The memories, the music, the recipes, the traditions. It's no longer in Tunisia. It's elsewhere now – in the only country that preserved it. HEN: The Jewish Tunisian culture, the only place that it's been maintained is in Israel. That's why it's still alive. Like in Tunisia, it's not really celebrated. It's not something that they keep as much as they keep here.  Like if you want to go to a proper Mimouna, you would probably need to go to Israel, not to North Africa, although that's where it started. And the same with the Middle Eastern Jewish cuisine. The only place in the world, where be it Tunisian Jews and Iraqi Jews, or Yemenite Jews, still develop their recipes, is in Israel.  Israel is home, and this is where we still celebrate our culture and our cuisine and our identity is still something that I can engage with here.  I always feel like I am living the dreams of my grandparents, and I know that my grandmother is looking from above and I know how proud she is that we have a country, that we have a place to be safe at.  And that everything I do today is to protect my people, to protect the Jewish people, and making sure that next time when a country, when an empire, when a power would turn on Jews we'll have a place to go to and be safe. MANYA: Tunisian Jews are just one of the many Jewish communities who, in the last century, left Arab countries to forge new lives for themselves and future generations.  Join us next week as we share another untold story of The Forgotten Exodus. Many thanks to Hen for sharing his story. You can read more in his memoir The Wrong Kind of Jew: A Mizrahi Manifesto. Too many times during my reporting, I encountered children and grandchildren who didn't have the answers to my questions because they'd never asked. That's why one of the goals of this project is to encourage you to ask those questions. Find your stories. Atara Lakritz is our producer. T.K. Broderick is our sound engineer. Special thanks to Jon Schweitzer, Nicole Mazur, Sean Savage, and Madeleine Stern, and so many of our colleagues, too many to name really, for making this series possible.  You can subscribe to The Forgotten Exodus on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts, and you can learn more at AJC.org/theforgottenexodus.  The views and opinions of our guests don't necessarily reflect the positions of AJC.  You can reach us at theforgottenexodus@ajc.org. If you've enjoyed this episode, please be sure to spread the word, and hop onto Apple Podcasts or Spotify to rate us and write a review to help more listeners find us.

“In the Israeli DNA and the Jewish DNA, we have to fight to be who we are. In every generation, empires and big forces tried to erase us . . . I know what it is to be rejected for several parts of my identity... I'm fighting for my ancestors, but I'm also fighting for our future generation.”  Hen Mazzig, a writer, digital creator, and founder of the Tel Aviv Institute, shares his powerful journey as a proud Israeli, LGBTQ+, and Mizrahi Jew, in the premiere episode of the second season of the award-winning podcast, The Forgotten Exodus. Hen delves into his family's deep roots in Tunisia, their harrowing experiences during the Nazi occupation, and their eventual escape to Israel. Discover the rich history of Tunisia's ancient Amazigh Jewish community, the impact of French colonial and Arab nationalist movements on Jews in North Africa, and the cultural identity that Hen passionately preserves today. Joining the conversation is historian Lucette Valensi, an expert on Tunisian Jewish culture, who provides scholarly insights into the longstanding presence of Jews in Tunisia, from antiquity to their exodus in the mid-20th century. ___ Show notes: Sign up to receive podcast updates here. Learn more about the series here. Song credits:  "Penceresi Yola Karsi" -- by Turku, Nomads of the Silk Road Pond5:  “Desert Caravans”: Publisher: Pond5 Publishing Beta (BMI), Composer: Tiemur Zarobov (BMI), IPI#1098108837 “Sentimental Oud Middle Eastern”: Publisher: Pond5 Publishing Beta (BMI), Composer: Sotirios Bakas (BMI), IPI#797324989. “Meditative Middle Eastern Flute”: Publisher: Pond5 Publishing Beta (BMI), Composer: Danielyan Ashot Makichevich (BMI), IPI Name #00855552512, United States BMI “Tunisia Eastern”: Publisher: Edi Surya Nurrohim, Composer: Edi Surya Nurrohim, Item ID#155836469. “At The Rabbi's Table”: Publisher: Pond5 Publishing Beta (BMI), Composer: Fazio Giulio (IPI/CAE# 00198377019). “Fields Of Elysium”; Publisher: Mysterylab Music; Composer: Mott Jordan; ID#79549862  “Frontiers”: Publisher: Pond5 Publishing Beta (BMI); Composer: Pete Checkley (BMI), IPI#380407375 “Hatikvah (National Anthem Of Israel)”; Composer: Eli Sibony; ID#122561081 “Tunisian Pot Dance (Short)”: Publisher: Pond5 Publishing Beta (BMI); Composer: kesokid, ID #97451515 “Middle East Ident”; Publisher: Pond5 Publishing Alpha (ASCAP); Composer: Alon Marcus (ACUM), IPI#776550702 “Adventures in the East”: Publisher: Pond5 Publishing Beta (BMI) Composer: Petar Milinkovic (BMI), IPI#00738313833. ___ Episode Transcript: HEN MAZZIG: They took whatever they had left and they got on a boat. And my grandmother told me this story before she passed away on how they were on this boat coming to Israel.  And they were so happy, and they were crying because they felt that finally after generations upon generations of oppression they are going to come to a place where they are going to be protected, and that she was coming home. MANYA BRACHEAR PASHMAN: The world has overlooked an important episode in modern history: the 800,000 Jews who left or were driven from their homes in the Middle East and North Africa in the mid-20th century. Welcome to the second season of The Forgotten Exodus, brought to you by American Jewish Committee. This series explores that pivotal moment in history and the little-known Jewish heritage of Iran and Arab nations. As Jews around the world confront violent antisemitism and Israelis face daily attacks by terrorists on multiple fronts, our second season explores how Jews have lived throughout the region for generations–despite hardship, hostility, and hatred–then sought safety and new possibilities in their ancestral homeland. I'm your host, Manya Brachear Pashman. Join us as we explore untold family histories and personal stories of courage, perseverance, and resilience from this transformative and tumultuous period of history for the Jewish people and the Middle East.  The world has ignored these voices. We will not. This is The Forgotten Exodus.  Today's episode: leaving Tunisia. __ [Tel Aviv Pride video] MANYA BRACHEAR PASHMAN: Every June, Hen Mazzig, who splits his time between London and Tel Aviv, heads to Israel to show his Pride. His Israeli pride. His LGBTQ+ pride. And his Mizrahi Jewish pride. For that one week, all of those identities coalesce.  And while other cities around the world have transformed Pride into a June version of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, Israel is home to one of the few vibrant LGBTQ communities in the Middle East. Tel Aviv keeps it real. HEN: For me, Pride in Israel, in Tel Aviv, it still has this element of fighting for something. And that it's important for all of us to show up and to come out to the Pride Parade because if we're not going to be there, there's some people with agendas to erase us and we can't let them do it. MANYA: This year, the Tel Aviv Pride rally was a more somber affair as participants demanded freedom for the more than 100 hostages still held in Gaza since October 7th.  On that day, Hamas terrorists bent on erasing Jews from the Middle East went on a murderous rampage, killing more than 1,200, kidnapping 250 others, and unleashing what has become a 7-front war on Israel. HEN: In the Israeli DNA and the Jewish DNA we have to fight to be who we are. In every generation, empires and big forces tried to erase us, and we had to fight. And the LGBTQ+ community also knows very well how hard it is. I know what it is to be rejected for several parts of my identity. And I don't want anyone to go through that. I don't want my children to go through that. I'm fighting for my ancestors, but I'm also fighting for our future generation. MANYA: Hen Mazzig is an international speaker, writer, and digital influencer. In 2022, he founded the Tel Aviv Institute, a social media laboratory that tackles antisemitism online. He's also a second-generation Israeli, whose maternal grandparents fled Iraq, while his father's parents fled Tunisia – roots that echo in the family name: Mazzig. HEN: The last name Mazzig never made sense, because in Israel a lot of the last names have meaning in Hebrew.  So I remember one of my teachers in school was saying that Mazzig sounds like mozeg, which means pouring in Hebrew. Maybe your ancestors were running a bar or something? Clearly, this teacher did not have knowledge of the Amazigh people. Which, later on I learned, several of those tribes, those Amazigh tribes, were Jewish or practiced Judaism, and that there was 5,000 Jews that came from Tunisia that were holding both identities of being Jewish and Amazigh.  And today, they have last names like Mazzig, and Amzaleg, Mizzoug. There's several of those last names in Israel today. And they are the descendants of those Jewish communities that have lived in the Atlas Mountains. MANYA: The Atlas Mountains. A 1,500-mile chain of magnificent peaks and treacherous terrain that stretch across Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia, separating the Sahara from the Mediterranean and Atlantic coastline.  It's where the nomadic Amazigh have called home for thousands of years. The Amazigh trace their origins to at least 2,000 BCE  in western North Africa. They speak the language of Tamazight and rely on cattle and agriculture as their main sources of income.  But textiles too. In fact, you've probably heard of the Amazigh or own a rug woven by them. A Berber rug. HEN: Amazigh, which are also called Berbers. But they're rejecting this term because of the association with barbarians, which was the title that European colonialists when they came to North Africa gave them. There's beautiful folklore about Jewish leaders within the Amazigh people. One story that I really connected to was the story of Queen Dihya that was also known as El-Kahina, which in Arabic means the Kohen, the priest, and she was known as this leader of the Amazigh tribes, and she was Jewish.  Her derrogaters were calling her a Jewish witch, because they said that she had the power to foresee the future. And her roots were apparently connected to Queen Sheba and her arrival from Israel back to Africa. And she was the descendant of Queen Sheba. And that's how she led the Amazigh people.  And the stories that I read about her, I just felt so connected. How she had this long, black, curly hair that went all the way down to her knees, and she was fierce, and she was very committed to her identity, and she was fighting against the Islamic expansion to North Africa.  And when she failed, after years of holding them off, she realized that she can't do it anymore and she's going to lose. And she was not willing to give up her Jewish identity and convert to Islam and instead she jumped into a well and died. This well is known today in Tunisia. It's the [Bir] Al-Kahina or Dihya's Well that is still in existence. Her descendants, her kids, were Jewish members of the Amazigh people.  Of course, I would like to believe that I am the descendant of royalty. MANYA: Scholars debate whether the Amazigh converted to Judaism or descended from Queen Dihya and stayed.  Lucette Valensi is a French scholar of Tunisian history who served as a director of studies at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences in Paris, one of the most prestigious institutions of graduate education in France. She has written extensively about Tunisian Jewish culture.   Generations of her family lived in Tunisia. She says archaeological evidence proves Jews were living in that land since Antiquity. LUCETTE VALENSI: I myself am a Chemla, born Chemla. And this is an Arabic name, which means a kind of belt. And my mother's name was Tartour, which is a turban [laugh]. So the names were Arabic. So my ancestors spoke Arabic. I don't know if any of them spoke Berber before, or Latin. I have no idea. But there were Jews in antiquity and of course, through Saint Augustin. MANYA: So when did Jews arrive in Tunisia? LUCETTE: [laugh] That's a strange question because they were there since Antiquity. We have evidence of their presence in mosaics of synagogues, from the times of Byzantium. I think we think in terms of a short chronology, and they would tend to associate the Jews to colonization, which does not make sense, they were there much before French colonization. They were there for millennia. MANYA: Valensi says Jews lived in Tunisia dating to the time of Carthage, an ancient city-state in what is now Tunisia, that reached its peak in the fourth century BCE. Later, under Roman and then Byzantine rule, Carthage continued to play a vital role as a center of commerce and trade during antiquity.  Besides the role of tax collectors, Jews were forbidden to serve in almost all public offices. Between the 5th and 8th centuries CE, conditions fluctuated between relief and forced conversions while under Christian rule.  After the Islamic conquest of Tunisia in the seventh and early eighth centuries CE, the treatment of Jews largely depended on which Muslim ruler was in charge at the time.  Some Jews converted to Islam while others lived as dhimmis, or second-class citizens, protected by the state in exchange for a special tax known as the jizya. In 1146, the first caliph of the Almohad dynasty, declared that the Prophet Muhammad had granted Jews religious freedom for only 500 years, by which time if the messiah had not come, they had to convert.  Those who did not convert and even those who did were forced to wear yellow turbans or other special garb called shikra, to distinguish them from Muslims. An influx of Jews expelled from Spain and Portugal arrived in the 14th Century. In the 16th Century, Tunisia became part of the Ottoman Empire, and the situation of Jews improved significantly. Another group who had settled in the coastal Tuscan city of Livorno crossed the Mediterranean in the 17th and 18th centuries to make Tunisia their home. LUCETTE: There were other groups that came, Jews from Italy, Jews from Spain, of course, Spain and Portugal, different periods. 14th century already from Spain and then from Spain and Portugal. From Italy, from Livorno, that's later, but the Jews from Livorno themselves came from Spain.  So I myself am named Valensi. From Valencia. It was the family name of my first husband. So from Valencia in Spain they went to Livorno, and from Livorno–Leghorn in English–to Tunisia. MANYA: At its peak, Tunisia's Jewish population exceeded 100,000 – a combination of Sephardi and Mizrahi. HEN: When we speak about Jews from the Middle East and North Africa, specifically in the West, or mainly in the West, we're referring to them as Sephardi. But in Tunisia, it's very interesting to see that there was the Grana community which are Livorno Jews that moved to Tunisia in the 1800s, and they brought the Sephardi way of praying.  And that's why I always use the term Mizrahi to describe myself, because I feel like it encapsulates more of my identity. And for me, the Sephardi title that we often use on those communities doesn't feel accurate to me, and it also has the connection to Ladino, which my grandparents never spoke.  They spoke Tamazight, Judeo-Tamazight, which was the language of those tribes in North Africa. And my family from my mother's side, from Iraq, they were speaking Judeo-Iraqi-Arabic.  So for me, the term Sephardi just doesn't cut it. I go with Mizrahi to describe myself. MANYA: The terms Ashkenazi, Sephardi, and Mizrahi all refer to the places Jews once called home.  Ashkenazi Jews hail from Central and Eastern Europe, particularly Germany, Poland, and Russia. They traditionally speak Yiddish, and their customs and practices reflect the influences of Central and Eastern European cultures.  Pogroms in Eastern Europe and the Holocaust led many Ashkenazi Jews to flee their longtime homes to countries like the United States and their ancestral homeland, Israel.  Mizrahi, which means “Eastern” in Hebrew, refers to the diaspora of descendants of Jewish communities from Middle Eastern countries such as: Iraq, Iran, and Yemen, and North African countries such as: Tunisia, Libya, and Morocco. Ancient Jewish communities that have lived in the region for millennia long before the advent of Islam and Christianity. They often speak dialects of Arabic. Sephardi Jews originate from Spain and Portugal, speaking Ladino and incorporating Spanish and Portuguese cultural influences. Following their expulsion from the Iberian Peninsula in 1492, they settled in regions like North Africa and the Balkans. In Tunisia, the Mizrahi and Sephardi communities lived side by side, but separately. HEN: As time passed, those communities became closer together, still quite separated, but they became closer and closer. And perhaps the reason they were becoming closer was because of the hardship that they faced as Jews.  For the leaders of Muslim armies that came to Tunisia, it didn't matter if you were a Sephardi Jew, or if you were an Amazigh Jew. You were a Jew for them. MANYA: Algeria's invasion of Tunisia in the 18th century had a disproportionate effect on Tunisia's Jewish community. The Algerian army killed thousands of the citizens of Tunis, many of whom were Jewish. Algerians raped Jewish women, looted Jewish homes. LUCETTE: There were moments of trouble when you had an invasion of the Algerian army to impose a prince. The Jews were molested in Tunis. MANYA: After a military invasion, a French protectorate was established in 1881 and lasted until Tunisia gained independence in 1956. The Jews of Tunisia felt much safer under the French protectorate.  They put a lot of stock in the French revolutionary promise of Liberté, égalité, fraternité. Soon, the French language replaced Judeo-Arabic. LUCETTE: Well, under colonization, the Jews were in a better position. First, the school system. They went to modern schools, especially the Alliance [Israélite Universelle] schools, and with that started a form of Westernization.  You had also schools in Italian, created by Italian Jews, and some Tunisian Jews went to these schools and already in the 19th century, there was a form of acculturation and Westernization.  Access to newspapers, creation of newspapers. In the 1880s Jews had already their own newspapers in Hebrew characters, but Arabic language.  And my grandfather was one of the early journalists and they started having their own press and published books, folklore, sort of short stories. MANYA: In May 1940, Nazi Germany invaded France and quickly overran the French Third Republic, forcing the French to sign an armistice agreement in June. The armistice significantly reduced the territory governed by France and created a new government known as the Vichy regime, after the central French city where it was based.  The Vichy regime collaborated with the Nazis, establishing a special administration to introduce anti-Jewish legislation and enforce a compulsory Jewish census in all of its territories including Tunisia. Hen grew up learning about the Holocaust, the Nazis' attempt to erase the Jewish people. As part of his schooling, he learned the names of concentration and death camps and he heard the stories from his friends' grandparents.  But because he was not Ashkenazi, because his grandparents didn't suffer through the same catastrophe that befell Europe, Hen never felt fully accepted.  It was a trauma that belonged to his Ashkenazi friends of German and Polish descent, not to him. Or so they thought and so he thought, until he was a teenager and asked his grandmother Kamisa to finally share their family's journey from Tunisia. That's when he learned that the Mazzig family had not been exempt from Hitler's hatred. In November 1942, Tunisia became the only North African country to come under Nazi Germany's occupation and the Nazis wasted no time. Jewish property was confiscated, and heavy fines were levied on large Jewish communities. With the presence of the Einsatzkommando, a subgroup of the Einsatzgruppen, or mobile killing units, the Nazis were prepared to implement the systematic murder of the Jews of Tunisia. The tide of the war turned just in time to prevent that. LUCETTE: At the time the Germans came, they did not control the Mediterranean, and so they could not export us to the camps. We were saved by that. Lanor camps for men in dangerous places where there were bombs by the Allies. But not for us, it was, I mean, they took our radios. They took the silverware or they took money, this kind of oppression, but they did not murder us.  They took the men away, a few families were directly impacted and died in the camps. A few men. So we were afraid. We were occupied. But compared to what Jews in Europe were subjected to, we didn't suffer.  MANYA: Almost 5,000 Jews, most of them from Tunis and from certain northern communities, were taken captive and incarcerated in 32 labor camps scattered throughout Tunisia. Jews were not only required to wear yellow stars, but those in the camps were also required to wear them on their backs so they could be identified from a distance and shot in the event they tried to escape. HEN: My grandmother never told me until before she died, when she was more open about the stories of oppression, on how she was serving food for the French Nazi officers that were occupying Tunisia, or how my grandfather was in a labor camp, and he was supposed to be sent to a death camp in Europe as well. They never felt like they should share these stories. MANYA: The capture of Tunisia by the Allied forces in May 1943 led the Axis forces in North Africa to surrender. But the country remained under French colonial rule and the antisemitic legislation of the Vichy regime continued until 1944. Many of the Vichy camps, including forced labor camps in the Sahara, continued to operate.  Even after the decline and fall of the Vichy regime and the pursuit of independence from French rule began, conditions for the Mazzig family and many others in the Tunisian Jewish community did not improve.  But the source of much of the hostility and strife was actually a beacon of hope for Tunisia's Jews. On May 14, 1948, the world had witnessed the creation of the state of Israel, sparking outrage throughout the Arab world. Seven Arab nations declared war on Israel the day after it declared independence.  Amid the rise of Tunisian nationalism and its push for independence from France, Jewish communities who had lived in Tunisia for centuries became targets. Guilty by association. No longer welcome. Rabbinical councils were dismantled. Jewish sports associations banned. Jews practiced their religion in hiding. Hen's grandfather recounted violence in the Jewish quarter of Tunis.  HEN: When World War Two was over, the Jewish community in Tunisia was hoping that now that Tunisia would have emancipation, and it would become a country, that their neighbors and the country itself would protect them. Because when it was Nazis, they knew that it was a foreign power that came from France and oppressed them. They knew that there was some hatred in the past, from their Muslim neighbors towards them.  But they also were hoping that, if anything, they would go back to the same status of a dhimmi, of being a protected minority. Even if they were not going to be fully accepted and celebrated in this society, at least they would be protected, for paying tax. And this really did not happen. MANYA: By the early 1950s, life for the Mazzig family became untenable. By then, American Jewish organizations based in Tunis started working to take Jews to Israel right away.  HEN: [My family decided to leave.] They took whatever they had left. And they got on a boat. And my grandmother told me this story before she passed away on how they were on this boat coming to Israel.  And they were so happy, and they were crying because they felt that finally after generations upon generations of oppression of living as a minority that knows that anytime the ruler might turn on them and take everything they have and pull the ground underneath their feet, they are going to come to a place where they are going to be protected. And maybe they will face hate, but no one will hate them because they're Jewish.  And I often dream about my grandmother being a young girl on this boat and how she must have felt to know that the nightmare and the hell that she went through is behind her and that she was coming home. MANYA: The boat they sailed to Israel took days. When Hen's uncle, just a young child at the time, got sick, the captain threatened to throw him overboard. Hen's grandmother hid the child inside her clothes until they docked in Israel. When they arrived, they were sprayed with DDT to kill any lice or disease, then placed in ma'abarot, which in Hebrew means transit camps. In this case, it was a tent with one bed. HEN: They were really mistreated back then. And it's not criticism. I mean, yes, it is also criticism, but it's not without understanding the context. That it was a young country that just started, and those Jewish communities, Jewish refugees came from Tunisia, they didn't speak Hebrew. They didn't look like the other Jewish communities there. And while they all had this in common, that they were all Jews, they had a very different experience. MANYA: No, the family's arrival in the Holy Land was nothing like what they had imagined. But even still, it was a dream fulfilled and there was hope, which they had lost in Tunisia. HEN: I think that it was somewhere in between having both this deep connection to Israel and going there because they wanted to, and also knowing that there's no future in Tunisia. And the truth is that even–and I'm sure people that are listening to us, that are strong Zionists and love Israel, if you tell them ‘OK, so move tomorrow,' no matter how much you love Israel, it's a very difficult decision to make.  Unless it's not really a decision. And I think for them, it wasn't really a decision. And they went through so much, they knew, OK, we have to leave and I think for the first time having a country, having Israel was the hope that they had for centuries to go back home, finally realized. MANYA: Valensi's family did stay a while longer. When Tunisia declared independence in 1956, her father, a ceramicist, designed tiles for the residence of President Habib Bourguiba. Those good relations did not last.  Valensi studied history in France, married an engineer, and returned to Tunisia. But after being there for five years, it became clear that Jews were not treated equally and they returned to France in 1965. LUCETTE: I did not plan to emigrate. And then it became more and more obvious that some people were more equal than others [laugh]. And so there was this nationalist mood where responsibilities were given to Muslims rather than Jews and I felt more and more segregated.  And so, my husband was an engineer from a good engineering school. Again, I mean, he worked for another engineer, who was a Muslim. We knew he would never reach the same position. His father was a lawyer. And in the tribunal, he had to use Arabic. And so all these things accumulated, and we were displaced. MANYA: Valensi said Jewish emigration from Tunisia accelerated at two more mileposts. Even after Tunisia declared independence, France maintained a presence and a naval base in the port city of Bizerte, a strategic port on the Mediterranean for the French who were fighting with Algeria.  In 1961, Tunisian forces blockaded the naval base and warned France to stay out of its airspace. What became known as the Bizerte Crisis lasted for three days. LUCETTE: There were critical times, like what we call “La Crise de Bizerte.” Bizerte is a port to the west of Tunis that used to be a military port and when independence was negotiated with France, the French kept this port, where they could keep an army, and Bourguiba decided that he wanted this port back. And there was a war, a conflict, between Tunisia and France in ‘61.  And that crisis was one moment when Jews thought: if there is no French presence to protect us, then anything could happen. You had the movement of emigration.  Of course, much later, ‘67, the unrest in the Middle East, and what happened there provoked a kind of panic, and there were movements against the Jews in Tunis – violence and destruction of shops, etc. So they emigrated again. Now you have only a few hundred Jews left. MANYA: Valensi's first husband died at an early age. Her second husband, Abraham Udovitch, is the former chair of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University. Together, they researched and published a book about the Jewish communities in the Tunisian island of Djerba. The couple now splits their time between Paris and Princeton. But Valensi returns to Tunisia every year. It's still home. LUCETTE: When I go, strange thing, I feel at home. I mean, I feel I belong. My Arabic comes back. The words that I thought I had forgotten come back. They welcome you. I mean, if you go, you say you come from America, they're going to ask you questions. Are you Jewish? Did you go to Israel? I mean, these kind of very brutal questions, right away. They're going there. The taxi driver won't hesitate to ask you: Are you Jewish? But at the same time, they're very welcoming. So, I have no trouble. MANYA: Hen, on the other hand, has never been to the land of his ancestors. He holds on to his grandparents' trauma. And fear.  HEN: Tunisia just still feels a bit unsafe to me. Just as recent as a couple of months ago, there was a terror attack. So it's something that's still occurring.  MANYA: Just last year, a member of the Tunisian National Guard opened fire on worshippers outside El Ghriba Synagogue where a large gathering of Jewish pilgrims were celebrating the festival of Lag BaOmer. The synagogue is located on the Tunisian island of Djerba where Valensi and her husband did research for their book. Earlier this year, a mob attacked an abandoned synagogue in the southern city of Sfax, setting fire to the building's courtyard. Numbering over 100,000 Jews on the eve of Israel's Independence in 1948, the Tunisian Jewish community is now estimated to be less than 1,000.  There has been limited contact over the years between Tunisia and Israel. Some Israeli tourists, mostly of Tunisian origin, annually visit the El Ghriba synagogue in Djerba. But the government has largely been hostile to the Jewish state.  In the wake of the October 7 attack, the Tunisian parliament began debate on a law that would criminalize any normalization of ties with Israel. Still, Hen would like to go just once to see where his grandparents lived. Walked. Cooked. Prayed.  But to him it's just geography, an arbitrary place on a map. The memories, the music, the recipes, the traditions. It's no longer in Tunisia. It's elsewhere now – in the only country that preserved it. HEN: The Jewish Tunisian culture, the only place that it's been maintained is in Israel. That's why it's still alive. Like in Tunisia, it's not really celebrated. It's not something that they keep as much as they keep here.  Like if you want to go to a proper Mimouna, you would probably need to go to Israel, not to North Africa, although that's where it started. And the same with the Middle Eastern Jewish cuisine. The only place in the world, where be it Tunisian Jews and Iraqi Jews, or Yemenite Jews, still develop their recipes, is in Israel.  Israel is home, and this is where we still celebrate our culture and our cuisine and our identity is still something that I can engage with here.  I always feel like I am living the dreams of my grandparents, and I know that my grandmother is looking from above and I know how proud she is that we have a country, that we have a place to be safe at.  And that everything I do today is to protect my people, to protect the Jewish people, and making sure that next time when a country, when an empire, when a power would turn on Jews we'll have a place to go to and be safe. MANYA: Tunisian Jews are just one of the many Jewish communities who, in the last century, left Arab countries to forge new lives for themselves and future generations.  Join us next week as we share another untold story of The Forgotten Exodus. Many thanks to Hen for sharing his story. You can read more in his memoir The Wrong Kind of Jew: A Mizrahi Manifesto. Too many times during my reporting, I encountered children and grandchildren who didn't have the answers to my questions because they'd never asked. That's why one of the goals of this project is to encourage you to ask those questions. Find your stories. Atara Lakritz is our producer. T.K. Broderick is our sound engineer. Special thanks to Jon Schweitzer, Nicole Mazur, Sean Savage, and Madeleine Stern, and so many of our colleagues, too many to name really, for making this series possible.  You can subscribe to The Forgotten Exodus on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts, and you can learn more at AJC.org/theforgottenexodus.  The views and opinions of our guests don't necessarily reflect the positions of AJC.  You can reach us at theforgottenexodus@ajc.org. If you've enjoyed this episode, please be sure to spread the word, and hop onto Apple Podcasts or Spotify to rate us and write a review to help more listeners find us.

