By David Ignatius

AfghanistanIt's easy to get depressed reading the news out of Afghanistan. The insurgents are getting stronger, the United States is sending another 20,000 troops there—and yet even Defense Secretary Bob Gates admits that American soldiers aren't a long-term solution. So what to do?

In sorting out these policy dilemmas, it helps to talk to Afghans such as Saad and Jahid Mohseni, who are struggling with these problems every day. The two entrepreneurial brothers are running a media business in the war zone of Kabul and, far from giving up, they keep thinking of innovative ways to adapt and survive.

Since the tragic events of 9/11, there has been an upsurge in ethnic comedy by Arabs/Muslims in America. More and more Arab/Muslim individuals and groups such as "Allah Made Me Funny," the "Sultans of Satire" and "Axis of Evil" are appearing on stage with comic routines and they are attracting larger and larger non-Muslim audiences. Paradoxically, a tragedy that triggered widespread Islamophobia in American society seems also to have opened the field for Arab/Muslim comedy.

This panel discussion and lecture series, sponsored by The Middle East Center at the University of Pennsylvania, will explore the landscape of American Middle Eastern ethnic comedy and its intricate relationship with Islamophobia.

Panel Members: Mucahit Bilici (Professor of Sociology at John Jay College-CUNY), Jordan Elgrably (Founder of Levantine Cultural Center, and the Sultans of Satire: Middle East Comic Relief) and Rahim Armat (of Kodoom.com, Cultural Events Search Engine).

9 Scripts from a Nation at War is a multi-channel video installation that responds to the conditions and questions that have arisen during the military conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. It examines the ways in which war determines and 'scripts" certain roles such as "citizen," "veteran," "detainee" and "correspondent" and the capacity of individuals to fulfill or resist these.

What is Pakistan’s agenda in the Middle East? We will examine U.S. expectations of Pakistan with Feroz Hassan Khan and Roger Morris. Retired Pakistan Army Brigadier General Feroz Hassan Khan is currently on the faculty of the Department of National Security Affairs, Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey. Before teaching in the U.S., Khan represented Pakistan in diplomatic nuclear arms control negotiations. Roger Morris served on the National Security Council under Presidents Johnson and Nixon, and has authored several critically acclaimed books, including Shadow of the Eagle, which exposes U.S. policy and covert intervention in the Middle East and South Asia over the past half century.

Michael T. Klare's latest book on the geopolitics of energy: your purchase benefits LCC programmingRising Powers, Shrinking Planet: The New Geopolitics of Energy, by Michael T. Klare

Reviewed By Dick Platkin

Richard Dreyfuss, Dick Cheney: The actor incarnates the veep in Oliver Stone's "W"In his new movie "W," a biopic about outgoing President George W. Bush, director Oliver Stone has Dick Cheney (played by Richard Dreyfuss) narrate a series of large-screen slides that demonstrate how the countries adjacent to the Persian Gulf and Caspian Sea contain most of the world’s proven oil and gas reserves. As the Cheney-Dreyfuss presentation unfolds, we see the locations where the U.S. government has constructed dozens upon dozens of Middle East military installations since the first Gulf War. We are also told that the country which controls these Middle Eastern oil and gas reserves will control the Eurasian continent. This, in turn, will become key for the U.S. to maintain its dominant position in the global economy.

By Jordan Elgrably

Mabruk!

From obscure Illinois senator to president-elect in just four years, Barack Hussein Obama has electrified the world. Indeed, this no longer feels like the same planet today as when I stepped into the polling booth yesterday morning. People who hardly looked at each other in the street are smiling now; we’re talking. There is a very tangible sense that we’re all together in this project to reinvigorate the country—to reinvent it from the ground up if we have to. And we’re going to do it across all the old racial and religious divides.

Christopher Caldwell on "What is the West's Problem with Islam?"

Reflections on the Revolution in Europe: Immigration, Islam and the West: your purchase benefits LCC programming Europe has received a wave of immigration from the global south in recent decades, similar in scope to the US-but very different in its results. Many immigrant and second-generation communities have astronomical unemployment rates and a thin connection to European identity. Some have produced terrorists. The problems are particularly severe among newcomers from the Muslim world.

If Europe has an Islam problem, whose fault is it? Is Islamic belief and culture incompatible with Western institutions? Or is there such a thing as "Islamophobia," poisoning immigrants' efforts to integrate on European terms?

Christopher Caldwell, who writes for the Financial Times, The New York Times Magazine and The Weekly Standard, visits Zócalo to talk about themes from his upcoming book, Reflections on the Revolution in Europe: Immigration, Islam and the West.

The eclectic Al-Fareed aka Alfred Madain is a deejay, musician and ethnomusicologist in Los Angeles. A walking encyclopedia of traditional, folkloric and contemporary music of the Arab/Islamic world and Africa, he intimately “gets” and analyzes music ranging from ancient traditions to modern world techno, hip hop, western new wave, heavy metal and punk. Al-Fareed’s attuned feel for rock gives him the ability to reflect on the west from an eastern perspective and on the east from a western perspective. As a music historian he can explain the history and influence of ziryab (a musician of the Baghdadi and Andalusian courts) as well as the history and influence of Woody Guthrie, David Bowie, Bob Dylan, Black Flag, Blind Lemon Jefferson, the Velvet Underground and more.

Hammasa Kohistani: the daughter of Afghan refugees who fled the Taliban revises England's notion of the Muslim woman.The first Muslim to be crowned Miss England warned that stereotyping members of her community is leading some towards extremism.

Hammasa Kohistani made history three years ago when she was chosen to represent England in the Miss World pageant.

But one year later, the then-19-year-old student from Hounslow felt that winning the coveted beauty title was a "sugar coating" for Muslims who have become more alienated in the years since 9/11.

She said: "The attitude towards Muslims has got worse...Also the Muslims' attitude to British people has got worse.

"Even moderate Muslims are turning to terrorism to prove themselves. They think they might as well support it because they are stereotyped anyway. It will take a long time for communities to start mixing in more.

Language for a New Century: your purchase benefits LCC programmingKudos to Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry from the Middle East, Asia, and Beyond. This handsome new anthology (Norton 2008) celebrates the artistic and cultural forces flourishing today in the East—gathering an unprecedented selection of works by East Asian, Middle Eastern, South Asian and Central Asian poets as well as poets living in the diaspora. The volume is organized around nine themes—including childhood, politics and oppression, identity, war, homeland and love—and includes more than 400 unique voices from 59 countries. Each section of the anthology—organized by theme rather than national affiliation—is preceded by a personal essay from the editors that introduces the poetry and invokes the readers to examine their own identities in light of these powerful poems.