Voices of the Middle East

Dec, 2011 Show;

2011-12-10T19:09:00.001-08:00

Arab Spring 2011, an end of the year overview.

To listen to this show please click here!

An interview with Nada Alwadi, a Bahraini journalist and researcher with the International Center for Non-violent Conflicts, and with Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya a sociologist and correspondent for Global Research, a Canadian research institute. Nada was in Bahrain during the uprising and Mahdi was in Libya during the NATO bombardment.

Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya, Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization was granted The Prize of the Mexican Press Club (Club de Periodistas de Mexico) for his outstanding achievements and writings as a War Correspondent for the Independent media.

Nazemroaya was a witness to the "Arab Spring" in action in North Africa. While on the ground in Libya during the NATO bombing campaign, he reported out of Tripoli for several Western media. He was Special Correspondent for Global Research and Pacifica's investigative radio program Flashpoints, broadcast out of Berkeley, California.

Nov. 2011 Show;

2011-12-10T18:41:00.001-08:00

Diplomatic Stalemate and Democratic Revolts: Making Sense of a Middle East in Transition;

To listen to this recording please click here!

Rami G. Khouri (www.ramikhouri.com), editor-at-large of the Beirut-based Daily Star and an award-winning journalist and scholar, talked at Westminster Presbyterian Church in Portland. Rami is a Palestinian-Jordanian and US citizen whose family resides in Beirut, Amman, and Nazareth. He is the Director of the Issam Fares Institute of Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut. Mr. Khouri is an internationally syndicated political columnist and author. Rami was a visiting scholar at Stanford University in October 2006, and in November 2006, he was the co-recipient of the Pax Christi International Peace Award for his efforts to bring peace and reconciliation to the Middle East.
This is the Q&A after the lecture that Mr. Khouri answered many questions that explain current situation in the region.

September 2011 Show;

2011-09-15T20:20:00.000-07:00

Libya after the fall of Tripoli

program date:
Wed, 09/14/2011
To Listen to this interview please click here!

After 6 months of heavy bombardment by and military assistance from NATO and some Arab countries Libyan capital Tripoli fell and now is under the control of the Libyan Transitional National Council. Countries from all across the world have recognized the TNC as the only representative of the people of Libya, but the struggle is not over. Several cities are still in control of the forces loyal to colonel Ghadafi and the African Union is still refusing to recognize what has replaced one of the friendlier leaders of the African nations.

In this program Goudarz Eghtedari of the Voices of the Middle East interviews Professor Stephen Zunes, University of San Francisco, an authority in the Middle East Studies stephenzunes.org, and Mahdi Darius Nazemoroaya, a sociologist and research associate with the Center for Research on Globalization, www.globalresearch.ca , who has been reporting from within the country for the past 3 months on dispatch by Global Research and Pacifica.

August 2011 Show;

2011-08-12T18:54:00.000-07:00

Iranian Opposition Group spends millions of $$$ on US Politicians to be removed from the State Dept. terrorists list.
Program date:
Fri, 08/12/2011

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Huffington Post, Christian Science Monitor are reporting that an Iranian opposition group, Mujahedin Khalgh Organization of Iran (aka MKO, MEK, PMOI, NCRI,...) has spent millions of dollars booking American and European politicians to support their campaign to reverse European Union and State Department's decision to list them as a foreign terrorist organization. Voices of the Middle East's Goudarz Eghtedari interviews Jamal Abdi, policy director with National Iranian American Council (NIAC) and Dr. Evan Siegel, NJ City University about MKO and its campaign over the years against Shah's regime and now the Islamic Republic and its evolution from a marxist Islamist organization to now aligning with neo-cons in the US.

June 2011 Show;

2011-06-09T21:15:00.000-07:00

A dialogue with Dr. Yahya Abdul-Rahman on the topic of his lecture in Oregon "The Theology of the Other in Islam: An American Muslim Perspective" and Islamic Banking system, a concept of interest-free financing.

Friday June 10, 2011 at 9 AM
KBOO 90.7 FM
Click here for Podcast!

Dr. Yahia Abdul-Rahman is author of "The Art of Islamic Banking and Finance" and author of many papers on Islamic Financing & Islamic Financial Instruments, Dr. Abdul-Rahman has more than 37 years of experience in International Banking and Project Financing. This includes having been a member of the Founding Board of Directors of a U.S. bank in Houston, Texas and Chairman of the Resources International Corporation, also in Houston. In 1987, Dr. Abdul-Rahman founded the American Finance House- LARIBA in Pasadena, California. Specializing in interest-free lending, the American Finance House is among the most respected names in finance in the world and is frequently profiled in the domestic and international media.

May 2011 Show;

2011-05-21T22:16:00.001-07:00

Program: Voices of the Middle East
Program date: Fri, 05/13/2011
This is recording of an interview with Nader Hashemi and Danny Postel about their new book: "The People Reloaded: The Green Movement and the Struggle for Iran's Future." Second part of the show is a reflection by Barry Amundson the survived brother of a 9-11 victim on killing of Usama Bin Laden.
Please Click here to listen to this program on-demand!

Arab rebellion continues and while West picks and chooses what to support and what not, people in both sides are following the dreams for a democratic future in the region. <--break->Some argue that Green movement in Iran after the elections of 2009 ignited the post modern indigenous uprisings in Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen, Bahrain, Libya, and now Syria. My guests are of the believe that new generation of the Middle Eastern are fed-up with autocracy and are in pursuit of a anti-colonial, yet modernized system of governance across the region.

Nader Hashemi teaches Middle East politics at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver, and he is the co-author with Danny Postel of "The People Reloaded: The Green Movement and the Struggle for Iran's Future." Danny Postel is the author of “Reading Legitimation Crisis in Tehran: Iran and the Future of Liberalism (Paradigm)”.

This month, US was able to attack and Kill al-qaeda leader Usama Bin Laden in the Pakistani town of Abotabad. The incident ended a self proclaimed decade of war against terror as was defined by US administrations since 2001, while President Obama now can claim the victory on behalf of victims. I have interviewed Barry Amundson a local member of the progressive community whose brother was killed during the 9-11 attack on Pentagon in Washington DC. Barry talks about his personal view of the killing of UBL and his right as survived brother of a victim of the crime the terrorists of 9-11 committed.

April 2011 Show;

2011-04-10T09:57:00.000-07:00

program: Voices of the Middle East
program date: Fri, 04/08/2011
This is recording of an interview with Nadia Abraibesh and Pepe Escobar about the situations in Libya and the rest of the Middle East and North Africa.

Please click here to listen to this program!

Nadia Abraibesh traveled to her father’s homeland after graduation from Linfield College to meet her Libyan family, and found herself in the middle of the uprising. She joined anti-government rallies and documented protests and atrocities with photos and interviews. Two weeks ago, Nadia and a male relative departed Benghazi for the 17-hour trip to the Cairo airport, and she is now safe at home in Portland.

Pepe Escobar (born 1954) is a journalist based in Sao Paulo, Brazil. He writes a column entitled The Roving Eye for Asia Times Online and is analyst and correspondent for The Real News Network.

An extreme traveler, Pepe's nose for news has taken him to all parts of the globe. He was in Afghanistan and interviewed the military leader of the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance, Ahmad Shah Masoud, a couple of weeks before his assassination (Masoud: From warrior to statesman , Sep 11, 2001). Two weeks before September 11, 2001, while Pepe was in the tribal areas of Pakistan, ATol published his prophetic piece, Get Osama! Now! Or else ... (Aug 30, 2001). Pepe was one of the first journalists to reach Kabul after the Taliban's retreat, and more recently he has explored and reported from Iraq, Iran, Central Asia, US and China.

To follow Pepe's articles on the Great Arab Revolt, please click here.

March 2011 Show;

2011-03-13T18:25:00.000-07:00

Program date: Fri, 03/11/2011
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Popular uprising in the Middle East and North Africa has expanded to Bahrain, Yemen and Libya, but unlike Tunisia and Egypt, people in these countries have faced fierce resistance from the government supporters. While West is considering military interventions or some sort of press for no fly zone over the Libya, US is asking Yemenis people to accept Ali Abdullah Saleh's reform initiatives and calm down the unrests.

I interviewed Professor Ali Ahmida on situations in Libya. Ali Ahmida is a professor and chair of the Department of Political Science at the University of New England, Biddeford, Maine. His specialty is political theory, comparative politics and historical sociology of power, agency and anti-colonial resistance in North Africa, especially modern Libya. He is the author of The Making of Modern Libya: State Formation, Colonization and Resistance (1994) in addition to numerous articles. He is editor of Beyond Colonialism and Nationalism in the Maghrib: History, Culture and Politics (2000).

February 2011 Show;

2011-02-11T23:21:00.000-08:00

Egyptian Revolution Unfold

Friday February 11, 2011
9-10 AM on KBOO 90.7 FM

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Current events in the Middle East and North Africa have captured world attentions. Ben Ali and Husni Mubarak, the US's allies of 20-30 years in Tunisia and Egypt are under pressure to leave or have already submitted to the will of the people. What happens there has impact on other countries of the region. Please join me in talking with 3 scholars of the field: Dr. Sherifa Zuhur, Mike Ghouse and Dr. Peter Bechtold in discussing these issues live on KBOO.

Sherifa Zuhur Masoud Ph.D.:
Dr. Zuhur is the Executive Director of the Institute of Middle Eastern, Islamic and Strategic Studies, and Associate Editor for Contemporary Conflicts and International Systems, Review of Middle East Studies and the Assistant Editor, Encyclopedia of U.S. Middle East Wars. ABC-Clio. She has two Ph.D. in History and Political Science from UCLA.

Mike Ghouse:
Mike Ghouse is a speaker, thinker and a writer. He runs the Foundation for Pluralism championing the idea of co-existence through respecting and accepting the otherness of other and is committed to nurturing the pluralistic ideals embedded in Islam through the World Muslim Congress. www.MikeGhouse.net

Peter Bechtold, Ph.D.:
A native of Heidelberg, Germany, Bechtold came to Oregon as a teenager to visit two uncles. He liked the area, so when fall 1956 rolled around, he entered Portland State College. At PSU, Bechtold earned a bachelor's in math and a minor in Middle East studies, before going to Princeton on a full fellowship. There he received two Ph.D.s, one in Near East studies and one in political science. to study culture, customs, religion, politics, and other issues before being dispatched abroad. For almost 30 years, Peter Bechtold '61 taught at the U.S. State Department's Foreign Service Institute in Washington, D.C. Last year he returned to Portland State as director of the Middle East Studies Center, where he served for one year.

January 2011 Show;

2011-01-14T18:21:00.000-08:00

Program date: Fri, 01/14/2011 Click here to listen to this broadcast!
The Palestine Fair Trade Association and Canaan Fair Trade are both a superb form of resistance to Israeli occupation. Farming their own land and the connections with the outside world are empowering our fair trade farmers and gives them hope. I interviewed Dr. Nasser Abufarha about his Fair Trade initiative in Palestinian territories.

December 2010 Show

2010-12-11T18:24:00.000-08:00

Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and Iran
December 10, 2010
For podcast of this interview please Click here!

The situation of human rights in Iran is of concern, because the West is so pre-occupied with the nuclear issue that the question is never raised in the context of the negotiations and/or the confrontation with the Islamic Republic. Two of the groups that face gross discriminations by the government, as well as the society, are religious and sexual minorities. These groups do not threaten the governmental establishment in a po...litical way, but still are subjected to mostly silent violations of the Human Rights. Followers of Baha'i and Jewish faiths are accused of spying for Israel and their loyalty is questioned. Their education and chances for participation in regular life are extremely minimal and in many cases they are denied equal opportunities. The GLBT communities on the other hand are treated as outcasts, both by the society and by the government.

I talked with representatives from both groups in my show 'Voices of the Middle East.' Two members of the Portland Baha'i community will speak about the situation of their community in Iran and the persecution by the government. Later we will hear from a Gay refugee in Portland about Gays in Iran, their involuntary migration to Turkey and finally their resettlement in Portland.

Jacqueline Left Hand Bull (Delahunt) lives in Portland and is the Administrative Officer of an organization that serves 43 native American tribes in the Pacific Northwest with health issues including research, policy, service delivery, and capacity building. She is also the Chairperson of the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States – the elected nine-person body that governs the affairs of the American Bahá’í community in the 48 contiguous states.