[This blog will always be free to read, but it's also how I pay my bills. If you have suggestions or feedback on how I can earn your paid subscription, shoot me an email: cmclymer@gmail.com. And if this is too big of a commitment, I'm always thankful for a simple cup of coffee.]You may or may not have a relative or friend or acquaintance in your life who has posted on social media in the past few days, quite sardonically, that there's a lot of money to be made in betting on Algerian boxer Imane Khelif, who just made it to the semifinals of women's boxing in the 66kg weight class at the Paris Olympics.The past several days have seen a deluge of disinformation across the internet regarding Ms. Khelif, whose sex has been called into question because she was simply too good in her Olympics match against Italy's Angela Carini, who gave up 46 seconds into their bout and then implied Ms. Khelif may not be a fair competitor.Donald Trump, J.D. Vance, J.K. Rowling, rightwing Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, and YouTube star Logan Paul, among others, have viciously spread vile propaganda that Ms. Khelif is actually a man, not only smearing her reputation with transphobic and misogynistic nonsense but also likely putting her in danger.To be clear, there are three trans athletes in the Paris Olympics, none of whom are trans women. You can read more about them right here. But hey, it's been interesting to watch the response of sports betting markets!That's probably why your “very concerned” relative insisted on plunking down a wad of cash on Ms. Khelif winning the Gold Medal in her weight class, despite simultaneously dehumanizing her.Let's review how betting odds work. 1. The better the odds for an athlete winning, the lower they yield for bettors. Ms. Khelif, for example, currently has -500 odds on Fanduel. This has jumped substantially in light of the anti-trans propaganda online this week.That means a bettor has to wager $5 on her in order to make $1. The question then becomes: would you put down $500 to make $100? Some folks would, but it's pretty risky. It's even riskier when you consider that the odds are very likely inflated due to the incomplete reporting on Ms. Khelif over the past several days. That brings me to my second point. 2. Ms. Khelif has a 42-9 record. She has lost previously to nine other women. Nine. That includes a loss to Amy Broadhurst of Ireland in the World Boxing Championships, who is among the women loudly defending Ms. Khelif against these horrid accusations. Nine times she's lost to other women in the ring. Think about that. That brings me to my third point.3. There has been no evidence presented that Ms. Khelif has XY chromosomes, but a woman having XY chromosomes does not mean she's a man. Contrary to what I think most of us were taught in 6th grade biology, there are non-trans women with XY chromosomes and non-trans men with XX chromosomes. This is long-established science. You can read more about it here. There is also no evidence that Ms. Khelif has differences in sexual development (DSD) or Swyer's Syndrome or any other condition that may present her chromosomal status as having substantially "male" sex characteristics. That brings me to my fourth point. 4. Ms. Khelif was disqualified by the IBA last year in incredibly murky circumstances. The International Boxing Association (IBA) refused to be transparent about their testing methodology, which, in itself, is bonkers. Her disqualification just so happened to come three days after she beat Russian boxer Azalia Amineva in the semfinals of the IBA Women's World Championship. The IBA has strong, documented ties to the Russian government. Its president, Umar Kremlev, is a Russian citizen. He also serves on the Executive Committee of Russia's boxing federation. After becoming its president in 2020, Mr. Kremlev moved the IBA's operations to Russia and made Gazprom, Russia's state-owned energy company, its sole sponsor. Mr. Kremlev is an associate of Putin, which feels pretty redundant to state after all the above. All of this, plus a number of other concerns over corruption, led to the International Olympic Committee, last year, stripping the IBA as an eligibility authority for the Paris Olympics. In response, Mr. Kremlev called IOC President Thomas Bach a "chief sodomite." Classy. That brings me to my fifth point. 5. Ms. Khelif's country, Algeria, is notoriously anti-LGBTQ. The rights of queer Algerians is abysmal. Are there non-LGBTQ Algerians who support equality? Of course, but the Algerian government does not. It is illegal to be transgender in Algeria. It is impossible for a trans woman to obtain an Algerian passport indicating her as female. Ms. Khelif would literally not be able to leave the country with a female passport if she were transgender, which she is not. Of course, this is further moot given that 1) Ms. Khelif's father has provided her birth certificate establishing she was assigned female at birth and 2) trans women are barred from competing in boxing at the Olympics. That brings me to my sixth point. 6. This isn't really about whether or not Ms. Khelif is a woman. It's about women athletes only being valid when they meet arbitrary standards of femininity as defined through the male gaze. Women athletes as varied as Serena Williams and Katie Ledecky—whom I think most of us would agree are gorgeous (not that it should matter, of course)—have been targeted in the past by vile rumors that they aren't really women. Because they're too damn good and aspects of their bodies may not align with the absurd and arbitrary expectations of the male gaze. Women can be successful in the male gaze if, and only if, they please the male gaze. And even then, not really. That brings me to my final point. 7. Male athletes don't deal with this nonsense. When a man is stronger and faster, preternaturally gifted, has extraordinary biological deviations from the norm, he is celebrated and mythologized. When a male boxer KOs their opponent in the first ten seconds of a bout, it is cause for adulation. When a woman does it, she is suspect. Sounds a lot like misogyny to me. Of course, Angela Carini, the Italian boxer whom Ms. Khelif defeated in that bout that launched this whole controversy, recognized this within a day of the match. She said: "All this controversy certainly made me sad, and I also felt sorry for my opponent, she had nothing to do with it and like me was only here to fight... It was not intentional, in fact I apologize to her and to everyone. I was angry, because my Games had already gone up in smoke. I have nothing against Khelif and on the contrary if I happened to meet her again I would give her a hug." She hasn't been the only one to back off. The Boston Globe released a rare statement apologizing for their sloppy reporting on the story, and Logan Paul released a statement backpedaling on his claims. I'm gonna leave it there. So, if your relative would like to risk $500 to win $100 on all this controversy and disinformation surrounding Ms. Khelif, they are welcome to do so. But it seems like a wobbly bet.Charlotte's Web Thoughts is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to Charlotte's Web Thoughts at charlotteclymer.substack.com/subscribe

