Cassandra Voices Podcast

The Cassandra Voices podcast is an Irish home for independent journalism with a global perspective. The prophetess Cassandra advised her fellow Trojans to reject the horse the Greeks had seemingly left behind as a gift, but was ignored. This podcast provides cautionary tales and inspiring narratives to illuminate our own troubled times. Host: Cassandra Voices Music: Loafing Heroes Produced by Massimiliano Galli

EP 14 Patrick Cockburn: on Syria and Ukraine 03/26/2025

EP 13 Philip McDonagh: 'We Urgently Need a Global Vision' 03/04/2025

EP 12 My Mother (at the Time) 01/31/2025

EP 11 BONUS EXTRA "It is Abhorrent to Stage an Image" A Conversation with George Azar 12/19/2024

EP 11 BONUS EXTRA "It is Abhorrent to Stage an Image" A Conversation with George Azar Part 2 of "It is Abhorrent to Me to Stage a Picture…” A Conversation with George Azar Host: Luke Sheehan Music: Loafing Heroes - George Azar: An Introduction George Azar was born in 1959, the descendant of Lebanese olive farmers who had set sail from Beirut a century earlier. They settled in South Philadelphia, a working-class enclave—later immortalized in ‘Rocky’. It was a mix of Italians, Irish, Polish, Jewish, and Lebanese families, a tough, mafia-controlled neighborhood where people staked their claims street by street. After graduating from UC Berkeley in Political Science, he postponed graduate school to see first-hand a war he had only read about. He covered the Lebanese Civil War as a front line news photographer, immersing himself and seeing the conflict up-close. The war brought moments that could be scripted for an absurdist play, like the teenage Shia gunmen and snipers who called themselves “The Smurfs”. For the dissonance between their youth, and the brutal violence they lived mirrored the contradictions his photography sought to capture. Azar learned the unwritten rules of the new industry where the pictures most in demand were ‘Bang Bang’ photos: high-drama, front-line images that convey the raw violence of war. His first photo captioned Machine Gun Alley, marked his entry into the profession. A strong image from the front line sold for $60, while a photo of a woman firing a weapon might land on front pages worldwide. Some photographers gave in to the temptation to stage scenes. Azar found the practice indefensible. “To me, it is abhorrent to stage an image.” The photographs Azar values most capture often quiet, deeply human moments: an elderly man weeping into his bed, a mother standing amidst the ruins of her Gaza kitchen, and Palestinian shepherd in a field of yellow wildflowers that grace the cover of his book, ‘Palestine, A Photographic Journey’ (UC Press, 1991). Azar left Lebanon after the war physically and emotionally drained. He returned to Philadelphia, and worked for the local newspaper. But the pull of the Middle East proved irresistible. The First Intifada drew him back, beginning a new chapter in his career, this time focused on the freedom struggle in Palestine. In conversation, Azar shared astonishing stories: the Irish junkies linked to the IRA who lived above him; Issa Abdullah Ali, a renegade African-American soldier who converted to Islam, defected and joined Iran’s Revolutionary Guard and fought the Israelis in the 1982 battle for Beirut; and his encounters with journalism legends Robert Fisk, and photojournalist Don McCullen. The conversation unfolded against a backdrop of Israeli drone sounds, power outages, and rising tensions—a grim reminder that Lebanon is once again in the grip of war. The country faces yet another reshaping, one that will demand extraordinary resilience from its people and, perhaps, a reimagined political future. /episode/index/show/da1b6c7f-52d2-4f97-a369-4fd1f95bde42/id/34528900

EP 11 "It is Abhorrent to Stage an Image" A Conversation with George Azar 12/08/2024

EP 11 "It is Abhorrent to Stage an Image" A Conversation with George Azar "It is Abhorrent to Me to Stage a Picture…” A Conversation with George Azar Host: Luke Sheehan Music: Loafing Heroes - George Azar: An Introduction George Azar was born in 1959, the descendant of Lebanese olive farmers who had set sail from Beirut a century earlier. They settled in South Philadelphia, a working-class enclave—later immortalized in ‘Rocky’. It was a mix of Italians, Irish, Polish, Jewish, and Lebanese families, a tough, mafia-controlled neighborhood where people staked their claims street by street. After graduating from UC Berkeley in Political Science, he postponed graduate school to see first-hand a war he had only read about. He covered the Lebanese Civil War as a front line news photographer, immersing himself and seeing the conflict up-close. The war brought moments that could be scripted for an absurdist play, like the teenage Shia gunmen and snipers who called themselves “The Smurfs”. For the dissonance between their youth, and the brutal violence they lived mirrored the contradictions his photography sought to capture. Azar learned the unwritten rules of the new industry where the pictures most in demand were ‘Bang Bang’ photos: high-drama, front-line images that convey the raw violence of war. His first photo captioned Machine Gun Alley, marked his entry into the profession. A strong image from the front line sold for $60, while a photo of a woman firing a weapon might land on front pages worldwide. Some photographers gave in to the temptation to stage scenes. Azar found the practice indefensible. “To me, it is abhorrent to stage an image.” The photographs Azar values most capture often quiet, deeply human moments: an elderly man weeping into his bed, a mother standing amidst the ruins of her Gaza kitchen, and Palestinian shepherd in a field of yellow wildflowers that grace the cover of his book, ‘Palestine, A Photographic Journey’ (UC Press, 1991). Azar left Lebanon after the war physically and emotionally drained. He returned to Philadelphia, and worked for the local newspaper. But the pull of the Middle East proved irresistible. The First Intifada drew him back, beginning a new chapter in his career, this time focused on the freedom struggle in Palestine. In conversation, Azar shared astonishing stories: the Irish junkies linked to the IRA who lived above him; Issa Abdullah Ali, a renegade African-American soldier who converted to Islam, defected and joined Iran’s Revolutionary Guard and fought the Israelis in the 1982 battle for Beirut; and his encounters with journalism legends Robert Fisk, and photojournalist Don McCullen. The conversation unfolded against a backdrop of Israeli drone sounds, power outages, and rising tensions—a grim reminder that Lebanon is once again in the grip of war. The country faces yet another reshaping, one that will demand extraordinary resilience from its people and, perhaps, a reimagined political future. /episode/index/show/da1b6c7f-52d2-4f97-a369-4fd1f95bde42/id/34334315

