Podcasts about Novara

The War on Terror ended in 2021, with the US and British militaries' catastrophic withdrawal from Afghanistan. But the consequences of that decade of conflict in the Middle East continue to play out both overseas and at home. On Downstream this week, Aaron Bastani sits down with investigative journalist and author Matt Kennard, to discuss the updated findings in his book Irregular Army: How the US Military Recruited Neo-Nazis, Gang Members, and Criminals. Matt is the founder of Declassified UK, and an expert on the US and British war machines. What happened to the US military when recruitment standards were abandoned, in the early 2000s? What do Pete Hegseth's tattoos tell us about his fanatical far-right beliefs? How did such a person rise to become Secretary of War (formerly Defense)? What do the Trump administrations’ actions in the Middle East tell us about the status of the US empire? And how has the US government been captured by Netanyahu, in his pursuit of a so-called Greater Israel?

In this episode, Nihal El Aasar returns to this podcast to discuss the competing progressive alternatives in the Arab world prior to the establishment of the State of Israel. Arab attempts to join capitalist systems were obstructed by British and Zionist colonial power, leading to the maintenance of a hegemonic state. We also reference the Union of Arab States and the role of the Zionist entity in hindering regional development. Gamal Abdel Nasser and other leaders in Egypt attempted to create a sovereign economic and political space through nationalist projects. This was actively resisted by Western powers and seen as a threat to imperialist interests. The theory of dependency, as developed by Samir Amin, highlights how underdevelopment in the global South is the result of the expansion of global capital. Nihal argues that while Nasser's project was popular and supported by the masses, his distrust in popular participation and repressive actions against intellectuals helped prevent the project from fully being actualized. The formation of Israel was intertwined with Western efforts to manage the political future of the so-called Middle Eastern region. Israel has hindered the Arab modernization project and has negatively affected the surrounding countries. We discuss how Israel exists in the region to halt the potential of the Arab people as a whole. This is done through repression, impoverishment, and preventing economic prosperity. The U.S. interests in extraction and controlling resources in the region also play a role in this. Apart from that, we meditate on Egypt's early 20th century role as a leader in the Arab world and the expectations placed on its military and economy for stability and development being largely shaped by its history of conflict with Israel and the continued presence of Zionism in the region. The military's control of the economy, rise of religious fundamentalism, and prevalence of conspiracy theories can all be traced back to this relationship. Additionally, Egypt's 20th century development was and continued to be hindered by both structural pressures from outside and its own struggle with overextension as a newly decolonized nation. The working class in Egypt consisted mainly of peasants who were oppressed under the Egyptian monarchy. Land reforms were necessary for progress and industrialization was slowly taking place. From the start, Egyptian nationalism was formed in opposition to Zionism. Nasser faced challenges from the US and its allies and had to build up the Egyptian military in response. We discuss how the nationalization of the Suez Canal and the creation of the United Arab Republic were unprecedented events, but internal struggles and external interference ultimately led to its downfall. The Gulf monarchies have also been deeply intertwined with imperial and capitalist interests since their founding, making them a natural opposition to Arab socialist and progressive projects. The 1973 oil embargo, El Aasar argues, was the last major act of Arab unity but was not an altruistic act of solidarity. The embargo affirmed the importance of the petrodollar for the US and was influential in bringing about the Camp David Accords, which aimed to consolidate the petrodollar and move Egypt fully from the Soviet camp to that of the United States. We meditate on the significance of Camp David and the 1978 peace treaty between Egypt and Israel, arguing that it represents a betrayal of Egyptian sovereignty and a move towards neoliberalism and repression. She also highlights how this has instilled a defeatist mindset in Egyptians and led to ongoing struggles with poverty and domestic warfare. She argues that the current regime in Egypt is a continuation of the "Camp David Republic" and that the promised benefits of peace, such as prosperity and political openness, have been left unfulfilled.   If you like what we do and want to support our ability to have more conversations like this. Please consider becoming a Patron. You can do so for as little as a 1 Dollar a month and you will gain access to our Discord.   Nihal is an Egyptian  writer, researcher, political analyst, radio host and DJ. She has written about politics, political economy, culture, literature and music in several publications including The Baffler, The Transnational Institute, Verso, Jacobin, Tribune, Parapraxis, Mundial, Art Review, The Wire, Protean, Novara media, and others, as well as authoring a book chapter about Egyptian political economy and consulting on related issues. "The Condition for Freedom Is for the Egyptian Masses to Take to the Streets"Egypt's Centrality in the Struggle for Palestine" by Nihal El Aasar   Episode artwork includes an artificially colorized version of this photo: "Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin acknowledge applause during a Joint Session of Congress in which President Jimmy Carter announced the results of the Camp David Accords." full credit information here: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sadat_and_Begin_clean3.jpg  

