I follow the referenced instagram account and I actually find it depressing.
I've probably visited Beirut 20+ times over the last 7 years. Last visit was summer of 2019, so haven't been since COVID. My company has an office there.
It's one of my favorite cities in the world. It's also one of the most heartbreaking situations in economic and humanitarian terms. The country has experienced one of the worst currency crises in history, did not wether COVID well, and then had one of the largest non-nuclear explosions in history go off right in the city center. Two years later, nobody has been prosecuted.
The country is in complete deadlock politically - all of the warlords from the civil war just became politicians and then systematically looted the country. There isn't much optimism that the situation will turn around, and almost everyone I know who lived there has left, accelerating an already problematic brain drain.
Beirut and Lebanon has to be one of the largest missed opportunities or what-could-have-been situations of the last 100 years.
100 years? It was basically a first-world country 50 years ago. The decline in living standards in Lebanon is one of the largest ever (Argentina probably the biggest, Venezuela is the other big one, Lebanon is somewhere around Venezuela).
Countries can come back (the country that was Austro-Hungary, Slovakia has a city with one of the highest GDP per capita in Europe after massive repeated collapses), but there is (at least in the West) a very concerted effort not to call this situation like it is. It is obvious what happened, and now people say it is unsolvable when it has clearly been engineered to happen this way (blaming colonialism, too much diversity, anything but what it is).
Vague insinuations such as this one always harm the discussion. Why not just communicate clearly?
> the country that was Austro-Hungary, Slovakia
No, Slovakia wasn't Austria-Hungary, rather it was just a small part of Austria-Hungary (of Hungary, to be more precise). Wasn't even a successor de jure of Austria-Hungary.
I was referring to Bratislava...I said Slovakia. Pressburg was in Austro-Hungary I believe. Either way, it is irrelevant because that whole area did collapse economically multiple times, Austro-Hungary is one of the only stock markets that went literally to zero. The same story to the Middle East in many ways (war, repeatedly).
Yeah, I assume the city they're referring to is Vienna? Just guessing because of its well known high GDP.
However, the point stands. Many cities were bombed to rubble in WWII and they came back. The same could happen in Beirut if a stable political situation were to emerge. Though there are numerous reasons that will be very difficult.
Let's not forget a hefty investment was made by the West to rebuild those cities that were bombed to rubble that Beirut is not getting. So Beirut may need more than a stable political situation.
Getting quite off-topic, but Vienna is the capital of Austria; while Bratislava and Košice are the only two Slovakian cities with a population greater than 100000, so presumably it's one of those.
Greed existed before 1975. Are you saying Americans aren't greedy? And that is why they are so rich?
To be more specific: Lebanon was a country that had avoided the stuff going on elsewhere in the Middle East. The PLO gets involved, and the country implodes.
1) The cause of all human suffering is desire. The Buddhists have been pointing that out for millennia.
2) Greed is pretty much constant, people have been extremely greedy forever. The cause is the thing that changed to allow that greed to be channelled negatively. We've figured out how to channel greed for positive ends - in the process called a 'modern economy'. Greed is just a fuel, the issue is whether it is burning in an engine or burning uncontrolled.
It is getting into the weeds of philosophy, but they are separate concepts. Entities can be greedy without desire (eg, corporations are extremely greedy, but have no desire) and vice versa (eg, imagine an extreme desire for fresh air - it is hard to call that greed).
But to say greed causes suffering is untrue. The thing to underline in the last 200-300 years is that humans harnessed greed to deliver great results - the successive Asian economic miricles of the last century are not being caused by charity and goodwill! And the techniques that they are using were forged in some of the crucibles of most concentrated greed in human history. And while there was suffering, this was also where progress, peace and comfort came from.
The greed isn't the problem here, it is part of the solution. It just needs to be separated out from the other things going on and properly focused.
Ignorance of what though? How airfoils work? Or how to speak french? Ignorance of how acting on your urge to be greedy results in suffering? Sure. But I think the greed is still the thing causing the bad here.
When someone tells you they're a fan of a culture because of the immigrants and expats they've met from that culture, it's not OK to explain to them why they're wrong by implying that the rest of the culture is unlike them.
Well, I guess those Christian and Persian refugees missed out on all the great things that happened that the majority of the population wanted to have happen. I am sure they are wishing they could have been there for those changes.
The country is in complete deadlock politically - all of the warlords from the civil war just became politicians and then systematically looted the country.
I always wonder why many democracies devolve into politicians just looting the government, whereas others become successful and relatively less corrupt.
Not the best or deepest account, but for the modern reader who can't
spare time on Aristotle and a gamut of old beards [1] Acemoglu and
Robinson's account is clear and interesting reading [2].
In the case of Lebanon, the story is that it's ethnic/religious
diversity is too much for stability, it being constantly open to
interference from its neighbours and super-powers playing proxy war
games.
Plenty of places with high ethnic/religious diversity have thrived: Singapore, Istanbul, New York City, (increasingly) the capitals of Western Europe. Teotihuacan, the largest pyramid complex outside of Egypt, was a multi-cultural city where different religions, languages and ethnicities lived side by side for 1000 years. It can be done.
> Plenty of places with high ethnic/religious diversity have thrived:
What you say is true but besides the point. There's no argument to be
made against ethnic/religious diversity. But there is a problem with
foreign interference that stokes ethnic tension.
My own London is perhaps the most successful multi-cultural population
in the world. We don't have RPG attacks on schools because we don't
have superpowers spending millions on manipulating and arming the
Hoxton Crips against the Hounslow Massive. And there's the important
difference.
Not forgetting the Chelsea Gym Rats, the West End Wide Boys, the Hackney Pirates, the East End Geezahs, the Brixton Yardies, the Camden Punks, the Camberwell Carrots, etc
1. Singapore has an extremely controlling government and lots of accounts of an ethnic non-citizen “underclass” being exploited.
2. Turkey as a whole is questionable. They have rampant ethnic violence even if Istanbul is doing ok.
3. The US and Western Europe arent turkey but again, have various degrees of ethnic tension being played out. Whether that’s trump and all he stands for or France’s burka bans. They’re also generally more powerful so less susceptible to meddling.
> I always wonder why many democracies devolve into politicians just looting
I am very concerned that US/UK appear to be decolving for the last 10 years. The standards of acceptable behaviour from politicians have definately gone down.
I am somewhat optimistic about the UK situation; in the end, Boris was at least held accountable, and by his own party. It was too late, and he got away with far too much in my opinion, but in the end a line was drawn and was told to bugger off. Incidents with "colourful" PMs are not unheard off, e.g. Churchill was widely criticised for various antics which are not all that dissimilar to Boris' antics. This of course ended up being overshadowed by his status as the war PM.
In the US the situation is quite a bit more dire, and roots of the current situation are also quite a bit deeper and go back longer beyond just "this asshole got elected to office".
I actually think that's a comparatively minor detail, and not all that important here. The biggest issue that has often been discussed is the first past the post constituencies/districts/states both systems share. Neither Trump nor Boris would have become President or PM without that, simply on account of voters having more options to cast a meaningful vote for (UK also does a little bit better than the US in this regard).
True. But the politicians who are scammers (not all are) seem to be much more brazen about it. And I can't help but feel that the public failing to hold them accountable is exacerbating and accelerating the situation.
