Peace

Last night my husband and I watched the latest "Portlandia" episode. Weird, anything goes, as usual, but seeing the streets and hearing the sounds of the Oregon coastal destination took us happily back to a wonderful Labor Day vacation. Not quite satisfied with a half hour of weirdness, we surfed to our local PBS station, which was re-airing Episode Five: Tradition (1957-1979) of "Broadway: The American Musical" [http://www.pbs.org/wnet/broadway/about/episode- descriptions/ ]. Watching the snipets of "West Side Story," "Fiddler on the Roof," "Funny Girl," "Annie," and other shows got me thinking about the beauty and grace of American Jewish culture, about all the gifts with which it has enriched this country and the world. I cried especially hard when Barbara Streisand (Fanny Brice, FG) sang "People" in the foreground, with Omar Sharif (Nick Arnstein, FG) watching her from a distance. By the time Joel Grey was shown singing "Through My Eyes" to his gorilla/true love, mocking Jews in "Cabaret," I was in why-do-we-still-not-have-Middle-East-peace land. Soon thereafter, when Mel Brooks noted that his career has been in large part about making America and the world laugh at Hitler (e.g., "Springtime for Hitler" in "The Producers"), I realized that we won't have the political will to make peace, not war, in the region until we can make sense of the Arab-Israeli conflict as a conundrum that European and American powers enabled as much as Arabs and Israelis. We need to accept these mistakes, laugh at them with sorrow leavened by anger and hope. We need to do this through shared cultural traditions -- poetry, religious rites, singing, dancing, art, fashion -- we need to create joy so powerful that miraculous moments of peaceful coexistence over-power the long years of conflict. Edward Said and Daniel Barenboim figured this out together http://www.knowledge-is-the-beginning.com/Daniel_Barenboim_and_Edward_Said.html ]. Individually, Arabs and Jews who live in the same communities figure this out every day. When we celebrate the shared culture we will show us that Arab-Israeli peace is possible. We need Jews and Arabs to share cultural traditions globally to show our mutual respect and love. We need to create more love to understand and absorb the pain of the Palestinians and the Jews and the Syrians and all the rest. Through our tears, we can learn to laugh, together. I hope. Maybe not in my lifetime, but someday. The hurt, the waste, are just too great. 

I hate war

War is tragic. People fighting one another is pathetic. This article http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/13/world/middleeast/lebanese-port-drifts-amid-conflicts.html?pagewanted=2&ref=world is just one reminder in one country in one region. People suffer everywhere because of war. The war in Syria is no different. 

A Useful Cross-national Exchange on Public Diplomacy

Thanks to John H. Brown's Public Diplomacy Press and Blog Review for posting this story, copied below, from
http://news.kuwaittimes.net/2012/12/04/cultural-diplomacy-plays-role-in-building-societies/

Cultural diplomacy plays role in building societies

KUWAIT: Sheikha Hussa Al-Salem Al-Sabah welcoming the participants on Monday.

KUWAIT: The role of cultural diplomacy in building bridges among different people came under focus at a symposium organized by the International Organization for Migration (IOM) on Monday at the UN House in Mishref. The symposium, a first of its kind in the Middle East and North Africa, saw experts from various walks of life bringing their experience to the table.

These included Sheikha Hussa Sabah Al-Salem Al-Sabah, Director of Dar Al-Athar Al- Islamiya. Iman Y. Ereiqat, Chief of Mission of IOM Kuwait, noted that ‘diplomacy’ is a science, a way of management, and the art of handling contradictions and negotiating for achieving results that could satisfy all concerned parties. “In view of the importance of diplomacy, we find it necessary to hold this forum, which is the first of its kind in the Middle East and Northern African Region, to highlight the role of diplomacy in understanding cultures of different people, and building bridges among them, to enable discussion based on mutual respect and sharing with others,” she pointed out.

The main theme of this conference was “The Role of Cultural Diplomacy in Building Bridges between Cultures”. “We, at IOM Kuwait, are proud that, in cooperation with “Aware Centre”,we managed to take this leading step of introducing such an important, distinguished and modern subject in the Arab World,” she added. “We look at you, young people, as our future, and thus decided that the invitees to this forum should be university and highschool students who have a genuine desire for learning and benefiting from the experiences of the speakers.

