Latitude Adjustment Podcast

16/12/2023

If you are looking to donate to support people in Ghaza and want to be sure that your support reaches people on the ground, Shahd Safi was the most recent guest on my podcast and a graduate of our Palestine Podcast Academy. She is currently living under Isr8el's genocidal assault on Ghaza with her family. I personally vouch for this campaign and just contributed myself. Please give what you can.

To everyone who has seen the atrocities happening daily in Gaza and hasn… Kari Ayoob needs your support for Lilnaazihin Fi Gaza - To Displaced People of Gaza

12/11/2023

We have been wanting to bring you voices from inside Gaza since the very start of the current atrocities, but for what are obvious reasons this has proven to be extremely difficult, especially after Israel cut all communication lines and mobile phone networks in Gaza, in the prelude to their ground invasion. However, a student from our Palestine Podcast Academy, Shahid Saffi, has managed to send me a series of daily audio diary entries detailing her experiences and her feelings in recent days. Shahid is from al Nuseirat Refugee camp in Central Gaza, a camp that has been subjected to repeated bombardments by Israel over the past few weeks. A Palestinian friend of mine, who invited me to his home in Nuseirat camp during my stay in Gaza, has lost nine family members to the airstrikes on the refugee camp in recent weeks. Shahid joins us from Rafah, in the South of Gaza, where she moved two years ago. However, the situation in Rafah is far from safe.

Please visit the post for this episode at LatitudeAdjustmentPod.com for links to Shahd's recent articles documenting her experiences, links to organizations (whom we personally recommend) who working to provide relief to Palestinians, and to supplemental resources for continuing your education on this subject and to aid you in your efforts to educate your communities.

We have been wanting to bring you voices from inside Gaza since the very start of the current atrocities, but for what are obvious reasons this has proven to be extremely difficult, especially after Israel cut all communication lines and mobile phone networks in Gaza, in the prelude to their ground

09/11/2023

09/10/2023

Some harsh truths concerning the current violence in Israel Palestine:

Israel has never been a democracy for non-Jews. Never.

Forty percent of Palestinian men spend time in Israeli jails, often without charge. Palestinian men, women, and children are murdered by Israeli settlers and soldiers on a daily basis, with total impunity. Israeli politicians, from the founding of Israel right up to today, have openly called for the genocide of Palestinians, and are carrying it out in slow motion.

We are hearing a lot about the Hamas forces kids snapping Israelis, so let's look at both sides of that topic. Palestinian children are kidnapped regularly by Israeli forces and imprisoned, often for months or years, for nothing. The press just doesn't call it "kidnapping" because the Israeli terrorists wear uniforms and hide behind a complete sham of a legal system.

Let's talk about "barbarity" and what goes beyond the Palestine in armed conflict. Every single day for the past 56 years Palestinians have been the victims of a nonstops war crime in the form of Israel's settlements and occupation. For the past 16 years Israel has held 2 million Palestinians under a siege in Gaza, making it the largest concentration camp in history. Israel has been called out for Apartheid by both Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and Israel's own human rights groups. These are all egregious violations of the 4th Geneva Convention... and just the tip of the iceberg for Israel's war crimes, which include collective punishment, lack of due process, extrajudicial killing, disproportionate force, torture, etc.

Those who are horrified by the sight of Israeli being attacked in their own communities? This is a daily occurrence for Palestinians. Also note that Israelis in the towns and settlements bordering Gaza have set up lawn chairs and hosted BBQs, watching and cheering as Israeli fighter jets bomb civilians in Gaza in massacre after massacre going back more than a decade. They live in the shadow of this massive concentration camp, like the Germans who lived next to the extermination camps and who later tried to pretend they knew nothing about what was happening to the Jews inside. They didn't want to know. They had the privilege of ignoring it.

Never forget that it is the occupier who is responsible for the nature of the resistance to their occupation. If Palestinians had access to guided "surgical" munitions, an air force, and a navy, they would surely use them. As it is, they are left to build rockets out of plumbing parts and quite literally out of the scraps of the very Israeli bombs that are dropped on them.