Perhaps but at least in Australia there's still a sense that politicians can't just get away with whatever they feel works for them. There's a big kerfuffle currently about the fact our previous prime minister secretly had himself sworn into multiple ministerial roles without consulting anyone else in his own party. The curious thing to me is that so far there's no evidence he did so for any personal gain or made improper use of ministerial privileges. But he's still rightfully being grilled over it and there's a decent chance he'll be forced to step down from his role as a member of the opposition. And the various YouTube videos mocking him have been hilarious (for anyone familiar with how he was in office the last 5 years).
Because voting is just a small part of Democracy. Democracies need strong and independent, judicial, law making and executive branches.
Voting itself is an averaging process, and you get the average of what ordinary citizen wants. It is hard to make people want good things for themselves without proactive investments in education and developing a population with scientific temper.
> Democracies need strong and independent, judicial, law making and executive branches.
Yes, absolutely, but they also depend on a strong civil society beyond government. You need a media that's interested in and capable of investigative reporting, a layer of trade unions and professional associations, and a social layer that integrates people. The units larger than extended family and smaller than the country. And they need to be somewhat independent, not all run by the Party, nor all aligned along ethnic or religious lines.
You need people who believe their government is legitimate and that the mechanism of voting is valid.
You don’t see that anymore in America anymore for example, republicans across the nation believe that if there candidate loses, it must be voter fraud by either by one scheme or another. Shit, Trump himself still claims that he won the previous election.
There is likely some illegal voting in every election. The systems in place generally prevent any sort of wholesale vote manipulation though. It's rare when an election is close enough that a handful of votes could make the difference, and the 2020 presidential election certainly wasn't one of those.
Evidence points to it mostly being small-scale and largely accidental (e.g. someone has two residences and forgets they voted in one place earlier in the year, votes in second place later in the year, accidentally commits voter fraud).
When people with the motivation, mandate, and access, plus often full support of an entire state government, to find as much fraud as they can, go looking for it, that's typically all they find. A handful of cases, mostly accidental, not part of a big conspiracy or effort to swing the election.
Like when Kobach, a guy who'd made his entire political identity "voter fraud is rampant and super-serious" got clearance to go on a big crusade in Kansas. 6 convictions, mostly accidental, none part of a coordinated effort, mixed R and D (IIRC the cases actually leaned R, but small sample size, so either way, not that meaningful)
Rhetoric that it's a big deal (that stupid D'Souza "documentary"), but when they have to put up or shut up (i.e. take their evidence to the courts) there's simply nothing (meaningful) there.
It's mind blowing to me that generally intelligent people believe the biggest sore loser in American history. It's a huge danger to the future of our democracy and you all don't care. It seriously makes me want to cry in despair for the future.
I feel your despair, but from the other side. I don't know how anyone could watch the surveillance videos of Fulton county and not conclude their was voter fraud. It's absolutely mind boggling.
I see your graphic posted by someone named jgreene777 on reddit and raise you a 72 page report prepared under the direction of eight prominent conservatives - people like retired federal judges, former senators, a solicitor general, an election lawyer, etc. [0]
This report looked at the 64 court cases and 187 allegations of election fraud in all 6 battleground states and documented the evidence showing that each and every claim of voter fraud by Trump's team was false, consistant with all the court rulings. You can scroll to any case you are interested in and read the details.
They found that there were many republicans who voted a straight party ticket except for their vote against Trump. This is consistent with the recent Wyoming primary results, where some 25-30% of republicans voted for the person in congress who is trying harder than anyone else to put Trump in jail.
The 2020 presidential election was most definitely lost by Trump, not stolen. I acknowledge that there are biased sources claiming otherwise, much to the detriment of our democracy.
Thank you. This is a perfect example of the maxim that it is at least an order of magnitude harder to refute propaganda than it is to create it. Imagine how much time went into the reddit graphic, vs. this report. And on top of that it will hardly change any minds.
> [...] and raise you a 72 page report prepared under the direction of eight prominent conservatives - people like retired federal judges, former senators, a solicitor general, an election lawyer, etc. [0]
Separation between the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of government appears to be a good practice. However, the UK doesn't really have that: Parliament controls everything. And they seem to have a fairly stable and functional democracy.
In theory Parliament controls everything, but in practice the executive controls everything (because they control Parliament). The separation of powers that does exist is largely because of 'leakage' in Ministers' control of events. They can straightforwardly change the law, for example, but you need to change it before you do the otherwise-unlawful thing, not afterward. If you don't, the courts will nullify your actions. You can dismiss 'independent' quango heads quite straightforwardly, but it's politically expensive (and somewhat time consuming) to do so too frequently. You control the Parliamentary timetable, but there are a few gaps in it for opposition day debates and private members' bills. That sort of thing.
We do have a stable and functional democracy, though it's rather brittle against a bad-faith executive. One prominent theory is the 'good chap' model of government, which holds basically that the system is set up such that 'reasonable chaps like us' can govern well and with few constraints, but the flipside is that Johnson's impact was limited by his government's lack of competence, not by institutional constraints. That might be liberating or terrifying, depending on your views about good government.
So then the question becomes "why do many democracies not develop strong and independent, judicial, law making and executive branches, whereas others do?"
It might be other way round - if there are no independent, judicial, law making and executive branches and all the blah from the start, democracy has much lower chance of success. There will always be attempts to take hold of it and if the start is wrong, chance that someone will succeed is much higher.
We talk a lot about separation of powers, the constitution, etc. in the US, but until pretty recently, we failed to appreciate the fact that democracy is largely a cultural thing. It works because we believe it works.
Go and read the Soviet Constitution of 1936 (Stalin) [1]. It talks about freedom of speech, freedom of press, assembly, demonstrations. It actually goes much further than the US constitution. It talks about the right to rest and leisure. Old age care. Education.
We all know that the reality of life under Stalin didn't quite live up to this. A constitution is just a piece of paper. It doesn't mean anything unless it is enforced. That's why I think we focus too much on things like originalism vs living constitution... the reality is that we should be focused on maintaining our democratic institutions which no longer look as secure as they used to.
I think this fact is more well recognized outside the west than inside it. Fareed Zakaria predicted the failure of the democracy experiments in iraq and afghanistan back in 2003: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Future_of_Freedom. Those predictions were widely shared among the Muslim diaspora in the U.S.
The british sent their criminals to Australia (a harsh island continent) and they turned it into a thriving liberal democracy. Meanwhile most democracies in the developing world struggle. Culture is destiny: https://www.jstor.org/stable/20045923
> The british sent their criminals to Australia (a harsh island continent) and they turned it into a thriving liberal democracy.
A misconception. Most people who moved to Australia were not criminals. Contrast that with Germany, which turned itself into a genocide state through the influence of European culture.
Most developing countries would be lucky to have the order and competency even of the Trump administration. We aren’t even talking about the same planet here in terms of what’s a functioning democracy.
In some countries they call that Tuesday... And the coups often succeed too, and also have military involvement, and aren't embarrassingly poorly executed.
I'm not even talking failed states here, I'm talking about respectable developing countries like Thailand and Turkey. The United States, despite its numerous obvious shortcomings, has it pretty good when it comes to political stability and democracy.
We left Bangladesh when it was ruled by a military leader that came to power in a coup: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1982_Bangladesh_coup_d%27état. January 6 bears no resemblance to the coups I'm familiar with. More like a failed peasant rebellion.
> It actually goes much further than the US constitution.
The US constitution is specifically designed not to have an exhaustive enumeration of rights. Its terseness is its primary asset as it's solely a restriction on government authority with supreme power wielded by the populace. Every worker's paradise that tries to list all freedoms operates from the opposite principle that they are granted by government authority.
