Over 700 expert guests have appeared on the show from around the globe since April 2002, including:

 
April 2016 will mark the 14^th anniversary for Arab Voices on KPFT!

Date:

Time:

  Did you miss the last show, or the previous shows? 
  (click on a date below to listen to a specific show)

Date:

March 16, 2016

1st Segment: The 6th Annual Houston Palestinian Festival
A live conversation with Ruba Afifi, Festival Co-Chair and Board Member with the Palestinian American Cultural Center (PACC-Houston), and Mona Fareed, Festival Team Member, about the 6th Annual Houston Palestinian Festival that will be held on Saturday and Sunday, March 19-20 at Jones Plaza in Downtown Houston.
 
This year, Palestinian Singer Rola Azar (from Palestine) will be performing live at the Festival. In addition, there will be live performances by Jabour, Ayman Al-Khatib, DJ Ashraf, and more. 
   

2nd Segment: Bill Corcoran
A live conversation with Bill Corcoran, President and CEO of ANERA, American Near East Refugee Aid, about the Syrian and Palestinian refugee crisis, and ANERA's projects and efforts to assist the refugees in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon.
 
Mr. Corcoran will be in Houston on Tuesday, March 22, to give a presentation about the current and ongoing projects in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon (Benefit Dinner: Stories of Hope from Palestine & Lebanon). This event will be held at 7 p.m. at Fadi's Mediterranean Grill, 12360 Westheimer Rd. in Houston. He will also be participating at the Palestinian Festival on Saturday and Sunday, March 19-20.

Date:

March 9, 2016

Ghada Talhami
Emeritus Professor in the Department of Politics at Lake Forest College in Illinois. She has published several books including "Historical Dictionary of Women in the Middle East and North Africa", "The Mobilization of Muslim Women in Egypt", and "Syria and the Palestinians". She has also published numerous articles including "Arab Women and the Attack of September 11", “Women, Education and Development in the Arab Gulf Countries”, and “Women and Philanthropy in Palestine and Egyptian Societies”. Professor Talhami previously served as Director of Arab Studies at the University of Illinois-Chicago, and Director of the Arab Information Center in Chicago (an office of the Arab League of States). She also served as President of the Association of Arab-American University Graduates, Editor of Arab Studies Quarterly, and Chair of Palestine Human Rights Campaign. She is also the recipient of several awards and honors over the years.

Tuesday, March 8th was the International Women’s Day, and today on Arab Voices we will speak with professor Talhami about women in the Middle East; their great contributions to societies; the important roles women play politically, economically, socially, and culturally; women's involvements in education; political activism; and their struggle and sacrifices for human rights, justice, and freedom. We will also talk about the west's view and stereotyping of Arab women; and more.

Joe Lauria (live from Iraq)
Veteran foreign-affairs journalist, author and political commentator based at the United Nation since 1990. He has been an independent journalist covering international affairs and the Middle East for more than 20 years. A former Wall Street Journal United Nations correspondent, Joe has been an investigative reporter for The Sunday Times of London. He has also corresponded from the U.N. in New York for numerous newspapers, and his work has appeared in many publications. Mr. Lauria has taught journalism at two American universities and traveled widely throughout the Middle East and the world. He is the author, with former U.S. Senator and American presidential candidate Mike Gravel, of A Political Odyssey: The Rise of American Militarism and One Man's Fight to Stop It. Joe has appeared on BBC World, PBS News Hour, Al-Jazeera, CNN, and other TV and radio programs.

We will speak live with Joe (currently in Iraq) about the situation in Iraq and what he is witnessing there; and the wars in Syria and Yemen. Joe just published an article titled "Obama’s Most Momentous Decision" which states: "With the Russian-backed Syrian army encircling Aleppo, cutting off Turkish supplies to rebels and advancing on the Islamic State’s capital of Raqqa, a panicked Saudi Arabia and Turkey have set up a joint headquarters to direct an invasion of Syria that could lead to a vast escalation of the war. And there’s only one man who could stop them: President Barack Obama".

