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What Beirut was like before the war (2019)

197 points by mmastrac 4y ago

deleted 4y ago
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sbate1987 4y ago
rayiner 4y ago
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.
- james-redwood 4y ago
  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.
  - ecopoesis 4y ago
    - intrestingstuff 4y ago
      irrelevant comment and flamewar i expect my comment to be downvoted (and of course flagged) instead of yours because HN
      - erikpukinskis 4y ago
        It’s actually quite relevant, but probably low effort and yes flamewar.
    - s5300 4y ago
      Eh, sometimes it’s the mongols.
      - the_only_law 4y ago
        Ironically, they’re probably more tolerant, though with more initial destruction.
        buscoquadnary 4y ago
        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.
        the_only_law 4y ago
        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.
        saiya-jin 4y ago
        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.
    - narrator 4y ago
      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
      - suoduandao2 4y ago
        you jest, but an officially secular system that asks us to 'trust the experts' has a lot in common with religious fundamentalism.
        suzzer99 4y ago
        As a whole, "trust the experts" has a much better track record than "google what you want to be true".
        suoduandao2 4y ago
        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.
        suzzer99 4y ago
        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..
        SuoDuanDao 4y ago
        This video series: https://odysee.com/@BiohackThePlanet:3/coding-the-dna-for-a-diy-rona-vaccine:7 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.
  - rayiner 4y ago
    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.
  - webmobdev 4y ago
    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. (Another good read that provides a brief glimpse about how the tragedy of partition affected people - An Indian author’s last days in the Lahore of 1947 - https://qz.com/india/1355466/khushwant-singh-recalls-lahore-before-indias-1947-partition/ https://qz.com/india/1355466/khushwant-singh-recalls-lahore-... ).
  - kamaal 4y ago
    >>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.
    - Apocryphon 4y ago
      What part that Chamberlain was saying?
  - campground 4y ago
    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.
    - googlryas 4y ago
      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?
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - teh_klev 4y ago
        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.
        4y ago
  - _alxk 4y ago
    >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. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lebanese_Civil_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lebanese_Civil_War
    - babarock 4y ago
      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.
  - _shadi 4y ago
    > largely as a result of radical Islamist Palestinians who had left Palestine and wanted an Islamic state in Lebanon. those damn communist and nationalist Palestinian factions wanting to create a caliphate. Not interested in a political discussion, just wanted to point out that this guy has no idea about the Lebanese civil war or the history of the region
  - finnh 4y ago
    Iran's decline began when the US overthrew Mossadegh's democratically elected government and installed the Shah, which led to the Ayatollah.
    - bnralt 4y ago
      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. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/1953/08/04/archives/mossadegh-gets-999-of-the-vote-in-iran-plebiscite-on-majlis-ouster.html https://www.nytimes.com/1953/08/04/archives/mossadegh-gets-9...
      - joshuaissac 4y ago
        > 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.
        bnralt 4y ago
        > 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).
  - babarock 4y ago
    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.
    - james-redwood 4y ago
      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.
    - AtlasBarfed 4y ago
      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).
  - _nedR 4y ago
    > a result of radical Islamist Palestinians who had left Palestine You mean the native palestinians who were ethnically cleansed from their homeland and became refugees in Lebanon (and Jordan and Syria)
    - rougka 4y ago
      He probably meant the PLO that moved from Jordan to Lebanon after failing to make Jordan the failed state it has made Lebanon
  - azth 4y ago
    Lebanon was literally formed by the colonialist West, who used divide and conquer to strategically place people there so that the conflicts keep going.
- AndyMcConachie 4y ago
  - james-redwood 4y ago
    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.
  - lotsofpulp 4y ago