Go and read the Soviet Constitution of 1936 (Stalin) [1].
That would be a waste of time. Stalin had no intention to do anything of that and everybody knew where dissension would send them: jail, gulags, torture and death.
That's not "a cultural thing", that's just cynism and propaganda. A cultural thing is when everybody wants to make it work but it never really works as intended. But that's more like the government with its full coercion power is against it!
> A cultural thing is when everybody wants to make it work but it never really works as intended.
That is sometimes the difference between stated preferences and revealed preferences.
A lot of people say they want democracy but when they’re faced with a democratic outcome they find repugnant they’re willing to look the other way when anti-democratic forces try to make changes.
Government is part of culture, as there's a feedback loop where culture shapes it, and is shaped by it.
It can absolutely happen here, too, if we elect clowns who explicitly want to break the working parts of the system. The ones that have no intentions of making it work (Except in a way that serves them).
Laws and constitutions are indeed just pieces of paper, and carry no power in themselves. It's culture that ultimately decides whether or not they actually apply, and to whom.
The Stalin was in power, because of party victory in war. Not much to do with culture, they won and a lot to do with who wins the fight. The winner of war then driven the culture, sure, but the deciding thing was about power.
This is a topic I find interesting. Out of any society in the world, in some form or another there always emerges some de facto leaders. And in some places in the modern world they will adopt democracy only so much as they know they can "win" elections and harness goodwill from other democracies. In some places being directly involved with the government is the only way to live with some luxury.
Main thing is I think there has to be some sort of cultivation of democracy (and some associated values), or it's just a facade or mob rule. It seems easier if the citizens are already middle-upper class for instance. We underestimate how much people need to be "primed" for democracy for it to flourish, it's also a more active process ideally that requires engagement, which isn't always so viable.
Main thing is I think there has to be some sort of cultivation of democracy (and some associated values)
Indeed. Also that cultivation must be stronger than the forces that try to sabotage democracy and freedom. Now, most parties say they want democracy and freedom, but in many cases, it's a lie.
Million dollar question. I don’t think it’s as clear cut as just these two very distinct groups.
It’s a spectrum and different countries sit somewhere within this spectrum. In addition, modern democracies are relatively young and we have yet to fully figure it out.
For example in Germany, consider Weimer Repulic. It was a democracy and it failed and Nazis replaced it but now it’s Federal Republic and a relatively successful democracy. Such a wild ride. It’s hard to formulate. Now put it Next to Iran or China or US or Russia. Each have different conditions.
Some of these democracies have been caught in proxy wars and super powers. Some fell to bigots and despots. Some have oil and are targets of bigger players. Some are falling and others rising. It’s too soon to draw a clear conclusion I believe.
I believe it arises from an interaction between individuals and the surrounding culture and institutions.
Let's assume, a priori, that everyone is trying to maximize their "success". This doesn't necessarily mean purely selfish greed, but more an observation that there's a natural incentive to take care of ourselves and our own and that we will naturally try to figure out how to get there.
The "get there" part means navigating the social environment and institutions that surround us. We aren't living alone on a desert island where our options for survival are purely physical. Most of our interactions and choices are around other people and social systems. So when we seek success, we are pathfinding through the rules, norms, and ethics of the culture we're embedded in.
What kind of path do you take? In a culture with low corruption and high institutional trust, the most efficient way to acquire resources and stability is by playing the game honestly and cooperating in good faith with others. If we all do the right thing, we all win. Overall efficiency goes up and that benefits all of us.
In institutions with low trust and high corruption, playing by the rules and attempting to cooperate leaves you open to exploitation because your peers aren't doing that. You'll get screwed.
Now the fun part is the feedback loop between individuals and institutions. A culture is just the collective choices of all of the individuals in it, so every move we make in the game is also an act of defining the rules of that game.
The greater trust we have in each other, the more efficient the system gets and the better it is for everyone. But by that exact same token, the easier the system becomes to exploit and the more attractive it becomes to bad actors. The optimally efficient society is also the perfect honeypot. So as we seek greater trust and efficiency, we also directly incentivize deceipt and corruption.
Going in the other way, as a society gets more corrupt, it becomes less and less efficient. It's hard to get anything done when every single action requires several rounds of negotiation at gunpoint because everyone is presumed to be an adversary. So as a society becomes less trusting, it loses the ability to compete against other more efficient, trustworthy societies.
What I think you see is that as a larger society's institutional trust falls, within that society new pockets of trusted cooperating subcultures arise. Since those are more efficient than the larger society, they tend to grow and outcompete. But people in those pockets don't trust outside of that subculture, so you end up with the inefficiencies of mistrust and adversarial interactions at the boundaries between these groups.
Eventually a group might win and continue to grow, but the bigger it gets, the harder it is to maintain cohesion and trust across all of it. So eventually its overall trust fades but then new pockets of trust appear inside it.
This sort of slow boiling foam of fading trust and growing bubbles of cohesion is, I think, fundamental to human sociology.
As a Lebanese, I find what you're saying both slightly offensive and slightly true. Lebanon, as a culture distinct from other middle easterners has existed for a very long time. Lebanon as an independent state has been invented in 1920, however there were multiple previous attempts historically to get independance.
Some historical figures have reached levels of influence that would qualify as "independent lebanon" (if people were so good at administrative bookkeeping back in the 1600s): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fakhr_al-Din_II
The modern state of Lebanon fails in part because it's a "contrieved post colonial state", you're right. But claiming it has no historical foundations is misguided. It's wrong. Colonials hijacked a very legit idea, and turned it into a failed state. It's different.
The resource curse is probably part of it. But another part is that the Ottoman Empire conquered all of these middle eastern societies at varying levels of development, and the european powers that inherited those colonies were faced with complex sectarian conflict that didn't exist in asia. With the separation of British India into Bangladesh, Pakistan, and India, you've solved 90% of the sectarian conflict that exists in the region. In Lebanon, by contrast, history has left you with Christians, Shia, and Sunni all living in the same place, such that you have a constitutional structure where christians and muslims are each guaranteed half the seats in the legislature, and other roles such as president and prime minister are divided by religion.
They had centralized fully functional states that maintained economy that could supply cities as large or larger than Europe.
Japan was not made by Meiji, it was transformed but foundation of the "miracle" was there. During sengoku it created and armed with locally built firearms armies that dwarfed that of any European state of the time in one generation.. from bows to hundred thousands of muskets
Culture >> everything. In 1945 Beirut was a paradise compared to burned to the ground Tokyo and every other major city. In few decades it had built dams like Kurobe, challenged and beat American car manufacturers.. resources, colonialism.. right. Whoever was running the place knew how to do it, they do not know now and very unlikely to learn in the next 100 years.
This point is often made for the middle east but a lot of the borders and ideals put in place that caused these disasters were put in place before oil really even mattered.
Sovereignty is different if you have U.S. bases on your soil. Any country with a U.S. base is a vassal state, independent and therefore sovereign in name only.
Those prosperous states in South Asia, outside mainland China, do seem to have lots of American troops stationed in them.
One could make the same argument for a country like India. There is no "India" in the sense of an ethno-linguisic grouping. India is more akin to the European Union but even more diverse. The Indian state has survived for seventy five years now.
Just as the French and British dismembered the Ottoman empire to create modern Lebanon, so too did the British dismember the Indian empire to create India and Pakistan.
