On June 5, Boris Kagarlitsky’s appeal against a five-year prison sentence was rejected by the Russian Supreme Court's Military Chamber. Kagarlitsky must now serve his sentence in a penal colony in Torzhok some 155 miles northwest of Moscow. The decision was unjust, but not unexpected. Kagarlitsky spent nearly five months in pre-trial detention, charged with "justifying terrorism" for ironic remarks he made on his social media channel after the explosion on the Crimean Bridge in 2022. He was free...
Jun 11, 2024•54 min
Siddhartha Deb , author of Twilight Prisoners , dives into the Hindu right and its poor showing in India’s elections. Sean Jacobs , professor at the New School and publisher of Africa Is a Country , explains the ANC’s poor showing in South Africa’s elections. Behind the News , hosted by Doug Henwood, covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex interactions, from the local to the global. Find the archive online: https://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/radio.html...
Jun 10, 2024•53 min
Featuring Abdel Razzaq Takriti, this is the TWELFTH episode of Thawra (Revolution), our mini-series on Arab radicalism in the 20th century. Today’s installment tells the story of Saudi Arabia, a country whose reactionary, US-aligned trajectory was throughout the 1950s and 60s challenged by labor strikes, dissident currents, rebellious princes, and an anticolonial oil minister. But Saudi royal conservatism asserted itself and a friendship with Nasser’s Egypt turned into conflict. Ultimately both ...
Jun 09, 2024•2 hr 35 min
This is another special episode of Long Reads about the Israeli war on Gaza. On Thursday, June 6th, we spoke with Akbar Shahid Ahmed of the Huffington Post . Akbar previously spoke with us in early January about the role of the Biden administration. Five months later, with the Israeli government now on trial for genocide while the attack on Rafah has begun, it’s time for another look at Biden’s tenacious support for Israel. Find Akbar's coverage here: https://www.huffpost.com/author/akbar-shahid...
Jun 07, 2024•32 min
Suzi talks to Isabel Kain at UC Santa Cruz, Marie Salem at UCLA, and Anna Weiss at USC — all UAW academic workers — about the unprecedented labor action on their campuses and the violent response from police called in by their administrations. We recorded the interview with Isabel at UCSC as the police in riot gear moved into the campus. Santa Cruz was the first to go on strike and unlike the other UC campuses, the administration was passive and did not call in the police. Until 1am on May 31. A...
Jun 04, 2024•59 min
Aziz Rana , author of The Constitutional Bind: How Americans Came to Idolize a Document that Fails Them , analyzes how our founding document constrains democracy but we worship it anyway. Behind the News , hosted by Doug Henwood, covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex interactions, from the local to the global. Find the archive online: https://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/radio.html...
Jun 03, 2024•53 min
Featuring Dylan Saba and Waleed Shahid on how Israel’s genocide in Gaza and the mass solidarity movement opposing it are transforming US politics. This anti-imperialist internationalist moment marks a profound turning point for the American left. Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig Check out our newsletter and vast archives at thedigradio.com Buy tickets for live Dig with Jeremy Corbyn in London: unionchapel.org.uk/venue/whats-on/versothe-dig-live-podcast-with-jeremy-corbyn-laleh-khalili The S...
May 31, 2024•1 hr 53 min
The Russian Marxist Boris Kagarlitsky last spoke to us shortly after his release from nearly five months in prison. He was arrested on far-fetched charges of "justifying terrorism" for ironic remarks he made on his social media channel after the explosion on the Crimean Bridge in 2022. Boris was freed after a military court handed him a fine in December 2023, and spoke to Suzi two weeks later in the interview you are about to hear. Barely two months after Boris’s release there was an unexpected ...
May 29, 2024•53 min
Mouin Rabbani discusses Israel's war on Gaza and the broader context of the conflict. Stefanie Stantcheva discusses her recent economic papers about why people hate inflation. Behind the News , hosted by Doug Henwood, covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex interactions, from the local to the global. Find the archive online: https://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/radio.html...
May 28, 2024•53 min
When Immanuel Wallerstein died in 2019, he was one of the most influential thinkers about the crisis-ridden development of global capitalism. People who might never have read one of his books will still find themselves referring to the core and the periphery of the capitalist world-system. Gregory Williams joins Long Reads to take a deeper look today at Wallerstein’s life and work as a radical intellectual. Gregory is a professor of political science and international relations at Simmons Univer...
