Preventing an attack on Iran: Real solutions
June 29th, 2008In order to prevent an attack on Iran, the american people must be made to understand that the Iranian people are ‘just like them’. They have to come to the realization that Iranians are not inhuman monsters, but that they are gentle, intelligent and perfectly normal human beings, living in a beautiful country, doing for the most part, the things that everyone else in the world does.
To make this happen, americans and Iranians need to talk to each other on a peer to peer basis, without any interference or filtering. They have to discover the humanity of each other, through a transparent medium that has no preconditions and no agenda other than to connect people so that they can get to know each other.
How can we do this?
Firstly cities and towns in america must twin with cities in Iran. Twinning of cities and towns has been done before, and it is a good idea, but we need to go further. The families in each town and city must also twin, and enter into regular communication.
When each ‘side’ sees that there are actually pleasant human beings on the other side of the globe, and not monsters, it becomes impossible for normal people to say that they must be bombed, or killed or made in any way to suffer. In effect, we will be de-demonizing and re-humanizing these populations.
It will be much harder for the american air force to bomb Esfahān when there are literally millions of americans intimately connected to the 3,430,353 people who live there. Not only will the americans feel total outrage that their friends are being murdered, but for the first time, many americans will know exactly where the bombs are falling and what the place looks like. They will be able to equate these places and people directly to their own places and people, and they, as decent moral folk, will not stand for it.
Now that we have the internetz, we can take this idea up to 11, organizing and fostering fine grained twinning down to the level of the family through a richly featured matching website, where each town and its residents can find people in the twinned town to connect with.
Think of it as ‘Peace 2.0’.
The unrepresentative and destructive Psychopaths that run the american government must have their plans for war short circuited. When americans feel, not by force, but by simple human contact, the pain of seeing their friends and acquaintances murdered, the insane pre-emption doctrine will implode. The vast majority of americans are completely decent, moral, generous and good people. They have been brutally mislead and tricked into a vicious cycle of hate by a small number of very bad people. But you know this.
There is nothing we can do about the myriad crimes that have been committed in the past; what we can do, is put a permanent stop to this headlong rush to endless war, and in particular, the war that is being planned right now against Iran.
Now, where can we find a Rails developer to build it?
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>>>>>>> UPDATE!! <<<<<<<
Someone has their thinking hat on:
Call Iran/Call America: People to People Diplomacy to Prevent War
Submitted by admin on Mon, 2007-10-08 07:29.
It is time that the people of America and Iran let our leaders know: we’re ready to talk, and if they won’t take that first step, we will take it for them.
The Enough Fear campaign seeks to link people across borders to halt the march to war between the US and Iran. By creating connections between people, we will demonstrate our common commitment to a negotiated settlement to the current crisis and show that dialogue between Iranians and Americans is possible.
To facilitate people-to-people diplomacy, we have designed an action that will link Americans and Iranians who otherwise would never have the opportunity to talk with each other.
You can find out more about our past events in Boston and New York, and read press coverage of this campaign.
How it works:
A phone bank, made up of 4-5 old-style red desk phones (like the ones used for direct emergency talks during the Cold War), is set up in a public space in the US. A phone call from each phone in the US is placed to a volunteer in Iran. The phone calls run continuously for 2 hours, and during that time, we invite passers-by in DC to have a 5-minute chat with someone in Iran. Iranian volunteers are welcome to invite friends and family to join them so they can pass their phone around as well. Each phone in the US has a second line to be used by a translator. Iranians and Americans are welcome to talk about anything they like – the only requirement is that people be respectful.
Needed: volunteers in the US and Iran
If you’re in the US, you can help us set up and volunteer at the events (and we especially need people who can translate between Persian and English on the calls). If you’re in Iran, you can volunteer to participate in one of our calls. To volunteer, or if you have any questions, please email contact@enoughfear.org.
For information on upcoming phone events, please sign up for our email list.
Photo by James Felder/SnapshotArtifact.org
We want to thank The Lee + Gund Foundation for their financial support. And thank you to everyone who made donations to make this event possible.
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