David Cole - NYRB

The podcast of the New York Review of Books (feed) is always worth to take a listen. I choose my subjects as I do with so many other interview and lecture podcasts. The latest issue was one I listened to with great interest.

Lawyer David Cole was interviewed on the subject of lawyers who authorize torture. About the subject he also wrote an article in the NYT called The Torture Memo. He refers to memo's that came from lawyers who informed the Bush administration how they could legally use enhanced interrogation techniques (a euphemism for torture) or alternately use them and avoid being called to defend the use in court. These memos have been secret until recently, but bit by bit are becoming public only now, thanks to legislation under the Obama administration.

The picture becomes clear of what Cole and his fellows long guessed was the case: torture was widely used and intentionally so. The legal foundation of it, he argues, has created a situation that torture is at the discretion of the president. If you have a president who wants to use torture, it shall be used and the cases shall be held out of court. The implicit argument is that this has no place in a state under the rule of law, according to Cole.

More NYRB podcast:
Amateur Science - Freeman Dyson,
Roger Cohen in Tehran,
Ronald Dworkin.

More David Cole:
Less safe, less free.

Rudyard Kipling - veertien achttien

Op de podcast Veertien Achttien (feed) zat ik deze week echt uit te kijken. Ik wist dat de nieuwe aflevering over een van mijn geliefde schrijvers zou gaan: Rudyard Kipling.

Ik wist helemaal niet dat Kipling een zoon in de oorlog verloren had. Het heeft hem zo aangegrepen dat hij er een prachtig gedicht over schreef: "If any question why we died/ Tell them, because our fathers lied." En rondom dat gedicht bouwt Tom Tacken deze biografie. De leugen van Kipling is wellicht dat hij zijn relaties gebruikt heeft om zoon John in het leger te krijgen. Daar was hij aanvankelijk voor afgekeurd.

John is ook een van die soldaten die nog heel lang vermist blijft, totdat de dood officieel wordt aangenomen. Het moet het leed van Kipling alleen maar verlengd hebben. Tacken heeft er deze week weer een prachtig verhaal van gesmeed. Het is of hij wat literaire inspiratie van meester Kipling heeft gekregen, want ik vond de uitwerking, die toch al elke week op uitzonderlijk peil staat, deze keer buitengewoon. Haast lyrisch. Met ironie, natuurlijk, dat wel.

Meer Veertien Achttien:
Ferdinand I van Bulgarije,
Veertien Achttien in transit,
Pegoud, Grimm - Veertien Achttien,
Emmeline Pankhurst,
Lord Kitchener.

A history of the Israeli-Arab conflict - Rear Vision

The program Rear Vision of Australia's ABC which is also available as podcast, had three guests to speak on The Middle East conflict and the two-state solution. Giora Eiland; former head of the Israeli National Security Council and General in the Israel General Staff. Jeremy Pressman; Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science, at the University of Connecticut in America. And Rashid Khalidi; Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies at Columbia University in America.

I especially liked the contribution of Rashid Khalidi, who we have recently heard also in several other excellent podcast appearances - see below. When discussing the Balfour Declaration Khalidi points out that although the provision was made that the Jews were to respect the rights of others, the Arabs are not mentioned here. This is to be a continuing problem in the history, the Arabs struggle with being a non-entity and one must in ones mind add to this that especially among Israelis, many consider the Palestinians, still, as a non-entity. And so, the rather refreshing light on the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict Khalidi gives is that of the Arab population and a disenfranchised community, without sliding into the rhetoric of accusing Israel of ethnic cleansing or equaling Zionism with Imperialism.

