Consensus: the authoritarian alternative

If you believe the hype, Lebanon is heading fast towards another crisis. A round of civil violence is lurking around the corner, or perhaps a renewed confrontation with Israel. For the seasoned conspiracy theorists, even a double whammy is in the cards: an Israeli attack in parallel with civil strife according to some plan being hatched by the tireless forces of imperialism. We’ve been there before of course, at countless times. Typically, the Lebanese instinct manifests itself in two ways under those circumstances: firstly emphasise the need for consensus to ward off the external danger, and secondly seek the intervention of external agents to help us avoid an explosion.

In defence of elitism: the American University of Beirut

I was amused to read this philistine attack on the American University of Beirut by Jana Nakhal in Al-Akhbar newspaper, The AUB and Beirut: One Side Love. Nakhal, 'an urban-planning engineer' (sic), subjects the AUB to a shrill anti-colonial examination, uncovering it in the process as an 'accelerating factor in the popular acceptance of colonial ideas, tastes and concepts'. (Presumably things like engineering, medicine and architecture which colonialism forced us to accept).

Suspended democracy and Lebanon’s paralysis

During Saad Hariri’s recent visit to London, he was questioned by a journalist about the failure to ratify the national budget for the past five years. The ‘opposition’ press has dedicated significant coverage to the subject of the budget during the past few months, especially that its ratification is linked to the funding of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon. In any other country, not ratifying the budget for 5 years would be a serious problem. In Lebanon, it’s a minor transgression, as Hariri’s matter-of-fact response indicated. The budget issue is one expression of the perpetual crisis that the Lebanese political system has been going through for years, but it’s only a symptom of the willingness of the political elites to suspend democratic mechanisms whenever convenient.

Saad Hariri: The limits of politics

I met the Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri for the first time this week, when I went to a talk he gave at the London School of Economics. The talk itself was very general. Hariri discussed the Arab Peace Initiative which was first proposed at the Beirut Summit for Arab leaders in 2002, and explained the need for peace in the Middle East which he asserted that Lebanon’s internal stability depends on. He touched on the economic achievements of his and the preceding government and outlined how building on those achievements is vital to fulfilling the aspirations of the Lebanese people.

Hariri Pop Idol

By Joseph El-Khoury, re-published with permission from Arabdemocracy

Yesterday night I came face to face with Saad Hariri for the first time. I had shaken hands in a past life with his late father more than 12 years ago and was looking forward to draw a comparison between father and son. The Lebanese Embassy in London provided the backdrop to an evening reception where the banking industry was overrepresented. Having sampled the canapés and exchanged opinions on the resilience of the Lebanese economy, they laid down their glasses to clap in their hero as he appeared past a group of heavily botoxed ladies. A friend pointed out that Saad Hariri looked a defeated man. Perhaps I thought! I rather found that his tone, posture and demeanour still revealed a degree of discomfort in his role, despite the 5 years of experience as heir to his father’s political legacy.

The Prince and CABE 2.0: An even less accountable version

It's emerged that the The Prince of Wales’ architectural charity, the Prince’s Foundation , is contemplating plans to replace CABE as the body in charge of carrying out design reviews. Instead of getting rid of this meddling and intrusive process of policing architectural design, we're now facing the prospect of an even more stylistically rigid organisation heading it. The haphazard nature of the government's decisions leaves the space open for powerful organisations to lobby for this role instead of handing the power back to planning departments as I had argued before. Councils are democratically-elected and accountable bodies, unlike Prince Charles and his foundation which are medieval relics.

The chief executive of the Prince’s Foundation Hank Dittmar tried to deny accusations that his organisation would only favour traditional architecture: “To be credible, it would have to have democratic, independent judgement. We would have to have a panel that was balanced and not exclusively traditional architects.” I am not worried about such a prospect. What I am worried about is the un-democratic nature of review panels.

Architects could build neo-Gothic hotels in central London for all I care. It's time that we learned that the tyranny of taste is not the way to ensure good design. But what we should fight for is the right of architects to make judgments about what they think is right and wrong without subjecting them to an extra layer of scrutiny. We should also give planners with the confidence to champion good schemes and not undermine their authority through committees of the great and the good. This new authoritarian outfit should be resisted before it turns into a reality.

You can watch a debate I had with Hank Dittmar here. The session was hosted by the Urban Design Group and entitled 'Building Urban Communities - What is a City?' I think it's a good preview of the clash of ideas between the authoritarian and backward-looking decision makers and those of us who have an aspirational outlook.

In defence of factory farming

Jason Smith makes a very good argument in defence of factory farming in response to the Compassion in World Farming (CIWF) campaign against a proposed super dairy at Nocton in Lincolnshire, England. Jason takes on several of the misguided arguments that drive antagonism towards large-scale farming. His article is a good accompaniment to my article against the misplaced faith in urban farming Grow Your Own: Urban Farming: The future of food or Arcadia on the cheap?

I liked in particular Jason's debunking of 'natural' farming:

"People who argue that super dairies are unnatural should realise that there is nothing natural about farming at all. There is nothing natural about the landscape of the British countryside and there is nothing natural about humans drinking milk. Human beings had been around some 140,000 years before they gradually stopped being hunter-gatherers and took up cultivating crops and animals. The British countryside that we see today was largely created between 1760 and 1820 as part of the agricultural revolution that saw the end of the open-field system and the subsistence farming that accompanied it."

When will people learn that the romantic views of nature and of the past are not the way to solve our problems today?