Date:

February 24, 2016

Stephen Zunes (live from New Zealand)
Professor of politics and international studies and program director of Middle Eastern studies at the University of San Francisco. He has published scores of articles in academic journals, anthologies, magazines, and newspaper op-ed pages on such topics as U.S. foreign policy, Middle Eastern politics, Latin American politics, African politics, human rights, arms control, social movements and nonviolent action. He is the author of Tinderbox: U.S. Middle East Policy and the Roots of Terrorism; co-author of Western Sahara: War, Nationalism and Conflict Irresolution; and co-editor of Nonviolent Social Movements. Recognized as one of the country’s leading scholars of U.S. Middle East policy and of strategic nonviolent action, Professor Zunes serves as a senior policy analyst for Foreign Policy in Focus, an associate editor of Peace Review, a contributing editor of Tikkun, and the chair of the academic advisory committee for the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict. He has contributed to the Nation, Huffington Post, and Alternet. Professor Zunes has presented numerous lectures and conference papers in the United States and over a dozen foreign countries and has traveled frequently to the Middle East and other conflict regions, meeting with prominent government officials, scholars and dissidents.

We will speak live with professor Zunes about the rewriting of the history of the Iraq War, challenging recent inaccurate statements by Marco Rubio, Hillary Clinton, and other presidential candidates.

Date:

February 17, 2016

The 2015 Edward Said Memorial Lecture with Dr. Cornel West
The Palestine Center in Washington, D.C. held its annual Edward Said Memorial Lecture on October 1, 2015. The speaker was Dr. Cornel West, Professor of Philosophy and Christian Practice at Union Theological Seminary and Professor Emeritus at Princeton University.
    
In this lecture, Dr. West discusses the profound legacy of Edward Said in social and political thought. He explores Dr. Said’s role as an “engaged intellectual” whose voice provoked introspection, deep questioning, dialogue, and enduring change.
    
Today on Arab Voices, we will listen to that lecture.

Date:

February 10, 2016

Winter Membership Drive
Arab Voices Needs YOUR Support!
     
Please call during the show on Wednesday between 7 and 8 pm central time and pledge your support (713-526-5738), or send e-mail to ArabVoices@hotmail.com with your name and the amount you want to pledge (all gifts to KPFT are tax-deductible).
 
Click here for a list of the "Thank-You Gifts" offered.
    

Membership Drive

Date:

February 3, 2016

Listen: Israeli army is “making our lives impossible,” says Hebron activist
A podcast produced by The Electronic Intifada.
 
Activists in the occupied West Bank city of Hebron have been staging an around-the-clock sit-in protest at an Israeli military checkpoint located at the entrance to Shuhada street in the Old City. The checkpoint leads to an area occupied by Israeli settlers. In this podcast, The Electronic Intifada speaks with Issa Amro, coordinator of Youth Against Settlements.
      

Membership Drive

Date:

January 27, 2016

Dyala Husseini
Palestinian activist (born and currently lives in occupied Jerusalem) who is heavily involved in social work. She graduated with a general education degree from the American University in Beirut, Lebanon. She worked at the Jordan Pavilion during the New York World Fair in 1964-65, and worked as a guide at the United Nations in New York in 1965-67. She joined the Jordan Mission to the United Nations for a year. In 1967, she helped create the Social Society of Burj Al-LuqLuq NGO in the Old City of Jerusalem (it gives social and psychological support and services to the residents of the Old City).
 
We will speak live with Dyala about the ongoing Israeli atrocities in occupied Jerusalem; home demolitions; colony expansion; and the Israeli destruction of Mamilla Cemetery, the oldest Muslim burial ground in Jerusalem, displacing hundreds of Muslim graves dating as far back as the 7th century, in order for US-based Simon Wiesenthal Center to build a "Museum of Tolerance" on its ground!
      

