More of the same this week on Backbeat - except different, because you'll rarely hear anything repeated, there's just too much to play. Such as gospel from Clara Ward, jug band music from Clarence Williams, African jive on a pennywhistle from West Nkosi, a Japanese take on a classic Duke Ellington song, Eddy Arnold's first hit and a nice new one from Reid Jamieson. Backbeat is also available in a 56 and 58 minute versions in three separate files if you want breaks. I am happy to provide custom station IDs, promos and liners. Email Lorne@Backbeatradio.com or visit www.backbeatradio.com for more information.

The Palestinian tragedy stretches across generations; a wound carried in the open for the world to see yet so often ignored. Entire communities have been uprooted, cities shattered, and families torn apart, while the global news cycle moves on as if grief has an expiration date. The media, once trusted to bear witness, has repeatedly failed them reducing a people’s suffering to fleeting headlines, softening the language of occupation, and avoiding the uncomfortable truths that demand moral courage. When reporters dared to ask real questions, many were reprimanded or removed. When anchors tried to name the injustice plainly, their voices were cut short. Into that silence stepped ordinary people activists, creators, and influencers who refused to let the story die. They filled the void left by institutions, using their platforms to show the world what cameras would not. But the moment these voices grew too loud, a new wave of pressure emerged. Accounts were flagged, demonetized, shadow banned, or erased entirely. Videos disappeared. Livestreams were cut. Entire pages vanished overnight. It became clear that the struggle was no longer only on the ground in Gaza or the West Bank it was also online, in the battle over truth itself. This is why supporting independent reporters and creators is no longer optional; it is essential. They are the last line of defense against erasure. They document what others bury. They speak when institutions fall silent. They carry stories that would otherwise be lost. Their work is not polished or sanitized, it is raw, urgent, and human. And in a world where truth is filtered through political interests, independent voices have become the closest thing we have to unfiltered reality. But even as we uplift these voices, we must pause to honor those who paid the ultimate price. The Palestinian journalists who ran toward danger, not away from it. The photographers who captured their homeland’s final moments before becoming targets themselves. The reporters who documented the destruction of their own neighborhoods, knowing each assignment could be their last. Their courage was not abstract, it was lived, breathed, and carried into the fire. They were chroniclers of a people’s suffering, guardians of memory, and witnesses the world desperately needed. And beyond them, the Palestinian people themselves, mothers burying children, children burying parents, families burying entire bloodlines have become the living archive of a tragedy the world has yet to fully confront. Their endurance is a testament. Their grief is a record. Their resilience is a rebuke to every attempt to silence them. In their names, and in the names of those who continue to speak when silence would be safer, we keep telling this story. Because truth, once spoken, refuses to disappear. This is This Week in Palestine.

Black History Month: A chapter in the struggle for equal rights.

https://politicsthisweek.gn.apc.org/2026/02/the-bristol-politics-show-presented-by-tony-gosling-10/

Sonic Café with the Fire Inside, that’s Bob Seger from 1991. So welcome to our little coastal radio café, a place that feeds your need, for eclectic music comedy, and just a little pop culture thrown in along the way. I’m Scott Clark and this is episode 472. This time the Sonic Café presents a mix pulled from 56 years that includes everything from Fontaines D. C. with Starburster, to Cream with White Room from 1968 with introduction provided by none other than Eric Clapton. We’ll also hear form The Empty Hearts, Supersuckers, Chad Kroger, Soraia, and ahh the list goes on. Then the Sonic Café brings you the voice of the late Carl Sagan, predicting the fate of the US, and George Carlin asking if the planet is OK. Oh and yet another Sonic Café two for two twin spin. Around the bottom of the hour we’ll spin Moon Martin with their original recording of Bad Case of Lovin’ you followed by the version Robert Palmer made famous. So yeah all that plus some other neat stuff thrown in for fun. So let’s get on with it already. From 2014 this is Weird Al Yankovic with a love song that is just plain weird. This is the Jackson Park Express and we’re the Sonic Café.

Zionism is the belief that Palestinians can and must be expelled from their homeland so that settlers can take their place. Dissident Israeli historian Illan Pappé speaks with hosts Nora Barrows-Friedman and Ali Abunimah about Zionism's roots in European colonial ambitions. Longtime Palestine solidarity activist Tony Greenstein joins Nora and the Electronic Intifada’s Asa Winstanley to discuss the Zionist movement’s prioritizing the colonial project in Palestine over saving Jewish lives during the Holocaust, and how its logic has always been rooted in racial nationalism, not refuge. Palestinian writer Abdaljawad Omar talks to the Electronic Intifada’s Tamara Nassar about how Zionism was shaped by Europe’s anti-semitism. We also hear an excerpt from an Electronic Intifada mini-documentary called Why Anti-Zionism is Not Anti-Semitism.

