The Fire These Times

This is a conversation with Shui-yin Sharon Yam, a US-based Hongkonger academic who has been writing on various topics. It is a long conversation about Hong Kong, being a member of the  diaspora who may not be able to go back, how Hong Kongers can learn from  other people’s experiences with disinformation, as well as the  emotional cost of that disinformation on Sharon and I. She is Associate Professor of Writing, Rhetoric, and Digital Studies,  and a faculty affiliate of Gender and Women Studies at the University  of Kentucky. Her research focuses on questions of identity, citizenship, affect,  and race. She teaches courses on transnational rhetoric, digital  composing, and political emotion. You can follow the podcast on Twitter @FireTheseTimes. You can follow the other project, Hummus For Thought, on Twitter @LebInterviews. If you like what I do, please consider supporting this project with only 1$ a month on Patreon or on BuyMeACoffee.com. You can also do so directly on PayPal if you prefer. Patreon is for monthly, PayPal is for one-offs and BuyMeACoffee has both options. If you cannot donate you can still help by reviewing this podcast on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. The Fire These Times is available on Apple Podcasts, Anchor, Breaker, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Radio Public, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Castro and RSS. If it is not available wherever you get your podcasts, please drop me a message! Music by Tarabeat. Photo by Leung Yattin on Unsplash

This is a conversation with Ethiopian journalist Zecharias Zelalem on  his recent investigation into the horrific living conditions that Ethiopian migrants are living in in Saudi detention centers, as well as  his overview of the recent protests in Ethiopia following the murder of  popular Oromo singer Hachalu Hundessa. Additional links on TheFireThisTi.Me You can follow the podcast on Twitter @FireTheseTimes. You can follow the other project, Hummus For Thought, on Twitter @LebInterviews. If you like what I do, please consider supporting this project with only 1$ a month on Patreon or on BuyMeACoffee.com. You can also do so directly on PayPal if you prefer. Patreon is for monthly, PayPal is for one-offs and BuyMeACoffee has both options. If you cannot donate you can still help by reviewing this podcast on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. The Fire These Times is available on Apple Podcasts, Anchor, Breaker, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Radio Public, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Castro and RSS. If it is not available wherever you get your podcasts, please drop me a message! Music by Tarabeat. Photo by Jr Korpa on Unsplash

This is a conversation with Hamed Sinno, lead singer of the Lebanese band Mashrou' Leila. We spoke about the September 2017 concert in Cairo, Sarah Hegazi, mental health, and growing up queer in Lebanon - and everything in between. You can follow the podcast on Twitter @FireTheseTimes. You can follow the other project, Hummus For Thought, on Twitter @LebInterviews. If you like what I do, please consider supporting this project with only 1$ a month on Patreon or on BuyMeACoffee.com. You can also do so directly on PayPal if you prefer. Patreon is for monthly, PayPal is for one-offs and BuyMeACoffee has both options. If you cannot donate you can still help by reviewing this podcast on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. The Fire These Times is available on Apple Podcasts, Anchor, Breaker, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Radio Public, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Castro and RSS. If it is not available wherever you get your podcasts, please drop me a message! Music by Tarabeat. The photo is taken from Mashrou' Leila's album Ibn El Leil.

This is a conversation with Rayhan Asat and Yonah Diamond, authors of a piece for Foreign Policy entitled "The World’s Most Technologically Sophisticated Genocide Is Happening in Xinjiang." In addition to both being lawyers, Rayhan is also the sister of Ekpar Asat who was forcibly disappeared by the Chinese Communist Party in 2016, and she's the president of the American Turkic International Lawyers Association. As for Yonah Diamond, he's legal counsel at the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights, named after the Swedish diplomat who saved tens of thousands of Jews in Nazi-occupied Hungary. Additional links available on thefirethisti.me  You can follow the podcast on Twitter @FireTheseTimes. You can follow the other project, Hummus For Thought, on Twitter @LebInterviews. If you like what I do, please consider supporting this project with only 1$ a month on Patreon or on BuyMeACoffee.com. You can also do so directly on PayPal if you prefer. Patreon is for monthly, PayPal is for one-offs and BuyMeACoffee has both options. If you cannot donate you can still help by reviewing this podcast on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

I spoke with Lebanese writer and translator Lina Mounzer about witnessing and experiencing the Beirut explosion on August 4th,  2020. So far there are 157 deaths, 5,000 injuries, US$10–15 billion in  property damage and an estimated 300,000 people left homeless. The blast was linked to about 2,750 tonnes (3,030 short tons) of ammonium nitrate – equivalent to around 1,155 tonnes of TNT (4,830 gigajoules) – that had been confiscated by the government from the abandoned ship MV Rhosus and stored in the port without proper safety measures for six years. For further info including how to hep, please visit TheFireThisTi.Me 

This is a conversation with Mariam Barghouti. She’s a Palestinian-American writer and researcher currently based in Ramallah. I spoke with Mariam about her growth as a Palestinian activist,  #BlackLivesMatter, the Syrian revolution, trans-generational  understanding and rendering our struggles visible Topics discussed: COVID19 in the context of the Israeli occupation of  the West Bank; the Palestinian Authority’s relationship with the  Israeli government; building transnational solidarity; rendering our  struggles visible/fighting against invisibility; Syrian-Palestinian  solidarity against authoritarianism and oppression; the generational  shift within activism and building trans-generational understanding;  Black Lives Matter; Gaza and Aleppo; Daraya’s secret library; survivor’s  guilt; and a bit on the Hong Kong protests. The webinar mentioned is called: From BLM to Palestine and Syria: The Politics of Revolutionary Solidarity. Associated blogpost: https://thefirethisti.me/2020/07/28/41-rendering-our-struggles-visible-palestine-blacklivesmatter-and-syria/ You can follow the podcast on Twitter @FireTheseTimes. If you like what I do, please consider supporting this project with only 1$ a month on Patreon or on BuyMeACoffee.com. You can also do so directly on PayPal if you prefer. Patreon is for monthly, PayPal is for one-offs and BuyMeACoffee has both options. If you cannot donate you can still help by reviewing this podcast on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. The Fire These Times is available on Apple Podcasts, Anchor, Breaker, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Radio Public, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Castro and RSS. If it is not available wherever you get your podcasts, please drop me a message! Music by Tarabeat.

