S2/E3: Death by Welfare with China Mills

In this episode we are joined by Nancy Doyle, Chief Research Officer at Genius Within and Charlie Eckton who is an independent Business Psychologist at Occ Psychs. We have a broad conversation about UK politics, the far right riots and how we can better connect and understand each other. Links https://geniuswithin.org https://www.occpsychs.co.uk Summary This podcast series was produced in partnership Genius Within - an organisation  dedicated to helping neurodistinct individuals access their inner genius and be at their best at work. Genius Within is both a neurodivergent led and owned business.  

In this episode we are joined by Nancy Doyle, Chief Research Officer at Genius Within and Charlie Eckton who is an independent Business Psychologist at Occ Psychs. We have a broad conversation about politics, the neurodiversity movement and how we can have more productive conversations about disability. Links https://geniuswithin.org https://www.occpsychs.co.uk Summary This podcast series was produced in partnership Genius Within - an organisation  dedicated to helping neurodistinct individuals access their inner genius and be at their best at work. Genius Within is both a neurodivergent led and owned business.

During a deadly dawn raid by a Kenyan paramilitary squad, an innocent Muslim man, Omar Faraj, was brutally murdered. In the final episode of the series, Namir Shabibi sets out to find those responsible for this extrajudicial killing. The paramilitary squad is, we discover, part of America’s post-9/11 covert War on Terror infrastructure. Following the death squad from Mombasa’s muslim neighbourhoods to the ‘secret’ Recce military complex miles away in rural Ruiru all the way to the CIA’s headquarters in Virginia, we hear how it was developed, funded, equipped and supported by the United States. Across conversations with former Kenyan parliamentarians, ex-American security forces personnel, academic experts and local activists, including the Chair of ‘Muslims for Human Rights,’ Khelef Khalifa, Shabibi exposes the global War on Terror’s brutal underbelly: a project designed to evade accountability, while terrorising Muslim populations in Kenya and beyond.    Useful Links  Center for Constitutional Rights (USA): https://ccrjustice.org/ Muslims for Human Rights (Kenya): https://www.facebook.com/UTETEZI/ UNREDACTED (UK): https://unredacted.uk/ Further Reading William Daugherty. Executive Secrets: Covert Action and the Presidency (Lexington: Kentucky UP, 2004).  Loch K. Johnson. The Third Option: Covert Action and American Foreign Policy (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2022).  Namir Shabibi. “Revealed: The CIA and MI6’s secret war in Kenya,” Declassified UK, 28 August 2020, https://declassifieduk.org/revealed-the-cia-and-mi6s-secret-war-in-kenya/. Namir Shabibi & Jack Watling. “Britain’s Covert War in Yemen: A VICE News Investigation,” 7 April 2016, https://www.vice.com/en/article/8x3enb/britains-covert-war-in-yemen-a-vice-news-investigation.  Bio Namir Shabibi is a visiting lecturer and doctoral candidate at Westminster University, researching covert paramilitary action in the “War on Terror.” He also leads the University’s Working Group on Telecoms, Spyware and Surveillance. As an investigative journalist, Namir has published reports for the BBC, the Bureau and VICE, among others, and now regularly contributes to Declassified UK. He previously worked for Reprieve, and the International Committee of the Red Cross in Darfur and Guantánamo Bay. This episode was co-developed with Claire Lauterbach, whose support with additional research into music, sounds and archival materials were integral to its production.   Voiceovers: Claire Lauterbach and Chris Alger  

