AMERICAN FREEDOM ALLIANCE
Conferences of the Air 2012

AFA Conferences of the Air are offered as a means of addressing subjects central to the survival of Western values and ideals without the expense and difficulty of bringing all the speakers together in the same room. . These conferences, which at times have been known to host over 25 participating speakers, can range in lenght from 90 minutes to four hours. They can be accessed free of charge in real time or else in real time or reviewed at a listener's leisure on this archived site. Biographies of all speakers are made available, often with links to their individual websites.

Recent Events

Spring Into Deadly Winter:
What is the Future of the Arab Middle East?

Featuring:

Nonie Darwish, Robert Spencer, Daniel Pipes, Ibn Warraq
Sebastian Gorka, David Pryce-Jones, and Robin Shepherd

Sunday, January 15, 2012
10:30 am - 1:30 pm PST ( 1:30 pm - 4:30 pm EST)

Streamed live on the Internet and then archived. Log in from anywhere in the world and listen at any time at http://www.blogtalkradio.com/westernwordradio

The revolutions which have roiled the Middle East over the past twelve months - from Tunisia to Egypt to Yemen to Syria - have taken the West largely by surprise. So sudden and effective were the demise of long time Arab autocrats that the West has barely had any time to recalibrate its understanding of these volatile societies in order to determine where they might heading. Drawing on a panel of experts from around the world AFA's Conference of the Air this month will examine this mercurial phenomenon in an attempt to understand the source of their vehemence, their current social and political trajectories and how developments in the region will ultimately affect the West.

Nonie Darwish is an Egyptian-American human rights activist, and founder of Arabs For Israel, and is Director of Former Muslims United. She is the author of two books: Now They Call Me Infidel; Why I Renounced Jihad for America, Israel and the War on Terror and Cruel and Usual Punishment: The Terrifying Global Implications of Islamic Law. Darwish's speech topics cover human rights, with emphasis on women's rights and minority rights in the Middle East. Born in Egypt, Darwish is the daughter of an Egyptian Army lieutenant general, who was called a "shahid" by the Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser, after being killed in a targeted killing in 1956. Darwish blames "the Middle Eastern Islamic cultureand the propaganda of hatred taught to children from birth" for his death. In 1978, she moved with her husband to the United States, and converted to Christianity there.

Robert Spencer is the director of Jihad Watch, a program of the David Horowitz Freedom Center, and the author of ten books, including the New York Times bestsellers The Truth About Muhammad and The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) (both Regnery). Along with his weekly columns, Spencer has completed a weekly Qur'an commentary at Jihad Watch, Blogging the Qur'an, which has been translated into Czech, Danish, German, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese. He is a contributing writer to the Investigative Project on Terrorism. His articles on Islam and other topics have appeared in the New York Post, the Washington Times, the Dallas Morning News, the UK's Guardian, Canada's National Post, Middle East Quarterly, WorldNet Daily, First Things, Insight in the News, National Review Online, and many other journals.

Daniel Pipes, Ph.D., is an academic and journalist and Director of the Middle East Forum whose writings on Islam, Europe and the threat to the West have appeared in newspapers and magazines around the world. His website, www.danielpipes.org, is the single most accessed internet source of specialized information on the Middle East and Islam. (http://www.danielpipes.org/)

Ibn Warraq, is an Islamic scholar and a leading figure in Koranic criticism and a visiting fellow at the Center for Law and Counterterrorism, a project of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Warraq's op-ed pieces have appeared in the Wall Street Journal in America and The Guardian and he has addressed distinguished governing bodies all over the world, including the United Nations in Geneva, and Members of the Dutch Parliament at The Hague.

Dr. Sebastian Gorka is an internationally recognized authority on issues of national security, terrorism, and democratization, having worked in government and the private and NGO sectors in Europe and the United States. He was born in the U.K. to parents who escaped Communism during the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. A graduate of the University of London and Corvinus University, Budapest, he was a Kokkalis Fellow at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government and holds a Ph.D. in political science. He is an associate fellow at the Joint Special Operations University (USSOCOM) and an assistant professor at the National Defense University in Washington, D.C.

David Pryce-Jones is the author of books dealing with contemporary events and including ten novels. In 1967 and 1973 he covered the wars in the Middle East for the Daily Telegraph and afterwards wrote The Face of Defeat (1974) about the Palestinians, and the best-selling The Closed Circle (1989) about the Arab world. He has published regularly in Commentary, New Criterion, the Wall Street Journal, and since 1999 has been a Senior Editor of National Review. He lives in London.

Robin Shepherd is the Director of International Affairs at the Henry Jackson Society in London. Mr. Shepherd has held senior fellowships at some of the world’s most prestigious public policy institutes since leaving international journalism in 2003 when his last position was as Moscow Bureau Chief for The Times of London. Mr. Shepherd’s key areas of expertise are transatlantic relations, American foreign policy, Middle Eastern (particularly Israeli) relations with the West, Russia, central and eastern Europe, NATO and the European Union. His recently published book: A State Beyond the Pale, Europe’s Problem with Israel looks at the reasons for widespread hostility to Israel in Europe among the continent’s opinion makers.