Irene Khan, secretary general of Amnesty International, speaking in Mexico City in August 2007. (AP)

Post your comments below

A new Sudan policy out today from the Obama administration — and immediate scrutiny from human rights advocates of its impact on a campaign called genocide.

It’s been a tough decade for human rights. As if terror and torture and war on terror weren’t tough enough to deal with, then came economic collapse.

From dissidents in prison to populations in peril and poverty, it’s a hard world.

This hour, we’ll talk with the secretary general of Amnesty International worldwide, Irene Khan, and The New York Times’s Nicholas Kristof, about human rights up against tough times.

You can join the conversation. Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Irene Khan joins us in our studio. She is has been secretary general of Amnesty International, the world’s largest human rights organization, since Sept. 12, 2001. She’s the first woman, the first Asian, the first Bangladeshi, and the first Muslim in the job. Her new book is “The Unheard Truth: Poverty and Human Rights.”

Joining us from New York is Nicholas Kristof, two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for The New York Times and author of the On The Ground blog. He is the co-author, with Sheryl WuDunn, of “Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide.”

Post your comments below

Barack Obama talked warmly of immigrant gifts on the campaign trail. His Homeland Security chief, Janet Napolitano, talked tough yesterday on the Rio Grande. All nations wrestle with immigration and demographic change. Immigration made America.

Christopher Caldwell says it may unmake Europe. A wave of Islamic immigration, European-style, is now challenging Europe’s historic culture, he says. And Europeans don’t know what to do about it.

This hour, On Point: Immigration, Islam, and the changing face of Europe.

You can join the conversation. Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Joining us in our studio is Christopher Caldwell, author of “Reflections on the Revolution in Europe: Immigration, Islam, and the West.” A senior editor at The Weekly Standard, columnist for The Financial Times, and a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine, he has been reporting on the politics and culture of Islam in Europe for more than a decade.

You can read an excerpt from Caldwell’s book at randomhouse.com.

Joining us from Paris is Christopher Dickey, Paris bureau chief and Middle East regional editor for Newsweek. He reports on European politics, economy, society and new technologies, as well as developing stories throughout North Africa, the Near East and the Persian Gulf.

Professor Pilo inspects a skull in the killing fields of Bogoro, Ituri, eastern Congo. (Susan Meiselas/Magnum Photos)

Post your comments below

When the International Criminal Court, the ICC, was formed in 2002, its goals were big — to arrest and prosecute warlords for mass murders and genocide, for crimes committed against humanity.

But those big goals met with equally big challenges. How does a prosecutor in the Netherlands arrest a warlord at large in the jungles of Congo?

“The Reckoning,” a new PBS documentary, tracks the struggle to make the International Criminal Court, from the courtrooms of The Hague to refugee camps in Uganda and the killing fields in Sudan.

This hour, On Point: Warlords, war crimes, and the International Criminal Court.

You can join the conversation. Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

-Jane Clayson, guest host

Tom Ashbrook is on vacation.

Guests:

Pamela Yates is director of “The Reckoning: The Battle for the International Criminal Court,” which was featured at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival and is airing on PBS. She’s a 2008 Guggenheim fellow and co-founder of Skylight Pictures, the documentary production company.

You can watch the film online at PBS.org through September 14.

Christine Chung was the first senior trial attorney to work in the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court. She directed the ICC investigation which led to the first ICC arrest warrants, for Joseph Kony, leader of Uganda’s rebel “Lord’s Resistance Army.” She also worked on the ICC’s investigations in Darfur and the Congo. She’s now a partner at the law firm Quinn Emanuel.

Watch the trailer for “The Reckoning:”

A supporter of defeated Iranian presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi hurls a stone at riot-police during clashes in Tehran, Iran, Sunday, June 14, 2009. (AP)

Post your comments below

Anyone who thought the world would wake up Saturday to a remade Iran, on easy street for reconciliation with the West, got a rude shock this weekend:

A landslide re-election victory announced for President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad. Rioters in Tehran alleging a stolen election. And, on its face, a much tougher road ahead for President Barack Obama’s outreach effort.

