October 12 – Learning From Indigenous People’s Day; The Suffering of the Syrian People; An American Reporter as a Pawn and Hostage of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps

Full Program

Part 1

On this Columbus Day holiday we begin with the nine cities in the United States which include Albuquerque, Portland Oregon, St. Paul, Seattle and Olympia that are celebrating Indigenous Peoples Day today in honor of the Native Americans whose lands we live on and whose cultures we largely decimated. Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, an author and editor of seven books including the recently-released “An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States”, who taught in the Native American Studies Program at California State University, Haywood joins us to discuss the real history of Native Americans which has been largely overlooked or buried because it raises questions of genocide in a country founded on settler colonialism.

Part 2

Then we speak of another genocidal war underway in Syria today that is largely a war by a ruling family against its own citizens who rose up in the “Arab Spring” to demand freedom and justice only to met by brutal repression that has led to civil war. Wendy Pearlman, a Professor of Comparative Politics of the Middle East at Northwestern University who has interviewed more than 150 Syrian refugees in Jordan and Turkey about their experiences in the Syrian uprising and the subsequent war joins us to discuss how individuals deal with high risk protest and defy political fear in a country where half the population has been driven into exile after experiencing unimaginable atrocities.

Part 3

Then finally we examine the conviction of the Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian by an Iranian Revolutionary Guard Court in a secret trial on trumped up charges extracted from torture by the IRGC’s Intelligence agency run the Supreme Leader’s Son Moshtaba Khamenei that are meant to embarrass Iran’s President Rouhani. One of the founders of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps Dr. Mohsen Sazegara joins us to discuss how the American reporter has become a hostage and a pawn in a political power play underway in Iran over the succession to the ailing Supreme Leader.