CNN National Security Analyst Peter Bergen visited the Carnegie Council in New York City late last year to discuss Talibanistan, a collection he recently edited for Oxford University Press. Bergen, who produced the first television interview with Osama bin Laden in 1997, discussed the positive changes in Afghanistan over the past ten years: “Afghans have a sense that what is happening now is better than a lot of things they’ve lived through…”
Bergen was joined at the event by Anand Gopal, who wrote the first chapter in Talibanistan. Gopal recounts the story of Hajji Burget Khan, a leader in Kandahar who encouraged his fellow Afghans to support the Americans after the fall of the Taliban. But after US forces received bad intelligence, perceiving Hajji Burget Khan as a threat, he was killed in May 2002, which had a disastrous effect in the area, leading many to join the insurgency.
Peter Bergen on Afghanistan:
Click here to view the embedded video.
Anand Gopal on the tragic mistake made by the American military:
Click here to view the embedded video.
Peter Bergen is the director of the National Securities Studies Program at the New America Foundation, and is National Security Analyst at CNN. He is the author of Manhunt, The Longest War and The Osama Bin Laden I Know. Anand Gopal is a fellow at the New America Foundation and a journalist who has reported for the Wall Street Journal, the Christian Science Monitor, and other outlets on Afghanistan. Talibanistan: Negotiating the Borders Between Terror, Politics, and Religion was edited by Peter Bergen and Katherine Tiedemann and includes contributions from Anand Gopal.
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The post Have conditions improved in Afghanistan since 2001? appeared first on OUPblog.
[Editor's Note: A chronological list of AICL's coverage of the shut-down of the Mexican American Studies classes at Tucson Unified School District is here.]
The Daily Show's segment on the shut-down of the Mexican American Studies program gave some cause to laugh and exclaim over the ignorance and racism of Michael Hicks, one of Tucson Unified School District's school board members, but it is imperative we remember what is happening in Tucson. This CNN story captures some of it:
In related news,
Education Week has a story out about the Common Core Standards, and how students ought to be reading more demanding texts. In the now-shut-down Mexican American Studies classes at TUSD, students were reading texts that some felt were too complex for high school students. Moreover, they felt that the classes and study of those texts promoted resentment of a race or class of people (with race and class referring to affluent white people). So, they voted to shut down the classes. In the middle of the week. In the middle of the academic year.
Ironically,
TUSD announced recently they were adopting the Common Core Standards!
Seems to me they ought to reinstate the entire MAS program and its teachers!
School districts across the country ought to call Sean Arce and invite him to help them revamp their classes in light of the Common Core Standards. He just received
national recognition for his work, but it looks like TUSD's governing board is not going to renew his contract.
How much shame will TUSD endure before it stops its attacks on the Mexican American Studies teachers and students???
By:
Claudette Young,
on 3/9/2012
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Everyone knows how the internet has changed the American scene, as well as that of the rest of the world.
Students aren’t at the mercy of expensive literary searches at university anymore. Research is finished in half the time and is a more efficiently selective process. High school students can reap major rewards by having so much more educational information at their fingertips than ever before.
At the same time, the average person has the ability and wherewithal to generate blogs about nearly every subject known to man.
The Good
There are people with agendas out there, and there are lovely people who’re just trying to make it from day to day, surviving the onslaught of the modern age. And within all of these people there seems to be a surging desire to communicate with others about their lives, their ideas, and their aspirations.
A wife and mother can talk about her day and her frustrations with thousands of other moms around the world and gain solace in the knowledge that she’s not alone.
Kids can vent about how angst-filled their lives are, connecting with others who also feel the need to rip everyone around them. They can also find help and counseling online that they can’t find at home for various reasons.
And while all that “help” goes on, others are providing the stimulus for some already in-crisis kids to end their existence rather than face another day in the trenches.
