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Tag: citizen diplomacy

  • The Brain War

    Boy with flag
    An international outpouring of grief over unnecessary human losses from depression has led to a startling conclusion: the truth that occurs to the human brain is often absolutely not the truth.
    The same can be said of the human brain on war and the human brain on nationalism. The brain on nationalism is a brain on cocaine. is a brain bent on unreality. is a brain that is damaged.
    The human brain on nationalism finds it impossible to express anything. to experience any new fact other then in how it affects the balance of power between his nationalism and everyone else’s nationalism.
    There could be a statement on a flower and it will be reinterpreted in terms of national defense, national attack, national opportunity.
    I am persuaded by extensive evidence that most human brains are capable of being rewired. But it takes hard work and the failure to do so …

  • Midnight Reflections on Ancient Words

    Sarkoy Moon rs

    Midnight Reflections on the ancient words of the prophets of these Abrahamic lands:

    Not impressed by the blood of your sacrifices. But a good struggle for the human rights of the children, the orphans, the widows, the hungry, the oppressed, whatever their religion, language or ethnicity? Now that would impress the hell out of me.

     

    (Photo: Life in the Middle East)…

  • Mirror Neurons and the Missing Middle / Armor

     

    MIRROR NEURONS AND THE MISSING MIDDLE

    Mimicry, the compulsion of humans to mirror their postures, facial expressions, and enemy war cries. Hence, many recent posts on FB and Twitter.

    ARMOR

    Wisdom says welcome criticism, but thin skin cracks and bleeds. The
    violent one has a thin skin, which is why he needs steel, but the
    nonviolent one has no need of steel. His skin is strong but steel is
    always piercing it. This is a paradox. It evokes prayer in some.

     …

  • Sins of the Nonviolent

     

    Ghandi

    Warriors carry the sins of violence, of killing the innocent, intentionally and by negligence. But the nonviolent carry sins too, because war is a collective crime and must be understood in its totality as an anti-civilization human phenomenon. The nonviolent play their role. Their sin is the sin of negativity, divestment, emotional distance, bifurcation, polarization, demonization. Divestment and hate are easy but more cowardly. It is the same everywhere. Arabs and muslims walk away from Syria if they are nonviolent, even fellow Syrians. They don’t support. Violent people are guilty of their own crimes but nonviolent are guilty of the sin of negativity, emotional cowardice and selfishness. …

  • Reflections on the Middle East June 2014

    Humans are using powers of reasoning and planning to make a far less violent planet than ever before in history http://tinyurl.com/lrdratd . Lets accelerate the pace.

     

    The defeat of violence is silence, for in silence there is observation, and observation yields reason, humility and compassion.

     

    Revenge and Compassion are the same. Both are crying mothers with raw hearts. But one gives birth to Hell, and the other to Heaven.

     

    When you oppose hatred with hatred you cannot win. Only hatred wins. Embrace those who hate and undermine their hatred from within. #Wisdom

     

    The only victory against hatred is love. Everything else is a defeat.

     

    Hatred is fire, and love is water. The hatred of the few burns the many who have no water, but those with water easily extinguish the fire.

     

    Policies without love cannot extinguish the fires of hatred. Policies with love are a mighty river. Human Rights …

  • The Honorable Thing to Do Is Kill Someone: Defeating Men’s Culture of Honor to Overcome the Syrian Catastrophe

     

    “It is time for honor to die, so that the people may live.”

    Here’s my latest on the Huffington Post.  Please click here to read the full article.

    First the bad news: a fracture in the Middle East is looming. There is a fracturing of states along sectarian lines that has been funded and instigated by a variety of men around the Middle East and beyond. There is a radicalization both of dictators and their violence, on one side, (Sisi far worse than Mubarak, and Assad the ophthalmologist committing massive war crimes), and religious extremists on the other, with their crucifixions and intent on destroying states and kingdoms as such. This has made for impossible choices to most innocent Middle Easterners who may retreat into sectarian safe havens that only guarantee more fracturing and violence.

    There is a hidden root to this negative spiral, and that root is men’s

    …

  • PEACEFUL POLITICS COMES FROM PEACEFUL PEOPLE: A HARD AND HOPEFUL LOOK AT OURSELVES AND OTHERS

    From the explosion of Osama Bin Laden into our consciousness on that terrible day in 2001, all the way to his death, feels like a frame of existence, a distinct period of our history and fate as an American community. There have been many deadly wars since then that America has participated in or supported. As an American Jew and a veteran peacebuilder in the Middle East, I also feel like this decade has been a whirlwind of violence, from Iraq to Lebanon to Gaza, and now to Arab countries in which I had worked, especially Syria where I put my heart and soul.

    Every war, every massive act of violence, always makes me reflect anew on the origins and nature of human violence, and on its opposites, empathy, compassion, and love. We humans have made so many efforts through the millennia to create one political arrangement after another in …

  • SAVING SYRIA— A STRATEGY FOR PEACEFUL CHANGE

    By Hind Aboud Kabawat (Senior Research Analyst and Expert in Conflict Resolution, CRDC, George Mason University).

    Damascus, Syria

    May 20, 2011

    Can our beloved Syria be saved from the brink of destruction? This is clearly the question on the minds of millions of our fellow countrymen (and countrywomen). And it is truly astonishing how quickly events have transformed the so-called “facts on the ground” in this country. One of the most locked-down societies in the Middle East quite suddenly erupted in rage, anger and frustration after forty years of political repression and economic stagnation. Just think of it: the first demonstration was on March 15, just a mere two months ago. But so much has changed in the minds, hearts and aspirations of the Syrian people that it is impossible to think that we can ever return to the status quo ante—the Syria of March 14th.

    What the …

  • NO WAY OUT: ANCIENT WISDOM ON PUTTING BAD GUYS UP AGAINST A WALL

    NO WAY OUT:

    ANCIENT WISDOM ON PUTTING BAD GUYS

    UP AGAINST A WALL

    Men in Middle Eastern palaces making decisions about their lives, their families, their fortunes, their necks. I think a lot these days about such men because history and the fate of millions of people often comes down to what is going on inside their heads. They are certainly not unique to the Middle East. Think Robespierre, Mussolini, Marcos, Milosevic, think Idi Amin, Charles Taylor, Noriega, Fujimori. The list is endless, the impact of their choices monumental.

    There is an ancient law in the Jewish Torah that forbids combatants from surrounding an enemy on all four sides, requiring instead that there is always an escape route. In the Middle Ages Maimonides, one of the greatest legal decision makers in Jewish history, concluded that this prohibition applies even to a mortal enemy in a defensive war. This sounds bizarre …

  • Dialogue Sparked by To Make the Earth Whole

    Some good questions from my student Agatha Glowacki on To Make the Earth Whole. Her questions are bolded; my answers are italicized.

    —

    Dear Prof. Gopin,

    I am reading your newest book and am very energized by the insights and vision you offer. As I read, I have so many thoughts and have been jotting them down, and decided to email you to start a conversation.

    Here are some of my thoughts:

    1. You mention the possibility of hope resident in the idea of a global social contract based on democracy and freedom. What about those elements, especially the radical Muslim fringe but even the more mainstream Political Islamists, who don’t accept or want democracy or human rights because they see them as illegitimate products of the West?

    Actually, I think this Western approach is overemphasized. Indicators are that support for non-democratic forms of political Islam, and especially violent …

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