LINKS Vatican bio of Cardinal Aveline https://press.vatican.va/content/salastampa/en/documentation/cardinali_biografie/cardinali_bio_aveline_jm.html   Jean-Marc Noël Aveline on FIU's Cardinals Database (by Salvadore Miranda): https://cardinals.fiu.edu/bios2022.htm#Aveline   Cardinal Aveline on Gcatholic.org: http://www.gcatholic.org/p/55034  Cardinal Aveline on Catholic-Hierarchy.org: https://www.catholic-hierarchy.org/bishop/baveline.html   Archdioces of Marseille on Gcatholic.org: http://www.gcatholic.org/dioceses/diocese/mars0.htm?focus=55034&tab=info   Archdioces of Marseille on Catholic-Hierarchy.org: https://www.catholic-hierarchy.org/diocese/dmarf.html   2019 France3 interview with Archbishop Aveline: https://france3-regions.francetvinfo.fr/provence-alpes-cote-d-azur/bouches-du-rhone/marseille/entretien-defis-du-nouvel-archeveque-marseille-mgr-jean-marc-aveline-1708884.html 2023 CruxNow coverage of an interview with Cardinal Aveline: https://cruxnow.com/pope-in-marseille-live-coverage/2023/09/ahead-of-papal-visit-marseille-cardinal-stresses-balance-on-immigration  2023 La Croix International write-up on Cardinal Aveline:  https://international.la-croix.com/news/religion/jean-marc-aveline-the-french-cardinal-who-has-the-popes-ear/18350  Vatican.va description of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue (PCID): https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/interelg/documents/rc_pc_interelg_pro_20051996_en.html    Thank you for listening, and thank my family and friends for putting up with the time investment and for helping me out as needed. As always, feel free to email the show at Popeularhistory@gmail.com  If you would like to financially support Popeular history, go to www.patreon.com/Popeular. If you don't have any money to spare but still want to give back, pray and tell others– prayers and listeners are worth more than gold!   TRANSCRIPT Welcome to Popeular History, history through Pope-colored glasses.   Check out the show notes for sources, further reading, and a transcript.   Today we're discussing a current Cardinal of the Catholic Church, one of the 120 or so people who will choose the next Pope when the time comes.   Jean-Marc Noël Aveline was born on December 26th, 1958 in Sidi Bel Abbès, a community in the province of the same name found in northern Algeria, about 75 kilometers from the Mediterranean. At the time, Algeria was officially part of France– not a French colony, mind you, but at least in theory a full-on constituent part of France that just happened to be in North Africa rather than Europe. That was a very active topic, as Algeria was in the midst of a brutal civil war that was a major catalyst for the change from the Fourth French Republic to the present Fifth Republic, a change that took place that same year of 1958.   After the war, Algeria became independent and Jean-Marc's family, including his two sisters, relocated back to the European side of things, moving to Marseille in 1966 in a move that one source described as painful, a pain that can be weighed in the context of a quarter million dead Algerians from the war according to the minimum French estimates, with estimates exceeding a million deaths also being common.   Anyways, Jean-Marc was one of our primary vocation cases, entering seminary while still a teen and being ordained in 1984 at the age of 25 as a priest for the Archdiocese of Marseille. He was soon embedded in parish life at Saint Peter and Paul Parish as well as the vocations efforts for the Archdiocese, looking to attract and bring up the next generation of priests. Of course he served in various roles at different institutes along the way, from teaching to directing, you know the drill. He picked up a Licentiate in Philosophy and In 2000 he earned a Doctorate in Theology as well.   His breakout year came in 2007 when he became Vicar General for the Archdiocese, being called up from parish life to that next level of service. Concurrently from 2008 to 2012 he served as a consultor to the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, which was his first Curial post but would not be his last. For reference, the PCID has about 50 consultors who serve in an advisory capacity.   In late 2013 Father Aveline was elected as an Auxiliary bishop of Marseille, becoming Titular Bishop of Simidicca because that's what happens with Auxiliary bishops. Auxiliary Bishop Aveline served alongside the Archbishop until the latter's retirement in 2019, at which point Bishop Aveline became Archbishop Aveline.   Marseille has always been a port city, ever since its days as a Greek colony, and recall Archbishop Aveline himself was something of a migrant, having been born across the Mediterranean in modern Algeria. So it's not too surprising that the plight of migrants, one of Pope Francis' biggest priorities, is also a central issue for Archbishop Aveline, though he's not as emphatic on the matter as Pope Francis is. Of course, it would be hard to be *more* emphatic on that particular matter than Pope Francis.   In July 2022, Pope Francis appointed Archbishop Aveline to the Dicastery for Bishops. Given that fact and the fact that it's not unusual for the second largest city in France to have a Cardinal, I don't think his inclusion in that year's August consistory would have been too surprising, but you never know. He could have wound up like the Patriarch of Venice, walking around looking like a Cardinal presumably because those were the only clothes in the Patriarchate's wardrobe after a long tradition of promotion only to be without an official red hat over a decade into things.   Jean-Marc Noël Aveline is eligible to participate in future conclaves until he turns 80 in 2038.   There's plenty more we can discuss about today's Cardinal, including the drama with one of his suffragan dioceses that's currently forbidden from ordaining new priests. We may indeed come back to Cardinal Aveline in the future, as today's episode is part of Cardinal Numbers, a Popeular project covering all the Cardinals of Church history to determine who's the most eminent Eminence of all. There will be more Cardinal Numbers in the coming weeks, culminating with the First Judgment where I sit down with some company and decide who among the Cardinals we've discussed in this batch should make it to the next round for a deeper dive.   Always remember, the best thing you can do to help Popeular History grow is tell your friends!   Thank you for listening, God bless you all!