Today, the scent of teargas and burning tires lingers in Tehran. Opposition outrage is not over. But what’s next, for Ahmedinejad’s opponents?

This hour, On Point: What now for Iran — and for the U.S. and Iran?

You can join the conversation. Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

From Istanbul, Turkey, we’re joined by Scott Peterson, Iran correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor. He was in Tehran covering the election until early this morning.

Joining us from Tehran is Mohamed Marandi, an Iranian political scientist and lecturer at the University of Tehran’s Institute for North American and European Studies.

Joining us from Washington is Hillary Mann-Leverett. She worked for 15 years for the Bush and Clinton administrations at the National Security Council and State Department. For two years following 9/11, she was one of a small number of U.S. officials authorized to negotiate with the Iranians over Afghanistan and Al Qaida. She is now CEO of a political risk firm called Stratega.

Joining us from Honolulu is Farideh Farhi. Formerly a professor at the University of Tehran, she teaches political science at the University of Hawaii at Manoa and is an advisor to the National Iranian American Council.

Alyssa Lanz poses for a snapshot in Egypt while studying at the American University in Cairo, taking classes in Arabic and political science, and working with New Women's Foundation, a research center in Cairo focusing on women's rights. (Photo: mayafrost.com)

Post your comments below

Everybody knows the straight and narrow, up-and-out formula for American success: good grades, good scores, good college, big debt … good luck.

My guests today, Maya and Tom Frost, say forget it. There’s a better way, they say. And the path leads abroad — early.

Stay home studying for SATs and taking on college debt, and you’re guaranteed nothing in this topsy-turvy economy. Go abroad — as early as high school, especially for college, they say — and you’ll find low tuitions, big adventures, and the future.

This hour, On Point: A new American way in the world. Going global, right from the start.

You can join the conversation. Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Maya Frost joins us in our studio. She’s the author of “The New Global Student: Skip the SAT, Save Thousands on Tuition and Get a Truly International Education.”

At Frost’s website, you can read about the students (such as Alyssa Lanz, seen in the photo above) who are featured in the book.

Also joining us in our studio is Tom Frost, husband of Maya and father of their four daughters.

President Barack Obama speaks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House on Monday, May 18, 2009. (AP)

Post your comments below

Nobody expected a shouting match in the Oval Office. But there is wide speculation that the agendas of Barack Obama and Benjamin Netanyahu may ultimately put the U.S. and Israel on a path to tough tensions.

Tensions over Iran, and whether to talk or attack. Tensions over a “two-state solution,” and whether to push forward.

Observers joke, grimly, of a “yes, we can” Obama versus a “no, we won’t” Netanyahu — and don’t joke at all about a potentially very real U.S.-Israeli test of wills.

This hour, On Point: Obama, Netanyahu, and the way forward in the Middle East.

You can join the conversation. Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Joining us from Washington are:

Gerald Seib, executive Washington editor of The Wall Street Journal, where he writes the Capital Journal column. He’s co-author with John Harwood of “Pennsylvania Avenue: Profiles in Backroom Power.”

Aaron David Miller, public policy scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. From 1978 to 2003 he advised six U.S. secretaries of state on Mideast policy and Arab-Israeli negotiations. His latest book is “The Much Too Promised Land: America’s Elusive Search for Arab-Israeli Peace.”

Robert Satloff, executive director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. His most recent book is “Among the Righteous: Lost Stories from the Holocaust’s Long Reach into Arab Lands.”

A Revolutionary Guard missile, the Shahab-3, claimed to be capable of carrying a nuclear warhead and reaching Europe, Israel and U.S. forces in the Middle East, is displayed in Tehran on Sept. 23, 2008. Behind it is a picture of the Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, (AP)

Post your comments below

The tangled intrigue over Iran’s nuclear ambitions and advances is a world where fact can be as strange and bewildering as fiction.

Washington Post columnist David Ignatius looks at it both ways. As fact, in his job following intelligence and foreign affairs for the Post. As fiction, in his second life as a writer of near-to-life spy thrillers.