Merat Bagha lives in Portland and is the President of Tiba Medical, a small medical device company. Born and raised in Iran, he is a longtime resident of the Pacific Northwest having completed his undergraduate studies at Oregon State University and graduate studies at the University of Washington. In 1981, his mother, Mrs Shidrukh Amirkia Bagha, was arrested in post-revolutionary Iran for hosting a Bahá’í gathering. After a 3 month incarceration in the notorious Evin Prison, she was summarily executed along with 7 members of the Local Spiritual Assembly of Tehran.

Arash is a pseudo name for an Iranian Gay refugee who has lived in Portland for the past 14 months. He has spent 2 years in Turkey before being accepted by US. There are hundreds of sexual minority members among thousands of the Iranian asylum seekers in Turkey waiting for their cases to be processed by UN and western countries. Arash like other refugees who arrived in the past few years is still looking for a descent job and to realize the dream that youth from Iran are hoping for in the USA. If you or anyone you know can offer him and his friends a good job please call the station or contact Goudarz via email at Goudarz@voicesofthemiddleeast.com.

Nov. 2010 Show

2010-11-12T22:52:00.000-08:00

Goudarz Eghtedari interviews Reese Erlich the author of "Conversations With Terrorists: Middle East Leaders on Politics, Violence, and Empire" on Voices of the Middle East.

The second half of the show is an interview with Osamah Khalil about the Israeli settlements in the occupied territories and Obama's attempt to deal with it.

For Podcast of this show click here!

Reese Erlich is a best-selling book author and freelance journalist who writes regularly for the Dallas Morning News, Canadian Broadcasting Corp. Radio and National Public Radio. He has won numerous journalism awards and he was a segment producer on a radio series that won a Peabody award. Erlich was born and raised in Los Angeles. In 1965 he enrolled at the University of California, Berkeley, and later became active in the anti-Vietnam War movement. In October 1967 Erlich and others organized Stop the Draft Week. They were arrested and became known as the "Oakland Seven." In their trial they were acquitted of all charges, being successfully represented by Charles Garry.

Osamah Khalil is co-director of Al-Shabaka, The Palestinian Policy Network. He specializes in Palestinian politics and history, US foreign policy in the Middle East and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

Khalil commented: “Israel's settlement policy perpetuates its occupation of the Palestinian territories and undermines American attempts to resolve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Without American largesse, Israel's occupation could not continue. The US can either broker a final peace accord or it can continue to subsidize settlements -- it cannot do both.”

August 2010 Show

2010-08-14T15:34:00.000-07:00

1953 Coup D'etat in Iran, and BP-CIA's role in it.

August 19th will be the 57th anniversary of a Coup D'etat in Iran that removed democratically elected Prime Minister Dr. Mohammed Mossadegh and brought back the Shah. BP's recent operations in the Gulf of Mexico has brought back the references to the coup and it is time to revisit the history of the Coup once again to better understand what people of Iran felt at the time when a company like BP was instigating regime change and CIA was implementing it.

Click here to listen to this interview!

Ironically I am going to interview Professor Gasiorowski, from Baton Rouge , Louisiana for this issue and premiering of another historical moment in Iran 's history of 1979. I’ll be talking with Professor Gasiorowski about the 1953 Coup, the role of British Petroleum, BP (then known as Anglo-Iranian Oil Company). We will further expand on Mark’s new research about the events prior to Students take over of the US Embassy in Tehran after the revolution of 1979.

Mark Gasiorowski (1954, ) is a professor of Political Science at Louisiana State University . He is an expert in Middle East politics, Third World politics, and U.S. foreign policy. He holds a joint appointment in Louisiana State University's International Studies Program. He has been a Visiting Fellow at St. Antony's College, Oxford University and a Visiting Professor at Tehran University. He has extensively researched on CIA Coup D'etat in Iran of 1953 that removed democratically elected Prime Minister DR. Mossadegh and brought back dictatorship of Shah of Iran. Journalist and academic Stephen Kinzer has called him "the most persistent" of "a small but dedicated group of scholars [who] have devoted considerable effort to uncovering the truth about events surrounding the 1953 coup" in Iran, an event so important (Kinzer believes) it "defined all of subsequent Iranian history and reshaped the world in ways that only now becoming clear."

June 2010 Show!

2010-06-14T15:50:00.000-07:00

Nonviolent Resistance from Iranian Green Movement to the Free Gaza Flotillas

An intriguing dialogue with Professor Ramin Jahanbegloo, University of Toronto
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Ramin Jahanbegloo was born in Tehran , Iran . He has a doctorate in philosophyJahanbegloo's intellectual activity focuses on fostering constructive dialogue between divergent cultures. He has written numerous books and articles in Persian, English and French on the subject of Western philosophy and modernity. from Sorbonne University in Paris , France where he lived for twenty years. He was a post-doctorate fellow in Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard University.

Upon returning to Tehran , he was appointed head of the Contemporary Philosophy Department of the Cultural Research Center . In his efforts to promote dialogue, he has interviewed scholars and intellectuals from all over the world, among them George Steiner, Noam Chomsky, Ashis Nandy and the Dalai Lama. In recent years, he invited Richard Rorty, Timothy Garton Ash, Antonio Negri, and Michael Ignatieff and other Western intellectuals to Iran .

In late April 2006, on his way to an international conference in Brussels, Jahanbegloo was arrested by the Iranian authorities. On May 3, Iran judiciary branch officials confirmed that he was arrested and sent to Evin Prison. According to some sources, he was accused of spying. On August 30, 2006, Jahanbegloo was released from prison after four months of confinement.

In 2006 and 2007 he was Rajni Kothari Professor of Democracy at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies in New Delhi, India . In January, 2008 he returned to the University of Toronto as a professor of Political Science, Massey College Scholar-at-Risk, and Research Fellow at the Centre for Ethics at Trinity College. In 2009, he wrote a book, Talking Architecture: Raj Rewal In Conversation With Ramin Jahanbegloo. The book was inaugurated on 19th December, 2009 in New Delhi , India.

Ramin Jahanbegloo’s publications, in addition to numerous papers, include following books:
Talking Architecture: Raj Rewal In Conversation With Ramin Jahanbegloo (2009)
The Clash of Intolerances (2007)
Talking India : Conversations with Ashis Nandy (2006)
Iran: Between Tradition and Modernity (Global Encounters) (2004)
Gandhi: Aux sources de la non-violence: Thoreau, Ruskin, Tolstoi (Le temps et les mots)
Conversations with Isaiah Berlin (2000)

May 2010 Show

2010-05-19T11:39:00.000-07:00

Executions in Iran
Program aired on Fri, 05/14/2010
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On May 9th 2010 Islamic Republic of Iran executed five political prisoners at Evin, Tehran's notorious prison. At least four of the victims -- Farzad Kamangar, Ali Haydarian, Farhad Vakili, and Shirin Alam-Houli -- were ethnic Kurds. The fifth victim was Mehdi Eslamian.

Their court cases were heard behind closed doors. The work of their attorneys was constantly obstructed, or ignored altogether. Neither they nor the families of the victims knew about the executions until after they had taken place. Even the dead bodies of the victims have not been turned over to their families.

Kamangar's case, which attracted international attention, is particularly heart-breaking. He was 35 years old and married. A highly popular teacher in Kurdish villages, he was also a poet and author. He was sentenced to death in February 2008, and his family had lived in agony ever since. In a letter to his students from prison two years ago, Kamangar wrote, "I miss you all. From behind these tall walls, I wake up with you, laugh with you, and go to sleep with you.... I wish I could play soccer with the first graders, and you, with the dream of becoming another Ronaldo, could score past your teacher, the goalie, and then celebrate it."

An interview with Dr. Hadi Ghaemi, International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, and Behrouz a Kurdish-American activist.

April 2010 Show

2010-04-11T20:42:00.000-07:00

For a Podcast of this show, Please Click Here!

The first-ever summer Youth Olympic Games will be held in Singapore from Oct. 12-25. Some 3,600 athletes, ages 14 to 18, will compete in 26 sports. Iran's girls' squad was to be among the six teams competing in the girls' soccer competition.... No longer.

The Federation Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) ruled that the Iranian girls may not play while wearing the hijab. In fact the version of the hijab the Iranian girls would wear is an unobtrusive head-covering that interferes neither with play nor with anyone's safety, FIFA's concerns notwithstanding. Thailand will replace the Iranian team. For a background analysis on this story, please read Pierre Tristam's article here!

Please read an excellent paper on the issue of Hijab and limits to the Human Rights to Religion, by Professor Paul Morris, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand -> For this paper click here!

Please join me when I discuss this issue with Golbarg Bashi, Linda Lowen and Pierre Tristam;
9:00 AM
Friday April 9, 2010
KBOO 90.7 FM

Golbarg Bashi is an Iranian Studies Professor at Rutgers University. She was born in Iran, raised in Sweden, and educated in Britain. She holds a First Class B.A. (Honors) in Middle Eastern Studies from Manchester University, a M.Sc. in Women's Studies from Bristol University and has recently completed her doctoral thesis on a feminist critique of the human rights discourse in Iran. Her research interests include the theories and practices of human rights in Iran, modern Iranian social and intellectual history, and women's rights movements in Iran and in a comparative context.

Pierre Tristam is an editorial writer and columnist at the Daytona Beach, Fla., News-Journal, and editor of Candide’s Notebooks and a contributor on Middle East issues at about.com

A former radio/TV broadcast journalist, Linda Lowen has won national awards for her coverage of women's issues over the past decade. She's been featured in the New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, and on NPR's Talk of the Nation, and she is a commentator for 51% The Women's Perspective, a nationally-syndicated show heard on public broadcasting, ABC Radio Network, and Armed Forces Radio stations.

During her career as a broadcast journalist, she created, produced, and hosted women's issues radio and television programs for NPR and PBS station affiliates including the award-winning talk show Women's Voices. Linda is also a member of the Women's Media Center Progressive Women's Voices program and the National Cancer Survivor's Day Speaker's Bureau.

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First Half of the show: President Obama's Nuclear Posture Review

For a Podcast of this portion, Please Click Here!

President Obama's Nuclear Posture Review and the success of the policy with regards to the Middle East, an interview with Dr. Flynt Leverett, New America Foundation, Director, Iran Initiative, Senior Research Fellow, American Strategy Program and Director, Geopolitics of Energy Initiative

Flynt Leverett is a leading authority on U.S. foreign policy, the Middle East and the Persian Gulf, and global energy issues. From 1992 to 2003, he had a distinguished career in the U.S. government, serving as Senior Director for Middle East Affairs at the National Security Council, Middle East Expert on the Secretary of State's Policy Planning Staff, and Senior Analyst at the Central Intelligence Agency. He left the Bush administration and government service in the spring of 2003 because of disagreements about Middle East policy and the conduct of the war on terror more generally. He is a consultant to the World Economic Forum's “Gulf Cooperation Council and the World 2025” scenarios project and to the Club of Madrid on global energy issues. He is a peer reviewer for the International Energy Agency's World Energy Outlook.

March 2010 Show

2010-03-11T10:13:00.000-08:00

Voices of the Middle East presents:
Poor record of President Obama when it comes to Israeli’s violation of Human Rights and an analysis of the Islamic non-violence movements,
An interview with Professor Stephen Zunes, University of san Francisco
Friday March 12th
9 Am on KBOO 90.7 FM
For Podscast of this showClick Here!

Dr. Stephen Zunes is a Professor of Politics and International Studies at the University of San Francisco , where he chairs the program in Middle Eastern Studies. A native of North Carolina , Professor Zunes received his PhD. from Cornell University , his M.A. from Temple University and his B.A. from Oberlin College . He has previously served on the faculty of Ithaca College , the University of Puget Sound , and Whitman College . He serves as a senior policy analyst for the Foreign Policy in Focus project of the Institute for Policy Studies, an associate editor of Peace Review, and chair of the academic advisory committee for the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict.