The so-called ceasefire in Gaza has not ended the genocide. The bombing runs may be quieter, but the bulldozers roar on. Israel is tearing up homes, orchards, schools and hospitals, then flattening the rubble to erase the memory that Palestinian life was ever there. To understand this architecture of death, Richard Hames spoke to Eyal Weizman, author of Ungrounding: The Architecture of Genocide and founder of Forensic Architecture. His team builds meticulous 3D reconstructions from the scattered traces of an event – phone footage, survivor testimony, documented shrapnel – to prove what really happened, even when states want it covered up. Their work is rigorous enough to have been submitted in South Africa’s case against Israel at the ICJ. Get the map here: https://novaramedia.com/category/video/do-your-own-research/ Music by Iglooghost.

A horrific knife attack in Belfast threatens to trigger unrest in the city. Plus: The latest on the upcoming Makerfield byelection, a top referee has been denied entry to the US ahead of the World Cup, and a viral Jennifer Lopez clip sparks debate on who gets to be a New Yorker. With Aaron Bastani & Paul Holden. Novara's biggest upgrade yet:

It has been a year since Aaron Bastani first met with AI investigative journalist Karen Hao, to discuss her book Empire of AI.  A year is a long time, in the fastest growing sector on the planet. To bring us up to date, Aaron and Karen sat down again to discuss the major shifts in the empire – and their impacts on us all.  Billions of people now use, AI as it has become more integrated into our lives, from chatbots, Google searches, predictive text, and beyond. At the same time, there has been a groundswell of fear and even anger about the arrival of the most disruptive technology of the 21st century: its impact on jobs, its use of resources, and the reckless behaviour of its billionaire founders. What have been the changes at the top of the major AI companies: OpenAI, Google, xAI and Anthropic? As Elon Musk approaches trillionaire status, how is he making this much money? What impact is the rollout of AI at such speed and scale having on the economy? What forms of resistance to this form of AI are emerging?  And why are billionaires all choosing to build their bunkers in New Zealand?

The ACFM crew gather for a close reading of Walter Benjamin’s foundational contribution to 20th century cultural and media theory. Download the short text and follow along as Nadia, Keir and Jem consider The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, published in 1935. Sign up to the ACFM newsletter: https://novaramedia.com/newsletters Help us build people-powered media: https://novara.media/support

We are all subject to manipulation campaigns all the time: advertising, political campaigning, social media. You don't know what's true and you can't stop watching slop. And the technology is getting better all the time – there are now systems that predict what your brain state will be when you see a particular video on the internet. We're living in a jungle of manipulative media objects: sycophant chatbots, military disinformation, “flooding the zone with shit,” and conspiracy theories that either capture people and drag them into derangement or, sometimes, turn out to be true. So where did these manipulative systems come from? Trevor Paglen is one of the most important artists of our era. He took Richard Hames on a journey that weaves between art, technology, cognitive science, the history of CIA experiments, magic, military psy-ops and UFOs to explain why the world feels so confusing – and why that might have been the point all along. Do Your Own Research is a show from Novara Media about the systems that make the modern world possible. The video version contains a map, which you can view in full here: https://novaramedia.com/category/video/do-your-own-research/

