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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)

#151

Post by watwut »

martincmartin wrote: post #88
kamaal wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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

#152

Post by nsajko »

skippyboxedhero wrote: post #74
nemesisj wrote: post #4

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 cri…

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 (a…

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.

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

#153

Post by rr888 »

Theodores wrote: post #76
babarock wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. We had high levels of autonomy under the Ottoman rule: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Lebanon_Muta…

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.

> Poland is an example

Poland has been around over a thousand years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianization_of_Poland

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

#154

Post by teh_klev »

petre wrote: post #149
teh_klev wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 dem…

> 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.

> to strip him of his powers.

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.

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

#155

Post by Apocryphon »

rayiner wrote: post #105
eldaisfish wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

#157

Post by JackFr »

narag wrote: post #130
chadash wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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…

> 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.

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

#158

Post by xyzzyz »

Apocryphon wrote: post #155
rayiner wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

#159

Post by rendall »

skippyboxedhero wrote: post #74
nemesisj wrote: post #4

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 cri…

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 (a…

> It is obvious what happened, ...it has clearly been engineered to happen this way

Sorry, not clear. Would you mind explaining this li5? I'm pretty ignorant about Beirut and Lebanon

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

#160

Post by Apocryphon »

_shadi wrote: post #62
_alxk wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 w…

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…

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?
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