Trigger warning: suicide. We talked about Sarah Hegazi's death. This is a conversation with Alia and Nadia of "The Queer Arabs" podcast. We spoke about what it's like to host a podcast about LGBTQ Arabs, the guests they have on and how queer arab activism has changed in recent years and especially since the 2011 uprisings including with the recent crackdowns in, for example, Egypt. We also spoke about why representation and visibility matter, the difficulties of tackling both homophobia in Arab spaces while also struggling against forms of homonationalism that use LGBTQ rights to push for anti-Arab/Muslim hatred. Finally we also spoke about what's next for The Queer Arabs and what's next for them personally. You can follow Alia and Nadia on Instagram @ alia_and_a_violin and @nadiainherownworld respectively. You can follow the podcast on Twitter @FireTheseTimes. If you like what I do, please consider supporting this project with only 1$ a month on Patreon or on BuyMeACoffee.com. You can also do so directly on PayPal if you prefer. Patreon is for monthly, PayPal is for one-offs and BuyMeACoffee has both options. If you cannot donate you can still help by reviewing this podcast on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. The Fire These Times is available on Apple Podcasts, Anchor, Breaker, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Radio Public, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Castro and RSS. If it is not available wherever you get your podcasts, please drop me a message! Music by Tarabeat. Photo by Sharon McCutcheon on Unsplash.

This is a conversation with Kate Zen. She’s an organiser with Red Canary Song,  a US-based grassroots Asian sex workers coalition. They also organise transnationally with Asian sex workers across the diaspora in Toronto, Paris, and Hong Kong. “There are over 9000 workplaces like these across the country with no  political representation, or access to labor rights or collective  organizing. Anti-trafficking NGO’s that claim to speak for migrants in  sex trades promote increased policing and immigration control, which  harms rather than helps migrant sex workers.” You can follow the podcast on Twitter @FireTheseTimes. If you like what I do, please consider supporting this project with only 1$ a month on Patreon or on BuyMeACoffee.com. You can also do so directly on PayPal if you prefer. Patreon is for monthly, PayPal is for one-offs and BuyMeACoffee has both options. If you cannot donate you can still help by reviewing this podcast on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. The Fire These Times is available on Apple Podcasts, Anchor, Breaker, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Radio Public, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Castro and RSS. If it is not available wherever you get your podcasts, please drop me a message! Music by Tarabeat.

This is a conversation with Wafa Mustafa, a Berlin-based Syrian journalist. We spoke about her father, Ali Mustafa, who was forcibly disappeared by the Assad regime on July 2nd 2013. Wafa highlights the fact that those who are forcibly disappeared are often depoliticized and coated in 'humanitarian' language. We spoke about how she participated in the 2011 uprising and how her activism actually started from sooner. We also  spoke about her journey from Syria to Turkey and then Berlin, about dealing with and talking about depression, and about her next projects. You can follow the podcast on Twitter @FireTheseTimes. If you like what I do, please consider supporting this project with only 1$ a month on Patreon or on BuyMeACoffee.com. You can also do so directly on PayPal if you prefer. Patreon is for monthly, PayPal is for one-offs and BuyMeACoffee has both options. If you cannot donate you can still help by reviewing this podcast on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. The Fire These Times is available on Apple Podcasts, Anchor, Breaker, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Radio Public, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Castro and RSS. If it is not available wherever you get your podcasts, please drop me a message! Music by Tarabeat.

This is a conversation with Daryn Howland. She's a Beirut-based researcher who recently finished her MA thesis entitled "racist capital: the racialization of migrant labor under the kafala system in Beirut", the subject of our discussion. You can read the thesis in its current format here. Daryn argues that the racialisation and dehumanisation of migrant domestic workers under the Kafala system in Lebanon contains four components: Commodification Inferiorization Criminalization Sexualization These four components are crucial to the reproduction of the Kafala system's structural racism which, ultimately, confines migrant domestic workers, the overwhelming majority of whom are women, to their labor. We unpack each of them so that, hopefully, you'll get a good sense of how the Kafala system functions on a structural level. We also spoke about how the components of the Kafala system also end up affecting any person of color, particularly of African and Asian heritage, in Lebanon. This is the fourth episode on the Kafala system. To see the previous three, click here. Additional links: What it means to be black and African in Lebanon by Claudette Igiraneza The Fire These Times' Anti-Kafala Action resources Exhibit Highlights Struggle of Lebanese of African and Asian heritage You can follow the podcast on Twitter @FireTheseTimes. If you like what I do, please consider supporting this project with only 1$ a month on Patreon or on BuyMeACoffee.com. You can also do so directly on PayPal if you prefer. Patreon is for monthly, PayPal is for one-offs and BuyMeACoffee has both options. If you cannot donate you can still help by reviewing this podcast on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. The Fire These Times is available on Apple Podcasts, Anchor, Breaker, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Radio Public, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Castro and RSS. If it is not available wherever you get your podcasts, please drop me a message! Music by Tarabeat. The photo is a modified version of the Anti-Kafala Action logo designed by Rawane Issa. You can find the original one at the Anti-Kafala Action resources page.