The Sunni - Shia split on podcasts

The average listener to BBC radio 4's program In Our Time is not expected to know much about Islam and therefore may barely know about the Sunni Shia divide in that religion. In the latest episode the Sunni-Shia split was the subject and in 43 minutes the bare basics were told.

Much is still missing. Host Melvyn Bragg tried to get through to the eventual religious meaning of the divide, but if at all some tip of the iceberg was revealed, somehow, the foucs went to the Shia beliefs. And I wouldn't be surprised if the listener was left in confusion. The podcast followers have a lot more content at their disposal. Content to either replace or complement this last episode of In Our Time.

A very good podcast that takes the divide and places it in a contemporary picture is Speaking of Faith's issue in which host Krista Tippett speaks with Vali Nasr. For a more extensive historic background I'd point everyone to the University of California San Diego. An unfortunate circumstance is that UCSD removes the podcast courses at the end of the semester, but recurring courses that are relevant are: UCSD's MMW3 by Chamberlain, UCSD's MMW 3 by Herbst and MMW 4. MMW3 is the course out of which you will find several lectures apply to the origins of Islam and here you will learn extensively about the origins of the Sunni-Shia divide. Professor Chamberlain has a more theological touch to his teachings and this may serve exactly best here, but overall I find the lectures by Professor Herbst more accessible and commendable in general. In MMW4, the Islamic empire is central in the beginning and the Sunni Ulama will be worked out more, as well as the ongoing repression of Shia Islam.

More In Our Time:
Revenge Tragedy,
The Augustan Age,
The trial of king Charles I,
St. Paul,
Whale evolution.

Naomi Klein on Media Matters

The podcast Media Matters with Bob McChesney is political commentary radio program with (frequently) listeners calling in. The most recent edition had Canadian writer and social critic Naomi Klein in the studio.

Klein gets the opportunity to voice her fierce criticism of modern free market criticism. As already pointed out in her book 'The shock doctrine' which describes what she terms 'Disaster Capitalism' - money making thrives with crises. In her book, the disaster caused by hurricane Katrina is used as an example. In the studio, she goes to show how the current financial disaster works just likewise. A private market crisis is being transformed into a public crisis with all the bail out programs.

What this boils down to is that the capitalists do not have to pay for their mistakes, but manage to pass the hot potato through to the government. That means the tax payer, the public budget and eventually the weakest pay the price. And rich speculators can go on taking huge risks. And thus, capitalism, this unrestrained capitalism, thrives by crises. The excitement and expectations about Obama, have obscured this fact in the US, but in other countries, she claims, the injustice is observed more clearly.

More Media Matters:
Noam Chomsky,
Juan Cole,
The Crisis.

More Naomi Klein:
Naomi Klein on Big Ideas.

Alexander Herzen according to Isaiah Berlin

Oxford's podcast of the Isaiah Berlin Centenary (Oxford on iTunesU, iTunes feed, site) contains one lecture about Berlin and several lectures by Berlin himself, recorded in the the 1950's.

One of the lectures is on a Russian writer, Alexander Herzen, about whom I had never heard, I must admit. Berlin turns out to be a great admirer of Herzen and his lecture on the writer is very fascinating. The importance of Herzen is not necessarily as a writer, although Berlin praises his autobiography as one of the great works in Russian literature. Herzen's meaning lies in his vocation as a publicist and political thinker.

Herzen was, according to Berlin, the first to found a liberal newspaper in Russia and as such a pioneer of free press and free speech. This put him in the position to politically choose between the Russian traditional order, the liberalists and the socialists. Herzen swayed back and forth but between liberals and socialists he kept sitting on the fence. And if this is vieed by some as weakness, Berlin praises this as a strength, just as he finds this a strength in the novelist Turgenev. In Turgenev's Fathers and Sons a similar quality is displayed. That is subject for yet another lecture.

More Isaiah Berlin:
Isaiah Berlin on Philosopher's Zone and Oxford,
Moses Hess according to Isaiah Berlin.

Iran in 1953 - Rear Vision

ABC's Rear Vision has dedicated two consecutive programs to Iran because of the unrest that is currently going on. The first was just yesterday with the history of the 1953 coup, which deposed prime minister Mossadegh and made the Shah a puppet of the West.

The program describes in detail how British oil interests were established in Iran. The terms under which the British could dispose of Iran's oil were advantageous to the ridiculous and when Mossadegh was about to nationalize Iran's oil, the Brits came into action. They needed the assistance of the CIA eventually to push Mossadegh out of power, which was not given by Truman at first. Eisenhower became the next president and did approve of the action.