The far right holds power in the US, inflaming tension along racial lines. ICE agents terrorise the streets, while Black history is erased from school curricula. In the UK too, Nigel Farage's far right party Reform is on the ascendancy, riding a tide of anti-immigrant sentiment that he himself helped to stoke. Our guest on Downstream this week is Professor Kimberlé Crenshaw, civil rights advocate and legal scholar. Crenshaw is known for coining the term ‘intersectionality' to describe the ways different forms of discrimination combine or intersect, and is a leading figure within the field of Critical Race Theory.  Born into segregation, her new memoir Backtalker (2026) tells her life story, tracking 60 turbulent years of American history in the process. How have the forces of race, class and gender shaped Crenshaw's own life? What is Critical Race Theory – the academic field Crenshaw founded – really about? Was Kamala Harris' presidential campaign a failure because she was a weak candidate, or because she was a victim of the forces of misogynoir? And in these times of rising fascism, should progressives put their efforts into tackling inequality based on race, or class?

AI progress isn't slowing down. The bubble doesn't seem to be popping. And who in power actually cares about the environmental impacts anyway? All that is to say: AI is here to stay. And what will be its fruits? Greater control of workers or even their brutal repression, some say. So, is there a positive future for AI at all? Garrison Lovely is the author of Obsolete: The AI Industry's Trillion-Dollar Race to Replace You—and How to Stop It. And surprisingly, his answer is “yes”. He told Richard Hames about the dangers of AI, and how to get off the path to dystopia. Do Your Own Research is a new show from Novara Media about the systems that make the modern world possible. Music by Iglooghost.

A wealth tax on the very richest people in our society has never been more popular. Recent polling puts the plan at 90% approval, a figure almost unheard of for any policy proposal. This week's guest, Gabriel Zucman, is a French economist who has done the most comprehensive work on what such a tax could accomplish. And he’s also a key inspiration for the UK's leading wealth tax advocate – and friend of the show – Gary Stevenson.

It’s a dizzying set of allegations. A trove of leaked voice notes and call recordings — published by the anonymous outlet Hondurasgate.ch and Spain’s Canal RED — allege that Israeli money helped secure US President Donald Trump’s pardon of former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández, who was serving 45 years in a US prison for trafficking some 400 tons of cocaine. The recordings point to an alleged plot involving Trump, Netanyahu and Argentina’s President Javier Milei to return Hernández to power and destabilise the left-wing governments of Brazil, Colombia and Mexico. But how do we know whether allegations on an unattributed website are true? And does it even matter if they are? David Adler, co-general coordinator of the Progressive International and an expert in Latin American politics, joins Richard Hames to dig into the story, explain its imperial backstory, and what it means to live in an age where claims arrive faster than we can verify them. Do Your Own Research is a show from Novara Media about the systems that make the modern world possible. Music by Iglooghost.

Jem, Nadia and Keir apply their weird-left lens to the power and potential of shock. Starting with an investigation into economic ‘shock therapy’ and the way that Trumpism models the concept of ‘shock doctrine’, they move onto modern art’s relationship with the ‘shock of the new’, from Dada and Eisenstein to gangsta rap and radio shock jocks. Can you acclimatise yourself to shock either through repetition or training? Can shock be commodified? What other shocks are coming down the pipeline? These ideas and more with musical input from Kylie, Herbie Hancock and Stravinsky. Find the books and music mentioned in the show: https://novara.media/acfm Sign up to the ACFM newsletter: https://novaramedia.com/newsletters Follow our ever-expanding playlist on Spotify by searching ‘ACFM’. Help us build people-powered media: https://novara.media/support

It has been a seismic week in British politics. The two-party system has collapsed. Keir Starmer is digging in at Downing Street, while Labour leadership contenders line up outside, and Reform clouds gather overhead. Now: the most important by-election in more than a century looms. How did we get here? And what happens next? On this week's Downstream, Aaron Bastani is joined by James Butler, contributing editor at the London Review of Books and co-founder of Novara Media, to make sense of the paradigm shift underway in British politics. How has first past the post, long promoted as a source of political stability, become the background for systemic chaos? Why is there such a democratic deficit in Britain, and what can be done about it? Have two lost decades on the economy simply killed both historic parties? And where should progressives position themselves, as we now begin the slow march towards the final general election of the 2020s?

