Ed Hale Photo Gallery From Civilian Diplomacy Trip To Iran

In 2009 Ed Hale attended a two week Civilian Diplomacy Trip to the country of Iran with the world’s oldest non-profit peace and diplomacy organization, the Fellowship of Reconciliation. Hale was among 11 Americans chosen for the trip, along with journalist Robert Dreyfus and author Larry Beinhart and several members of American prominent nuclear watchdog NGOs as well as other peace activists. They met with various members of different departments of the Iranian government including presidents Ahmadinejad and Khatami, Iranian Peace activists, members of the Islamic Republic clergy, Imams and Ayatollahs, leaders of Christian Churches and Jewish Synagogues there. They also had time to connect with a lot of the Iranian people all over the country, who were extremely happy and excited to meet Americans. Hale has been writing about the experience extensively in his Transcendence Diaries (run a search for “Iran”) and speaking about the trip to various groups over the years. CLICK TO READ MORE Continue reading “Ed Hale Photo Gallery From Civilian Diplomacy Trip To Iran”

Ed Hale Travels to Israel-Palestine for Peace Mission & Spiritual Pilgrimage

Ed Hale Travels to Israel-Palestine for Peace Mission & Spiritual Pilgrimage. On October 10th, 2013 Ed Hale embarked on a two-week fact-finding mission and spiritual pilgrimage to Israel-Palestine with a small group of approximately 18 others with the Israeli-based ICCI Organization. The team will visit ‘holy sites’, attend meetings with various peace organizations and have an opportunity to stay with Palestinian families in the West Bank. Ed will be posting photos on Facebook, Twitter and Flickr and regular updates on his Transcendence Diaries blog. For more detailed information about the trip click here http://ift.tt/1g9fHjY
via Flickr http://ift.tt/1nAo9sa

NEW ED HALE INTERVIEW IN EXCLUSIVE MAGAZINE TALKS ABOUT RECENT WEDDING, TRUE LOVE, AND CIVILIAN DIPLOMACY

photo by Flavia MolinariA new interview with Transcendence singer Ed Hale in Exclusive Magazine. The singer, who just recently released a new solo album, Ballad On Third Avenue, and more recently surprised friends and fans by getting married to the beautiful Nahal Mishel-Ghashghai in dual Persian and Christian Ceremonies.”
‘All Hale, Ed!’
Ed Hale, the iconic singer of the rock group Transcendence, never known for doing things ‘ordinary,’ definitely did it his way in what may be the ‘interfaith wedding of the year!’
On February 13, Hale’s last Triple A radio hit single, ‘I Walk Alone,’ no longer applied to him as he and the beautiful Nahal Mishel-Ghashghai, began their life together in a style that crosses all cultural barriers.
At a church on the corner of Park Avenue in New York City, they were joined in a formally Islamic fashion in a traditional Persian wedding, followed immediately by a traditional Christian wedding.
I recently had the opportunity to speak with Ed Hale about all this, and first wondered, being that he just married his soul-mate (congratulations!) in a Multi-Interfaith, one-of-a-kind wedding, if he could kindly explain this a little more. “Thank you for the congrats. Nahal and I knew that if we were going to have a wedding that it needed to be special. Something that was bigger than just the binding of the two of us as one. If we wanted to do that, we could have just eloped off alone the two of us and done it privately. But we felt a responsibility to our friends and fans and family… we wanted to share it.”
“Many people already knew our story. How long we had been together. How in love we were. Always the iconoclast, I wasn’t too knowledgable about weddings per se, but I knew that if I was going to get married in public that it had to be about more than just the two of us. So we really worked hard at this idea of ‘celebrating love,’ in all its shapes and forms… rather than just making it about us.”
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ED HALE TRANSCENDS TO DISCUSS RECENT IRAN ISSUES ON VANCOUVER PERSIAN RADIO 93.1FM CKYE