An elegant Trotskyist, Michael Pablo grew up in Greece to become an urbane revolutionary, who made his presence felt at many of the most significant uprisings of the 20th century in an attempt to build what he called self-managed socialism.   Partnered by his dynamic and fearless wife Elli Dyovoumoti, Pablo was often in great danger, spent time in prison, and made enemies among fellow socialists. But when it came to the Algerian uprising of 1962 against the French, he rolled up his intellectual sleeves and got his hands dirty, helping the Algerians to arm themselves by setting up a gun factory. The story of this venture is worth a movie in its own right.   Clashing with Castro, supporting Solidarity in Poland, Pablo was an influential force without ever becoming a leader. He was ahead of his time in his support for fully-fledged feminism and maintained a strong circle of friends throughout his life.   Hall Greenland's biography, The Well-Dressed Revolutionary, is an admiring portrait of a man and a time when socially progressive ideas had real momentum and it felt as if the world were tilting towards a raised consciousness on equality and human rights.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Find me and the show on social media @DrWilmerLeon on X (Twitter), Instagram, and YouTube Facebook page is www.facebook.com/Drwilmerleonctd This week our guest is Vijay Prashad. TRANSCRIPT Announcer (00:06): Connecting the dots with Dr. Wilmer Leon, where the analysis of politics, culture, and history converge. Dr Wilmer Leon (00:14): Welcome to the Connecting the Dots podcast with Dr. Wilmer Leon, and I'm Wilmer Leon. Here's the point. We have a tendency to view current events as though they occur in a vacuum, failing to understand the broader historical context in which most events take place. During each episode, my guests and I, we have probing, provocative, and in-depth discussions that connect the dots between the current events and the broader historical context in which they occur. This will enable you to better understand and analyze the impact on the global village in which we live on today's episode. The question is, is the West's hegemonic control over the rest of the world on the decline? If so, is it salvageable for insight into this and other issues? Let's turn to my guest. He's an Indian historian, editor and journalist. He's a writer and fellow and chief correspondent at Globetrotter. He is an editor of Left Word Books and the director of Tri Continental, the Institute for Social Research. He's a senior non-resident fellow at Sean Yang Institute for Financial Studies at the Remnant University of China. He's written more than 20 books, including the darker nations and the Poor Nations, and he's the author of the article, hyper Imperialism. He's Vijay Prade. Vijay, welcome to the show. Vijay Prashad (01:45): It's great to be with you. Yeah, truly. Dr Wilmer Leon (01:48): Thank you so much for giving me time in your peace. Hyper in imperialism. Well, in fact, let me start this way. Lemme start this way back in 2016 at the Democratic Convention, then Vice President Biden said, we do not scare easily. We never bow. We never bend. We never break when confronted with crisis. No, we endure, we overcome, and we always, always, always move forward. We are America second to none, and we own the finish line. Don't forget it, Vijay. The undefeatable indispensable America are terms that are often used, well worn tropes, the realities that are existing all around us. Make these statements trite and meaningless to me. Your thoughts? Vijay Prashad (02:47): Well, it's interesting Wilmer, because Mr. Biden made those comments, as you said in 2016. In 2023, the United States forgot to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the Munro Doctrine. Now, for those who don't know the Munro doctrine, it was enunciated by James Munro. The idea was pretty simple. Ro was saying for this new country, 1776 Revolution, 1923, Monroe Doctrine, I mean in the 18th century, a decade was a very long time. I understand that, not like now where you're sometimes just goes by so quickly. Time seems to have speed it up, but nonetheless, a young country in 1823, Mr. Monroe says at the time that, look, we just told the British Empire to go out of our shores. Not exactly because Britain still had Canada as a colony, but nonetheless Britain out of a part of North America. The United States hadn't yet ejected the French from all of North America, and there was also pockets of other Europeans involved in North America, let alone South America. (04:13) So nonetheless, quite audaciously, Mr. Monroe said, with the backing of the whole political class. Don't forget, Jefferson had already foreshadowed some of this stuff in his speeches, but Monroe said, look, Europeans, this hemisphere, the Americas from the tip right down to TGA del Fuego is not yours. The Americans will determine the destiny of this hemisphere. Now, of course, he then said something else which is, well, we in the United States have a manifest destiny, very delightful term from Christian eschatology about the city on the hill, the church at the town square and so on. We have a manifest destiny. We are Europeans. We are Europeans who have gone beyond the Europeans in Europe, and we want to make it clear not only as Europeans, because there are Europeans in South America as well, but we want to make it clear that it's America for the Americans, except when we say Americans, we mean those from the United States of America. (05:23) So that in fact the Monroe Doctrine, noble words as well, the MRO doctrine basically says the whole Americas is the domain of the United States. The United States therefore can intervene anywhere in the Americas when it feels that its interests or the interests of an enlightened civilization are threatened. And therefore we had a range of interventions, military interventions, most of Central America, much of the Caribbean, Haiti, colonized recolonized United States goes into Dominican Republic, the assault on Cuba after 1959. And so all done on the basis of Thero doctrine of 1823. Now, it's interesting because Wilma, I could make an argument what the United States did subsequent to the So-called Spanish-American War where the US seizes, the Philippines seizes, Puerto Rico seizes Cuba. You see, it's a very good example of Thero doctrine being, well, it's America for the Americans, but really Americans means the United States of America. After the Spanish American War, 1898, the United States starts to globalize the Monroe Doctrine. (06:44) And in fact, that's what happens in the aftermath of World War ii because by the aftermath of World War ii, the United States did have the technology therefore could actually have a global MRO doctrine, military bases having ships that could cross the Pacific Ocean pretty rapidly, oil fired ships could get through the Panama Canal, could go out to the Suez Canal. You had an amazing global military footprint bases all over the world and so on. That was the global MRO doctrine. Well, what's happened is that as a consequence of a number of different factors, including in the United States, the government no longer wanting to regulate the rich and therefore harvest taxes from them for a host of reasons. That's one, the lack of any kind of consensus among the elites in the United States, deep partisanship and so on. And then the trauma of this third grade depression, all these factors came together to basically signal a decline of US global power. (07:57) That is, you still have the rhetoric of the Monroe Doctrine, Mr. Biden's speech in 2016, but you don't have the realities of the Monroe Doctrine. You can bomb any country around the world, but you really can't have legitimacy over them. If a country, for instance, on the African continent needs to have a bridge built, they turn to China now to get money for that bridge to build the bridge. The United States very good at bombing the bridge, not so good at building the bridge. And I think that itself, the bridge story is a way to encapsulate the nature of the decline. In other words, US still has immense military power, spends with its allies, three quarters of world military spending, but just doesn't have the resources to do the kind of development aid it used to build the legitimacy that it once did. You said shop won cliches, tired language and so on, reporting to Mr. Biden. Yes. And the reason for that is not because Mr. Biden is out there flogging old clothes. It's that no us politician in fact can flog anything but tired. Shop one rhetoric and belligerence, they can do that legitimately, but they can't go out there and say for instance, to the people in the Sahel, Hey, listen, don't do all these cos we'll come in, we'll build a factory. We'll build a bridge for unbelievably to even once hear them say, we'll build a school, we'll build a hospital. Not going to happen Wilma, not in our lifetime. Dr Wilmer Leon (09:43): You just mentioned that the United States has extraordinary military supremacy, but the irony in that reality is the United States for all intents and purposes, hasn't won a conflict since World War ii, unless you want to throw Grenada into the conversation. United States had its hin parts whooped in Vietnam. The United States had its hin parts whooped in Afghanistan, 20 years in Afghanistan, what two and a half trillion dollars wasted, and we wound up turning the country back over to the same folks that we were fighting to take it from. We lost in Iraq, we lost in Libya. Now we've been outmaneuvered in Ukraine and of all people, Ansar Allah in the Red Sea is having traumatic impact on international trade. So yes, the United States has military superiority, but it seems as though the nature of warfare has gone almost asymmetrical and the United States hasn't been able to keep up. Vijay Prashad (11:05): Well, one of the issues is the difference Dr Wilmer Leon (11:08): Is that assessment accurate? Vijay Prashad (11:10): Very accurate. I mean, look, let's just take one of your examples. Let's take the example of Afghanistan. You said over $2 trillion spent by the United States doing what? And that's a key thing. Doing what? I want to come back, Wilma to that distinction between blowing up the bridge and building the Dr Wilmer Leon (11:30): Bridge and building the bridge. Vijay Prashad (11:31): You see, because the United States can win battles, it can win a military confrontation. You can win a battle. I mean, I was there and saw the destruction of Iraq after 2003. You can destroy power plants, take out bridges, just level the government buildings to all those things win. But war have never, never been won merely by battles. Now, there could be lots of examples in the ancient world when an army was in fact defeated and another army came in and occupied and conquered and oppressed people. But in a way that's still not a victory in the war because unless you are able to do something for the people you've occupied, unless you are able to create legitimacy for yourself as a new government, a new king, a new ruler or whatever it is, there's no way to win the war. War just merely by force. (12:31) So in the case of Afghanistan, it is absolutely true. When the US went in there in October of 2001, the bombing was ferocious. The Taliban fled from Kabul, from Jalalabad. The Taliban remnants of them that had been sitting near the Pakistan border just ran across the border to Pakistan. They fed. I mean, you remember the battle of Torah, Bora when apparently Osama bin Laden was holed up in a cave there, the United States was ping those mountains. The Taliban was fleeing. They don't want to fight a direct battle. Nobody wants to stand Wilma in a plane and be taken out by a drone. Okay? The United States can do that. Incredible technology as a young person sitting in Nevada in Las Vegas with a toggle stick in a red button can kill somebody in the of Afghanistan, in Pakistan. Extraordinary technology having chased out the Taliban, having bombarded the infrastructure. (13:34) What happens next? Here, let's go to Iraq where it's clear, clearer. Lots of journalists looked at this closely. I mean, pram Chatterjee wrote a great book called Iraq Inc. In other words, Iraq Incorporated. What did he mean by that? What he meant was it was open season, Wilma, there's a Hollywood film about this. A bunch of, let me just speak pretty straight with you here. A bunch of jackasses from God knows where Republican party people showed up in Iraq, got contracts from the US government, from the people who were the vice councils of the United States in Iraq. They didn't build anything. Let's go back to Afghanistan. In Afghanistan, they began to count Wilma, and this is horrifying. They began to count educated. When they say so many hundreds of thousands of children are in school in Kabul, okay, how do you know that so many hundreds of thousands of children are in school in the area around ka? (14:43) How do you know that all across the country? How do you know that? Well, we know that because somebody invoiced the government for chairs. So if I invoice for a hundred thousand chairs, the US government and the Afghan government stunningly and scandalously said, we have a hundred thousand people in classroom. Meanwhile, a hundred thousand chairs were not even delivered. I just invoiced you. I took the money and ran. You never saw me again. I mean, you look at the audits done by the US government of the spending in Afghanistan, scandalous spending. So you can win the battle. You can't win the war. You're not building schools, you don't have kids in classrooms. Then families say, what's the point of throwing out the Taliban and bringing you guys in because you are just corrupt. Those people, they may have their problems and indeed, my God, they have their problems. (15:42) They want gender segregation. No girls in schools and so on, but at least they're not corrupt. That's what people started to say again about the United States government in Iraq, the same thing. People go, why is there this attitude? Let's make a quick buck. Why? Because people have been learning this since at least the Reagan administration in the United States. This cannibalization of society is not something that only happens abroad. You are familiar with that Within the United States, there's so many. There are even terms where it boondoggles. The US military forgets hundreds of millions of dollars. They can't find where that money went. I mean, this is annually. There are reports that come out on this money forgotten, this boondoggle culture among the elites. It makes them mediocre. They don't want to work to be an elite. They want to inherit elite status. Everything is about an inheritance. (16:46) They don't want to work hard. They don't want to do anything. It's interesting because in Afghanistan, the British, for all their flaws, they said, well, we have experience of three to 400 years of colonialism. The British were saying, you people don't have the staying power. Well, actually, Rory Stewart and others who were saying things like that, they were not right. It's not a question of staying power. It's a question of did you want to win the war or did you just want to win battles and then come in there and quickly make a buck and flee, go off somewhere else? As I said, a Hollywood film was made about this. It's in the culture, this conversation. I'm not making this stuff up. It's real. So yes, United States very big military capable of blowing up bridges just to repeat that, but not so committed to building them. (17:39) And that's how you lose your legitimacy. If you no longer give people something that they want or they need, you don't address their problems, you're not going to be credible. Look, during the pandemic, the Chinese announced that they've ended absolute poverty in China, so enormous fe, the United Nations celebrated it and so on as we speak, Wilma, I was reading a story that there's a bill sitting in the US Congress about tax credits to be given to families so that millions of children in the United States can for the period of just this calendar year, be outside poverty. I mean, how does a story like that look around the world here at the Chinese saying, we've eradicated absolute poverty and here's the United States Congress debating whether or not to eradicate poverty, mind you, whether to pass tax credit so that for one year so many tens of millions of children in the United States can be above the poverty line. (18:43) I mean, what's going on, Wilma? This is something for people in the United States to reflect on very seriously. Is this the country that looks credible to the world? When you have somebody saying, we own the finish line. I mean, what a revealing statement that is. Joe, Joe Biden. I mean Joe, nobody owns the finish line, Joe. That's why it's a finish line. If you own the finish line, Joe, there's no race. You rigged the race, and that's exactly the attitude that people in the United States need to confront. You can't live in a society that's rigged against you. You have to fight to build a society where people feel like something is there for them, and that attitude then will create new speeches. People will realize we're not a city on the hill. We don't have a manifest destiny. There is Noro doctrine. We're just people. (19:38) We live on the planet. We've got to collaborate with others, whether it's the people in Yemen or other people in Libya or indeed the people in the Democratic Republic of Congo. I want a cell phone. I want to use their cobalt. I want to use their cold tan, but they have a right to live decent lives. I need to pay them. The corporations need to pay the people in the Congo that are digging that stuff up with their fingernails, and that's the scandal, and that's the discussion around that scandal that needs to happen in a place like the United States. Dr Wilmer Leon (20:14): And to Joe Biden's point and to your response about owning the finish line, if you claim to own the finish line, then that means that you control the finish line, and that also means that you can move the finish line. And that takes me to Tony Blinken term. Well, George HW Bush talked about the new world order, and then Tony Blinken comes in with not international law, but what's the term that Tony Blinken always loves to use about the controlling order? I can't remember the term that Tony Blinken loves to use, but it's where basically what he's saying is we have the rules, we set the laws. You all just follow what we say. Vijay Prashad (21:09): Yeah, this is his phrase, the rules based information, Dr Wilmer Leon (21:11): Order based order. Exactly. Exactly Vijay Prashad (21:14): Why you forgot it, Wilma. This is a because Dr Wilmer Leon (21:17): It has no definition. Vijay Prashad (21:18): No, it means nothing. And also it's one of the things that was there when Mr. Blinken was nominated for this job. You remember this very well. They praised him saying He's fluent in French. I thought, and I'm sorry to be so blunt, and I know that a lot of your listeners are serious people and they don't like this kind of talk, but I felt that Mr. Blinken, if he doesn't make sense in English, can't be making sense in French. So there's that rules based international order. What other kind of international order could there be? Tony? That's the question to ask him are they're all rules based. The question is who makes the rules and does everybody abide by the rules? Okay, we actually have rules that are based on Dr Wilmer Leon (22:13): Do we even know what the rules are, Tony? Yes. Vijay Prashad (22:17): In fact, that's the interesting part, Wilma, because okay, the question to ask them is what's the basis for your rules? In fact, the most consensus treaty document we have in the modern world since 1945, the document with the greatest consensus is the United Nations charter. There is no other document which has almost all countries signed onto it, okay? It's the greatest consensus document that we have in human history till now. Maybe there'll be another one, but the UN charter is paramount, and in fact, I would say that most people around the world want to live in a rules-based order, which is grounded in the rules, which we've all accepted by treaty, which is the UN charter, not the rules being something invented by the United States government at its whim by let's say the group of seven countries by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, by the 14 Eyes Intelligence Network. (23:22) They don't get to make the rules and impose them on us. I mean, what's really, really interesting in this period is that for the first time in my mind, since the 1970s, for the first time, we see heads of governments who are not necessarily leading political forces that are anti, whether it's the president and prime minister of Namibia, their political formation isn't anti systemic. Even in fact, Ali Pando and Il Rama, South Africa, these political forces are effectively telling the United States, now, we don't like your rules. We don't think your rules are good. Why? Because we think they are capricious and we think you don't follow them. What's the point of having rules if you don't follow them? So for instance, when international courts, the International Court of Justice demanded a ceasefire in the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. In fact, just a month into that conflict, they called for a ceasefire. (24:29) A thousand people had died at that point. By the way, now, 25,000 Palestinians and counting dead, the ICJ didn't exactly call for a ceasefire. They said that we see that it's plausible genocides, an enormous admission by the ICJ, and then they said, you must do everything to end the genocide. Well, that means a cease file. They don't use that language. They don't say secession of hostilities. Nonetheless, what's interesting is people around the world, whether it's again in Namibia or it's Indonesia or it's in Bolivia, people, ordinary people not talking about governments, ordinary people are saying to their newspapers and so on. When I meet them, as I travel around the world, people say this to me, what they are saying is, look, when it's an African leader indicted in the international criminal court, the west goes all in. They demonize the person, and in some cases these people deserve to be in front of the ICC. (25:27) They've done bad things, but the level of demonization, the music is cranked up really high. These people are bad. They're committing crimes against humanity and so on here, 17 judges, 15 sitting judges of the international criminal court, the judge from Israel, the judge from South Africa, 17 judges basically to a account of most of the time, 16 to two, in some cases, 17 to one. The Ugandan judge was the outlier, and in fact, even the government of Uganda disassociated itself from her saying she doesn't speak for our government. In fact, very interesting and we can talk about that if you'd like, but most cases 1716 to two was the count, which means that the international criminal court, the court of the United Nations has basically said Israel's actions are plausible genocide. What does the United States, Canada, almost the entirety of the west do within our, they defund the United Nations Agency for the Palestinians Honora, within hours of this coming out, this order that the Algerians wanted carried immediately to the Security Council United States, I mean around the world, people are saying, you people are not credible, Mr. (26:49) Biden, you are not credible, and anyway, you are a one term president because you've lost left liberals in your own country. They're not going to vote for you after this and you've lost the election. I mean, Mr. Trump is going to come back, whatever that means, maybe catastrophic, but he's coming back. That's probably a foregone conclusion without legitimacy, Mr. Biden, Mr. Macrow, Mr. Trudeau, Mr. Soak, Mr. Schultz, I mean, you're so bent out of shape about Ukrainians because as people at the time were saying that these are white babies with blue eyes and blonde hair, but Palestinians, brown skin, black hair and so on, some of them have by the way, blonde hair, but nonetheless, not white, irrelevant. We're not even talking about the war in the Sudan. We're not talking about the war in the Democratic Republic of Congo. We're not even talking about the ceaseless destruction of Yemen. (27:49) The reason the US and Britain are nuts, they think a couple of missiles will scare the Yemenis. Forget it. They've taken much more and more than that from the Saudis for a decade. They're not scared of anything and they've been hardened. What has hardened them? Not Islam, not some inherent accusation that they're terrorists. What has hardened them is your bombing. It's British and US ammunition used by the Saudis bombing them relentlessly for 10 years. People look at all this and say, you never complained about any of that. One Russian tank crosses the border. One Ukrainian is killed and suddenly you are outraged and you say, open the doors, all Ukrainian refugees allowed, but Syrians, you still remain in the camps in Greece or in Turkey, wherever Palestinians, we don't apply. And so on. The stock hypocrisy, racism, a lack of concern for human life, what I consider to be an international division of humanity. (28:57) That's what's really been drawn. There's an international division of humanity and the other side of that division, the prime minister of Namibia, the president of Indonesia, even the Indian foreign minister, right-wing government, they are now speaking from the other side of the international division of Vanity saying no more. I mean, Mia Amor Motley, the prime minister of Barbados last year convened a group for an emancipation conference. A former president of Nigeria was there, the former Prime Minister Addison from Jamaica, and they basically said, we're going to have reparations from the west. This is Barbados tiny country just thrown off the monarchy. And what happened this year recently, the African union's 55 countries, the 20 countries of the Caribbean community gathered together and said, reparations now of putting it on the agenda. This is not a radical demand, by the way. It's a pretty milk to demand, but it's actually showing this new mood. They're saying, we're fed up with your hypocrisy. We're fed up with your intervening, your attempting to foist the international monetary fund on us sending your warships to scare us. It doesn't work anymore. People, you politicians are too mediocre. You don't scare us, and Trump is that dog that western civilization is going to let loose against the world bark all night Wilmer, he'll bark all night, but he won't have the guts to bite anybody or to enter the house. Dr Wilmer Leon (30:34): You mentioned about Ansara la in Yemen and the fact that United States can't scare them, that takes me back to President Putin's statement. When Joe Biden first sent the USS Gerald Ford Aircraft carrier group into the Mediterranean, and Putin said, why are you doing that? Who do you think you're going to scare? These people don't scare. And in fact, Al Hhi in Yemen said, we want to fight you. They are saying, and who would think that this small country called Yemen where most people couldn't find it on a map of Yemen is saying, we want to fight you. Please. That's an amazing, amazing reality, and you also mentioned about not following that we have this rules-based order and we don't even follow the rules. Well, Joe Biden has just signed an executive order where he now says the US may sanction Israeli settlers who attack Palestinians. Now that's an interesting contrast or conflict or just total confusion. When the United States is sending weapons, sending money, logistical support, targeting support to the IDF to attack Gaza, but now seemingly for political reasons, he wants to issue this executive order and oh, by the way, Joe Biden's administration approved the sale of the very weapons that the settlers are using to murder Palestinians, but now he wants to try to sanction them for using the weapons that he sent Vijay. It's insanity. Vijay Prashad (32:45): You put it very, very well. I mean you put the point very plainly, but let's again look at this executive order. I think they named four people in this, and one of them in fact has already made a public statement saying, listen, I don't have any bank accounts in the United States. I'm not affected by this not planning to travel. There don't have any assets there. This is just symbolic. One of the people named has already said that this is bogus, not a critic of this, but what Biden doesn't do here and doesn't have the guts to do is there are thousands of US citizens in these illegal settlements. This executive order doesn't touch a US citizen in an illegal settlement who goes and shoots a Palestinian. It doesn't touch that person. This is just directed at those who are Israeli citizens, but not US citizens. Many of the US citizens are also Israeli citizens. They have joint citizenship, but this is not, he is immunized US citizens in this. That's one point. Secondly, he doesn't really sanction anybody. I mean, you want to give a real sanction, sanction Israeli politicians who are inflaming the settlers. What about putting them on the list? I mean Dr Wilmer Leon (34:08): Smoke trick for example. Vijay Prashad (34:10): Exactly. Why should they not? Why should universal jurisdiction not cover them? You look back at the international criminal court warrant against Mr. Potent and his minister of children, they were accused and maybe there is an accusation to be made there. They were accused of removing children from a war zone in Ukraine. They were accused of removing children from the war zone. Now, fourth Geneva Convention does say that population transfer is illegal, but let's have a discussion about that removing children from a war zone, is this appropriate? Should they have been removed to Russia? Did they go with the consent of their parents? There could have been a range of discussion and debate. I don't remember any debate. I just remember being told that this is a war crime and the ICC indicted him. Now, the Israelis have already killed over 11,000 children. They didn't remove children from a war zone in the way that the Russians did. (35:13) They did remove children from a war zone, but by killing them, 11,000 of them in body bags, 11,000 of them and no ICC warrant and no statement from the United States government instead this ridiculous executive order that's supposed to modify his base. You see what's been happening is I watched these videos, Mr. Biden traveling around the country, the United States trying to drum up support for his failing election campaign and at every single stop, it seems to me, or at least that's what circulates, I know this is not exactly a scientific assessment what you see circulating, but at many campaigns stops. He starts speaking, he's talking about a woman's right to choose whatever he's talking about. People yell, genocide, Joe, they yell, seize fire. Now they yell, stop supporting Israel and he is a dear in headlights as any of us would be a caught between a really bad policy that you can't defend and a base that is angry with you because let's not forget that this is a base that might not be scared into voting. Again for the Democrats, this is a base that might say, really, Trump is so bad and you were so great, you authorized a genocide against the Palestinians. I don't think this base is coming back. Dr Wilmer Leon (36:37): Lemme quickly say to that point. That's a great point and I've been saying for a while that in 2020, Joe Biden was talking about how horrific Donald Trump was and he was making a lot of promises about what he would do. He had no track record as a president. Now in 24 he has a track record as a president and he's now starting to make some of the very same promises in 24 that he made in 20, and folks are comparing his promises and his rhetoric to his record and they're saying You didn't do it then why are you going do it now? Vijay Prashad (37:21): In fact, worse than that, the people who are out there at these rallies saying genocide, Joe sees pie. Now these are people with a modicum of interest in what's happening outside the United States. They're not people who are going to focus on quite correct issues like for instance, a woman's right to choose. There is some difference between the candidates and so on. Not that the Democrats have done much to defend the woman's right to choose or on the question of immigration. I mean the Democrats haven't done much better than the Republicans in some cases, maybe even worse Dr Wilmer Leon (37:54): Because it's more important to them as an issue, as a political wedge issue than it is for them as a solution. Vijay Prashad (38:04): Correct? Exactly. So what you have is you have people genocide, Joe Ana. These are people who are saying, I'm not a single issue voter. I'm not going to be wedged by you back into the fold. You can't wedge me and you can't wedge me because I'm looking at these other things. And there are lots of young people in that cohort and one of the areas where they're looking at is Cuba. This July norm Chansky and I are going to release a book called On Cuba, which is where the reason I know all this stuff about the MRO doctorate, and I mean I'm not a scholar of all this, but we had to study this to understand US foreign policy against Cuba. We did a deep study. It was a pleasure to work with. No on this book, it's not an interview book. We wrote this together. (38:51) We discussed and talked and went through it and so on Cuba, there's a section in the book toward the end where Mr. Biden says, during the campaign says that I am going to reverse Trump's unfortunate strangulation of the people of Cuba. We are going to remove Cuba from the state sponsored on terrorism list. We are going to roll back the 243 extra sanctions, no more talk as John Bolton did of axis of whatever it is of tyranny and so on. Bolton speech, none of that. Biden said all that there, this video of him saying all that. It's not like some private interview, which he then denied. He said this in front of the cameras. Well, then he came into office, he won the election, came into office. Jen Psaki at the time, spokesperson was asked, what about the reversal? He can by executive water get rid of some of these sanctions. (39:52) You can start the process to remove Cuba from the state sponsor of terrorism list and so on. Because Cuba, after all is a state sponsor of healthcare for the world, not terrorism, a bad idea Trump, and now Biden Biden didn't do anything and Jen Psaki said, it's not on our agenda. Now what you just said ferociously, I'm going to reverse Trump's. It's not on our agenda now. Then there was some small protests in a small town, a few hours outside Havana, which the anti Cuban people in Miami blew up and said, it's a big protest in July and so on, he is going to overthrow the government. Then Biden entered and said, we are going to tighten our grip on the island because we have to support the people fighting. So not only did he not do what he said because it was not on the agenda when he started to do something about Cuba, it was in fact Trump plus. (40:52) So in that case, what the heck, man? I mean, where are you genocide, Joe? That's what people are calling him more and more. That is not a good look for a president or for a person running for president of the United States on the Democratic ticket because I admit to you, I know a lot of the people on the left and so on, but don't underestimate the power of that small section of left liberals because they are the activists. They are the ones that go door to door In South Carolina for instance. There is no such thing as a democratic party. There are only motivated activists who are the people. It's mostly middle-aged women and young college students who go door to door distributing things, talking up candidates, going into churches, talking to their friends and so on. If that crucial section is started to call him genocide Joe and say, ceases fire now, and to ask questions like, why are you trying to suffocate the people of Cuba? (41:58) Why can't you pass a proper infrastructure bill? Why are you arresting and deporting people at the border? Activists say that you lost the election because there's no body else to substitute for them. You can have as much astroturfing as you want. You can get all the high rollers around the United States to give your campaign money. You can hire people to go with clipboards, but they don't have the passion to stand on the door, stop to stand at the front door, knock on the door, say, listen, you got to vote for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. They're just going to stand there with a clipboard. Say, I have been told to say, please vote for Mr. Biden, it's chat GPT, man, you don't win elections with chat GPT, you win elections with passion. It's not going to be there for them, and I think they have made a huge, huge error trying to believe that these little executive orders will claw back that section. (42:56) The only thing that's going to claw back that section is something that neither of the political parties can do. Mr. Trump can't do it either. None of them can break with the Israeli ruling elite, none of them. None of them will offer a robust criticism of Israel. That's a serious problem for the American elite. The American public on the other hand, has already broken that consensus. You've already seen the polls, Wilma, a majority maybe up to something like two thirds of the United States. Public no longer wants the US to support Ukraine with money. Correct? Two thirds of the US public, correct. A majority of Republicans don't want the United States to support Israel in this war. A majority of Republicans, that's interesting. 40 some percent of Democrats have turned against this war. That's compelling evidence to my mind once more of the great disjuncture in US politics between the people's mood and their opinions and what the governments want to do. (43:56) Nancy Pelosi was confronted by some protestors from Port and what did she say? She said, oh, you are all doing the work of Russia. Russia. I mean for God's sake to use this kind of language against US citizens who have a First Amendment right to protest the FBI, my God, I can't believe I'm going to say this. I just got word this evening before we spoke. The FBI has made a public statement Wilmer saying that we will not investigate people who are conducting nonviolent protests on behalf of the Palestinians because those people doing the protests have a First Amendment right. The FBI has said that Dr Wilmer Leon (44:38): Mean because Nancy Pelosi called upon the FBI to investigate those protestors saying that they were operatives of Russia and here was her rationale. Putin has a message saying that there's genocide in Gaza and these protestors are saying that there's genocide in Gaza. So because the protestors have the same message as Putin, ergo or Ipso facto, they must now be operatives of Russia when everybody on the planet should be opposed to genocide. Even Nancy Pelosi should be opposed to anybody in their right mind should be so even if Putin is the autocrat, is the dictator, is the madman, is whatever is the evil villain is a swamp monster and an evil villain. A broken clock is right twice a day. So the issue on Gaza, he's right on that issue. Vijay Prashad (45:59): Well, I'm actually personally invested in this particular part of the conversation because some months ago, the New York Times basically accused me of being an agent of the Chinese government. It was a ridiculous article. I mean, I was embarrassed to read it, not embarrassed for myself, embarrassed for the New York Times. I was like, man, you guys wrote some pretty shoddy articles with the name Judith Miller attached to them that basically made the case for the United States to go to war illegally against the Iraqi people. You got some pretty bad journalism under your hat, the gray lady all these years, but this particular article was really bad because it essentially took certain quite trivial facts like I run a research institute, I also work for a media house. I have people who donate to these things. I can't travel to the SA region on money. I borrow from my friends. I need donors for this because when I publish things, I can't get enough newspapers to pay me enough to actually travel to places. You got to forward fund a lot of these projects. I'm not embarrassed to say that I don't come from money. I'm not independently wealthy. I don't have that kind of trust fund that would enable me to live the kind of Dr Wilmer Leon (47:26): George Soros won't back you, so Vijay Prashad (47:28): Yeah, he's not going to back me. I've got to find people, and by the way, the Chinese government gives me zero money. In fact, my post at the Chang Yang Institute of Financial Studies is non remu. I don't make any money at all. They don't pay me for anything. The reason I took that position is I was keen to interact with Chinese scholars. I wanted to have a place where I could sit down and listen to what Chinese scholars are thinking and saying, almost no place in the world that allows that unless you get involved somehow with a Chinese institution because they don't trust. You can't just show up in Beijing and say, Hey guys, I want to talk to you so I don't have any Chinese. They know that. By the way, the New York Times know that they knew the provenance of the funds. (48:09) They knew everything they had all the material, the questions that the journalists asked me. I'm going to give this to you just because it's so funny. David, far andhold the journalist, senior journalist New York Times wrote big questions like, for instance, are you paid by the Chinese government? Do you take orders from the Chinese government? I mean, I felt that this is not journalism's McCarthyite hearing. It's the kind of question you'd expect some off the wall, right-Wing congressman to ask you, Lindsey Graham, that kind of thing, going from McCarthy to Lindsey Graham and to somebody as mediocre as Marco Rubio who read that article and the next day asked the Department of Justice to investigate all the projects named in it. Fortunately, either the Department of Justice is doing an ongoing investigation that I don't know about or they decided not to take Mr. Rubio seriously, which I think is probably what happened. (49:10) But the point reason I'm raising this is that it's really interesting in the United States unable to have the argument. Why can't Nancy Pelosi have the argument about Gaza unable to have the argument about Russia, let's say, or unable or unwilling to have the argument about China? They simply want to repress you. They want to say anybody who doesn't follow the line saying China is evil, Russia is evil. The Palestinians are terrorists. Anybody who moves even one millimeter from that general line, they just want to repress you. They want to delegitimize you. They want to basically put you in jail. They don't want to have the argument with you, and that I think is depressing for the whole situation of the culture in the United States, the political culture, the conversations, I mean for God's sake. I watched a couple of the Republican primary debates before the Iowa caucuses. (50:14) I watched a few of them. The level of conversation was abysmal. It was juvenile. Juvenile. There are real problems in the world. I mean real problems that guy Ram, he actually did a favor for us culture because we Ramas proved once and for all that all South Asians aren't at the caliber of doctors and whatever. There's no model minority. I mean there's mediocrity even amongst South Asian Americans, mediocre. He's out there as an attack dog of somebody just sort yelling at people. I felt bad at moments even for DeSantis, for God's sake, let the man try his best to put an argument on the table. Don't keep interrupting him and saying, Ron, you is Ron, you're that. And then DeSantis piling on Nikki Haley, I thought, God, you are just a bunch of people that if I saw you in the bar, I would get out of there, get into my car, drive across town. (51:16) I would prefer to buy a bottle at a liquor store and sit in my car, not car. I would prefer to sit in the anti room of my house and drink it by myself. I don't even want to be within sight of you when I'm having a drink, let alone let's say in front of a congressional committee. Really mediocre level of discussion if that's the standard of discussion, no wonder that if they are challenged, let's talk about Gaza. They'll just say, you are a Russian agent. Get out of the room. I don't want to talk about, I just heard Megan Kelly who had Trump on her show for an hour. She has a YouTube type show. Anyway, Megan Kelly was on a podcast I was listening to a very, very interesting, she was talking a little bit about this, about the fact that the deterioration of the ability to actually have a discussion about ideas, the big ideas, you want to have a discussion about immigration, let's have a discussion about immigration. Let's not demonize all sides and not talk to each other about how to understand these issues. (52:29) There is no space for that and therefore Nancy Pelosi turns around and says, FBI investigate them. They're criminals. And fortunately somebody at the FBI had managed to read the Constitution, the Bill of Rights and decided, Hey, listen, they have a constitutionally protected right to speech as long as they are nonviolent. Now, I found that an interesting part of their statement because in fact, I'm not even sure that's necessarily true because for instance, this goes back to Dr. Martin Luther King's letter from Birmingham jail. Does nonviolence include, for instance, resisting chaining yourself to a wall, blocking a street and so on there? I think we could have an interesting discussion with the lawyers at the FBI that What do you mean by nonviolent? I mean, if I go and lock myself into the office of a congressman, are you still going to say I a right to that speech? Because after all, you can't lionize the civil rights movement and then criminalize its tactics today, which is exactly what they seem to be doing. Nancy Pelosi will stand up there and say, the great Dr. Martin Luther King, when I marched with him across Selma, as you know, every living American politician marched across Selma with Dr. Martin Luther King. I marched across, but then if you try to march across the Brooklyn Bridge, you are an agent of Russia. Dr Wilmer Leon (54:00): You were mentioning the United States is better at blowing up bridges than building bridges, and the Washington Post has a very interesting article. China sets sites on Taiwan's three remaining tiny Pacific Islands, and here's an interesting element of this as China. This is from the Washington Post as China Vs. With the US for power and influence in the Pacific. It has tirelessly tried to pry allies away from Taiwan. By many means, chief among them money, it has offered much needed funds to struggling island nations like Nru and allegedly doled out envelopes of cash to officials and accusation. Beijing denies China has approached Pacific politicians as they travel overseas, inviting some to lunch and surveilling others what they're slaying out. I mean, that sounds like lobbying to me. And what they don't say in the peace is, well, China's not assassinating rulers in these islands. China isn't involved in their elections. China isn't overthrowing their governments. China isn't involved in China, is engaged in building relationships with countries, and they're doing it by determining what the country needs, seeing what China can provide and how there can be a win-win. And that's not rhetoric. That's, as you know, that's an actual policy strategy of the Chinese government win-win, and somehow the Washington Post makes it out to be nefarious, and there's something spooky going on here because China's actually building relationships with these people not coming in, building air bases, army barracks and shooting people. Vijay Prashad (56:12): Well, there's something in this Taiwan China story that the Washington Post also won't cover. There's something really interesting. Well, firstly, it is settled treaty position of the United States that Taiwan is basically a part of China that was established when the United States agreed to remove the Republic of China from its permanent seat at the UN Security Council and replace it with the People's Republic of China. This was right there in the 1970s, part of the Nixon Mao negotiations and so on. Okay, so why is the United States so desperate to hold on to Taiwan? Lemme give people a little glimpse into things that don't get talked about. Taiwan is the home to a company called TSMC. TSMC is one of the world's largest chip manufacturers. In fact, 90% of the advanced chips used in cell phones and other electronic gadgets made by TSMC. The United States worried about eight, nine years ago that if China was able to incorporate Taiwan, not necessarily by political incorporation, but even just economically, what was John Adam's statement? (57:29) That by the natural force of gravity, Cuba will fall into the US lap. They were salivating about that, by the way, because it was about the Mississippi River and the slavery complex. They wanted Cuba part of that big slavery kind of economy down the Mississippi River all the way to Cuba, like the force of gravity. Cuba will fall in. Well, United States worried by the force of gravity. Taiwan is going to fall into the lap of China, economic links, everything that post. So United States government then started talking to TSMC saying, look, you have to set up a factory in the us and indeed United States opened the door in Arizona. They built a big factory. Washington Post ran a story about it. It was a huge thing. Lots of engineers came from Taiwan. The factory went nowhere. Why the Taiwanese engineers said, we can't work in these conditions. People just don't. They don't work. I mean, whatever they said, I'm not even judging anybody, but they turned home. That's what they said. That's what they said. I mean, I don't know. I wasn't there. Dr Wilmer Leon (58:33): They couldn't find the workforce that they needed to perform the tasks that needed to be performed. That's what they said. Vijay Prashad (58:41): That's what they said. And then they went back home. So TSMC still in Taiwan and actually also on the Chinese mainland produces a lot of these advanced chips. Now, United States tried to squeeze China's ability to buy these chips, but what they're really worried about is that TSMC will come to the realization that they cannot, absolutely cannot accept the US sanctions on China that prevent TSMC from selling chips to China, because China is one of the biggest markets for those advanced chips. There's also a Dutch company that produces very advanced electronic equipment for Chinese. They cannot afford to stop selling to China, and because of that, the United States will buy to anything to maintain Taiwan. But there's a real worry that they can't control it because in Taiwan, people are saying, sanctioning China is bad for us, bad for our economy. That's the natural cause of gravity. John Adam's statement didn't work for Cuba. It might work for Taiwan. Dr Wilmer Leon (59:51): And as we get out, what did Joe Biden, or what did members of the administration say when Nancy Pelosi was getting ready to go over there and there was all this concern that China might shoot her plane out the sky and all this other kind of stuff. The Biden administration said, if conflict breaks out between China and Taiwan, the United States will blow up TSMC. The United Vijay Prashad (01:00:21): Imagine that Dr Wilmer Leon (01:00:22): Threatened to blow up the TSMC factory on the mainland of Taiwan on the island of Taiwan. If conflict broke out, that to add additional validity to your statement, that's how and what that also did, as they say, necessity is the mother of invention that forced Huawei to develop. Just speaking on the cell phone side of things that motivated Huawei to expedite their chip development, their phone development, and they now have developed this, I can't remember the name of the phone, but their latest cell phone also now has satellite capability. Vijay Prashad (01:01:14): Imagine that. (01:01:16) Look at what I would be able to do with a phone like that, Wilma. I mean, the fact of the matter is just to underline all these points and give you the bottom line. The fact of the matter is it's very clear that we are at a fork in the road. The legitimacy of the old colonial countries of the global North has declined precipitously ever since the war in Ukraine and this war in Gaza. And at the same time, the kind of confidence in the global south, the new mood in the global south has really altered the confidence levels has risen. That's where we are. You asked at the beginning of the show, can this be turned around? I don't think so. I think what people in the United States must try to do is to recognize that everybody who lives on this planet earth is equal, and the people in the United States are not more gifted or more entitled or anything very good people in the United States, but nothing special compared to other people in the world. We got to live as a planet. We have to collaborate. We can't talk about finished lines and races. That's not where we're going. This is a human family and we have to treat each other in a better way than we do our own families Dr Wilmer Leon (01:02:40): And the solution to the conflicts are not military. One of the things that I have been saying about the conflict in Gaza is that Israel has bombed the world into reality, and people now see the horrors that have been ongoing for the last 75 years. It's playing itself out on their cell phones. It's playing itself out all through social media, and people are now finally looking at this, and they are, it's similar to, I believe it's similar to what Dr. King's strategy was with the children in the protests and the nonviolent protests. Do not respond to the brutality. Let the world see the brutality for what it really is and people will be aghast. And now the response in Gaza has bombed the world into reality and people all over the world, with the exception of Joe Biden and Tony Blinken and Samantha Power, who by the way wrote a book about genocide and now people on her staff are resigning their positions, asking her, well, wait a minute. I thought you wrote a book about your side. How can you back this play? The responses to the solutions to these problems are not through sanctions, and they're not through militarism and violence. They are through negotiation and accommodation, and the sooner the United States understands what Brix understands and what the Chinese cooperative and so what all of them understand, the better off we're going to be. Vijay Prashad (01:04:32): I mean, I agree with you fundamentally got to hope and believe that these changes, this new confidence arising in the world is going to provide a path out of the madness. We are at a fork in the road. Let's not choose madness. Dr Wilmer Leon (01:04:49): Let's not choose madness for no one wins in that debate. Vijay Prade, thank you so much for joining me today. Folks, I want to thank you all for listening to the Connecting the Dots podcast with me, Dr. Wimer Leon. Stay tuned for new episodes every week. Also, please follow, leave a review, share my show with those and love, follow us on social media. You can find all the links below in the show description. I'm Dr. Wilmer Leon. Remember, this is where the analysis of politics, culture, and history converge talk without analysis is just chatter, and we don't chatter on connecting the dots. Peace. I'm out

