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This interview is excerpted from the KPFK 90.7 FM Los Angeles broadcast of February 11th. The original is available here.

Asia Times columnist Pepe Escobar discusses the Egyptian moment, a mash-up of the French Revolution and the Berlin Wall’s destruction; the Arab world’s reclaimed dignity, after humiliations in colonial and post-colonial times; and how culture and language barriers prevent the revolutionary spirit from spreading from the Mideast to the Central Asian “Stans,” despite the autocratic governments and Muslim populations common to both regions.

MP3 here. (9:17)

Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving Into Liquid War and Obama Does Globalistan.

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. Two weeks before September 11, 2001, while Pepe was in the tribal areas of Pakistan, Asia Times Online published his prophetic piece, “Get Osama! Now! Or else …” 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.