In all the places that I have visited during my 'travels' , I observed a lot of street names being similar if not the same. For example, Broad Street, Main Street, High Street, Broadway, Washington Boulevard, Hamilton Boulevard, etc., JFK Boulevard etc., etc. Not to mention 'downtown' and then the ghetto and the upscale neighborhood where the first thing that hits your view is the ever conspicuous signs like 'Neighborhood Watch. Report suspicious activity'.

For a person with 'Mohammad' as his first name and skin as brown as chocolate chip cookie, my intrusion might be a suspicious activity, no?. What do I do then? Keep away from these neighborhoods or go back to where I came from? Or should I drop my first name Mohammad and replace it with a Mike, Joe or just Mo. But then what do I do with my brown? There's no way I can assimilate to the "Anglo-Saxon Protestant node", not in a thousand year.

Imagine same situation being in Dhaka, Delhi or Karachi. But it can't happen though. Street names in all these countries are as unique and dissimilar as the political scenarios and atmospheres there. A reflection of democracy in disharmony! Or disharmony democracitized! Either way the resultant vector is a mosaic not a melting pot of views, opinion, ideas, etc. Not in USA though. Here I love the symmetry, the silent nod of yes and no's, the controlled laughter. They say the idea is to enhance 'predictability and control' The only time one relaxes or chills out is over the weekend or on Fridays when the paycheck gets the best out of you as precisely as the sun rises daily.

In Bihar, Laloo Prasad would name all the streets Laloo Street 1 thru Laloo street XYZ if he had his way. Rabri doesn't even know the significance of naming streets. She is too busy maintaining eye-contact with her worse-half or checking out the size and color of mangoes in her backyard.

One thing is for sure. Pakistani power brokers love to don expensive dress suits and ties.

To me it looks like a perennial fashion statement albeit 'Thank you note' to the western civilization which helped carve out Pakistan. But the red scarves or handkerchief sticking out from their left mini pockets is probably meant to remind others, not the wearer, that the blood, sweat and tears for 'Kashmir' still persists. What a romantic way to make a point. But the Indians are smarter. For example Nehru would wear Sherwani (a Mughal manifestation) and instead stick a red rose. Some people still do it and call it Kashmir ki kali or kashmir ka gulab.

Samuel Huntington, a professor of government at Harvard - who stole the concept of the "clash of civilizations" from conservative academic Bernard Lewis - first stigmatized Arab civilization in 1993 as "The Great Menace". Now, in 2004, he finally switches to the enemy within: Hispanics.

Latinos, in his view, are guilty of being excessively attached to their culture, and their galloping demography prevents their assimilation to the "Anglo-Saxon Protestant node". He calls for the preservation of the messianic project of the original American settlers.

It's all color-coded, of course: after the red menace (communism), the yellow peril (Asia) and the green peril (Islam), now the terror alert (elevated) has been switched to the brown peril (Latinos).

This is the thrust of Huntington's thesis: "The persistent inflow of Hispanic immigrants threatens to divide the United States into two peoples, two cultures and two languages. Unlike past immigrant groups, Mexicans and other Latinos have not assimilated into mainstream US culture, forming instead their own political and linguistic enclaves - from Los Angeles to Miami - and rejecting the Anglo-Protestant values that built the American dream.

Huntington is against multiculturalism, and most of all immigration. He is convinced that America is not a nation of immigrants but, at least initially, a nation of settlers who reached the New World not to found a new nation but rather to relocate from Britain. Call it a case of extending its own backyard. Later, regardless of religion or nationality, says Huntington, every immigrant engaged in an Anglo-Protestant makeover of some sort, were they Germans, Irish, Italian or Chinese.

Huntington is essentially saying that America must never abandon its original set of 16th century Anglo-Protestant values: and this "back to the roots" mode implies no immigration, protecting the English language and no secularism. No wonder the neo-cons love it.

But that is still a long way before Huntington's thesis becomes a reality. In the meanwhile, replace 'Hispanics' with the word 'Arabs' and 'Latinos' with the word 'Muslims' and you get to taste neocons' present day cupcakes and jelly beans!!!

Hasta la vista!



More by Irshad Salim:
Guns n Roses
Musharraf and Bloody Ma(r)y
'Oscar-Tango Karachi'
Chalabi- Now you see him now you don't
Bush being ambushed?