    That is not what rayiner wrote.
- mytailorisrich 4y ago
  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.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- bnralt 4y ago
  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).
- VictorPath 4y ago
  > Egypt and Iran are similar 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.
  - rayiner 4y ago
    Secularism is also a western import. Mosdadegh was educated in Switzerland, after all. This is in the context of India, but does a good job explaining the phenomenon: https://unherd.com/2021/04/the-culture-wars-of-post-colonial-india/ https://unherd.com/2021/04/the-culture-wars-of-post-colonial... 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.
    - kamaal 4y ago
      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.
      - rayiner 4y ago
        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.
  - _shadi 4y ago
    related: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/may/14/secret-british-black-propaganda-campaign-targeted-cold-war-enemies-information-research-department https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/may/14/secret-british... 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.
- kamaal 4y ago
  '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.
  - TremendousJudge 4y ago
    >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.
  - gautamdivgi 4y ago
    Not sure why you’re getting downvoted. It’s actually the truth.
  - VictorPath 4y ago
    > Here in India, British barely spent money on education, or industrialising the country. It's beyond even that. The English spent the nineteenth century deindustrializing India - textiles, steel etc.
- justinzollars 4y ago
  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.
  - dvirsky 4y ago
    > Israeli Huh? You mean in biblical times?
    - justinzollars 4y ago
      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.
nemesisj 4y ago
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.
- martincmartin 4y ago
  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.
  - kamaal 4y ago
    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.
    - pjc50 4y ago
      > 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.
BigHatLogan 4y ago
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.
- quacked 4y ago
  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.
- netsharc 4y ago
  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.
  - petre 4y ago
    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.
    - netsharc 4y ago
      Your comment is based on unfounded speculation (or at least you don't cite any sources) and I find it just a waste of time...
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fzfaa 4y ago
pid_0 4y ago
- dang 4y ago
  We've banned this account for posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
zeveb 4y ago
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.
epolanski 4y ago
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.
dakial1 4y ago
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."
photochemsyn 4y ago
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.
upupandup 4y ago
Is lebanon safe to remote work from for visible foreigners? what can 1 USD buy in lebanon?
- mamoul 4y ago
  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.
- stu2b50 4y ago
  Unless your form of remote work does not require reliable access to electricity or internet, it would be difficult to work remotely.
spaetzleesser 4y ago
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.
- deepdriver 4y ago
  Minneapolis is well on its way.
  - benburleson 4y ago
    Really? As an American (on the West coast), I had no idea.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - deepdriver 4y ago
      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: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovtLTPrB2MA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovtLTPrB2MA
ronyfadel 4y ago
Not pictured are the refugee camps and slums that have existed since at least 1948. The “Golden Age” was one for a (predominantly Christian) upper class that was out of touch (and still is) with the rest of the country. Source: am Lebanese Christian.
- brink 4y ago
  Has there ever been a "great civilization" that didn't also have slums?
  - ronyfadel 4y ago
    It's all about ratios. A large chunk of the Lebanese people lived in poverty (add to that 100,000 Palestinian refugees who arrived in 1948).
dannylandau 4y ago
Cool pics. I'm from Israel and would like to visit Beirut, enjoy the food and people, not sure that will ever be possible in the near future.
- napmo 4y ago
  - DiggyJohnson 4y ago
    This is needlessly political and antagonistic. You make no attempt to respond to the best possible interpretation of the parent comment. No, I am not saying this to dismiss the region’s problems, or defend one side or the other. I am responding to your mode of response specifically.
known 4y ago