Ed Hale with American Peace Delegation to Iran with former President Khatami
Until the passing of Michael Jackson it seemed the entire world was fixated on the recent people’s uprising in Iran and the attendant government’s controversial attempts to quell the protests. A hot topic in Western news for more than fifty years, Iran most recently came to public attention again when millions of people in Tehran and other large cities of all ages and religious backgrounds came out into the streets in droves to protest or support the second term election of Iranian president Ahmadinejad. On Saturday July 18th, 2009, singer/songwriter/political activist Ed Hale will be giving a special two-hour radio interview on one of the Western World’s most popular Iranian news programs, Vancouver Persian Radio – CKYE 93.1. The show is hosted by Iranian born Ebby Mohseni and will be broadcast live from 9:00PM to 11:00 PM PST. It can also be heard live on the internet here. In 2008 Hale, also called “The Ambassador” precisely for these kind of social and global cultural activities, co-founded the non-profit organization PeaceWithIran.com after traveling to Iran as a Civilian Diplomat on a special peace delegation where he and ten others met with the Iranian president and many other influential government and religious leaders.
Hale was surprised by the immediate popularity and the positive response the website received on a global level. A few months later he was asked to again meet with president Ahmadinejad at last year’s United Nations General Assembly meeting in New York City – along with many of America’s leading peace activists – to discuss solutions for peaceful relations with the United States and other Western Powers. Since the people’s uprising in Iran after the June elections, the website that Hale and company founded as a means to create more peace with Iran became – seemingly overnight – one of the most popular and visited websites on the internet, both as a comprehensive news source updated by the minute from people all over the world, and more importantly – as a secure platform for the Iranian people to communicate with one another regarding political activism and organizing. Hale had not predicted the increased traffic, attention, or popularity the site would receive post-election – assuming it would remain a relatively transparent host for occasional Iranian cultural events and news.
Hale commented, “Well we certainly didn’t see this coming did we? Though I’d be lying if I didn’t say I was excited as hell about this. We’ve found ourselves right in the middle and on the front lines of one of the most exciting people’s democratic movements in recent history! Now I’m not sure how I or anyone outside of Iran itself can offer much that has not already been said… It’s more about what we can do, which is why I’m a little reluctant about these kinds of radio things…” Hale and co-founder Monica Bernardo have been inundated with interview requests from radio stations and newspapers from all over the world and the demand is tough to keep up with, especially considering that Hale is currently promoting a new album less than a month out of the box.
“I’m a singer and songwriter, and an artist and entertainer. I’m not an expert on politics. But there is an opportunity here to help. So we’re going to help. Like many, I love Persian culture, which is why I created the website, to share my passion for the people there. But I don’t believe that makes me a go-to guy for what is happening there now. Though at this time we are receiving hundreds of emails from all over the world with vital inside information that is not being shared with the world from the mainstream media. So if anything, I hope the increased popularity of the website and the interviews we are doing will help spread more awareness about the importance of paying more attention to the struggle of the Iranian people right now so we can do more and help them do more. That’s the real goal with this.”

