Dear Dusziak, thank you for the different take on avenues toward peacemaking, and for providing some inspiring examples of innovative business. I'll add one, too: http://www.newvoiceofbusiness.org/

Hello everyone!

Unfortunately my computer is acting up and I wasn't able to listen to the videos on this topic. However, I think it would be interesting for us to consider the role of businesses in this dilemma. For instance, how could businesses help in the peacemaking process in the middle east while making profit? If you do a bit of searching on the internet you may come across several businesses that are doing just so--They are promoting peace while making profit in heavily conflicted areas. Thus, perhaps, we should not only consider the need for religious leaders to express understanding and respect for each other, but we should also look at the potential role of business as agents for world benefit. It seems that businesses may have something unique to offer us in peacemaking situations! Check out some neat innovative and peace-enhancing businesses that are operating successfully today... I have listed a few of them below. There are many, many more out there. I just wanted to provide you all a little inspiration and hope on the subject! Enjoy! :)

If you are interested in finding more inspirational business examples, then check out this website: http://worldbenefit.case.edu/ It has a catalogue of businesses that agents of world benefit!

http://www.peaceworks.com
PeaceWorks Holdings LLC was established in 1994 and describes itself as “a not-only-for-profit company,” which sells all-natural, health food products that are produced by neighbors on opposing sides of political or armed conflict.

www.thanksgivingcoffee.com
Their “Delicious Peace” blend of coffee is harvested from the Kawomera Cooperative, a group in Uganda which brings together Muslim, Christian, and Jewish farmers in a gesture of peace.

www.outwardboundpeace.org
“The Outward Bound Center for Peacebuilding is a new initiative applying Outward Bound’s expertise in experiential education and its global capacity to the needs of individuals living in regions of conflict around the world.
The Outward Bound Center for Peacebuilding is committed to applying Outward Bound’s many strengths to the work of conflict prevention, management and mitigation and post-conflict reconciliation around the world. Working with the international network of Outward Bound schools located in more than 35 countries, the Outward Bound Center for Peacebuilding has been established to develop and support programs that contribute to global conflict resolution, reconciliation, peace and security.”

Wall AG—The Universal World House
http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/kit-eaton/technomix/5000-paper-house-dis...
Wall AG has succeeded in creating a one-room home with running water, an indoor toilet, a shower, a kitchen area, veranda, shelves, tables, benches, and eight built in beds, all out of recycled paper. Not only is this innovation environmentally-friendly, but its low cost of $5,000 makes it affordable to purchase in third world countries. The homes, created by Gerd Niemoeller, are composed of cellulose from recycled paper and cardboard soaked in resin and pressure-treated. Best of all, this substance is rain-proof. Wall AG is planning to build and ship the fabricating machines as well as the raw materials to their designated destinations. By doing so, Wall AG can keep housing costs minimal to consumers while creating local jobs in needy communities. The housing model promises adequate housing for poverty-striken areas while making profit for Wall AG.

The impact that the rest of the world has on any conflict depends on how the 'rest of the world' perceives the conflict - or even the concept of conflict itself - and this in itself depends on certain conditioned factors.

For sure istlota above has a correct analysis of the socio-economic conditions that lead to the continuation of the situation but there is a step before that; most people if confronted by the actual reality of war, or the situation on the ground in Gaza say, [i]in the raw[/i] as it were, would be challenged to change their conditioned responses and motivated to make a commitment to wholesale change.

Unfortunately, in order to perpetuate the global interests, things are so constructed that the ordinary person is never confronted with the actuality to such a degree to elicit such a change.

As an example, at the height of the Communism-paranoia in the US in the 50s/60s, an 'exchange scheme' was instituted where a US citizen would go to live with a Russian family for a week or so and later the Russian host would come to stay in the US with the visitor. Both parties radically changed their customary views of each other because they saw the reality as it was.

Unfortunately, in today's 'global village' this is no longer so easy because with the plethora of infotainment proffered today we are convinced the quantity of news available equates to a comprehensive and correct overview. I don't think this is always the case....the same people who want to defend their financial and political interests also control the means of forming our opinions about their activities.

They do this because we have power to change things - and their method works. That's where change must start, circumventing the artificial barriers that prevent the reality of situations being fully perceived.

We have to look to _us_, we Americans [not our government], for peace.

America must be taken out of the Middle East equation. But, that will only happen by one of three means:

1) America is defeated in a devasting nuclear war --- not entirely improbable if our government continues to pursue its suicidal fantasy of installing nuclear missile sites in the nations along Russia's perimeter.

2) The American economy continues to collapse until the value of USD approachs that of pesos --- effectively ending America's ability to pour billions into Israel's war machine. Again, this is not improbable since, so far, all we are doing to stimulate the economy is to have the Fed create trillions of new USD out of thin air --- the equivalent of attempting to use gasoline to put out a wildfire.

3) You, I, and other Americans who value peace above American hedgemony take advantage of every opportunity -- and create a few of our own -- to repeat, over and over again, to whoever will listen, that governments which discriminate, violently, on the basis of race and religion should not receive American foreign aid.

We will, voluntarily, choose the 3rd option, or the 1st and/or 2nd options will be chosen for us.

Istiota, you make a compelling argument, and I tend to agree. So, if we don't look to the US and UN to seek peace in the Middle East, which makes sense, and we don't look to the other Western beneficiaries of the keep-oil-flowing-regardless dynamic, then who else might be invested in peacemaking? And, what would be their motivation? Do such countries/entities even exist? Or, must peace be sought solely from within the Middle East itself, in the form of a grassroots, indigenous uprising, as they tire of conflict and shake the dog off their ankle?

The events in Gaza/Middle East are inextricable from the presumed "national interests" of the rest of the world.

In this technology-dependent age, access to energy is a primary focus of all the nations of the world. Most of the easiest accessible oil is in the Middle East. As long as that is the case, the wealthiest nations and the strongest militaries --- the West --- will continue to pump arms and other forms of military aid into what Noam Chomsky has referred to as the local cop on the beat --- Israel. The job of the local cop on the beat is to maintain the status quo --- i.e., use whatever force is necessary to convince the oil rich residents of that beat [Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia] to continue to allow the West --- primarily the US --- to control the oil and to receive the lion's share of the oil.

Israel is the cop being used by the West, primarily America, to enforce "law and order" --- or, at least what America decides is to be law and order.

If there were no oil in the Middle East, the US would be no more committed to defending the Jews than we were when we allowed Hitler to murder millions of them in the last World War.

For this reason, it is incredibly naive for the world to continue to look to the US and to the UN [effectively hamstrung by the US P5 veto seat] to seek peace in the Middle East. The focus of America's Middle East foreign policy is to keep the oil flowing from east to west, not to seek peace.

Welcome to this month's theme: The Middle East conflict. It has been tremendously inspiring for me to watch and listen to the diverse voices featured here, and to find that at their core they each reveal facets of a common humanity that transcend their deep cultural and religious differences.

If the people who are embedded in this age-old conflict can find and express the ties that bind us all together, then I have every confidence it is possible to spread this awareness everywhere conflict exists in the world, and in doing so, finally transform 'swords into plowshares'. This transformation surely begins within each one of us.

Now, I look forward to hearing your diverse voices, and engaging in dialogue with you.