Also Eiland's and Pressman's contributions are quite good, so that this is one of the very few podcasts that will give you a basic insight in the history of the conflict going as far back as 1917. The only thing I found missing in the program was how this two-state solution as an option has been losing ground recently. While it is still largely held as the one and only viable option for a cold peace, only Eiland mentions one of the fundamental problems with it: the most Israel is politically capable of offering is less than any Palestinian Authority can accept. Add to this the deep mistrust between the peoples that have risen over the last decade and the eternal problems of the Palestinians to forge a basis for a viable state, not only economically, but also politically. The two-state solution seems, more than ever, apart from being politically out of reach, practically not sustainable.

More Rear Vision:
Fish depletion,
Follow up on Iran and Versailles,
Versailles 1919,
Iran 1953,
Coffee.

More Rashid Khalidi:
Sowing crisis - Us and the Middle-East,
Empire.

The Iran power struggle - LSE podcast

The LSE Public Lectures and Events at the London School of Economics, in short the LSE podcast, is great series of guest lectures at the LSE, which are almost invariably worth listening in on. Subjects that are of great interest are being discussed by world specialists and responded to by an educated audience.

Whether Hooman Majd, an Iranian journalist who lives in the US, is such a great specialist is something he actually shed doubt on in his own lecture The Ayatollah Begs to Differ - the path to an Islamic Democracy. Although he has written a book under the same title and he frequently visits Iran, he states there are no Iran experts and he certainly doesn't regard himself as one. The audience also turns out to have second thoughts. When Majd wants to argue that Iran is not a dictatorship, critical questions about that statement are met with cheers in the hall.

Nevertheless, this lecture is very interesting. It emphasizes once more, as we have heard in other podcasts, that Iran is in no way a monolithic state. It is not so culturally, ethnically, religiously and even politically. As others have done Majd paints a picture of two factions vying for power, the fundamentalists with Ahmedinijad in their side and the moderates with Moussavi. There might even be more flavors in the spectrum, but even in this picture, Majd tells how free, open and carefully democratic Iranian society is. And in this version of Iran, the road to further liberalization is open. And as to the nuclear program, Majd sees that as a scientific and energy project.

I have added the episode to the composite podcast feed Anne is a Man - Iran.

More LSE Events:
Justice,
In Search of Islam’s Civilization,
Religion and the Market - John Gray on LSE,
John Gray's cultural pessimism,
Omniculturalism.

Blog Action Day 2009 - Climate Change

Also this year I will participate in Blog Action Day, which is held every year on October 15th. Bloggers from all over the world and from all walks of life will pay attention to one and the same subject. The subject in 2009 will be Climate Change



Last year on October 15th I re-posted all podcast reviews that were related to that year's subject (poverty). This amounted to a manageable series. If I were to repost all podcast reviews on Climate Change, I'd hand you too much. I think I will summarize in stead of repost and, wherever possible, present all those podcasts in a composite feed (thanks to Huffduffer).

If you have any suggestions, let me know through the comments.

More Blog Action Day:
2008: Poverty,
2007: Environment.

What can you do with philosophy?

On Philosophy Bites Nigel Warburton and David Edmonds spoke with writer John Armstrong about the question 'What can you do with philosophy?'. For a philosophy podcast that reaches a wide public this is almost an obligatory question. One would almost expect the defining podcast for Philosophy Bites.

As the dialog set out, I was reminded of a radio program I heard many years ago with a mathematician who was addressing the similar question, what practical use does mathematics have. And surely this mathematician set out to tackle the problem of choosing the right partner in life with chance theory, stochastics and deliver the exact answer. Fine, but yet I feel that somehow the mathematician, or the philosopher for that matter, is in a way degrading himself by forcefully applying to the profane and should have some arrogance in not wishing to be practical.

Yet, in the end, John Armstrong seemed to have established more than the reported mathematician as I found myself discussing this episode with others who had heard it and noticed we all began applying the trains of thought and refining questions Armstrong had suggested. And so, especially in hindsight, this was indeed a very good issue of the podcast.

More Philosophy Bites:
Morality without God,
Pascal's Pensées,
Fourth Revolution,
Michael Sandel on what cannot be sold,
Aristotle's Ethics.