Lebanon Q & A

Jeha adds a little dollop of hope to a smorgasboard of worrying maybes.

Excerpts.

Are we moving towards a civil war in Lebanon?
In Lebanon, anyone who grows to big for is own boots is pulled back in by the other groups, who will find plenty of allies in doing so. Willing or unwillingly, we are all minorities in this country; whoever tries to impose their will on the others faces war. With assassinations in Lebanon, and suicides in Syria, we are indeed in the middle of a “cloak and dagger”, stealthy war.

Why hasn’t the “real” shooting started?
Syria’s greed is keeping things quiet, for now. With the new US Congress, our sister is hoping for a return to the buffet, in a “Grand Bargain”. As long as it is hoping to get Lebanon back, it will not break it directly. It may hope to spark civil strife by assassinations, demonstrations, but it will shy away from any larger scale confrontation.

[T]he Syrians are smart enough not to move to a direct confrontation, and would try to initiate another “battle of the marionettes ”. Indeed, the assassination of Pierre Gemayel may have been an attempt at sparking another civil war... The fires of anger were quickly quenched, but one should not expect Syria and Iran to give up so easily.

Will the United States be “Defeated” by Iran or Syria?
[B]efore you chant the “Vietnam” mantra, recall that there was not much oil in Indochina. The United States may have “lost its way” and Israel may be scared , but it is no South Vietnam . And Iran is no Soviet Union.

I am reassured, however, by Amine Gemayel’s stance; coming from a father who had just lost a son, his call to calm and prayer has gone a long to calm passions, and saved us another war. Whatever their fault, many of March 14th leaders, have apparently learned the lessons of the civil war and the occupation.

Meanwhile the marionettes are busy.

Goodbye, Lenin

Just before the Wall comes down in 1989, Alex's mother suffers a heart attack and falls into a coma which lasts almost a year. When she wakes, in a very delicate state, Alex decides that she must never suffer the shock of finding out what has become of her beloved DDR. She had been heroically dedicated to the state ever since her husband had fled to the West leaving her alone with two children. No that it no longer exists, Alex must recreate it in her bedroom, which he does by raiding the rubbish heaps and abandoned houses all around him.

Goodbye, Lenin is a sweet and affectionate film, but one built on concentric layers of lies. There is the great lie of the state itself which must hide behind socialist bombast, censorship and the Wall. There is the lie about the fate of the DDR that Alex tells his mother. Nor is she entirely innocent. She confesses to Alex and his sister eventually that their father did not abandon them. He had been driven away by the Party that he had refused to join, and she had been meant to follow him with the children to the West. He had waited for and written to them begging her to come, but she did not have the courage to take that fatal step. So she hid his letters, told her children he had deserted them and threw herself into social usefulness. She admits that it was the biggest mistake of her life, and wishes only to see him once more.

When she suffers a second heart attack, Alex goes to find his father and bring him to her bedside warning him not to let on that there is now only one Germany. Just before they arrive at the hospital room, we have a glimpse inside to where Alex's Russian girlfriend, who was disgusted by the deception he practiced on his mother, is relieving her of it. She leaves the room as Alex's father enters. It is a lovely moment, and a very moving one. All the layers of lies are heaped one on top of the other, the final one being that the mother doesn't let on to her ex-husband or to Alex that she knows. Indeed, the viewer cannot be sure that she has acknowledged the truth since she gives no sign of it.

It is so fitting. Yet there is nothing of bitterness about the film. Because it is played in the grey key of nostalgia for a communal penury, lightened by the love of a son for his mother, we get none of the anger you would expect for this sandcastle of lies that has all but buried them. Far from it, the triumphant West is symbolised (or tokenised) by Coca-Cola whose bright red tankers pour through the sullen Berlin streets and whose massive banners dress the concrete of its buildings. Somehow you are left with the feeling that life leaves you with two choices: idealistic futility or pragmatic and spiritually squallid gaudiness.

Better and better (I have to admit it's getting)

It doesn't feel like it and I haven't heard anyone say it on a news programme for quite some time, but things are getting better. According to Indur Goklany in his book The Improving State of the World, we have never been better off, where we does not mean us middle class pigs and oppressors, but humans, rich and poor, from North and South. A sample, just concentrating on the South, from a review in The Spectator

The daily food intake in poor countries has increased by 38 per cent since the 1960s to 2,666 calories per person per day on average

The rate of chronic undernourishment has halved to 17 per cent, compared with a little over a third 45 years ago

The number of people subsisting on $1 a day has declined from 16 per cent of the world population in the late 1970s to 6 per cent today, while those living on $2 a day dropped from 39 per cent to 18 per cent. (In 1820, 84 per cent of the world’s population lived in absolute poverty; today this is down to about a fifth.)

