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Lionel Messi or the Re-enchantment of the World

By Michel Hajji Georgiou

Published Sep 6, 2026 - 13:31

The Argentine player, who brought his international career to an end on August 31, 2026, was nothing less than a magician of the stadiums. His journey, made of wonders, falls and redemption, may tell us something about our undiminished need for enchantment in a world that nevertheless claims to have rid itself of it. Announced a few weeks after the 2026 World Cup final lost to Spain, Lionel Messi’s international retirement inevitably stirred an emotion for which it is difficult to find many equivalents in the recent history of football. One would probably have to go back to Maradona, or perhaps to Cruyff or Pelé, to recover that sense that, with the retirement of a player, something disappears that extends far beyond the sport itself, as though a certain way of inhabiting football, perhaps even of believing in it, were also coming to an end. Far from the glacis of reason Enough of the endless statistics and the unbearable, tedious and sterile quarrels over “who is the greatest of all time.” The author of these lines has never been a fanatic of the round ball, nor, for that matter, of vertical rankings or hierarchies of merit in general, and consequently appreciates the talent of each player with the same sense of wonder as an eleven-year-old child. Besides, this particularly contemporary obsession with numbers ruins all the pleasure of the spectacle. And with good reason: the approach that consists in adding up goals, assists, Ballons d’Or, Champions Leagues, Copa América titles, World Cups… can only be reductive. On another register, it is not entirely unrelated to German-American philosopher Eric Voegelin’s critique of the modern Gnostic temptation: that of a form of knowledge convinced that it can imprison reality within a system and abolish whatever resists it. Records are probably one indicator of Lionel Messi’s genius. Yet so many other great players who made stadiums and hearts tremble, without achieving half of what he did, nevertheless remain eternal in our memories. What made them truly singular lies elsewhere, far from the glacis of reason. Something else was at work around them. Something belonging to a certain profound sense of transcendence that understanding can never fully grasp. This has been true of Lionel Messi for more than twenty years, since the day when, under the gaze of the “icon” Diego Maradona, he made his first appearance, in June 2006, on the World Cup stage in the colors of the Albiceleste against Serbia and Montenegro. That ineffable element that constitutes Messi’s genius, as it does that of others, may indeed touch upon one of modernity’s strangest paradoxes: the persistence of magic in a world that has constructed itself precisely against it. The disenchanted world Max Weber used the expression “disenchantment of the world” to describe the slow process by which Western modernity gradually subjected existence to rationalization, calculation, predictability and causal explanation. The world was no longer supposed to be traversed by obscure powers, signs, supernatural interventions or invisible wills; it was, at least in principle, to become intelligible. Unfortunately, modern sport, and more broadly the modern world inherited from globalization, fits perfectly within this dynamic. Today’s football, and not football alone, is probably one of the most quantified objects imaginable. The slightest gesture is measured, and everything is carefully calculated and modeled. From mathematics to artificial intelligence, raw talent now depends more on science than on enchantment. What is human in its spontaneous, even wild, relationship with the invisible that springs from the heart is disappearing before our eyes, in favor of the squaring of the VAR circle. It is, in a sense, the murder of sport in the name of greater rigor and fairness… even though the euthanasia of this share of sublime spontaneity ultimately produces glaring injustices of its own. One need only revisit some of the controversial decisions of the 2026 World Cup to see it. Paradox of paradoxes, Lionel Messi was himself, at the outset, a child of this technical modernity, to which he certainly owes part of his exceptional career. His body, too small by expected standards, was corrected through hormone treatment. Identified very early, his talent was taken in hand by an institution that organized his training, nutrition, physical development and integration into an already globalized sporting machine. Nothing, in appearance, could have been further removed from the old heroic narrative. At first sight, the story seems closer to dystopias in the vein of Gattaca than to myths and messianic narratives. And yet the old narrative did indeed return, and with an almost