The Fire These Times

(I accidentally uploaded the wrong file before so let's all pretend that didn't happen) This is a conversation with Yousef Kekhia, a Berlin-based Syrian singer, songwriter and producer originally from Aleppo. I spoke to Yousef about his debut album Monologue. I have been genuinely moved by his music and I think this conversation will show you why. Pluggables: Facebook, Instagram, SoundCloud and Twitter. And his bandcamp account where you can buy his music and other merch is here (I myself have the Monologue Premium Vinyl Bundle). You can also read Yousef’s profile on Project Revolver. The playlist from Bandcamp is below. If you click on each song you can read the Arabic lyrics and their English translation. 1.Al Bidaye (The Beginning) 04:22 2.Bshi Yom (One Day) 04:54 3.Faragh (Emptiness) 06:35 4.Mafi Shi Byijama’na (Nothing Unites Us) 05:28 5.Lahn Al Hayat (The Anthem of Life) 04:09 6.Ana Al Kezeb (I Am the Lie) 07:19 7.Khalaya Sarataniye (Cancerous Cells) 06:07 8.Hal Ard Lamin? (Album Version) (Who is This Earth For?) 05:13 9.Al Tayr (The Bird) 04:47 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. Usual music by Tarabeat, in addition to the three songs by Yousef. Photo taken from Youssef’s bandcamp page.

Trigger warning: gender-based violence is mentioned throughout the episode. This is a conversation with Chuck Derry, co-founder of the Gender Violence Institute and the Minnesota Men’s Action Network: Alliance to Prevent Sexual and Domestic Violence. Chuck has worked to end men’s violence against women since 1983. From  1983 to 1993, he worked with male offenders at the St. Cloud  Intervention Project in St. Cloud, MN, and was the men’s program  coordinator for six of those years. In 1994, he co-founded the Gender  Violence Institute in Clearwater, Minnesota and through that  organization provides training and technical assistance nationally and  internationally on the dynamics of domestic violence, criminal justice  system reform, effective coordinated community responses to domestic  violence, law enforcement investigations, and rehabilitative programs  for men who batter. I wanted to talk to Chuck after reading his very interesting essay ‘psychologising oppression‘  in which he argues against the belief that men who are violent are  “losing control” or about to “explode”. He instead argues that men who  are violent do so because it is beneficial to them, and thus argues that  this is what society should instead be tackling and facing. In some ways this is an episode addressing men, especially cis men  who benefit from patriarchal structures even if they’re often unaware of  it. It is an exploration of the privileges that come with simply being a  cis man in society, and especially a cis straight man, and how even men  who consider themselves allies, the so-called ‘good guys’, need to also  question why so many of us do not actively work to end gender-based  violence, structural inequalities and patriarchal oppression more  broadly. 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 an in-depth conversation with Ziad Majed, a Lebanese writer and Program Coordinator for Middle East Pluralities at the American University of Paris. Ziad was one of the founders of the Democratic Left Movement (DLM) in Lebanon, one of the few independent and leftwing groups that came out of the anti-Assad mobilisation that followed the assassination of Rafik Hariri in 2005. The DLM soon found two of its prominent figures assassinated: George Hawi, former secretary general of the Lebanese Communist Party, and Samir Kassir, the man we'll be talking about in this episode. Samir Kassir was assassinated on this day 15 years ago, June 2nd 2005, with a car bomb just outside of his house in Beirut. Born to a Palestinian father and a Syrian mother, Kassir brought together his multiple identities with his principled opposition against both Israeli and Syrian occupations of Lebanon to create a unique persona. I wanted to have Ziad on because he was 'there'. He saw first-hand some of the major events that defined Lebanon in the past three decades, and he saw his friends pay the ultimate price for their principled stances. He himself also had to pay a price due to the increasing threats made against him. Naturally, we also spoke about what Samir represented, about Syria, Lebanon and Palestine and how and why they are interrelated, and about why it's two prominent anti-Assad leftist intellectuals, Samir Kassir and, later, George Hawi who were assassinated first after Hariri's assassination. We spoke about the Syrian revolution, the role of the Assad regime in Syria and Lebanon, the intsrumentalisation of the Palestinian cause by authoritarian regimes and groups, the difficulties in dealing with Hezbollah and the recent October uprising in Lebanon. There was a particular focus on the Syrian occupation of Lebanon since it is linked to the assassination of Samir Kassir and George Hawi. We spoke about how Hezbollah took over the Assad regime's role in Lebanon and its relationship with the Iranian regime's foreign policy. We also spoke about how the sectarian groups within March 14 preferred to deal with Hezbollah and Amal rather than deal with independent Shia voices, as that would have meant dealing with independent Christian, Druze and Sunni voices, and thus feeling threatened 'from within'. This is a long conversation but one which I think will stand the test of time. I wanted us to do justice to Samir Kassir's legacy and I hope we succeeded. 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. Music by Tarabeat. Photo by Syrian Banksy in Idlib.