In times of peace as well as conflict, humor has served Algerians as a tool of both unification and division. Humor has also assisted Algerians of various backgrounds and ideological leanings with engaging critically in power struggles throughout the country's contemporary history.  By analyzing comedic discourse in various forms (including plays, jokes, and cartoons), Humor and Power in Algeria, 1920 to 2021 (Indiana UP, 2023) demonstrates the globally informed and creative ways that civilians have made sense of moments of victory and loss through humor. Using oral interviews and media archives in Arabic, French, and Tamazight, Elizabeth M. Perego expands on theoretical debates about humor as a tool of resistance and explores the importance of humor as an instrument of war, peace, and social memory, as well as a source for retracing volatile, contested pasts. Humor and Power in Algeria, 1920 to 2021 reveals how Algerians have harnessed humor to express competing visions for unity in a divided colonial society, to channel and process emotions surrounding a brutal war of decolonization and the forging of a new nation, and to demonstrate resilience in the face of a terrifying civil conflict. Elizabeth M. Perego is Assistant Professor in the Department of History at Appalachian State University. Her work has appeared in the Journal of North African Studies and the International Journal of Middle East Studies. Tugrul Mende holds an M.A in Arabic Studies. He is based in Berlin as a project coordinator and independent researcher. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

In times of peace as well as conflict, humor has served Algerians as a tool of both unification and division. Humor has also assisted Algerians of various backgrounds and ideological leanings with engaging critically in power struggles throughout the country's contemporary history.  By analyzing comedic discourse in various forms (including plays, jokes, and cartoons), Humor and Power in Algeria, 1920 to 2021 (Indiana UP, 2023) demonstrates the globally informed and creative ways that civilians have made sense of moments of victory and loss through humor. Using oral interviews and media archives in Arabic, French, and Tamazight, Elizabeth M. Perego expands on theoretical debates about humor as a tool of resistance and explores the importance of humor as an instrument of war, peace, and social memory, as well as a source for retracing volatile, contested pasts. Humor and Power in Algeria, 1920 to 2021 reveals how Algerians have harnessed humor to express competing visions for unity in a divided colonial society, to channel and process emotions surrounding a brutal war of decolonization and the forging of a new nation, and to demonstrate resilience in the face of a terrifying civil conflict. Elizabeth M. Perego is Assistant Professor in the Department of History at Appalachian State University. Her work has appeared in the Journal of North African Studies and the International Journal of Middle East Studies. Tugrul Mende holds an M.A in Arabic Studies. He is based in Berlin as a project coordinator and independent researcher. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

In times of peace as well as conflict, humor has served Algerians as a tool of both unification and division. Humor has also assisted Algerians of various backgrounds and ideological leanings with engaging critically in power struggles throughout the country's contemporary history.  By analyzing comedic discourse in various forms (including plays, jokes, and cartoons), Humor and Power in Algeria, 1920 to 2021 (Indiana UP, 2023) demonstrates the globally informed and creative ways that civilians have made sense of moments of victory and loss through humor. Using oral interviews and media archives in Arabic, French, and Tamazight, Elizabeth M. Perego expands on theoretical debates about humor as a tool of resistance and explores the importance of humor as an instrument of war, peace, and social memory, as well as a source for retracing volatile, contested pasts. Humor and Power in Algeria, 1920 to 2021 reveals how Algerians have harnessed humor to express competing visions for unity in a divided colonial society, to channel and process emotions surrounding a brutal war of decolonization and the forging of a new nation, and to demonstrate resilience in the face of a terrifying civil conflict. Elizabeth M. Perego is Assistant Professor in the Department of History at Appalachian State University. Her work has appeared in the Journal of North African Studies and the International Journal of Middle East Studies. Tugrul Mende holds an M.A in Arabic Studies. He is based in Berlin as a project coordinator and independent researcher. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/middle-eastern-studies

In times of peace as well as conflict, humor has served Algerians as a tool of both unification and division. Humor has also assisted Algerians of various backgrounds and ideological leanings with engaging critically in power struggles throughout the country's contemporary history.  By analyzing comedic discourse in various forms (including plays, jokes, and cartoons), Humor and Power in Algeria, 1920 to 2021 (Indiana UP, 2023) demonstrates the globally informed and creative ways that civilians have made sense of moments of victory and loss through humor. Using oral interviews and media archives in Arabic, French, and Tamazight, Elizabeth M. Perego expands on theoretical debates about humor as a tool of resistance and explores the importance of humor as an instrument of war, peace, and social memory, as well as a source for retracing volatile, contested pasts. Humor and Power in Algeria, 1920 to 2021 reveals how Algerians have harnessed humor to express competing visions for unity in a divided colonial society, to channel and process emotions surrounding a brutal war of decolonization and the forging of a new nation, and to demonstrate resilience in the face of a terrifying civil conflict. Elizabeth M. Perego is Assistant Professor in the Department of History at Appalachian State University. Her work has appeared in the Journal of North African Studies and the International Journal of Middle East Studies. Tugrul Mende holds an M.A in Arabic Studies. He is based in Berlin as a project coordinator and independent researcher. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/french-studies

Here is a summary of the key points from the podcast transcript: Riadh Barkat grew up in Algeria during a turbulent time with political unrest. This made him distrustful of people and careful about who he associated with. However, Algerians are also very welcoming and proud people. Work ethic was instilled in Riadh from a young age through small jobs and helping his parents. He always understood he had to work to earn money and rewards. Early sales experiences like promoting flyers in hotels taught Riadh resilience and overcoming rejection. He credits foundational sales roles like lead profiling for his successful sales career. Transitioning from individual contributor to people manager was challenging. Riadh learned he had to establish trust and validate he could add value before leading others. Letting go of individuals with fixed mindsets improved team culture. Riadh sees AI as an efficiency play to help reps do tasks faster. It provides instant access to account insights for smarter conversations. However, complex enterprise sales still requires human touch. For work-life balance, Riadh enjoys scuba diving and fishing during vacations. He also doesn't talk much about his personal life with colleagues. If Riadh wrote a book, it would contain life lessons on what to do and avoid based on his experiences. Top lessons are resolving issues quickly before they escalate and always being respectful. If Riadh could never work again, he would spend time mentoring people from disadvantaged backgrounds. Helping others gives him great joy. The title of Riadh's biography would be "Giving Back" since he wants to be remembered for generosity and helping others.