embarrassing insistence. Since the beginning of his career, Lionel Messi has been placed under the microscope. But the more people labored to explain and demystify him, the less they succeeded in entirely dissipating the impression produced by some of his gestures. The man simply cannot be circumscribed and reduced to an accumulation of data. At an age when most great players retreat into the shadows, he continues to surprise. To astonish, even, by bringing to sport that element of the senseless which escapes the quasi-robotic hypersystematization of the world. It is probably there that one must seek this elsewhere that characterizes Messi. In the survival of magic at a time when even the spaces that once allowed the positive expression of a humanity made of flesh and blood are gradually being “disciplined” by the hypnotic attraction of a new puritanical Gnosis in the name of modernity. The Messiah made by the machine Although he emerged, in a sense, from the machinery of the Matrix , Lionel Messi constitutes in himself a challenge to this ready-to-wear model. A kind of alter ego of Neo from The Matrix , thrown into a simulation governed by parameters that claim to calculate everything. The Argentine’s destiny gradually took on, almost despite himself, the form of a messianic narrative. The pun on his name would be too easy had it not been ceaselessly revived by his own story: that of the fragile child whose body seemed intent on denying him the fulfillment to which his talent destined him. Then that of exile at a very young age to Barcelona, adoption by a foreign city, an almost unreal ascent, worldwide recognition, followed by this strange difficulty in being recognized by his own… For a long time, Argentina maintained a relationship of hainamoration with its prodigal child. His results, his talent, his brilliance mattered little… he still had to answer one merciless question: why wasn’t he Maradona? The comparison was admittedly inevitable, but it was also profoundly unfair. Everything separated the two men in their way of being in the world. Maradona carried Argentina with everything in it that was passionate, contradictory, excessive and theatrical. He spoke, provoked, fought, fell, returned, mingled football with his private life, his anger, his political commitments… all the way to his own destruction. His very body seemed to become one of the places where the contradictions of his country were played out. Maradona was the very incarnation of what the world expected from football: a rebellious soul, sometimes pushing the game to the point of immorality, but within a kind of footballing gigantomachy. Maradona was epic. And, above all, he had placed his country at the summit of world football in 1986. Messi offered none of that. He was silent, at times almost absent from the story others were constructing around him, an absence long interpreted as a flaw. Almost erased, devoid of personality. That, moreover, was what the two giants Maradona and Pelé reproached him for: a lack of leadership, being too smooth. A kind of miracle test-tube baby of the stadiums. The boy from Rosario was also criticized for not singing the anthem loudly enough, for not being Argentine enough, for having been “manufactured” by Barcelona, and then, naturally, for failing to win with the national team what he won almost continuously with his club. The unfulfilled prophecy The dramatic loss to Germany in the 2014 World Cup final, followed by the Copa América finals of 2015 and 2016, had gradually transformed that suspicion into an accusation. When he missed his penalty against Chile in 2016 and subsequently announced that he was leaving the national team, he was nevertheless already one of the greatest players in football history. Yet his story remained strangely unfinished. The sense of incompletion had little to do with his honors. It concerned instead that quasi-archaic necessity continually imposed upon modern heroes: to bring their initiatory journey to completion. In Argentina’s colors, Messi shone, then fell heavily. But he did not rise again. He did not fulfill the prophecy. And, in the eyes of his people, this reinforced the sense of hainamoration: a fallen god remains a god, after all. But with the added burden of what his worshippers regard as an intolerable substratum of humanity and, therefore, something perfectly detestable: his flaws, his weaknesses. Argentines loved Maradona despite his spectacular downfall and his fallible humanity. But that was because he had “earned” the right to such a downfall, because it had somehow become acceptable after Mexico 1986. Messi, by contrast, did not yet have the right to fall, because he had not yet reached the summit. No, the prophecy had not been fulfilled. It was even becoming a caricature. So Messi returned. But he still had to wait for his redemption. It took the 2021 