Images from Iran

Unlike most folks, I'm not convinced we are about to invade Iran, but if we are, this is what we will be destroying: http://www.lucasgray.com/video/peacetrain.html

Paradise Lost by Robert Fisk on Lebanon

Politics : An absolutely moving article about the destruction of Lebanon I encourage everyone to read by Robert Fisk called Paradise Lost in The Independent. Here's a rather large snippet:

For 30 years, I've watched this place die and then rise from the grave and then die again, its apartment blocks pitted with so many bullets they looked like Irish lace, its people massacring each other.

I lived here through 15 years of civil war that took 150,000 lives, and two Israeli invasions and years of Israeli bombardments that cost the lives of a further 20,000 of its people. I have seen them armless, legless, headless, knifed, bombed and splashed across the walls of houses. Yet they are a fine, educated, moral people whose generosity amazes every foreigner, whose gentleness puts any Westerner to shame, and whose suffering we almost always ignore.

They look like us, the people of Beirut. They have light-coloured skin and speak beautiful English and French. They travel the world. Their women are gorgeous and their food exquisite. But what are we saying of their fate today as the Israelis - in some of their cruellest attacks on this city and the surrounding countryside - tear them from their homes, bomb them on river bridges, cut them off from food and water and electricity? We say that they started this latest war, and we compare their appalling casualties - 240 in all of Lebanon by last night - with Israel's 24 dead, as if the figures are the same.

And then, most disgraceful of all, we leave the Lebanese to their fate like a diseased people and spend our time evacuating our precious foreigners while tut-tutting about Israel's "disproportionate" response to the capture of its soldiers by Hizbollah.

I walked through the deserted city centre of Beirut yesterday and it reminded more than ever of a film lot, a place of dreams too beautiful to last, a phoenix from the ashes of civil war whose plumage was so brightly coloured that it blinded its own people. This part of the city - once a Dresden of ruins - was rebuilt by Rafiq Hariri, the prime minister who was murdered scarcely a mile away on 14 February last year.

The wreckage of that bomb blast, an awful precursor to the present war in which his inheritance is being vandalised by the Israelis, still stands beside the Mediterranean, waiting for the last UN investigator to look for clues to the assassination - an investigator who has long ago abandoned this besieged city for the safety of Cyprus.

At the empty Etoile restaurant - best snails and cappuccino in Beirut, where Hariri once dined Jacques Chirac - I sat on the pavement and watched the parliamentary guard still patrolling the faade of the French-built emporium that houses what is left of Lebanon's democracy. So many of these streets were built by Parisians under the French mandate and they have been exquisitely restored, their mock Arabian doorways bejewelled with marble Roman columns dug from the ancient Via Maxima a few metres away.

Hariri loved this place and, taking Chirac for a beer one day, he caught sight of me sitting at a table. "Ah Robert, come over here," he roared and then turned to Chirac like a cat that was about to eat a canary. "I want to introduce you, Jacques, to the reporter who said I couldn't rebuild Beirut!"

And now it is being un-built. The Martyr Rafiq Hariri International Airport has been attacked three times by the Israelis, its glistening halls and shopping malls vibrating to the missiles that thunder into the runways and fuel depots. Hariri's wonderful transnational highway viaduct has been broken by Israeli bombers. Most of his motorway bridges have been destroyed. The Roman-style lighthouse has been smashed by a missile from an Apache helicopter. Only this small jewel of a restaurant in the centre of Beirut has been spared. So far.

avoiding civil war

politics, life: i read an interesting article in slate titled four strategies for averting civil war by gary bass. in it, bass writes:

In the wake of Bosnia and Rwanda, the assumption is that ethnically divided countries can never function. But countless countries at risk of civil war have been able to avoid going over the cliff. The most famous example is South Africa. Under apartheid, the country was widely seen as a likely candidate for a massive and devastating all-out civil war, yet despite some substantial violence, it managed to transform into today's multiethnic democracy.

i think there's a lot of truth to this. i recall during the yugoslavian break up, the same type of analysis permeating the news. essentially it boiled down to: these people hate each other, have for hundreds of years, there's nothing that can be done to stop it. its often academics interviewed and quoted by the news that re-enforce this perhaps by their tendency to discuss a modern issue in the context of hundreds or thousands of years of sectarian/tribal/whatever strife. the impression is that this is unnavoidable. one of bass's most interesting points to me, is what he calls "no bowling alone." bass writes:

When ordinary people come together across ethnic lines to form unions, political parties, soccer leagues, or movie clubs, their social connections can help prevent civil strife.

The scariest rift in India is between Hindus and Muslims. That division ripped the country apart in 1947 and at worst could do so again. But Ashutosh Varshney, a University of Michigan expert on Indian politics, points out that Hindu-Muslim riots usually happen only in certain of India's cities and very rarely in the countryside. Why are some places, like Bombay and Ahmedabad, so much more volatile than others?

Varshney's answer, updating Tocqueville, is that intercommunal civic life in India has been a powerful force in preventing Hindu-Muslim violence. In Hyderabad, Varshney argues, Hindus and Muslims don't come together in social and economic life. In places like Calicut and Lucknow, by contrast, members of the two groups mix in groups like trade unions, business associations, and professional organizations of teachers and doctors.

this is a great point. would be wonderful if indian, and other sectarian challenged societies, went on sustained campaigns to create more opportunities for cross sections of their populace to interract.

i lived in chicago for a number of years during college. i recall a friend of mine who was of croatian descent. he'd talk about how much hatred there was between his community and the serbians (clearly he had absorbed some of it) - this was all during the croatian independence conflict. peers of his, born and raised in america, were hauling off to go fight in the conflict. he felt tremendous guilt for studying while his friends were defending their ancestral land.

here in the states, in one of the most segregated cities in the world, the serbian immigrant community neighborhood happens to live essentially across the street from the croatian. on the weekends the youth would take turns throwing garbage and things at the others' churches. anyway, we had a serbian in a bunch of our classes who was totally brilliant; my friend was an average engineering student - confronting this fact was a source of constant annoyance for him. the serbian was utterly disinterested in the conflict, another source of annoyance for him. my friend was forced to interact with this fellow, and other students of many nationalities. it was interesting seeing his views widen over our four years there. i am convinced, after this collegiate experience, he served as a voice of moderation and reason amongst his community.

civil war in iraq

since the day bush decided to invade iraq, i have been saying this will in all likelyhood result in 25 years of civil war, a war i believe will make lebanon's 25 years of strife seem relatively pastoral. i believe yesterdays bombing of Askariya, shiite islam's holiest shrine, is the turning point. i think the past year's activities have already proven iraq was in a civil war, but now it is undeniable to even the most ardent optimist. to the secular, it's difficult to illustrate just how terrible a crime this is. for believer's it is simple, and the emotional response can be sadly uncontrollable. with each passing hour, iraq is spinning toward a state from which it cannot return. already the revenge attacks have begun. many sunni mosques have been destroyed in retaliation. sunni imams have been killed assassination style. soon the sunni's will begin their revenge attacks for these revenge attacks. despite the near unanimous pleas of all leaders: secular, religious, iraqi, and non-iraqi, the cycle of revenge has begun. i think of the utter devastation caused in india driven by sectarian violence during partition, and my heart saddens. i can no longer see a reasonable outcome in iraq for many years to come.