Wongel Zelalem reports on bedbugs invading French cities and raising concern among Algerians about the possibility of the insects' transmission to their country. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/africandiasporanews/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/africandiasporanews/support

#DarienGap: Afghans, Iraqis, Libyans, Algerians,, Chinese, Africa Arabic speakers, Africa French speakers from Burkina Faso, more, enroute to the Mexican border.  @Michsel_Yon https://x.com/michael_yon/status/1702037813749813499?s=61&t=p8MRaatq9pVVjBrMnwK2iA 1927 Darien

Can an initiative by Algeria end the crisis in neighbouring Niger? The Algerians are proposing a six-month transition period from military to civilian rule. While other African countries are threatening coup leaders with military intervention. So, how much leverage does Algeria have to push its initiative forward? Join Host Mohammed Jamjoom Guests: Alexis Akwagyiram - Managing Editor, Semafor Africa news website. Kabir Adamu - Managing Director, Beacon Consulting security risk management and intelligence provider. Jacques Reland - Senior Research Fellow, Global Policy Institute think tank.

Featuring: Dr. Christopher C. Harmon, IWP Professor and Brute Krulak Center for Innovation and Future Warfare Distinguished Fellow at Marine Corps University. About the Lecture: Terrorist groups have used a fantastic variety of means to seize attention, explain themselves, and seek recruits and support: song and speech, “guerrilla theater,” leaflets, radio, cable TV, newspapers, print ads, books, videos, web sites, e-zines… Social media is only their latest endeavor. This training will cover the modern terrorist propaganda techniques being used today so you can recognize them in your work. This training is developed from the recent book: The Terrorist Argument. The Terrorist Argument: Modern Advocacy and Propaganda, a recent book for the Brookings Institution, is a highly original merging of media studies & terrorism studies. Christopher C. Harmon and Randall G. Bowdish paired a medium of strategic communication with a named terrorist group. Examined in successive chapters are propaganda works of nationalists such as the Algerians and Irish; Maoists; secular Iranian dissidents; eco-terrorists, and other groups such as the potent Islamist organizations Hezbollah, Al Qaeda, and ISIS. Highlights from this multi-year study will be offered in an illustrated lecture and Q&A session by the lead author, Dr. Harmon of the Institute of World Politics. About the Speaker: Dr. Christopher C. Harmon ran counterterrorism studies programs for the U. S. government in two of our Defense Department's regional academic centers (Garmisch Germany & Honolulu Hawaii). His work on “how terrorist groups end” was explored in a lecture series in the Washington, D.C. area from 2004 onward, with overseas dates including INTERPOL headquarters in Lyon, France (2010). Dr. Harmon is the lead author or editor of seven books about revolutionary warfare, insurgency, terrorism, or counterterrorism. The latest is just now out from Marine Corps University Press, entitled Warfare in Peacetime. ***Learn more about IWP graduate programs: https://www.iwp.edu/academic-programs/ ***Make a gift to IWP: https://interland3.donorperfect.net/weblink/WebLink.aspx?name=E231090&id=18

In this episode of International Horizons, RBI's director, John Torpey interviewed Laetitia Bucaille about the factors that explain variation in resentment and grievances in former colonies drawing from the cases of Algeria and South Africa. Bucaille delves deeper into the case of Algeria and the affected populations whose identities were crossed cut by institutions and personal experiences as a former colony. Moreover, she explains how Algeria, considered not a colony but a French territory, still implemented discriminating laws against native Algerians who were deemed as second-class citizens. Finally, the author discusses the long-lasting consequences of this decolonization process and how it gets intertwined with politics and anti-Islam narratives in France. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

In this episode of International Horizons, RBI's director, John Torpey interviewed Laetitia Bucaille about the factors that explain variation in resentment and grievances in former colonies drawing from the cases of Algeria and South Africa. Bucaille delves deeper into the case of Algeria and the affected populations whose identities were crossed cut by institutions and personal experiences as a former colony. Moreover, she explains how Algeria, considered not a colony but a French territory, still implemented discriminating laws against native Algerians who were deemed as second-class citizens. Finally, the author discusses the long-lasting consequences of this decolonization process and how it gets intertwined with politics and anti-Islam narratives in France. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/middle-eastern-studies

In this episode of International Horizons, RBI's director, John Torpey interviewed Laetitia Bucaille about the factors that explain variation in resentment and grievances in former colonies drawing from the cases of Algeria and South Africa. Bucaille delves deeper into the case of Algeria and the affected populations whose identities were crossed cut by institutions and personal experiences as a former colony. Moreover, she explains how Algeria, considered not a colony but a French territory, still implemented discriminating laws against native Algerians who were deemed as second-class citizens. Finally, the author discusses the long-lasting consequences of this decolonization process and how it gets intertwined with politics and anti-Islam narratives in France. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-studies

In this episode of International Horizons, RBI's director, John Torpey interviewed Laetitia Bucaille about the factors that explain variation in resentment and grievances in former colonies drawing from the cases of Algeria and South Africa. Bucaille delves deeper into the case of Algeria and the affected populations whose identities were crossed cut by institutions and personal experiences as a former colony. Moreover, she explains how Algeria, considered not a colony but a French territory, still implemented discriminating laws against native Algerians who were deemed as second-class citizens. Finally, the author discusses the long-lasting consequences of this decolonization process and how it gets intertwined with politics and anti-Islam narratives in France. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/french-studies

In this episode of International Horizons, RBI's director, John Torpey interviewed Laetitia Bucaille about the factors that explain variation in resentment and grievances in former colonies drawing from the cases of Algeria and South Africa. Bucaille delves deeper into the case of Algeria and the affected populations whose identities were crossed cut by institutions and personal experiences as a former colony. Moreover, she explains how Algeria, considered not a colony but a French territory, still implemented discriminating laws against native Algerians who were deemed as second-class citizens. Finally, the author discusses the long-lasting consequences of this decolonization process and how it gets intertwined with politics and anti-Islam narratives in France. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode of International Horizons, RBI's director, John Torpey interviewed Laetitia Bucaille about the factors that explain variation in resentment and grievances in former colonies drawing from the cases of Algeria and South Africa. Bucaille delves deeper into the case of Algeria and the affected populations whose identities were crossed cut by institutions and personal experiences as a former colony. Moreover, she explains how Algeria, considered not a colony but a French territory, still implemented discriminating laws against native Algerians who were deemed as second-class citizens. Finally, the author discusses the long-lasting consequences of this decolonization process and how it gets intertwined with politics and anti-Islam narratives in France. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I have another amazing episode for you! If you didn't get an opportunity to listen to the inspiration words of Martinique Lewis, my first guest, click here right after you listen to this episode. In this episode, I am speaking with Nour Brahimi. Nour is THE FIRST female Algerian travel Vlogger, Travel content Creator, visual storyteller, and EU goodwill ambassador. Nour uses her trips to inspire fellow women to step into the unknown. With more than 1 million followers across social media, at age 29, she is one of the top 100 influential young Africans. Nour has a lot to say about what the world should look like for women travelers and especially women travel content creators, and you're going to love her story. Join me and Nour as we discuss: Travel Women in Travel Being Responsible Safety Content Creator Islam Women Dress Code Women In Travel Summit (WITS) Visa Africa Visa Free Countries Assekrem: Part of the Sahara Desert Honorable Mentions 00:01:37 Nour Brahimi | Who am I? 00:15:08 Malaysia 00:16:47 Family Weekend At a Chalet Blida 00:22:12 Algerians at WITS 00:33:11 Nour Brahimi TikTok - Traveling with Food and Liquids Follow Nour in these spaces: Email:  nourtravelspro@gmail.com Website: https://nourbrahimi.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nour.brahimii/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVqnriClC9YapZykWVEcrpw Tik Tok: https://www.tiktok.com/@nour.brahimi

Henry Jarju joins host Steve Teel on this edition of Very Bold Radio. Be inspired every Saturday by difference-makers on Very Bold Radio and Podcast. A Five-Part Special Very Bold Series “Henry Jarju: One Refugee's Journey.” This is Henry Jarju's journey as a refugee from The Gambia seeking better opportunities in Europe. Henry shares his harrowing yet inspiring story in this five-part interview (with David Teel and Steve Teel as interviewers). The emotions and memories are strong as Henry faced death many times, was robbed, beaten, kidnapped and imprisoned by human traffickers. He was severely beaten after a daring escape attempt from traffickers. Henry survived shipwreck, a deadly fire, betrayal, and the desperate defeat of death hanging over his head and the feeling of truly being all alone. The many obstacles Henry Jarju faced over and over again are a testimony of Henry's amazing endurance and of God's providence and grace. Here in Part 1 - From Amsterdam, Netherlands (YWAM Youth With A Mission) Close friend David Teel (guest co-host) introduces Henry Jarju to his dad and host Steve Teel (Very Bold Radio & Podcast VeryBold.com Ministries based in Texas) and gives background on Henry Jarju's current ministry with refugees, the homeless, and soccer ministry. (0:00-6:00)Henry talks about his brand new engagement to be married. (6:00-12:00). Henry's faith and love and knowledge of God's Word shines through in this story. Henry introduces his story as being from The Gambia. The Gambia is significantly majority Muslim though Henry grew up Catholic. He will explain as we go on that he was not yet a born-again believer in Jesus (some of his brothers were so). He was living for vanity and money and things of the world at this time. Henry explains that most Gambian youth desire to move to Europe or USA. He sets up that his journey will mean traveling across the Sahara Desert before setting out by boat across the Mediterranean to Italy. (12:00-24:00)No one on his family approved or supported Henry's decision to take this risky journey. His dad cautions him against this dangerous plan. Knowing that his family did not approve, Henry begins his journey without telling his family goodbye. He embarks on journey with his Bible, some money, and one friend but quickly runs out of money. Henry understood his family not being supportive but it was still very painful and he felt all alone in a country where he did not speak the language. But he continued on. Living in the streets in the country of Mauritania for 3 weeks and looking for any day labor job. Henry explains the next destination was the country Mali and then across Sahara Desert in a truck (approximately 25-30 people in the truck) to go through Algeria. The journey across the Sahara will take 4 days in the midst of hostile rebels and land disputes. The truck breaks down, is fixed, but soon runs out of fuel in the middle of nowhere. No shade except for laying under the truck. “For the first time in the desert, I felt like … this is it… we all lost hope.” The next day United Nations peacekeeping soldiers come upon them and help with food and water. Refreshed with water and hope the group heads out again. Just two hours later they encounter rebel soldiers. (24:00-42:00).Henry explains the rebels surrounding their truck, pointing their guns at them. One by one the rebels go through their bags taking whatever they want: phones, money. They are forced to take their clothes off. Henry had hid his money inside a body cream tube and it was not discovered. The rebels beat the sojourners with lashes and threaten them to reveal where their money is. The rebels then leave—but even take the last of the water the refugees had received. That was the third day.(42:00-53:00)They run into a different group of rebels who force the refugees to their camp. This group of rebels then sell the refugees to human traffickers. The human trafficker is Senegalese and this gives Henry comfort for a brief time as he speaks the same language. Then as the man becomes angry Henry realizes the dire situation that they are in the hands of human traffickers. He is forced to call his dad and ask for ransom money to release him. His dad reminds him he had told him not to go and will not send money. Henry then calls one of his sisters who pledges to send money though he knows she does not have any money to send. But his captor incorrectly believe she will. Some of the other captives Henry learns have been there for 7 or 9 months but had not been able to pay off the full ransom amount. He then learns that these other captives are permitted to go work outside the compound to pay down the ransom.Henry calls a brother and explains the troubling situation. Henry speaks in a language his captive doesn't know and tells his brother he will try to escape but to tell the man that he will send the money. Henry is warned by other captives not to attempt an escape because he will be caught and taken back to the rebels. Henry's friend's family is able and willing to pay the fee for his friend. But Henry must attempt to escape. That night the rebels and Algerians engage in a gunfight and Henry is determined to try his escape despite warnings not to. (53:00-1:08:00) This ends Part 1. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This Jobs with Jodi Podcast episode.....Career Services Specialist Jodi Hammer chats with  Andrew Shannon and Robbieana Leung..... FEATURED GUESTS: Andrew Shannon is a member of the Outreach team at Georgetown University for the U.S. Department of State English Language Programs. He has worked in the field of English language education for 15 years as a teacher, trainer, and coordinator. Andrew's interests include Russian language and development in post-Soviet states. He was an English Language Fellow in Kyrgyzstan in 2014-2016 before moving to Kazakhstan where he taught high-school English for 3 years. Andrew entered the field of education as an Assistant Language Teacher on the JET (Japan Exchange and Teaching) Program and then taught in North Carolina public schools as an ESL teacher prior to his English Language Fellowship. He currently works closely to support the new Virtual English Language Educator Program.Robbieana Leung  flew before she could walk. At one month old, her first plane ride foretold a life that would span the globe. Growing up on three continents, she developed a love of people, cultural exchange, and service learning, which inspired her teaching career in 2010. With an MA in Conflict Studies & Human Rights and BA in International Studies & Intercultural Communication, she has taught English learners and teachers in Hong Kong, China, Thailand, Hawaii, the Philippines and Algeria. According to the Rotary Ambassadorial Scholar and Semester at Sea Alumna, to be an ESL teacher is to be a peacebuilder – and students learn best when having fun! In class, she engages minds and hearts by providing opportunities for students to learn from the world around them.As a Peace Corps Volunteer, she led her students in developing libraries and publishing a Bisaya-English children's book, “Moalboal Tales: Stories for Dreamers / Sugilanong Moalboalanon: Mga Istorya Alang Sa Mga Ngandoy.” She also implemented a Global English program on two voyages with Peace Boat, a Japan-based NGO that promotes the Sustainable Development Goals. In 2021, Robbieana joined the English Language Programs as a Virtual Fellow, where she taught Algerians learners and promoted cultural understanding. In September 2022, she looks forward to teaching in Thailand as an in-country Fellow! PODCAST HOST: Jodi Hammer is an RPCV (Ecuador, 1994–97), Job Coach, and host of the Global Reentry's Jobs with Jodi Podcast. In her role as Global Reentry Career Support Specialist with NPCA, she develops and delivers individual and group programming to foster Global Reentry's mission of providing career and transitional support to RPCVs worldwide.

