Persiflage & Paroxysm

What a difference a week makes. The high voltage power lines cutting across the Mansourieh skyline are well on their way to completion. People’s fears have been allayed, hot tempers have cooled, politicians intervened, speeches were made, selfies were taken, and it’s as if nothing ever happened.  While I am a strong supporter of people’s right to protest in a democratic society, I would have liked to see a better organized protest movement with far less friction with security forces and something approaching a well thought out rational strategy. Simply saying “it shall not pass!” and going toe to toe with politicians and governments carrying the banner of the public good is simply not a sustainable strategy or a winnable fight. The supposed public good seems to make villains out of anyone who opposes it. From the start, when the pylons first started to pop up in and around Mansourieh in the early 2000s, protestors would routinely aim to disrupt work on the pylons an...

Official Lebanon has long been characterized by a murky opacity and the absence of willingness or even ability to communicate effectively with the general population. This lack of transparency coupled with a haughty and dismissive attitude towards the general pop. on the part of government officials of all ranks, has allowed rumor to take the place of fact and suspicion and mistrust to take the place of trust. This broken trust between the governing and the governed in Lebanon cannot be heeled by imposing the will of the central government through pronouncements from on high, not all things are as simple as that, even if that will be representative of the will of the voters and a general desire to see the country move forward and prosper. Obstruction sometimes is an invitation to stop and think on the next move before taking it, it’s not always a mad desire to see a country’s progress hobbled. It is my assertion that there has never been a sincere effort to be honest with vot...

There may very well be no scientific basis to residents’ fears of “cancer” from electromagnetic fields from a new high tension power line which now it appears shall pass over their homes; a cursory search via google tells you that, but that’s not the point. It is how our Lebanese Government, and indeed other Arab and third world governments, treat their people, the heavy-handed approach that considers all who oppose the official will as trouble makers and vandals.  On the morning of Tuesday, May 7, I left my home at just after 10am. I was stunned to see a row of armored personnel carriers with M60 machine guns set atop them, police vehicles, army jeeps, machinegun-armed soldiers in camo fatigues, I thought “They must be here to raid an ISIS cell in Mansourieh!” The next thought was “In Mansourieh! Nah”. It was only later, when I returned home in the midafternoon that I learned of the clashes between irate residents and security forces protecting power utility employees prep...

Humans have a factory installed flaw, we accumulate corrupted data from multiple untrustworthy sources, suffer day dreams and delusions and crash in a fit of rage for no logical reason. We then reset, automatically reverting to factory settings, erasing or overriding all that we have learned as modern educated rational humans. We revert to tribalism, feudalism, nationalism, we become xenophobic, over religious, revert to magical thinking to name only a few flaws. Our minds are clearly inferior to anything we can build ourselves in our more lucid moments.  Artificial intelligence then seems to be a gift that modern man has given himself, a blessing, a loyal servant, an autonomous machine that requires no nutrition or rest, but works tirelessly and constantly to ensure our comfort.  Ever since man was beaten at chess by a super computer, a game some thought only clever humans could master, humans have been divided into two camps: those fearlessly embracing AI as ...