May 24, 2024•49 min
Featuring Abdel Razzaq Takriti, this is the ELEVENTH episode of Thawra (Revolution), our rolling mini-series on Arab radicalism in the 20th century. Today’s installment tells the story of the destruction of the two giant revolutionary projects of 1958: the union of Egypt and Syria under Nasser’s United Arab Republic and Iraq’s July Revolution that brought Qasim alongside communist allies to power. The rival radical projects of pan-Arabism and communism suffered huge blows. So did Nasser and Qasi...
May 24, 2024•2 hr 38 min
Volkswagen workers in Chattanooga, Tennessee scored a smashing victory on April 19, when they voted by a 3-1 margin to join the UAW. That makes Tennessee Volkswagen the first auto plant in the South to unionize by election since the 1940s. While the recent victory was overwhelming, it came only after two bitter organizing defeats for the VW Chattanooga workers, first in 2014 and then in 2019. The organizing victory at VW is one of the single most important wins for U.S. labor in decades, and pot...
May 23, 2024•1 hr 35 min
Annelle Sheline talks about her resignation from the State Department as a protest against the war on Gaza. See her statement on Yahoo! News . Plus: Daniel Bessner, author of a recent Harper's cover story , discusses the debasement of screenwriting in Hollywood. Behind the News , hosted by Doug Henwood, covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex interactions, from the local to the global. Find the archive online: https://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/radio.html...
May 20, 2024•53 min
After inhabiting the White House but before examining the Newsroom, Aaron Sorkin created a show that sought nothing less than to fix the most important American institution of them all: Saturday Night Live. We launch what will eventually become a multi-episode discussion of STUDIO 60 ON THE SUNSET STRIP (2006-7). Catch parts two and three on Patreon . Michael and Us is a podcast about political cinema and our crumbling world hosted by Will Sloan and Luke Savage....
May 13, 2024•1 hr 10 min
Featuring Abdel Razzaq Takriti, this is the TENTH episode of Thawra (Revolution), our rolling mini-series on Arab radicalism in the 20th century. Today’s installment tells the story of Iraq’s 1958 July Revolution: a Free Officers’ coup overthrew the imperialist-aligned Hashemite monarchy and brought nationalist Abdul-Karim Qasim to power alongside a surging Communist Party. Revolutionary currents soon turned against one another, however, as did Qasim and Nasser. Conflict stemmed from serious pol...
May 11, 2024•2 hr
Quinn Slobodian, who recently wrote a paper about Peter Brimelow , discusses the white supremacist wing of neoliberalism. Derek Seidman looks into the Alabama corporate elite and its terror at the incursion of the UAW. See his recent articles for Truthout . Behind the News , hosted by Doug Henwood, covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex interactions, from the local to the global. Find the archive online. https://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/radio.html...
May 10, 2024•53 min
Adam Federman , author of a recent feature for In These Times , talks about the criminalization of protest. Kay Gabriel , who wrote a piece about anti-trans panic for n+1 , explains how the right is using that panic to make war on public schools and teachers’ unions. Behind the News , hosted by Doug Henwood, covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex interactions, from the local to the global. Find the archive online: https://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/radio.html...
May 06, 2024•53 min
In the election year of 2004, an ultraviolent subtitled right-wing Christian movie became a genuine cultural phenomenon and political lightning-rod. We finally discuss THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST (2004) and theology according to Mel Gibson. PLUS: the White House Correspondents Dinner, the Columbia encampment, and the one optimistic takeaway of a discouraging week. "This Is How Power Protects Itself" by Jack Mirkinson - https://www.thenation.com/article/activism/columbia-ccny-cuny-protest-nypd-poli...
May 04, 2024•57 min
Featuring Abdel Razzaq Takriti, this is the NINTH episode of Thawra (Revolution), our rolling mini-series on Arab radicalism in the 20th century. Today’s installment covers the creation of a Palestinian national liberation movement throughout the 1950s by a people dispersed by the Nakba: organizations, alliances, and theories of change assembled in the universities, cities, and refugee camps surrounding Palestine. We end with the 1959 foundation of Fatah, the first organization for Palestinians ...
May 03, 2024•2 hr 2 min
During the 1990s, the government of Slobodan Milošević led Serbia into another Balkan war. His allies in Bosnia were responsible for a litany of war crimes, including the massacre at Srebrenica. The war left Serbia itself isolated and impoverished. A protest movement drove Milošević from power in 2000. Two decades later, Serbia has a president who served under Milošević and supported the wars in Croatia, Bosnia, and Kosovo. Where is Serbia going under the rule of Aleksandar Vučić? Lily Lynch, an...