Life expectancy in China has surged from 41 years in the 1950s to 71 years today; in India it is up from 39 years to 63 years, almost doubling the average lifespan of 2 billion people

By the early 1950s a child born in a wealthy country such as Britain could expect to live 25 years longer than a child born in a poor country such as Algeria; today the gap has closed to 12.2 years

Before industrialisation, at least 200 out of every 1,000 children died before reaching their first birthday. Infant mortality globally is now down to 57 per 1,000

In 1960 a quarter of all children aged ten to 14 were in work, a share which has fallen to a tenth today.

The global illiteracy rate has declined from 46 per cent in 1970 to about 18 per cent today.

All of these improvements are the consequence of the spread of Western technology and scientific knowledge as well as economic globalisation. Where in developing countries, these have been accompanied by good governance, the rule of law and economic liberalism, the benefits are felt most strongly.

This will never be enough for the drama queens that would smother everything under regulation just to resolve one problem: carbon emmissions. Sir Nicholas Stern shouts out for crisis management. Goklany has done his own projections.

In fact, equally rigorous modelling using different assumptions suggests that, for the next 80 years at least, the benefits of faster economic growth in further improving quality of life across the developing world will outweigh any cost of global warming. Some reductions in carbon emissions may eventually be needed, Goklany says, but in most cases it would be cheaper to adapt to higher temperatures than to try to stop them.

Our best bet, therefore, is to allow technology, trade and the global economy to continue growing unimpeded. Such is Goklany’s plea: if the present rate of improvement continues, he argues, we could soon be living in a world where ‘hunger and malnutrition have been virtually banished; where malaria, TB, Aids and other infectious and parasitic diseases are distant memories; and where humanity meets its needs while ceding land and water back to the rest of nature ... even in sub-Saharan Africa infant mortality could be as low as it is today in the United States, and life expectancies as high’.

Benedictine rule

The Pope has several reasons to go to Turkey. One of them puts him in the centre of the most burning issue of the day:

[the] attempt to help spark Islamic theological reform. According to this analysis, the pope's speech in Regensburg on the necessary unity of faith and reason was aimed as much at the secularized West as it was at the Islamic world.

"There's no doubt in my mind, he states it clearly, that Islam can evaluate when a passage of the Koran was written: was one early, was one later, was one in a certain context and one in another," Moynihan said. "Those remarks in the Regensburg speech make very clear that he's inviting Islam to engage in a process of self-evaluation and examination and of exegesis of the Koran, which is extremely difficult, controversial. But in my view, it's absolutely clear that he's inviting them to engage in that." [Robert Moynihan, a medieval historian and editor-in-chief of the magazine Inside the Vatican]

Also worth a read is Joshua Treviño's lament for Hagia Sophia.

France2 lose second al-Dura trial

France2 has lost the second al-Dura trial, though the grounds for the decision have nothing to do with the authenticity of the film.

Judging that France 2 did not provide proof for the allegation that Pierre Lurçat is the director of the site on which the incriminated statements were published [League de Défense Juïve], the court rejected the plaintiff’s case without further consideration.

I must confess that I have given little attention to this second trial on the assumption that it would be another stitch-up. Obviously, I was mistaken.

Will?

A crib of What the Islamists Have Learned: How to defeat the USA in future wars by Michael Novak

Today, the purpose of war is sharply political, not military; psychological, not physical. The main purpose of war is to dominate the way the enemy imagines and thinks about the war.

The main strategic aim of war today is to dominate the mind of the enemy's public, and then ultimately to dominate the mind of that public's leaders.

What we have discovered in Iraq is the weakest link in the ability of the United States to sustain military operations overseas. That link is the U.S. media. They are Islamists' best friends.

In such wars, my brothers, whichever party maintains the stronger will, along the most durable storyline, always wins.

Bin Laden is even more correct than we knew before the last two years. The West does not have the will to resist. Those elites among them who do have the stomach to fight back, inexorably, day after day, are being undermined by their own media.

Now and in the future, the media will do our work. All we need are martyrs sufficient in number to keep a steady stream of orange flames and black smoke before their cameras, and to dump before them bodies that are stone-cold dead, and bear all over them the unmistakable blue marks of power drills and other disfigurements.

Of such martyrs, we need each day only a handful. In 365 successive days, we need fewer than one thousand.

(via Melanie Phillips)

Israeli-Palestinian truce

I find this sudden outbreak of peace extremely difficult to take seriously. Israel is weaker now than it has been for many years, so it is not surprising that its government wants a period of relative calm. But Hamas has been able to land more blows on its enemy than ever and the situation in Lebanon, however uncertain its outcome may be, is almost certainly going to be more favourable to Hezbollah and Iran than it is now.

What's in it for them? Has Hamas suddenly renounced its ultimate goal? Hardly. They need time to prepare a more convincing attack and maybe to allow their friends in the North to take a few more steps towards control of Lebanon.

John Sentamu

Lapsed Catholic that I am by nature, if not by nurture, and therefore occasionally contemptuous of the Church of England, especially in these times, I cannot help wishing for the success of an Anglican cleric who says things like this.