The Bad/Down Side
The debate rages about limits on personal exposure and personal privacy. Entire volumes have appeared on all of these topics, both online and off. Writers don’t have to go any further than their desk to have enough material to span their lifetimes. Some of it is well-done, some dreadful, but always having a point.
As a writer, I watch news feeds each day, looking for tidbits to use for stories, articles, exploration, etc. Each day I shake my head in wonderment as I peruse the latest and greatest in the world of news. I wonder if everyone has gone totally insane, considering episodes like the one on the American Airlines flight this morning from Dallas to Chicago.
Soon I come to another story about a car costing nearly $300,000 that visited Harry Potter’s world and came away with his invisibility cloak. Yes, an invisible car is cool. We’ve had those kinds of military planes for a long time, but why would a person need one? The price tag along would make the car for the wealthy only. Do those going without adequate food on the table need another reason to resent those who’re living large?
There was the one about Coke and Pepsi changing their recipes to eliminate a particular chemical. I ask myself how long they’ve known about potential problems with that chemical and why they waited for a whistle-blower to press the issue.
We are bombarded with news 24/7 on CNN and other broadcast networks. We can’t escape from it, what with all the apps for phones now and hand-held computers. Dick Tracy watches/communicators are already on the market. How much more news do we need to fi
By:
Claudette Young,
on 3/9/2012
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Everyone knows how the internet has changed the American scene, as well as that of the rest of the world.
Students aren’t at the mercy of expensive literary searches at university anymore. Research is finished in half the time and is a more efficiently selective process. High school students can reap major rewards by having so much more educational information at their fingertips than ever before.
At the same time, the average person has the ability and wherewithal to generate blogs about nearly every subject known to man.
The Good
There are people with agendas out there, and there are lovely people who’re just trying to make it from day to day, surviving the onslaught of the modern age. And within all of these people there seems to be a surging desire to communicate with others about their lives, their ideas, and their aspirations.
A wife and mother can talk about her day and her frustrations with thousands of other moms around the world and gain solace in the knowledge that she’s not alone.
Kids can vent about how angst-filled their lives are, connecting with others who also feel the need to rip everyone around them. They can also find help and counseling online that they can’t find at home for various reasons.
And while all that “help” goes on, others are providing the stimulus for some already in-crisis kids to end their existence rather than face another day in the trenches.
The Bad/Down Side
The debate rages about limits on personal exposure and personal privacy. Entire volumes have appeared on all of these topics, both online and off. Writers don’t have to go any further than their desk to have enough material to span their lifetimes. Some of it is well-done, some dreadful, but always having a point.
As a writer, I watch news feeds each day, looking for tidbits to use for stories, articles, exploration, etc. Each day I shake my head in wonderment as I peruse the latest and greatest in the world of news. I wonder if everyone has gone totally insane, considering episodes like the one on the American Airlines flight this morning from Dallas to Chicago.
Soon I come to another story about a car costing nearly $300,000 that visited Harry Potter’s world and came away with his invisibility cloak. Yes, an invisible car is cool. We’ve had those kinds of military planes for a long time, but why would a person need one? The price tag along would make the car for the wealthy only. Do those going without adequate food on the table need another reason to resent those who’re living large?
There was the one about Coke and Pepsi changing their recipes to eliminate a particular chemical. I ask myself how long they’ve known about potential problems with that chemical and why they waited for a whistle-blower to press the issue.
We are bombarded with news 24/7 on CNN and other broadcast networks. We can’t escape from it, what with all the apps for phones now and hand-held computers. Dick Tracy watches/communicators are already on the market. How much more news do we need to fi
Fox Business’s Lou Dobbs claims that President Obama’s “liberal friends in Hollywood” are “targeting a younger demographic using animated movies to sell their agenda to children.” He cites Studio Ghibli’s The Secret World of Arrietty and Illumination Entertainment’s upcoming The Lorax as evidence of this indoctrination. One of Dobbs’s guests claims that these films are creating a generation of Occutoddlers, referring to the Occupy Wall Street movement which these films allegedly promote.
