[Carrie]

Here's an interesting non-partisan site that monitors tv in the Middle East & provides downloads & transcripts:

http://www.memritv.org

It's a fascinating look at the culture, and how they view us.

-- Carrie

[rowante]

See also: http://english.aljazeera.net/HomePage

[muhandis]

Eight years ago I travelled through Jordan and Syria for the fun of it. It was fascinating, and I really appreciated meeting the different Arabic speaking peoples. There is no singular Arab culture or identity, it is a language. So like English, it is spoken by many different cultures and religions, each bringing to it their own histories and customs.

Now about TV. Arabs might seem to like shows like Baywatch and Three's Company. This is only an impression from what I saw broadcast on Jordanian TV. They of course also have local shows, but they show a lot less skin than shows like Baywatch, and I had the impression that shows on the good life in California rated highly. Even the Bedouin had TVs and generators in their tents! Oh yeh, there is also women's kickboxing via satellite...which is very surreal when you see at a truck stop in the middle of the desert.

It seems that from talking to Palestinians, that Arabs understand about as much about Western-culture as the average American does about Arabs. My Palestinian hosts seemed genuinely saddened by the lack of contact with Western tourists and felt that they were being avoided. This was back in 1996!

Most interesting was the observation from my Palestinian hosts that the 1991 Gulf War (Gulf War II) was about oil, and finding a way to keep an army on top of it. These guys were expelled from their low paying jobs in Kuwait (even though they had been born in Kuwait) and replaced by even cheaper Egyptian and Pakistani labourers.

Also to add, I have yet to encounter people more friendly and hospitable than the Jordanians, Syrians and Palestinians in my travels across the world.

[gg3]

Interesting, Muhandis.

In recent years I've been running with the hypothesis that the scarcity of the desert environment has been a contributing factor to the prevalence of certain types of violence in Middle Eastern cultures.

But you provide an interesting counterexample when you say the Jordanians, Syrians, and Palestinians are "hospitable." I read that to infer the meaning "hospitable -> given to hospitality toward guests." Looking it up, the first two definitions of that word are:

1) Disposed to treat guests with warmth and generosity.

2) Indicative of cordiality toward guests: a hospitable act.

Now if that's what you mean, it seems to fit and make sense. Western monotheisms have scriptural injunctions about treating guests properly, and about the obligation to take in travelers, etc., all of this based on the understanding of the desert as a hostile environment, both in terms of physical danger, and danger from criminals etc. This seems to be common to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam; a kind of interdenominational consensus.

This has a very interesting set of implications for societies facing conditions of scarcity.

What else is a desert but a place of extreme scarcity? Particularly of those things that are needed for immediate survival, i.e. food and water. One doesn't just go catch a fish for dinner, gather up some berries for desert, and wash it all down with a jug of fresh water from the creek.

So here we have an environment of extreme scarcity, and a cultural response of cooperation among strangers at least insofar as sharing those basic essentials of food, water, and a safe place to rest.

And, this tendency exists in a region often known for its prevalence of violence in all forms, including notably those forms that involve vengeance.

Based on which I have to conclude that this tendency toward hospitality is both a) at some level hardwired in humans, and b) has survival value for cultures over time.

And, extrapolating from that conclusion, it would seem reasonably probable that a similar factor could become operative in times of energy scarcity. In other words, a civilized impulse coming forward at a time when many doubt that such things are likely.

Very interesting....

[Leanan]

I think it depends on how bad the crash is. People are fundamentally social animals, like baboons or chimpanzees. Ordinarily, we do feel an obligation to help those who need it. Not for altruistic purposes, I suspect, but because we know that one day, we might be the ones in need. Humans and other primates have a keen sense of "fairness." We will be bothered if we do favors constantly for someone, and they never do any for us. We all keep little books in our heads, calculating whether we owe or are owed in our dealings with others, and grow uncomfortable if the books get too far out of balance, in either direction.

But if times are really tough, then people grow more selfish. You have to be, to survive. (In fact, I think that's why we have urge to be selfish, as well as the urge to share. Which one is most beneficial depends on the situation.)

There's an area in Hawaii called "Nanakuli." It translates literally as "Deaf Ear." In the old days, Nanakuli was a very poor area - so poor that the residents couldn't offer the traditional hospitality to strangers. So they would pretend to be deaf when travelers asked for it.

[smiley]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I')t seems that from talking to Palestinians, that Arabs understand about as much about Western-culture as the average American does about Arabs. My Palestinian hosts seemed genuinely saddened by the lack of contact with Western tourists and felt that they were being avoided. This was back in 1996!

[gg3]

Smiley, one good reason we don't see much crossover online here is the language barrier. Middle Eastern languages are very very difficult for westerners to pick up. Quranic scholarship is said to depend upon years of study of the Arabic language, and the US military says it takes ten years to become fluent in some of the regional languages.

Compared to this, it appears that English is widespread in the Middle East. So as a practical matter, it appears we need to reach out to English speaking Middle Easteners, and they to us. And also, we are depending on the most open-minded elements within each culture to come forward and reach out to each other, at a time when there are strong cultural forces pulling in the opposite direction on each side.

Not impossible, but difficult. Are we up to the task..?

And then, there may just be fundamental and irreconcilable (at least for the foreseeable future) differences between the cultures. Womens' issues come to mind in particular, where each side believes, for its own good reasons, that the other side is simply barbaric. At that point the most practical thing to do is just declare a truce, but there are fierce emotional reasons why this would at best be an unstable state of affairs.

So in a way, we're all stuck with each other, and the sooner we recognize that and find a way to get along, the better for all of us.

[Barbara]

So I had this (maybe stupid) idea. Why not writing to mr. Bakhtiari (someone with a better english than mine) asking for arab english forums where we can invite people to discuss peak oil here? It would be very interesting, but I think we can't do it ourselves, since we don't know their forums and don't want to risk to end with some fundamentalists.
Of course, I mean arab english forums from Arab countries, not from here.
I think he could be pleased to be of help. Any thoughts?

[Cynic]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Barbara', 'S')o I had this (maybe stupid) idea. Why not writing to mr. Bakhtiari (someone with a better english than mine) asking for arab english forums where we can invite people to discuss peak oil here? It would be very interesting, but I think we can't do it ourselves, since we don't know their forums and don't want to risk to end with some fundamentalists.
Of course, I mean arab english forums from Arab countries, not from here.
I think he could be pleased to be of help. Any thoughts?

[Barbara]

LOL Cynic!
On another thread I said "call arab a persian and you're dead" and now you catched me with this!
LOL!

[inverse_agonist]

Everything that comes out of MEMRI should be viewed with the assumption that it's Israeli psychological operations. The founder's background is in Israeli intelligence, other staff members have worked with the IMF/World Bank, etc.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_Eas ... _Institute