Professor Zunes is the author of scores of articles for scholarly and general readership on Middle Eastern politics, U.S. foreign policy, international terrorism, nuclear nonproliferation, strategic nonviolent action, and human rights. He is the principal editor of Nonviolent Social Movements (Blackwell Publishers, 1999), the author of the highly-acclaimed Tinderbox: U.S. Middle East Policy and the Roots of Terrorism (Common Courage Press, 2003) and co-author (with Jacob Mundy) of the forthcoming Western Sahara: Nationalism, Conflict, and International Accountability (Syracuse University Press.)

February 2010 Show

2010-02-12T10:36:00.000-08:00

Friday March 12, 2010
9-10 AM

For Podcast of this show click here!

Iranian government on Thursday celebrated its 31st anniversary of the Islamic Revolution while mass protests continues. Violent suppresions of the demonstrators related to the Green Movement was apparent all over the country. I talked with Professor Ahmad Sadri about the prospects of a resolution to the 8 month unrests in Iran with a look at Iran's recent nuclear maneuvers and challenges for the Obama Administration.

Ahmad Sadri is Professor of Sociology and James P. Gorter Chair of Islamic World Studies at Lake Forest College. He received his BA and MA degrees at the University of Tehran and his PhD from the New School for Social Research. Sadri is the author of Max Weber’s Sociology of Intellectuals (Oxford University Press 1992, 94) and editor and translator (from Persian) of Reason Freedom and Democracy in Islam (Oxford University Press, 2000) and (from Arabic) Saddam City (Saqi Press, 2002.) Sadri has authored three books in Persian published by Kavir, and Hermes Press, Tehran. He has also functioned as a columnist for Daily Star of Lebanon and a commentator at National Public Radio in Chicago.

December Show 2009.

2009-12-10T15:40:00.000-08:00

Iran and Israel, What is the problem? Do they hate each other, or this is all internal rhetoric?

Friday Dec. 11, 2009
9 AM on KBOO 90.7 fm
Webcast on www.kboo.fm

Listen to this interview with Marsha Cohen and Patrick Disney of NIAC, Click Here!

Dr. Marsha B. Cohen is a Fellow of Florida International University's Middle East Studies Center. Her research focuses on the role of religion in international affairs, particularly in political discourse. She taught for over a decade at FlU, specializing in International Relations of the Middle East and North Africa.. She covers Israel-Iranian relations for TehranBureau, now affiliated with PBS/Frontline and has written for the global news agency InterPress Service (IPS). Her book Lions and Roses: the Politics of Religion in Israel and Iran, is in the process of being edited for publication.

September 2009 Show

2009-09-12T16:20:00.000-07:00

Human Rights Violation in Iran after the Elections
Friday Sep. 11, 2009
KBOO 90.7 fm
Click here to listen to this recording!

An interview with Dr. Hadi Ghaemi of the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran about the situations in Iran in aftermath of the elections fraud and people uprising. Thousands of the regular people and reform activists are still in prison 80 days after the elections. We will also hear about the welcoming ceremonies planned for president Ahmadinejad in New York while he visits the UN general assembly.

Hadi Ghaemi is the director of International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran[1], which is a project of the Dutch Foundation for Human Security in the Middle East. Ghaemi was formerly the Iran and United Arab Emirates researcher in the Middle East and North Africa division of Human Rights Watch.[4] He holds a PhD in Physics.

July 2009 Show

2009-07-12T20:47:00.000-07:00

An interview on sociological analysis of the recent events in Iran with Professor Mahmoud Sadri, Texas Woman's University, and Professor Hossein Farahani, Portland States University, and Professor Ahmad Sadri, Lake Forest College, Chicago.

To listen to this recording, Please click here!

Mahmoud Sadri is a professor of sociology at the Federation of North Texas Area Universities that includes Texas Woman's University, University of North Texas , and A&M University , Commerce. His major interests include Sociology of Religion, Sociology of Culture, and Theoretical Sociology.

Dr. Sadri regularly contributes to popular journals and newspapers in his native country, Iran, and grants interviews to radio and television programs such as BBC, Radio France, Voice of America, and Radio Australia. Also, he writes op. ed pieces for Daily StarDaily Telegraph, Newsweek, and Time have carried interviews, profiles, and quotations from him in the recent years., The Guardian, UK . The New York Times, Fort Worth

For a pre-election prediction of Dr. Sadri Click here!
Professor Sam Hosein Farahani is an International studies visiting scholar at Middle East Studies Center at Portland State University.

Ahmad Sadri is Professor of Sociology and James P. Gorter Chair of Islamic World Studies at Lake Forest College. He received his BA and MA degrees at the University of Tehran and his PhD from the New School for Social Research. Sadri is the author of Max Weber’s Sociology of Intellectuals (Oxford University Press 1992, 94) and editor and translator (from Persian) of Reason Freedom and Democracy in Islam (Oxford University Press, 2000) and (from Arabic) Saddam City (Saqi Press, 2002.) Sadri has authored three books in Persian published by Kavir, and Hermes Press, Tehran. He has also functioned as a columnist for Daily Star of Lebanon and a commentator at National Public Radio in Chicago.

Please Note that the Voices of the Middle East has now moved from Thursday nights to Friday mornings at 9 AM.

June 30, 2009 Talk Show.

2009-06-30T20:59:00.000-07:00

Iranian Green Wave movement for democracy and US Left's skepticism

Why were ellections in Iran rigged? What Iranian Demonstrators want? Is the Green Wave in Iran another CIA staged colour revolution? for some answers KBOO's special talk show host Goudarz Eghtedari interviews Professors Hamid Dabashi and Kaveh Ehsany. Please Click Here to listen to this recording!

Hamid Dahbashi is the Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and
Comparative Literature at Columbia University's Middle East Studies, and Kaveh Ehsani is Professor of International Studies at DePaul University, Chicago and an editor of Middle East Report.

Iranian Elections, the day after...

2009-06-15T12:53:00.000-07:00

An interview with Professor Hamid Dabashi, Columbia University, on the 10th Presidential Elections in Iran.

Click here to listen to this interview!

Born on June 15, 1951 into a working class family in the south-western city of Ahvaz in the Khuzestan province of Iran, Hamid Dabashi received his early education in his hometown and his college education in Tehran, before he moved to the United States, where he received a dual Ph.D. in Sociology of Culture and Islamic Studies from the University of Pennsylvania in 1984, followed by a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard University.

He is the Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia University in New York, the oldest and most prestigious Chair in Iranian Studies. He has also taught and delivered lectures in many North American, European, Arab and Iranian universities.

June 2009 Show

2009-06-10T16:01:00.000-07:00

Reflections on President Obama’s speech in Cairo and upcoming elections in Iran; A live interview with Stephen Zunes, University of San Francisco, and Farideh Farhi, University of Hawaii, Manoa.
Click Here to listen to this show on-demand!

Dr. Stephen Zunes is a Professor of Politics and International Studies at the University of San Francisco , where he chairs the program in Middle Eastern Studies. A native of North Carolina , Professor Zunes received his PhD. from Cornell University , his M.A. from Temple University and his B.A. from Oberlin College . He has previously served on the faculty of Ithaca College , the University of Puget Sound , and Whitman College . He serves as a senior policy analyst for the Foreign Policy in Focus project of the Institute for Policy Studies, an associate editor of Peace Review, and chair of the academic advisory committee for the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict.

Professor Zunes is the author of scores of articles for scholarly and general readership on Middle Eastern politics, U.S. foreign policy, international terrorism, nuclear nonproliferation, strategic nonviolent action, and human rights. He is the principal editor of Nonviolent Social Movements (Blackwell Publishers, 1999), the author of the highly-acclaimed Tinderbox: U.S. Middle East Policy and the Roots of Terrorism (Common Courage Press, 2003) and co-author (with Jacob Mundy) of the forthcoming Western Sahara: Nationalism, Conflict, and International Accountability (Syracuse University Press.)

Dr. Farideh Farhi is an independent researcher and an adjunct professor of political science at the University of Hawaii, Manoa. Her publications include States and Urban-Based Revolutions in Iran and Nicaragua (1990), as well as numerous articles and book chapters on comparative analysis of revolutions, contemporary Iranian politics and foreign policy. Her writings also appear on numerous webzines such as "Informed Comment". I'll interview her about the elections in Iran this Friday and the challenge that President Ahmadinejad is facing with 3 opponents that are gaining ground.

April 2009 Show

2009-04-10T09:45:00.000-07:00

Morocco a look from afar – Literature of North Africa, Religion and the Moroccan Society

An interview with Moroccan author Professor Laila Lalami, UC Riverside
and Professor Kambiz Ghanebasiri, Reed College.

Click here to listen to this show!

Laila Lalami was born and raised in Morocco . She earned her B.A. in English from Université Mohammed V in Rabat , her M.A. from University College , London , and her Ph.D. in linguistics from the University of Southern California . Her work has appeared in The Boston Globe, The Los Angeles Times, The Nation, The New York Times, The Washington Post and elsewhere. She is the recipient of an Oregon Literary Arts grant and a Fulbright Fellowship. She was short-listed for the Caine Prize for African Writing (the “African Booker”) in 2006. Her debut collection of short stories, Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits, was published in the fall of 2005 and has since been translated into Spanish, Dutch, French, Portuguese, Italian, and Norwegian. Her first novel, Secret Son, will be published in the spring of 2009. She is currently Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at the University of California Riverside .

Kambiz GhaneaBassiri was born in Tehran , Iran , and grew up in the United States . He has a B.A. from Claremont McKenna College and an M.A. and Ph.D. from Harvard University . He has taught Islamic studies in the religion and humanities department at Reed College since 2002.

Kambiz was asked by the Ministry of Islamic Affairs and Religious Endowments in Morocco to lead curricular reform efforts at Dar Al Hadith Al Hassania. The Islamic seminary, which has begun teaching non-Islamic religions and non-Islamic languages as well as philosophy and social sciences, asked GhaneaBassiri to direct academic affairs during the 2006-2007 academic years.

Professor Ghanebasiri, a Carnegie Scholar, currently works on his first book "Islam in America".

February 2009 Show

2009-02-12T11:51:00.001-08:00

Iranian Islamic Revolution, 30 years later; Two views from accross the oceans. Goudarz Eghtedari speaks with Ambassador John Limbert

Thursday February 12th, 2009
6-7 PM on KBOO 90.7 fm
Click here to listen to this show on-demand!

February marks the 30th anniversary of the Islamic Revolution in Iran . One of the most significant events in the Middle East in the last half century, it dramatically changed the political balance of power in the region and created one of the US’s greatest foreign policy challenges. The revolution caught all the western intelligence agencies off-guard. The Shah’s monarchy, characterized by President Carter a year earlier as the Island of Tranquility , had disappeared and a revolutionary government unlike anything seen before had taken over the most valuable US ally in the Persian Gulf .

US-Iran relations have regrettably gone from bad to worse over the past 3 decades. During this same period, Iran has gained great influence in the region and is a major player in all Middle East arenas – Iraq and Palestine in particular. Many analysts of foreign affairs today agree that having a normal relationship with Iran is critical if the US goal for stability of the Middle East is to be realized.

Ambassador Limbert first joined the Foreign Service in 1973, and his overseas experience also included tours in Algeria , Djibouti , Iran , Saudi Arabia , and the United Arab Emirates . From 1981 to 1984 he taught Political Science at the U.S. Naval Academy, and in 1991-92 he was a Senior Fellow at Harvard University 's Center for International Affairs. Ambassador Limbert was president of the American Foreign Service Association (2003-2005) and Ambassador to the Islamic Republic of Mauritania (2000-2003).

John Limbert was appointed Distinguished Professor of International Affairs at the U.S. Naval Academy in August 2006 after retiring from the Foreign Service with the rank of Minister-Counselor. His last postings before retirement were as Dean of the Foreign Service Institute's School of Language Studies and, on temporary assignment, as Chief of Mission in Khartoum , Sudan .

Born in Washington , D.C. , John Limbert graduated from the D.C. public schools and holds his B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. from Harvard University , the last in History and Middle Eastern Studies. Before joining the Foreign Service, he taught in Iran , both as a Peace Corps Volunteer (1964-66) and as an English instructor at Shiraz University (1969-72). He has written numerous articles on Middle Eastern subjects and has authored Iran : At War with History (Westview Press, 1987) and Shiraz in the Age of Hafez ( University of Washington Press , 2004).