Of course, I wouldn’t put it past Fox that they’d try to stick it to Chris Meledandri, who runs Illumination and is a competitor of Fox in the animation market. After all, Meledandri used to run 20th Century Fox Animation and oversaw the earlier Dr. Seuss animated adaptation, Horton Hears a Who!, which was distributed by Fox.
Cartoon Brew: Leading the Animation Conversation |
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Post tags: chris meledandri, CNN, Lorax, Lou Dobbs, Secret World of Arrietty
I have been soooo busy reading that I haven't had time to review the books! Since Friday I have read Wonderstruck, Stupid Fast, AND Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children. O, I forgot! I also read Trapped by Marc Aronson. So let's start with that one.
I remember watching the plight of 33 Chilean copper miners in late summer/ early fall of 2010. It was a harrowing story with a jubilant, triumphant ending. The whole world joined together to provide experts and technology to bring those miners safely to the surface. Aronson does an excellent job of conveying the tension of the situation. He describes how the miners played a huge role in their own rescue by remaining calm and engaged during their captivity. I cried as I watched the miners come out of the earth on TV last year. I cried again as I read about their rescue.
Here's a local note. The drill that created the column for the rescue capsule was designed and built in Pennsylvania! Go PA!
Click here to view video of the miners, still inside the mines, from a report originally run on CNN.
By: Lauren,
on 3/21/2011
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By Bernard Schweizer
There’s a lost tribe of religious believers who have suffered a lasting identity crisis. I am referring to the category-defying species of believers who accept the existence of the creator God and yet refuse to worship him. In fact they may go so far as to say that they hate God.
No, I’m not talking about atheists. Non-believers may say contemptuous things about God, but when they do so, they are simply giving the thumbs-down to a fictional character. They may as well express dislike about Shakespeare’s devious Iago, Dickens’ scheming Uriah Heep or Dr. Seuss’ Grinch who stole Christmas.
For atheists, God is in the same category as these fictional villains. Except that since God is the most popular of all fictional villains, New Atheists – those evangelizing ones such as Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins – spend a considerable amount of energy enumerating his flaws.
But someone who truly believes in God’s existence and yet hates or scorns him is in a state of religious rebellion so perplexing as to strain our common understanding of faith to the breaking point.
Although these radical dissenters could steal the thunder from the New Atheists, they have remained almost unknown to date.
When it comes to God-hatred, a collective blindness seems to settle on us. First, we lack a generally agreed-upon name to refer to this religious rebellion. And anything that doesn’t have a word associated with it doesn’t exist, right?
Well, in the case of God-hatred, this principle doesn’t hold because the phenomenon does exist whether or not there’s a name for it. And in any case, I’ve ended the semantic impasse by naming these rebels and their stance once for all. My chosen term is misotheism, a word composed of the Greek root “misos” (hatred) and “theos” (deity).
Why do I care so much about them? They strike me as brave, visionary, intelligent people who reject God from a sense of moral outrage and despair because of the amount of injustice and suffering that they witness in this world.
At the same time, they are exercising self-censorship because they dare not voice their opinion openly. After all, publicly insulting God can have consequences ranging from ostracism to imprisonment, fines and even death, depending on where the blasphemy takes place (Ireland, for instance, imposes a fine of up to 25,000 Euros for blasphemy) and what God is the target of attacks (under sharia law, being found an enemy of God, or “mohareb” is a capital offense).
But I also care about these rebels because they chose literature as their principal medium for dealing with their God-hatred. I am a professor of literature, and the misotheists’ choice of literature as their first line of defense and preferred medium endears them to me.
Literature offered them the only outlet to vent their rage against God. And it was a pretty safe haven for doing so. Indeed, hardly anybody seems to notice when God-hatred is expressed in literature. Such writers cleverly “package” their blasphemous thoughts in works of literature without seeming to give offense in any overt way.
