The fourth episode of “Liberating Iran” features Yegi Rezaian, who tells us about her life as a reporter in Iran and her efforts to free her husband Jason, with whom she was falsely imprisoned after he was accused of being a U.S. spy in July 0f 2024.

Please go and buy his book, “Prisoner: My 544 Days in an Iranian Prison―Solitary Confinement, a Sham Trial, High-Stakes Diplomacy, and the Extraordinary Efforts It Took to Get Me Out”

This is the fourth of five episodes that will publish each Saturday, with the final show airing September 9. Next week’s episode, the fifth and last of the series, will feature Priscillia Kounkou-Hoveyda., who’ll talk about being Black in Iran and how news around the protests have left Black Iranians voiceless.

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Articles of note

#FreeJason: The inside story of The Post’s role in global efforts to free Jason Rezaian from Iran

Axis of Immigration TedTalk by Yegi Rezaian

The third episode of “Liberating Iran” features Nahid Siamdoust, who takes us through the history of Iranian feminism and the decades of female musical expression that defines today’s protests in Iran. 

Please go and buy her book, “Soundtrack of the Revolution: The Politics of Music in Iran.”

This is the third of five episodes that will publish each Saturday, with the final show airing September 2. Next week’s episode, the fourth of the series, will feature Yegi and Jason Rezaian , who’ll talk about the role of media in Iran. Jason’s story is well know, so Yegi will be the primary subject of the episode and discuss her behind-the-scenes role and helping to secure Jason’s freedom from Iranian imprisonment and how this impacted her life personally. 

Please support Black Diplomats! Give us 5 star ratings on Spotify, iTunes or wherever you listen to us. Also support our work financially on CashApp at $BlackDiplomats, Venmo @BlackDiplomats and on PayPal at paypal.me/BlackDiplomats. 

Some links to stories used in episode

The second episode of “Liberating Iran” deals with the 1953 CIA coup that overthrew Iran's leadership and how that event provides better context for Washington’s relationship with Tehran—not the 1979 U.S. Embassy takeover. 

Historian Pouya Alimagham helps us understand how devastating the West’s role in undermining has been to fostering better relations with Tehran’s leadership and why Americans have been fed a false narrative on Iranian people and its history.

Please go and buy Pouya’s book, “Contesting the Iranian Revolution: The Green Uprisings.”

This is the second of five episodes that will publish each Saturday, with the final show airing September 2. Next week’s episode will feature Nahid Siamdoust, who’ll talk about the role of women in Iranian history and the role music has played in the current protests.

Please support Black Diplomats! Give us 5 star ratings on Spotify, iTunes or wherever you listen to us. Also support our work financially on CashApp at $BlackDiplomats, Venmo @BlackDiplomats and on PayPal at paypal.me/BlackDiplomats. 

Notable links to stories used in episode:

The first episode of “Liberating Iran” drops today. 

Assal Rad breaks down the Iran Deal and the political history between the U.S. and Iran that explains why relations between the two nations are so frayed. 

Please go and buy Assal’s book “State of Resistance: Politics, Culture & Identity in Modern Iran." 

This is the first of five episodes that will publish each Saturday, starting August 5 and ending September 2. Next week’s episode will feature historian Pouya Alimagham who’ll break down the West’s efforts to undermine Iran’s democracy and why so many Americans have bought into false narratives about Tehran’s leadership.

Please support Black Diplomats! Give us 5 star ratings on Spotify, iTunes or wherever you listen to us. Also support our work financially on CashApp at $BlackDiplomats, Venmo @BlackDiplomats and on PayPal at paypal.me/BlackDiplomats. 

Notable links to stories used in episode

Fact-Checking Donald Trump’s Reasons For Leaving Iran Deal. (Washington Post)

Chris Cuomo Interview with Benjamin Netanyahu  (CNN)

Is Maximum Pressure Working Against Iran? (NBC)

Coming July 29:

A five-part series about Iran through the eyes of Iranians - protest, history, music, Black Iranian struggle, what the U.S. always gets wrong, and how we can get it right this time.

Join host Terrell J. Starr as he unlearns years of media hype to find out the real history of Iran.

Good evening from Kyiv!

Today’s show is all about the ongoing and ever-changing newscycle revolving around the aftermath of Yevgeny Prigozhin’s failed mutiny of the Russia’s Ministry of Defense. I break down the aftermath of how Russian President Vladimir Putin is responding to everything and the need to not try and predict what’s coming next.

The following segment deals with Ukraine’s top intel chief’s claim that Russia mined the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant and there is a real chance they might blow it up. 

Today’s show will feature Dina Urich, Head of department of temporarily occupied and unoccupied territories and a Board Member at Helping to Leave, an organization that has helped more than 20,000 people flee Russian captivity. 

Thank you all for tuning into this week’s episode of Black Diplomats. Please give us 5 star ratings on Spotify, iTunes or wherever you listen to us. Also support our work financially on CashApp at $BlackDiplomats, Venmo @BlackDiplomats and on PayPal at paypal.me/BlackDiplomats. 

This week on Black Diplomats, I start off with news about the Kakhova dam explosion in the Kherson region that has claimed at least 5 lives and is causing a massive ecocide in the area.  

