The problems between the middle-east and the west have been going on for much longer than 40 years, and these conflicts are not just cultural, but also economic, political and religious. True that there was a period in the mid-20th century where Iran, Iraq (whose borders were defined by British colonialism in the first place) etc. had a certain amount of "freedom", and tolerance within their own borders. Even today there are traces of that.
Obviously the western interest in the middle-east is strongly tied to oil, a dependency that was carefully constructed by big business in both the US and the Saudi spheres at the beginning of the 20th century, there are strong ties between the Bush family and the House of Saud (amongst others). The current conflict in Iraq is also carefully constructed, war is very profitable, esp. when the instigators of the war (Bush and cronies) are making a mint in contractor budgets (V.P. Cheney's Haliburton is only one of many). Yes, there are cultural conflicts in other geographies (the US and EU being easy for us to see, but East Asia is not without it's fair share). However, perhaps what we are seeing is really a conflict of fundamentalism. The only ones really willing to kill over these ideals. What's funny is that the US Christian right is almost identical in belief systems to the Muslim right, the main difference being one believes Mohammed was a prophet. The leaders of both movements constantly feed their fearful followers with untruths about the opposite side. It just makes one wonder what would happen if a bunch of "american devil infidels" kids and a bunch of "jihadist camel-jockies" kids were sent to the same summer camp every year what would happen? (things of this sort have occured in the past between Palestine and Israel, with the unfortunate result of those involved becoming alienated from their own cultures due to their now broader world-view). The movement must start with what us art-types have available, Indy-Media *is* and excellent network to start with, but will be limited in reach due to it's fairly punk nature. The goal being to make it obvious that if we all just decide to get along we will actually get along. What would be nice is if the governments themselves decided to start creating these sorts of awareness campaigns. Sadly, it's very difficult to be a dictator without a common enemy to ones people. The writer Heiko Recktenwald writ: http://stopthemadrassa.wordpress.com/ is so extremly typical. The same sound in Cologne. We have to learn much more than the Arabs. > > > http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/11/nyregion/11school.html?ref=nyregion , > > http://nyc.indymedia.org/en/2007/08/89207.html > ______________________________________________ SPECTRE list for media culture in Deep Europe Info, archive and help: http://coredump.buug.de/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/spectre ______________________________________________ SPECTRE list for media culture in Deep Europe Info, archive and help: http://coredump.buug.de/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/spectre
