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What Beirut was like before the war (2019)

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Re: What Beirut was like before the war (2019)

#91

Post by xeromal »

nine_k wrote: post #83
Theodores wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that there are many national identities that are similar. Poland is an example. Regarding the article, before and after pictures of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria to name a few places are the same. Prosperous sovereign nations outside Western Europe and North America are bad for business.

I wonder why prosperous sovereign nations in South Asia are not bad for business. Maybe because they don't have the oil.

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.

Re: What Beirut was like before the war (2019)

#92

Post by photochemsyn »

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.

Re: What Beirut was like before the war (2019)

#93

Post by VictorPath »

bnralt wrote: post #55
finnh wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Iran's decline began when the US overthrew Mossadegh's democratically elected government and installed the Shah, which led to the Ayatollah.

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 succee…

> He'd been in power since 1941

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.

Re: What Beirut was like before the war (2019)

#94

Post by amanaplanacanal »

loonster wrote: post #77
literallyWTF wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 was obvious voter fraud in the 2020 election. The only question that should be disputed is if it was enough to sway the 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.

Re: What Beirut was like before the war (2019)

#95

Post by suzzer99 »

suoduandao2 wrote: post #64
narrator wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

you jest, but an officially secular system that asks us to 'trust the experts' has a lot in common with religious fundamentalism.

As a whole, "trust the experts" has a much better track record than "google what you want to be true".

Re: What Beirut was like before the war (2019)

#96

Post by rayiner »

fezfight wrote: post #85
skippyboxedhero wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, the cause of all human on human suffering since the dawn of time is greed. Its almost a tautology so maybe it didn't need to be said. For the record, I'm a Canadian who went to school with countless Lebanese people in Ottawa. I'm a big fan!

No post body was provided.

Re: What Beirut was like before the war (2019)

#97

Post by rayiner »

chadash wrote: post #60
martincmartin wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 a…

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

Re: What Beirut was like before the war (2019)

#99

Post by egberts1 »

suzzer99 wrote: post #89
loonster wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was obvious voter fraud in the 2020 election. The only question that should be disputed is if it was enough to sway the election.

No, there absolutely was not obvious voter fraud in 2020. That's the Big Lie.

You were saying?

https://www.reddit.com/r/electionfraud/comments/v85iy4/mind_...

Re: What Beirut was like before the war (2019)

#100

Post by AtlasBarfed »

babarock wrote: post #49
james-redwood wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 coloni…

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, b…

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).

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