For on the ground coverage, please read these articles that break down what is going on:

The New York Times: U.S. Official Says Spy Satellites Detected Explosion Just Before Dam Collapse

The Moscow Times: Norwegian Seismologists Detect Explosion Signals From Ukraine Dam

The Kyiv Independent: Zelensky: 'Russia needs to bear full responsibility for ecocide'

Please support Black Diplomats! Give us 5 star ratings on Spotify, iTunes or wherever you listen to us. Also support our work financially on CashApp at $BlackDiplomats, Venmo @BlackDiplomats and on PayPal at paypal.me/BlackDiplomats. 

My featured guest this week is Nerdeen Kiswani, a Palestinian organizer from New York City and close friend of Fatima Muhammed, the CUNY law graduate student who delivered the student address at this year's graduation. As you all know by now, Fatima’s speech was unfairly criticized for its strong stance against white supremacy and Israel’s apartheid against Palestinians. Of course, it’s all bullshit and untrue. 

You can listen to it here. The time stamp is 1:16:54-1:28:30.

Nerdeen, who delivered CUNY Law School graduation address, also drew criticism and accusations of antisemitism for her remarks, which challenged the very white supremacy and Israeli apartheid Fatima did recently. 

We spoke about that, why everyone should stand up for Palestine and more. Enjoy.

Here is Nerdeen’s full biography: Nerdeen Kiswani is a Palestinian organizer from New York City. She is the founder and chair of Within Our Lifetime - United for Palestine, a community organization revitalizing the revolutionary spirit of the Palestinians in exile in pursuit of liberation. Nerdeen has spoken for the Palestinian cause at events and conferences worldwide and has organized rallies with tens of thousands of attendees in support of Palestine.

Nerdeen recently graduated from the CUNY school of Law and has organized successful campaigns on and off campus to pass a resolution by the student government and faculty of CUNY Law to cut all ties and divest from all israeli institutions that service the occupation. The resolution also defends the right for Palestinians to resist colonization and calls to protect Palestinian speech. In 2021 Nerdeen led a campaign that successfully defeated a proposal to adopt the IHRA definition of antisemitism which it equates with anti zionism. 

While her organizing led to Zionist organizations orchestrating character assassination campaigns against Nerdeen demanding she is expelled, in the summer of 2021 CUNY Law issued a statement defending Palestinian activism and denouncing anti-palestinian hate. Not only was this the first statement of its kind from a U.S. law school,  contrary to the zionist demands to discipline Nerdeen, she was chosen to be the commencement speaker at her graduation, marking another victory for those fighting for Palestine and our refusal to be silenced. 

On this episode of Black Diplomats we're doing something different.

Terrell is on his way back to Ukraine so he sat down with BD producer Michael Hull to talk about his plans for the summer, some special projects we have coming up, and what the media needs to do to help the world survive the 2024 election cycle.

Plus - what does Terrell do for his mental health? Can't have a Black Diplomats interview with asking the guest what they're doing to stay healthy!

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And remember to support Black Diplomats by giving to Terrell on PayPal at://paypal.me/blackdiplomats, CashApp: $BlackDiplomats and venmo at account.venmo.com/u/blackdiplomats. 

Thank you for listening!

What are we to believe nowadays?

It’s a question most of us have asked since social media platforms began competing with traditional media outlets in the 2010s. Everyone has the power to push out information and that is actually a good thing. We saw the power of citizen journalism during the Ferguson Uprisings and how they helped to push out culturally competent narratives when local and national media failed to do so.

But what happens when people abuse, say, Twitter to spend lies that most folks don’t have the education or bandwidth to cross check? Or worse, you can have a billionaire like Elon Musk take over that platform and he can all but sanction disinformation simply because he owns it and the U.S. government has few legal tools to stop him—at least for now.

This episode of Black Diplomats will feature one of the United States’ top disinformation experts, Shireen Mitchell, President of Stop Online Violence Against Women. Shireen has been a leading voice on online disinformation against women for  over a decade. She has  published numerous studies on the impact unchecked harassment has had on women, particularly women of color. She was one of the first scholars to warn about misogyny online against Black women and the impact it has had on women of color at large. 

During our discussion, we talked about how she was one of the first online disinformation experts to draw parallels between unchecked misogyny against Black and Russian disinformation campaigns that dogged the 2026 Presidential Election. Then we unpacked how European regulators monitor social media platforms in ways that the U.S. refuses to do and why that is. Then we deep dive into mainstream media’s failure to learn from past mistakes of platforming liars all in the name of ratings. And, yes, we are talking about that debacle of a CNN Trump town hall! And boy did he turn it into a superspreader disinformation event. What harm will that event and those that follow have on U.S. media literacy and the rest of the world. That and much more on this week’s episode of Black Diplomats.

Please remember to support Black Diplomats by giving to us on PayPal at://paypal.me/blackdiplomats, CashApp: $BlackDiplomats and venmo at account.venmo.com/u/blackdiplomats. The links are also available in the show notes as well. Also rate us on itunes, Spotify and on every platform on which you listen to Black Diplomats podcast.

Terrell J. Starr opens up this week’s episode of Black Diplomas with his thoughts on Great Britain’s likely shipment of long range missiles to Ukraine, weapons Kyiv have long requested. He also talks about the disinformation fog that will precede the upcoming Ukrainian offensive.

From there he talks with Sudanese human rights scholar Mutasim Ali about the violence in Sudan. Terrell concludes the show with Palestinian human rights lawyer Diana Buttu and independent journalist Sharif Abdel Kouddous about the one-year anniversary of Shireen Abu Akleh’s killing and why Israel is an apartheid state.

Music: “Dreams” by Ink Prod.