Membership Drive

Date:

January 20, 2016

Joshua Landis
Director of the Center for Middle East Studies and Associate Professor at the University of Oklahoma’s College of International Studies. He writes “Syria Comment,” a daily newsletter on Syrian politics that attracts over 100,000 readers a month. Dr. Landis travels frequently to Washington DC to consult with government agencies and speak at think tanks. He has lived over 14 years in the Middle East (4 years in Syria, 8 years in Lebanon, and spent most summers in Damascus until the revolution began) and speaks Arabic and French fluently. He served as President of Syria Studies Association. He is a frequent analyst on various media outlets including Charlie Rose, PBS News Hour, Al-Jazeera, and many others. He is frequently published in many journals such as Foreign Policy and Middle East Policy. He has won the best teacher prize at his university; helped raised over one million dollars for a new chair in Iranian studies, and helped bring the government funded Arabic Flagship Program to OU. Three Fulbright grants, the SSRC and other awards have helped support his research. Dr. Landis teaches Political Islam, International Relations in the Middle East, Islam, The Modern Middle East, Culture and Society in the Middle East, and the US in the Middle East.

We will speak live with Joshua about the crisis in Syria; foreign interventions by various countries (Russia, Iran, US, Turkey, Arab States); the Syrian peace talks set for next week in Geneva; and the prospects of a real peace deal and/or path to end the crisis.

Date:

January 13, 2016

Chris Hedges' Talk in Houston
The Houston Peace and Justice Center (HPJC) held its 2015 Peacemaker Awards Dinner on November 14, 2015. The National Peacemaker Award recipient was Chris Hedges, who was also the keynote speaker.
 
Today on Arab Voices, we will listen to Chris Hedge's talk at this event, and also listen to some of the questions and answers that followed his talk.
 
Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist who writes a weekly column for the online magazine Truthdig. He spent nearly two decades as a foreign correspondent in Central America, the Middle East, Africa, and the Balkans. He has reported from more than 50 countries and has worked for The Christian Science Monitor, National Public Radio, The Dallas Morning News and The New York Times, for which he was a foreign correspondent for 15 years. Hedges left the Times after being issued a formal reprimand for denouncing the Bush administration’s invasion of Iraq. In 2012, he sued President Barack Obama after the passing of the National Defense Authorization Act. Hedges authored numerous bestselling books, including Empire of Illusion; Death of the Liberal Class; War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning; Days of Revolt which he co-wrote with Joe Sacco; and his most recent book Wages of Rebellion: The Moral Imperative of Revolt. Hedges received many awards and recognitions over the years. He was part of the team of reporters at The New York Times that was awarded a Pulitzer Prize, and he also received the Amnesty International Global Award for Human Rights Journalism. Hedges is a senior fellow at The Nation Institute in New York City. He has taught at Columbia University, New York University, Princeton University and The University of Toronto. He currently teaches prisoners at a maximum-security prison in New Jersey. Hedges holds a B.A. in English literature from Colgate University and a Master of Divinity degree from Harvard University. He was awarded an honorary doctorate from Starr King School for the Ministry in Berkeley, California. Hedges speaks Arabic, French and Spanish and studied classics, including ancient Greek and Latin, at Harvard.

Date:

January 6, 2016

"Islam in Liberalism" by Joseph Massad
The Arab-American Educational Foundation Chair in Modern Arab History at the University of Houston held an event on December 3, 2015 titled "Islam in Liberalism". The guest speaker was Joseph Massad, Professor of Modern Arab Politics and Intellectual History at Columbia University. He is the author of Islam in Liberalism (Chicago, 2015); Desiring Arabs (Chicago, 2007), which was awarded the Lionel Trilling Book Award; The Persistence of the Palestinian Question: Essays on Zionism and the Palestinian Question (Routledge, 2006); and Colonial Effects: The Making of National Identity in Jordan (Columbia, 2001).
   
Today on Arab Voices, we will listen to Professor Massad's lecture on "Islam in Liberalism".

Date:

December 30, 2015

Interviews from 2015
Arab Voices will air portions of several interviews conducted with different guests in 2015, including:

Remi Kanazi
Poet, writer, and organizer based in New York City. He is the author of the new released collection of poetry Before the Next Bomb Drops: Rising Up from Brooklyn to Palestine.

Zakaria Odeh (in occupied Jerusalem)
Executive Director of the Civic Coalition for Palestinian Rights in Jerusalem.

Chris Hedges
Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and author who writes a weekly column for the online magazine Truthdig.

Phyllis Bennis
Fellow and the Director of the New Internationalism Project at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington D.C. She is also a fellow of the Transnational Institute in Amsterdam. She has been a writer, analyst, and activist on Middle East and UN issues for many years.