Ambassador Limbert holds the Department of State's highest award -- the Distinguished Service Award and Award for Valor, which he received after fourteen months as a hostage in Iran . He also holds the American Foreign Service Association's Rivkin Award for creative dissent. His foreign languages are Persian, Arabic, and French. He is married to the former Parvaneh Tabibzadeh, and has a son, a daughter and two grandchildren.

January 2009 Show

2009-01-14T13:28:00.000-08:00

Gaza; a humanitarian catastrophe in making- A live interview with Stephen Zunes, University of San Francisco, and Isaac Luria, JStreet.

Click here to listen to this show!

Dr. Stephen Zunes is a Professor of Politics and International Studies at the University of San Francisco , where he chairs the program in Middle Eastern Studies. A native of North Carolina , Professor Zunes received his PhD. from Cornell University , his M.A. from Temple University and his B.A. from Oberlin College . He has previously served on the faculty of Ithaca College , the University of Puget Sound , and Whitman College . He serves as a senior policy analyst for the Foreign Policy in Focus project of the Institute for Policy Studies, an associate editor of Peace Review, and chair of the academic advisory committee for the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict.

Professor Zunes is the author of scores of articles for scholarly and general readership on Middle Eastern politics, U.S. foreign policy, international terrorism, nuclear nonproliferation, strategic nonviolent action, and human rights. He is the principal editor of Nonviolent Social Movements (Blackwell Publishers, 1999), the author of the highly-acclaimed Tinderbox: U.S. Middle East Policy and the Roots of Terrorism (Common Courage Press, 2003) and co-author (with Jacob Mundy) of the forthcoming Western Sahara: Nationalism, Conflict, and International Accountability (Syracuse University Press.)

Isaac Luria, Online Campaigns Director. Isaac joins J Street after 4 years of experience in online organizing and consulting, 2 years of which he spent at the online marketing firm Donordigital in San Francisco . Isaac received his Bachelors degree in American Studies from Trinity College in Hartford , Connecticut . During 2007-2008, Isaac lived in Jerusalem , Israel as a Dorot Fellow. Isaac lives in Brooklyn with his wife, Sara, who is studying to become a Reform Rabbi.

ABOUT J STREET

J Street is the political arm of the pro-Israel, pro-peace movement. J Street was founded to promote meaningful American leadership to end the Arab-Israeli and Palestinian-Israel conflicts peacefully and diplomatically. J Street supports a new direction for American policy in the Middle East and a broad public and policy debate about the U.S. role in the region.

Download audio file

December 2008 Show

2008-12-12T15:40:00.000-08:00

An interview with Ambassador Farhang on issues related to the Middle East, Iran and the anniversary of the Universal Declaration of the Human Rights.

Thursday December 11, 2008

To listen to this show on-demand, Click here!

Professor Mansour Farhang served as an advisor to the Iranian foreign ministry and as ambassador to the United Nations following the 1979 revolution. He later resigned in protest when the Khomeini regime refused to accept the U.N. Commission of Inquiry's recommendation to release American hostages in Teheran. Early in the Iran-Iraq war, he also served as envoy in negotiations with international peace missions. During his ambassadorship, Dr. Farhang wrote and spoke about the threat of religious extremists who had come to dominate the course of the Iranian revolution. He sought refuge in United States in the fall of 1981, following the violent suppression of political dissidents in Iran . He has been teaching international relations and Middle Eastern Politics at Bennington College in Vermont since 1983.

Mansour Farhang currently serves on the advisory board of Middle East Watch, a branch of Human Rights Watch, an organization dedicated to protecting the human rights of people around the world. And in the media, he's one of the most sought-after experts on the Middle East , appearing as a guest on numerous national and international radio and television programs

He holds a BA from the University of Arizona (1965) and a PhD from Claremont Graduate School (1970).

Books:

U.S. Press and Iran : Foreign Policy and the Journalism of Deference (Univ. of California, 1987)
U.S. Imperialism: From the Spanish-American War to the Iranian Revolution (South End Press, 1981).

November 2008 Show

2008-12-12T15:13:00.000-08:00

President-elect Obama and a window of opportunity to resolve some of the issues with Iran.

An interview with Farideh Farhi, University of Hawaii, Manoa

Thursday Nov. 13th, 2008

To listen to this show on-demand, Click Here!

Farideh Farhi is an independent researcher and an adjunct professor of political science at the University of Hawaii, Manoa. Her publications include States and Urban-Based Revolutions in Iran and Nicaragua (1990), as well as numerous articles and book chapters on comparative analysis of revolutions, contemporary Iranian politics and foreign policy. Her writings also appears on numerous webzines such as "Informed Comment". I'll interview her about the US election results and President-elect Obama's window of opportunity to move toward an oppening with Iran. The benefits of such involvement and impacts that it might have on the Middle East in general and stability of the Region and especially Iraq.

October 2008 Show

2008-10-09T16:17:00.000-07:00

Presidential Candidates and the Middle East - Interview with Dr. Entessar
Thursday Oct 9, 2008

Click here to listen to this show!

Nader Entessar is professor and chair of the Department of Political Science and Criminal Justice at University of South Alabama . He is the author of Kurdish Ethnonationalism (1992) and the co-editor of Reconstruction and Regional Diplomacy in the Persian Gulf (Routledge, 1992) and Iran and the Arab world (St Martin Press, 1993)

September 2008 Show

2008-09-11T16:12:00.000-07:00

Raid on Islamic Charities after 9-11, Interview with Tom Nelson
Thursday Sep 11, 2008

Click here to listen to this show

In aftermath of the 9-11, many Islamic Charities and foundations became targets of FBI raids and investigations. Al-Haramin was the first such institution in Oregon to be targeted. I have interviewed Tom Nelson who represented Al-Haramin in their law suit against the Federal government. Thomas Nelson is a local lawyer who is active with several cases dealing with Civil Rights affected by 9-11.

August 2008 Show

2008-08-13T20:52:00.000-07:00

An interview with Robert Dreyfuss
On issues related to US presence in the Middle East: Iraq, Iran, and beyond
Thursday August 14th, 6 pm

Click here to listen to this recording!

For nearly fifteen years, Robert Dreyfuss has worked as an independent journalist who specializes in magazine features, profiles, and investigative stories in the areas of politics and national security. In 2001, he was profiled as a leading investigative journalist by the Columbia Journalism Review, and two of his articles have won awards from The Washington Monthly. In 2003, Dreyfuss was awarded Project Censored’s first prize for a story on the role of oil in U.S. policy toward Iraq. He has appeared on scores of radio and television talk shows, including Hannity and Colmes on Fox News, C-Span, CNBC, MSNBC, Court TV, and, on National Public Radio, The Diane Rehm Show and Public Interest with Kojo Nnamdi, and Pacifica's Democracy Now! with Amy Goodman.

Based in Alexandria, Va., Robert Dreyfuss has been writing for Rolling Stone for at least a decade, and currently he covers national security for Rolling Stone’s National Affairs section. He is a contributing editor at The Nation, a contributing writer at Mother Jones, and a senior correspondent for The American Prospect. On line, he writes frequently for TomPaine.com, and has produced a popular blog for Tom Paine called The Dreyfuss Report.

June 2008-Bread and Roses

2008-06-30T22:06:00.000-07:00

Interview with Professor Fatemeh Keshavarz, Washington University
Click here to listen to this Interview!

Fatemeh Keshavars is Associate professor of Persian and of comparative literature, and chair of the Department of Asian and Near Eastern Languages & Literatures of Washington University, St. Louis, MO.

Gabi Ross has interviewed Professor Keshavarz on her book "Jasmin and Stars, Reading more than Lolita in Tehran". Interview covers more than just the book and critiques the orientalists approach to literature and emphasizes on the richness of Iranian literature and samples from Iranian women writers whose works are translated to English. This was a "Bread and Roses" show and is being presented at "Voices of the Middle East" with permission.

May 2008 Show

2008-05-08T16:50:00.000-07:00

An interview with Proessor William Beeman, University of Minessota.
Click Here to Listen to this show!
William Beeman is a professor of anthropology and director of Middle East Studies at University of Minessota. He writes extensively about Iran and US relations and their conflicts. Dr. Beeman has recently visited Iran and is the author of The "Great Satan" vs. The "Mad Mullahs": How the United States and Iran Demonize Each Other.

February 2008 Show

2008-02-14T13:14:00.000-08:00

Dr. George Habash was remembered in an interview with historian Professor Evan Siegel (City University of New Jersey) and Dr. Mazen Malek, local Palestinian activist. George Habash was the leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) who died at age 82 in January in Amman Jordan.

Click Here to listen to this show on-demand.

January 2008 Show

2008-01-11T13:02:00.000-08:00

"The important thing to know about Scott Ritter is that he was right."
- Seymour Hersh

US Tour of Duty: The Iran Talks
An interview with SCOTT RITTER
The UNSCOM Senior Weapons Inspector in Iraq and Non Proliferation Analyst

Click here for the Voices of the Middle East program that was aired on January 11, 2008.

Video of the entire forum at Lincoln High School is available on-demand (courtesy of Mike Tabor)

December 2007 Show

2007-12-10T15:31:00.000-08:00

The National Intelligence Estimate report and future of the Iran problem.
An interview with Barbara Slavin
Thursday December 13th, 2007 at 6 PM
KBOO 90.7 FM
Click here to listen to this interview!

Barbara Slavin has been senior diplomatic reporter for USA TODAY since 1996, responsible for analyzing foreign news and U.S. foreign policy. She has covered such key issues as the U.S.-led war on terrorism and in Iraq, policy toward "rogue" states and the Arab-Israeli conflict. She has accompanied three secretaries of State on their official travels and also reported from Iran, Libya, Israel, Egypt, North Korea, Russia, China, Saudi Arabia and Syria. Author of a new book on the United States and Iran entitled "Bitter Friends, Bosom Enemies: Iran, the U.S. and the Twisted Path to Confrontation," she is a regular commentator on U.S. foreign policy on National Public Radio, the Public Broadcasting System and C-Span. In October, she joined the U.S. Institute of Peace as a Jennings Randolph fellow, to continue her research on Iran.

October 2007 Show

2007-10-11T21:06:00.000-07:00

Interview with David Barsamian 10-11-2007, click here to listen!

As the United States stands on the brink of initiating war on Iran, the publication of David Barsamian's TARGETING IRAN, a collection of interviews with Noam Chomsky, Ervand Abrahamian and Nahid Mozaffari, could not have come at a better time. David Barsamian's Alternative Radio award-winning lecture series continues to bring critical perspectives to the airwaves throughout the US. He was named one of the "Top Ten Media Heroes" by the Institute for Alternative Journalism and received the ACLU's prestigious Upton Sinclair Award for independent journalism in 2003. David's visit to Portland is co-sponsored by KBOO 90.7FM Community Radio and the Portland Peaceful Response Coalition and is endorsed by the American Iranian Friendship Council, Peace & Justice Works, Jews for Global Justice, Physicians for Social Responsibility, Jewish Voice for Peace (Portland Affiliate), Lutherans for Justice in the Holy Land - A Witness of Central Lutheran Church, Americans United for Palestinian Human Rights and others.

Event: Presentation by Alternative Radio founder, David Barsamian, speaking about his most recent collection of interviews, TARGETING IRAN (Open Media).
Date: Monday, October 22, 2007
Time: 7:00 PM
Place: SEIU Local 49 Union Hall, 3536 SE 26th Avenue, Portland
Admission: FREE
Contact: 503-344-5078.

August 2007 Show

2007-08-13T20:28:00.000-07:00

To listen to this show on-demand please click here!

Turkey a challenge between Ataturk Secularists and Reformed Islamists, in the aftermath of the elections and victory of Prime Minister Ordugan's party, what is next?

An Interview with Robert Olson, University of Kentucky, and John Olmsted, Portland State University.

Thursday August 9, 2007.
6:00 PM
KBOO 90.7 FM

John Olmsted MA, Med. is an adjunct instructor in psychology at Portland State University in Portland Oregon where he teaches a course in paranormal psychology. He is mental health therapist specializing in issues of learning, attention and the brain. John has just returned from Turkey after couplmonth of leading an educational tour from Portland Community College.