Rear Vision also attempts make clear what came of the success of this coup, making a connection with the revolution in 1979 and the unrest of today. The bottom-line is that the action was a success from the start and backfired in the end. The worst result of it being that the moderate, pro-western stream in Iranian politics was compromised and left the spectrum to be battled between extreme forces such as the Islamists and the communists and possibly also causing the polarization of today.

More Rear Vision:
Coffee,
Fiji.

Spaanse Successie Oorlog - Hoor Geschiedenis

Ik kan onmogelijk elke dag over Hoor! Geschiedenis schrijven, maar ik luister wel trouw naar deze dagelijkse podcast. Maker Feico Houweling verzorgt consequent op elke werkdag vijf minuten met vaderlandse geschiedenis, langzaam maar zeker opstomend naar het heden.

Vaderlandse geschiedenis was een vak op de lagere school dat altijd doortrokken was van nationale trots en ook verteller Houweling is in deze serie voelbaar ingenomen met de Republiek der Verenigde Nederlanden. Dat wil zeggen, daar waar het goed gaat en iets bijzonders op te merken valt, zoals bijvoorbeeld zijn perspecitief van Het Plakkaat van Verlating, waarmee de Nederlanders in zijn ogen de tijd ver vooruit zijn. Daar waar de stadhouder of de raadspensionaris niet in staat zijn om van de Republiek een wereldmacht te maken is zijn spijt voelbaar.

Inmiddels is de podcast aangekomen bij het begin van de achttiende eeuw. De Engelsen en de Nederlanders zullen betrokken raken in de Spaanse Successieoorlog (mp3). Dat was tot voor kort een episode uit de geschiedenis waar ik hoegenaamd niets van wist, maar voordat Houweling bij dit conflict aankwam was ik al een luisteraar van Jim Mowatt's podcast Historyzine, die de Spaanse Successieoorlog als centraal onderwerp heeft. Nu zullen we zien wat Houweling er van maakt en of Houweling net als Jim Mowatt de moderne tijd in dit tijdsgewricht laat beginnen.

Meer Hoor! Geschiedenis:
Plakkaat van Verlating,
Willem van Oranje als Bijbelfiguur,
Dagelijks genoegen: hoor! geschiedenis,
Hoor! Geschiedenis - historische podcast recensie.

Historyzine:
The lines of Brabant,
Historyzine at its best,
The battle of Blenheim,
Reliving the War of Spanish Succession,
The year 1703.

The bioethics concern - Third Reith Lecture

Michael Sandel's third of BBC's Reith Lectures 2009 had me thoroughly excited. Those who have followed this blog over a long period may recall my search into the field of bioethics, looking for a way to bring together the need for cures and for scientific research with the intuitive qualms with us meddling with the building blocks of nature. It never got beyond that dilemma.

Sandel, however, succeeded in his third lecture, Genetics and Morality, to analyze the ethical qualm, this nagging intuition, into its rational components. I was so excited while listening, trains of thought kept springing up, making things clear in my age old search (I have been troubled since 1989 with this), yet making me lose track of the podcast. I have listened to it three times now and still not covered it all. Fortunately there is a transcript (Genetics and Morality - in rtf).

Sandel's method is to strip the intuition from its fears and see if there is something left. So, suppose meddling with genetics is not dangerous for our health, suppose allowing a free market force to be at work does not lead to reduced genetic diversity, suppose the benefits are available for all and elevate the weak and the poor, suppose we can handle the greater responsibility that comes with having greater influence on life, what still seems to be the problem? Applied to having children it looks like we reduce children to commodities. We can design them, order them as we like, we can fully repair whatever looks to be imperfection. This is a loveless meritocracy. We will have lost the quality to work with what we get, to appreciate the contingencies of nature. We will have submitted to a morality in which human being is not good enough unless it meets an ever rising set of standards.

We will abort the child with legs of uneven length, because we wanted a football star. And we will kill Garrincha, a man with several birth defects to become one of the best players next to Pele.

More Reith:
Morality in Politics,
Morality and the Market,
Michael Sandel - Philosophy Bites.

More Bioethics:
Regenerative Medicine - Stanford,
Straight Talk about Stem Cell Research,
The Ethics of Stem Cell Research,
Human rights and the body,
Life and bio-engineering - podcast review,
Bioethics without Christ, please,
A useful map into Bio-Ethics,
Stem Cell Research: Science, Ethics, and Prospects,
Stem Cells - Biology and Politics.