Good Morning Monaco THURSDAY AUGUST 11, 2022 published by NEWS.MC Subscribe to our daily email newsletter Recidivist Monegasque drunk driver jailed for five days A young drunken driver decided to take his car home despite the fact that the bonnet of the car had been damaged by colliding with a planter, and visibility was substantially impaired... Smoke from Ligurian wildfire descends on Menton and Monaco Residents of Monaco and neighbouring communities have noticed the smell of woodsmoke in recent days, as a fire inland from Ventimiglia has sent smoke across the border from Liguria... Rekindled wildfires rage in Gironde, thousands evacuated, homes lost Wildfires tore through the Gironde region of southwestern France on Wednesday, destroying homes and forcing the evacuation of more than 8,000 residents... Hamilton not a fan of driving on Riviera roads Lewis Hamilton is no stranger to driving in the most demanding way. With seven world titles to his name, and 103 race wins under his belt, he is arguably the most impressive and fearless driver there ever was. However... DULY NOTED: Fifty individuals fought a pitched battle in the Paris suburb of Saint-Denis on Monday night, according to police sources cited by Le Figaro on Wednesday. Using iron bars and planks of wood with nails attached, opposing bands of Algerians and Egyptians were involved. One policeman was wounded and there were no arrests. * After six years of trying to break into the Italian market, the home of pizza, Domino's Pizza is winding down its operations in the country. Unsurprisingly, local producers knocked spots off the interloper. Tonight in Monaco: Soirées de Monaco-Ville – “Brazilian evening” With two workshops for children, three musicians, three dancers and an entertainer. From 16:00 to 21:00 Monaco-Ville invites you to rediscover the authentic alleys of the old town. There is a 100% electric shuttle on a circuit linking Monaco-Ville to Place Saint-Dévote, every 15 minutes from 20:00 to 22:50, in addition to the usual bus lines. Copyright © 2020 NEWS SARL. All rights reserved. North East West South (NEWS) SARL. RCI: 20S08518 - NIS: 6312Z21974 --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/monacodailynews/message

This week Lara and Michael discuss the egregious case of the Lapid's occupying a stolen Palestinian house and announcing it as a "new beginning" on Instagram. We cover a couple of instances of Germany silencing both Palestinian and pro-Palestinian Jewish activists including the disinvite of Mohammed El Kurd, which led to the all-out boycott of the event in Germany. Lara talks about the so-called "Doomsday settlement" and how the Doomsday events have already happened. We discuss the anniversary of Algerian independence, talk about the deep bonds between Palestinians and Algerians, and that Algeria resisted colonialism for over 100 years. We talk about how you never know that liberation is close until it comes. We cover the phenomena of Arab Zionists both in governments and among the people. We conclude with an update about Ben & Jerry's lawsuit against their parent company Unilever. Michael is unimpressed with the PR tactics of the company. 

Dans cet épisode, Laura Bisaillon, membre du CREFO, rencontre Jim House, professeur titulaire  à l'Université de Leeds Monsieur Jim House est historien et professeur titulaire à l'Université de Leeds en Grande-Bretagne. Il a effectué des études supérieures en français et en histoire à l'Université de Leeds, à Saint-Étienne (France) et à Damas (Syrie). Il est spécialiste de l'Algérie, de la France et du Maroc à l'époque coloniale et il mène des recherches comparées sur la colonisation, la décolonisation et l'antiracisme. A l'Université de Leeds, il a cofondé et dirigé le Centre d'Études Culturelles Françaises et Francophones et a également cofondé et dirigé l'Institut d'Études Coloniales et Postcoloniales. Avec Neil McMaster, il est l'auteur de Paris 1961: Algerians, State Terror, and Memory (Paris 1961 : Les Algériens, la terreur d'État et la mémoire) (2006) publié chez les Presses de l'Université Oxford (traduction française 2008 chez les Éditions Taillandier).  

Dr. Richard Derderian talks about how Algerians in France maintained and developed their culture during decades of remarkable, violent change. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

More than 200,000 Algerians fought for France during the war of independence, becoming known as Harkis. After Algeria's independence in 1962, the Harkis were treated badly by both the Algerians and the French. The FLN regarded the Harkis as traitors; while the French washed their hands of them after losing the war. Brahim Sadouni was one of the Harkis. He spoke to Louise Hidalgo in 2010 about how he was rejected by his own father. PHOTO: Harki forces in 1959 (Jean-Louis SWINERS/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images)

