Voices of the Middle East and North Africa

Last month oppressive summer heats, lack of water and electricity, and pent-up anger against government corruption sparked mass protests in southern oil rich city of Basra. It quickly spread across the south of the country and into Baghdad- People in Iraq have sent a clear message to the government- enough is enough!

This week, we bring you the first part of an in-depth conversation about the root causes of the protests in Iraq with Balsam Mustafa, a PhD researcher in Modern Languages & Politics at the University of Birmingham

Also this week, artist and author Dr. Cara Judea El Hadeff joins us to talk about her children’s book, Zazu Dreams. It is a tale about the adventures of a Sephardic boy and his imaginary friend, a malamute husky, as they traverse the globe on a humpback whale across time and space, experiencing the marvels and may-hem of the relationship between humans and their environments.

Iraqi-American pediatrician Dr Mona Hanna-Attisha has played a critical role in exposing the water crisis in Flint, Michigan, which affected thousands of adults and children after dangerous cost-cutting measures led to widespread lead poisoning.

This week, we speak with Dr Attisha about her new book “What the Eyes Don't See: A Story of Crisis, Resistance, and Hope

in an American City,” which centers on her own account of the crisis through both scientific and activist lenses.

Later in the program, Italian director Marco Proserpio will tell us about the making of his documentary film “The Man Who Stole Banksy” ,

which chronicles the saga of one of street artist Banksy’s murals in the Palestinian city of Bethlehem and how it ended up on the western world's commercial art market.

This week, we bring you a conversation about the recent Supreme Court ruling upholding Trump administration ban on travelers from seven cpu tries, most of them Muslim-majority nations.

Last month, In a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court reversed a federal court’s judgment against the third version of the Trump administration’s travel ban. Now, the Supreme Court has upheld Trump’s ban on travel from North Korea, Venezuela Syria, Iran, Yemen, Somalia and Libya.

We'll have a conversation with Penn State Immigration law professor SHOBA SIVAPRASAD WADHIA of Penn State University about the Supreme Court decision and the Trump administration's xenophobic and anti immigrant policies.

Later in the program, we'll bring back an interview with Marcel Khalife, celebrated Lebanese composer, singer, and aoud player, and one of the Arab world's most revered and celebrated cultural icons.

This week, we bring you the second part of an in depth conversation about the presidential election and the ruling Justice and Development party or AKP in Turkey with sinan Birdal, a visiting assistant professor of International Relations and Middle East Studies at the University of Southern California

In the second part of the conversation, we speak about the base of support for President Ardogan and his ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) . We also discuss about the impact of government's economic policies, the ongoing state of emergency as well as Turkey’s military intervention in Syria on the country’s political landscape and the June 24 elections.

We will also speak with award winning director Gianfranco Rosi about his documentary film Fire at Sea. It explores the human cost of refugee crisis.

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/jun/09/fire-at-sea-review-masterly-and-moving-look-at-the-migrant-crisis

This week, we bring you the first part of an in depth conversation about the presidential election and the ruling Justice and Development party or AKP in Turkey with sinan Birdal, a visiting assistant professor of International Relations and Middle East Studies at the University of Southern California

Award-winning journalist Rania Abu Zeid has made countless trips inside Syria, Turkey, Jordan, Lebanon, Washington, and several European towns and cities to cover the Syrian uprising and the deadly civil and proxy war that ensued and destroyed tens of millions of lives.

This week Rania Abouzeid joins us to talk about her new book, No Turning Back: Life, Loss, and Hope in Wartime Syria

Later in the program Vomena’s contributor Paola Messini sits down with Lebanese singer-songwriter Yasmine Hamdan to discuss her latest album Al Jamilat (The Beautiful Ones)

In the summer of 2015, a wave of refugees taking perilous sea and land crossings to get into Europe exposed one of the worst humanitarian crises in modern history, the wars in Syria and Iraq and the worsening situation in Afghanistan having forced hundreds of thousands of people to live their homes and risk their lives to seek sanctuary elsewhere.

According to the most recent reports, in 2014, 14 million people were displaced by war, the most in a single year since World War II. In the past decade, forty thousand people died trying to cross international borders.

The dramatic increase in the influx of refugees to Europe has produced a rise in anti-refugee sentiments, the enactments of anti-refugee laws and the construction of walls and fences, exacerbating the plight of millions of people who were forced to flee war violence and poverty.

Reece Jones is Associate Professor of Geography at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa, and author of several books including his most recent Violent Borders: Refugees and the Right to movement

He spoke with Malihe about his new book and the structural violence of the global border regime.

On Saturday, May 12th, Iraq held its parliamentary elections to decide the 329 members of the body, which will serve as the basis for establishing a new government. While Nearly 7000 candidates and more than 200 parties were vying for votes, only 44 percent of eligible voters cast their ballots in the recent elections; a notably low figure given that, no election since the U.S-British invasion of 2003 has had a turnout below 60 percent.

This week we spend the hour focusing on the primary concerns of Iraqis in the run up to the election, the main protagonists contending for power in these elections. So What do the election results represent? What does the outcome mean to the regional and international actors? To answer these questions, Vomena’s Shahram Aghamir spoke with Loulouwa Al Rachid, who has been conducting research on Iraq and the Gulf region for the past 20 years- She argues that the elections highlighted the wide and dangerous gap between rulers and ruled in Iraq by reflecting massive popular rejection of the post-Ba‘th political order.

Loulouwa Al Rachid is a co-director of the Program on Civil-Military Relations in Arab States at the Carnegie Middle East Center. She has been conducting research on Iraq and the Gulf region for the past 20 years,

For the past thirty year, The Middle East Children’s Alliance (MECA) has been working for the rights of children in the Middle East by sending humanitarian aid, supporting projects for children and educating North American and international communities about the effects of the US foreign policy on children in the region.

This week, we speak The Middle East Children’s Alliance founder Barbara Lubin and MECA’s program manager for cross-cultural programs Ziad Abbas about the organization’s humanitarian work in Palestine. Also this week, we bring back a conversation we had with Palestinian visual artist Khaled Jarrar about his award-winning documentary film, “Infiltrators.”

in his new book "Inter/Nationalism Decolonizing Native America and Palestine," Steven Salaita argues that American Indian and Indigenous studies must be more central to the scholarship and activism focusing on Palestine. His discussion includes a fascinating inside account of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement; a wide range of Native poetry; the speeches of U.S. President Andrew Jackson; and the discourses of “shared values” between the United States and Israel.