At the same time, these writers count on the reader’s cooperation to keep their “secret” safe. It’s like a pact between writer and reader.
Zora Neale Hurston could write that “all gods who receive homage are cruel” without anybody objecting that “all gods” must necessarily include the persons of the Christian Trinity.
Or Rebecca West could write that “something has happened which can only be explained by supposing that God hates you with merciless hatred, and nobody will admit it,” counting on the fact that, since nobody will admit it, nobody will rat her out for blasphemy.
There lies, in a s
By: Rebecca,
on 7/21/2009
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Elvin Lim is Assistant Professor of Government at Wesleyan University and author of The Anti-intellectual Presidency, which draws on interviews with more than 40 presidential speechwriters to investigate this relentless qualitative decline, over the course of 200 years, in our presidents’ ability to communicate with the public. He also blogs at www.elvinlim.com. In the article below he looks at the achievements of Walter Cronkite. See his previous OUPblogs here.
For most of the second half of the twentieth century, Walter Cronkite was always there whenever history moved. Before the word “embedded” came into fashion, he flew on the first bombing raids over Germany in a B-17 Flying Fortress. Before he covered the Kennedy Assassination, Vietnam and Watergate, he was also right there at the Battle of the Bulge. He covered the first nationally televised Democratic and Republican National Conventions - out of which the term “anchor” (and the Swedish term “Kronkiter”) was coined to describe his role. Walter Cronkite was always there; he was the anchor of all anchors.
But while Cronkite was always there, he understood that it was never about him, but about the facts. Today however, his model of reporting is praised by everyone, but emulated by no one. Not by Lou Dobbs, or Keith Olbermann, and not even by his replacement at CBS, Dan Rather, who tried to meddle in politics rather than to report it. CNN has a name for this narcissistic reporting style: “I-report.” I don’t think Walter Cronkite believed that there was an “I” in the news, however much an event lent itself to self-reflection.
So Cronkite’s legacy lives on only in advertising slogans. CNN may be “the most trusted name in news,” and Fox news may be “Fair and Balanced.” But “the most trusted man in America” would tell us that self-praise is no praise and that objectivity should be practiced, not trumpeted.
To be sure, it isn’t that today’s journalists are unrepentant gossips or opinion exhibitionists (though some are). It is that their bosses know that opinion and feisty debate sells. It is because experts in mass communications and social psychology have discovered that listeners and viewers like to hear what they want to hear, especially opinions that cohere with their own. That is why our journalistic umpires venture their opinions, and if they don’t, they pose incendiary questions to get their interviewers to say something about their political opponents that would start a war of words. While Walter Cronkite covered the news, the news establishment today wants to drive it.
Cronkite was a first-rate journalist who understood that it is always about the news, never about the reporter, transmitting the news faithfully while at the scene but never making a scene. He didn’t
engage in story making, he didn’t engage in frivolous banter about the role of the media in order to insinuate the self-congratulatory premise that he is a mover and shaker and master of the universe. Walter Cronkite knew that it was never about Walter Cronkite. It was his principled commitment to reticence that made his exceptional departure in declaring the war in Vietnam unwinnable so compelling. In his self-abnegation lay his considerable credibility.
Walter Cronkite was confident enough in the processes of American democracy, and humble enough to know the difference between newscaster and newsmaker, to desist from meddling from either the meaning or movement of politics. Without touch-screen monitors or a teleprompter, he brought us the news. Plain and simple. He wasn’t cool, he wasn’t a model, and he was even, by his own admission, “dull at times.” Though his career is a period piece in the age of facebook and twitter, we will do well to remain anchored in his journalistic values.
“And that’s the way it is.”
By: scriberess,
on 11/8/2008
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A. PLAYWRIGHT'S RAMBLINGS
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The Dr. Phil and Sarah Interview: a dialogue
by Eleanor Tylbor
So Sarah Palin returns to "normal" life and starts making the rounds of the talk shows.