Dr. Robert Olson, University of Kentucky, Professor of Middle East History and Politics. He received his Ph.D. from Indiana University in 1973 where he studied with Professor Wadie Jwaideh and specialized in the history of the Ottoman Empire and contemporary politics of the Middle East. Professor Olson is the author of some 70 research articles, 80 essays and reference works and 180 book reviews. Fulbright Senior Professor Research Middle East Civilization Program Fellowship (1990-91); University Research Professor, (1995-96); The Albert D. and Elizabeth H. Kirwan Memorial University Professor (1999-2000); Best Book Award Third World Studies Association, 1999-2000; Distinguished Professor of the College of Arts and Sciences (2000-01); member of the Strategic Assessment Group of the Central Intelligence Agency's Future Panel on Turkey and the Kurdish Question (2000-03).

For an analogy of Turkey's role in the region with regards to Kurdish question see here!

July 2007 Show

2007-07-13T20:58:00.000-07:00

Golbarg Bashi and Iranian Feminism

Golbarg Bashi is an Iranian feminist and visiting scholar at Columbia University. She visited Portland in June and is interviewed by Gabi Ross for the Bread and Roses.

To listen to this interview click here!

June 2007 Show

2007-06-15T17:02:00.000-07:00

Click here to listen to this broadcast!

Chris Toensing is the executive director of the Middle East Research and Information Project (MERIP) and senior editor of the Middle East Report. Toensing has written for the Los Angeles Times, The Nation, The Progressive and other US newspapers and magazines, and has appeared hundreds of times on radio and TV programs to discuss Middle East politics. He was interviewed by Goudarz Eghtedari in the eve of the take over of Gaza by Hamas forces (June 14th, 2007). He commented on the situation in Palestine after this conflict and about the future of the Peace between Israelis and Palestinians.

Wednesday June 6th at PSU, 7:30 PM

2007-06-03T16:46:00.000-07:00

The American Iranian Friendship Council, the Iranian Studies Advisory Board and the Middle East Studies Center at Portland State University proudly present:

Professor Hamid Dabashi, Columbia University
"At Home in the World: Iranian Cosmopolitan Culture"

Wednesday, June 6, 2007 at 7:30 PM
Portland State University,
Smith Student Union 338 (Vanport Room)
SW Broadway and SW Montgomery, Free
(free parking in PSU structure after 7 PM)

Professor Dabashi's talk will be based on his latest book "Iran: A People Interrupted," a political and cultural history of Iran (2006). Other well-known examples for Dr. Dabashi's 14 books include Authority in Islam; Theology of Discontent; Truth and Narrative; Close Up: Iranian Cinema, Past, Present, Future; Staging a Revolution: The Art of Persuasion in the Islamic Republic of Iran; Masters and Masterpieces of Iranian Cinema; and an edited volume, Dreams of a Nation: On Palestinian Cinema. An internationally renowned cultural critic and award-winning author, his books and articles have been translated into numerous languages. A selection of articles and interviews is available at www.hamiddabashi.com.

Born in1951 into a working class family in the south-western city of Ahvaz in Iran, Hamid Dabashi received his early education in his hometown and his college education in Tehran, before he moved to the United States, where he received a dual Ph.D. in Sociology of Culture and Islamic Studies from the University of Pennsylvania in 1984, followed by a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard University. He wrote his dissertation on Max Weber's theory of charismatic authority with Philip Rieff (1922-2006), the most distinguished Freudian cultural critic of his time.

He is the Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia University in New York, the oldest and most prestigious Chair in Iranian Studies. He has also taught and delivered lectures in many North American, European, Arab and Iranian universities. In the context of his commitment to advancing trans-national art and independent world cinema, Professor Dabashi is the founder of Dreams of a Nation, a Palestinian Film Project, dedicated to preserving and safeguarding Palestinian Cinema.

A committed teacher for nearly three decades, Professor Dabashi is a public speaker around the globe, a current affair essayist, a staunch anti-war activist. He has two grown-up children, Kaveh and Pardis, who are both Columbia University graduates, and he lives in New York with his wife and colleague, the Iranian-Swedish feminist, Golbarg Bashi and their daughter Chelgis, who will join him for his Portland visit.

April 2007 Show

2007-04-09T21:32:00.000-07:00

Western Left and Iranian Liberalism - lessons to learn
KBOO 90.7 FM
Thursday 4/12/07 6:00 PDT

Click here to listen to a recording of this Interview!

If you are interested in the topic of Iranian Liberalism and Western Left, I am interviewing Danny Postel writer of the book "Reading Legitimacy Crisis in Iran" on my radio program on KBOO 90.7 FM at 6 PDT coming Thursday 4/12/07 program is webcast at www.kboo.fm click on the listen live icon. Danny has just come back from a two weeks trip to Iran in March. Just to give you an exposé to the book, I suggest following review by Rafia Zakaria.

Danny Postel is a journalist and critic living in Chicago. He is a Senior Editor of openDemocracy, an online global magazine of politics & culture; a Contributing Editor to Dædalus, the journal of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences; a member of the editorial board of The Common Review, the magazine of the Great Books Foundation; and an Editor-at-Large of Stop Smiling.

In 1991 he was on the editorial collective of Left Green Notes, the magazine of the Left Green Network. From 1996-1999 he hosted Free Associations, a weekly radio show in Chicago about politics, culture, and books. In 2000-2001 he was editor of philosophy and then history & humanities at Britannica.com, the late online magazine of Encyclopædia Britannica. From the fall of 2001 until the spring of 2003 he was a staff writer for The Chronicle of Higher Education, where he covered philosophy, history, political theory, Middle Eastern studies, and African studies.

He has taught journalism at Columbia College in Chicago; English as a Second Language at St. Augustine College and at the Howard Area Community Center in Chicago; and Spanish in a Chicago elementary school. He is the author of Reading Legitimation Crisis in Tehran: Iran and the Future of Liberalism, forthcoming from Prickly Paradigm Press in October, and the editor of The Shadow of Kosovo, an anthology exploring the debate amongst leftists over the Kosovo war, forthcoming from Cybereditions.

Reading Legitimation Crisis in Iran
Iran and the Future of Liberalism
Wednesday 4 April 2007
Rafia Zakaria

An indictment of the Western Left, which has abandoned Iranian liberals in their fight for freedom and democracy.

IN unravelling the grand universalism of the Modern project, post-modern thinkers arrived at a conception of authenticity that eschewed the imposition of Western ideas on the misunderstood `other'. They proclaimed the death of universalism and left behind a philosophical legacy that presented diverging paths for the Western and non-Western world. For the Western Left, the acknowledgement of complicity in the exploitative projects of colonialism and the recognition of the distorted perspectives of orientalism brought in its wake an unquestioned veneration of those aspects of the non-Western `other'. For the non-Western world, the post-modern legacy meant the rejection of all that bore the imprimateur of the oppressive `other' and led to a search for a pre-colonial truth unmarred by Western influence. In the ideological confusion that followed, religious fundamentalism clothed itself in the robes of authenticity and produced a political discourse that thrives on the crude evaluative principle that ideas have singular geographical sources that dictate the status of their authenticity and relevance. In countries such as Iran, anti-imperialist arguments have been appropriated by theocracy and religious faith manipulated as a means to delegitimise any and every form of dissent.

The unfortunate geopolitical cataclysm resulting from these divergent prescriptions and the subsequent stagnation of the Western left are the subjects of Danny Postel's short volume entitled Reading Legitimation Crisis in Tehran: Iran and the Future of Liberalism. Based on an engaging play of words, the title of the book draws from liberal philosopher Jurgen Habermas' volume entitled Legitimation Crisis and Azar Nafisi's recent book Reading Lolita in Tehran. Postel argues that observing liberalism through an Iranian lens reveals the failure of the Western Left to emerge from the myopia that prevents it from accepting the reality that the `other' can engage with and have indigenous connections with ideas that may be punctuated by similarity rather than difference. In honing in on this, Postel identifies how the limitations that bound the orientalists of yore have indentured a new breed of Western leftists in a different but equally lethal servitude. These new prisoners, indoctrinated to expect only difference from the `other' are as indignant in their fervour to discard similarity as their orientalist predecessors were to fetishise the `other'.

In a succinct but hard-hitting argument, Postel uses the case of Iran to illustrate how liberal movements within Iran have begun the arduous but necessary political project of extricating liberal ideas from the snare of automatic delegitimisation at the hands of fundamentalist theocrats. Postel frames his introductory argument against Nafisi's brilliant explication of how reading any text within a certain context, regardless of its distance from the point of production, provides novel insights and sources of introspection. In Nafisi's own words: "[T]he West's gift[s] to us have been Lolita and [The Great] Gatsby, while Iran's gift to the West has been reasserting those values that you now take for granted." The dialogue between civilisations thus construed is not as a reductionist exchange of two alienated `others' defined solely by their differences. Instead it emerges as an interchange in which "landscapes and localities undergo symbolic metamorphoses, and that experiences once localised at a given place increasingly find echoes or resonance chambers among distant societies and peoples".

Postel goes on to describe how the "renaissance of liberalism" taking place in Iran relies not simply on a blind and ravenous consumption of the writings of liberal thinkers such as John Stuart Mill, Isaiah Berlin and Karl Popper. It is instead a process that combines the ideas of liberal thinkers with liberal concepts in Iranian history. Postel's use of this dual approach, which indigenises liberalism through an analysis of the liberal origins of the Iranian constitutional revolution of 1905-1911, gives liberal ideas an identity that is both authentically Iranian and contextually relevant. Through interviews with Iranian intellectuals such as Ramin Jehanbegloo - in jail since 2006 for his support for liberal ideas - Postel guides the reader into a country where a resuscitated liberalism is the subject of vibrant debate amid an engaged public that is hungry for reform and committed to the liberal principles of respect for human rights, democracy and the rule of law.

The most astute argument presented by Postel is his revelatory account of how Western leftists, by prioritising their own opposition to American imperialism, have abandoned Iranian liberals in their fight for freedom and democracy. Postel vehemently renounces the argument that support for pro-democracy interests in Iran somehow amounts to supporting the neo-conservative agenda. He presents engaging ideas as to how Iranian liberals have accomplished this very task. He relates in detail how Iranian human rights activists such as Akbar Ganji shun any contact with the United States government when visiting the country and focus solely on engaging with scholars, human rights organisations and civil society groups. Postel recounts an incident in which Nobel Peace laureate Shirin Ebadi, during a visit to the U.S., was confronted by an anti-war protester who suggested that she stop talking about human rights abuses in Iran because her arguments could be appropriated by the neo-conservatives. Ebadi's response was clear and unequivocal: "Any anti-war movement that advocates silence in the face of tyranny can count me out." Iranian intellectuals, despite being in the direct line of fire of the neo-conservative military agenda, are demonstrating that fighting the expansionist military agendas of the Bush administration does not require silence about the injustices perpetrated by the Iranian regime.

. Western Liberals' silence

This same conundrum confounds Western liberals. They, as Postel documents, have been silent in the face of repeated student protests in Iran, imprisonment of Iranian activists and numerous other human rights violations that should have logically attracted their support. They are so locked in the singular prism of anti-imperialism that they are unable to make peace with the idea that it is liberalism rather than radicalism that is the true fighting creed in Iran. They are even less amenable to the reality that "the denunciations of U.S. Empire in Iran today are the rhetorical dominion of the Iranian Right, not the Left". As Postel states, "it is the reactionary clergy who wield the idiom of anti-imperialism and regime hardliners [who] legitimate the suppression of Iranian students". This aversion to recognising reality in Iran has exacted a huge cost; it has delegitimised the Western left and exposed its disinterest in championing the cause of Iranian liberals and pro-democracy fighters who suffer daily at the hands of an increasingly repressive regime. Postel exposes how the insistent prioritisation of anti-imperialism over all else has produced a repugnant inversion of itself - a new form of imperialism equally blind in its U.S.-centric perspective as its ugly counterpart.