In his latest, Ignatius imagines a full-lather American plunge toward war with Iran as intelligence operatives battle over whether Tehran is really on the brink of going nuclear, as in nuclear arms.

This hour, On Point: David Ignatius goes close to life in “The Increment.”

You can join the conversation. Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guest:

David Ignatius is a columnist and associate editor at The Washington Post. He has covered the Middle East and the CIA for more than 25 years. His new novel, his seventh, is “The Increment.” His 2007 novel, “Body of Lies,” was made into a movie staring Leonardo DiCaprio and Russell Crowe.

Read the first chapter of “The Increment” (pdf).

Neil MacFarquhar and bodyguards, Marib, Yemen.

Post your comments below

New York Times correspondent Neil MacFarquhar grew up on a beach in Libya, son of an American oil engineer, before our age of violent jihad, war, and Middle Eastern turmoil.

He studied Arabic and went back to cover upheaval in the Arab world. But he could never ignore the other side of Arab life — the human, the everyday, the sometimes comical — behind the headlines of terror and tyranny.

In a new book he says Americans need to remember and speak to that humanity.

This hour, On Point: Neil MacFarquhar’s unexpected encounters in a changing Middle East.

Is there another Middle East to call on, draw on, beyond the endless headlines of conflict? Or not? Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guest:

Neil MacFarquhar joins us from New York. He was Cairo bureau chief for The New York Times from 2001 through 2005 and is now its UN correspondent. He grew up in Libya and covered the region for the Associated Press. His new book is “The Media Relations Department of Hizbollah Wishes you a Happy Birthday: Unexpected Encounters in the Changing Middle East.” He’s also the author of a novel, “The Sand Café.”

You can read “The Beachhead,” Chapter 1 of MacFarquhar’s new book, at his website.

A woman is welcomed by relatives after arriving from the U.S. at the Jose Marti airport in Havana on Tuesday, April 14, 2009. (AP)

Post your comments below

On Monday, when President Obama lifted restrictions for Cuban Americans on travel and remittances to Cuba, he made good on a campaign promise. He also became the latest President since Kennedy to deal with Cuba — without dealing with Cuba.

Cuba won’t have a place at the thirty-five nation Summit of the Americas that starts tomorrow in Trinidad and Tobago, with President Obama in attendance. But the American embargo on the island nation — and pressure on the U.S. to end it — certainly will.

Some charge that Obama is giving away a diplomatic chip. But at tomorrow’s summit, the president will likely hear that the U.S. isn’t giving enough. And while the rest of the hemisphere calls for lifting the embargo on Cuba, the Cuban community in America is divided.

Up next, On Point: Weighing diplomacy with Cuba, and what the future may hold for Cubans and Cuban Americans.

You can join the conversation. Cuban Americans, what’s your reaction to President Obama lifting restrictions on travel and remittances to Cuba? Do you welcome the development — or worry that the U-S is giving up leverage?

Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

-Jane Clayson, guest host

Guests:

Joining us first from Washington is Mark Silva, Washington correspondent for Tribune newspapers, including the Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune, and writer for the Tribune Washington bureau blog, The Swamp. He was senior political writer for The Miami Herald for 21 years. 

From Miami, we’re joined by Myriam Marquez, Metro Columnist for the Miami Herald newspaper. She has overseen award-winning projects for the Miami Herald, including reporting on the evolving face of Miami’s Cuban exile community. She spent 18 years at the Orlando Sentinel and returned to Cuba for that newspaper in 2002. She was born in Havana and came to the U.S. when she was 4 years old. She grew up bi-lingual and bi-cultural in Miami.

And from Coral Gables, Florida, we’re joined by Jaime Suchlicki, professor of history at the University of Miami and director of the Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies. He emigrated from Cuba in 1960, when he was 18 years old. He has written twelve books about Cuba, including “Cuba: From Columbus to Castro and Beyond.”

President Barack Obama meets with Gen. Ray Odierno at Camp Victory in Baghdad, Iraq, Tuesday, April 7, 2009. (AP)

It’s been the week of pirates. Just four Somali pirates storming a huge American cargo ship. Thrown off, but with the captain hostage. Bobbing on a life boat on the high seas, a U.S. destroyer hovering. Captain Richard Phillips reportedly managing to jump off last night. Then recaptured. Riveting.

