Expanding Mind – Cross Cultural Qawwali – 05.11.17

North American Qawwali musician Tahir Faridi Qawwal talks about sacred improvisation, the mystic bliss of qawwali music, breaking into tradition, and building bridges between East and West with his group Fanna-Fi-Allah. www.fanna-fi-allah.com  Download this episode (right click and save)

The ruthless neo-colonialists of 21st century

The start of current decade revealed the most ruthless face of a global neo-colonialism. From Syria and Libya to Europe and Latin America, the old colonial powers of the West tried to rebound against an oncoming rival bloc led by Russia and China, which starts to threaten their global domination. Inside a multi-polar, complex terrain of geopolitical games, the big …

Pope Francis calls out journalists: Does the media needlessly foster fear?

The Vatican’s Pope Francis has strived to be a voice of peace and unity on a continent struggling to deal with a refugee crisis. On Thursday he spoke out once again, this time against mass media, which he says has the power to shape the public’s response to that challenge. During an address to Italy’s national journalism guild, Pope Francis …

Progressive Commentary Hour – 07.26.16

CONVERSATIONS WITH REMARKABLE MINDS

Understanding the coup in Turkey – and the history of CIA/US involvement with the Muslim Brotherhood and Islamic terrorism

F. William Engdahl is an award winning geopolitical analyst, strategic risk consultant and author who specializes on the rise of the US as an international superpower. His writings deal with empire building through the roles of financial control of global banking, the food chain, medicine and bioengineering and energy, primarily oil. He holds a degree in politics from Princeton University and did graduate work in comparative economics at Stockholm University in Sweden. He has taught at Beijing University and lectured widely at business and economic institutions throughout the world including Russia, Turkey, London, Croatia and elsewhere. His articles appear in Global Research, New Eastern Outlook, Asia Times, Financial Sense and RT among others. William has written many important books, his latest being “The Lost Hegemon: Whom the Gods Would Destroy” which provides a history of the US intelligence’s relationship with the origins of Islamic terrorist and jihadi organizations and movements. His website is WilliamEngdahl.com

John Grant – Omar Mateen: The Answers Are All Around Us

The spontaneous, day-long “sit-in” initiated by Congressman John Lewis and others in the House of Representatives echoed Fannie Lou Hamer: “I’m sick ‘n tired of bein’ sick ‘n tired.” At one point Wednesday evening, a Republican House member stood off and shook his fist at an insurgent Democratic speaker focused on reasonable gun legislation. The man simply hollered, “Radical Islam! …

GARY LEUPP – On “Islamic” and “Islamist Terrorism”

Donald Trump declares that the Orlando nightclub massacre shows that he “was right on Islamic terrorism” all along, once again chiding Obama for avoiding that label. Hillary Clinton for the first time uses a similar term in an interview with Savannah Guthrie on NBC New’s Today Show. She says, “To me, radical jihadism, radical Islamism, I think they mean the …

Go Harrison – 06.13.16

Guest 1: Lauren Meister – West Hollywood Mayor – Discusses the Orlando massacre and what went down in Los Angeles as well.

Guest 2: Professor Junaid Ahmadhmad Director of the Center for Global Dialogue – Currently in Virginia, Ahmad is based in Lahore. Professor Ahmed is also a muslim and has also been secretary general of JUST International, the International Movement to Create a Just World. He is on the faculty of advanced studies at the University of Management Technology and on the faculty of law and policy at the Lahore University of Management Sciences.

“The Orlando mass shooting is a tragic atrocity that is, at the very least, partially attributable to the multiple fundamentalisms spawned by the political maneuverings of Washington and its ‘moderate’ fundamentalist allies in the Muslim world, particularly Saudi Arabia. While it is still too soon to determine the veracity of the narratives around the shooter’s motives and recent behavior, even if we accept some version of it – it is a tragic amalgamation of the systemic pathologies of our time: fundamentalist-inspired hatred of the ‘other’, in this case homosexuals, and militarized, terrorizing violence, conducted wholesale by states and retail by private, non-state actors. Whether or not mental illness contributed to this shooting, it is incontrovertible that these tragic cases have nothing to do with religion per se, but deeper contemporary processes that have fueled violence at home and abroad, with guns, bombs, and drones that have caused countless, nameless victims, in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, becoming so commonplace.

“In addition, it’s important to remember that while conservative ‘orthodoxies’ in all religions, including in Islam, may be homophobic, Muslim thought, practice and behavior has become much more intolerant of homosexuality because of two principal reasons: a) imposition and importation of Western homophobia since the beginning of Western colonialism, with contemporary Muslim homophobic rhetoric reflecting less of Islamic tradition, and far more of Western Victorian and Protestant Fundamentalist vitriol, and b) Washington’s favorite ally in the Muslim world, Saudi Arabia, advancing a fundamentalist violent contempt for anyone not subscribing to their Wahhabi puritanism. Islamophobic and, indeed, homophobic politicians and pundits in the U.S. will conveniently ignore these two factors when pontificating on yet another example, for them, of ‘Islamic terrorism.'”

US Government: Muslims Are the VICTIMS of “Between 82 and 97% of Terrorism-Related Fatalities”

ISIS and Al Qaeda terrorist attacks on Westerners are evil. And as a white American from a Judeo-Christian background, I am repulsed by the fact that ISIS is targeting Christians in Syria and Iraq with brutal murder … including crucifixion. But most victims of ISIS, Al Qaeda and other Islamic terrorism are themselves Muslim. The U.S. National Counterterrorism Center – the United States government organization responsible …

Paul R. Pillar – Misunderstanding the Terror Threat

A couple of unfortunate ways of thinking about terrorism continue to plague discourse about the subject and create a political environment that encourages destructive policy responses. One is to conceive terrorism not as what it really is — a tactic — but instead as an identifiable group of bad actors: “the terrorists.” These bad guys are thought of as, if …

Leid Stories – 02.04.16

President Obama on Islam, Terrorism, Race and the American Way
In a highly publicized speech he delivered yesterday at the Islamic Society of Baltimore—his first visit to a U.S. mosque as head of state—President Barack Obama ostensibly was playing the role of Domestic Peacemaker in Chief, calling for religious tolerance and a rekindling of the Jeffersonian/Founding Fathers’ commitment to religious freedom for all Americans.
Lawdy, Lawdy, so wrong in so many ways, says Leid Stories of Obama’s speech.