NICOSIA — A group of some 300 ordinary, yet extraordinary women, from 28 countries cycled 370 kilometers (230 miles) through Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan into Palestine last May, calling for peace and empowering women and youth in the Middle East.

The idea began in 2003 when a handful of like-minded female youth workers in the European Union’s Youth Program formed Follow the Women (FTW) to cycle through the Middle East as a means of supporting Palestinians who were restricted in taking part in Euro-Med activities due to living under Israeli occupation.

FTW has had four annual peace rides, each aimed at showing solidarity toward the women and youth of the region, increasing intercultural understanding and providing participants with the chance to experience first-hand the plight of Palestinians living in the occupied territories and in exile in refugee camps.

The members of FTW come from the European Union, the Middle East and as far away as North America, Australia and Japan.

Throughout the 12-day peace ride, men, women and children lined the streets to welcome the ‘Messengers of Peace,’ who were showered with flowers and gifts. Locals applauded and called out “Ahlan wa sahlan!” offering traditional Arabic sweets and coffee as tokens of appreciation.

Eleni Mavrou, the first female mayor of Nicosia, Europe’s last divided capital, offered a message of solidarity, which was read in the presence of Ramallah’s first female mayor, Janet Michael.

“Nobody can defeat our love for freedom, hope and peace.” The words of the FTW Lebanese coordinator from the Progressive Youth Organization (PYO) are representative of the sentiments most frequently expressed by the Lebanese to the participants of FTW.

The energetic volunteers from the PYO arranged a diverse program which had the women cycling from the cool lush green Mount Lebanon, down to the picturesque Mediterranean coast, through the serene Bekaa Valley.

In each region, locals enthusiastically welcomed the cyclists, who were immediately lured by the Lebanese traditional music, and inevitably found themselves dancing in the streets, re-energizing themselves for the rest of the ride.

The most solemn moment of FTW in Lebanon was the visit to the mass grave at the Palestinian refugee camp of Shatila. The women were given the opportunity to lay a wreath at the memorial site, and pay their respect to the approximate 3,000 innocent victims lost, as well as to salute the ones among the FTW group who survived the September 1982 massacres at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps.

In Damascus, Syria’s first lady, Asma Assad, has backed the philosophy of FTW since its inception in 2003. In previous years she rode with the cyclists. This year she welcomed the riders of peace at the presidential palace, before the cyclists went on to visit the UNRWA al-Husainia refugee camp and the uninhabited city of Qunaitra, the capital of the Golan Heights, a city left in total ruin after its systematic destruction by the Israeli military before withdrawing from the city in June 1974.

The ride and full program of diverse events in Jordan, which took place under the patronage of Queen Rania, concluded with an enjoyable evening at the Dead Sea.

The next destination was the Palestinian territories, where the women rode through Houwara, one of Israel’s strictest checkpoints for locals, through the hilly city of Nablus, reaching the al-Najah University, where FTW were welcomed as guests of the faculty and students.

One of the more memorable experiences was a night spent in the former Israeli interrogation prison for Palestinian youth, the al-Faraa Center, and they were given a guided tour by one of the former detainees.

Next on the program figured a ride past some parts of the imposing Israeli separation wall, reminding some of the German participants of the Berlin Wall. One of the most frequently raised questions is how pressure from the international community managed to bring down the Berlin Wall; whereas no real pressure is being exerted on Israel to do the same.

Despite calls from the International Court of Justice to dismantle the wall, which the Israelis call a “fence,” Palestinians see it as an “apartheid wall” and the U.N. refers to it as a “separation barrier.”

Follow the Women has become an important regional event where women are at the forefront of promoting peace, debunking stereotypes about Arab women.

By YIOTA KAMARATOS (Middle East Times)

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Hoping to widen the market for a low-budget anti-war film, one distributor is testing a strategy of releasing “CSNY: Deja Vu,” directed by rocker Neil Young, not just in theaters but on pay TV and the Internet on the same day.

Roadside Attractions, 40 percent-owned by Lions Gate Entertainment Corp, is in “final negotiations” to release the film July 25 in theaters, on TV video-on-demand services and via Netflix Inc’s “Watch Instantly” Web streaming, said Howard Cohen, co-president of Roadside.

“It’s a big experiment to release this film simultaneously on all these media, with big expectations for all of them,” said Cohen of the film, which chronicles a 2006 tour of the Woodstock generation band of David Crosby, Graham Nash, Stephen Stills and Young against a backdrop of anti-Iraq-war protest.

This untraditional strategy may help Young’s movie after several other anti-war films, like Universal Pictures’ “The Kingdom” ($47 million U.S.) and Paramount’s “Stop-Loss,” failed to reach box office expectations, industry analysts said.

And faced with an ever swelling pipeline of Hollywood movies and stagnating theater attendance and DVD sales, Hollywood studios are mulling more and more experiments like this in hopes of finding ways to maximize audience exposure, technology and profits, industry sources said.

But to date, the major studios have only dabbled with changes to their release strategies, hesitant to threaten relationships with partners and abandon the old formula of distributing movies in staggered “windows” of opportunity — first in theaters, then premium TV services, DVD and lastly, basic TV, generally speaking.

Major studios for the most part declined to comment, although opinions vary among executives and analysts as to when these companies, which spend upwards of $150 million to promote and release big budget films, will defy the system.

Forrester Research analyst James McQuivey said he believes the next two years could see change. “By 2010, there should be one major summer release in which a studio will break the mold and try simultaneous platforms,” McQuivey said.  Continued…

by Dnieze

In the biblical story of the Great Flood, Noah, from his ark, deploys different birds in search of dry land. The dove returns with an olive branch, a sign that there will be life after the storm.

In a similar fashion, local youth from the Hyde Square Task Force, a nonprofit neighborhood group, and Spontaneous Celebrations, a community-based arts organization, sent out their own symbolic doves, searching for solid ground in the struggle against gun violence.

On April 25, about 50 youths gathered on the steps of Jamaica Plain’s Curley K-8 School to learn from Robert Guillemin, a.k.a. Sidewalk Sam, a Boston artist, who showed them how to produce 5-foot doves with paint and a stencil. The prototype shows the bird in flight, outlined in purple, with a banner clenched in its talons that reads: Stop Violence*Create Peace

That day, Paint for Peace stenciled 50 doves in front of Jamaica Plain bodegas, pizzerias, schools, a housing development, and other locations.

“Art just helps me,” said participant Stefanie Baez, 17. “It helps me just relax.”

Guillemin launched the project last summer, working with local youths to decorate City Hall Plaza with a 5,000-foot dove. Then came a spate of shootings in JP, the victims local teens, prompting the task force youth to contact Paint for Peace, asking to participate.

An ongoing project, Paint for Peace aims to create 600 doves throughout Boston. Including the Jamaica Plain doves, it has completed 80 so far.

“I find it very encouraging, here where the children of Boston have all been painted with the same brush,” said Guillemin of the project. “They’re all thought of as violent and disrespectful. But 99.9 percent are peaceful children who desire to have the peace they feel for their neighborhood.”

MARC LAROCQUE

by lucy_vis

Guy Raz quotes from President Dwight Eisenhower: “I like to believe that people in the long run are going to do more to promote peace than our governments. Indeed, I think that people want peace so much that one of these days governments had better get out of their way and let them have it.”

All Things Considered, May 31, 2008