We hear constantly that Israel has the right to exist and to defend itself? Is any of this actually self defense, or is it simply fighting for the right to keep acting like a criminal? Do Palestinians have these rights? As Israel is constituted they certainly do not have the right to exist and all self defense is labeled "terrorism".

So no, in it's current form Israel does not have the right to exist. No fascistic, terror state built on a direct link to white supremacy has such a right. Many criminal states did not have the right to exist. The Third Reich did not have the right to exist. The Khmer Rouge did not have the right to exist. Apartheid South Africa did not have the right to exist.

What's more, many groups have suffered and don't have a nation state. Jewish suffering does not come with unique entitlements. Suffering does not entitle anyone to a state if it comes at the cost of inflicting suffering and terror on others.

And finally, Israel's disingenuous misuse and abuse of the Holocaust and Antisemitism makes Jews less safe by cheapening the weight of those terms. Misusing those terms makes it more likely that people will ignore legitimate cases of Antisemitism.

End the illegal occupation. That's the root of it all. Everything we are seeing is rooted in that original sin. If you care about the Jewish people then boycott Israel and hold it to account until it stops conflating and distorting Jewish identity with Zionism, settler colonialism, and Apartheid.

Free Palestine , and free the Israelis from the burden of maintaining their hateful and unjust system. There can and truly should be one state for all. Far crazier aspirations have been realized in the pursuit of a just peace.

28/08/2023

Why don’t we see more African researchers presenting at global Public Health conferences and in US and European research journals? Who determines which public health issues are prioritized in Africa? What is Public Health and “Vaccine Apartheid”? What do these insights reveal about the current state of our Public Health discourse on the global scale?

It’s impossible to isolate the conversation around public health in the Global South from the topic of colonialism more generally. What’s more, while Africa and Africans continue to be presented with unique challenges and forms of discrimination, it would be a tragic oversight to assume that the factors contributing to global health disparities are limited to the African context. Insights that are applicable to Africa, are not only applicable to the Global South, and to minority populations in the Global North more generally, but these insights frequently map out the grounds and the various avenues for solidarity amongst similarly impacted populations and all people looking to dismantle oppressive structures.

Dr. Catherine Kyobutungi is the Executive Director of the African Population and Health Research Center (APHRC).

She holds a Ph.D. in Epidemiology and a Master of Science in Community Health and Health Management from the University of Heidelberg. Prior to her graduate studies, Catherine studied medicine at Makerere University, Kampala, after which she worked as a medical officer in Western Uganda for three years.

In 2018, Catherine was elected as a Fellow of the African Academy of Sciences and in 2019, she was selected as a Joep Lange Chair at the University of Amsterdam; a position in which she investigates chronic disease management in African countries. She is the co-director of the Consortium for Advanced Research Training in Africa (CARTA), a program that seeks to build and strengthen the capacity of African research leaders and has trained more than 230 PhD fellows in eight African universities.

Why don’t we see more African researchers presenting at global Public Health conferences and in US and European research journals? Who determines which public health issues are prioritized in Africa? What is Public Health and “Vaccine Apartheid”? What do these insights reveal about the current...

03/08/2023

Be sure to check out this journalistic collaboration between my good friend Paul Cochrane and myself. Thank you again to the brilliant scholar, investigative journalist, and activist, Andrew Feinstein for making time to be interviewed about the global arms trade.

Paul deserves full credit for the text for this CounterPunch article. You can catch the podcast version of our interview on my show: Latitude Adjustment Podcast

Paul Cochrane and Eric Maddox interviewed Andrew Feinstein about the devastating impact of the global arms trade, how militarism feeds corruption and

01/08/2023

While the global arms industry may only account for about one percent of global trade, it’s important to note what that one percent actually buys. Beyond the price tags on the weapons themselves, arms and arms sales have a tremendous impact on all other aspects of global trade, and on relations between trade partners and competitors.

This week's episode is a collaboration between journalist Paul Cochrane and Latitude Adjustment Podcast.