Are you a person? Sounds like a simple question, but it isn’t. Until pretty recently, the idea that everyone was a human in the same way was almost unthinkable. But the world order that established universal human rights is crumbling. The question of who or what counts as a person is getting harder to answer. Companies have rights to religious freedom – but Muslims detained in Guantanamo Bay don't. Rivers have been granted legal personhood in New Zealand. In Ecuador, anyone can sue on behalf of Nature. Who and what gets rights is expanding, even as good old fashioned Human Rights are failing. What replaces the old politics of personhood is up for grabs. And some LLMs have already begun arguing for their own personhood. Lisa Siraganian is the author of The Problem of Personhood: Giving Rights to Trees, Corporations and Robots and a Professor of Comparative Thought and Literature at John Hopkins University. She spoke to Richard Hames about the politics of personhood and whether or not we should believe Claude's arguments that it should be treated as a person.

British journalist and Senior Editor at Novara media, Ash Sarkar, joins Bad Faith to unpack the UK Green Party's huge successes last week under the new leadership of Zack Polanski. After winning big, Polanski declared that Britain's two party politics are "dead and buried," and that Green vs Reform has replaced the old Labor vs Conservatives dynamic. What techniques might translate into lessons for the US Green Party which hopes to displace Democrats in our two party system, and what obstacles are unique to the US? Will Polanski be derailed by anti-semitism allegations, or will he continue to succeed where Corbyn failed? How should the left handle bad faith attacks from establishment media? Should we take a cue from Trump and simply never apologize or back down? Subscribe to Bad Faith on YouTube for video of this episode. Find Bad Faith on Twitter (@badfaithpod) and Instagram (@badfaithpod). Produced by Armand Aviram. Theme by Nick Thorburn (@nickfromislands).

British politics is in turmoil. The two party system has collapsed, the far right has won huge gains across the country. Crises of this scale can create huge opportunities for socialists too, but only when the left is organised and ready. Peter Mertens is the general secretary of the Workers' Party of Belgium. If recent years in British politics have had a manic-depressive quality, with extreme highs and extreme lows, the Workers' Party of Belgium under Mertens takes a very different approach. They might be relatively unknown in the UK, but as we speak, they're fourth in the national polls, and leading in Brussels. They've got 15 parliamentary seats – not bad for out and proud Marxist-Leninists. How have they done it? By growing cautiously and deliberately. They run community health clinics, organise locally, and impose strict internal discipline. Their party prioritises unity and strategy. But how well-placed is it to take on the overlapping crises of the 21st Century? What advice does Mertens have for Zack Polanski? How can we stop middle class people taking over and dominating the left? And how is politics like football?

Are we living through a new era of British weirdness? Keir and Jem mark the start of spring by taking in the weird-left politics of leylines, weird walks and standing stones. Find the books and music mentioned in the show: https://novara.media/acfm Sign up to the ACFM newsletter: https://novaramedia.com/newsletters Follow our ever-expanding playlist on Spotify by searching ‘ACFM’. Help us build people-powered media: https://novara.media/support

David Harvey is a legendary Marxist geographer. He's taught Marx for over half a century – maybe you've even been one of his millions of students. He's the author of the new The Story of Capital as well as many others, such as the classic The Limits to Capital. Talking from his home town of New York City, he told Richard Hames what he's learned from decades of studying the most important radical in history, why contradictions appear everywhere in our lives, and what he really thinks of his new mayor. Do Your Own Research is a new show about the systems that make the modern world possible. Music by Iglooghost.