Dr. Clovis Maksoud
Former ambassador and permanent observer of the League of Arab States at the United Nations and its chief representative in the United States for more than 10 years.

Date:

December 23, 2015

1st Segment:
We will first air the statement by the US Council of Muslim Organizations (US-CMO), a coalition of leading national and local Muslim organizations, announcing major educational, outreach and civic empowerment initiatives to address growing Islamophobia in America and to enhance national security through the promotion of freedom and justice.
 
We will also air few minutes from an interview Amy Goodman conducted on Democracy Now! on December 22, 2016 with Pulitzer-winning veteran journalist Seymour Hersh  about a new report he published in the London Review of Books that says the US Joint Chiefs of Staff has indirectly supported Bashar al-Assad in an effort to help him defeat jihadist groups!
 

2nd Segment: Vijay Prashad
Vijay Prashad is the George and Martha Kellner Chair in South Asian History and Professor of International Studies at Trinity College. He is the author of sixteen books, including The Poorer Nations: A Possible History of the Global South, Arab Spring, Libyan Winter, (co-edited with Paul Amar) Dispatches from the Arab Spring, and No Free Left: The Futures of Indian Communism. Vijay's latest book is Letters to Palestine: Writers Respond to War and Occupation. He is the chief editor at Leftward Press, and writes regularly for The Hindu, Frontline, Jadaliyya, Counterpunch, Himal and Bol. Vijay also served as the Edward Said Chair of American Studies at the American University of Beirut (2013- 2014).
 
We will speak live with Vijay about ISIS and the how it is able to extract and smuggle oil from the oil fields it controls in Syria and Iraq to other countries including Turkey and Israel to fund itself.

Date:

December 16, 2015

Rev. Ronnie Lister
Reverend Lister is an ordained minister in the National Baptist Convention. He is a social activist, scholar, and an advocate for the poor. He co-founded (with his wife, Minister Ann Lister) the International Center for Spiritual and Social Activism, committed to . He has also served as a teaching assistant at the Interdenominational Theological Center, and Candler School of Theology at Emory University both located in Atlanta, GA. Reverend Lister holds a Master of Arts Degree in Theology from Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, CA, and has pursued post graduate studies at California State University, and the Interdenominational Theological Center.

Mustafaa Carroll
Executive Director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations Texas, Houston Chapter. He has more than 23 years' experience in business and leadership, and 18 years as a corporate management consultant specializing in leadership, service and diversity. Mustafaa began his civil rights activism at 16 as President of the NAACP Youth Council in his hometown of Gary, Indiana. Prior to his arrival to CAIR's Houston office in June 2010, he served on the CAIR-TX DFW board from 2004-2006 and the Executive Committee as Board President in 2007, and was appointed as Executive Director in June 2007. Carroll has also served on several other boards including the North Texas Islamic Council, Masjid Al-Islam, Dallas, the Islamic Medieval Studies Group, the Make-A-Wish Foundation of North Texas, the advisory committee of the Greater Dallas Chamber of Commerce, and he was a founding member and Chair of Humanitarian Day-DFW Event for 5 years. Together with the board and staff of CAIR-TX, Carroll is helping to develop and execute strategies that assure justice and civil rights for Muslims in the Greater Houston Community.
  

We will speak live with our guests about the anti-Muslim sentiment that is on the rise in the US; recent spike in attacks on American Muslims and their religious institutions including hate crimes, vandalism, shootings, harassment, and arson. We will talk about Islamophobia, fearmongering, stereotyping, racism, racial profiling, and surveillance of Muslims, Arabs, and mosques.
 
We will also talk about ways community organizers, organizations and religious institutions of different faiths work together to counter these issues through interfaith work/relations, and how to deal with the negative image portrayed by media outlets, politicians, presidential candidates and others.

