The Fire These Times

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.

This is my second conversation with Timour Azhari, a Beirut-based Lebanese journalist with Al Jazeera. I wanted to talk to Timour because few people are able to explain what’s happening in Lebanon with such clarity.  We went through the economic crisis and its political roots, the local and regional dimensions and how protesters and activists have  been reacting. We also spoke about how the average resident of Lebanon, both Lebanese and non-Lebanese (Ethiopian, Sudanese, Syrian etc), has been affected and what we could realistically expect to happen in the  coming weeks and months. The first episode was called: Lebanon’s October Uprising, Six Months Later (episode 8). 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 is by Dear.Nostalgia on Instagram, repurposed for this episode with permission.

I spoke with Jack Sapoch, coordinator of No Name Kitchen's border violence reporting, itself part of the Border Violence Monitoring Network (BVMN). We spoke about the EU's policy of violence against asylum seekers on the so-called 'Balkan Route' and how BVMN partners have been trying to document it and support those being victimised by it. BVMN works through a democratic and horizontal management, in which each NGOs (or partner) is involved in different areas and carries out several tasks: A group of NGOs which works on reporting (collecting pushback cases): No Name Kitchen, Collective Aid, Escuela con Alma, Re:Ports Sarajevo. A group of NGOs which dedicates its effort to the advocacy strategy: Are You Syrious, Centre for Peace Studies, Info Kolpa, Mobile Info Team, Mare Liberum. Rigardu, a German-based NGO which is responsible for the management and administrative coordination and forms the legal frame for the Network. Topics covered also include: the role of the Croatian government and other governments on the so-called 'Balkan Route'; EU-funded/supported (re)borderisation processes which violates the rights of asylum seekers; lack of awareness by EU citizens of this Balkan Route; and how BVMN uses open-source investigations like that used by Bellingcat and Forensic Architecture to uncover these abuses. 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 from the BVMN website by artist Ena Jurov.

This is a conversation with Ronnie Chatah, host of 'The Beirut Banyan' podcast and organiser of the Walk Beirut tour. We spoke about Ronnie's experience with storytelling and his desire to maintain the memory of those we have lost in Lebanon such as Samir Kassir, the journalist and historian assassinated 15 years ago, and his father Mohammad Chatah, the Lebanese diplomat who was assassinated in December 2013. We of course touched upon the current crisis in Lebanon since it has worsened beyond most predictions. 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 Michal GADEK on Unsplash.