And that’s just the pirate story. We’ve got gay marriage on a roll, in Iowa and now Vermont. The President in Baghdad. Earthquake in Italy. Markets up. Economic jitters still strong.

This hour, On Point: All that, and more. Our weekly news roundtable goes behind the headlines.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Joining us from Washington is Ruth Marcus, editorial writer and columnist at The Washington Post.

Also from Washington is Barbara Slavin, assistant managing editor for world and national security at The Washington Times and author of “Bitter Friends, Bosom Enemies: Iran, the U.S. and the Twisted Path to Confrontation.”

And from Hanover, N.H., we’re joined by Jack Beatty, On Point news analyst and senior editor at The Atlantic.

Dambisa Moyo

Post your comments below

The world has poured aid into post-colonial Africa. And Africa remains overwhelmingly poor.

Now, one young African economist is speaking up to say, “stop the aid.” No more concerts for Africa. No more heartfelt appeals.

Dambisa Moyo — from Zambia by way of Harvard, Oxford, and Goldman Sachs — says tough market discipline is what African nations need, not handouts. She argues that the more than $1 trillion in aid that’s gone to Africa has not helped the continent, but put it on life support. Stifled entrepreneurship. Fed corruption. Made Africa’s leaders beholden to the West.

She’s been on the road with her controversial message. The pushback has been loud and strong.

This hour, On Point: We’re debating aid for Africa, with Dambisa Moyo.

You can join the conversation. Could Bono be wrong? What about Dambisa Moyo? How do you see aid to Africa?

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Joining us from London is Dambisa Moyo, economist and author of the new book “Dead Aid: Why Aid Is Not Working and How There Is a Better Way for Africa.” She is former head of economic research and strategy for sub-Saharan Africa at Goldman Sachs and a former World Bank consultant.

From New York we’re joined by John McArthur, chief executive of the Millennium Promise, created to help achieve the United Nation’s eight Millennium Development goals, which include cutting global poverty in half by 2015.  He oversees the Millennium Villages project, which helps more than 400,000 people in rural communities across 10 countries in Africa to become economically viable. He is also research associate at the Earth Institute at Columbia University, where he teaches at the School of International and Public Affairs.

Ahead of the G20 summit, a lone protester delivers a speech on the financial issues, back dropped by the Bank of England, left, and the Royal Exchange, right, in central London's City financial district, Tuesday March 31, 2009. World leaders are gathering in London for the Group of 20 summit amid an unprecedented security operation to protect the meeting from possible violent protests. (AP)

President Obama stepped off Air Force One onto British soil last night — his first venture across the Atlantic since cheering multitudes greeted him last summer.

What a difference this time. Heading into tomorrow’s G-20 summit, he faces a global challenge greater than any since perhaps World War II. And his European allies aren’t all falling in line with his agenda. Many blame American-style capitalism for the global economic crisis. Yet can anyone but America lead them out? Will they follow?

This hour, On Point: The view from Europe, on the eve of the G-20.

You can join the conversation. What’s at stake at the G-20 meeting? Do you expect anything to come out of it? What do President Obama and the world’s leaders need to accomplish in London?

-Jane Clayson, guest host

Guests:

Joining us from London is Edward Luce, Washington Bureau Chief for The Financial Times. He’s covering the G20 summit in London.

Also from London, we’re joined by Richard Jackman, professor at the London School of Economics.

Joining us from Berlin is Joachim Fritz-Vannahme, director of European Affairs at the Bertelsmann Foundation. He’s former deputy editor-in-chief, and now an online columnist, for the German newsweekly Die Zeit.

And joining us in studio is Dominique Moisi, a founder and senior advisor at the French Institute for International Relations and currently a visiting professor at Harvard University. His new book, out next month, is “The Geopolitics of Emotion: How Cultures of Fear, Humiliation, and Hope are Reshaping the World.”