Sitting at the edge of the notorious ‘Western Balkan Route,’ Bihac’s Borici Temporary Reception Centre is witness to some of Europe’s worst border violence. Only a few kilometres from the Bosnian-Croatian border that separates the Western Balkans from the European Union, migrants find themselves stuck; arrested, tortured and pushed back over and over again by Croatian police. But within Borici, they also find themselves part of this building’s 75-year history. Borici is a place where communities have always found shelter: against fascism, against civil war and siege, against post-war abandonment, and now against fortress Europe. Benedetta Zocchi is guided through Borici’s many incarnations by local historians, Asmir Piralic and Almir Kurtovic, human rights activist, Silvia Maraone, and local volunteer, artist and activist, Adem Hajdarevic.  Useful Links Border Violence Monitoring Network: https://borderviolence.eu/ IPSIA (Institute for Peace, Development and Innovation ACLI) Bihac: https://www.ipsia-acli.it/notizie/itemlist/tag/bihac.html Radio Elsewhere: https://www.radioelsewheres.net/ Further Reading  Barbara Beznec & Andrej Kurnik. “Old Routes, New Perspectives: A Postcolonial Reading of the Balkan Route,” movements 5:1 (2020), pp. 34-54.  Marta Mitrovic et al. (eds). The Dark Sides of Europeanisation. Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and the EUropean Border Regime (Belgrade: Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung, 2020). Bene Zocchi. “The Game: Ritualized Exhaustion and Subversion on the Western Balkan Route,” Journal of Borderlands Studies (2023), pp. 1-21.  Bene Zocchi. “Contesting the EU Border: :Lessons and Challenges from the Bosnian Frontier,” Postcolonial Studies 26:1 (2023), pp. 165-182.  Bio Benedetta Zocchi is a border and migration researcher and a humanitarian development consultant. She holds a PhD in Political Science from Queen Mary University, where she wrote about border struggles and resistances in Bihac. Her work sits at the intersection of decolonial thinking and activist scholarship and she has contributed to several academic and advocacy projects across and beyond the Balkans.

When a dam on the Tigris burst in 2018, waters rushed towards Amed, Turkey’s largest predominantly Kurdish city. In its aftermath, the Turkish state claimed there were no casualties. Speaking with environmental justice campaigners and farmers (Samed Uçaman, Doğan Hatun and Zeki Kanay), Eray Çaylı reveals how this claim was based on dodgy accounting. Delving into the depths of this case, he explores Turkey’s long history of using water as a tool of war and treating Kurdistan as a laboratory for resource extraction. But, as we’ll hear from conversations with Amed residents like Berivan Arslan, these riverbanks are also fertile sites of struggle against the tide of Turkish state violence.   Useful Links Amed Ecology Association: https://x.com/Ekolojidernek?t=Epz5LkL0-yvwYUmUH5kbzQ&s=09 Coordination Council of Amed-based Professional Organizations: https://x.com/Amedikk?t=UwLb2R72f0soPzMpJntY8g&s=09 Turkey’s State of Emergency (Documentary on the "commune field"):  https://youtu.be/v11PuSvpaUY?si=vWYSphqOfTb6_o9A Further Reading Zeynep S. Akıncı, Arda Bilgen, Antònia Casellas, & Joost Jongerden. “Development Through Design: Knowledge, Power, and Absences in the Making of Southeastern Turkey,” Geoforum 114 (2020), pp. 181–188.  Eray Çaylı. “The Aesthetics of Extractivism: Violence, Ecology, and Sensibility in Turkey’s Kurdistan,” Antipode 53:5 (2021), pp. 1377–1399. Eray Çaylı. “Contemporary art and the geopolitics of extractivism in Turkey's Kurdistan,” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 46:4 (2021), pp. 929–943.  Anıl Olcan & Zozan Pehlivan. “Wildfires in Mount Cudi and the Ecological, Ideological, Political, and Historical Dimensions of Forest Fires: Turkey's Destruction of the Kurdish Environment,” Jadaliyya, 30 September 2020 https://www.jadaliyya.com/Details/41791/Turkey’s-destruction-of-the-Kurdish-Environment-WILDFIRES-IN-MOUNT-CUDI-AND-THE-ECOLOGICAL,-IDEOLOGICAL,-POLITICAL-AND-HISTORICAL-DIMENSIONS-OF-FOREST-FIRES    Bio  Eray Çaylı is a researcher and teacher of spatial politics and culture in Istanbul, London, Hamburg, and Amed. He regularly collaborates with Amed-based independent organisations such as the Architects' Chamber and the artist-run space Loading. His books include Victims of Commemoration: The Architecture and Violence of Confronting the Past (2022), Architectures of Emergency in Turkey: Heritage, Displacement, Catastrophe (2021), and Climate Aesthetics: Essays on Anthropocene Art and Architecture (2020).  Voiceovers: Maia Holtermann Entwistle

