In my latest podcast episode, I speak with Jennifer Brick Murtazashvili, Founding Director of the Center for Governance and Markets and Professor at the University of Pittsburgh’s School of Public and International Affairs, about the impacts on women that this current Taliban regime has had in Afghanistan. Listen to this and more in my latest episode; link in bio.
Today’s podcast guest is Jennifer Brick Murtazashvili, Founding Director of the Center for Governance and Markets and a Professor at the University of Pittsburgh’s School of Public and International Affairs. She is a nonresident scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a Distinguished Fellow of Peace and International Cooperation at the Institute for Humane Studies.
In this episode, we discuss the situation in Afghanistan under the Taliban, particularly the difference between the Taliban 1.0 that ruled in the 1990s prior to the US invasion, and the current Taliban 2.0, the Taliban’s relations with Afghanistan’s neighboring countries, women’s rights in Afghanistan currently, and the prospective for insurgency against the Taliban.
Listen now; link in bio.
Today’s podcast guest is Mordechai Kedar, an Orientalist and lecturer in the Department of Arabic at Bar-Ilan University, and a Research Fellow at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies.
In this episode, we discuss the Palestinian Emirates Plan, which Dr. Kedar has presented as a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, delving into the intricacies of the plan and discussing what merits this plan may have.
Listen now; link in bio.
Full bio
Dr. Mordechai Kedar is an Israeli scholar of Arab culture and a lecturer at Bar-Ilan University, and the vice president of NEWSRAEL.
He is an Orientalist and lecturer in the Department of Arabic at Bar-Ilan University, a Research Fellow at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Bar-Ilan University, and Vice President of “NEWSRAEL – Pro-Israeli Dynamic Feed”. He specialized, among other things, in researching the Hafez al-Assad administration in Syria.
He completed all his academic studies at Bar-Ilan University. In 1981–1983 he studied for a bachelor’s degree in the Department of Arabic and the Department of Political Science, and in 1991–1997 he completed a doctorate in the Department of Arabic. The topic of his doctoral dissertation was “The Public Political Language of the Assad Regime in Syria: Messages and Ways of Expressing Them.” In 2000, he was appointed a lecturer at Bar-Ilan University.
In 1970 he enlisted in the IDF, served in the Armed Forces and completed his service, after 25 years, with the rank of lieutenant colonel.
I recently spoke with former Israeli diplomat Alon Liel and former Palestinian politician Ziad AbuZayyad on my podcast about the case of imprisoned Palestinian leader Marwan Barghouti. Liel discusses the background of Marwan`s imprisonment, but more importantly, where the focus needs to be now - on what Marwan Barghouti can do for the Palestinians, and for peace.
Listen now; link in bio.
The Netanyahu government has employed, and continues to employ, the most ruthless means not only to subjugate the Palestinians in the West Bank but to make their lives as miserable as can be inflicted on any human being. This fascist government does not merely tolerate settler violence — it commissioned it. It arms the settlers to intimidate and kill innocent Palestinians, and their violence knows no bounds. They torch olive groves, sever electrical lines, steal livestock, poison wells, and burn cars, often under the watchful protection of Israeli soldiers. This is not the work of rogue individuals; it is state policy designed to accelerate annexation. The purpose is exhaustion. To that end, the government conducts routine night raids, routine house demolitions, routine incarceration, driving families from their homes without a single expulsion order ever being signed. More than 190 water and sanitation structures were damaged or destroyed this year, and the loss of safe, clean water has spread skin disease and infection among a population already stripped of every protection. Let it be said plainly: a government that starves a people of water, arms the mobs that burn their fields, and calls the ruin it engineers security has forfeited any claim to moral standing. History will not record this as self-defense. It will record it as a deliberate campaign to break a people — and it will name the criminals who ordered it, those who carried it out, and those who watched in silence.
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and the other side isn't??????????? who posted this a moron???????????
So are we, just on a somewhat different scale.
Cuba shows cruelty pursued as strategy. Since January, the Trump administration has blocked oil tankers bound for the island, imposing what reporting calls the most effective blockade since the Missile Crisis, and has followed up with rolling sanctions designations through the spring and summer. The result is not democracy but darkness: hospitals without generators, water pumps without power, insulin spoiling, the elderly climbing unlit stairwells, and families fleeing by sea. Six decades of embargo produced no political opening; starving a population of fuel will not produce one now. It merely hands Havana's rulers an alibi for their own repression and hands Washington the moral posture of a besieger. Collective punishment of civilians to topple a government is condemned when others do it. The United States cannot claim the language of human rights while turning off the lights.
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In Ethiopia, journalists and reporters are being arbitrarily arrested and detained as national elections draw nearer. According to the BBC, three journalists from Sheer FM, a private radio station, were taken into police custody in early September – part of a larger crackdown on independent journalists which began in August, with the intention of stifling public discourse, dissent, and free expression in the face of upcoming elections. The escalation of repressive measures against journalists, human rights groups, and other organizations that advocate for freedom of association and civil society is undermining the ability of the public to hold the government accountable – especially with regard to its actions in the Amhara and Oromia regions, where violent conflict persists, and atrocities continue to occur.
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Trump has not merely criticized the UN; he has walked away from the UN's architecture. In January, he ordered withdrawal from 66 international organizations, including the UN population agency and the framework treaty underpinning global climate negotiations. The secretary general reminded Washington it has a legal obligation to pay its assessed dues. Institutions the United States designed at San Francisco, Bretton Woods, and Geneva were the cheapest force multiplier in history, converting American power into legitimacy. Abandoning them does not free us; it hands the drafting pen to Beijing and the veto to every autocrat we once outvoted. Bilateral deal-making rewards the strong and abandons the weak, which is precisely why the strong prefer it. Empty American chairs will be filled, and quickly.
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That’s true 
Umm, no. He is making America great again.
So he walk away from what some believe to be the most corrupted world organization