TRANSCENDENCE SINGER ED HALE RELEASES SUMMARY OF MEETING WITH IRAN PRESIDENT AHMADINEJAD

White House Does Not Meet with Iran President Ahmadinejad during UN General Assembly Meeting, But a Small Group of American Citizens Does – Part I of III
By Ed Hale
As United States 2008 presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obamabickered over how they would “handle the Iran threat” in their first debate on Friday night, citing erroneous facts and competing with one another on who would hold out the longest from engaging in diplomatic talks with Iran, a small group of one-hundred and fifty American citizens representing fifty of the country’s most prominent peace and human rights groups were busy talking to the world’s media about the two-hour private meeting they held with the Iranian President two days prior.
The meeting, which was not revealed to the media until the next day to assure the safety and security for those in attendance, took place on Wednesday September 24 at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in New York City during the 63rd annual United Nations General Assembly Meeting. The goal of the meeting was “to introduce President Ahmadinejad to the peace community in the United States and to illustrate how this sector of civil society works to oppose war and the use of non-violence to resolve differences,” said the meeting’s facilitator, Mark Johnson, Executive Director of the global Fellowship of Reconciliation, the world’s oldest peace organization.
In an exhilarating live experiment in civilian diplomacy in action, the ballroom of the Grand Hyatt Hotel was transformed into a veritable who’s who of some of the most outspoken and prominent members of America’s peace, anti-war, and human rights organizations, including Medea Benjamin of A Global Exchange, Jodie Evans of Code Pink and Women for Peace, Brian Becker of the ANSWER Coalition, yours truly representing PeaceWithIran.com, and Leslie Cagan of United for Peace and Justice. There were also representatives from Physicians for Social Responsibility, the Mennonites, the Lutheran Peace Fellowship, American Friends Committee on National Legislation, and the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, among many others. American citizens flew in from almost all fifty states to hold the private meeting with President Ahmadinejad in an effort to begin the process of what many consider long overdue open dialogues with Iran regarding how our two nations can work together to secure more peaceful relations with one another.
The issues raised during the two-hour plus talk, many considered vital for the future security of both the United States and Iranian citizenry, revolved around how the countries can begin putting aside their mutual distrust of one another in order to move forward in peaceful negotiations; both the US and the Iranian government’s recent crackdown on human rights, freedom of assembly, and dissidents; the current US occupation of Iraq; Iran’s controversially viewed policy toward Israel; their treatment of women and other minorities; the difficulty on both sides of obtaining visas to visit either country. Of course the big issue of the moment, will Iran accept a compromise on its nuclear fuel enrichment program, was also addressed.
Ahmadinejad was joined by his Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki, and Iran UN Ambassador Mohammad Khazaee. After already participating in two full days of talks with leaders from all over the globe, the Iranian President seemed tired, but he spoke eloquently, near poetically, and many of the points he made and the answers he gave to our questions were illuminating and insightful. In response to Iran’s nuclear energy program, a subject that the United States government continues to demonize in unsubstantiated propaganda to the American media though it has the support of one-hundred and eighteen other UN nation-states around the planet, Ahmadinejad reasserted for the umpteenth time that Iran has allowed more IAEA inspections of their nuclear facilities than any other country in the world to date, and that they discontinued pursuing nuclear weapons in 2005. A fact that has been confirmed and reconfirmed by all thirteen US Intelligence Agencies including the NSA, the FBI, and the CIA countless times over the last three years.
Why the White House persists in attempting to publicly frame Iran’s nuclear energy program as “a threat to American security” remains a mystery. As does why the US government continues to refuse to speak with or enter into diplomatic talks with Iran while other countries such as Iraq, Japan, Italy, China, Pakistan, and Russia are now jumping at it. Bear in mind that Iran currently sits on the second largest oil deposit on the planet. He told us that US President George W. Bush missed a historic opportunity when he didn’t respond to the Iran President’s 2006 letter inviting him to talk, an opportunity that could have begun a reconciliation of the two countries 28 year cold war of silence. As an American citizen I couldn’t help but feel a sense of bitterness and regret — as if we were indeed a winning team but could still lose the game because we simply suffer from having a bad captain.
Ahmadinejad also commented about how the United States, the UK, France and Canada supported, cooperated with, and even gave nuclear technology information to the pre-1979 regime ruled by the US-installed dictator, the Shah of Iran but now “When there were no elections in Iran, they wanted us to be a nuclear power. As soon as there were elections, they didn’t want us to be a nuclear power.” The room roared with laughter at the obvious irony. As a passionately patriotic American – granted, more of the ideals we talk rather than the missteps our government often walks, especially with our foreign policy over the last fifty years – I felt proud knowing that this might be the first time an Iranian government leader was in a room with living breathing American’s who actually understood and fought for America’s promise and potential of real democracy and liberty for all, rather than feeling bullied, threatened, and manipulated as many smaller countries feel in their dealings with the United States government today.
