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.
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).
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.,
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.
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.
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."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.