DR. PHIL walks on to the TV set and greets the audience
DR. PHIL
Hi there, folks! This is a great and news-making and earth-shattering and super-duper-pooper day because - right here in front of your very eyes and on TV's around the world, our guest today is Sarah Palin!
(audience cheers)
It's true - I swear it! Would, I, Dr. Phil lie to you all? Look - my fingers aren't crossed! Just a joke... Sarah's gonna be here and we're gonna talk about...stuff. You know, Alaska...Russia...the prank phone call... What's it like to lose... Meanwhile, put your hands together and welcome... SARAH PALIN!
(audience cheers)
(SARAH PALIN walks on to the stage, waving and throwing kisses to everyone. She stops half-way and throws more kisses, smiles)
DR. PHIL
Hey Sarah...sweetie! C'mon over here, darlin'!
(she ignores him and continues to wave to audience, who is now on their feet and applauding wildly)
DR. PHIL
Um...Sarah? This is my show? Hello?
(ROBIN, Dr. Phil's wife walks on stage and pushes her from behind until she is directly in front of DR. PHIL)
DR. PHIL
Now ain't that nice? Robin really loves this woman, y'know! Right Robin? 'Course she does!Now sit down, Sarah, honey!
(SARAH is still waving and throwing kisses)
DR. PHIL
(placing a hand on either shoulder)
I said...sit down! Okay. That's better. I'm the only one who stands up on this show. So Sarah - how does it feel to be a loser?
SARAH P.
Loser? You're a loser, Dr. Phil! The whole media are losers! Everyone in the whole world are losers.
(the audience responds by applauding loudly and cheering)
SARAH P.
See? They agree! Yeah! I'm a loser, alright! You better believe it!
DR. PHIL
Now...Sarah. When did you first experience these feelings of persecution?
SARAH P.
The minute I bought these new glasses. I mean, I needed a new prescription so I went out and bought new frames! Is there anything wrong with that? Suddenly, everyone is wearing the exact same frames! They could have bought other models but nooooo - they bought the exact same one's as me! Why did they do that, Dr. Phil?
DR. PHIL
(finger on chin, pensive)
Cheez - I dunno, Sarah... Maybe they were on sale or something? Never mind that. So...how y'doin'?
SARAH P.
Well...alright I guess. I mean, Alaska ain't New York or Washington or Boston or...
DR. PHIL
Aha! See folks? Sarah here's isn't geographically-challenged like the press says she is!
SARAH P.
....or Montreal...or L.A....
DR. PHIL
We get the point, babe. So? Whad'ya been up to? Been hunting lately?
SARAH P.
Well Phil - you don't mind if I call you Phil - after all...we're friends now. What was the question? Something about Neiman-Marcus?
DR. PHIL
Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha...! You're so funny. Not as funny as Tina Fey but funny. I was askin' you 'bout whether or not you been huntin', lately
SARAH P.
Hunting? Who told you I hunt? I don't hunt! I buy all my meat at the supermarket, silly!
DR. PHIL
Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha....! 'Course you do and I'm Arnold Schwarzneggar!
SARAH P.
Who?
DR. PHIL
Arnold? Governor of California?
SARAH P.
California? Oh yeahhhhh! I can see California from my door! Yeah...
DR. PHIL
So what are your plans, now? Just to go back to your boring job of governing Alaska?
SARAH P.
Yeah... I mean, being a governor is challenging work! Very challenging! Like every morning I go into my office... Uh-oh...I forgot where my office is, again. We move a lot, y'know. They keep opening new Walmart stores
DR. PHIL
'Course it is! We know that! So...like...let's say...if a person - not me of course - wanted to hunt possum in Alaska, could they?
SARAH P.
'Course they could! We got lots of possum waiting for the stew pot in Alaska! Why, we got them running everywhere
(silence for 5 seconds)
DR. PHIL
You don't know what possum is, do you, Sarah?
SARAH P.
Not really...