This is a PSA from the Channel Zero Network. I'm posting it here in solidarity with #BlackLivesMatter. Justice for the murder of George Floyd and for all of those brutalised and murdered by the police everywhere in the world. As protests heat up, the Channel Zero Network has some reminders on how to stay safe while out in the streets. Bring buddies and don’t let them out of the range of your voice. Write a legal aid number on your body so you can get help if you get  arrested. Be sure to know your buddies legal names and birthdays. You’ll  need these to help find them if they’re arrested. When moving around, walk don’t run. Stick together. Turn off your phone while out in the street to avoid surveillance of  your location and so as not to have your unlocked phone taken by the  authorities or other bad actors. Try your best not to stick out in a crowd. Cover up tattoos with clothing or body paint. Cops will use footage from the protest to try to  identify you. Wear clothes that are good for moving quickly. Avoid wearing jewelry and wear closed toe shoes. Wear your mask at all times, even if you’re talking to someone in order to guard yourself against surveillance, covid 19, pepper spray,  and tear gas. Avoid wearing contact lenses. Bring goggles of some kind in case of tear gas or pepper spray. Consider wearing bike helmets as police often cause head injuries with batons and other weapons. Don’t take photos or video of people doing anything illegal or with their face uncovered. Whenever possible, film the cops, not the protesters. ONLY PUT WATER IN YOUR EYES. Don’t use milk or baking soda or anything else. Clean water is the safest thing to use at a protest. If possible, bring a water bottle to drink from and a water bottle to flush  out eyes of any comrades who are maced or tear-gassed. And white comrades are encouraged to follow the lead of black and brown comrades, as they bear the brunt of state brutality. Follow Unicorn Riot and Channel Zero Network member It’s Going Down for ongoing updates. The Channel Zero Network sends y’all solidarity.  Stay safe out there and never stop fighting for a better world.

This is a conversation with Bryan Farell, one of the founders of Waging Nonviolence. He also hosts the podcast City of Refuge, the topic of this episode. City of Refuge is a 10-part series from Waging Nonviolence which explores a little-known WWII rescue story, showing what happens when ordinary people won’t ignore the horrors surrounding them. It is the story of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, a small village which sits on a 3,000-foot high plateau in South-Central France. During World War II, Le Chambon's people — along with those of several surrounding villages — sheltered, fed and protected around 5,000 refugees, including 3,500 Jews. Even more incredibly, they did this while openly rejecting Nazism, as well as its collaborators in the French Vichy government. We spoke about the story of Le Chambon and its people and what it meant to be waging non-violence. We argued that non-violence should be seen as a set of actions rather than the widespread misconception portraying it as akin to 'doing nothing'. Non-violence is active, not passive. 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. Music by Tarabeat. 

This is a conversation with Eliot Higgins, founder and executive director of Bellingcat, an online open-source investigation collective. Bellingcat rose to prominence over its team's investigation of the  downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 on July of 2014 by Russian-backed  separatists in eastern Ukraine, which killed all 298 passengers on  board. The evidence, which linked that group to the Russian army's 53rd  Anti-Aircraft Missile Brigade, was later confirmed by the joint investigation team (JIT) which includes the Netherlands, Belgium, Ukraine, Australia, and Malaysia. So I spoke to Eliot about that case and about some of the many  investigations that Bellingcat has done in the past six years. Among the  cases mentioned are: the Latamneh and Ghouta chemical attacks by the Assad regime in Syria in 2017 and 2013 respectively; ISIS' oil  refineries and the environmental and humanitarian catastrophes they've  caused; the US bombing of Al-Jineh Mosque in Aleppo in 2017; the Skripal  Affair in the UK; the Saudi bombings in Yemen; and Europol's #StopChildAbuse campaigns. One thing I wanted to focus on is how Bellingcat's investigative  techniques can be used in both human rights and journalism worlds. So  while this episode features a lot of concrete examples, we also spoke  about how anyone listening to this podcast can take part in these  investigations following well-established and always-developing tools  and techniques. 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.

This is a conversation with Ayman Makarem. He’s a Lebanon-based writer and filmmaker who recently wrote essays on mutual aid in Lebanon for The Public Source. One of the themes of The Fire These Times is to promote  mutual aid for the 21st century so I was really looking forward to speaking with Ayman about this. In addition to reading his essay, this  has been a topic that we’ve been discussing since Lebanon’s October 2019  uprising. We both found that there were structures that were lacking within  revolutionary settings in Lebanon that could allow for a much longer-lasting movement, and the same could be said for most of the rest  of the world. Mutual Aid is simply voluntary reciprocal exchange of resources and services for mutual benefit. Most of us already practice it with family, friends and/or our communities without really feeling  the need to label it anyway. The problem starts with the fact that Mutual Aid is seen as something  that arises out of a state of exception. For example, as we go through  an ongoing pandemic more people everywhere around the world have been  reported to be willing to adopt ‘exceptional’ societal measures such as a  guaranteed temporary monthly income, temporarily canceling rent or forgiving debt, depending on the country and situation. But what those of us arguing for Mutual Aid argue for is that we shouldn’t need a state of exception to think of ways to build a fairer  society, and we obviously believe that Mutual Aid is one way of doing  that. 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. Music by Tarabeat. Relevant links: Izraa Facebook Group Habaq Facebook Group Leila Al Shami on Syrian Anarchist thinker Omar Aziz