Our guest, Andrew Feinstein, is the author of the best-selling book, "The Shadow World: Inside the Global Arms Trade", published in 2011. In his review Noam Chomsky writes, "This shocking expose unveils a shadow world of corruption, greed, slaughter, and other horrors, ta**ry and gruesome in its criminality. It must be brought to a quick and final end".


Shadow World was turned into an award winning documentary film, premiering at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2016.

Andrew currently resides in the UK with his wife and children, and much of his current work is focused on Shadow World Investigations, an investigative news website focused on global corruption, often involving, but not limited to, the global arms trade.

While the global arms industry may only account for about one percent of global trade, it’s important to note what that one percent actually buys. Beyond the price tags on the weapons themselves, arms and arms sales have a tremendous impact on all other aspects of global trade, and on relations be...

20/07/2023

Where is Western Sahara? What is Western Sahara? Is it a country? Who lives there? If you find yourself unable to answer any of these questions, or if you want a resource that will help you to quickly explain the history and the current political realities around Africa's last colony to your friends and to your community, this short episode was created for you!

Latitude Adjustment Podcast is also working on plans to complete a multimedia documentary series, working on the ground with Sahrawi refugees in Western Algeria, and in collaboration two former guests of the show. You can find more information on that developing project on our website, at LastAfricanColony.com

Be sure to check the episode following this one for our interview with Solidarity Rising, a Swedish couple currently riding their bicycles around the world to raise awareness about the independence struggle of the Sahrawi people.

Where is Western Sahara? What is Western Sahara? Is it a country? Who lives there? If you find yourself unable to answer any of these questions, or if you want a resource that will help you to quickly explain the history and the current political realities around Africa's last colony to your friends

10/07/2023

Hey everyone! We're teaching a one-day podcasting crash course! Please share with your friends!

Been dreaming of starting your own podcast but you’re unsure about how to take that first step?

Join our two-hour workshop on either July 15th or 22nd, where you'll learn everything you need to know before starting your own show.

In this workshop, Eric Maddox, host of the human rights podcast Latitude Adjustment, and creator of the Palestine Podcast Academy, will share his expertise and years of experience from producing over 120 podcast episodes. Beyond producing his own show, Eric has also trained students held in migrant detention in Greece, and students living under military occupation in Palestine, to create their very first podcast productions.

During the workshop, you'll gain practical insights that will save you countless hours and unnecessary expenses. Whether you're struggling to decide on your show's theme, intimidated by the equipment and technical aspects of production, or simply too overwhelmed by life's demands to figure out where to start, Eric will help you to create a blueprint to launch your show.

All you need is a reliable Internet connection, two hours of your time, a cup of coffee, and some enthusiasm!

Here's a glimpse of what you'll learn:

Identifying your niche audience

Formulating the mission and vision for your show

Understanding journalistic ethics

Mastering the art of interviewing and building trust with guests and your audience

Booking guests effectively

Researching and preparing for each episode

The importance of scripting your episodes

Essential equipment (and what you don't need)

Editing basics and best practices

Podcast hosting and distribution

Podcast marketing essentials

Budgeting for your podcast

Instead of spending months scouring YouTube and online communities, you'll gain all the necessary preliminary knowledge in this workshop.

Podcasting has a learning curve, but with the information shared in this crash course, you'll have the confidence and expertise to hit the ground running.

The first 5 people to register also get a free 20-minute one-to-one consultation call with me after attending the course. This free consultation must be redeemed by August 15th.

We’ll be offering a free 30-minute introductory webinar at 6pm PDT/9pm EDT this Wednesday, July 12th, and at 12pm PDT/3pm EDT this Sunday July, 16th.

So take action and secure your spot now for $120. Or jump fast to get the early bird rate of $90.

Don't miss this opportunity to transform your podcasting aspirations into a reality.

Register by July 12th for the early bird rate for July 15th
Register by July 19th for the early bird rate for July 22nd

Follow the link to the sign-up form:

https://forms.gle/E9wARkwJr2GCLUyT7

02/07/2023

My thoughts on the state of freedom and independence as US Independence Day approaches. I would be honored if you'd read and share it.