Date:

December 9, 2015

Date:

December 2, 2015

ACC's Annual Unity & Friendship Gala
The Arab American Cultural & Community Center in Houston held its 22nd Annual Unity & Friendship Gala on November 14, 2015. This year's theme was "Embracing our Community's Needs and Aspirations", and it highlighted the culture and people of the Kingdom of Jordan. The Gala Chair was Mayada Al-Kaisi Coleman, and the Gala Co-Chair was Sarah Rabie. The Master of Ceremonies was Phil Snyder. Today on Arab Voices we will listen to most of the remarks made at the Gala.
     
This year's ACC honorees were the late Dr. Amer Sabbagh (2015 ACC Outstanding Community Service Award, presented by Wafa Abdin, ACC Board Member, and Abdel ElKhadiri, ACC Treasurer), and Dr. Samir Tuma (2015 ACC Lifetime Achievement and Leadership Award, presented by Dr. Kamal Khalil, ACC President).
  
There was also special recognition for FADI'S Mediterranean Grill (2015 ACC Business Community Award, presented to Fadi Dimassi by Wadih ElHajj, ACC Second Vice-President), and FotoFest (2015 ACC Service to the Arab Culture and Art Award, presented to Frederick Baldwin and Wendy Watriss, co-founders of FotoFest, by Dr. Rudeina Baasiri, ACC Board Member at Large).

Date:

November 25, 2015

Paul Gottinger
An independent journalist based in Madison, WI whose work focuses on the Middle East. He recently wrote an analysis of the "war on terror" in an article titled "Despite 14 Years of the U.S. War on Terror, Terror Attacks Have Skyrocketed Since 9/11". In this analysis, Paul Gottinger says: "Terror attacks have jumped by a stunning 6,500 percent since 2002, according to a new analysis by Reader Supported News. The number of casualties resulting from terror attacks has increased by 4,500 percent over this same time period. These colossal upsurges in terror took place despite a decade-long, worldwide effort to fight terrorism that has been led by the United States." "The analysis, conducted with figures provided by the U.S. State Department, also shows that from 2007 to 2011 almost half of all the world’s terror took place in Iraq or Afghanistan -- two countries being occupied by the U.S. at the time.
 

Date:

November 18, 2015

Date:

November 11, 2015

Reese Erlich
Award-winning freelance foreign correspondent who has traveled widely across the Middle East and just came back from there. He has covered the Middle East for three decades and was in northern Iraq at the start of the U.S. bombing campaign against ISIS. Erlich reports regularly for several media outlets including NPR, the Canadian Broadcast Corporation, and CBS Radio News. His articles on the Middle East have appeared in the Christian Science Monitor, GlobalPost, Atlantic Online, and Vanity Fair Online. He is author of several books including Conversations with Terrorists: Middle East Leaders on Politics, Violence and Empire, the best selling book Target Iraq: What the News Media Didn’t Tell You (co-authored with Norman Solomon), The Iran Agenda: The Real Story of US Policy and the Middle East Crisis, and most recently Inside Syria: The Backstory of Their Civil War and What the World Can Expect, with a foreword by Noam Chomsky. Erlich has received several awards over the years. In 2006 he shared a prestigious Peabody Award as a segment producer for Crossing East, a radio documentary on the history of Asians in the US., and in 2012 the Society of Professional Journalists awarded Erlich a prize for best “radio explanatory journalism” for his documentary “Inside the Syrian Revolution”.
 

Date:

November 4, 2015

Remi Kanazi
Poet, writer, and organizer based in New York City. He is the author of the new released collection of poetry Before the Next Bomb Drops: Rising Up from Brooklyn to Palestine. He is also the author of Poetic Injustice: Writings on Resistance and Palestine, and the editor of Poets For Palestine. Remi's political commentary has been featured by news outlets throughout the world, including The New York Times, Salon, Al Jazeera English and BBC Radio. Kanazi has toured hundreds of venues across the United States, Canada, Europe and the Middle East, and he has appeared in the Palestine Festival of Literature as well as Poetry International. He is a Lannan Residency Fellow and an Advisory Committee member for the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel. He has taught poetry workshops from Oklahoma to the West Bank, given talks from New York City to London, and has performed at hundreds of venues, from New Orleans to Amman.

Date:

October 28, 2015

Political Terrorism in the US: The Assassination of Alex Odeh
Today on Arab Voices we will air a special Pacifica Radio Archives documentary from interviews with law enforcement agents, possible suspects, politicians, and community members concerning the October 11, 1985 murder of Arab-American political activist Alex Odeh.
 