I don't think that is especially accurate. India has a lot of ethno-linguistic diversity, but has hundreds of years of centralized administrative rule even before the British: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mughal_Empire. That's longer than Germany or Italy have had centralized governance.
Funnily enough, the Mughals were initially foreign conquerors, just like the British with their Raj. But then ancient Germania was also somewhat unified by the foreign Romans, so perhaps it's same as it ever was.
I always wonder why the Maurya Empire doesn't get brought up as a pan-Indian empire, it was local to the area and conquered almost the entirety of the subcontinent.
Human history is a story of repeated conquest, population admixture and/or replacement. Almost all “indigenous people” in present or past are just descendants of the most recent conquerors. Hardly any peoples have legitimate claim to land on the virtue of being there first, it’s almost universally on the basis of conquest instead. It always has been thus.
Yes, but it's interesting to note the difference between when a large region is united through conquest by locals, or an outside power further away. Italy, in comparison to the above two examples, was united by the local Romans. (Though of course, "local" is incredibly relative. The difference between northern and southern Italy has been vast even unto modernity, never mind during antiquity.)
Now, I'm not sure what the difference of living under Maurya vs. Mughal vs. British rule was for its inhabitants, these are widely different polities from completely different time periods, but it's still a distinction. Though I suppose more of a retroactive one imposed by our modern bias, when we can point at India, Italy, and Germany and say, "ah, that patch of land is naturally meant to be united by someone."
But there is a difference between conquerors that intermarried (European colonists to Latin america) and ones that didn’t (Mughals and British). Modern Indians have very little Mughal ancestry.
It’s the other way around - Mughals gained Indian ancestry. Canonical example is Babur to Akbar losing epicanthic folds. I guess “Ganga-jamni tahzeeb” and culture of Awadh don’t count here according to you.
- Signed, one of your mythical people with “very little Mughal ancestry” whose family founded Shahjahanpur.
India and Pakistan didn't split up because of the British, they split up because Jinnah and the Muslim League wanted it. Pakistan was born out of a sustained bottom-up movement.
The reason the British get blamed for a lot of the Indo-Pak issues is that, absent an indigenous Indian/Pakistani civil service bureaucracy, the British were tasked with executing the plan originally conceived by the Two-Nation Theorists, and they totally botched that execution.
This argument can be made for any country on earth.
Pick up a globe, close your eyes and randomly put your finger anywhere and you will see the point under question was under different (political)boundaries every 300 years or so.
Boundaries of any country are just limits to which a certain political administration extends its powers to. They keep changing for various reasons, every few decades.
Sadly it is pretty much the story of the world with a few rare exceptions.
Far right movements ethnic/religion/political have engulfed almost every place , amplified by social media and re-amplified by media.
Note that Hindus get shot in their homes in Indian state of Kashmir too , the latest being 1 day ago.This eye for an eye will take anyone anywhere.
'Dismembered the carcass of the Ottoman Empire' surely? Maybe my sense of history in this regard is flawed, but the Ottoman Empire was much to blame for its own demise.
All systems will have a tendency toward corruption. Democracy is really a facade and a political tool and not what runs a country. The bureaucrats in the government are what run a country; and they hold most of the cards. (and they are also very difficult to change or replace).
> Beirut and Lebanon has to be one of the largest missed opportunities or what-could-have-been situations of the last 100 years.
I think what makes the potential of the city is also what makes it get into severe conflict. Beirut is a cross-road of global interests. I think it still is. It also has huge and wealthy diaspora.
Beirut will certainly come back, and most likely (unluckily) will come bursting again.
It is also being ripped apart by external actors - Iran, Israel, France, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Syria, United States and I am probably missing others.
External actors, hmmm... I believe you mixed that up with internal actors like Hezbolla and others, who have a tight grip on the countries political system.
This is what happens, when the goal of politicians is to acquire wealth for ten generations, and the welfare of people becomes secondary. This leads to "brain drain". The only people are left: the old, the weak, those who can't migrate to other countries.
Last time I checked the leader of Hezbolla, which is part of the government of Lebanon said: "There is no solution to the conflict in this region except with the disappearance of Israel."
Lots of places in the Middle East were more European like this before the colonial influences weakened and the Muslim majority populations got back more power over their own countries. Egypt and Iran are similar. The nostalgia is somewhat uncomfortable because in some respects things were better because they were better, but in others it’s the perception of things being better because they’re more relatable to Europeans.
Lebanon became independent in 1945. Civil war began in 1975, largely as a result of radical Islamist Palestinians who had left Palestine and wanted an Islamic state in Lebanon.
Lebanon beforehand, it is important to note, was not Muslim majority at all. It was Christian and Druze, and that was the very foundation of the country itself. It was never the country of Muslims in the first place.
Iran was also never colonised by European countries. Its decline began with both theocratic rule as well as sanctions, but even despite this it’s still remarkably functional and developed in comparison to a ton of countries that weren’t put in such a position.
Your description of Lebanon is correct, but incomplete.
- Lebanon (as an independent state) has been created in 1920, right after WW1 by the French "colonialists" specifically to draw an enclave of non-muslim minority in the country. It's classic Divide&Conquer strategy.
- The PLO (Palestinian Islamists) did try to set up an Islamic state in the country, but they were aided, or at least encouraged through inaction, by the muslims in the country who felt that the system was unfair.
- Currently the conflict isn't "muslims vs non-muslim". It's much more a conflict between Shia muslims (affiliated to Iran) and Sunni muslims (affiliated to KSA/Gulf). The non-muslims are now a minority and are split more or less evenly across the two camps.
- As of today, there's a lack of national identity, where every region's local lord amasses more power and influence than any "central" government.
It's not as simple as "they were non-muslims, got invaded by muslims and now it's gone bad"
Source: I'm Lebanese.
PS: Pedantically, we became independent in 1943.
A huge issue in the middle east for democracy is that muslims, or the very very substantial percentage of them that are fundamentalist, want democracy if they aren't in power, and a super oppressive totalitarian state if they are in power. To the point that it isn't just about establishing islamic states and oppressing non-muslims, it's about establishing an islamic state of the Sunni or Shia variety and brutally oppressing the other islamic branch.
The Kurds are an exception, arguably should have their own state and would be the most sane partner in the middle east, but the US can't get its shit together to stand up to Turkey. Alas, we routinely screw over the Kurds as they get gassed by Saddam Hussein, ethnic cleansed by Turkey, abandoned to destruction by Russia when they were our best anti-ISIS ally.
Oil money and the wealth inequality that came with it certainly don't help things to engineer functioning democratic states, and then as stated elsewhere, neither does the CIA toppling democratic governments because multinational corps find them inconvenient.
America building "democracy" in Iraq was a telling process. All we cared about was oil and maintaining political control. We didn't care about making the lives of the everyday person better, which is the true fundamental path to a functioning democracy (it's why the USA's is gradually apart after all).
I disagree that Muslims want democracy (I'm Muslim). Present day democracy generally contradicts and is against Islam, so I'm not sure where you're getting your information from.
What (most) Muslims want is something like what America was like in the early days. Puritan society was extremely democratic, insofar as the people did make the rules for society. But it was not liberal democracy—the puritans created public schools for the purpose of socializing children into religion. They also made it a criminal offense to celebrate Christmas: https://www.history.com/news/when-massachusetts-banned-chris...
> insofar as the people did make the rules for society
But which rules? While Islam does have certain leeway for certain things to be left to society to decide, not everything is. You will not find any Muslim who will make it an offense to celebrate Eid for example.