Soldiers patrol as federal police vehicles are inspected at a military check point on the outskirts of Tijuana, Mexico, on Jan. 22, 2009. Mexico's drug war has brought a surge in violence, with more than 5,300 gang killings reported in 2008. (AP)

Post your comments below

Police officers beheaded, civilians bombed. No, not in Afghanistan, but Mexico — where last year more than 5,000 people were killed in drug cartel violence.

Now that violence is spilling over the border like never before — to Tuscon and Atlanta. Phoenix is the new capital of kidnappings for ransom.

Mexican President Calderon’s U.S.-backed crackdown has created a brutal backlash from warring cartel factions. And the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff worry that a “failed state” is in the making.

This hour, On Point: Mexico’s drug war, and its consequences, on both sides of the border.

You can join the conversation. Can you imagine drug cartel kidnappings in major U.S. cities? How should President Obama respond to Mexico’s drug war? Is it time for a new approach?

-Jane Clayson, guest host

Tom Ashbrook is on vacation this week.

Guests:

Joining is from Phoenix, Arizona, is J.J. Hensley, staff reporter at The Arizona Republic. He’s been covering the spike in drug-related kidnappings for ransom hitting Phoenix.

With us in our studio is Alfredo Corchado, Mexico bureau chief for the Dallas Morning News and currently a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University.

From Washington, we’re joined by Andrew Selee, director of the Mexico Institute at the Woodrow Wilson International Center.

And from Tuscon, Arizona, we’re joined by Anthony Coulson, assistant special agent in charge at the Drug Enforcement Administration in Tucson.

Azadeh Moaveni

Post your comments below

On the streets of Tehran today, tens of thousands of Iranians chanted at a mass rally marking 30 years since Islamic revolution toppled the U.S.-backed Shah of Iran.

Iranian-American journalist Azadeh Moaveni watches the anniversary with a special perspective.

Born in California, she went back to Iran as a young woman for Time magazine. She wrote “Lipstick Jihad,” saw the rise of Ahmadinejad, saw Iranian longing for pride and freedom. She fell in love, got pregnant, got married, got out.

This hour, On Point: Azadeh Moaveni and her candid, conflicted view of modern Iran.

You can join the conversation. How do you see Iran? What’s your question about the complex country behind the “death to America” chants? Share your thoughts.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guest:

Joining us from London is Azadeh Moaveni, contributing writer on Iran and the Middle East for Time magazine. She spent two years in Iran, from 2005 to 2007, and just returned from three weeks there at the first of the year. She is author of “Lipstick Jihad” and of “Iran Awakening,” with Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi. Her new book is “Honeymoon in Tehran: Two Years of Love and Danger in Iran.” You can read excerpts at RandomHouse.com.

More links:

In a recent piece for The Wall Street Journal, Moaveni wrote that Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi has been targeted recently by the Ahmadinejad regime. 

In The Washington Post, she wrote about Iranians’ reactions to Israel’s campaign against Hamas in Gaza.

And on a somewhat lighter note, she wrote recently for The New York Times Magazine about her effort to serve alcohol at her Tehran wedding.

James Fallows

Post your comments below

The Chinese New Year kicks off today: the Year of the Ox. Across China it’s firecrackers and New Year’s celebration.

But for the first time in years, China’s new year is not roaring in on an economic boom. After years of roaring double-digit growth, China’s export-driven economy has hit the skids. Factories closing. Millions out of work. And a new administration in Washington has already crossed swords with Beijing over the Chinese currency and trade.

China-watcher James Fallows has spent the last two and a half years in the country, digging deep into China’s realities and complexities. This hour, On Point: We’re looking at China with James Fallows.

You can join the conversation. What do you see ahead for China, and China-US relations, in the Year of the Ox? What’s your question on China now?

-Tom Ashbrook

Guest:

James Fallows is a national correspondent for The Atlantic. He’s been based in China since 2006, and his new book, “Postcards from Tomorrow Square: Reports from China,” collects his articles for The Atlantic during that time.  He’s the author of several other books, including “Blind Into Baghdad: America’s War in Iraq” (2006) and “Looking at the Sun: The Rise of the New East Asian Economic and Political System” (1995).