Postel's conception of the `other' imperialism draws heavily from his discussion of Janet Afary and Kevin Anderson's book Foucault and the Iranian Revolution: Gender and the Seductions of Islamism (University of Chicago Press, 2005). The connection to this recent work that documents Foucault's writings on Iran and his naïve fascination with the Iranian revolution as a positive project of "political spirituality" is important because it places the current reluctance of the Western left to get involved with Iran in the context of post-modern philosophical thought. As Postel argues in his discussion of Afary and Anderson's work, Foucault's stance on Iran was marked by a rejection of the scepticism that characterised his stance on Western institutions of power. Instead Foucault adopted a heady and misguided optimism that embraced theocracy because of its sheer "difference" rather than its ability to govern equitably and respect human rights. The discussion of Foucault's encounter with Iran is also important because it presents how post-modern philosophical estimations of the `other' have evolved out of what is judged by Westerners to be most authentic about the `other' - in this case the most exotic and most different aspects of Islam. Despite its brevity, Postel's work raises urgent questions about the orientation of the Western left towards pro-democracy movements in different parts of the world. He deftly deconstructs how judging the "other" through the ethnocentric lens of Western philosophical ideas and political imperatives is to blame for the geopolitical messes that define contemporary world politics. Opposition to neo-conservative agendas and military intervention should not mean ignorance of local forces fighting oppression from a different source. The result of the configuration that Postel exposes is that engagement with struggles for liberty and the rule of law has been duplicitously cast in `all or nothing' terms. Involvement is equivocated with supporting the neo-conservative zeal of the Bush administration and opposition is understood as the knowing ignorance and lack of support for those who may fight a different but equally repressive enemy.

This book is a timely indictment of the Western left's apathy, which justifies itself by constructing a deceptively dualistic model of Western engagement with the world. The time has come for the emergence of a new "radical" liberalism that rejects such misguided political perversions and reclaims the right to both engage with the struggles of human rights defenders and pro-democracy activists in Iran and elsewhere, and denounce the Bush administration's tyrannical politics of military intervention.

Bread and Roses March 16th, 2007

2007-03-18T21:56:00.000-07:00

Gabriele Ross interviews Jamila, Isra, and Saba 3 women from Afghanistan, Iraq, and Iran about the situations in those countries after the war on Iraq and Afghanistan and the likelihood of an attack on Iran.

click here to listen!

March 2007 Show

2007-03-09T11:29:00.000-08:00

From "the End of History" to Neocons Orientalism

Listen to this interview -Click Here! or go to Iranian.com!
I interviewed Professor Hamid Dabashi on March 8th, 2007 by phone as part of my KBOO 90.7 FM program “Voices of the Middle East.” The main occasion for the interview was the recent release of his book “Iran, a people interrupted.” by the New Press. The book is mainly the bicentennial history of Iran, but it also refers to more than just the History. It covers a parallel path of political as well as cultural and literary developments in Iran.

Dr. Dabashi is definitely a committed believer of Edward Said’s view point of anti-colonialist critique of Orientalism, a person he worked with at Columbia. He is at the center of recent controversial criticism of American Neo-Conservatives and their Iranian counterparts. His passionate responses to my questions about this issue came after a more detailed inquiry of his critique of the Fukuyama’s notion of the “End of History”.

We started with philosophical bases of his book such as the struggle between Modernity and Tradition and concluded with the US tragedies in the Middle East and his solution to end that catastrophe. I am offering this recording to the young-generation-Iranians living in the US and Europe as well as those who find access to the Internet elsewhere in response to Dr. Dabashi’s specific interest to outreach to them.

Born on June 15, 1951 into a working class family in the south-western city of Ahvaz in the Khuzestan province of Iran, Hamid Dabashi received his early education in his hometown and his college education in Tehran, before he moved to the United States, where he received a dual Ph.D. in Sociology of Culture and Islamic Studies from the University of Pennsylvania in 1984, followed by a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard University.

He is the Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia University in New York, the oldest and most prestigious Chair in Iranian Studies. Professor Dabashi has written 12 books, edited 4, and contributed chapters to many more. He is also the author of over 100 essays, articles and book reviews in major scholarly and peer reviewed journals on subjects ranging from Iranian Studies, Shi’ism, Medieval and Modern Islamic Intellectual History, Comparative Literature, World Cinema, Trans-aesthetics, Trans-national Art, Philosophy, Mysticism, Theology, Post-colonial Theory and Cultural Studies.

Attacking Iran? If I did it, here is how!

2007-02-24T13:25:00.000-08:00

An article by Gouidarz Eghtedari analysing the situations regarding Iran and threat of a US-Israeli attack, @ Iranian.com (click here)

February 2007 Show

2007-02-11T02:29:00.000-08:00

US moves to prepare for an all out attack on Iran. Is this threat real? Who benefits from it and why? Goudarz shares his prediction based on information he has acquired in the past few months.

Click here to listen to this all commentary and talk show.

Dec. 2006 Show

2006-12-13T10:18:00.000-08:00

Thursday December 14, 2006 - 6 PM
KBOO 90.7 FM
Click here to listen to this program!

The Baker-Hamilton report and recommendations
A regional point of view.
An interview with Trita Parsi, Ph.D.

Dr. Trita Parsi is the author of the forthcoming book Treacherous Triangle - The Secret Dealings of Iran , Israel and the United States (Yale University Press, 2007.) He is also the President of the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), the largest Iranian-American organization in the US.

Nov. 2006 Show

2006-11-21T11:44:00.000-08:00

Thursday at 6PM PST
KBOO 90.7 FM
live at www.kboo.fm

A lecture delivered by Professor Gary Sick at Reed College's Public Policy Series. Dr. Sick has served on National Security Council during Presidents Ford, Carter and Reagan and currently teaches at Columbia University. He is director of the Gulf 2000 Project a research think tank on security and development in the Persian Gulf Region.

Click here for this broadcast.

Oct. 2006 Show

2006-10-10T15:20:00.000-07:00

Alison Weir, Executive Director of "If Americans Knew"
Thursday Oct 12th at 6 PM.
KBOO 90.7 FM or webcast at www.kboo.fm
Click here to listen on-demand

Ms. Weir will speak in Portland on Oct. 14 (Sat. 7:30 pm) at Central Lutheran Church, 1820 NE 21st Ave.

She is a national expert and award-winning investigative journalist on U.S. media coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, documenting media bias statistically, etc.. Recently her organization released a study on The Associated Press newswire, which was partly motivated by the Oregonian news editors telling us that the AP is the "gold standard." She'd be especially timely as Jimmy Carter's book "Palestine: Peace not apartheid" comes out Nov. 15.

Weir has provided briefings on Capitol Hill and her speech at the Center for Policy Analysis in Washington D.C. was broadcast nationally on C-Span. Harvard Law School, Columbia, Stanford, Berkeley, the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, and the Naval Postgraduate Institute are among the numerous universities and colleges where she has been invited to speak.

September 2006 Show

2006-09-14T00:03:00.000-07:00

September 14, 2006
6-7 PM
KBOO 90.7 FM

Clisk here to listen to this program on-line.

Please join me in a live interview with Chris Toensing and Farideh Farhi about the impacts of the 9-11response on the Middle East, and Iranian nuclear crisis.

Farideh Farhi is an independent researcher and an adjunct professor of political science at the University of Hawaii, Manoa. Her publications include States and Urban-Based Revolutions in Iran and Nicaragua (1990), as well as numerous articles and book chapters on comparative analysis of revolutions, contemporary Iranian politics and foreign policy. She recently returned from several months in Iran. She writes: "Should the US join its European allies in offering to assist Iran with nuclear power generation, this time without preconditions, the resulting negotiations could resolve not only the nuclear issue, but larger concerns as well, an outcome that may well benefit the whole region."

Chris Toensing is editor of Middle East Report and executive director of the Middle East Research and Information Project. Toensing has written for the Los Angeles Times, The Nation, The Progressive and other US newspapers and magazines, and has appeared hundreds of times on radio and TV programs to discuss Middle East politics. He commented today: "What was once beyond the pale -- the idea that the September 11 attacks should have been treated as crimes against humanity instead of acts of war -- has now almost become common sense. If the US had pursued that route, much of the death and destruction that followed September 11 could have been avoided."

June 2006 Show

2006-06-11T12:54:00.000-07:00

US and Iran Relations - Ups and Downs,
an interview with Professor Ervand Abrahamian

Thursday June 8th, 2006 at 6 PM

For listening to this program click here!
Ervand Abrahamian is a CUNY Distinguished Professor in the department of history, Baruch College and the Graduate Center in the City University of New York. He has written a number of books on modern Iran, including Iran Between Two Revolutions, The Iranian Mojahedin, Khomeinism, Tortured Confessions and most recently Inventing the Axis of Evil: The Truth About North Korea, Iran and Syria, coauthored with Bruce Cumings and Moshe Mo'az. He said today: "Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's recent statement about America's willingness to talk to Iran has another more important modification in US position, that the US is willing to accept Iran's civil nuclear program. This is different from the earlier US position that Iran could not be trusted with any nuclear program. Iran may take the opportunity to explore this modification."

May 2006 Show

2006-05-06T13:59:00.000-07:00

Live interview with Dr. Shirin Ebadi
The 2003 Nobel Peace Laureate.
Thursday May 11th, 2006
6-7 PM KBOO 90.7 fm
To listen to this Radio interview click here!
Click here to listen to Dr. Ebadi's lecture in Portland:
~in English
~in Persian!

Shirin Ebadi is an attorney and former judge who has worked passionately for the rights of the politically oppressed in Iran for over 30 years. The first Muslim woman to win the Nobel Prize, she asserts that it is patriarchal attitudes in the Muslim world that restrict human rights, not Islam itself, which she views as a religion of peace and tolerance. A vocal opponent of foreign interference in Iran’s domestic politics, she will challenge our thinking about the future of Islamic societies.

Dr. Ebadi will be the World Afairs Council of Oregon's International Speakers Series Guest at Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall, 7:00 p.m., Friday, May 19, 2006

April 2006 Show

2006-03-29T13:25:00.000-08:00

Plan to attack Iran--Fool Me Twice!
Thursday April 13th, 2006
6-7 PM (PST)

Click here for on-line archive of this interview!

Recently several articles in the US and UK have pointed out the administration’s planning of attacks on Iran. Seymore Hershe’s New Yorker report is the latest with details on why and how these attacks are being developed. Joseph Cirincione a month ago revealed the same story in an article for the Journal of Foreign Policy, titled “Fool Me Twice”.

In the first part VOME program hosts Joe Cirincione for a live interview about this issue and the Iranian nuclear program and its potential threat (if any). Second part of the show covers the paper recently published about Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy in an interview with Jeff Blankfort.

Joseph Cirincione is the Director for Non-Proliferation at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and author of Deadly Arsenals: Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Threats, (Second Edition, 2005) and co-author of Universal Compliance: A Strategy for Nuclear Security (March 2005). He teaches at the Georgetown University Graduate School of Foreign Service and is one of America’s best known weapons experts, appearing frequently in print and on FOX News, CNN, ABC, NBC, PBS, NPR and occasionally on Comedy Central.

Cirincione worked for nine years in the U.S. House of Representatives on the professional staff of the Committee on Armed Services and the Committee on Government Operations. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

Joseph Cirincione appeared in the 2005 award-winning documentary, "Why We Fight," by Eugene Jarecki. He is the author of numerous articles on proliferation and weapons issues, a co-author of WMD in Iraq: Evidence and Implication (January 2004), the editor of Repairing the Regime (Routledge, 2000) and producer of the award-winning DVD, The Proliferation Threat.

Fool Me Twice

Second Part: Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy
Two Political Science scholars, professors John J. Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago's Department of Political Science and Stephen M.Walt of Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government recently published a research paper about “The Israel Lobby and U.S Foreign Policy”.

The 83-page Mearsheimer-Walt paper is a downloadable PDF file at the following links:

Original research paper as was initially released.

Against the Next War?

2006-03-12T20:52:00.000-08:00

I am not affiliated with any of the following organizations but I support their cause to stop the nexr war before it starts:

stopwaroniran.org

Campaign Against Sanctions and Military Intervention in Iran

March 2006 Show;

2006-03-09T15:18:00.000-08:00

Iraq 3 years after the occupation;
March 9th, 2006 - 6PM
To listen to this show on-line, Click Here!

Within two weeks the 3rd anniversary of the Iraqi invasion will arrive, a look at personal accounts of the people who are affected by the war will be presented.