Copa América at the Maracanã for this relationship of suspicion, expectation and disappointment with his public and his people truly to begin changing. And above all it took the 2022 World Cup for the story to acquire that almost excessively perfect form that no one would have dared write without appearing to indulge in a screenwriter’s contrivance. Strangely, Maradona had died in 2020. It was as though a kind of oppressive national curse had been lifted. At the same time, the Argentine people needed a substitute father figure, and the pressure was thereby only redoubled. But perhaps mixed with a little tenderness this time? What happened in Qatar in 2022 is all the more interesting because Messi himself appeared slightly different. He protested more, answered provocations, lost his temper, spoke with a violence of which few had thought him capable, and even let slip that now famous “¿Qué mirás, bobo?” at the Dutch, to Argentina’s amusement. Buenos Aires finally discovered, belatedly, what it had always expected from him. A little Maradona in a great deal of Messi. But Messi did not become Maradona. And perhaps that was precisely where the true reconciliation occurred: Argentina stopped asking him to be. From 2022 onward, Messi no longer needed to embody another model of national genius. For his country too, he could finally become what he had already been everywhere else: Messi. Simply. The final act of the prophecy Granted, the triumph of 2022 could have constituted a perfect ending. But, as with Maradona, the final act of heroic prophecy is the fall. No one really expected anything extraordinary from Messi anymore in 2026. At 39, he was widely regarded as one of the “tired heroes.” The fall from the Capitol had come with the bitter episode of his departure from FC Barcelona and his misadventure at PSG. He was now playing only in the American league, in Miami’s colors… on the periphery of the footballing world, in the distant lands of soccer . And the new generation was already there, ready to send its ancestors off to Bicêtre. Yet this 2026 World Cup, which seemed destined to be nothing more than an epilogue, turned into one last sensational blaze of glory. Argentina reached the final once again, with Messi, at 39, restored as its “historic leader” and its recourse in decisive moments, achieving something not unlike what Roberto Baggio had done for Italy in 1994, at… 27: a perpetual deus ex machina . Baggio failed at the gates of triumph against Brazil after practically carrying Italy all the way to Pasadena. His penalty, sent over the crossbar, would leave behind one of the cruelest images in World Cup history: a man standing motionless, head bowed, hands on his hips, while Brazil celebrated its victory. The man who had “died standing.” The Italian imp never knew apotheosis. Yet this symbolic death, far from erasing his tournament, eventually became part of his legend. History was kinder to Messi, despite a campaign of hatred directed at him, mixed with accusations of cheating and favoritism, against a backdrop of controversial refereeing decisions and acts of unsporting conduct by his team, just as it had once been with Maradona. Kinder still, in fact. A final in a sixth World Cup on the verge of retirement, capped by an outstanding individual performance? That is precisely where the magic of the Messi phenomenon lies, and where it defies reason and its avalanche of statistics. Genius cannot be imprisoned within a sum of parameters and variables. Even optimal physical condition cannot by itself explain what the entire world witnessed. And what does it matter if his story reminds us that the hero, however mythical, cannot abolish the sinister influence of Saturn. The re-enchantment of the world For beyond the prophecy fulfilled, from ascent to fall, with its share of happiness and misfortune, the Argentine offered the world one final lap that belongs to art, if not to a form of Homeric poetry. With Lionel Messi’s withdrawal from the international stage, a little of the world’s magic disappears… until another providential hero returns to enchant the stadiums. For more than twenty years, Messi embodied the coexistence of two worlds we had thought incompatible: that of the extreme rationalization of modern sport and that, far older, of the hero, the sign, expectation and enchantment. When Messi leaves, something of this contradiction suddenly becomes visible. Other prodigies have already emerged, but perhaps, at the very moment when one of its last great representatives leaves the stage, we discover just how much we continue to need transcendence. The modern world has therefore probably not abolished enchantment. It has merely displaced it. For ninety minutes at a time, this man called Lionel Messi, who embodied it on football pitches, now leaves after having accomplished everything. And even more.

