LE BREAKDOWN With Yasser Louati

As UN experts are warning about genocide and crimes against humanity in Gaza and despite israel's long track record of bombing palestinian civilians, this episode will cover France's support to the ongoing massacre. Who is behind it? What are France's interests in this position? How about Europe, is this new?

After WWII, the mantra was "never again". France which deported its own Jews to the Nazi death camps and which was home to the collaborationist Vichy regime, could have been the leading country to perpetuate this mantra in the face of the atrocities in Gaza. Yet it chose not to. Why not? What are the power dynamics that have motivated Macron and his party to stand with Israel and its bombings against civilians. Worse still, the French government had even banned all pro Palestinian protests and to prosecute organizers.

At the European level, Ursula von Der Leyen went on to bypass the union's diplomatic corp and show total support to Benyanmin Netanyahu, again in the name of "Israel's right to self defense". However, rebellion is brewing within EU diplomacy as many have called her out for overstepping her job description. How long will this support last as the number of civilian deaths has reached 4000 and clearlyn Isreal has no strategy on what will come next.

This episode will attempt to answer these questions and to decipher the official position of France and that of the European commission.

This episode is my personal appreciation of Hip Hop and how it played a fundamental role in my political upbringing. Though I traced back the lessons I learned from Public Enemy, KRS One among others, I could not resist the temptation of sharing with my audience a brief history of French Hip Hop in Paris, Marseille and the area I am from, the Southside Banlieue (94).

You will hear about IAM, NTM, Mafia K1Fry, Secteur A, Doc Gyneco, Arsenik, 113, Kery James, Ideal J... We will also cover the movie "La Haine" and what it meant for the Arab and Black.

I am grateful to all the artists that have influenced me throughout the years. Hip Hop forever.

The recent raid against French journalist Ariane Lavrilleux for exposing the SIRLI operation has made headlines about the repression of a free press in France. The SIRLI operation is a long running collaboration between the French military and the Egyptian dictatorship. In the name of fighting terrorism, highly trained French military personnel was used to carry extra judicial killings on the Lybian border leading to the death of hundreds of civilians.

In this podcast we will see how this raid is not an exception. The journalists working for DISCLOSE that made these revelations actually had been interrogated by intelligence services at least five times since 2018. How dangerous is it to be a journalist in France and was Macron serious when he said "he will always be on the side of those who struggle to inform us, who fight for the truth?"

On August 31st, the newly apointed Minister of Education Gabriel Attal started his mandate by launching a campaign against abayas, or long dresses, supposedly worn by radicalised Muslim students.

Where is this prohibition coming from? What are its political aims and what does it say about France, its war against French Muslims and the future of French society?

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Reviewing the presidential campaign, the election, the debates, the state of the Left and what the 2022 elections say about France.

Read the full analysis on The New Arab: https://english.alaraby.co.uk/opinion/macrons-victory-paved-oppression 

'The levels of respectability that the National Rally has garnered was  all too visible during the presidential debate between Macron and Le  Pen. Not once did the sitting president critique the political views  that Marine Le Pen espouses. The words ‘far right’ ‘racism’ or ‘fascism’  were never uttered by him.''

“This anti separatism bill reminds me of the Muslim ban under Trump” Channel Andrews, Professor of Law at the University of Pariss Assas

Channel Andrews is an American attorney based in Paris, France, where she teaches law at Université Panthéon-Assas (Paris II). Prior to moving to France, she served as Assistant Counsel in the Governor’s Office of General Counsel in Pennsylvania. Her legal expertise includes Administrative Law, Comparative International Law, and Constitutional Law.

In this conversation, Channel Andrews compared ongoing mobilisations in both France and the US against shrinking space and how governments, especially in France seem unable to hear demands for equality and justice.

This prodcast is a product of the Committee for Justice & Liberties, we are and remain totally independent thanks to our donors. How about being one of them from 1€ without commitment! www.cjl.ong/en/donation 

"...there is a deeper, more damaging force at play: our assimilation into  the capitalist structure via globalisation..."* *Mariem Massmoudi, civil society activist working for democratic governance &  religious freedom in the Middle East and North Africa. She writes on  critical political & social theory, comparative democracy studies,  and Islamic & comparative religious studies. Quoted: "Ramadan: The Month of Anti-Imperialism" https://traversingtradition.com/2018/06/04/ramadan-month-of-anti-imperialism/

Watch this conversation here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOzo-Rf3vrs

As the French Senate has passed a series of amendments against the Muslim headscarf, foreign flags in weddings and even threats againts organizations on political grounds, where is this legislative brutality coming from and where is France going?

This podcast is independent thanks to our donors, please be one of them and help us sustain this project, from 1€ without commitment: www.cjl.ong/en/donation

Malia Bouattia is the former head of the National Union of Students (NUS) in the UK. She was the first female Black British and Muslim leader of the historic student union in a landmark election that took place in 2016. She brought forward the issue or race, class and gender and was a leading voice for better access to education especially for minorities. Malia Bouattia also stood against the PREVENT provision that criinalised Muslim communities in the UK in the name of fighting terrorism.

Malia Bouattia is aso Editor at Redpepper Magazine and is herself a contributor to several news outlets, including The Guardian, Middle East Eye, The New Arab and the HuffPost. She is currently a host on the British Muslim TV panel show Women Like Us.

In this conversation, Malia gave her analysis of shrinking spaces in the West as several prominent academics are being silenced by the government as is the case for David Miller, if not outright brutalised at gunpoint like Dr Farid Hafez from the University of Salzburg.

The conversation further expanded to highlight the ongoing bullying of civil society by the Macron government, the calls to censor criticism of israel by zionist organisations in the West acting on behalf of local israeli embassies, student organizing, the role of Muslims in fighting human rights violations and finally, why time is for “civil disobedience”.