We all work together for participating in building real societies capable of accommodating different strata ; societies that understand others, respect them, and defend their privacy; where everyone can live without discrimination or exclusion,” Ereiqat further said . Terming the forum as a first step along the path, she said, it would be held annually and would focus on one area that can “help bridge gaps between cultures.” “We are working (so that) that the next versions will be on a regional level,” she concluded.

On his part, Dr. Ebraheen Al- Adasani from the Aware Center said that although cultural diplomacy existed since long, still many regard it as a means of exporting cultural values of one country to another, rather than engaging in a cultural interaction. “For the purposes of this symposium, I define cultural diplomacy as the pursuit of better mutual understanding with the aim of eliminating differences of perceptions between nations. Knowing one another is the essence of cultural diplomacy. And in order for it to be effective, it should be an exercise of give and take rather than a one way street. The goal is not to prove that one culture is superior to the other, but rather to understand that certain concepts are perceived in a different manner in other cultures.

This awareness will help us avoid misunderstandings,” explained Al-Adasani. Nowadays, the internet and different social media platforms have made interaction between countries and individuals of different cultures much easier and more intense. “This means that cultural diplomacy has become essential in contemporary relations. While classical diplomacy is handled almost exclusively by the State, cultural diplomacy requires the involvement of multiple actors from various sections of society.

This includes higher education institutions, NGOs, sportsmen, artists and professional associations,” he pointed out. “The Aware Center, one of the NGOs in Kuwait, works towards combating the risks of misperception and misunderstanding through cultural exchange and constructive dialogue,” he concluded. The Ambassador of the United States of America to Kuwait, Matthew Tueller, said, “We as Americans see great value in cultural exchanges and cultural diplomacy.

While we do not have a Ministry of Culture as many other countries around world do, there is an entire branch of our Department of State which promotes U.S. culture abroad, brings international visitors to the United States for cultural exchanges, and promotes U.S. Education.” On the cultural diplomacy in the Middle East, he said, “Many of you may recall President Obama’s “New Beginning Speech” that he delivered on June 4, 2009 in Cairo, Egypt.

I was fortunate to be among the audience that day and I can tell you that the atmosphere was electric. Never before had an American President embarked on such an ambitious plan to bridge the gap between America and the countries in the Middle East,” and proceeded to quote the President. “What the President articulated in Cairo is something that our Embassies around the region endeavor to put into practice every day.

At times this work can be quite challenging as many peoples’ views of America are influenced heavily by movies and TV shows or by media that distorts the image of the U.S. So, working overseas, our Embassies, and particularly our Public Affairs Sections, seek to offer a more realistic picture of the American people,” stressed Tueller. “Facilitating exchanges and face-to-face interactions between individuals is the bread and butter of our public diplomacy work.

Our Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs works around the clock to maintain a wide range of high-quality exchanges between youth, students, educators, artists, athletes, and emerging leaders in the United States and more than 160 countries,” he noted. Finally he spoke about the future of cultural diplomacy and the role of technology in helping reach even more people. “The importance of social media and connective technology is to help us reach local communities that we previously did not engage with directly.

Listening to local communities is a key element of successful cultural diplomacy. Kuwait has the highest levels of social media usage compared with other countries in the region, in spite of its small population. Kuwaitis are more active than ever on social media like Twitter and Instagram,” concluded Tueller

By Nawara Fattahova, Kuwait Times Staff

A great dream continues...

To me, President Obama's speech [http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/11/06/us/politics/06-obama-election-night-speech.html] was a message about the importance of shared -- national -- identity. It was about living together through the good times and increasingly tough times. You could forgive him the moments of triumphalism as efforts to encourage and praise the citizens. I am a little less worried this morning, even though our process of "self"-government is harder and harder because of all the problems we face. Change can be good, but with all of these problems and all the uncertainty, good change needs to be sustainable. Sustainability means we work through the problems together, and it's going to take more than four more years. That's why we need to stick together and show each other our shared commitment. I can't imagine another way.

This 'Jersey Girl is inspired...

I'm so relieved that my parents have arrived home safely, to a re-electrified house and neighborhood, and I am so inspired by our local poet, who has spent days singing on the campaign trail for love of country...