I was reminded of the shock I felt when I first learned just a few short months ago that in 1950 Iran had their first democratic revolution and in 1953 the CIA and the UK, under Operation Ajax, orchestrated a coup d’etat and ousted Iran’s new democratically elected Prime Minister Mosaddeq sending him into exile and installed a puppet regime that they could control easily in the form of The Shah so both countries could reap giant profits from Iran’s enormous oil supply while that country’s people struggled in poverty and fell behind the rest of the world in technology, social services, and infrastructure for thirty more years. I also contemplated how as children we are taught to honor, respect, and celebrate our own American Revolution while at the same time being advised that we should disrespect, fear, and dishonor the Iranian people’s own Democratic Revolution.
But as important as that little bit of history is for all Americans to have knowledge of, that’s in the past and here we were, twenty-eight years later, American citizens no longer able to bear the archaic bullheaded imperialist system that refuses to practice in real life what it preaches to its children in school, taking matters into our own hands and sitting down in the first ever diplomatic talks with the relatively new democratically-elected Iranian government to help begin to build a bridge of shared values and mutual agreements: mainly, that “œwe must work together to form a wave of citizens who are dedicated to world peace for all citizens of the world and of all nations.”
Echoing what we heard countless times by many leading government officials when I visited Iran in March of this year, Ahmadinejad told us that Iran is politically and religiously opposed to nuclear weapons, adding: “The time for nuclear weapons has come to an end. Those who want to build a new generation of nuclear bombs are politically backward, period. Those days are over.” Again the room erupted into applause. “Did nuclear weapons help the United States in their Vietnam War? Did they help the former Soviet Union in the Cold War? Are they helping your country in the Iraq War?” Silence in the room. Perhaps it was the fact that Ahmadinejad was fasting for weeks straight due to the Muslim holiday of Ramadan. Perhaps he has just matured over the years. But his mannerisms were cool, his demeanor was calm, and the tone of his answers poetic and philosophical. He then posed the question “Doesn’t it seem odd that we are being economically sanctioned, our people strangled literally to death, and at the same time publicly threatened and attacked almost daily for attempting to harness nuclear energy for our rapidly growing economy with no intention of building nuclear weapons, by the United States who has over 10,000 functional nuclear warheads aimed at half the world? Doesn’t this seem odd and illogical?” Again, more applause.
I was speechless. Perhaps this was a first for me too. The first time that I had heard a high ranking government official, a head of State no less, speaking not only insightfully with moral and ethical undertones, but speaking truths that many of us think to ourselves privately but are afraid to utter aloud for fear of being labeled “unpatriotic” or “treasonous.” Having grown up in America in the latter half of the 20th century I was jaded from one too many politico speeches filled with nothing but empty rhetoric and flip flopping. But Iran is in a different position now than they’ve been in thousand’s of years and different than even we American citizens are. They are quickly gaining allies and support and mammoth deals with countries all over the world. They do not share the same fears that even we here at home face of being attacked for speaking their truth. They are a rapidly growing new country of strong proud people with a seven-thousand year long history, a sovereign nation who are free to say what they wish, economic sanctions and near-constant threats of military strikes be damned. All I could do was transcribe the contents of the meeting as quickly as my illegible handwriting would allow. Something told me that what I was witnessing and listening to was important to share with as many people as I could over the coming weeks and months.
This is not to say that those of us in attendance were able to agree with everything that the conservative Muslim President said during our meeting. There was plenty to take umbrage with and in fact just downright vehemently disagree with. This I will cover in Part II, along with a summary of the dialogue surrounding some of the other issues mentioned earlier in this article. But in the name of peace, which was the reason for the meeting in the first place, perhaps it best to end Part I with Ahmadinejad’s closing remarks to illustrate why many left that room that night inspired by the potential hinted at that there is power in our civil society and in non-violent civilian diplomacy to effect change in the world and to lift up democratic societies despite challenges and obstacles.
“My friends we need to create a wave of all world citizens of all backgrounds and all walks of life to create more peace in the world. We need to practice our values of our various religions and gather ourselves together to work at the pace of light itself to keep up with the pace of the world. Carrying out this mission has certain requirements based on justice and respect for all nations. If we don’t like something for ourselves, then we should not want it for other nations. Yes? What I am saying here is not complicated. These are clear-cut ideas that we need simply to put into practice.”
It is too bad that neither John McCain nor Barack Obama could have been in attendance at this historic meeting. Perhaps the contents of their debate on Friday regarding the country of Iran would have appeared more well informed and enlightened. (Both candidates mistakenly referred to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard as “the Republican Guard”) If the United States is going to pull out of the numerous crises both here and abroad that it currently faces, it is going to take real change on many levels – the kind of change hyped and promoted by at least one of this election year’s presidential candidates. And one of those changes absolutely essential to our survival, let alone our thriving in the 21st century is going to be a more open door diplomatic policy towards communication with other countries that we may not see eye to eye on in all matters. But we have to start somewhere for real reconciliation to start taking place.
Ed Hale
September 27th, 2008