    Albert Camus - The Stranger - Episode 1 -Introduction To Absurdity!I'm Christy Shriver and we're here to discuss books that have changed the world and have changed us.    And I'm Garry Shriver and this is the How to Love Lit Podcast.  Today we begin a three part series on Albert Camus' mostly widely translated and perhaps even read book, “L'Estranger”- which in English has been translated “The Outsider” as well as “The Stranger”- both apply and apply well, which we'll talk about more in episode three.  The initial critical reception to the novel was mixed but after WW2 as well as an aggressive marketing campaign for its first English translation, the book took off.  It was a critical success as well as a commercial one.  Camus' book today is translated in over 60 languages and has sold over 6 million copies.       It's a favorite with teenagers as well, although, I will say, most wouldn't care to tell you all about the absurdism or existentialism in the text.  They just relate to it.  It's easy to read.  In fact, a lot of high school French students will read it in the original French for the very obvious reason that they can- the language is itself deliberately simplified to the most basic of verb tenses.  Camus wrote for everyone not just for everyone to read but to express the condition of every individual who engages the world, and although the language is simple, the book is not…in fact, it's intimidating.      Well, it is intimidating not just because it asks questions that are difficult, but because it doesn't allow you to answer questions with anything like a cliché or a simple answer- in fact, for Camus to do so is to commit philosophical suicide- it is to give up on life itself- to become the Meursault of part one- to not be the protagonist of our own lives- so to speak.  But in all of its grimness on the surface, Camus is not a dark guy.  Literally or metaphorically- his favorite symbol, at least in this book, is ironically, the sun.  He wouldn't like the word “hopeful” because that goes against his world view, but he might like the phrase- defiant against darkness.    I agree with that, but before we get into the paradox which is the thinking and writing of Camus, let's talk a little about this man who managed to be the second youngest man to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, and that was in 1957.      As an aside, who was the youngest.    Rudyard Kipling did it in 1907 at the age of 41.  Camus was 44 years old, and seems to me, was more surprised than anybody that he won.  He comes across as embarrassed to have earned it, and very humbly said if he'd had a vote as to who got the award, he wouldn't even have given it to himself.  He would have given it to a different writer.  I love the fact, that He also immediately wrote a letter to one of his elementary school teacher sback in Algeria, with this to say, “  “When I heard the news, my first thought, after my mother, was of you,” The name of the teacher, by the way, by way of a shout out was Monsieur Germain. “Without you, without the affectionate hand you extended to the small poor child that I was, without your teaching and example, none of all this would have happened.”  As a teacher I find that so very endearing.  It's what every teacher would love to hear some day from a student who made good, not just one that won the Nobel prize for literature.    Well, of course.    Anyway, I mention he was from Algeria because that is an important detail in understanding him as a person, and although arguable in many critical circles, we contend is something helpful to know when understanding a person's worldview and work.      Some would call that rhetorical context.     Yes, I think they would.  Anyway, Algeria is the largest country in Africa, if you go by total area.       True, but it's large by world standards as well.  It's the tenth largest country in the world.  It's the world's largest Arab country.  It's in North Africa.  Tunisia (where part of Star Wars was filmed) is on one side and (Morocco where Casablanca was set) is on the other side.     Let me add that “Casablanca” was released two years after Camus published The Stranger if that gives you any visual context. Garry, tell us a little bit about the place Camus called home, where The Stranger is set, and the place that held Camus' heart his entire life.    Of course, Algeria, historically, has an extremely long and rich history dating remarkably to 200,000 bc, but I'm guessing you're not interested that far back.    Yeah, I'd say that would pretty much eclipse Camus, Homer, Sophocles or pretty much anything we've ever featured, let's go with modern history.    Of course.  As you would expect, as with every other part of Africa, Algeria experienced European colonialism.  By 1848, nearly all of Algeria was French.  And just like we saw with the American experience, many Europeans who were having trouble in Europe or looking for a place to find upward mobility looked to migrate to this new colony- and why not, if you were a struggling French man or woman.  Algeria is beautiful; it's warm, has beaches- there was much allure.  Camus' great grandparents were part of this movement.  These French Europeans who came to Algeria in search of a better life were called “pied Noirs” or black feet.  But just as we saw in our series “Things Fall Apart”, colonialism takes a toll on indigenous populations.  European colonial governments did  not treat local peoples equally or even respectfully, although they were technically French citizens.  In the colonial system, pied noirs dominated government as well as the wealth of Algeria.  This of course, went on during Camus life and obviously he had ample opportunity from his earliest days to watch the abuses of this system from all sorts of angles.  His views on how these inequalities should be solved eventually made him antagonistic to both the far right as well as the far left.    You know, I've read his views and what people thought of them, and at first pass, I agreed with the accusation that his “peace first- never violence” approach was naïve and something only a pie in the sky philosopher could afford to indulge, but the more I think about it, the more sense it makes to me.  His idea was ahead of his time in some ways.  During his day 15% of the population was of European origin, that's a minority and one that was imported, obviously, but they were indeed still Algerian and a significant number of individuals.  In his case, he was born there.  Yes, he wasn't of the same skin tone as people whose ancestors had been there more than two generations, but it was still his home.  His idea was, find a way- make peace- live together.  The idea of the indigenous people was something like everyone of a different skin tone needs to get out.  And the French approach was, dominate and subjugate all local peoples of different ethnic origins.      Which of course is not a peaceful attitude on anyone's part.  After the end of WW2, which by the way, over a million soldiers from all over Africa but mostly north Africa, fought on the European front of that conflict, including many Algerians.  But after the war, Algerian Muslims demanded and eventually won their independence.  However, independence wasn't simple.  The Algerian war was bloody, deadly and long.  Algerian independence did not come until 1962.  Almost 1,000,000 pied noirs fled back to Europe, France sent 100s of thousands of soldiers to Algeria to fight against the insurrections.  Tens of thousands of young men on both sides died.  Terrorist tactics were used on both sides.  Napalm was even employed- if you recall that was the toxin of choice Americans associate with the war in Vietnam.  There were horrible internment camps. But the death count isn't the only measure of devastation. By the time Algeria finally proclaimed its independence, 70% of the workforce in Algeria was unemployed, businesses that had been run by European descendants had been confiscated by the state, but many were not being administrated productively.  Independence created a power vacuum internally.  Political factions vied for control.   For average people, life was a real struggle.        So, this was Algeria during Camus' lifetime.  He died in 1960 right before its independence.     Yes, and let me add, even into the 1990s and the early 2000s Algeria has experienced incredible internal violence and civil strife.  It does make Camus's call for peaceful resolution seem more and more reasonable- at least less costly for average people, which of course was his upbringing, and who he cared about protecting.      Yes, and it is Camus' understanding of Algeria that shaped his personal story, his politics, his philosophy and his art.  As you mentioned, Camus was a pied noir, but he certainly couldn't be described as being a member of any ruling class.   He was born in Algeria to a very low-income working-class household, and passionately loved his homeland.  I think it's important to understand, he was not European; however, he was, in many ways, an outsider in Algeria.  He was born there, but his people were not indigenous- think the title of his book- the Stranger.  There is so many ways this title could be the subtitle to the author, as well.  Let me be clear, I'm certainly not suggesting the novel I autobiographical because it is not in any overt sense- but I will suggest that his experiences did him an heightened understanding of feelings that are, of course,  universal.  Mersault, the name of our title character, by the way, was a pen name Camus had used before in other writings- so do with that what you will.  But the experiences of his life that left him an outsider are not just about his geo-political situation.  Camus' father died in one of the first battles of WW1 when Camus was one year old, and as a result, the family had to move in with Camus' uncle and their grandmother.   He has fatherless which is itself a handicap, but as you might expect, this situation wasn't awesome financially.  The family was left left in poverty.  Here, little Camus experiences another version of being an outsider.  He's the poor kid with no dad. His mother worked in factories, she was also a maid, all the things poor single moms do to make ends meet, but nothing that inspires a child with pride.  She was illiterate, was mostly deaf and suffered from a serious speech impediment.  The deafness and speech problems were a result of a childhood illness that went untreated.  Camus deeply loved his mother, but I've also read she was a distant person emotionally- we can only speculate perhaps it was because of the circumstances of her life, maybe she just was- I don't know, but I can imagine that those challenges created barriers in building relationship and intimacy.  Camus said this about his mom later in life, “"When my mother's eyes were not resting on me, I have never been able to look at her without tears springing into my eyes."    I also read, although this is getting farther along in Camus' personal story, that he commented when he received the Nobel Prize, that his mother was one woman who would never be able to read his speech.     True, and I think it's important to bring his relationship with his mother out because of his famous first line in The Stranger, but we'll get to that in a minute.  Camus, without any privilege of birth or education was still a brilliant student who managed to stand out to the point that he received scholarships to attend a very fancy high school there in Algiers- let me add, another way to be an outsider- the poor kid in the rich kid school.        True, but he was successful there- and more than just academically.  He played soccer, and in fact; was good at it.    He was a first string goalie, and perhaps might have had a shot at sports on a bigger level, except…at age 17 he contracted tuberculosis- yet another set back- one more way to be an outsider.   His disease shocked him, as you can imagine.  NO 17 year expects to be confronted with potential death, and especially not an athlete.   He had to drop out of sports, out of school, out of everything.  So, I hope you are seeing some trends here. I am.  He can't cut a break.    Yeah, Camus is definitely not the cliched spoiled rich kid privileged “thinker” who attends elite universities then sits around Parisienne cafes or salons discussing personal omniscient theories about existence and nature of the universe.      No, his buddy Jean Paul Sartre is much closer to that description than Camus, although, Sartre's ideas are actually interesting and not cliches- in fact, his explication of The Stranger is fantastic.  But before we get the Sartre/Camus drama-  and they are often associated together although not always on good terms, but before any of that, sweet Camus is getting his butt kicked by life itself in every imaginable way.  When he does show up in Paris, he's got an edge to him that's sexy to the upper crust. He's this brilliant, good-looking bad boy from the provinces, if you want to think in cliches- the James Dean of Algeria.  But before that, he recovers his health and returns to school in 1933, marries a girl named Simone Hile- a beautiful girl apparently but one with a bad drug habit.  The marriage was not good- another set back.  In 1936, he graduates from school and gets involved in supporting the Algerian Muslims and other workers in Algeria.  He joins the Communist party and even creates a theater group trying to bring the arts to the working class people of his community.         This is interesting, Camus joins the Communist party precisely because he doesn't believe in how the French are treating local people in Algieria.  He believes in fairness, equal opportunity, and sees that the power in Algeria is disproportional.  It's obvious to everyone that the  French are abusing the local populations.  He wants to be part of the solution, and he wants a peaceful solution. He wants maximum freedom for the maximum number of people.  All the things the Communists were espousing with their words.  However, through the war, he eventually changes his attitude towards the communists.    At first I thought that meant he moved towards the right.  But he doesn't really.  He will always be a leftist- he just has this very consistent view of equality- and the Communists when they got in charge did not live out the message that got them his support.     Exactly, and we see that as a problem in politics for all times- from antiquity and it's a problem today.  Camus finds Stalin and the Communists to be as awful as Hitler and the fascists.  He does NOT believe the ends ever justifies the means, and so he eventually be became disenfranchised and despised by both the right and the left.      I would say that is to his credit especially in 1940.  But speaking of that year, that's the year he divorced Simone and moved to Paris- which in retrospect, wasn't the best time to be moving to Paris.    Ah, no I would say not.  France falls to Germany in June of 1940.  There are famous pictures that most of us have seen of Nazi soldiers marching through the Arche de Triomphe.        Camus gets trapped.  He tries to get home, but he's stuck in occupied Paris.  And so, he does what he can.  He takes an active role in the resistance.  He literally risks his life through his journalism. He inspires the people of France to not give in to the Nazis; to hold on to the resistance- his essays from their period are actually published and people still find them inspirational. (One example would be “The Almond Trees” if you are going to try to Google them).  But more interesting for us, tt's also during this period that he writes the three works that would change his life.  First there is novella, if we're going to call it anything, The Stranger, but there is also and the philosophical companion piece published four months later titled, the myth of Sisyphus, as well as the play Caligula.  Camus called these three works, “The Cycle of the Absurd”.  The Stranger, which is where we want to focus, expresses the feelings of the absurd, but obviously, we can't avoid reading it without the lens of The Myth of Sisyphus  but the essay is designed to help explain the impressions or the experience we should have when reading the story.     You know, in some ways it makes total sense that Camus would write about the meaningless of life in the backdrop of WW2, but in other ways, it's a total paradox.  He doesn't advocate rolling over and surrendering to the Nazis.  His political writings instill hope, but while encouraging people to resist fascism, ironically he's writing a great philosophical work on the idea that there is no hope.    Exactly, and Camus IS a paradox.  But, in many ways, he's the most relatable philosopher most high schoolers or maybe just many of us, will ever read.  I actually love his stuff, and I'm not even an atheist, to be honest.     And I do think we need to point that Camus is an atheist, or at least an agnostic and this thinking is predicated on exactly that.  He said this, “I do not know whether this world has a meaning that is beyond me.  But I do know that I am unaware of this meaning and that, for the time being, it is impossible for me to know it.  What can a meaning beyond my condition mean to me?  I can understand only in human terms.  I understand the things I touch, things that offer me resistance.”    And of course, that is a completely rational position to hold and easy to understand.  He's one of the few philosophers I would have loved to have met, and I think it's a real loss that he died so young.  We may talk about his untimely death towards the end of the series, but I think this is a good spot to break from biography and open the book.  It's time to read that famous first line- and make no mistake about it…it's very famous and recognizable.  Garry, in your best Camus voice…would you mind.      “Maman died today. Or yesterday maybe, I don't know.”    It is the sentence that shocked the world.  In a sentence that feels so cold, he uses the personal way of saying mama- he doesn't open with “Mother died”.  He doesn't call his mother by her first name.  In French, Maman would be like us saying mom, mum or mommy or mummy- it's the term kids use to call their mothers.  And yet…look at the rest of this phrase- she died today or yesterday.  I don't know.  What do you mean you don't know?  Are you a psychopath?  Are you a monster?  Why would you seeming blow off the death of your mom.  Except Meursault isn't a psychopath.  He's not a monster.  He's lost.      If we keep reading the next sentence, we see that maybe he's not a monster, maybe the nursing home is.  The nursing home sent him this telegram.   I got a telegram from the home: "Mother deceased. Funeral tomorrow. Faithfully yours." That doesn't mean anything. Maybe it was yesterday.   it's not cruel it just feels cruel. just because it's a telegram and they have to be short.   Or, another idea, maybe it's the culture of the area to be so short, or maybe, or maybe…it's absurd.    And now we got down to the point.  Camus is introducing to us through these very short phrases a feeling we get from our world.  At this point, he's not telling us what to think, he's showing us how we fee.    Camus' world is not theistic at all, it's not deistic.  So that's important to understand.  Camus doesn't believe in God nor does he believe it's rational to believe in God.   But he's also not naturalistic or deterministic either- he's not like Steinbeck who will say, there are forces in the world and we are just victims of nature and the laws that govern it.  Camus would not even claim to be existential, although today we would say he most definitely falls in this broad category.  But he didn't call himself that- he saw existentialists like Kierkegaard, Nietche, or even Sartre, or Kafka as different, but for our purposes we don't need to really go there.  The point Camus is making here, and it's a point so many of us understand, is that the world is really an absurd place to live, and although we can go through the routine of our daily lives, making ourselves busy, doing things we think are important, there will be moments in our lives, if we are lucky (he would suggest) where we are absolutely hit in the face with an undeniable truth that the world is one heck of an absurdity.   And as a young man in his twenties, there is anger here.    So once again the author tells the whole story in the very beginning-   Yes, but let me add- this is a book that will with all intentionality will offer almost NO commentary or NO explanation about anything at all for anything that will happen in the story, but here we will receive some of the only words of explanation- and let me remind you we will see in a lot of scandal later on but here's the explanation- that doesn't mean anything”.  Well, in context doesn't he mean that it doesn't mean enough for him to know when she died?  Well, of course, but what, I think, we're seeing is beyond that.  His mother's death sets off events that will define events, if we're looking for meaning which, of course, we shouldn't because we can't find- although we will still try, even subconsciously as we go through each event in the story.  Our brains will try to find a  correlation as we see Camus take as many pains as he possibly can to clearly disconnect every single action in the story.  It will be a futile hunt for meaning in a book that is meant on teaching us that there is no connection between events- it is the nature of our existence and this we will express with this term “the absurd”.      And as soon as we read these first lines, if we are honest, we intuitively identify with them…especially if we have lived more than five minutes in this world.  We know exactly how this feels – this book describes the feeling of not being able to feel, or to feel an unidentified guilt, or to feel impulses that are even self-sabotaging.  It's acknowledging feelings that are fair and indeed human to feel.  There is a moment in everyone's life, hopefully, if you're not a sociopath or narcissist, when we realize things just don't matter in the grand scheme of things, and Meursault is experiencing this at the death of his mother.  He describes asking off from work and being made to feel guilty to the point where he literally says “it's not my fault.”   This guilt feeling is an abstract guilt, he's aware it's coming from somewhere outside of him- he's not important enough to matter that his mom is dead.  He goes on to describe his bus ride to the old people's home- and its remarkably plain.  The world is the same.  His mother is dead and as he says to himself before he catches the bus, “it's almost as if Maman weren't dead.  After the funeral, though, the case will be closed, and everything will have a more official feel to it.”  There is a sense he understands the universe but just doesn't care.    I want to go back to something you mentioned. The word “fault” is used on the first page and in this book where the main character seems so detached from everything, it's strange that his boss is to make him feel guilty for something that is entirely NOT his fault.  This is something to take note of.   We will see him revisit  next episode we will discuss this idea of guilt, in full, because it is the most important idea in the text- Meursault does commit an action that IS his fault, at least we think it is, but then we're made to question whether it is or isn't .  Camus is interested in guilt and wants to solve the problem of guilt.  So there is something to look forward to.  But on to your important point- as we read Meursault's recollection of the death and then funeral of his mother, there's much to relate with.        For one thing, Meursault''s mother's death  is reduced to a telegram without even a definitive point of time.  Both she and he are specks in the universe and the death of a speck is of no consequence whatsoever.      I totally remember the moment I understood this about myself.  When I graduated from high school, my parents sent me back to America, are you know, I grew up in Brazil.  As a child, I thought I was the center of the world, but for me, I went in one day from being a somebody in a community to being a nobody from nowhere- a speck. I  remember showing up at college in Arkansas.  I went to a dance the first week on campus.  I drove myself to a skating rink, that's where the dance was held hoping to make friends.  I walked it, was greeted by no one.  I tried to go up to a couple of people, but it seemed strange.  They all knew eath other.  I was invisible.  I was unwanted.  I was a speck.  I remember the overwhelming nature of that realization.      Every one has those moments- and there will be more than one.  At some point, many of us will all of a sudden become keenly aware of a certain level of pointlessness to almost every human enterprise- hence the myth of Sisyphus which Camus thinks is the perfect metaphor for our everyday existence.      Yeah- we didn't have time to really talk about Sisyphus, but he's a guy Odysseus meets in the underworld.  Garry, read for us the paragraph about this guy.  Now, he's in trouble with Zeus so he has a punishment.  Let's read it.    When I witnessed the torture of Sisyphus, as he wrestled with a huge rock with both hands. Bracing himself and thrusting with hands and feet he pushed the boulder uphill to the top. But every time, as he was about to send it toppling over the crest, its sheer weight turned it back, and once again towards the plain the pitiless rock rolled down. So once more he had to wrestle with the thing and push it up, while the sweat poured from his limbs and the dust rose high above his head. (Odyssey, Book 11:593)     For Camus, this is a metaphor for our everyday routines- a pointless sameness over and over.  To use Camus' words it's the, “getting up, tram, four hours of work, meal, sleep, and Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, in the same routine.”  And for Camus, after a while, it all just seems absurd.  So, it's not just in the big moments where we recognize the absurd, but it is in the routine of our daily life-     Indeed, but here in the Stranger, it' feels a little overwhelming  here at the start of a novel.  “Maman died today.  Or yesterday maybe, I don't know.”- if I read it this way, it reminds me that it really doesn't matter.   Her life doesn't matter.  Her death doesn't matter.  The fact that I loved her doesn't matter.  The fact that we're here doesn't matter.   It's pretty depressing.  It's an expression of lostness.     And that's where Camus starts his philosophical treatise which he titles and wrote to explain the Stranger, “The Myth of Sisyphus”.  Let me read the first line of that famous essay.  It reads, “There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide.”   Camus goes on to say that “the feeling of absurdity can strike any man in the face.”  We're to feel like we're being slapped in the face by Meursault's sense of absurdity.   And I think it's important to understand as Camus clearly differentiates that the feeling of the absurd isn't the same as the idea of the absurd.”      That kind of makes me confused pretty much immediately and tired and depressed if I think about it too long.  Sartre calls it “hopeless lucidity”. It's a tiresome feeling- and we see Mersault just wanting to sleep basically all the time.  The idea being that there will come a moent when we become lucid or aware of a certain hopelessness- and that is our beginning point.  If you're reading this book and feel disoriented- that's a good thing.  You're supposed to.  If the next feeling is one of boredom- you're getting the point.    Such irony there- so we're supposed to be bored by reading- I guess every student can identify with that.  In fact, I think that's happened to me in lots of books that are not about existential meaning of life!  HA!  So true.  The scene Camus goes on to describe in chapter 1 is described in as brief a way as humanly possible.  When you read the book at first, you think it's going to be about a mom and a son, but that's really only 12% of the book.  In reality it has nothing to do with anything else and making arbitrary connections between the funeral and the events that follow is an obvious point of absurdity.      Here are a few of the sentences as Camus writes them.  They sound like a journal someone is keeping for themselves when they have to document their actions for some court case or something.   “It was very hot.  I ate at the restaurant, at Celeste's, as usual. Everybody felt very sorry for me…I ran so as not to miss the bus.  I slept almost the whole way.  The home is two kilometers from the village.  I walked them.       Exactly, All these short isolated sentences that have no connection with anything.  No connection is made between them.  They do no explain each other like you would expect in plot progression.   They are just declarative observations,  and somehow we arrive at a feeling of  “lucid hopelessness”.    Another feature of the text that I want to point out because it's going to become incredibly important next episode is this emphasis on the sun.  When I read this book, I got the impression that Algiers must be this incredibly hot place with a boiling sun- like Memphis, btw, but then I looked it up.  It turns out the weather in Algiers is pretty much perfect.  It rarely gets excessively cold in the winter or mercilessly hot in the summer.  But in this book, we feel an intensity of heat that is stifling.  The sun is oppressive.  In fact to use Meursault's exact words he says this, “but today, with the sun bearing down, making the whole landscape shimer with heat it was inhuman and oppressive.”  It is a presence during the procession.  It makes sweat pour down Mersault's face.    And so we walk with hand in hand with our narrator this absurd man, Meursault.  And Meursault undeniably is the absurd man- and, as Sartre tells us, the absurd man does not explain, he describes.  He doesn't prove anything.  And so with no reason, he experiences th sun.  It bears down.  The glare from the sky is unbearable.  It gets to the point where it makes Mersault feel lost.  He literally says that.  Here's another description. Let's read it.  “All of it- the sun, the smell of leather and horse dung from the hearse, the smell of varnish and incense, and my fatigue after a night without sleep- was making it hard for me to see or think straight.”  And this is where reading the Myth of Sisyphus is helpful.  For Camus, the absurdity of life comes from realizing a few undeniable things about the world- and this is regardless of worldview.  1) There is something in the heart of man that seeks to find meaning. We are not absurd.  We are wired to NOT be absurd.  We as non-absurd people look to find meaning.  We're wired like that. But then there's this second reality.  2) There is something in the arbitrary nature of the way life works that defeats us. We will lose and we know it.  We desire immortality but we will die.  Life is rigged against us.  Nature wins.  The absurdity of life will absolutely win.  Good things will happen for bad people. Bad things will happen to good people?  These are truths, and certainly obvious during Camus days in occupied France.      To use his words, “The world itself is not reasonable, that is all that can be said.”  So, this is our beginning point.  Now what do we do.    In the Myth of Sisyphus, Camus talks about suicide, and he does mean physical suicide for sure, but physical suicide is not such a simple thing to understand.   And it's not the only way to kill yourself.  He uses the term “philosophical suicide”.  And this is something that Camus is really against.  But he thinks that most of us will actually commit philosophical suicide.  Benjamin Franklin thought so too.  Franklin said it this way, “  “Many people die at twenty five and aren't buried until they are seventy five.”  In other words, in order to not face the reality that life is absurd, they choose to live dishonest lives.  We lie to ourselves about almost everything.  We can use God as philosophical suicide- if you can't explain it put it on God- I'm doing  this because it is the will of God.  It is a simple answer to a complicated question, but if you can just chalk everything up to god, than it's an easy answer- a way to stop asking the question that reminds us we're absurd.  Camus focuses on religion quite a bit, but religion certainly isn't that only thing in this world that can bring meaningless for the absurd man.  I would suggest that in the year 2022, we literally use drugs- . We use entertainment.  In a rich country like the United States, we use the pursuit of wealth to find meaning.  More recently, we've used morality- not religious morality, but secular morality.  We parade it over social media, proclaiming this platform or this other one- but in reality, it's all pretty absurd.  Camus says we have a mind that desires meaning and a world that disappoints.      And so we walk on with Mersault.  We experience with him the very basic feelings of life with Meursault- Maman's death SHOULD mean something, but it doesn't.  It's an inconvenience and it's uncomfortable.  It makes him hot; it makes him tired.  We experience the absurd.  With Meursault we experience what we glean from our senses, but not a lot more than that.  In chapter one, we feel a lot of physical discomfort, but we will see next episode that sex, food and cigarettes are strong physical sensations as well.  We will watch Meursault be pushed around and do things that I find morally repulsive.  He's not a part of anything really.  He'a into nothing- he's not a soccer fan, a company man, or even a film buff.      He's quite an outsider in almost every way.  Although, I will say, he doesn't have any trouble getting a girlfriend, but even Marie seems attracted to him because he's a wierdo.  He's a stranger.  He's l'estranger.       Christy, at this point, you're not leaving us a lot to look forward to.  This seems like we're heading toward nihilism and a foregone conclusion that we know the answer to the suicide question and it's not a good one.    True, but we're really only in chapter one.  Although, I will admit, there's a lot more boredom and a whole lot more poor decision-making or lack of decision-making in Meursault's immediate future.  But let me end with this, if this was all Camus had to say, he would not be interesting.  I had a friend in high school from France, ironically.  His name was Laurent.  Laurent was nihilistic, by 18.  He had this saying that he would go around saying all the time.  To this day, I can hear him say it in my head as I can see him put three cigarettes in his mouth at one time.  He loved to smoke, and I would fuss at him for it.  He would say, “You die. You're dead. So what.”      But that is not Camus.  Camus never lost faith in justice, the life of the spirit, the power of truth.  He rejected nihilism completely.  He said this, “All of us, among the ruins, are preparing a renaissance beyond the limits of nihilism.”  At another point he says this, “No, everything is not summed up in negation and absurdity.  We know this.  But we must first posit negation and absurdity because they are what our generation had encountered and what we must take into account.”      And so we begin…with the uncomfortable sun glaring down from the sun making us hot, sweaty, sleepy and reminding us that nature always wins.      Yeah- that's the idea- the absurd reality Starts with honesty- that is opposite of philosophical suicide.     Negation and absurdity are just the beginning.  It takes a certain amount of courage to do what he's asking, but of course, I agree.  The alternative is the Meursault of part 1- the absurd man- and as you said, he's not really that likeable.    Thanks for listening……                 

Our Washington political update starts with the Fox News report, “Democrats tee up filibuster reform by forcing issue on immigration, voting rights.” Harold Meyerson comments on that – and on reports that Dan Quayle saved American democracy on January 6. Also: Amy Wilentz on Haitians and Haiti – and Joe Biden's disastrous decision to deport those 15,000 Haitian refugees who crossed the border at Del Rio, Texas, sending them back to a country ravaged by assassination, earthquake, poverty, and gang violence. And we have the story of a Black writer who moved to Paris in the fifties and discovered French racism – aimed at Algerians. Adam Shatz explains—he's written the introduction to the new edition of a novel called “The Stone Face,” by William Gardner Smith, originally published in 1963 and now republished by New York Review Books.

I asked you on my Instagram stories to send me your opinions about the new trend of female influencers and regular girls publically removing their scarves. In this episode we showcase how some Algerians feel about this phenomenon. طلبت منكم ارسال ارائكم حول انتشار ظاهرة خلع المؤثرات و الفتيات العادية لحجابهن علنا في قصص انستغرام الخاصة بي، في حلقة اليوم نستعرض اراءكم حول الظاهرة. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/thewissdiss/message

⚠️The talk with Luna is devided into 3 differen episodes ⚠️ In today's episode, me and Luna discuss a very fundemantal question: Do women belong in the kitchen? Alongside a variety of topics such as: Luna's experience with the covid19 disease, how her page Lunatic came to life, do we identify as feminists, why didn't Algerians accept women's rights movement, the political feminism waves, does Algeria have a women's or an individual oppression problem and we also touched on freedom of speech restriction and how it relates to the Algerian mentality. في حلقة اليوم ، ناقشت أنا ولونا سؤالًا أساسيًا للغاية: هل بلاصة المرا في الكوزينة؟ إلى جانب مجموعة متنوعة من المواضيع مثل: تجربة لونا مع مرض الكوفيد 19 ، كيفاه بذات صفحتها على الفيسبوك، هل انا وياها نشوفو رواحنا نسويات، علاه الجزايريين ما تقبلوش حركات حقوق النساء، حكينا شوي ثاني في امواج الحركة النسوية السياسية ، هل مشكلة الجزاائر في قمع النساء او في قمع الفرد، و تطرقنا ثاني لمشكلة حرية التعبير و علاقتها بعقلية الفرد الجزائري --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/thewissdiss/message

In Algeria, protests against corruption, the jailing of opposition leaders and the army's powerful role in national politics have entered their ninth month. Tens of thousands filled the streets of the capital Algiers last Friday to mark the 65th anniversary of the war of independence from France and to demand a “new revolution” rather than an upcoming election they say will be rigged. Over 100 student protesters were arrested last night as the Algerian government intensified its crackdown on demonstrators ahead of the upcoming polls. Interim President Abdelkader Bensalah announced the country will hold a presidential election on December 12. This comes after longtime President Abdelaziz Bouteflika resigned in April following weeks of protests. We speak with Mehdi Kaci, an Algerian-American activist who organized a protest last weekend in San Francisco in support of Algerians, and Daikha Dridi, a journalist based in Algiers. “There is a political uprising, but there is also a huge sense of pride, of self-love, that the Algerian people are experiencing,” Dridi says. “The Algerians are wanting a much, much deeper change, and they're not going back home.” The post Algerian Protesters Are Still in the Streets, Months After Pushing Out Longtime President Bouteflika appeared first on KPFA.