Calendar: Archives
The Cafés Diplomatiques (Café Diplo)
Cumulative Archive of Cafe Topics for the year 2009
Monday January 26th THE WORLD AFTER BUSH with Dr. Bryan Mabee
The election of Barack Obama to the US Presidency has inspired all who hoped to see a change in American policy. But will the presence of the first Democrat in the White House for eight years effect the profound shifts in domestic policy and international relations that many wish to see? Dr Bryan Mabee will discuss the likely impact of the new administration in both these areas. He is a lecturer at Queen Mary University of London, where much of his work focuses on the United States, and he is currently writing a book that examines the future of American power.
Monday February 9th - THE AGONY OF ZIMBABWE, WHAT CHANCE FOR CHANGE? with Christina Lamb
Christina first visited Zimbabwe in 1994 and over the last eight years she has made repeated trips back to the country despite the banning of British journalists and was the first journalist to expose Mugabe’s rape camps. In 2005 she was named an enemy of the state by Mugabe’s spokesman George Charamba who said she had “a penchant for finding corpses on golf courses”.
Foreign Affairs Correspondent for The Sunday Times, Christina Lamb has spent 20 years on the road since an unexpected wedding invitation when she was just 21 led to her travelling with the mujaheddin fighting the Soviet occupation in Afghanistan. Since then Christina has reported from all over the world, becoming one of Britain’s leading foreign correspondents and winning numerous awards. She has covered wars from Iraq to the Siachen Glacier, the world’s highest battlefield; interviewed dictators such as General Pinochet and heroes such as Nelson Mandela; lived on a fattening farm in southern Nigeria, and narrowly escaped with her life from a Taliban ambush of British troops in Helmand and was on Benazir Bhutto’s bus when it was bombed.
Her books include the best-selling The Africa House as well as House of Stone: The True Story of a Family Divided in War-torn Zimbabwe; Waiting For Allah – Pakistan’s struggle for democracy; and The Sewing Circles of Herat, My Afghan Years. Her most recent book is Small Wars Permitting: Despatches from Foreign Lands, part memoir and part collection of her reportage.
Monday February 23rd
NATIONAL SELF DETERMINATION - WHAT CONSTITUTES THE RIGHT TO SECEDE? with Dr. Richard Mole
The declaration of Kosovan independence and events in Georgia have shown the explosive nature of demands for self determination. From western to eastern europe and beyond there are unresolved issues of self determination with the potential for serious international repercussions. Dr. Richard Mole is a lecturer in the Politics of Central Europe at the UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies. He has undertaken research on the relationship between national identity and foreign policy and has worked at the University of Pennsylvania's Centre for the study of ethnopolitical conflict. He will talk about the right to secede and the role of nationalism in demands for self determination.
Richard is the editor of the Discursive Constructions of Identity in European Politics Socio-linguists and discourse analysts have long been aware of the fact that language does not simply describe a pre-existing reality but is rather the medium through which the social world is created and given meaning. While other branches of learning have been slow to take this on board, there is nevertheless a growing awareness of the importance of discourse in the creation of identities and the legitimisation of social structures and moral and political hierarchies. Discursive Constructions of Identity in European Politics brings together specialists from critical discourse analysis and critical approaches to communications, history, literature, media, sociology, politics and International Relations to discuss the discursive construction of identities and analyse how specific identity discourses condition and constrain knowledge and action with regard to various socio-political issues in Europe.
Monday March 9th - Pakistan: stable state or global hazard? with M. Ziauddin
Pakistan today is the victim as well as the source of terrorism, and its political stability is of critical importance to the rest of the world. In fact, it is five countries in one: part Saudi Arabia, part Iran, part Turkey, part Afghanistan and part India, and sometimes gives the impression of being a viable state only when it has a military regime and American crutches. But paradoxically these very two factors undermine its viability whenever they come together - Washington loves Pakistan's army and hates its politicians! M. Ziauddin, the special correspondent and former editor of the leading English language Pakistan newspaper 'Dawn', will discuss the political situation and its implications for global peace.
Monday March 23rd - PEAK OIL - A CASE OF CRY WOLF? with Chris Skrebowski
The spectre of peak oil, the point at which global oil production cannot be increased, seems to have faded now that prices and demand have dropped. But is such over-optimism misplaced? Chris Skrebowski, consulting editor to the Petroleum Review, describes his analysis and findings on the imminence of Peak Oil and the possible impacts of recession in delaying its incidence. He will also briefly discuss some of the measures that can be taken to mitigate the impact of oil supplies becoming constrained and moving into decline. Chris is a Fellow of the Energy Institute, a founding member of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil (ASPO) and sits on the board of the Oil Depletion and Analysis Centre (ODAC). He recently authored one of the two 'Opinions' in the recently published 'Oil Crunch' report from the Industry Taskforce on Peak Oil & Energy Security.
Monday 6th April : FILM EVENT: 'The Empire Pays Back' with Dr Robert Beckford
Robert Beckford, academic, theologian and award-winning film maker, will introduce his hard-hitting documentary 'The Empire Pays Back', which looks at how much Britain profited from the Transatlantic Slave Trade. He argues that Britain should repay its debt to the descendants of slavery in the same way that the German government gave settlements to former slave labourers under the Nazis, and that an American bank funded a $5 million scholarship fund for Afro-American students. He also suggests that the British government should apologise and fund education and local projects that would be of benefit to the African and Afro-Caribbean communities. Dr. Beckford will discuss the film and the issues it raises in the Q&A.
Mon 20 April. UKRAINE; WHAT IS THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE ORANGE REVOLUTION? with MARK ALMOND.