This is also why the West generally supported or stayed quiet about the violent coup that took out the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt's only democratically elected government. We value liberalism even if it's at the point of a gun over democracy.
The USA should at the very least support the Kurdish region in Iraq if it bothered to topple Saddam. The thing is that it can't/won't stand up to Türkye mainly because we (all) need it in NATO, we need it meddling into Russian affairs in the Caucasus and the Black Sea, at the expense of the Kurds and the Armenians.
I didn’t intend to make it seem that simple - I did so rather to point out the fallacies in the parent comment and point out the main reason for civil war to my knowledge. I’m well aware the situation is significantly more complex today.
Under President Arafat, the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority adopted the 2003 Amended Basic Law, which stipulates Islam as the sole official religion in Palestine and the principles of Islamic sharia as a principal source of legislation. The draft Constitution contains the same provisions. The draft Constitution was formulated by a Constitutional Committee, established by Arafat in 1999 and endorsed by the PLO.
Iran may not have been colonized but their democratic government was overthrown by the US and Britain to prevent them nationalizing their fossil fuel supply.
I often wonder what the Middle East would look like today if Iran has been able to use their oil wealth for their own democratic civil development.
That's not really what happened. The Shah was the ultimate authority in Iran, and he asked the Prime Minister to step down, which was his legal right. The Prime Minister said "No thanks, I'm the boss now", at which point the US/UK helped the Shah assert his actual legal right under their existing rule of law.
Can you tell me - if Queen Elizabeth asked that Boris Johnson step down from role as PM(which is her right), and Boris Johnson instead refused and said that he was now the leader of the UK, whose side would you throw your support behind?
That's quite the re-writing of history there. The Shah removed Mosaddegh from power in 1952 but re-instated him almost immediately due to pressure from pro-democracy supporters. The Shah was then exiled after a failed coup attempt by one of his Imperial Guard colonels effectively leaving him powerless.
The rest is history and we've gotten to where we're at today because the UK and the US interfered with a nascent democracy because...oil.
> if Queen Elizabeth asked that Boris Johnson step down from role as PM(which is her right), and Boris Johnson instead refused and said that he was now the leader of the UK, whose side would you throw your support behind?
Regardless of Johnson's behaviour and incompetence I'd hold my nose and throw my support behind the Prime Minister. Such autocratic behaviour should not be tolerated. I should reveal that I'm an anti-monarchist and a believe that states should strip any and all powers from from their monarchies, even if they are quaint and historical anachronisms.
> I should reveal that I'm an anti-monarchist and a believe that states should strip any and all powers from from their monarchies, even if they are quaint and historical anachronisms.
Curious why? Would you hold that position even if the monarch has present widespread support from the population?
Do you think something has changed to make that form of rule more objectionable than it was in the past? I.e., do you have an equally negative view of historic monarchies?
I wouldn't go around and label myself an anti-monarchist but I'm surprised that that's a contentious position? Yes, of course the people should strip all power from their monarchies/monarchs/aristocrats in a democracy, because democracy is about sovereign power originating from the people or whatever, not from divine right or right of conquest or tradition or something. And yes, of course historic monarchies are at least equally objectionable! As a rule I'm pretty sure they exploited people a lot worse than at least the present-day monarchies we tolerate for whatever reason!
If the monarch as a person has present widespread support from the population they can probably do the aristocratic equivalent of a gofundme to keep living in their pretty palace if that's what the population wants, and then get elected to normal political offices like a normal person. If the monarch as an office has present widespread support I'm going to quietly disagree with the population and in the case of the UK at least roll my eyes a little.
> I should reveal that I'm an anti-monarchist and a believe that states should strip any and all powers from from their monarchies
I guess Charles taking Bakr Bin Laden's (the half brother of Osama Bin Laden) money is not enough to outrage the English enough to strip him of his powers. But maybe if Scotland and Northern Ireland secedes, they'll realize their queen's successor is quite useless.
The thing is he has no powers. Even if/when he becomes king the "powers" of that role are purely ceremonial, even if enshrined in law and what paltry bits of a constitution we have in the UK. As another commenter here suggested, if the monarch were to use one of these powers (that they historically agreed not to use) then they'll endanger the privileges afforded to them for merely being the "royal family". They'll happily put up and shut up so they can roll around their estates in their Range Rovers and tweeds accompanied by their close protection unit.
> But maybe if Scotland and Northern Ireland secedes, they'll realize their queen's successor is quite useless.
But they're all quite useless, and many of us already realise this.
To label the protestors "pro-democracy supporters" is an interesting take. To me, it would be like labeling the Jan 6 protestors as pro-democracy supporters. The people protesting for him were the nationalists and the islamists, and some socialists. Not pro-democracy folk. Mossadegh's party also called for the assassination of the Shah during this time.
Isn't Johnson declaring himself the leader of the nation autocratic behavior? But simply non monarchical?
> The rest is history and we've gotten to where we're at today because the UK and the US interfered with a nascent democracy because...oil.
Mossadegh was on the path to maintain his all-encompassing emergency powers for the rest of his life, if only his policies weren't so boneheaded as to throw the entire country into chaos. I just can't understand what this has to do with democracy.
> Mossadegh's party also called for the assassination of the Shah during this time.
Going to have to insist on a citation for that claim.
> Isn't Johnson declaring himself the leader of the nation autocratic behavior? But simply non monarchical?
That's not how it works in the UK. In a general election it's traditionally the leader of the winning party who becomes prime minister, the electorate know this and it generally works out fine. The government of the day can still have their policies and legislation challenged in the houses of parliament (simplistically speaking).
Admittedly, what is anachronistic and anti-democratic are the current shenanigans going on to elect Johnson's replacement where the electorate have no say.
> if only his policies weren't so boneheaded as to throw the entire country into chaos
What's boneheaded about wanting to control your own natural resources and de-colonialise your country?
My source would be Iran Between Two Revolutions, but that's just going from memory. Maybe I'm confusing some other party, but I am fairly sure it was the National Front.
> What's boneheaded about wanting to control your own natural resources and de-colonialise your country?
No, the goal wasn't boneheaded, but the policies he implemented towards that goal were boneheaded. Nationalizing your #1 and basically only source of revenue which is propping up your society, when you don't actually have the ability to continue operating it by yourself, is boneheaded. Thinking that the British would stick around after you nationalized their assets(one mans nationalization is another mans theft) in order to help you figure it all out, is bone headed.
Likewise, rural people deserve freedom and to not be serfs to local lords, but at the same time, just setting them free
and thinking they will be able to manage the land as well as the centralized administrator immediately is boneheaded
> if Queen Elizabeth asked that Boris Johnson step down from role as PM(which is her right), and Boris Johnson instead refused and said that he was now the leader of the UK, whose side would you throw your support behind?
If it really that were to happen, I suspect UK would become a republic in a few weeks. Parliament is sovereign in England and all the powers that the Queen has left are under the understanding that they are never to be used.
The U.S. didn't install the Shah. He'd been in power since 1941, when the Anglo-Soviet invasion of Iran forced the abdication of his father. He didn't have as much power as his father, so there was a power struggle between him and members of parliament, but he still wielded a great deal of political power in the country pre-1953. One only need look at the 1949 constitutional assembly, where the Shah sought and succeeded at getting changes to the constitution made that gave him greatly enhanced powers.