ED HALE TO MEET WITH IRAN PRESIDENT AHMADINEJAD DURING UN GENERAL ASSEMBLY MEETING


Coinciding with this week’s United Nations General Assembly meeting in New York City, singer-songwriter Ed Hale of the rock group TRANSCENDENCE, will be part of a coalition of prominent members of the United States peace and human rights movement who will be meeting with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Over 100 peace and human rights activists representing over three dozen American peace and human rights groups will fly in to attend the private meeting with the Iranian president in an undisclosed location. There has been an embargo on releasing the date, time, or location of the meeting to the press in order to avoid any interruption of the proceedings.
Hale visited Iran in March of this year along with 12 others as a Civilian Diplomat to discuss US/Iranian relations with members of the Iranian government including former President Khatami. Hale has been interviewing with the media about the trip over the last six months, as well as giving formal presentations to discuss it with the public. He has also written about it on his blog, The Transcendence Diaries. Photos from the trip can be viewed by visiting Hale’s Flickr page here. This meeting in the US is being held in order to introduce Ahmadinejad to the peace community in the United States and to illustrate how this sector of civil society works to oppose war and the use of violence to resolve differences. Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki and UN Ambassador Mohammad Khazaee will also be in attendance.
Ed Hale at the Center for Hadith Studies in Qom, Iran
In response to those who have vocally protested his involvement in meeting with Ahmadinejad, Hale had this to say: “Iran and the United States have not spoken diplomatically in over 25 years. When the governments of these nations do speak to each other it is usually behind closed doors through special envoys in some remote neutral country or they speak AT each other publicly through the media making accusations and threats and bullying each other. Israel is also involved in this childish power struggle. All three countries need to grow up and start representing the people of their nations in a more mature and responsible manner that respects human life. Until the governments of our countries are willing to stop the chest beating and start a real dialogue about the most pressing issues that the people are facing — most importantly peace between our countries — then we the people need to step up and do the talking for them. This is what Civilian Diplomacy is about. It is imperative that someone say something constructive that moves us forward; at the same time we need to start listening to each other more. For me personally I don’t care who I have to meet with if it means that it might potentially save human lives. Our meeting with President Ahmadinejad does not imply that we agree with his Holocaust denial statements anymore than our meeting with Dick Cheney would imply that we support the invasion of Iraq. What is most important is that we get the message out to as many people around the world as possible that peace is possible and that if we have to then we the people will make that happen if the governments of the world are not willing to. We certainly cannot continue in the direction we are headed in now. We need to open the lines of communication in order to assure that we save more lives. That’s what this meeting is about.”