Analyze

Have We Become Stupider?

Or Are We Experiencing a Transformation in the Structure of Knowledge?

By Mona Fayad - Published Sep 5, 2026 - 20:01

The question “Has the world become stupider?” frequently returns in contemporary debates about digital media, search engines, and social networks. On the surface, it seems simple. Yet behind it lies a deeper issue concerning the very nature of knowledge: how it is produced, how it is transmitted, and how it is consumed. Perhaps “Have we become stupider?” is not the most accurate question. A better one might be: Is knowledge still being transmitted in a way that allows it to be understood and made productive? Do most readers still go back to the original texts? Or do they turn instead to summaries and to what is said about those texts through material circulating among readers? One key to understanding this phenomenon lies in the work of British psychologist Frederic Bartlett, who conducted a series of experiments in the 1930s on what he called “serial reproduction.” In these experiments, one person would be asked to hear a story and then retell it to someone else, who would in turn retell it to a third person, and so on. The results were striking: with each new transmission, the story was not conveyed as it had originally been told, but was reformulated. Some details were omitted, others were exaggerated, and still others were replaced by elements that better suited the recipient’s background, experience, and culture. By the time the chain had passed through enough people, the original story had become something entirely different. This simple model reveals a fundamental truth: memory is not a neutral container, but a mechanism of reconstruction. When knowledge passes through multiple intermediaries, it is not “preserved” but “reproduced.” Here we begin to see the resemblance to our contemporary world, and with it the fear that we may be becoming stupider. In the age of digital media, knowledge no longer travels through oral transmission, but through chains of mediation: an article is summarized, then quoted, then reposted as a short post, before being further reduced to a sentence or a headline. In this context, we might borrow a metaphor that appeared in a journalistic text: a library whose books are gradually replaced by summaries, then by summaries of summaries, until the reader is left facing layer upon layer of reduction. We might call this the “raccoon chain”: the raccoon does not read the original, but rummages through what remains of it. It is worth clarifying that the choice of the “raccoon” is not arbitrary. The metaphor symbolically condenses a cognitive condition that is becoming increasingly entrenched. This animal, which lives on the fringes of cities and rummages through garbage bins, does not produce its own food but feeds on the leftovers of what others have produced. Despite its practical intelligence and its ability to pry things apart, pick through them, and seize what is useful, it does not understand what lies before it. It treats things simply as material available for immediate use. This is what knowledge begins to look like in an age of serial reduction: texts are shortened, then shortened again, until all that remains are scraps of meaning, rearranged and circulated without any genuine connection to their source. At that point, we have not merely moved away from the original. We have entered a new phase in the production of information or knowledge, in which the cognitive actor is no longer a reader or a thinker, but a collector of fragments of meaning who redistributes them in forms designed for rapid consumption. “Raccoon culture,” then, is not merely a description of superficiality. It is an accurate description of the degradation of the knowledge chain itself: from creation to summary, from understanding to formal processing, from ideas to something resembling only their faded trace. Yet this phenomenon cannot be understood apart from the technological structure that governs it. Here Marshall McLuhan becomes relevant, with his famous formulation: “The medium is the message.” The problem lies not only