You can read an excerpt from “Postcards” at the Random House site. And for Fallows’ latest thoughts on China, U.S. politics, and much else, see his widely read Atlantic blog.

Adm. William J. Fallon in February 2007. (AP)

Post your comments below

Four-star Admiral William J. Fallon had a brilliant Navy career and a mouth, it was said, that could peel paint off the walls.

He flew fighter missions over Vietnam, rose to head of the Pacific Command, then was named by George W. Bush Combatant Commander of U.S. Central Command — Centcom — the U.S. military’s top commander in the white-hot region from Egypt to Pakistan.

He oversaw the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and abruptly retired after Esquire magazine called him the last man standing between Washington and war with Iran.

This hour, On Point: The admiral who spoke his mind.

You can join the conversation. What’s your question for the fighter-pilot admiral who once ran your country’s wars? What’s your question for William Fallon today on Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Gaza? On “smart power”? On Al Qaeda?

-Tom Ashbrook

Guest:

Adm. William J. (“Fox”) Fallon, retired four-star Navy admiral, Commander of CENTCOM from March 2007 to March 2008, Commander of PACOM (Pacific Command) from Feb 2005 to March 2007, and currently a Robert E. Wilhelm fellow at MIT’s Center for International Studies.

More links:

“The Man Between War and Peace,” the Esquire profile by Thomas P.M. Barnett that caused so much controversy.

Slate’s Fred Kaplan, writing in March 2008,  looked at the context surrounding Fallon’s departure.

Secretary of State-designate Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., in Chicago on Dec. 1, 2008. (AP)

Post your comments below

She wanted to be on her way to the Oval Office as the next U.S. president. Fate and Barack Obama had it otherwise.

Hillary Clinton, today, is before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in her confirmation hearing for Secretary of State. As a fellow senator, her reception is expected to be warm. But the issues she and the country are facing couldn’t be tougher.

Gaza. Iraq. Iran. Afghanistan. New powers. Old foes. And then there’s Bill Clinton and his web of ties.

This hour, On Point: We’re talking about Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State, and listening in on her confirmation hearing.

You can join the conversation. What would your question be for Senator Hillary Clinton — soon to be, it appears, Madame Secretary? On Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Gaza, China, Pakistan?

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

From Washington, we’re joined by Charles Kupchan, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and professor of international relations at Georgetown University. He served on the National Security Council during President Bill Clinton’s first term. He’s author of “The End of the American Era: U.S. Foreign Policy and the Geopolitics of the 21st Century” and the forthcoming book, “How Enemies Become Friends.”

And from Paris, we’re joined by Christopher Dickey, Newsweek’s Paris bureau chief and Middle East regional editor. He recently wrote about the challenges President-elect Obama will face from Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran. His forthcoming book, due out next month, is “Securing the City: Inside America’s Best Counterterror Force – The NYPD.”

More links:

For a breakout of Senator Hillary Clinton’s positions historically on various foreign policy issues, see this backgrounder from the Council on Foreign Relations.

New Year's eve midnight fireworks in Boston. Photo: Susan Cole Kelley

Post your comments below

Happy New Year — we hope!

One year ago, at the dawn of 2008, we knew we had problems, but thought we might skate through them. Now we know better. The economy was the big bombshell, and that’s not over. Wars and power shifts fill out the picture.

So what about 2009? Is this the year of turnaround? On Wall Street? Main Street? Afghanistan and beyond? Or more woe?

This hour we’ll peer into 2009 with big thinkers Laura Tyson, on the economy, and Noah Feldman, on world affairs.

This hour, On Point: What lies ahead. We’re imagining ‘09.

You can join the conversation. What do you foresee in 2009 — for the economy, Iraq, Afghanistan? Is the U.S. ready for a comeback, or is it still on thin ice? Will Obama change the game? Share your thoughts.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Joining us from Berkeley, California, is Laura Tyson, professor of global management at the University of California’s Haas School of Business. She served as chairman of the President’s Council of Economic Advisors from 1993 to 1995 and chairman of the National Economic Council from 1995 to 1996. She was dean of London Business School from 2002 to 2006, and she serves on the boards of AT&T, Eastman Kodak, and Morgan Stanley.