This is a conversation with Brian Hioe, one of the founding editors of New Bloom Magazine which came out of Taiwan's 2014 Sunflower Movement, in which Brian also participated. The topics covered in this episode are numerous which is why I really wanted to have Brian on and use his encyclopedic knowledge of Taiwan and the region to give us an overview of the complicated history and recent political developments of Taiwan - and why they matter. This is the second episode in The Fire These Times' series focusing on Hong Kong, China and Taiwan. The first episode was with JP of the Hong Kong leftwing collective Lausan. By the end of this episode you would have hopefully gained a better idea of Taiwan's political history and more recent developments. Brian spoke about: The 2014 Sunflower Movement and its significance, including the impact that Occupy Wall Street had on it; The role of independent media including New Bloom and its associated Day Break project; The subsequent elections (2016 and 2020) and their significance; Taiwan's generational shift, with younger generations increasingly identifying as Taiwanese and not Chinese; The multi-faceted relationship between Hongkongers and Taiwanese, especially the younger generations involved in protest movements in both countries; Taiwan's very complicated relationship to the 'international community', here referring to the United Nations and its various bodies as well as other nation states; The role of UN agencies including the World Health Organisation in erasing Taiwanese identity, recently highlighted by Taiwan's succesful handling of the COVID19 Pandemic; China's role in trying to de-facto annex Taiwan including the possibility of a military invasion; The failures of China's stated 'one country, two systems' policy'; Taiwan's indigenous history as well as its past under Japanese occupation; The waves of Chinese migrations to Taiwan including the KMT-lead one in December 1949 - following the Communist Party of China's victory in the Chinese Civil War - which produced a sort of 'sub-ethnic' group of people that include Brian himself; The KMT's decades-long one-party rule of Taiwan as a right-wing dictatorship backed by the United States and other countries; The 1970s UN resolution recognizing the People's Republic of China (PRC) as "the only legitimate representative of China to the United Nations", hence unrecognizing Taiwan; and I also spoke a bit about some of the similarities between Taiwan and Lebanon. 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. Music by Tarabeat. 

This is a conversation with Lina Mounzer. She's a Beirut-based writer and translator who, like me, took part in the October and post-October protests. I wanted to catch up with her to talk about how she started preparing for the worst yet to come very early on. This anticipation - of economic hardship, of violence - is a widespread phenomenon in Lebanon but not a lot of people are able to express it so accurately like Lina does. I know I've struggled to do so. Lina experienced the ups and downs of the revolution. She wrote the moods and experiences and facts in her diaries as it was happening, and she has clearly deeply thought about what the past several months in Lebanon have meant, and even the past few decades. We talked about Lebanon, about revolution as a 'feeling greater than love' (which is also the title of a Lebanese film), and why many people actually miss the civil war, or rather are so tired of the present's uncertainty that the past's certainties, however horrible, were easier to digest. And we even talked about the impact that the Italian Jewish writer and Holocaust survivor Primo Levi's writings have had on her. This is why I was really looking forward to having this chat with her, and I hope you also enjoy it. The first part of this convo is roughly around this essay of hers for LitHub: Letter from Beirut: From Revolution to Pandemic. You can find the remaining articles on the website. You can follow the podcast on Twitter @FireTheseTimes and Instagram @thefirethesetimes. 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. Music by Tarabeat. The featured photo is a modified version of the featured photo on the LitHub article.

This is a conversation with Lebanese-British journalist and editor Zahra Hankir. She's the editor of the award-winning, best-selling anthology Our Women on the Ground which features 19 women reporters from the Middle East and North Africa. The book includes essay by Donna Abu-Nasr, Aida Alami, Hannah Allam,  Jane Arraf, Lina Attalah, Nada Bakri, Shamael Elnoor, Zaina Erhaim,  Asmaa al-Ghoul, Hind Hassan, Eman Helal, Zeina Karam, Roula Khalaf, Nour  Malas, Hwaida Saad, Amira Al-Sharif, Heba Shibani, Lina Sinjab, and  Natacha Yazbeck. Zahra spoke to me about the formation of this book and how she started  following some of these reporters in the context of the 2011 uprisings  throughout the region. I also asked her about how women reporters in the  region navigate gender-based discrimination to get the stories they  want told as well as her reflections on the politics of representation  in the Western world. This advertisement at the beginning of the episode is by the Ethiopian group Egna Legna,  which The Fire These Times supports. Please consider visiting their  website, checking out their crucial work and seeing how you can help  them fight the racist Kafala system and patriarchy in Lebanon. You can follow the podcast on Twitter @FireTheseTimes and Instagram @thefirethesetimes. 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. Music by Tarabeat.