in content, but also in the form through which that content is transmitted. Contemporary digital media do not simply convey information. They reshape it according to the logic of speed, condensation, and fragmentation. Long texts become unsuitable for consumption, while an idea becomes acceptable only if it can be compressed into a few shareable lines. This transformation produces a striking paradox: we live in a time when access to knowledge is no longer difficult. It is excessively easy. And with that excessive ease comes what might be called a “cognitive illusion”: reading a brief passage or a quick summary can be enough to make a person feel that they have grasped an idea. Yet this feeling of possession is not necessarily accompanied by deep understanding, or by the ability to reconstruct or critique that knowledge. This is where we encounter what might be called the “semi-educated”: people who possess the signs of knowledge but not its structure, its vocabulary but not its internal logic. The problem becomes even more complex when viewed through the lens of attention. Instead of remaining in a state of sustained concentration, as in traditional reading or prolonged reflection, the mind now exists under continuous informational bombardment: notifications, clips, headlines, and successive waves of content. This does not merely fragment attention. It reshapes it according to a logic of constant jumping between short units of meaning, rather than the gradual and cumulative construction of an idea. I am reminded here of a joke that we used to tell and that was widely circulated during the days of popular demonstrations. It vividly illustrates the process of reduction and reshaping of content. After the occupation of Palestine, many popular demonstrations took to the streets chanting, “Down with the Balfour Declaration!” The joke was that by the end of the demonstration, the slogan had become, in Arabic, “Let one fall from above,” a completely different phrase that retained something of the original slogan’s rhythm and sound. This image may help bring us closer to what happens in everyday language when knowledge is transformed into short messages that are collectively repeated. A demonstration begins with a precise political slogan. Through repetition, collective immersion, and sonic rhythm, it gradually turns into a completely different formula. The new version may preserve the rhythm and emotional charge of the original, while losing its meaning and original significance. What remains is no longer the meaning, but the emotional energy of the phrase. Here, in another form, we encounter what Bartlett observed: what matters is not merely what was said, but how it was retold and how it was reinterpreted within a changing social context. If we bring these strands together, we might say that what we are experiencing today is not so much a “collapse of intelligence” as a transformation in the conditions under which intelligence operates. The human mind has not changed radically, but the environment in which it functions has changed profoundly: from an environment that allowed slow accumulation to one that imposes the rapid and fragmented reproduction of knowledge. This transformation creates a permanent tension between two kinds of thinking: reflective thought, which requires time, and rapid thought, which demands an immediate response. Seen in this light, the question “Have we become stupider?” is partly misleading. It may be more accurate to say that we are increasingly exposed to conditions that make deep thinking less stable, or less possible, and knowledge more vulnerable to fragmentation and recycling. As for stupidity, if the term can be used, it may not be a quality of the mind at all, but rather a side effect and a characteristic of the cultural structure that has emerged. It is a technology that reshapes our relationship with the world. Thus, rather than seeing this as a decline in human capacities, we might understand it as a transformation in the “knowledge environment”: an environment in which it has become easy to know something, but harder to truly understand it in depth.