With us in our studio is Noah Feldman, professor of law at Harvard University and a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine. In 2003, he helped draft Iraq’s interim constitution as senior constitutional advisor to the Coalition Provisional Authority. He is the author of several books, including “The Fall and Rise of the Islamic State” and “What We Owe Iraq: War and the Ethics of Nation Building.”

Smoke rises following an Israeli missile strike in the northern Gaza Strip, Dec. 30, 2008. (AP)

Post your comments below

Nightmare scenes in Gaza, where for five days F-16s and Apache helicopter gunships have rained fire on one of the poorest, most crowded enclaves on Earth.

And nightmares across southern Israel, where rockets out of Gaza have now reached as far as an empty kindergarten classroom in Beersheba. Four Israelis dead since Israel’s assault on Gaza began. Nearly four hundred Palestinians dead. Many more injured.

After grinding seasons of embargo and tunneling and Hamas defiance, Israel’s defense minister now speaks of “war to the bitter end.”

This hour, On Point: Bloody showdown over Gaza.

You can join the conversation. Did Hamas make this inevitable, with its rocket fire and its fury? Did Israel make this inevitable, with its chokehold and its demands? Will this turn Palestinians away from Hamas, or more deeply against Israel? What should the U.S. have done? What should it be doing now? Tell us what you think.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Margaret Coker, Middle East correspondent for The Wall Street Journal.

Aaron David Miller, public policy scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. He advised six U.S. secretaries of state on Arab-Israeli negotiations, from 1978 to 2003, and is the author of “The Much Too Promised Land: America’s Elusive Search for Arab-Israeli Peace.”

Shai Feldman, chair of the Crown Center for Middle East Studies and professor of politics at Brandeis University.

Issam Nassar, professor of history at Illinois State University.

The Dalai Lama, right, confers with Samdhong Rinpoche, Prime Minister of the Tibetan government-in-exile, in Dharmsala, India, Nov. 20, 2008. (AP)

Post your comments below

For decades now, Tibet’s exiled spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, has smiled and talked of peace and won Western hearts — and dreamed of autonomy for Tibet.

And China has listened, intermittently, and said no, consistently.

This fall, after riots in Tibet last spring, China said no loudly — flatly rejecting Tibetan autonomy and the Dalai Lama’s smiling appeals.

For the last week, more than 500 Tibetan exiles from across the world gathered in Dharamsala, India, to debate their way forward: whether to stick with the Dalai Lama’s peaceful “middle way,” search for autonomy within China, or to reach openly for independence. Whether to pray, to fight, to wait, to hope.

Their path looks as steep as the Himalayas.

This hour, On Point: The Dalai Lama, China, and the fate of Tibet.

You can join the conversation. Are you still rooting for the red-robed Buddhists and their struggle to reclaim their kingdom at the “roof of the world”? Will that struggle outlast the Dalai Lama? Will old Tibet simply disappear one day under a wave of Chinese immigration and development?

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

We’re joined from Dharamsala by Tsewang Rigzin. He is president of the Tibetan Youth Congress, an exile group that advocates full independence from China.

From Vancouver, we’re joined by Tsering Wangdu Shakya, a Tibetan scholar and professor at the University of British Columbia’s Institute for Asian Research. Born in Lhasa, he fled to India with his family after the Chinese invasion. He is the author of “The Dragon in the Land of Snows: A History of Modern Tibet Since 1947,” which The New York Times called “the definitive history of modern Tibet.”

Joining us from New York is Robbie Barnett, director of the Modern Tibetan Studies program at Columbia University.

And from Melbourne Australia, we’re joined by Cameron Stewart. An associate editor at The Australian. He was in Tibet in early November, one of only a handful of Western journalists to have been in Tibet since the March riots.

]]> http://www.onpointradio.org/2008/11/the-fate-of-tibet/feed 34