Part I: An interview with Farnaz Fassihi chief Middle East correspondant for the Wall Street Journal. (Goudarz Eghtedari)
Part II: Absent Voices: Iraqi Americans on War and Peace (Miae Kim)

Farnaz Fassihi was stationed in Iraq for 3.5 years from before the start of the invaision until recently when she was relocated to become the WSJ's Middle East chief correspondant. I have talked to her today from her home in Beirut.

A self Biography of Farnaz Fassihi from Association of Newspaper Editor's web site, click here!
Farnaz Fassihi's article after she left Baghdad. Click Here!
And for Farnaz's infamous e-mail of 2004 that created some controversy in the media click here!

Part II:

Absent Voices: Iraqi Americans on War and Peace
with Dr. Enas Mohamed, who has returned to Iraq frequently since the war began, and others. Produced by KBOO's Miae Kim

A Commentary:

2006-03-03T14:19:00.000-08:00

An Honest Conflict Resolution!!
Goudarz Eghtedari

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is expected to send a report on the Iranian nuclear program to the UN Security Council on March 6th. After almost 4 years of meetings and extensive monitoring, UK, France, and Germany (EU-3) have called off the negotiations due to an impasse on these talks.

Last week German former foreign minister Joschka Fischer and Zbigniew Brzezinski, National Security Advisor to President Carter, appeared together to discuss foreign policy problems at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and called on the US administration to get directly involved in the nuclear negotiations with Iran. However, when Adam Ereli, deputy spokesman for U.S. Department of State, was asked about the Fischer-Brzezinski’s comments, he responded that the US is happy with the outcome of the EU-3 negotiations and does not think there is a need for direct talks with Iran. Considering that negotiations between the EU and Iran were halted a month ago without a positive result, one would ask what exactly the US administration is calling successful. And what is in the outcome that our State Department is happy about?

The fact of the matter is that one can not enter an honest conflict resolution process hoping for stalemate negotiations. Parties who are directly benefiting or feeling harmed by the situation should be involved for the remedies to be meaningful. In this case however, the US’s objective must have not been to resolve the problem, but to take Iran to the UN-SC similar to the case of Iraq. Perhaps that is why Mr. Ereli calls it a success; otherwise this is clearly a failed process, as Mr. Fischer and the rest of the diplomatic community believe. Joschka Fischer was directly involved in the negotiations until Germany’s new chancellor came to office and has the most insights. Hassan Rowhani, the chief Iranian negotiator at the time has recently disclosed in a published report that “… cooperating with the Europeans would not change anything because Europe was not independent from the US which was committed on taking us to the Security Council.” (Raahbord, journal of Iranian Center for Strategic Studies, Fall Issue 2005)

Two points that have been conveniently ignored by the Western media were that right before the formal breakdown of the negotiations last January, Iran agreed to a ban for up to two years on industrial uranium enrichment process, while negotiations continue, and in return asked for a guarantee that the country will not be attacked militarily. Unfortunately the European negotiators could not offer such security guarantees while Americans were not at the table. President Bush, Vice President Cheney, and Secretary Rumsfeld on the other hand have continuously reminded the world that a military option is still on the table. As Mr. Brzezinski noted in his appearance in Portland last year, you can not stop a country from the pursuit of nuclear capability if you constantly threaten them with military attack and regime change.

One last minute announcement from the Russian and Iranian Nuclear Energy Agency chairmen this week brought some hope that there might still be a way to resolve the issues in hand. Reports from Tehran and Moscow indicate that Iran has accepted in principle the Russian proposal (endorsed by President Bush) to establish a joint venture that would enrich Iranian uranium to reactor level outside of the country to defuse the suspicions that Iran might divert some nuclear fuel into a weapons program.

Considering Russia's record with providing natural gas to Ukraine, the Iranian party understandably has asked for other partners, such as China, in the deal. Iran again has linked this agreement to guarantees of its territorial sovereignty. It is time for President Bush to refrain from his unilateral strategy in dealing with world affairs and become an involved partner in solving this problem.

As President Bush mentioned in his state of the union speech and is followed up with India and Pakistan, it is every country’s right to have peaceful nuclear energy--he is in fact proposing it as an alternative energy source in the US. So why not call on the Iranian proposal to get involved in their energy project, give them modern and safe nuclear reactors and monitor their activities on the ground under IAEA safeguards. After all we should remember that the master plan for Iran’s nuclear program was designed and endorsed by President Ford’s administration, and the Iranian regime is just following the steps that the US Department of Energy and Stanford University outlined back in 1976. The US should actively participate in the discussion and use its economic and strategic advantages to concurrently pursue other important issues such as Human Rights, the Middle East peace process, and the fight against drugs and terrorism. If we have learned anything from the Iraqi adventure, it is that we should stop the bloodshed before it starts.

February 2006 Show;

2006-02-08T08:57:00.000-08:00

Thursday February 9th, 2006
6-7 PM on KBOO 90.7 FM
Call-in number: (503) 231 8187

To listen to this show on-line, Click Here!

On Saturday February 4th the board of Governors of International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) voted to report Iran to the United Nations Security Council with regards to its nuclear activities. Iran claims that it only aims to use the nuclear energy in a peaceful manner and has no intention to produce weapons. United States and some European countries on the other hand charge that Islamic Republic of Iran pursues a nuclear program that can eventually produce weapons of mass destruction.

My guests this week is Cyrus Safdari. Mr. Safdari is a lawyer and a political analyst on Iranian affairs.

January 2006 Show

2006-01-11T17:03:00.000-08:00

Palestinian/Israeli Peace Process after Ariel Sharon

Interviews with Dr. Joel Beinin and Dr. Robert Blecher
Thursday January 12th, 2006 at 6 PM
KBOO 90.7 FM
webcast at www.kboo.fm

Departure of Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon from the helm will bring new opportunities or obstacles? Who Ariel Sharon was and how his departure will affect the Peace process? Join Goudarz Eghtedari in an interview with two scholars in the field for answers to these questions;

Click here to listen to this show on-line!

Robert Blecher is director of scenario planning at Strategic Assessments Initiative, where he directs a team of Israeli and Palestinian scholars investigating unorthodox solutions to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. He is also an editor of Middle East Report. Previously, he was an assistant professor of history at the University of Richmond and has consulted with International Crisis Group and United Nations High Commission for Refugees.

Joel Beinin has taught Middle East history at Stanford since 1983, including a broad range of courses from the rise of Islam to the present. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in 1982, his A.M. from Harvard University in 1974, and his A.B. from Princeton University in 1970. His principal areas of research have been the social histories of modern Egypt, Israel and Palestine, radical movements, minorities, and the Arab-Israeli conflict. His intellectual profile has been formed by engagement with political economy, cultural studies, and comparative empire studies. His most recent books are The Struggle for Sovereignty: Palestine and Israel, 1993-2005 (Stanford University Press, forthcoming 2006); co-edited with Rebecca L. Stein and Workers and Peasants in the Modern Middle East (Cambridge University Press, 2001). He is the past president of the Middle East Studies Association of North America and a member of the editorial committee of Middle East Report, published by the Middle East Research and Information Project (MERIP).

December, 2005 Show

2005-12-06T17:04:00.000-08:00

Part I: A pre-recorded lecture by Dr. Laila Al-Marayati on struggles that American-Muslims face in the US nowadays.

Part II: A live interview with Dr. Lisa Hajjar about CIA practices of secret detentions and interrogations.

Thursday December 8th, 2005
6-7 PM
KBOO 90.7 fm

Click here to listen to this program

Lisa Hajjar is an associate professor in the Law and Society Program at the University of California-Santa Barbara. She is the author of Courting Conflict: The Israeli Military Court System in the West Bank and Gaza (University of California Press, 2005). Dr. Hajjar is a member of the editorial committee of Middle East Report, a publication of the Middle East Research and Information Project.

Dr Laila Al-Marayati is the spokesperson and past president of the Muslim Women’s League, a Los-Angeles based organization dedicated to disseminating accurate information about Islam and women and to strengthening the role of Muslim women in society, Al-Marayati is an obstetrician –gynecologist and director of Women’s health at Northeast Valley Health Corporation.

She has served as presidential appointee to the Commission on International Religious Freedom from 1999 to 2001. As an American of Palestinian- descent, Al-Marayati frequently speaks about the right of the Palestinians. She is a member of the Board of Directors of KinderUSA, addressing the health and educational needs of Palestinian children living in the West Bank and Gaza.

November 2005 Show

2005-11-08T09:57:00.000-08:00

Iran-US-Israel Triangle of Mistrust
A round table with Professor William Beeman and Professor Hooshang AmirAhmadi

Thursday Nov.10th, 2005.
6-7 PM
KBOO 90.7 FM

To listen to this recording click here!
A month ago Iranian President Ahmadinejad during a summit called for elimination of Zionism. This public announcement, perceived by the world as “Israel should be wiped out…”, caused a global outrage that indeed fueled more rhetoric from both sides. Looking at this statement in light of Iranian pursuit of Nuclear energy and discussion with IAEA generated a wide variety of concerns in the western countries. People question the value of these kind of statements and want to understand the Iran-US-Israel game plan in the future. Voices of the Middle East welcomes back two distinguished scholars with insight knowledge about the issue; Professor William Beeman and Professor Amirahmadi.

William Beeman is a professor of anthropology and director of Middle East Studies at Brown University. He writes extensively about Iran and US relations and their conflicts. Dr. Beeman has recently visited Iran and is the author of The "Great Satan" vs. The "Mad Mullahs": How the United States and Iran Demonize Each Other. (Praeger/Greenwood). For his latest op-ed on this issue click here!
Hooshang Amirahmadi holds a PhD in economic planning and international development from Cornell University and is professor and director of the Middle East Studies Center at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. Dr. Amirahmadi is also president of the American Iranian Council an organization aimed at normalizing the Iran and US relations. For his latest opinion on this issue click here!

October 2005 Show

2005-10-18T21:40:00.000-07:00

An interview with Professor Birol Yesilada, Professor of Political Science and Chair of Turkish Studies at Portland State University.

Thursday October 13th, 2005
6-7 PM KBOO 90.7 fm

Click here for the on-line version of this show.

Despite resentments in part of several European Countries finally EU entered into the negotiatiosn for Turkey's full membership in the Union. Dr. Yesilada will elaborate on this process and reasons behind EU's resentment to accept a predominantly Muslim country as a full member. What is at stake for both sides and future implications will be discussed.

Birol A. Yesilada is professor of Political Science and International Studies at Portland State University (PSU). He is also holder of the endowed chair in Contemporary Turkish Studies in the Mark O. Hatfield School of Government. He came to PSU in September1998 from the University of Missouri-Columbia where he was Chair of the Department of Political Science.

Dr. Yesilada received his B.A. degree in 1977 in Neurobiology from the University of California at Berkeley, his M.A. in Political Science in 1979 from San Francisco State University, and his Ph.D. in Political Science in1984 from the University of Michigan.

His recent publications include books, The Emerging European Union (with David Wood, Longman, 1996, 2nd ed. 2001 and 3rd ed. 2003), Comparative Political Parties and Party Elites (University of Michigan Press, 1999), The Socioeconomic and Political Transformation of Turkey (co-ed., with Atila Eralp and Muharrem T?Praeger, 1993), and numerous articles and book chapters including ?Political Future of Afghanistan and Its Implications for U.S. Policy? Conflict Management and Peace Science (Spring 2003 with Jacek Kugler and Brian Efird), ?Negotiating a Resolution to the Cyprus Problem: Is Potential European Union Membership a Blessing or a Curse?? International Negotiation Journal (2002, with Ahmet Sozen), ?Turkey?s EU Candidacy? Middle East Journal (2002) ?Turkey and the United States? Dangerous Neighborhood: Aspects of Turkey's Foreign Relations, (2002), ?The Virtue Party,? Turkish Studies (2002), and ?Realignment and Party Adaptation,? in Politics, Parties, and Elections in Turkey (2002). His is co-editor of International Studies Perspectives and Associate editor of Middle East Studies Association Bulletin.

His current research interests include: The European Union (enlargement issues, ESDI-NATO, economic integration and other internal policies), political and economic development of Turkey, radical Islam and terrorism, the Cyprus negotiations (decision making and bargaining analysis), global power transition, and politics of economic reform in the emerging markets.