Opinion

Portents of an Israeli-Turkish Clash in Syria

By Youssef Mouawad - Published Sep 5, 2026 - 13:25

In 2010, Israel violently intercepted the Mavi Marmara, a Turkish ship chartered by a humanitarian NGO to bring aid to the Gaza Strip, which was under Israeli blockade at the time. This was the last straw, and the incident brought the simmering hostility between Erdogan's government and the Jewish state out into the open. (AFP)

The war has not yet ceased in our south, and already it threatens to break out among our neighbors. In other words, we live on borrowed time, lurching from one conflict to the next. And for good reason! The bombing of a Syrian base very nearly escalated into an all-out clash between Ankara and Tel Aviv. That was on August 18, and Benjamin Netanyahu didn't mince his words: his country would not tolerate a Turkish military foothold that could spread into southern Syria. The warning was all the more forceful given that eight strikes had targeted the Abu al-Dhuhur air base, just 70 kilometers from the Turkish border. It's worth recalling, too, that since the fall of Bashar al-Assad in December 2024, Erdogan has become the chief mentor of the new Syria under Ahmed al-Sharaa, helping rebuild its armed forces and turning it into a strategic partner. This is no longer Hafez al-Assad's Syria Was it this renewed tension between Ankara and Tel Aviv that prompted a meeting between Syria's top diplomat, Assaad Chaibani, and Mossad chief Roman Gofman, in Jordan on August 23? Yet this quiet parley did not spark outrage across the Arab world the way Anwar al-Sadat's surprise visit to Israel did in 1977. A taboo was officially broken—and indeed, who would have imagined such talks taking place under the Baathist regime? Israel might have been expected to welcome this, but contrary to expectations, it halted neither its airstrikes nor its territorial incursions, as seen on August 27 in Quneitra. The fact is, things have changed. Under Hafez al-Assad, Syria was a regional power that, while not exactly formidable, was feared by its immediate neighbors, Arab or otherwise. No one wanted to pick a fight with it, which allowed it to pursue, within certain limits, an assertive foreign policy that often bordered on provocation. As a result, thanks to the autonomy it exercised and the room to maneuver it granted itself, Syria had become, at least geographically, a buffer zone between an "Erdoganist" Turkey flaunting its unabashed brand of Islam on one side, and Israel, a state Jewish to its core, on the other. But now, in a country worn down by Baathist mismanagement and ravaged by years of civil war, Turkey has begun staking its claims—and will inevitably find itself face to face with an Israel that occupies part of Syrian territory. What can we expect? Given the outsized egos of both Netanyahu and Erdogan, and assuming both leaders remain in power, we should brace for an epic showdown across Syrian, Lebanese, Jordanian, or even other territories. This will be a fight of feints and dodges, of underhanded tactics as well as head-on attacks, close combat, and rising tensions right up to the breaking point. And this despite a September 2025 report from the Congressional Research Service concluding that direct confrontation between Turkey and Israel remains unlikely, precisely because both states are well aware of the cost such a war would entail. Still, in the realm of conflict studies, leaders and other elites don't always act rationally! All the more so since, in the eyes of Israeli observers, the slogan now popular in Anatolia—"Make Turkey great again"—hardly reassures the Zionist state. Washington will find it increasingly difficult to contain or keep apart two adversaries already gearing up for battle. Turkey, the new Iran? Yes, that's one hypothesis, but only in a face-off with Israel, since Syria has overnight become a zone where 'two security perimeters overlap' — the Turkish and the Israeli, the Muslim and the Jewish. And it can't be ruled out that Shiite militancy, that mobilizer of "proxies," might end up allying itself, even if only temporarily, with a 'Muslim Brotherhood version' of political Islam championed by Ankara! So we would have, against all odds, a Hezbollah backed by its former enemy, Ahmad al-Sharaa, an Islamist who emerged from Jabhat al-Nusra and Hayat Tahrir al-Sham! Against a common adversary, a reversal of alliances is always legitimate and opportune. But this would only be a tactical alliance, dictated by the exigencies of the moment, one that couldn't presume anything about the future. With Arab nationalism now out of the picture, Turkey won't settle for economically capturing the Syrian market of 25 million consumers: it will want to wield political influence in Damascus, and to that end will deploy its military and security apparatus. Since the shaky power of the Syrian president can't fulfill certain sovereign functions or oversee the various branches of the state, it will inevitably turn to the expertise of its northern neighbor. Does this mean Turkey will get sucked into the spiral of 'announced belligerence'? Everything points that way, and we can already see the early signs of a spiral reminiscent of the US involvement in Vietnam under Lyndon Johnson. Indeed, if the Syrian state intends to rebuild itself, it will first need an army capable of quelling the centrifugal tendencies of the Alawites, the Druze, and other factions calling for the country's breakup. And it's up to Ankara to provide that and to bolster the central authority based in Damascus. But Israel, which has gotten into bad habits in Syria and intends to keep its freedom of aerial action there, cannot tolerate an army built along NATO lines that could serve as a proxy for a neo-Ottoman venture. And Lebanon, from primary stage to secondary stage? A new stage is now set for a new script that will define new rules of the game! What will become of Hezbollah, caught in a trap? Well, in that scenario, it could benefit, even if only partly, from Damascus's logistical support — support it has sorely lacked since the fall of Bashar al-Assad. And perhaps, through a shift in the tectonic plates, Lebanon would move from being the initial stage to being merely a secondary stage of a regional conflict. But frankly, that would do us a lot of good!

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Leo XIV… Lebanon and the Third Independence!

