I recently visited Lebanon and have previously been in Tunisia. Both countries are very much “front line states”. They live next door to bloodshed and chaos in Syria and Libya. Both have taken in more than 1 million refugees coming from the neighbouring country. They have done so without putting their guests into “camps”. This is a truly remarkable achievement.
Britain has responded generously in the case of Lebanon, perhaps because of the spotlight on war in Syria. More should be done by Europe and USA for Tunisia, because of high unemployment, especially among young people. This forces people to choose between despair at home, trying to go to Europe with a high risk of drowning, or going off to fight in Syria or Iraq.
Here is a link to the text of a thoughtful article from Chatham House.
http://www.chathamhouse.org/publication/britain-fairweather-friend-tunisia
“Competition” – bear with me for a minute, please.
A nation’s “right” to a”Competitive Advantage” can lead into covert and even outrightly bloody war. –
where is the NE Mediterranean Oilfield ‘going’ ?
Doesn’t the Oil coveted by Lebanon lie under the Sea, close to Crete, Greece, Turkey, maybe close enough to Israel for them to stake a claim, too.
Since there appears to be a dearth of “No Lose” Needs and Cooperative Problem-Solving [anywhere in the World, not just in the Middle East]
we are ‘stuck’ with both
a Fundamental-Equation-Faulty academic economics, ruling the roost worldwide and unavoidably into local micro-economics too;
and
a similarly faulty academic Human-Relationships model of “Competition”
that conflates and ‘spin-doctors’ the “best brains”
and inflates mindsets at all governance and Establishmentarian levels.
Human Management [Personnel Control] should have been helk=ping
but still languishes without being able to ‘first-resort’ the ‘Method III ‘win-win-win’ needs and problem-solving methodology;
consequently we are literally ‘trapped’ within 2000+ civilisational “towers of babble’, under conflicting “Rules of Law and Adversarisms”.
Which is keeping us unconsciously stuck in a 5-foldly ‘snapshottable’ but ‘inscrutable’ model scaled between
Peace-Building Integrative [at the ‘best’ end],
and
Destructively-Exploitative [at the ‘worst’].
Exploitative: includes torture, bodily force. coercion, assassination, and blackmail
[sweat-shops. slavery, forced-armsbearing, genocide, hard-labour].
Manipulative: may include covert coercion and blackmail
[“if you don’t spy for us your family might suffer”; “serve on more big company Boards and be paid an extra £million a year for just a few hours of attendance”; “vote for me at the next election and I’ll get you everything you ever dreamed of (in addition to this gift of my good-looking glossy portrait, and cordon-bleu sandwiches at my local party-meetings”;
Competitive: [this major middle is also a dominant middle-muddle, the ‘villainous lawyer-in-the-middle’ ‘milking the disputed cow whilst one farmer tugs at its horns whilst the other tugs at its tail’]
to be brief with instantiation, so as to let the reader do the filling-in of real-life Gorgon’s-head known occurrences and case-confusions:
Ludo [with a young child] is “Competition”
Genocide [by rogue-dictatorships or warlords] bears the same term “Competition”;
at the Ludo end it is, however, Constructive, Peacefully-Educative’ Healthily-Sociable;
whereas at the opposite genocide end, it is outrightly Destructive, Belligerently Suppressive, and Socially-Disruptive.
But this whole range of contrasting and too often conflicting “Competitivenesses”
is held to be politically-correct and to be known across the board as “Competitive People Management/Directive/Control”,
one sort of public-mindset indistinguishable from another, and sometimes likewise conflated by Law and Media.
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SUB_CONCLUSION so far: Se need to majorly begin establishing Method III ‘No-Lose- Needs-Recognition and Cooperative Problem-Solving,
throughout all nations
and eventually to be directed by the United Nations.
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The remaining two proposed categories of ‘People Control’ are
Nurturance: [in a positivising contrast to Marx’s political “From each according to ability; then to each according to need”
we arrive at a socio-ecolonomic [sic] Nurturance beginning with
“To each according to his/her need; then from each according to ability”]
Integration: [whereby as it were ‘rear-guards’ maintain the whole envelope and fascia of Civilisation in ‘balance’, harmony, and peace].
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Let me put it to you
that only under first-resort lead by Methodology III of ‘No-Lose’ Cooperative Problem Solving can the Middle East,
and ultimately the whole Human Civilised World,
begin moving forward
longest-term sustainworthily.