“Christianity is the very soil of this place. Look at what you did in the past, remember what you did.”

Furthermore

His campaign against political correctness has addressed the shame so many educated English people feel for their culture, history and religion. He experienced no such feelings as a boy in Africa, listening to the Queen’s coronation on the radio. His family always checked their purchases for a “Made in Britain” stamp. Indeed, he has called for a proper celebration of St George’s Day.

John Sentamu, the Archbishop of York, brought up in Imperial Uganda to love Queen and country and seemingly uncorrupted by the flabby thinking that undoes so many of his fellows, including his leader. We need more like him; I'd bet that such people are far more likely to come from some of Her Majesty's more humble ex-possessions than from Blighty.

(via Ninme)

Casino Royale

Took Son No2 (11) to see the new Bond. I hadn't read anything about it beyond the headlines that Google News displays, which led me to think that it was not a disappointment.

A view I would share. The new Bond is different to the earlier incarnations and seems able to open up a bit of new territory for the character. Much less new technology. In fact, the big chase is on foot through a building site and is very impressive. The torture scene is brutally primitive and the finale is very low-key spectacular with a Venetian palace collapsing into the muddy waters.

It did drag towards the end. In part, this is due to the relationship to the lady, which gets sort of serious what with Bond sending in his resignation so as to stop in time to save 'what little soul is left'. You know that's not going to last, so you have to wait to see how.

But the real problem is with the thrust of the plot itself. James Bond always deals either with super-rich nutters out for world domination/destruction or with the Big Baddies of the day. Obviously, the Soviets are long gone, though their descendents may well feature in future episodes, which leaves terrorism.

In fact, it is the financing of terrorism that is the object of Bond's attentions. He kills one terrorist intent on wreaking havoc at the launch of the world's largest airliner (strangely transplanted to the US, as I suppose the backers of the Airbus A380 probably wish it was). The only other terrorist that appears is an African chap who hands over his impressive fortune to the main baddie of the film, Le Chiffre.

Le Chiffre is, as the name says, just a figures man. He upsets the terrorist fraternity with some creative, though unfortunate investments of their money and the secret services want to use this to get him to talk about his terrorist masters. Needless to say, he's called away to a meeting in Heaven before this happens, which is bad news for the goodies because they can't now get to the heart of the matter.

Having glimpsed him a couple of times already, the spectator knows the face of the Master, and, at the end, so does Bond. (It occasions a lovely way to make a tardy introduction of the new actor - only at the last does he deliver the catch-phrase introduction and do we hear the Bond music.) Who is this Master of Terrorism? A sophisticated European-looking bloke with the air of someone who treats women badly and dogs well, a Jag and a quaint turreted manor above an Italian lake.

Puzzling. What possible interest could such a gent have in funding international terrorism ('international' is the only modifier applied throughout the film to the noun 'terrorism')? Could it be that the writers/producers are just falling back on an old reliable stand-by? Could it be that they did not dare make mention of the international crime that is present as a rhetorical and plot device, but almost apologetically? Is this another case of pre-emptive censorship?

Past sins, present virtues

For those unfamiliar with him, Victor Davis Hanson is one of the major voices in the pro-war camp in the US. He's a Classics academic, firm believer in the superiority of Western civilisation and has not performed any U-turns recently. Here's what he has to say about past US policies.

The United States had been far too friendly with atrocious regimes in the Middle East. And when bloodletting inevitably broke out, either internally or between aggressive regimes, too often we cynically played one side off the other. Or we backed repugnant insurgents, with little thought of the "blowback" that would result. We outsourced sophisticated arms and training to radical Islamists fighting against the Soviet-backed Afghan government.

We hoped the murderous Saddam might check the murderous Iranian theocracy -- and then again sold arms to the mullahs during the Iran-Contra affair. We breezily called for an uprising of Shi'ites and Kurds only to abandon them to be slaughtered by Saddam after the first Gulf war. We cynically gave the Mubarak dynasty of Egypt billions in protection money to behave. While we thought we were achieving short-term expediency, American policy only increased long-term instability by not pressuring these tyrants to reform failed governments.

I put this here because of a discussion I've been having with Wodge. He has pointed out, as have many others, that the US record in supporting dictators of Saddam's ilk is not a reassuring one. Agreed, though I don't find this as heinous as he obviously does. This is especially so in the Middle East where you choice of rulers is not of the widest. However, there is a more important point.

The alternative to the Bush doctrine of "trying to help democratic reformers" is the old 'realism' outlined by Hanson above. That is, from a range of nasties, you help the nasty least dangerous for your own interests. The alternative is not, as is often implied, leaving them all alone because that would be the decent thing to do. It would not.

The result would be, now more than ever, the growth of regimes not only antithetical to our values, but dangerous to their own people and to the rest of the world. With the Middle East on the verge of a nuclear arms race, with its unemployed, alienated masses of young men and a well-developed ideology and methodology for turning them into weapons, the prospect of the US withdrawing into itself is truly frightening.