Ziad Al-Sayegh

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Published

Pope Leo XIV’s visit to Lebanon is not an ordinary event, it is a historic moment with exceptional meaning. In this land of message, and across the region and the world, major confrontations converge: peace in the face of war, dialogue in the face of violence, moderation in the face of fanaticism, diversity in the face of uniformity, humanization in the face of populism, the constitution in the face of martial rule, the law in the face of chaos, citizenship in the face of Minoritism and Majoritism, the state in the face of non-statehood, governance in the face of corruption. Lebanon and the free world are experiencing these struggles at a time when the country holds a rare opportunity to prove its ability to rise again. For five decades, the Holy See has never lost hope in Lebanon as a “model state” despite political, economic, and sovereign collapses. A cardinal once said: “You believe historical Lebanon is dying, but its resurrection will come at the hands of its elite, residents and expatriates.” It was a clear sign that the real wager remains on the Lebanese themselves. The late Pope Francis confronted this reality with spiritual and political clarity. He embraced the Lebanese flag and mobilized Vatican diplomacy to defend Lebanon’s civilizational identity, yet he declined to visit Beirut at that time, sending a message without ambiguity: no to an alliance of minorities, no to non-statehood, no to corruption, no to the Church’s alignment with political power, no to transforming Lebanon into a platform for conflict. It was an affirmation that the Lebanese state was eroding and that Lebanon’s civilizational formula was under threat. Pope Leo XIV now comes bearing a unifying title: peace. Peace here is not only the opposite of war, but the opposite of moral collapse, national abdication, and complicity in destroying the state. It is an act of resistance against illicit arms, against alliances that fabricate imagined minorities, against fanaticisms that undermine the constitution, paralyze institutions, and threaten coexistence. He comes to affirm that Lebanon deserves life, deserves resurrection, and deserves a state that reflects its message. He comes to reawaken the will of an exhausted people and to remind a hesitant elite that the world still sees in Lebanon a space of freedom and responsibility. His choice of Lebanon as his first stop after Turkey is no coincidence, it is a message that Lebanon’s collapse strikes the core of pluralism and coexistence in the entire East and the wider world. His message to the Lebanese is clear: “Either you save your state, or you lose your mission.” There is no room for half a state or half a sovereignty, no mixing of good governance with political manipulation, no surrender to the blackmail of arms under the pretext of civil peace. True peace rests on citizenship, on the constitution, and on international legitimacy. His message to the world is equally clear: “Saving Lebanon is defending the human being,” defending threatened pluralism, and preserving a bridge between East and West. Peace becomes a liberation project: freeing the human being from fear, the state from subordination, politics from corruption, and Lebanese identity from distortion. His visit becomes a chance to write a new chapter, the third independence: the independence of the state from destroying the sovereignty, the independence of truth from falsification, the independence of the human being from systems that crush the common good.