May 02, 2024•1 hr 14 min
Jacobin is celebrating International Workers’ Day once again with solidarity subscriptions! Since our founding in 2010, we’ve aimed to reach millions with democratic socialist perspectives on politics, economics, and culture. Our work online — be it podcasts, video, or daily articles — is sustained first and foremost through magazine subscriptions. On May 1st, and a few days after, you can use the code MAYDAY2024 at checkout to get a yearlong digital subscription for just $1, or $10 for the prin...
May 01, 2024•33 sec
Jodi Dean talks about being suspended from teaching at Hobart and William Smith Colleges for writing an article the administration didn’t like . Keri Leigh Merritt , who recently wrote an essay for Aeon, discusses the lingering effects of antebellum Southern society. Finally, we hear excerpts from an interview first broadcast in June 2023 with Samuel Bazzi , co-author of a paper about the postbellum South, on the effects of white migration out of the region. Behind the News , hosted by Doug Henw...
Apr 27, 2024•53 min
Featuring Abdel Razzaq Takriti, this is the EIGHTH episode of Thawra (Revolution), our rolling mini-series on Arab radicalism in the 20th century. A compact introduction to the Movement of Arab Nationalists, which in the 1950s built a presence that stretched across the region, from Beirut and Jordan to Cairo and the Gulf—becoming a truly powerful force in Kuwait. Led in significant part by Palestinians, its early history offers a ground-level look at the organizational and theoretical currents s...
Apr 26, 2024•1 hr 10 min
At the end of last year, the French politician Jacques Delors died at the age of 98. Delors is best remembered for his time as president of the European Commission from the mid 1980s to the mid 1990s. During that time, the European Community became the European Union. The Delors Commission also laid the groundwork for the single currency through the Maastricht Treaty. One of the main ideas associated with Delors was the concept of a “social Europe.” Our guest today is Aurelie Dianara. She’s a re...
Apr 21, 2024•1 hr 5 min
Yanis Varoufakis talks about being banned in Germany for supporting the Palestinian cause, and then about the transformation he analyzes in his new book, Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism . Behind the News , hosted by Doug Henwood, covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex interactions, from the local to the global. Find the archive online: https://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/radio.html...
Apr 20, 2024•53 min
Featuring Noura Erakat, Avi Shlaim, Ussama Makdisi, Ilan Pappé, Ghada Ageel Hamdan, and Abdel Razzaq Takriti on the ongoing Israeli genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. Recorded at the World Academic Forum for Palestine in Houston. We’ll be back next week with episode eight of Thawra, our rolling series on 20th century Arab radicalisms. Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig Donate to Palestine Legal palestinelegal.org/donate Watch more from the World Academic Forum for Palestine youtube.com/c/...
Apr 19, 2024•2 hr 16 min
By the third entry of the God's Not Dead franchise, its creative team had clearly started listening to their critics. The result was a kinder, gentler right-wing Evangelical Christian drama that sought to heal divides... and failed at the box office. We welcome back New Republic writer and our resident God's Not Dead correspondent Alex Shephard to discuss GOD'S NOT DEAD: A LIGHT IN THE DARKNESS (2018). Michael and Us is a podcast about political cinema and our crumbling world hosted by Will Sloa...
Apr 16, 2024•53 min
Heidi Matthews surveys cases against Israel pending at the the World Court. Elijah Wald , author of Jelly Roll Blues , talks about Jelly Roll Morton and the hidden history of early blues music. Behind the News , hosted by Doug Henwood, covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex interactions, from the local to the global. Find the archive online: https://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/radio.html...
Apr 15, 2024•53 min
Featuring Abdel Razzaq Takriti, this is the SEVENTH episode of Thawra (Revolution), our rolling mini-series on Arab radicalism in the 20th century. Today’s installment lays out the the US’s Eisenhower Doctrine, which in 1957 inaugurated a new era of imperialism in the Middle East; the Ba’ath Party driving Syria and Egypt into the United Arab Republic, a superstate under Nasser’s rule, in 1958; and, later that year, Eisenhower landing US Marines in Lebanon, the first American combat operation in ...
Apr 10, 2024•1 hr 25 min
For seven weeks in 1936 and 1937, workers at the General Motors plant in Flint, Michigan held a risky sit-down strike. A true David vs. Goliath story, their strike won recognition for the United Auto Workers and changed labor in the United States forever. With a newer UAW strike fresh in the memory, we discuss the BBC documentary THE GREAT SIT-DOWN (1976). Watch The Great Sit-Down - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E2Py_vNt4fc See Will introduce Gamera: Super Monster at the Fox Theatre in Toronto...
Apr 10, 2024•50 min