Thirty years ago this month Alex Odeh, who was the West Coast Regional Director for the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) at that time, was assassinated in his office, and to this date, the murder case of Alex Odeh remains unsolved by the FBI.
  
"Political Terrorism in the United States: The Assassination of Alex Odeh" is an early look at the circumstances surrounding the terrorist attack. This documentary features the voices of Alex Odeh, family members, the FBI and from the Jewish Defense League, an organization originally named by investigators as the probably culprit of the crime. Just who killed Alex Odeh remains a question to this day.
   

Visit www.ADC.org for more details.
   
Born in Jifna, Palestine in 1944, Alex Odeh became a poet, lecturer and Arab-American peace activist. He originally studied to become an engineer at Cairo University in Egypt. When the Six Day War ended in 1967, Israeli authorities prevented Odeh from returning to his hometown in the West Bank. Living a life of exile changed him, starting off a life in politics. Alex Odeh immigrated to the United States in 1972 eventually continuing his studies with a Masters degree in political science from Cal State Fullerton. In 1982, the Palestinian activist joined the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, a newly formed group aimed at combating grotesque Arab stereotypes in the media and bias in Middle East reporting. A year later, Odeh became the West Coast Regional Coordinator, setting up an office in Santa Ana, California. Death threats haunted Odeh on nearly a daily basis. On October 10, 1985, a local television station interviewed him about the Achilles Lauro hijacking and murder of Leon Klinghoffer. Odeh spoke condemning terrorism across the board but argued that the media was too quick to link the attack to the PLO. As fate would have it, the activist opened the door to his officer the next morning for what was to be another routine day at work. When the door swung open, a powerful pipe bomb exploded killing Odeh.

Date:

October 21, 2015

Zakaria Odeh (in occupied Jerusalem)
Executive Director of the Civic Coalition for Palestinian Rights in Jerusalem (an independent, non-governmental, non-profit coalition of organizations, institutions, societies, and associations dedicated to the promotion and protection of Palestinian rights in Jerusalem). We will speak with Zakaria (in occupied Jerusalem) about the situation in occupied Palestine, especially in Jerusalem, and the ongoing Israeli atrocities and killing in occupied Palestine (more than 51 Palestinians were killed over the past three weeks including 11 children and 1 pregnant woman, and nearly 6,000 Palestinians were injured).
 
We will also hear the reaction and statements of several local Houstonians who participated in a demonstration/protest held in Houston on Saturday, October 17 to protest Israel’s actions in the occupied Palestinian territories.

Date:

October 14, 2015

Susan Abulhawa
Palestinian-American human rights activist, novelist, award-winning author and a frequent political commentator. She was born to Palestinian refugees from Jerusalem, where her family had lived for centuries. She is the founder of Playgrounds for Palestine, an organization dedicated to upholding Palestinian children's Right to Play. Susan received her Master's degree in Neuroscience from the University of South Carolina. She is a science writer for medical journals, and has contributed to several anthologies and has been published in several US and international newspapers and other periodicals. Her first book of poems was titled My Voice Sought the Wind. Her first novel, Mornings in Jenin, was an international bestseller, with rights sold in twenty-six languages, and her second novel (just released) is titled The Blue Between Sky and Water, and was sold in nineteen languages before its release. Susan tried to visit Palestine in July 2015 as a US citizen, but was denied entry by the Israeli occupation forces.
 

Date:

October 7, 2015

Fall Membership Drive
Arab Voices Needs YOUR Support to Raise $2,940
     
Please call during the show on Wednesday between 7 and 8 pm central time and pledge your support (713-526-5738), or send e-mail to ArabVoices@hotmail.com with your name and the amount you want to pledge (all gifts to KPFT are tax-deductible).
 
Click here for a list of the "Thank-You Gifts" offered.
     

Membership Drive

Date:

September 30, 2015

Fall Membership Drive
Arab Voices Needs YOUR Support to Raise $2,940
     
Please call during the show on Wednesday between 7 and 8 pm central time and pledge your support (713-526-5738), or send e-mail to ArabVoices@hotmail.com with your name and the amount you want to pledge (all gifts to KPFT are tax-deductible).
 