Palestine, Perception, and the Limits of American Compassion (Part 1 of 2)

01/07/2023

The very same week that a massive multi-million dollar, multinational rescue operation was launched to rescue 5 of the wealthiest people on earth from a elite and ill-advised sight-seeing tour, European rescue vessels literally floated and watch for hours as a ship carrying hundreds of refugees slowly faltered and sank, offering no help, as hundreds of desperate people drowned. More than any other demographic, the wealth of those five people places them in the class of individuals most responsible for the the circumstances of those refugees.

To those who feel inclined to respond to the disparity with "all lives matter", we say, act like it.

Satellite imagery, sealed court documents and interviews with survivors suggest that hundreds of deaths were preventable.

27/06/2023

What we are seeing now in the US, with the rollback of so many progressive victories, and with the passage of bigoted legislation towards sexual minorities, is in many ways the final stage of a decades-long strategy by violent strains of American Christian Evangelism. That strategy has seen Africa used as a testing ground in an ideological war against sexual minorities. And that war has returned home with a vengeance; newly emboldened, with more support, and with a more focused strategic vision.

Reverend Doctor Kapya Kaoma is an Anglican priest from Zambia, a human rights activist, and one of the central figures in the documentary film, “God Loves Uganda”.

Kapya is also a researcher, and the author of several books, including “American Culture Warriors in Africa”, “Christianity, Globalization, and Protective Homophobia.” He has testified before the US Congress, US State Department, and the United Nations. Though he has also focused on Environmental Ethics, much of his research and advocacy work focuses on the targeting of the LGBTQIA community in Africa and the Christian Evangelical and Catholic roots of this persecution.

See show notes at this link for organizations in Africa that are in need of your support for their work on the front lines.

What we are seeing now in the US, with the rollback of so many progressive victories, and with the passage of bigoted legislation towards sexual minorities, is in many ways the final stage of a decades-long strategy by violent strains of American Christian Evangelism. That strategy has seen Africa u

13/06/2023

Omar Alshogre is currently 28 years old. He was first arrested at 15 for attending a protest against the Al Assad regime, and was arrested a total of 11 times between 2011 and 2013. His last arrest, in 2012, along with the arrests of two of his cousins, led to his incarceration in the Branch 215 military intelligence detention center for 21 months, where he experienced torture on a daily basis. In 2014 he was transferred to Sednaya prison, where he experienced even more brutal forms of torture, and where prisoners were subjected to summary ex*****on for talking without permission. During his period of incarceration, Omar was also forced to remove the bodies of prisoners and to mark their foreheads for identification.

Many of the systematic abuses of Syria’s Al Assad regime have been visually documented in the 2014 Syria Detainee Report, or the Caesar Report. Caesar is the alias for a photographer with the Syrian Military police who worked in secret with a Syrian opposition group to leak graphic images of the torture, starvation, and murder of prisoners at the hands of the al Assad regime. The report documents "the systematic killing of more than 11,000 detainees by the Syrian government in one region during the Syrian Civil War over a two and half year period from March 2011 to August 2013". Human Rights Watch spent six months investigating the authenticity of the photographic evidence and concluded that it was genuine. Signed into law by President Trump in 2019, the Caesar Act, or Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act, is a set of sanctions against the Al Assad regime for war crimes against the Syrian civilian population.

After suspending Syria from the Arab League for 12 years, last month the Arab League voted unanimously to readmit Syria’s Al Assad regime.

Omar Alshogre is a public speaker and human rights advocate, who endured three years of unjust imprisonment and torture in Syria before being smuggled out and brought to safety. Currently, he serves as the Director of Detainees Affairs for the Syrian Emergency Task Force and the spokesperson for Atrocities Tracker, dedicating himself to the critical cause of advocating for the release of those unjustly detained. Omar has spoken before the US Senate's Foreign Relations Committee, and presented his insights at several world-renowned universities, organizations, and news outlets including Harvard, Georgetown, CNN, and Aljazeera.