Golden oldies (60s, 70s, 80s, 90s)

Radio Curious revisits a conversation with Mary Catherine Bateson, author of ““Full Circles: Overlapping Lives, Culture and Generation in Transition. Do we really know the people around us? Our children? Our family? Our friends? Or are we strangers in our own community? Mary Catherine Bateson, the author of a book entitled, “Full Circles: Overlapping Lives, Culture and Generation in Transition,” believes that we are strangers. She describes us as immigrants in time, rather than space.In this interview from the archives of Radio Curious, recorded in April 2000, we visit with Mary Catherine Bateson, the daughter of two distinguished anthropologists, Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson. The book Mary Catherine Bateson recommends is “Ithaka: A Daughter’s Memoir of Being Found,“ by Sarah Saffian. Originally Broadcast: April 17, 2000.

A weekly 30 minute review of international news and opinion, recorded from a shortwave radio and the internet. With times, frequencies, and websites for listening at home. 3 files- Highest quality broadcast, regular broadcast, and slow-modem streaming. Germany, France 24, Japan, and Cuba.

New Celtpunk from Australia! You've Got A Friend down under with The Cloverhearts. Haggis X-1test fire Arthur's Gold and we spin new Tiller's Folly at the Far End Of The Road. Contemporary Celtic comes home to Celt In A Twist each week with Patricia Fraser.

Sweet spins for you this week starting with a double serving of Turkish Delights from Altin Gun and Umut Adan and Zabanis, Vancouver's bhangra bangers En Karma take us from Surrey to London, where British R&B singer Rosie Love is Burning Down The House, and new music from Bahia, Brazil by Spok. It's only logical that you listen in. World Beat Canada Radio.

This episode is a talk by Gabriel Rockhill to mark the publication of his new book, titled “Who Paid the Pipers of Western Marxism?” For Rockhill, an American philosopher, writer, cultural critic, and Professor of Philosophy at Villanova University, the term "Western Marxism" is not simply a geographic label or a neutral academic category. IInstead it denotes an ideological formation that depoliticizes Marxism and detaches it from revolutionary struggle, transforming it into a politically defanged cultural-philosophical discourse. In his view, Western universities, foundations, cultural institutions, Cold War anti-communism, and state and corporate funding structures all helped shape a form of Marxism that was safe, non-revolutionary, compatible with liberal capitalist societies, and “critical” but not politically threatening. His goal is to redirect Marxist theory back toward revolutionary praxis, global anti-imperialist movements, and material political struggle. Gabriel Rockhill spoke on December 11, 2025 in a panel discussion sponsored by Critical Theory Workshop.

First Half: In the first half of the episode, we discuss the implications for the MAGA voter base of Trump’s immigration policy and its effect on the job market. We also discuss how Trump and other conservatives hide racism behind their proximity to Black conservatives and how this phenomenon is mutually beneficial to them. Second Half: The second half of the show sees us discussing a new trend of MAGA Christians referring to empathy as ‘sinful’ and ‘toxic’ as a way to provide cover for their extreme beliefs. We also discuss the shifting trends in Pew Research data of Black Americans over the last quarter-century and discuss the implications.

A look at some of the parody records put out as part of the Beatles craze some 60 years ago...some groovy 60s dance grooves of a Watusi dance style and it will become very clear why we what to play a particular song this week, but you have to follow along to find out.

After Four Years of Ukraine War and Nearly 2 Million Casualties, Prospects for Peace are Uncertain; Trump Regime’s Massive Buildout of Immigrant Concentration Camps Meets Local Resistance; In Second Term, Trump Acts to Demolish America’s Multiracial Democracy.

Craig Steven Wilder, talks about “Ebony & Ivy: Race, Slavery, and the Troubled History of America's Universities,” which uncovers the truth about race, slavery and the academy. Slavery funded colleges, built campuses, and paid professors. In an excerpt from his talk on “Communism and Jeffersonian Democracy” Avakian talks about the myth of Jefferson's ideal society and the reality of slavery that was its backbone and continues to influence and shape America.