The parliament while Mossadegh was prime minister was democratically elected (though Mossadegh was appointed by the Shah, per the constitution). But by the time he was removed, Mossadegh had dissolved the parliament and was ruling by fiat based on a rigged plebiscite (his administration claimed the result was 99.9% in favore of the plebiscite[1]).
The U.S. certainly conspired with the Shah to oust him, but it seems like their initial plans failed (certainly, the plotters seemed to think it failed), and royalists in the Iranian military were ones who ultimately removed him.
The whole thing was a fairly complex situation that tends to get reduced to a simplistic soundbite with little connection to what actually happened.
> The parliament while Mossadegh was prime minister was democratically elected
> (though Mossadegh was appointed by the Shah, per the constitution)
This is the case in almost all parliamentary democracies. The head of state (either the president, the monarch or the viceroy) invites the leader of the largest party or coalition in the parliament to form the government and become the prime minister.
> This is the case in almost all parliamentary democracies.
Iran _wasn't_ a parliamentary democracy at the time. It was a constitutional monarchy where an unelected monarch wielded significant political power. As I noted, he had just had the constitution changed a few years prior to increase the political powers granted to him (against U.S. objections, it should be noted).
Does that include when he had fled to Italy in 1953? The reports were he had little desire to go back to Iran, and the CIA and SIS met trying to figure out how to get him to go back to Iran
> the Iranian military were ones who ultimately removed him
That's how it usually happens, the military elements with contact with foreign powers are usually who do in the local nationalists.
>largely as a result of radical Islamist Palestinians who had left Palestine and wanted an Islamic state in Lebanon
Not accurate.
Until the early 90s and the rise of Hamas the most active Palestinian militant groups were secular, some were even Marxist/Leninist (as in, officially areligious).
Fatah, in control of the PLO, has always been secular and the second most active Palestinian militant group during the 1970s was the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a Marxist organisation led by a Palestinian Christian.
Political Islam as a force in Palestinian politics started in the 90s and only really became a big thing during the second intifada in the early 2000s.
The Wikipedia page [1] makes for an interesting read if you want to understand more about the Lebanese Civil War and the many groups and foreign interests involved in this tragic conflict. As for the Palestinians, they had a large refugee population established in Lebanon and the PLO leadership wanted a base for their militias; the Lebanese state understandably didn't want a parallel state operating with militias within their borders; this lit the fuse on a country with an already fragile sectarian balance and dozens of sizeable minorities that had grief with the state and each other.
While the PLO tried to distinguish itself from Hamas by claiming to be more secular, make no mistake that they were clearly a muslim force.
I was too young to remember the civil war, but at least in the collective retelling of the story, it's commonly accepted that PLO tried to topple the Beirut government to install their own. There are many claims that Arafat wanted Lebanon to be an alternative for their "stolen" Palestine. If it's the first time you hear that, then I think it's likely you never talked to Lebanese people about the war and the PLO.
Arafat, the leader of the PLO, wasn't christian. That's ... weird you claim this. His name is Mohammed Abdel Rahman Abdel Raouf al-Qudwa al-Husseini. That's as Muslim as it gets. He was even a member (or a close ally I don't know) of the Muslim Brotherhood.
It's tough to convey to non arabic speakers, but several politicians, PLO front and center, use the terms "Arabs" and "muslims" almost interchangeably.
The Lebanon "civil war" is a misnomer. For the majority of the time, it was a war between lebanese christian militias and palestinian invaders that were tolerated by the lebanese muslim groups.
Lebanon's history and the civil war are complex and I'm not doing a good job of explaining then in a HN comment. If I understand you correctly, you're saying that islam has become more strict in the palestinian ranks after the 90s. This may be true. But I assure you that from the late 50s to the late 80s, they were trying to kick the non-muslims out of Lebanon by force.
> PLO tried to distinguish itself from Hamas by claiming to be more secular
Hamas was founded in 1989, a bit late for participation in the Lebanese civil war.
> Arafat, the leader of the PLO, wasn't christian. That's ... weird you claim this.
I'm talking about the leader of the PFLP, George Habash, which was the second largest Palestinian force at the time and operating in Lebanon during the civil war.
> they were trying to kick the non-muslims out of Lebanon by force.
I'm not disputing that the intention of the PLO was to anchor themselves in Lebanon (out of the control of the Lebanese state, even if that meant toppling it) and use it as a base, but I'm going to need some sources for the claim that the PLO wanted to "kick the non-muslims out of Lebanon".
Fair, not Hamas, the Islamic Jihad that came before it. It's not nearly the point of my reply, but good gotcha.
As for sources of how the PLO treated non-muslims during the civil war of lebanon, it's tough to find what you want. The whole civil war was about the christian factions vs the palestinian factions, with different entites in between with rapid shifting alliances.
There was no "Islamic Jihad" in Palestinian groups before the 90s. Religion wasn't a factor in Palestinian politics or militancy before Hamas, and Hamas only became a big player during the second intifada in the 2000s.
I understand you are from Lebanon and from a sectarian background, but that's maybe partly why you have a biased understanding of the groups, ideologies and foreign players involved. You may want to read some background on the history and the conflict from some other sources maybe starting with [1]. Palestinian militancy played a big role, but their religion did not and they were not trying to ethnically cleanse Lebanon or establish a theocracy.
That's what I get for revealing my identity and sharing my stories. I'm told by strangers hiding behind their anonymous username that my views are "biased". Well, yeah, all views are "biased". Does it mean that those stories are not true?
Lebanon was divided around ethnic lines all throughout the war. On one hand, christian militias. On the other hand, palestinian militias. I know what they said about each other. I know how they killed and assassinated each other. I know how impossible it was to cross the line. I grew up there, I don't full remember the last years of the war, but I definitely remember the after-war and what people did afterwards.
Maybe it "just happens" that the Lebanese muslims sided with the 90+% muslim-palestians. But judged from living there for my whole life I might know that this isn't what they say. Not how they saw each other. The Lebanese muslims sided with the palestinians because of a percieved shared identity. Call it pan-arabism, call it whatever fancy term you want.
I am NOT saying that middle eastern christians are perpetually persecuted or that coexistence with muslims isn't possible. I'm not saying that the situation is the same today in 2022. I'm saying that at one specific moment in history, in one specific country in the middle east, the muslims have attempted (and succeeded at) toppling a non-muslim government that was seen as pro-west-anti-arab.
And to be clear, I agree with you that Lebanon was not a solid nation, was gonna implode anyway, and was dealing with internal conflict long before Palestine was a thing.
> There was no "Islamic Jihad" in Palestinian groups before the 90s.
You didn't even check your own link I guess. That group's first attack was in 1984 when they operated out of Egypt and in the south of Israel/Palestine. Not a single one of their attacks happened in Lebanon during the civil war. Their presence in Lebanon starts in 1989, at the end of the civil war, and they have to this day not attacked a Lebanese target.
This confirms the point I've been communicating this entire thread that religion only became a driving force in Palestinian politics and militancy in the 1990s and Palestinian Islamism was not a factor in the Lebanese civil war.
> radical Islamist Palestinians who had left Palestine and wanted an Islamic state in Lebanon
This is false and misrepresents Palestinian movements in the pre-1990s era and their objectives in Lebanon. That is all I wanted to point out.
I understand now what you are saying. I don't agree or disagree. Honestly I don't know enough about the topic.
See, for middle eastern, words like "muslim" or "chrisitans" or "jews" doesn't represent your spiritual beliefs. It represents ethnic belonging. To put it in a western perspective, your religion is not a mutable characteristic. I'm born "christian", but my level of belief in Jesus Christ has nothing to do with it.