DR. PHIL
Well - there you have it, folks! A regular sit-down-and-get't'know-'ya with the loser... I mean to say, Governor Sarah Palin! Thanks for dropping by, Sarah! See? We ain't so bad after all!
SARAH P.
Just wanna say before I leave that I'll be having my own talk show this fall right after you, Dr. Phil! Isn't that wonderful? You and me on the same network? It's so exciting!
DR. PHIL
Thanks for dropping by, Sarah.
SARAH P.
And I just wanna invite you and Robin to come shoot possum in Alaska anytime you want. Bye everyone!
DR. PHIL
(whipping out cell phone)
Possum in Alaska, huh...get me Wolf Blitzer at CNN...
… to Yohannes Gebregeorgis of Ethiopia Reads, who has been named one of CNN’s top 10 heroes of the year - voting is now taking place to choose the Number One!
I blogged about Yohannes’ book Silly Mammo a few weeks ago, and his amazing donkey-drawn library in Ethiopia - and it’s great to see such recognition for his work.
I used up my April Fools energy making an April Fool AskMe page on MetaFilter. Those of you in reference positions may appreciate the jokes even if you’re not closely acquainted with the community. If you reload that page, you’ll get to the main page of AskMe as it usually is. The other site admins and I really tried for something that was mostly funny and not very confusing. I never like feeling that I spend the whole day on the first of April fending off bad jokes at my expense.
april1,
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“The price tag along would make the car for the wealthy only. Do those going without adequate food on the table need another reason to resent those who’re living large?”
Clauds, I’ve often disliked greatly the imbalance in our world of poverty stricken and the wealthy. While some, say, professional ball players, for instance, make an unsightly amount of money there’re some that don’t even know where there next meal will come from and are cold. It’s the sign, I believe, of relationship gone wrong and in this case it’s our relationship with money that is out of whack.
“There was the one about Coke and Pepsi changing their recipes to eliminate a particular chemical. I ask myself how long they’ve known about potential problems with that chemical and why they waited for a whistle-blower to press the issue.”
You’ve touched on another topic that is clearly, unsettling and an example of our trust (in our government and it’s regulations that are meant for our safety), being sorely abused. I recently conducted a mini research on the CCD (the colony collapse disorder of our honey bees), and discovered the real reason behind it was our government was allowing the chemical companies do the testing on their own chemicals (pesticides), and deeming them safe, had them on the market for the last nine years. Come to find out these “safe,” systemic pesticides are indeed very dangerous to the health of the colonies and in turn our own food supply etc.
Well, this has been an eye opening, rabble rousing (in a good way), post Claudsy. I didn’t tend to the questions you posed but I shall return later to see what you/others think about those, too.
Thank you and blessings,
Hannah
Even though I read some of the news each day, I try to ignore most of those that I know will raise my blood pressure above safe levels. I suppose it comes from knowing the patterns of political activity, patterns in military behavior and such. Training as a sociologist has its down side. I tend to extrapolate from the tiniest provocation.
Now, though, I’m finding less and less that’s safe for me to read. I really don’t like dealing the entertainment world. The superficiality of it all makes for upset stomachs and headaches.
Some would say that I’ve become intolerant of human activities as I’ve aged. I wonder if it’s intolerance or fatigue. Humans simply never seem to take the time to think about what they’re doing most of the time, or the consequences of their actions.
Don’t mind me. I’ve had a lousy night’s sleep due to noisy neighbors upstairs, and that tends to erase any smilie face I would normally use.
Have a great weekend, Hannah. I know you’ll take time to enjoy your family and the time you have together.
Take care and God bless,
Claudsy
This is exactly why I don’t watch news, entertainment style or otherwise. It IS tiring.
Sorry you didn’t get very good sleep, Clauds. Happy weekend to you, too.
Blessings,
Hannah
The way I look at it, Hannah, is: if that’s the worst that happens to me in a given week, I’m ahead of the game and fortunate.
Happy weekend to you, too.
Claudsy
Thank you!