The crisis over gas supplies has shown the importance of the Ukraine in relations between Russia and the west and it remains to be seen whether
Ukraine will join NATO. Mark Almond teaches at Oriel College, Oxford and has spent time in the Balkans and the former Soviet bloc. He is a frequent
commentator in the media on current affairs in Eurasia and is writing a book on the so called colour-coded or "People Power" revolutions. He will
discuss the significance of the orange revolution five years on and the geopolitical importance of the Ukraine.
Mon 11 May. THE HISTORY AND HISTORIOGRAPHY OF THE ARAB-ISRAELI CONFLICT with Professor AVI SHLAIM.
The Gaza war and the recent Israeli elections have shown the continuing intractable nature of the Arab-Israeli conflict and the challenges that face the new Obama administration in the search for peace in the Middle East. Avi Shlaim is Professor of International Relations at Oxford. He has written extensively on the Arab-Israeli conflict and is a frequent contributor to the newspapers as well as commentating on radio and television on Middle Eastern affairs. He will discuss the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict as the background to an understanding of the current situation in the Middle East.
Seminar and Film - "The Energy Crisis: Facts & Remedies" - 11am to 4.30pm - Saturday September 19th
Our planet is facing a profoundly serious environmental and energy resource crisis, and this event will start with a presentation of The Age of Stupid a 90-minute film from McLibel director Franny Armstrong, about climate change, in which Pete Postlethwaite stars as a man living alone in the devastated world of 2055, looking back at “archive” footage from 2007 and asking: why didn’t we stop climate change when we had the chance? But it remains far from clear where the answer to the search for safe and sustainable energy sources lies. Wind? Solar? Tidal? Biomass? Nuclear? Or a combination of these? Following the film, our panel of environmental experts including Dr Terry Barker, Director of the Cambridge Centre for Climate Change Mitigation Research and Dr Cameron Hepburn, Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment, University of Oxford will guide us through the various alternatives open to us, and will respond to a chaired Q&A.
MONDAY SEPTEMBER 28th
Afghanistan: Local Realities and Foreign Myths with Dawood Azami
Dawood Azami has been a Senior Producer with the BBC World Service for ten years, and won the Global Reith Award for Outstanding Contribution in 2009. A specialist in politics, security and culture in Afghanistan and Pakistan, he will explore some of the myths about Afghanistan and its people prevailing mainly in the Western World. He will talk about the past and present of Afghanistan and the surrounding region by linking the events today with past policies, and will explain how foreign interference has transformed the country into a centre of drug production and a key attraction for militants. He will also assess whether Afghanistan is heading towards stability or anarchy, and the implications for the rest of the world.
MONDAY OCTOBER 12th
Civilian & military casualties in Western warfare - with Professor Maja Zehfuss
Maja Zehfuss is Professor of International Politics at the University of Manchester. Her current research examines the politics of ethics in the context of war. Drawing in particular on the example of the use of precision bombs, she will talk about the issue of civilian protection in current Western warfare. Her most recent book, Wounds of Memory: The Politics of War in Germany examines the question of memory in the context of German memories of the Second World War and the way in which they are called on to justify positions on the use of military force. She will raise questions about how we should think about deaths in war, both those of civilians and of combatants. Maja has also co-written Global Politics: A New Introduction - see also audio interviews with the authors
MONDAY OCTOBER 26th - "SRI LANKA: THE PROSPECTS FOR PEACE"with Jan Jananayagam
The long lasting civil war in Sri Lanka has finally come to an end amid allegations of genocide and human rights violations, and with large numbers of civilians detained in camps. What does the future hold in this war torn society? Jan Jananayagam is a writer and human rights activist who is the UK's spokesperson for "Tamils against genocide", an advocacy group that seeks to obtain convictions for genocide. She will look at the current situation in Sri Lanka and the prospects for reconciliation and peace
MONDAY NOVEMBER 9th
Capitulation, capitulation, capitulation: the UK government's relationship with the City of London with John Christensen
The current crisis exposes weaknesses in a development strategy that puts financial services at the heart of Britain's political economy. But the City of London depends heavily on its role as a major tax haven in its own right. John Christensen, Director and International Coordinator of the Tax Justice Network, explains how the UK has led the world in de-regulating financial services, in promoting tax havens, and in resisting moves to strengthen international cooperation. Having become the victim of its own follies, the UK urgently needs a new development strategy, but how can any government - progressive or otherwise - resist the strongest political lobby in the world?
MONDAY NOVEMBER 23rd
FILM EVENT: 'BLACK GOLD' with Nick Francis, and Deborah Burton
As westerners revel in designer lattes and cappuccinos, impoverished farmers in Ethiopia, where 15 million people depend on coffee growing for their survival, hover on the brink of destitution. In their documentary Black Gold director and producer Nick Francis provides an eye-opening expose of the $80 billion dollar coffee industry, now the most valuable trading commodity in the world after oil http://www.blackgoldmovie.com/story.php The film traces the efforts of one man, Tadesse Maskada, to achieve a fair price for the exploited African farmers who support it. Against the backdrop of his journey to London and Seattle, the enormous power of the multinational players that dominate the world's coffee trade becomes apparent. Deborah Burton is the co-founder of the not-for-profit Tipping Point Film Fundhttp://www.tippingpointfilmfund.com/news/film-makers-meet-campaigners/ which aims to raise money to support independent film-makers, and was involved in the production of Black Gold. Following the film showing, Nick and Deborah will respond to a Q&A from the floor.
Conference alert! Saturday, June 16th, 2007 
It’s broke – let’s fix it!