In 2005 blowouts occurred at Bangladesh’s Tengratila gas field operated by Canada’s Niko Resources Ltd. Toxins leached into the surrounding environment, devastating local habitats. Niko pled guilty to bribery charges related to Tengratila in 2011, but it had already sued Bangladesh’s government for losses at an international arbitration tribunal. What the hell is international corporate arbitration? The opaque legal wranglings of this case reveal the invisible infrastructure of international investment law, its colonial inheritances, and how companies shirk criminal liability for corporate negligence and corruption. Paul Gilbert, this episode’s host, speaks to leading Global South arbitrator and academic Muthucumuraswamy Sornarajah, legal scholar Gus van Harten and Catherine Coumans from Mining Watch Canada.  Useful Links Bangladesh Working Group on Ecology and Development: https://bwged.blogspot.com/ ISDS Platform: Resources for Movements: https://isds.bilaterals.org/ National Committee to Protect Oil, Gas, Mineral Resources, Power and Ports: https://ncbd.org/ Website : https//materialcrimes.com/ Further Reading  Paul Robert Gilbert. ‘National Resources, Resistance, and the Afterlives of the New International Economic Order in Bangladesh,” International Development Policy, 12 June 2023.  Kamal Hossain. “Permanent Sovereignty over Natural Resources,” in Legal Aspects of the New International Economic Order, pp. 33-43 (London: Bloomsbury Academic Collections, 1980).  Frederico Ortino. “The Public Interest as Part of Legitimate Expectations in Investment Arbitration: Missing in Action?” in Charles Brower et al. (eds), By Peaceful Means: International Adjudication And Arbitration  (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2022).    Muthucumuraswamy Sornarajah. “On Fighting for Global Justice: The role of a Third World International Lawyer,” Third World Quarterly 37:11 (2016), pp. 1972–1989.   Bio   Paul Robert Gilbert is a Senior Lecturer in International Development at the University of Sussex. This episode was made possible by those whose voices can be heard in this episode, as well as conversations with members of Bangladesh Environmental Lawyers Association, Bangladesh Working Group on Ecology and Development, and the National Committee to Protect Oil, Gas, Mineral Resources, Power & Ports.

On Tothill Street, in the heart of London’s Whitehall, sits Caxton House, home to the Department for Work and Pensions. The DWP administers the UK’s welfare system, a key infrastructure of everyday life. For many, the DWP determines if they have enough money to eat, stay warm, power medical equipment - to live. For many, it has also become synonymous with suicide. In collaboration with activists and scholars Stella Dadzie, Imogen Day, John Pring, and Rick Burgess, in this episode, China Mills (from Healing Justice London) describes the grinding bureaucratic crimes committed as the DWP sought to force disabled people into work. This painful story is also one of power. We’ll hear how disabled people and people of colour have fought tirelessly to expose the true scale of this crime - and get justice.  Useful Links *Caring for ourselves and each other when the state tells us that we don’t matter is a radical act. We hope you find these resources useful.* Deaths by Welfare Project podcast (including BSL interpretation and captions): https://healingjusticeldn.org/deaths-by-welfare-project/  Disability News Service: https://www.disabilitynewsservice.com/advice-and-information/    DPAC (Disabled People Against Cuts): https://dpac.uk.net/ Welfare State violence: a feature, not a bug with Stella Dadzie, Tumu Johnson, Derica Shields & China Mills:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6nJNJzm53pg&t=1564s Website : https://materialcrimes.com/ Further Reading  Deaths by Welfare Project timeline of evidence https://deathsbywelfare.org/   China Mills and John Pring. “Weaponising Time in the War on Welfare: Slow Violence and Deaths of Disabled People within the UK's Social Security System,” Critical Social Policy 44:1 (2024), pp. 129-149.  China Mills. “For as Long as the DWP has been Killing People, Disabled Activists have been Fighting Back,” 26 November 2021, https://novaramedia.com/2021/11/26/for-as-long-as-the-dwp-has-been-killing-people-disabled-activists-have-been-fighting-back/   Bio   China Mills is Head of Research at Healing Justice Ldn and leads the Deaths by Welfare project, investigating deaths of disabled people linked to welfare reform and welfare state violence.  Healing Justice Ldn works for and with communities surviving state and systemic oppression, building towards futures rooted in dignity, safety and belonging. Their work is rooted in disability justice, aiming to build cross-disability and cross-movement solidarity, and create life-affirming systems with disabled people at their heart. Ellen Clifford. The War on Disabled People: Capitalism, Welfare and the Making of a Human Catastrophe (London: Bloomsbury, 2022). 