Click here for a list of the "Thank-You Gifts" offered.
    

Membership Drive

Date:

September 23, 2015

Fall Membership Drive
Arab Voices Needs YOUR Support to Raise $2,940
     
Please call during the show on Wednesday between 7 and 8 pm central time and pledge your support (713-526-5738), or send e-mail to ArabVoices@hotmail.com with your name and the amount you want to pledge (all gifts to KPFT are tax-deductible).
 
Click here for a list of the "Thank-You Gifts" offered.
    

Membership Drive

Date:

September 16, 2015

Shireen Jasser
Social Worker, community organizer and President of the Syrian American Council Houston Chapter.
 
We will speak with Shireen about the Syrian Refugee Crisis where more than half of the Syrian population (over 12 million) are now refugees as a result of the ongoing bloody and destructive war in Syria. We will also talk about the Syrian refugees in Houston, and how the Houston community is dealing with the situation, and also talk about ways to assist.

Date:

September 9, 2015

Chris Hedges
Pulitzer Prize winning journalist who writes a weekly column for the online magazine Truthdig. He spent nearly two decades as a foreign correspondent in Central America, the Middle East, Africa, and the Balkans. He has reported from more than 50 countries and has worked for The Christian Science Monitor, National Public Radio, The Dallas Morning News and The New York Times, for which he was a foreign correspondent for 15 years. Hedges left the Times after being issued a formal reprimand for denouncing the Bush administration’s invasion of Iraq. In 2012, he sued President Barack Obama after the passing of the National Defense Authorization Act. Hedges authored numerous bestselling books, including Empire of Illusion; Death of the Liberal Class; War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning; Days of Revolt which he co-wrote with Joe Sacco; and his most recent book Wages of Rebellion: The Moral Imperative of Revolt. Hedges received many awards and recognitions over the years. He was part of the team of reporters at The New York Times that was awarded a Pulitzer Prize, and he also received the Amnesty International Global Award for Human Rights Journalism. Hedges is a senior fellow at The Nation Institute in New York City. He has taught at Columbia University, New York University, Princeton University and The University of Toronto. He currently teaches prisoners at a maximum-security prison in New Jersey. Hedges holds a B.A. in English literature from Colgate University and a Master of Divinity degree from Harvard University. He was awarded an honorary doctorate from Starr King School for the Ministry in Berkeley, California. Hedges speaks Arabic, French and Spanish and studied classics, including ancient Greek and Latin, at Harvard.
 

We will speak with Chris Hedges about the US Foreign Policy towards the Middle East; ISIS; the crisis in the Syria, Iraq, Yemen and other countries in the Middle east; the BDS Movement; and more.
 
Please note that Chris Hedges will receive the Houston Peace and Justice Center HPJC's 2015 National Peacemaker Award and give the keynote address at the Awards Dinner in Houston on November 14, 2015. For more details on this event or to purchase tickets, visit http://www.hpjc.org/dinner2015.

Date:

September 2, 2015

Phyllis Bennis
Fellow and the Director of the New Internationalism Project at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington D.C. She is also a fellow of the Transnational Institute in Amsterdam. She has been a writer, analyst, and activist on Middle East and UN issues for many years. She helped found and remains on the advisory board of the U.S. Campaign to End Israeli Occupation. Phyllis plays a leading role in US and global movements against wars and occupation, and writes and speaks widely across the U.S. and around the world as part of the global peace movement. She continues to serve as an informal adviser to several top UN officials on Middle East and UN democratization issues. She is the author of numerous books including "Understanding the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict", "Ending the Iraq War: A Primer", "Understanding the US-Iran Crisis: A Primer", and "Before & After: US Foreign Policy and the War on Terror". Her most recent book (just released) is titled "Understanding ISIS and the New Global War on Terror: A Primer".
 

We will speak with Phyllis about her new book "Understanding ISIS and the New Global War on Terror: A Primer". We will also get her views on the US foreign policy towards the Middle East, the turmoil that is engulfing several areas in that region, and more.

 
 
 

 
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