Omar Alshogre is currently 28 years old. He was first arrested at 15 for attending a protest against the Al Assad regime, and was arrested a total of 11 times between 2011 and 2013. His last arrest, in 2012, along with the arrests of two of his cousins, led to his incarceration in the Branch 215 mi

05/06/2023

On April 15th war broke out in Sudan. The fighting between the Rapid Support Forces paramilitary group and the Sudanese army has devastated Khartoum, spread across the country, and an estimated 1,800 people have lost their lives, with hundreds of thousands displaced.

Dalia AbdelMoniem joins us from the UK, where she has been living since fleeing the war in April, after a missile struck her home. Dalia is a former journalist who moved back to Sudan in 2013 after living in Egypt for more than two decades.

Go to the post for this episode for links to organizations that you can support.

On April 15th war broke out in Sudan. The fighting between the Rapid Support Forces paramilitary group and the Sudanese army has devastated Khartoum, spread across the country, and an estimated 1,800 people have lost their lives, with hundreds of thousands displaced. Dalia AbdelMoniem joins us

30/05/2023

This is the second of a two-part series about Basir Bita's escape from Afghanistan after the US withdrawal in August, 2021. In this second half of his story, Basir shares his experiences getting from Pakistan to Canada, the challenges of adjusting to a new culture, the double-standards in Western moralizing, and navigating the prejudices and stereotypes that refugees often face. Be sure to listen to part one, about the fall of Kabul and about his family’s escape from Afghanistan after the US withdrawal in August of 2021.

 This is the second of a two-part series about Basir Bita’s escape from Afghanistan after the US withdrawal in August, 2021. In this second half of his story, Basir shares his experiences getting from Pakistan to Canada, the challenges of adjusting to a new culture, the double-standards in

24/05/2023

On August 30th 2021, the US and its coalition partners ended their nearly twenty-year occupation of Afghanistan. Two weeks before they left, the Taliban swept across the country taking major urban centers, including Kabul. As embassies were abandoned, and as Afghan government officials fled the country, those Afghan citizens who had worked with the occupying forces faced the very real prospect of ex*****on by the Taliban as collaborators. Yet, just as Afghan interpreters had been abandoned in years past, many were left behind when the last US flight left the country. Now they, and the millions of Afghans who never had any hope of being evacuated to begin with, were left to scramble for their survival.

Basir Bita last appeared on Latitude Adjustment Podcast just two weeks before the Taliban takeover of Kabul, and a month before US and international forces left the country. Though he and his family had been issued a visa for his work with the Canadian government, they were left behind. This episode is the first of a two-part series in which Basir recounts what happened next. Stay tuned for the second half in the next few days.

On August 30th 2021, the US and its coalition partners ended their nearly twenty-year occupation of Afghanistan. Two weeks before they left, the Taliban swept across the country taking major urban centers, including Kabul. As embassies were abandoned, and as Afghans government officials fled the cou

22/02/2023

While there have been different strains of Christian Zionism dating back to the Sixteenth Century, the most politicized, powerful, and violent iteration of the movement has its roots in the contemporary Christian Evangelical Church. Modern Christian Zionists hold that the ethnic cleansing of roughly 750,000 Palestinians from their homes in historic Palestine in 1948 by Jewish Zionists was the fulfillment of a Biblical prophecy in which the so-called Holy Land must be resettled by the Jewish people in order to usher in the return of Jesus Christ as the messiah. Modern Christian Zionism is distinct from the modern form of political Zionism that arose amongst the European Jewish community in the late 19th Century.

Don Wagner is a Christian theologian, a former minister, and author. He received a Master of Divinity from Princeton Theological Seminary and a Doctor of Ministry degree from McCormick Theological Seminary. He is also author of, "Glory to God in the Lowest: Journeys to an Unholy Land".