On New Year’s Eve 2019, a drive-by shooting took place in the popular Johannesburg suburb of Melville. Two people were killed and six injured in this shocking and as-yet-unsolved case. Almost unheard-of in this crime-ridden city, the drive-by horrified local communities, provoking surging anxiety in everyone from middle class home- and business owners to student renters and informal workers. To unravel the “true crime” beneath the sensational headlines, Nicky Falkof speaks with Antonette Gouws, who was present at the drive-by, as well as local “character,” Danny Nunes, and filmmaker and academic, Dylan Vally. As we’ll hear in this episode, these unsolved murders expose the convenient fictions of Melville’s multilateral security infrastructure. Local sleuthing about the drive-by also unveils long-held beliefs about race, corruption, violence, insecurity and belonging in this complicated city.  Useful Links  Sophiatown Arts Akademy: https://www.instagram.com/sophiatownartsakademy/ Socio-Economic Rights Institute of South Africa: https://www.seri-sa.org/ Sticky Situations: https://stickysituations.org/ Dlala Nje: https://www.dlalanje.org/about website : https://materialcrimes.com/ Further Reading Zimitri Erasmus. Race Otherwise: Forging a New Humanism for South Africa (Johannesburg: Wits Press, 2017).  Nicky Falkof and Cobus van Staden (eds). Anxious Joburg: The Inner Lives of a Global South City (Johannesburg: Wits Press, 2020).  Martin J. Murray. City of Extremes: The Spatial Politics of Johannesburg (Durham: Duke UP, 2011).  Tanya Zack and Mark Lewis, Wake Up, This is Joburg! (Durham: Duke UP, 2023).  Bio  Nicky Falkof is an Associate Professor of Media Studies at Wits University in Johannesburg. She is the author of The End of Whiteness: Satanism and Family Murder In Late Apartheid South Africa (2017) and Worrier State: Risk, Anxiety and Moral Panic in South Africa (2022), and co-editor of Anxious Joburg: The Inner Lives of a Global South City (2020) and Intimacy & Injury: In the Wake of #MeToo in India and South Africa (2022).  Voiceovers: Nkululeko Sibiya

In this episode series producers - Chantelle Lewis, Maia Holterman-Entwistle, Sharri Plonski and the inimitable George ‘Adders’ Ofori-Addo - reflect on the evolution of season two of ‘ Material Crimes.’ We discuss the incredible work of contributors, the arc of infrastructural violence across the episodes and the powerful struggles at the centre of these stories. Season two delves even deeper into the “true crimes” of infrastructure, with upcoming episodes on both the visible, tangible violence of military complexes, broken dams and drive-by shootings and the more insidious yet no less deadly infrastructural violence of bureaucratic welfare, environmental degradation and the complex web of international arbitration. We also discuss how Palestine haunts this season, asking what it means to produce creative and collaborative work during the ongoing genocide and how this year of acute traumas has shaped our thinking about Material Crimes. Useful Links https://materialcrimes.com/

Material Crimes returns with a brand new series. Material Crimes is brought to you by Surviving Society Productions. Executively Produced by Dr Chantelle Jessica Lewis George Ofori - Addo Sharri Plonski Maia Holtermann-Entwistle Design by Evelyn Miller Edited by George Ofori - Addo