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VIOLENCE
He has been described as ‘the Elvis of Critical theory’, once ran as ran for the Presidency of his home country Slovenia, and is feted as one of the world’s greatest living cultural philosophers…this week on Thinking Allowed Laurie Taylor talks to Slavoj Žižek about his latest work, Violence. Is the world becoming a more violent place? Why is some violence more palatable than others? What underlies seemingly random riots and mayhem that sporadically erupt around the world? Žižek has ideas that address the violence of modern life and a few victims of his own as he blames many of the humanity’s upheavals on the ‘humanitarian’s’ who claim to be helping.

ARAB TELEVISION
Naomi Sakr is Reader in Communication in the School of Media, Arts and Design at the University of Westminster, and Director of the Arab Media Centre there. She talks to Laurie about her new book, Arab Television Today which looks at the impact of Satellite broadcasting and Al Jazeera on the strictly controlled state broadcasters of the Middle East.