While there have been different strains of Christian Zionism dating back to the Sixteenth Century, the most politicized, powerful, and violent iteration of the movement has its roots in the contemporary Christian Evangelical Church. Modern Christian Zionists hold that the ethnic cleansing of roughly

24/11/2022

Episode 102 is up!

The US military industrial complex describes the relationship between the US armed forces, weapons and military systems corporations and, though they are often omitted from the phrasing, the Legislative and Executive branches of the US government.

This episode is dedicated to examining the interests at play in maintaining the US military budget as an unquestionable and sacred burden on the US taxpayer and its impact on democracy, even when our national infrastructure is in tatters, education and medical costs are exploding, the gap between rich and poor is ever-widening, wages have stagnated, and a pandemic has ravaged our economy and our lives.

The Friends Committee on National Legislation is the Quaker's Peace Lobby. Allen Hester leads the FCNL's Nuclear Disarmament and Pentagon Spending portfolio. This means that he develops legislative strategies and lobbies Congress for reductions in Pentagon spending, strengthened arms control regimes, and the eventual elimination of nuclear weapons.

The US military industrial complex describes the relationship between the US armed forces, weapons and military systems corporations and, though they are often omitted from the phrasing, the Legislative and Executive branches of the US government.  This episode is dedicated to examining th

17/11/2022

Episode 101 is up!

For this episode we cover a wide range of issues related to Palestinian human rights and political autonomy, including the recent Israeli elections, the current state of Palestinian resistance, parallels and distinctions between Apartheid in South Africa and Palestine, and the aims of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement in Palestine.

Dr. Haidar Eid is Associate Professor of Postcolonial and Postmodern Literature at Gaza's al-Aqsa University in Palestine, and completed his PhD in South Africa. In addition to being an author and a regular contributor to Al Jazeera, he is also on the advisory board of The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel. He’s also an amateur singer; having released one album, Tyrants’ Fear of Songs, while currently working on his second collection.

For this episode we cover a wide range of issues related to Palestinian human rights and political autonomy, including the recent Israeli elections, the current state of Palestinian resistance, parallels and distinctions between Apartheid in South Africa and Palestine, and the aims of the Boycott,

10/11/2022

It's Episode 100! 🎉

It's episode 100 of Latitude Adjustment Podcast, and what better way to celebrate the occasion than to bring back our guest from Episode 1? We catch up with Andrius Mažeika in Lithuania, and in the spirit of our very first episode we cover a wide range of topics, from the war in Ukraine to being a Leftist in a post-Soviet context, to lessons learned from photography, and addressing mental health while traveling. Thank you to everyone who has supported the show these past 4 years!

It's episode 100 of Latitude Adjustment Podcast, and what better way to celebrate the occasion than to bring back our guest from Episode 1? We catch up with Andrius Mažeika in Lithuania, and in the spirit of our very first episode we cover a wide range of topics, from the war in Ukraine to being a

26/10/2022

Episode 99 is up!

On September 13th, 22-year-old Mahsa Amini was visiting Tehran with her family, having traveled from Irans’ Kurdish region. While in Tehran she was stopped by Iran’s morality police for improperly wearing her hijab, or head covering. Three days after her arrest she was dead. In the days and weeks following her death Iran has seen nationwide protests, and while protests are not a particularly new thing in Iran, what’s unprecedented about these protests are the calls not simply for reforms but for the toppling of Iran’s theocratic regime, a regime that has been in power since the Iranian Revolution of 1979.

Assal Rad is a historian and research director at the National Iranian American Council. She’s also author of “The State of Resistance: Politics, Culture, and Identity in Modern Iran".

Pouya Alimagham is a professor of History at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and author of, “Contesting the Iranian Revolution: The Green Uprisings.”

You can also find this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever you download podcasts on your Android device. Be sure to subscribe to Latitude Adjustment!

On September 13th, 22-year-old Mahsa Amini was visiting Tehran with her family, having traveled from Irans’ Kurdish region. While in Tehran she was stopped by Iran’s morality police for improperly wearing her hijab, or head covering. Three days after her arrest she was dead. In the days and week...