On Sept 26th 2003, Palestinian Intellectual Edward Said passed away after a long battle with leukemia. We remember Professor Said by featuring an interview he did about his seminal work, Orientalism.
Later in the program, we speak with Golden Thread Productions’ Founding Artistic Director Torange Yeghiazarian and International artist Hafiz Karmali about the play, NIGHT OVER ERZINGA.
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As the 10th anniversary of the 911 attacks approaches, a report points out a handful of charitable groups involved in $42.6 million dollar campaign to fund Islamophobia. We talk to journalist and author Max Blumenthal who has investigated these organizations relationships with right wing Zionists group in the U.S. Later in the program we bring present the second part of our interview with a famed Algerian cartoonist.
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With the arrival of Gaddafi’s family in Algeria, we turn our attention to Libya’s neighbor to the west, Algeria. We speak with Azzedine Layachi the professor of government and politics at St. John University in New York. We also speak with Algeria’s leading cartoonist, about his colleague Ali Farzad, who was brutally beaten by government thugs on the streets of Damascus.
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This week on Voices of The Middle East and North Africa, we revisit the situation in Libya. We speak with Libyan Professor Ali Ahmida from the University of New England and professor Gilbert Achcar who teaches at the School of Oriental and African Studies. We will also speak to the Guardian’s Africa correspondent, David Smith, about the challenges of reporting from the Libyan capital. Also tonight, the second half of a conversation we had with Egyptian actor and movie director Khaled Abol Naga about his award-wwinning feature film, “Microphone.”
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This week on Voices of the Middle East and North Africa we look at the political situation in Syria as it intensifies as the revolt against Assad’s government spreads to different parts of the country. We speak with Syrian-born political scientist, Professor Bassam Haddad who has just returned from a trip to the region, about the current developments in Syria and what they might mean for the country’s future. Later on in the program, Voices of the Middle East and North Africa contributor Professor Samera Esmeir will be speaking with Egyptian actor and producer Khaled Abol Naga about the award winning feature film Microphone which explores the underground music scene in Alexandria, Egypt.
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This week on Voices of the Middle East and North Africa, we talk about democracy in the MENA region; from Tunisia to Egypt, Syria to Iran, to Yemen and Bahrain and Libya. Does this concept extend to Israel and Palestine? Can democracy be reconciled with colonialism or is that a contradiction in terms? We speak with prominent Israeli scholar Dr. Ilan Pappe who in his latest book “Out of The Frame” examines this question in depth. He recounts his political evolution from staunch Zionist as a youngster to liberated humanist as an adult. Ilan Pappe is a long time activist and is a professor of history at the University of Exeter. He is the Co-Director of the Exeter Center for Ethno-Political Studies and director of the European Center for Palestine Studies Center. He is the author of the best selling “The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine”, “A History of Modern Palestine”, and “The Israel Palestine Question.”
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This week on Voices of The Middle East and North Africa we will be looking at Turkey’s expanding role in the Middle East and North Africa. We will be speaking with Dr. Karem Oktem, a research fellow at the European Studies Center of Saint Anthony’s College about Turkey’s foreign policy in the Middle East and North Africa. Later on in the program, VOMENA producer Shuka Kalantari will speak with Iranian-American author, Firoozeh Kashani of Penn State University about her debut novel ‘Martyrdom Street.’
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The revolutionary spirit endures in Egypt as thousand of protesters stay camped out at Tahrir square for the second week in a row. In response to nationwide protests and the slow pace of reform Egypt’s Prime Minister, Essam Sharaf has fired several of his top ministers.
We continue our conversation with leading Egyptian activist and journalist Hossam El Hamalawy about the prospects for the revolution to flourish and bring about real change.
And in the summer of 1988, over 5000 political prisoners in Iran were executed and dumped into shallow graves in Khavaran cemetery on the outskirts of the capital, Tehran in what was a pre planned and systematic campaign. We will be speaking with Professor Shahla Talebi of Arizona State University and a former political prisoner about her memoir, ‘Ghosts of Revolution: Rekindled Memories of Imprisonment in Iran.’
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This week on Voices of the Middle East and North Africa the revolutionary spirit continues in Egypt as thousands of protesters camped out in Tahrir Square for the sixth day in a row. We speak with leading Egyptian activist and journalist Hossam El Hamalawy about the current protests in Egypt and what the prospects are for the revolution to flourish and bring about real change. We will also talk to Bassam Haddad, co-founder of Jadaliyya online magazine and director of the Middle East Program at George Mason University for an update on the Syrian uprising that started in mid-March.
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