What does it say about a country when the current Minister of Interior Gerald Darmanin singles out the far right leader Marine Le Pen for being "too soft on Islam and in need of vitamines"? When the far left leader Jean Luc Mélenchon has a forty year track record of supporting anti-Muslim controversies to the point of supporting Marine Le Pen when she refuses to cover her head in a Mosque in Beirut for: "No one tells French people what to wear"? From the rush to Africa to the birth of the fifth Republic in 1958 following a pro Charles de Gaulle coup d'État, from the French Revolution in 1789 to the fall of the Vichy Regime in 1945, has France really distance herself from white supremacy?

Guest: Dr Hatem Bazian,
Hatem Bazian is a co-founder and Professor of Islamic  Law and Theology at Zaytuna College, the 1st Accredited Muslim Liberal  Arts College in the United States. In addition, Prof. Bazian is a  lecturer in the Departments of Near Eastern and Asian American and Asian  Diaspora Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. Dr. Bazian  between 2002-2007, also served as an adjunct professor of law at Boalt  Hall School of Law at the University of California, Berkeley. He teaches  courses on Islamic Law and Society, Islam in America: Communities and  Institutions, De-Constructing Islamophobia and Othering of Islam,  Religious Studies, and Middle Eastern Studies. In addition to Berkeley,  Prof. Bazian served as a visiting Professor in Religious Studies at  Saint Mary’s College of California 2001-2007 and adviser to the  Religion, Politics and Globalization Center at UC Berkeley.

Reclaiming Arabness in "When We Were Arabs", Guest: Massoud Hayoun

“I am a Jewish Arab. For many, I’m a curiosity or a detestable thing. Some say I don’t exist, or if I did, I no longer do.” This how Massoud Hayoun, a Los Angeles based journalist begins his book titled “When We Were Arabs” (The New Press). Admitting that the book puts him in the position of an “enfant terrible”, Massoud explains his reasons for writing it through the lives of his late grand parents Oscar and Daida Hayoun who left Egypt and Tunisia but never stopped reminiscing about their lives in the Arab world. In a beautifully written fashion, filled with flashbacks, historical facts and a profound sincerity in a quest for identity, the author exposes what went wrong under the colonial era in combination with the zionist project and how Arab Jews were “divorced” from their arabness. “Zionists made sure to divorce us from our home countries to the point of turning us into national security threats for them” Asked on why such stories that seem far from being isolated are not told nor transmitted, Massoud Hayoun answers that “those stories are diminished because of their revolutionary potential”. Indeed, Jewish community leaders had done their part in refusing the French colonial administration’s attempts to peel off arabness from Arab Jews in the colonies but lost the battler after multiple generations went through the white education system outsourced to the “Alliance Israelite” in charge of colonial subjects. But once the new “francisés” looked up to France as the center of civilisation, the disillusionment was immense when they decided to follow France after she left her North African colonies. Once in France, Arab Jews from Tunisia, Algeria or Morocco had to face hostile long established european jewish communities and a racist society they were not prepared to deal with. What is left of Arabness in Arab Jewish communities? Not much if we were to rely on the mainstream narrative. But as Massoud Hayoun explains it in this in episode of Le Breakdown, some descendants of Arab Jews whose parents established themselves in the West and in occupied Palestine, are starting to ask for the conversation to be had. “If anyone should pay reparations to the families that were forced from their homes in arab nations, it is israelfor making their conditions unliveable. The effects on my family were catastrophic” Being beautifully written does not dilute any of the bold stances taken by the author. Page after page, he tackles colonialism, white supremacy, zionism, antisemitism in the West and anti-Jewish sentiment in the Arab World and how “being Arab is a choice”. This episode of Le Breakdown further explored how white supremacy weaponizes anti-Jewish sentiment to denigrate arabness and demonize arab societies and how anti-Jewish attacks in the West are never weaponized to seperate western Jews from their Western identities. From Tunisia to Egypt, from occupied Palestine to France, Massoud Hayoun shed light on the tragedy of “deracinement” and th devastating effects of Jewish intellectuals who play into the hands of white supremacy as is the case for people like Eric Zemmour in France. Credit Music Beatz Curry Jiem EB Music Beat Junkie

French elites easily call out racism and police brutality in the US or elsewhere but they have no lessons to give when we see what’s going on here.

As thousands tool to the street to call out police brutality in France and as anger is being expressed across the United States following the death of George Floyd, this podcast analyzes the deep roots of police brutality in France.

Blacks and arabs are 20 times more likely of being racially profiled by the police. Police brutality has been called out for decades and for generations. From the birth of the “Police Nationale” under the antisemitic government of Vichy which had collaborated with the Nazis to the racist violence exercised by against blacks, arabs, Muslims in the so called “Banlieues”, we see how racist ideologies have remained deeply engrained in the police.

In this first episode of The Breakdown, we analyse France's inability to cope with the covid19 crisis and how a combination of ideological blindness, political cynicism, greed and incompetence lead to the death of over 25,000 people as of May 2nd.  From the declaration of a WHO expert's that "there will be no epidemic in France" despite all evidence to maintaining the first round of the municipal elections, a series of wrong decisions were taken by the Macron administration with a complete disregard to the opinions of experts whom have been warning for months. 

We further analyse how decades of ausrerity based economic policies imposed by the European Union and sanctionned by member states litterally ripped the safety nets between people and death. Chief among those nets were public hospitals that saw drastic budget cuts, at leat 11 billion euros in 10 years. France alone was asked 63 times to cut spendings on health services. But this pandemic did not come without any warning. In 2003, a heatwave had killed over 15 000 people as hospitals were unable to cope with the influx of patients, most of whom were senior citizens.