Jimmy Carter in Beirut: public address
30 years after Camp David: A memo to the Arab World, Israel and the Quartet from Jimmy Carter
N.B. Carter’s address starts at the 13 minute mark after the obligatory introductions. You can skip the lengthy introductions by moving the audio-indicator along the axis.
President Carter’s political reminiscences are a worthwhile listen; also notable as is the mention of Hamas’s election being “the most perfect” the Carter Center had ever helped conduct (25 minute mark, Part One).
Part I (video; audio) – 38 mins
Part II (video; audio) – 44 mins
On December 12, 2008, Jimmy Carter gave a public lecture on ’30 years after Camp David: A memo to the Arab World, Israel and the Quartet‘ at the American University of Beirut (AUB), as part of the Issam Fares Institute’s Bill and Sally Hambrecht Distinguished Peacemakers Lecture Series.
President Carter served as the 39th President of the United States from 1977 to 1981, and was recipient of the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize. Prior to becoming President, Carter served two terms in the Georgia Senate and as the 89th Governor of Georgia, from 1971 to 1975. Significant foreign policy accomplishments of his administration included the Camp David Accords and the peace treaty between Israel and Egypt.
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Aiyeeeee! The dreaded introductions! Ya shoulda reminded me of that stuff before the jump!
Well… okay… I shoulda known, but… still….
I’ll just download the sucker and skip that noise…. I swear, I loof, luff, lurve listening to lectures by great men and women to itty bitty bits, but the introductions of academe are the worst…. :-P
How can people concentrate after being that dulled out is a marvel… or maybe that’s the mark of a truly great speaker: that they can overcome the soporific effects of their introduction.
xoxoxox
Good point, 99 and entirely agreed. I’ve amended accordingly to include the notification at the start. I must say, I also love listening to his southern accent. xoxoxox
It ended up making me cry pretty hard. Israel doesn’t want peace. They want Palestine. If you listen to Carter here, you are reminded of all the intense effort over the decades that has all been ruined, ignored, worked around by Israel until it is shaped back into genocide. It’s an inexorability of extermination they obviously feel they are completely entitled to carry out, ordered by God to carry out.
I was cheered to learn that some Turks ran their basketball team back to their lockers, and Venezuela expelled their ambassador. They should be booted out of every country. They should be booted out of Palestine. And all our war criminals should be made to go live with them.
It has always perturbed me that, at least in the U.S., there is a pervasive perception that Palestinians are ‘Islamist’ religious fanatics and that Israel is merely combating the threat of such fanaticism. It never seems to occur to many people here that Israeli colonial policy is more or less dictated in totem by the belligerent admonitions in the Old Testament, as Carter alludes with respect to Begin.
Carter has what we sometimes call the ‘plantation drawl,’ the aristocratic manner of speaking common in the coastal plains and the lower Mississippi delta that is in many ways similar to the New England accent found in Boston. In my part of the South, the most commonly found accent is more harsh, with exaggerated ‘r’ sounds, a tendency to turn simple vowels into dipthongs, and a characteristically rapid, rather than languid, pace of speech.
Not to get off on a tangent (except, of course, that I really am), the difference in the two primary types of Southern accent is thought to reflect heritage. Carter’s accent, though lessened by his international travels, is exemplary of the plains drawl that represents culture and refinement in the South. It is the accent of the descendants of English planters, with some French influence. But the more terse and harsh manner of speaking elsewhere in the south–hill country talk–reflects more Scottish, Irish, and particularly German influence. It was born in early Appalachia and then spread westwards. This type of speech clearly reflects German grammar, e.g. “The way we talk in these here parts,” or “Pull that door to, would ye?” and, at its most brutal, even German vocabulary, e.g. “I’m fixin’ to learn you to talk right, boy,” from German lehren, “to teach.” It’s really fascinating.
Oh, I love hearing the Appalachian, south hill country one as well. Thanks very much for the fascinating explanation and the note abut the German influences. I also happen to like German as a language, so perhaps that lends itself to the inclination to liking hearing the former.