This pattern of anti-Muslim violence in the wake of extremist attacks has become all too familiar in Britain over the last decade. The public has grappled with angry backlashes to the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks in the United States, the London transport bombings of July 7, 2005 and now the murder in Woolwich.

The Qatar Foundation sponsors Barcelona football club, a reminder that in 10 years' time it will play host to the World Cup. Then there is the Doha-based al-Jazeera television, considered the most important Arab news TV channel, owned by Qatar through the Qatar Media Corporation—which last week claimed that it had evidence that the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat was poisoned with polonium.

The Department of State’s Office of Art in Embassies (AIE) is pleased to announce the AIE American Artist Lecture Series at the Tate Modern-London, in a unique collaboration with Embassy London. In celebration of AIE’s 50th anniversary, the three-year-long program will feature six noted American artists.

Nothing could act as a better reminder that culture is a marketing tool, as well as an organic process that grows from the ground upwards. With contributions from a host of famous names, the climax of the Cultural Olympiad aims to prove once and for all that London, not New York, not Paris, really is the arts capital of the world.

"We know nothing about the form of future tragedy," German playwright Botho Strauss once wrote. But that isn't true any longer. Now we can picture the form of our tragedy -- all we have to do is watch it on YouTube. The images of the London riots are a preview of our future.

The timing probably couldn’t have been much worse. Almost a year to the day until the 2012 Olympics Games begin in London, the world was treated to images of rioters smashing storefronts and setting buildings ablaze in the capital and beyond.

The morning after devastating riots swept across London, hundreds of people gathered in Twitter-organized crews to sweep up broken glass, clean vandalized buildings and show the world — and themselves — that their city is about more than mindless destruction.