You're saying the factions that fought in Lebanon didn't emphasize a islamist rhetoric until the 90s. From what I know from the earlier days of the war, there was a lot of talk of pan-arabism and arabic identity, not talk of an Islam nation, so what you're saying sounds plausible.
But from our middle eastern perspective, lebanese muslims allied themselves to other muslims from syria and palestine to topple the christian-led government. I was communicating the point that the factions involved were based on ethnicity.
People picture "wars" like soldiers in battlefields and there was some of that. But a LOT of the Lebanese war was undisciplined militiamen mass killing villages based on ethnic lines. On both sides. Plenty of massacres in christian villages because they were christians. Plenty of massacres in muslim villages because they were muslim. From our point of view, we saw was christian and muslims killing each other.
> radical Islamist Palestinians who had left Palestine and wanted an Islamic state in Lebanon
The first time I read that quote, I didn't react to the words "radical Islamist", but read "palestinians had left palestine and wanted a state in lebanon". I guess this shows my bias after all :D
Now I'm curious what caused the change in the palestinian rhetoric. I'll try to read some more about it. Thanks for opening my eyes to this.
I would say the trend started before the 90s but it became apparent in the 90s.
It started in the 70s, before that all the islamist political groups were heavily repressed by Nasser and different nationalist leaders in the region, Sadat realignment, the Islamic revolution in Iran, and the commercialization of oil in the gulf countries opened the Pandora box for the different(and sometimes warring) groups inspired by different interpretations of Islam.
And didn't the House of Saud invest heavily in Islamist groups as a counterweight to the Arab Nationalists and to Iranian-style Islamic revolutionary influence?
>>Lebanon beforehand, it is important to note, was not Muslim majority at all. It was Christian and Druze, and that was the very foundation of the country itself. It was never the country of Muslims in the first place.
As a part of Sykes-Picot Agreement, the French wanted Lebanon to be a Christian Israel in the Middle East.
WW1/2 didn't workout well for France and Britain(Should have listened to Neville Chamberlain, the empires would have continued for another century at least). And ensuing rise of USSR to the world scene mean't both French and British colonial aspirations were brutally put to an end.
Too bad for the French, their colonial designs failed, and it didn't achieve the required demographics to achieve its goals of geopolitical control in the Mid east. Lebanon didn't end up being a Christian Israel.
When Lebanon became independent from France it was based on a political structure created by the French. Lebanon’s religious demographics are fuzzy, but the Christian population probably became a minority decades before the civil war.
An elderly friend, retired, likes to reminisce about his time in the middle-east. He was quite upset when he heard about the conflict in Syria. For him, it was one of the few places that had a vibrant culture in the middle-east, and the beautiful women there (not covered up), added to the cosmopolitan charm of the place.
Yep it's very easy to be tolerant whenever fears you. Remember the Mongols killed around 10% of the worlds population. The reason they could have tolerance is that you knew if you stepped one toe out of line the Mongols would destroy you, your family, rape the women, slaughter the town and everyone you knew, and then come back a few days later just to make sure they got everyone.
This is like saying China is super tolerant once they get rid of the Ughyrs.
I didn’t say it was great, but if I had to be stuck under vicious authoritarian rule, I’d rather one that will tolerate my culture and religion as long as my loyalty is there, which is not what China seems to be doing.
Shit the Mongols themselves ruled over the Uyghurs (though admittedly I’m not quite sure whether medieval Uyghurs and modern Uyghurs are the same people) and many were in high ranking court positions, not re-education camps.
Well, they did kill left and right during their conquests, sometimes even literally exterminated whole cities that surrendered to them without fight. Piling human heads, ears, penises and whatnot on very tall heaps. Chinese are currently fluffy cuddly kittens compared to mongol brutality. When they will kill half of uyghur in most gruesome way and rape the rest then we can start comparing.
Like the religious extremists that destroyed American cities like Detroit and Baltimore in the 70s and after? Maybe it was this same religious extremism that is leading to the economic crisis today in Florida and Texas? /s
That’s white flight and collapse of legacy industry. Different problem.
The weird theocratic/government stuff you see in places like Texas is bad news. No different than the catholic dominated political machines that ruled the Northeast.
The thing is, you might be cool with their politics today, but religious extremists flip on a dime. You may not like them tomorrow.
A better track record according to whom, the experts?
It's one thing when an expert in biblical study tells you not to do your own research. When the same instructions come from an institution deferring its authority to the scientific method, someone's very obviously gone off the rails.
Should a random person with no scientific background or familiarity with medical studies trust their doctor and the overwhelming consensus of epidemiologists and virologists over Joe Rogan and a two hour youtube video? Yes, clearly. That this is even up for debate shows how insane things are right now..
This video series: https://odysee.com/@BiohackThePlanet:3/coding-the-dna-for-a-... was created before any MRNA vaccines for novel coronavirus were scheduled to be released and the global research community world was scrambling for any edge against covid-19. It documents the efforts of a group of citizen scientists to develop and test an MRNA vaccine against Covid and test it on themselves. If you can offer one semi-compelling reason why it should have been removed from youtube without resorting to ad hominem against either me or the people producing it, I'll engage in some self-reflection.
Lebanon was literally formed by the colonialist West, who used divide and conquer to strategically place people there so that the conflicts keep going.
France didn't control Lebanon for long, less than three decades and never as a colony. These pictures here were taken a couple of decades after Lebanese independence. I imagine the collapse of the Ottoman empire and the resulting turmoil has more to do with the upheaval we see in the region than the Europeans leaving after their relatively brief period of control.
And Iran was never colonized (Egypt's a bit more complex, though it wasn't simplistically colonized).
'Colonial Influences' were exactly what they were - 'Colonial Influences', Here in India, British barely spent money on education, or industrialising the country. Whatever little infrastructure got built, was done to ensure British could efficiently siphon off whatever they were trying to take from here.
To that effect, the pictures of modernism you see from the colonies are restricted to a few cities, and a few minority people from those cities. Bulk of the population masses lived in absolute poverty, illiteracy and there wasn't even a glimmer of hope for the future. The pictures misrepresent a non existent past, making it look like when natives were under colonisation, every last nook and corner of the country was overflowing with affluence, modernity and education. The reality is the exact opposite.
Since independence government spending is a lot more uniform and focused towards the benefits of Indians. Building infrastructure, institutions and projects that make sense towards national interests and not to make some European colonial power win WW1/2.
I wouldn't be surprised if that is the case with other former colonies of Europe.
>I wouldn't be surprised if that is the case with other former colonies of Europe.
In Latin America, the central extractivist structure was kept after independence, only the owners changed. Now instead of a foreign crown siphoning off the wealth, it was the local owners of the land -- who still sold as much as they could to foreign powers, and spent the rest in petty civil wars against their own people. Another common occurrence was involving foreign powers in local disputes, as the landowners always put their own interests before the interests of the country.
Nowadays it's less overt in most places, but it's still going on.
It was nicknamed "Paris of the Middle East", including because of the French influence. There's also a large Christian population in Lebanon, which I suspect made 'absorbing' European influences easier.
What a limited view. Consider Tyre, very close to Beirut. Before Muslim it was Phoenician, Hittite, Egyptian, Babylonian, Assyrian, Canaanite, Persian, Macedonian, Israeli, English, Ottoman, Roman, and now Lebanon. Its had both Eastern and Western Influence (since Alexander). Remember Alexander predates the existence of Islam and Christianity - certainly colonialism. At the time of Beirut's founding its religion was following a god named Baal and Astarte.
