Posts Tagged ‘political jargon’
Oxymoron, Liberty, Liberal, Liberalism, Libertine… And Is Liberalism in Lebanese a Myth?
Posted on: July 18, 2013
Oxymoron, Liberty, Liberal, Liberalism, Libertine… And Is Liberalism in Lebanese a Myth?
You think that the term Liberalism means some kind of liberty in choices, liberation from constraints, freedom from outside intervention, freedom of expression, rights to gather, “do as you please” in your decision and actions…
Nothing of the sort.
The terms liberal and Liberalism have various jargons in politics, economy, and finance that are not related to the social wishes and wants.
Liberalism is a political jargon used by the colonial powers to throw smokescreen on outright economic embezzlement and coercion on developing States.
Liberalism has been coined to express forms of economic activities, mainly in exploiting former colonial States by denying them import taxes on products that are subsidized by the developing States, by facilitating financial extortion schemes on the weaker people, by the rights to ruin entire economic bases for the benefit of the richest oligarchies inside and outside State boundaries, by allowing monopolistic enterprises, cancelling out any forms of competitions in the developed States… Dismantling well-run and profitable State institutions, and Privatizing them (read financed by Banks)…
Liberalism is a financial jargon expressing the will that all financial activities must be linked through Banks, directly linked to one of the 8 families related to the Rothschild House (hoarding $300 trillion). It fits the saying “Little cloud, you may wander any which way you want, where you rain your proceeds will return to me” (Harun Rashid, Abbasid caliph)
Liberalism is not Libertine life-style. Saudi Arabia is far more into Libertine way of life than Lebanon within enclosed palaces and special closed clubs of emirs and royal family members…
Life in Lebanon slowly but surely resets the dial on anyone’s “normality” barometer. You adjust to power cuts at home, at work, and in public places. You grow used to headlines constantly predicting impending war.
You even learn to laugh these off, once near-crises have passed you by. You stop thinking twice about buying $12 cocktails while a refugee child stands outside the bar, selling Chiclets for one hundredth the price of your shoes. I’m not proud of this, but all of these things have become my new normal.
Michelle Ghoussoub posted this July 12, 2013 on NOW: The Myth of Lebanese Liberalism
(with minor editing to match my style of writing)
Perhaps out of self-preservation, there is one thing I have never come to terms with: my inferior status as a woman.
In Lebanon, we don’t have it all that bad. (At least in the Christian dominated urban areas)
We can drive, dress as we like, study what we wish and have successful and fulfilling careers. But these norms should not be hailed as some kind of liberal victory. Rather as minimal requirements for a State that at least tries to manage itself “democratically”.
These so-called modern practices did nothing to help Roula Yaacoub when she was brutally murdered, allegedly by a husband who beat her regularly, and who remains a free man.
It frankly doesn’t mean much that women can dress provocatively and order a drink when their husbands can also legally rape them. Nor should we feel empowered by our right to date freely (within our religions, of course) when any woman who has lost her virginity is treated as damaged goods, or worse.
No society whose laws reflect the belief that a woman’s moral compass lies somewhere between her legs can logistically advance in any capacity.
If anything, Lebanon’s toxic mix of sexual objectification and repression enhances the extent to which women are seen as lesser beings.
Expected to remain simultaneously desirable and chaste, all sexual agency disappears when women are pressured to change their appearance to please men without being entitled to any fulfillment of their own. The narrative of Lebanon’s plastic surgeries – from breast enhancements to reconstructive hymen procedures – has been so well documented that it borders on cliché. If anything, it reflects the extremity of a country that marinates in superficiality, as half the population lacks basic rights.
This by no means implies that the situation is much better across the region, or in some of the world’s most developed countries.
While the horrific mass sexual assaults on women in Egypt have rightfully been vilified by international media, rape culture and restrictive laws in regards to women’s health continue to surface in the United States.
Hell, a video of Dustin Hoffman having an on-camera breakdown as he discusses his epiphany that society has “brainwashed” him against talking to ugly women has recently gone viral on the web.
But when pacifist feminists are threatened at gunpoint, and a mother of five is brutally murdered by a husband who then retains custody of her children, Lebanon may just take the cake in terms of ironic gender politics. And that should never pass as “normal” for any of us.
Adonis Diaries 