BRUCE’S SPEECH FROM MADISON, WI

Let me begin with a shout out to all of our neighbors in the Northeast who are reeling from Hurricane Sandy and its immense impact. Our thoughts and prayers are with you.

So, it’s good to be here with you today–and it will be great to feel the power of your votes and voices tomorrow.

I’m here today for Wisconsin, America, and for President Obama. For the last 30 years I’ve been writing in my music about the distance between the American dream and American reality. I’ve seen it from inside and outside: as a blue collar kid from a working class home in New Jersey–where my parents struggled, often unsuccessfully–to make ends meet–to my adult life, visiting the 9th Ward in New Orleans after Katrina, or meeting folks from food pantries from all around the United States, who work daily to help our struggling citizens through the hard times we’ve been suffering

The American Dream and an American Reality: Our vote tomorrow is the one undeniable way we get to determine the distance in that equation. Tomorrow, we get a personal hand in shaping the kind of America we want our kids to grow up in.

I’m a husband and a dad, my lovely wife Patti is here with me. We’ve got three kids growing up and on their way out into the world, I’m 63 (Patti is much younger)… but we have both lived through some galvanizing moments in American history: the Civil Rights struggle, the Peace Movement, the Woman’s Movement, we played in East Berlin one year before the Fall of the Berlin Wall, and we were with Amnesty International a year before the release of Nelson Mandela and the end of apartheid. These were days when you could feel the winds of change moving and the world shifting beneath your feet.

And… we both remember another galvanizing moment, the night that President Obama was elected.

It was an unbelievable evening, when the hope of your heart felt fulfilled, when you could feel the locked doors of the past being blown open to new and previously unimaginable possibilities– to fresh Hope and Change.

Today we have another battle. Now we are charged with the hard daily struggle to make those possibilities, those changes real and enduring in a world that challenges your hopefulness, a world that is often brutally resistant to change. We’ve lived through that struggle over these past four years when the forces of opposition have been tireless.

I stood with President Obama four years ago and I’m proud to be standing with him today. Because…

I’m thankful for the historic advances in healthcare.

I’m thankful for a more regulated Wall Street that will begin to protect our citizens from the blind greed of those who over reach.

My father worked on a Ford assembly line when I was a child and I’m thankful that we have a President that had faith in the American automobile industry and that General Motors is today making cars. What else would I write about.

I’m thankful that we have a decisive President working hard to keep America safe… and I’m appreciative of the fact that, as promised, he has ended the war in Iraq and is bringing the war in Afghanistan to a close.

I’m here today because I’m concerned about Women’s Rights and health issues both at home and around the World. I don’t have to tell you about the dangers to Roe versus Wade under our opponents policies.

I’m also troubled by thirty years of an increasing disparity in wealth between our best off citizens and everyday Americans. That is a disparity that threatens to divide us into two distinct and separate nations. We have to be better than that.

Finally I’m here today because I’ve lived long enough to know that the future is rarely a tide rushing in. Its often a slow march, inch by inch, day after long day. We are in the midst of one of those long days right now. I believe that President Obama feels those long days in his bones for all 100 per cent of us. He will live those days with us.

President Obama ran last time as a man of hope and change. You hear a lot of talk about how things are different now. Things aren’t any different–they’re just realer. Its crunch time. The President’s job, our job–yours and mine– whether your Republican, Democrat, Independent, rich, poor, black, brown, white, gay, straight, soldier, civilian–is to keep that hope alive, to combat cynicism and apathy, and to believe in our power, to change our lives and the world we live in. So, lets go to work tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after that.. Lets re-elect President Barack Obama to carry our standard forward towards the America that awaits us.

accessed 11/6/12 from http://brucespringsteen.net/

Mother Nature Strikes Back...

This past week has been a trying one for most people along the Northeast seaboard, and to the west, in West Virginia. Hurricane-Post Tropical Storm-Sandy has changed the lives of thousands. Over eight million lost electricity and phone service. It hurts. Home has changed. Thank goodness for talented artists to help us make sense of our situation:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4BiWZ7w_vhM

More -- more credible -- news resources

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2012/10/20121019124036610672.html
Al-Jazeera English is blogging by the minute about the blast. Watch the video if you don't want to/have time to read the story.

This and other links are available at one of the best blogs on Lebanon: http://qifanabki.com/2012/10/19/bomb-hits-achrafieh-updates-commentary/