EP.10: ‘Inside the Belly of the Beast: Reporting on U.S. Foreign Policy from Washington D.C.’ with guest Anya Parampil. 09/30/2024

EP.10: ‘Inside the Belly of the Beast: Reporting on U.S. Foreign Policy from Washington D.C.’ with guest Anya Parampil. As a journalist, Anya Parampil is unafraid of rattling the cage. She now writes for the Grayzone, founded by her husband Max Blumenthal in 2015, an online publication which aims to ‘break through any narrative of the day that is pushing the United States’ public in support of war.’ Previously she worked as a producer and broadcaster, then an anchor correspondent, for Russia Today (U.S.), from which she was fired, after refusing to accept restrictions on her reporting of U.S. foreign policy. In this podcast Anya likens writing about U.S. foreign policy from Washington D.C. to working inside ‘the belly of the beast’. Her work charts the policy machinations emanating from what she describes as a ‘deep state’ whose power, she argues, exceeds democratically elected politicians. Anya is the author of Corporate Coup – Venezuela and the End of US Empire (Or Books, New York, 2023), which dissects the motivations of the U.S. government, under the presidency of Donald Trump – directed in particular by figures such as John Bolton and Eliot Abrams – to sponsor a shadow government of Venezuela under Juan Guaído to challenge President Nicolás Maduro. As we approach another Presidential election, Anya sees little hope of a change in approach from the U.S. towards a country containing greater oil reserves than any other country on planet Earth. She maintains hope, however, that an alliance that includes isolationist supporters of Trump and progressive elements within the Democratic Party could in time tame the beast of this seemingly permanent government, and retains a faith that the First Amendment of the US Constitution on free speech will allow her to continue her work. Episode Credits: Host: Frank Armstrong Music: Loafing Heroes - https://theloafingheroes.bandcamp.com Produced by Massimiliano Galli - https://www.massimilianogalli.com /episode/index/show/da1b6c7f-52d2-4f97-a369-4fd1f95bde42/id/33261637

EP.9 HIT IT! Hustling and the Ivory Tower with Max McGuinness 05/28/2024

EP8. Lockdowns: ‘A Flawed Consensus: COVID-19 in Africa’ with guest Professor Toby Green 05/08/2024

EP7. Spilling the ‘Cup of Tea’: Matt Ridley and Luke Sheehan on China and COVID origins 04/29/2024

EP6. ‘The Alphabet is like a Set of Drums’ – an interview with musician of the month John Cummins. 04/20/2024

EP5. Fuck Real Countries with Nadim Shehadi 04/01/2024

EP4. Lockdowns: "Thinking in One Dimension," with guest Professor Sunetra Gupta. 03/10/2024

EP4. Lockdowns: "Thinking in One Dimension," with guest Professor Sunetra Gupta. In early 2020, Sunetra Gupta was quietly working on a universal influenza vaccine as Professor of Theoretical Epidemiology at Oxford University, while finishing her sixth novel. By then, a new coronavirus had been discovered in Wuhan, China. In response, she and her group produced a paper suggesting, among other scenarios, as much as 50% of the U.K. population had already been infected. This was in stark contrast to the assessment of Professor Neil Ferguson at Imperial College London, whose modelling assumed COVID-19 had just arrived in the West and that we had no cross-immunity from other coronaviruses against it, meaning it would kill almost one in a hundred of those who contracted it. For reasons still inadequately explored, the U.K., Irish and most Western governments – along with many in the Global South – followed Ferguson's (and others’) doomsday prediction and chose untested lockdowns in anticipation of a vaccine – a containment strategy to ‘flatten the curve’, as opposed to a (Chinese-style) elimination strategy. Sunetra Gupta has been vindicated in her assessment that COVID-19 had been circulating far longer than initially understood, and also that it had a much lower fatality rate than Ferguson and others assumed from limited data. Moreover, it was obvious that this social experiment would cause serious harms, while the capacity of the strategy to contain the virus was unknown. Sunetra Gupta did not take lockdown lying down. She and a number of academic colleagues authored the Great Barrington Declaration in October 2020, advocating for an end to lockdowns, and promoting the targeted protection of the elderly – who were by far the most susceptible to death from the virus. What followed was not, as she hoped, a civilised discussion weighing the costs and benefits of each strategy, but abuse and even an attempt to have her silenced. Host: Frank Armstrong Music: Loafing Heroes - PostPrimitive - Produced by Massimiliano Galli - /episode/index/show/da1b6c7f-52d2-4f97-a369-4fd1f95bde42/id/30307148

EP3. We are in a new dark age: David Langwallner on Julian Assange 02/29/2024

EP2. BONUS 'Devil in the Hills': Jim Sheridan on the Sophie Toscan du Plantier Murder 02/24/2024

EP2. 'Devil in the Hills': Jim Sheridan on the Sophie Toscan du Plantier Murder 02/24/2024

EP1. Believe Nothing Until it is Officially Denied! With guest Patrick Cockburn 01/30/2024

Cassandra Voices Podcast

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