Probably difficult to distinguish the groups. Phoenician is a Canaanite language closely related to Hebrew. But the point is the area traded hands with almost every major civilization through many epochs.
Mossadegh wanted a secular independent Iran, England empowered the mullahs and worked for decades to destroy the secular left in Iran (along with the US). Eventually even the mullahs and bazaari turned against western colonialism.
The west also worked against Nasser's secular pan-Arab socialism, including the French/English invasion of the Suez.
Turkey and Bangladesh are other good examples of countries where elites tried to impose secularism, and succeeded for a time, but which ultimately failed because the public didn’t want it.
Speaking in the context of India, you can argue secularism has sort of failed here too. The problem happens to be with the top-down approach. You can't exactly ram down these political concepts down peoples throats. And when the popular leaders who were executing these concepts die, in time these projects fail.
Secularism really is more of a process than a law, you can't exactly legislate a culture into people. On the longer term, you need lots of good intentions sustained over decades, and you need investments in education sector to keep them going.
I agree, but I’d go further and say that promotion of secularism is a warning sign. It’s indicative of a westernized elite trying to reshape the “common people” according to their own ideology.
The effort, run from the mid-1950s through to the late 70s by a unit in London that was part of the Foreign Office, was focused on cold war enemies such as the Soviet Union and China, leftwing liberation groups and leaders that the UK saw as threats to its interests
The campaign also sought to mobilise Muslims against Moscow, promoting greater religious conservatism and radical ideas. To appear authentic, documents encouraged hatred of Israel.
Recently declassified British government documents reveal hundreds of extensive and costly operations.
While that did happen in my home country of Zimbabwe, it’s not the case for the examples that he mentioned. Especially considering that even Lebanon was under a mandate and had far more freedom to rule themselves, which in my opinion came nowhere near actual colonialism.
I thought it was going to be those terrible posts like those "look how Iran/Cuba/etc was much better for western touristic eyes before the uprising/war/revolution!" but at the end the author gives the plot twist.
"That was the time called Beirut Golden Era. And yet, while it was better in various aspects, Beirut has evolved significantly in many more, not only has it survived the destructive war but it has also progressed and become even lovelier today.
Yes, we have issues that need solving, and some are undergoing active solutions, but the golden era was not without issues neither. We just have to see how we have evolved and improved since then, while we continue our collective journey in making our country better and better. God bless Lebanon."
One of the things I've learned about Lebanese is that the scars of war are very vivid in society and it changed it for generations.
One side effect of the wars is that Lebanese people live much less programmatically and far planning than pretty much any other society out there. They try to enjoy life as much as possible and I believe they rank highest in the world for how much they go to the barber and how much they spend on cosmetics, etc. They care more for looking good to themselves and others to day than to save for tomorrow.
They live like they are forever in a truce thus they do their very best to find the glass half full rather than half empty and all that makes them very friendly, open and beautiful people that do their best at enjoying everything before the next bad thing will hit their country.
Beirut should be a warning for all of us who live in comfortable countries and think things well be like that forever. I remember talking to somebody who grew up in Beirut sometime in the 60s or 70s and she said at that time nobody would have believed that their well developed, prosperous city would descend into chaos only a few years later.
Remains to be seen whether periods like this post-Floyd were a one-off, or devolve into a regular occurrence. I am pessimistic. Ethnic and sectarian divides getting worse not better:
This strikes me as tremendously sad--how a city can go from lively, productive, and engaging to something else entirely in such a short time span. The writer speaks positively about the Beirut of today. I won't pretend to know anything about Beirut, but is it really "lovelier" (author's word) today than it was back then?
It's a cliche at this point to wonder whether the same thing can (or will?) happen in the United States, but I still found myself thinking about it nonetheless while reading the essay.
The date on the top of the article is August 10, 2019. Almost a year later, August 4, 2020, the port explosion happened, probably breaking all the glass of the city. Wikipedia:
> The damage from the blast affected over half of Beirut, with the likely cost above US$15 billion and insured losses at around US$3 billion. Approximately ninety percent of the city's hotels were damaged and three hospitals completely destroyed, while two more suffered damage. [...] Windows and other installations of glass across the city were shattered.
They should have probably left that wreck of a ship transport its explisive cargo to Somalia or wherever it was going instead of arresting it and storing its cargo. Probably Russian explosives bound for Eastern Africa conflict zones masking as fertilizer.
I was there in 2017 and in 2018, and I found Beirut to be a beautiful, amazing city.
There were fewer of the sort of amenities that rich, non-Lebanese celebrities might be drawn to. For example, the author spends a lot of time talking about a fancy hotel, which doubled as a "Yacht and Marina Club", and which is now gone.
But there was still tremendous food all over the place, beautiful architecture, an active street culture, stunning museums, natural vistas, a lively and energetic spirit, and more diversity than I've seen anywhere else on Earth.
I think it already is happening in the US, even in cities that are currently considered "nice". There is no overarching ethos that the citizens hold regarding small economies and city design, and so anywhere with a lot of Americans is subject to the centralization of commerce and the development of cookie-cutter, investment-group-owned cheap buildings.
It’s so much easier to destroy than to build. That applies to buildings, but it also applies to cultures and civilisations. The work of centuries — even of millennia — can be broken in decades or even years.
And what’s worse is that there’s not much one can do about it. One can preserve what one has inherited, and try to increase it, but others can knock it down much more easily.
There are a lot of interesting historical factors that led to the destabilization of the region:
1. After World War II, the entire region turned anticolonial and Arab independence movements took off in every country. Some of these efforts were thwarted by the US and Britain, as in the crushing of the pro-democracy government in Iran and the installation of the puppet Shah, and some were far more successful, as with Nasser's Egyptian government.
2. The CIA got in bed with the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood in the 1950s after France and Britain were ejected from their colonial holdings in the region (see Suez Canal Crisis, c. 1954) because radical Islamic fundamentalism was viewed by the CIA as a reliable bulwark against the Godless Communist Soviets in the battle for control of the Middle East and North Africa (and more importantly, of their extensive oilfields). A major motivation for this was Egypt's Nasser reaching out to the Soviet Union for support.
3. A quick-and-dirty summary is that Western powers who wanted to retain control of the region turned to a colonial standard, divide-and-conquer, to break up Arab independence movements and install puppet regimes beholden to Washington and Wall Street. At the same time, the Soviet Union engaged in similar behavior and thus the whole region turned into a Cold War proxy conflict zone, with control of the oilfields being the ultimate prize.
It's difficult to work remotely in Lebanon unless you have access to reliable electricity and a solid internet connection. Both of which are unfortunately scarce.
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I've probably visited Beirut 20+ times over the last 7 years. Last visit was summer of 2019, so haven't been since COVID. My company has an office there.
It's one of my favorite cities in the world. It's also one of the most heartbreaking situations in economic and humanitarian terms. The country has experienced one of the worst currency crises in history, did not wether COVID well, and then had one of the largest non-nuclear explosions in history go off right in the city center. Two years later, nobody has been prosecuted.
The country is in complete deadlock politically - all of the warlords from the civil war just became politicians and then systematically looted the country. There isn't much optimism that the situation will turn around, and almost everyone I know who lived there has left, accelerating an already problematic brain drain.
Beirut and Lebanon has to be one of the largest missed opportunities or what-could-have-been situations of the last 100 years.