197 points by mmastrac 4y ago

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

sbate1987 4y ago

rayiner 4y ago

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.

james-redwood 4y ago
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.
- ecopoesis 4y ago
  - intrestingstuff 4y ago
    irrelevant comment and flamewar i expect my comment to be downvoted (and of course flagged) instead of yours because HN
    - erikpukinskis 4y ago
      It’s actually quite relevant, but probably low effort and yes flamewar.
  - s5300 4y ago
    Eh, sometimes it’s the mongols.
    - the_only_law 4y ago
      Ironically, they’re probably more tolerant, though with more initial destruction.
      - buscoquadnary 4y ago
        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.
        the_only_law 4y ago
        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.
        saiya-jin 4y ago
        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.
  - narrator 4y ago
    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
    - suoduandao2 4y ago
      you jest, but an officially secular system that asks us to 'trust the experts' has a lot in common with religious fundamentalism.
      - suzzer99 4y ago
        As a whole, "trust the experts" has a much better track record than "google what you want to be true".
        suoduandao2 4y ago
        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.
        suzzer99 4y ago
        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..
        SuoDuanDao 4y ago
        This video series: https://odysee.com/@BiohackThePlanet:3/coding-the-dna-for-a-diy-rona-vaccine:7 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.
- rayiner 4y ago
  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.
- webmobdev 4y ago
  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. (Another good read that provides a brief glimpse about how the tragedy of partition affected people - An Indian author’s last days in the Lahore of 1947 - https://qz.com/india/1355466/khushwant-singh-recalls-lahore-before-indias-1947-partition/ https://qz.com/india/1355466/khushwant-singh-recalls-lahore-... ).
- kamaal 4y ago
  >>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.
  - Apocryphon 4y ago
    What part that Chamberlain was saying?
- campground 4y ago
  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.
  - googlryas 4y ago
    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?
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - teh_klev 4y ago
      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.
      - 4y ago
- _alxk 4y ago
  >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. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lebanese_Civil_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lebanese_Civil_War
  - babarock 4y ago
    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.
- _shadi 4y ago
  > largely as a result of radical Islamist Palestinians who had left Palestine and wanted an Islamic state in Lebanon. those damn communist and nationalist Palestinian factions wanting to create a caliphate. Not interested in a political discussion, just wanted to point out that this guy has no idea about the Lebanese civil war or the history of the region
- finnh 4y ago
  Iran's decline began when the US overthrew Mossadegh's democratically elected government and installed the Shah, which led to the Ayatollah.
  - bnralt 4y ago
    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. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/1953/08/04/archives/mossadegh-gets-999-of-the-vote-in-iran-plebiscite-on-majlis-ouster.html https://www.nytimes.com/1953/08/04/archives/mossadegh-gets-9...
    - joshuaissac 4y ago
      > 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.
      - bnralt 4y ago
        > 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).
- babarock 4y ago
  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.
  - james-redwood 4y ago
    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.
  - AtlasBarfed 4y ago
    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).
- _nedR 4y ago
  > a result of radical Islamist Palestinians who had left Palestine You mean the native palestinians who were ethnically cleansed from their homeland and became refugees in Lebanon (and Jordan and Syria)
  - rougka 4y ago
    He probably meant the PLO that moved from Jordan to Lebanon after failing to make Jordan the failed state it has made Lebanon
- azth 4y ago
  Lebanon was literally formed by the colonialist West, who used divide and conquer to strategically place people there so that the conflicts keep going.
AndyMcConachie 4y ago
- james-redwood 4y ago
  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.
- lotsofpulp 4y ago
  That is not what rayiner wrote.
mytailorisrich 4y ago
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.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
bnralt 4y ago
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).
VictorPath 4y ago
> Egypt and Iran are similar 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.
- rayiner 4y ago
  Secularism is also a western import. Mosdadegh was educated in Switzerland, after all. This is in the context of India, but does a good job explaining the phenomenon: https://unherd.com/2021/04/the-culture-wars-of-post-colonial-india/ https://unherd.com/2021/04/the-culture-wars-of-post-colonial... 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.
  - kamaal 4y ago
    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.
    - rayiner 4y ago
      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.
- _shadi 4y ago
  related: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/may/14/secret-british-black-propaganda-campaign-targeted-cold-war-enemies-information-research-department https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/may/14/secret-british... 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.
kamaal 4y ago
'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.
- TremendousJudge 4y ago
  >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.
- gautamdivgi 4y ago
  Not sure why you’re getting downvoted. It’s actually the truth.
- VictorPath 4y ago
  > Here in India, British barely spent money on education, or industrialising the country. It's beyond even that. The English spent the nineteenth century deindustrializing India - textiles, steel etc.
justinzollars 4y ago
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.
- dvirsky 4y ago
  > Israeli Huh? You mean in biblical times?
  - justinzollars 4y ago
    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.

nemesisj 4y ago

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.

martincmartin 4y ago
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.
- kamaal 4y ago
  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.
  - pjc50 4y ago
    > 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.

BigHatLogan 4y ago

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.

quacked 4y ago
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.
netsharc 4y ago
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.
- petre 4y ago
  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.
  - netsharc 4y ago
    Your comment is based on unfounded speculation (or at least you don't cite any sources) and I find it just a waste of time...

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

fzfaa 4y ago

pid_0 4y ago

dang 4y ago
We've banned this account for posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

zeveb 4y ago

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.

epolanski 4y ago

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.

dakial1 4y ago

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."

photochemsyn 4y ago

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.

upupandup 4y ago

Is lebanon safe to remote work from for visible foreigners? what can 1 USD buy in lebanon?

mamoul 4y ago
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.
stu2b50 4y ago
Unless your form of remote work does not require reliable access to electricity or internet, it would be difficult to work remotely.

spaetzleesser 4y ago

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.

deepdriver 4y ago
Minneapolis is well on its way.
- benburleson 4y ago
  Really? As an American (on the West coast), I had no idea.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - deepdriver 4y ago
    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: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovtLTPrB2MA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovtLTPrB2MA

ronyfadel 4y ago

Not pictured are the refugee camps and slums that have existed since at least 1948. The “Golden Age” was one for a (predominantly Christian) upper class that was out of touch (and still is) with the rest of the country. Source: am Lebanese Christian.

brink 4y ago
Has there ever been a "great civilization" that didn't also have slums?
- ronyfadel 4y ago
  It's all about ratios. A large chunk of the Lebanese people lived in poverty (add to that 100,000 Palestinian refugees who arrived in 1948).

dannylandau 4y ago

Cool pics. I'm from Israel and would like to visit Beirut, enjoy the food and people, not sure that will ever be possible in the near future.

napmo 4y ago
- DiggyJohnson 4y ago
  This is needlessly political and antagonistic. You make no attempt to respond to the best possible interpretation of the parent comment. No, I am not saying this to dismiss the region’s problems, or defend one side or the other. I am responding to your mode of response specifically.

known 4y ago