Obama's AfPak War: Pratap Chatterjee & Professor Kiren Chaudhry

Dennis Bernstein will moderate a discussion with Pratap Chatterjee and Professor Chaudhry, who will discuss the expansion of the AfPak War and its connection to securing oil in the region. Chatterjee will share his first hand investigations in Afghanistan and Iraq, including the massive waste, fraud and abuse among the multi-billion dollar contractors that support the US military, as well as their treatment of their Third World workers. Chaudhry will discuss her essay "Dis(re)membering af-pak/istan" which examines the historical context of the war in the region, and its evolution into Pakistan under the guise of the War on Terror.

Professor Chaudhry is Associate Professor at the Department of Political Science. She teaches in the fields of comparative politics, the political economy of development, the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia.

Pratap Chatterjee is an investigative journalist and senior editor at CorpWatch. He is the author of "Halliburton's Army" (Nation Books, 2009) "Iraq Inc: A Profitable Occupation" (Seven Stories Press, 2004) and "The Earth Brokers" (Routledge Press, 1994). He has traveled to the Middle East and Central Asia over a dozen times including four reporting trips to both Afghanistan and Iraq in the last decade.

Dennis Bernstein is an investigative reporter for print and radio. He is the producer and host of the radio news program, Flashpoints Radio on Pacifica Radio. Bernstein was chosen by Pulse Media as one of "20 Top Global Media Figures of 2009."

This is a benefit for the First Voice Media Collective. First Voice is sending local grassroots media producers from the Bay Area to Detroit to attend the Allied Media Conference and the US Social Forum in June. Many participants from the KPFA Apprenticeship Program will attend and bring back reports from both conferences.