August 11th, 2005 Show

2005-08-09T11:18:00.000-07:00

Palestine and Palestinians in Lebanon
Thursday 8/11/05
6:00 PM
KBOO 90.7 FM webcast at www.kboo.fm

First part of the show this week is about Palestinian refugees right to work in Lebanon in light of changes in the Lebanese reforms after Syrian Pullout. Hundreds of thousands of stateless Palestinian refugees live in Lebanon scattered in refugee camps throughout the country, originally displaced through the creation of the state of Israel in 1948. Legally defined as foreigners, Palestinians live in Lebanon as second-class citizens without any basic social or political rights.

Currently Palestinian refugees in Lebanon do not have the right to work in over 70 professions, while broader laws and regulations of the Lebanese state undermine the basic survival of Palestinians. They are forbidden from owning property, the majority living in refugee camps throughout the country, which are surrounded by Lebanese military check-points.

In June 2005, Lebanon’s Labour Minister proposed changes to the country’s labour laws regarding the right to work for Palestinian refugees. The changes, if implemented by Lebanon’s newly formed government, will grant the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in the country the right to work in manual and clerical jobs, while still being forced to apply for foreign work permits. The proposed changes will still prohibit many Palestinian professionals from working in their fields of expertise including, medicine, law and engineering.

The proposal to grant Palestinians the right to work in limited professions, takes place in the context of larger ongoing political changes in Lebanon. In April 2005, Syria complied with U.N. Security Council Resolution 1559 and withdrew upwards of 15 000 troops from Lebanon.

Social and political pressure also forced from Lebanon, tens-of-thousands of Syrian workers from the country. Many Palestinians in the camps express skepticism regarding the economic motives for this change regarding their right to work. It has been argued that Palestinian refugees can now fill the cheap-labour vacuum, left by the withdrawal of Syrian labour force.

The second part of the show is a speech from Aaron Lakoff a member of the International Solidarity Movement and a journalist with CKUT community radio in Montreal. This presentation was given in Montreal, at a panel organized by Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights (SPHR.org), shortly after Aaron returned from working for 2 months in the Israeli occupied West Bank, with the International Solidarity Movement (ISM). Aaron originally traveled to Palestine, as part of a “Birthright Israel” trip, with the intention of going to work with Palestinians struggle against Israeli occupation.

This presentation specifically focuses on the realities on the ground in occupied Palestine, in the context of the reemergence of “negotiations” between the Israeli state and the Palestinian Authority, specifically addressing the ongoing construction of Israel’s Apartheid Wall and ongoing “Settlement” construction throughout Palestinian territory.

-------------------------------------------------

-> For more information of the situation of Palestinian Refugees in Lebanon visit the Independent Media Center of Beirut at: www.beirut.indymedia.org
-> To view report and pictures from Aaron Lakoff in Palestine visit: aaron.resist.ca

Campaign for Ganji's release!

2005-07-10T16:52:00.000-07:00

Hello my friends;

I have created a simple card asking Iranian ambassador to UN to pay attention to Ganji's case. You just need to print and copy back to back to create 4 post cards per sheet. You can then sign and/or have your friends sign it and send to ambassador Zarif. You can of course use this in any event happening in your area to campaign for release of Akbar ganji. The objective is to send as many postcard as possible in the next few weeks, Ganji is in a very dangerous situation and needs support from all of us.

File is in pdf format and can be downloaded by CLICKING HERE!

Appreciate your help and support of Human Rights.

Goudarz Eghtedari

June 2005 Show

2005-06-06T16:52:00.000-07:00

Voices of the Middle East presents:
Thursday June 9th, 2005 6:00 PM
KBOO 90.7 FM

Click here to listen on-line!

First part:
June 16, 2005 is the day of presidential elections in Iran. Eight candidates from right to center reformists are running to replace President Khatami. One of the people who signed up as a candidate for elections but was disqualified by guardian council is professor Hooshang Amir Ahmadi. I am talking to Dr. Amirahmadi about presidential elections in Iran and his plans for remedy of the US-Iran problems.

Second part:

Food is central to Arab culture in general and Lebanese culture in particular. It is also central to one of the most important factors in that culture which is Hospitality.

Food is served to family and guests in copious amounts and the variety of dishes on a well laid table is designed to delight the eye, as well as to impress the appetite and the guest. Such a table is a proud work of art.

I will be talking to Artist Linda Sawaya about her timely book, Alice’s Kitchen, which serves up such a work of art.

May 2005 Show

2005-05-11T15:19:00.000-07:00

US-Iran relations and Iranian government's responses
An interview with William Beeman, Ph.D.

Click here to listen to this show on-line!

William Beeman is a professor of anthropology and director of Middle East Studies at Brown University. He writes extensively about Iran and US relations and conflicts. Dr. Beeman is currently a visiting professor at Stanford University.

For Dr. Beeman's latest op-ed on Iran click here:

April 2005 Show

2005-04-17T09:18:00.000-07:00

Click here to listen to the on-line version of this show!

Outside The Ark
An Artist's Journey in Occupied Palestine
By Ellen O'Grady

Ellen O'Grady is an artist and social justice activist who spent six years living in Palestine and Israel. Her work has been shown in galleries and museums throughout the state and country. Much of her work draws from her time in Palestine and Israel and reflects on the present conflict revealing the human faces behind the ongoing tragedy.
Ellen is currently on a nation-wide tour to promote her new book, Outside the Ark. It is the culmination of her painting series of the same name whose inspiration came from her time living and working in the West Bank. Outside the Ark tells the stories of individual Palestinians living in the West Bank. It links these stories and her own story through a remembering of the Biblical flood story. The work is exhibited in the form of a slide-show/storytelling performance, in paintings exhibitions, and in a book. It has been reaching people at a variety of venues, including art galleries, public libraries, colleges, high schools and places of worship.

March 31st show with John Limbert

2005-03-18T15:25:00.000-08:00

Click here to listen to the on-line version of this show!

An interview with Ambassador John Limbert, We will talk about his long experience in Iran, from his Peace Corp volunteer days to becoming a Hostage. Mr. Limbert has writen the "Iran, at war with history" and has recently published a book titled "Shiraz in the Age of Hafez: The Glory of a Medieval Persian City".

6-7 PM Thursday March 31st on KBOO 90.7 FM
Web cast at www.kboo.fm

March 10th show with Nijyar Shemdin

2005-03-09T19:08:00.000-08:00

Click here for on-line version of this show!

Kurds and elections in Iraq, current situation and future prospects.
an interview with Nijar Shemdin

Thursday March 10th, 6-7pm KBOO 90.7 fm
webcast at www.kboo.fm

Nijyar Shemdin is the Kurdistan Regional Government's Representative in the USA. He has tirelessly given all his efforts to support Kurds.

February 10th show with Richard Sale

2005-02-10T14:08:00.000-08:00

Click here to listen to this recording!

6-7 pm KBOO 90.7 FM in Portland, OR.
Webcast at www.kboo.fm

An interview with Richard Sale about recent reports on US intelligent activities in Iran.

Richard Sale is a United Press International correspondent with extensive works in the Middle East. Mr Sale covers military and intelligence in the region. He will be talking about Pentagon intelligence gathering in Iran and potential courses of actions by the administration.

January 13th show with Jaime Mayerfeld

2005-01-15T18:29:00.000-08:00

Voices of the Middle East
Thursday, 1/13/05 from 6 to 7 PM
on KBOO 90.7FM, for webcast go to http://www.kboo.fm
Host: gabriele Ross

* An interview with Jaime Mayerfeld, Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Washington and specialist in theory and practice of human rights. Topic: The nomination hearing of Attorney General to be Alberto Gonzales and his responsibility for reoccurring cases of torture.
Click here to listen to this interview on-line!

* A conversation with Morteza Baharloo, an author born in Darab, Southern Iran. Mr. Baharloo will introduce his book "The Quince Seed Potion" on February 9th at 7.30 at Powell's Books in Portland and on February 14th at 7.30 at Elliot Bay Books in Seattle. More information at http://www.mortezabaharloo.com
Click here to listen to this interview on-line!

December 9th, 2004 with Paulann Petersen

2004-12-10T22:10:00.000-08:00

A celebration of the Human Right Day- Click here to listen!

Voices of the Middle East
Thursday, 12/9/2004 from 6 to 7 PM
on KBOO 90.7FM, for webcast go to http://www.kboo.fm
Host: Goudarz Eghtedari

A journey to Turkey with poetry of Paulann Petersen and Nazim Hikmet accompanied with Turkish music by Chris Henke, David Reihs.

Archive of previous shows:

2004-12-01T20:30:00.000-08:00

Following shows are available on A-info Radio project site, click on each line to access:

US Foreign Policy towards Iran and the Nuclear Aspirations of the Islamic Republic.
Recording of an International seminar on this issue organized by the Unity for a Democratic and Secular Republic in Iran (www.jomhouri.com). Speakers: Gary Sick, Farideh Farhi, Mohsen Sazegara, Mehdi Askaryeh, Ramin Safizadeh

Presidential Candidates and the Middle East
An interview with Prof. Akbar Mahdi, Weslyan University, OH. On different approaches and similarities between two candidates.

Abu Ghraib Abuses
An interview with Mr. Sharif Aquil the litigating attorney for victims of Abu Ghraib prison abuses.

Iraq, Kurds, and Israel
An interview with Professor Robert Olson about situation of Kurds in Iraq after establishment of the interim government and his comments on reports of Israeli involvement in Northern Iraq.

Denis Kucinich at Middle East Forum
Congressman and presidential candidate Denis Kucinich attended a forum at PSU titled Middle East beyond Baghdad. And also an interview with students for Islamic Studies group.

OPEC and price of oil
An interview with Hossein Kamali a retired director of UN Human development program and former Iranian delegation member to OPEC.

Iranian Jews
An interview with Homa Sarshar the founder of the Iranian Jewish Oral History Project.

US & Saudi Arabian Relations
Joint Forum: Portland State University and King Saud University Summary: Interviews with Dr. Saleh Al-Amai and Dr. Hend Khuthaila of King Saud University, Saudi Arabia and Dr. Jon Mandaville of Portland State University on the US-Saudi relations. The political structure and reforms in Saudi Arabia and situation of women is discussed.

Homosexuality in Iranian Society
A Feminista Factor production about the first conference of Hooman about homosexuality in Iranian society. Parandeh Kia one of the members of Hooman is featured

The Crescent
Interview with Diana Abujaber the writer of The Crescent. Diana is an associate professor at University of Miami. Her books Arabian Jazz and The Crescent have won a significant attention by literary critics as well as the Media. (12/11/03)

Modern Iran; Politics and Women Rights
Interview with Dr. Nikki Keddie, Professor of History UCLA. Professor Keddie is talking about current events in Iran and her new book "Modern Iran: Roots and Results of Revolution". (11/13/03)

Democracy and Women Movements in the Middle East
An interview with Dr. Nawal Saadavi Egyptian feminist, novelist and visiting professor at University of Main. (10/09/03)

Two Years and Two Wars after the 9-11
An interview with Dr. Juan Cole professor of Middle East History at University of Massachusetts (9/11/03).

IBDAA Palestinian dance troop
This is a short interview with teen age dancers from Ibdaa, the Palestinian dance group on their tour of US in Portland, OR. They talked about their refugee camp D'Hesha and their ambitions for peace. A voice that should be supported but was ignored by main stream media. (7/15/03)

Is Tehran the next stop?
Dr. William Beeman, Director of Middle East Studies, Brown University (6/12/03)

CIA coup of 1953 in Iran against Dr. Mossadegh
Dr. Mark Gasiorowski, Louisiana State University (5/8/03)

About the VOME

2001-11-02T21:42:00.000-08:00

This project is aimed at giving the forgotten Voices of the Middle East a chance to be heard at least in Oregon and Portland, the city dubbed as "Little Beirut".

KBOO 90.7FM is a progressive community radio in Portland, OR. which values minorities and tries to be the voice of the voiceless. I am an Iranian-American and have been involved with Middle Eastern community, Peace and Justice, and Human Rights movements since I arrived here. I am a secular person as is this program, but all voices are welcome as long as they are in the spirit of peace and justice.

Your Host: Goudarz Eghtedari
Co-host: Gabriele Ross