Dior, Fashion's Madeleine de Proust

Yasmina Comair

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Published

At the heart of the City of Light, amidst archives, sculptures, bolts of fabric and thimbles, there vibrates a house where the fragrance of May roses seizes the olfactory memory of its visitors. A house where past and present hold dialogue. Since the fertile shadow cast by John Galliano and the arrival of Jonathan Anderson, a new reading of the Dior legacy seems to be emerging: more conceptual, more artistic, yet profoundly faithful to the spirit of the house founded in 1946. A Study in Form It was at the Musée Rodin, that marvel of Auguste's sculptures, that this new chapter revealed itself. Following the haute couture show during the last week of January 2026, the installation Grammaire des Formes opened to the public beneath the ephemeral marquee where the collection had first been presented to the world. Fifteen silhouettes by Anderson held conversation there with nine historic creations by Monsieur Dior and several ceramics by Kenyan sculptor Magdalene Odundo. The setting was almost radical. The floor, covered in silver aged-lamé herringbone parquet, murmured to a ceiling drowning in pink cyclamens. This jewel box embraced the dresses as much as the curves of Odundo's creations. Hand-fashioned, these works develop a language of tensions inspired by the human body and ancestral pottery traditions. In Anderson's collection, these forms find an unmistakable echo: cinched waists, sculpted volumes, almost architectural silhouettes. Couture becomes material here, a conversation between garment and sculpture. Groups of children, seated on the floor with pencils in hand, were drawing and colouring the models in their notebooks. A simple, silent moment that recalled that couture is, above all, a way of seeing that takes form. This first collection by Anderson for Dior does not seek the spectacular. It functions rather as a study. Galliano, the Fertile Shadow One cannot approach this moment without evoking John Galliano. Fashion's enfant terrible — the one whose latest provocation consigned him to a purgatory to purge his demons. Before Anderson, it was Galliano who had truly transformed Dior. In the 1990s and 2000s, he had turned the venerable house into theatre: spectacular shows, historical references, flamboyant silhouettes. Anderson makes no attempt to reproduce that dramaturgy. But he seems to have retained its essential lesson: the idea that Dior must remain a place of experimentation. Where Galliano worked with narrative and costume, Anderson explores archives and form. Another way of being radical, but with the same awareness of heritage. Moreover, the cyclamens on the ceiling are the extension of the tiny bouquet offered by the master to the pupil, when the latter invited the former — in a private preview — to discover the collection of the one who truly succeeded him. A flower as disarming as a pivot, as beautiful as a tribute. The Bar Jacket, Centre of Gravity At the heart of this reflection remains a founding piece: the Bar jacket. Created in 1947 to accompany the New Look, it remains the matrix of the entire house: cinched waist, sculpted hips, architectural silhouette. In Anderson's hands, it appears sometimes intact, sometimes displaced or decomposed, shortened or elongated, like a sculpture examined from several angles. It is the sign that a house may evolve without disowning its origins. The demonstration continued at the most recent ready-to-wear show at the Jardin des Tuileries in Paris, before a pond scattered with water lilies… The revisited classics were acclaimed for their balance between historical precision and contemporary breath; a moment when the house seemed to fully assume this tension between archives and avant-garde. On Literature and Humanism Dior has long maintained a discreet dialogue with culture. One finds it today in the large-format Dior Book Tote bags, which have become almost literary objects. Some bear the titles of great classics printed on their canvas. From Les Fleurs du Mal to Madame Bovary , from Les Liaisons dangereuses to Dracula , these accessories now resemble books one would carry over the shoulder, as though couture itself were becoming a library. That said, the history of Dior is not merely aesthetic, nor intellectual. During the Occupation, Christian Dior continued his work as a couturier in Paris while his sister Catherine Dior was engaged in the Resistance. Arrested and deported to the Ravensbrück concentration camp, she would return after the war… the perfume Miss Dior is dedicated to her. This tension between shadow and light is part of the house's memory. It explains why Dior has never been merely a brand, but a human story. A House That Redefines Itself Dior has passed through several periods. There was the radicality of the New Look, the successive visions of artistic directors, then years in which the house's image seemed to be searching for itself. The logos, once discreet, grew immense before finding a more subtle form. Today, under the thoughtful impetus of Delphine Arnault, the house seems to want to recover the balance between heritage and invention. The arrival of Jonathan Anderson fits clearly within this direction. A Living Memory To touch a leather, to observe and wear a cut, to inhale a refined perfume or even to gently open a Lady Dior bag is sometimes enough to understand the DNA of this house. Dior is not merely a silhouette, not merely an aesthetic. It is a creative memory in motion, a couture born under a fortunate star — for it never forgets where it comes from; yet continues to explore what it might become: fashion's madeleine de Proust, in perpetual reinvention.

Breaking News: The War Has Begun!

Zeina Ziadeh

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Nothing new in the phrase. But this time its weight is different — the speed of its rhythm tears through me. We all call each other to make sure. The replies come in like a daily ritual: We're fine, you? Fine! As if the word were a spell we shelter behind. My mother. Fine. My older brother and his family. Fine. My younger brother, at his Gulf posting. Fine. My sister and her family, here. Fine. Those my heart holds and those I love. Fine. Fine! We write it, we repeat it until it goes numb. My relatives who came from France to spend a week in the land of Cedars — among them some we were meeting for the first time, the children especially — are going back in a few hours. The suitcases are at the door. Two children ask: Aren't we going to the airport? A mother trying to smile so her panic doesn't cross onto the faces of the little ones. Fathers pretending to hold. The three o'clock flight — cancelled. The door to a direct return — shut. I saw in their eyes that worry we, the children of this earth, have learned: a worry that doesn't scream. That calculates. We gather, we decide fast — because time in crises does not grant the luxury of hesitation. After cascading calls and a search through whatever options remain, seats are found out of Beirut at nine-thirty at night to Istanbul, then Belgium, then Lille. Ten hours of travel and transit through several airports seemed better than staying in a city whose shores and sky the flames of the region were closing in on. Beirut, which I had been walking only days ago like a tourist, searching its stones for some trace of the past, now seemed to be standing on tiptoe. The city that knows how to fall and rise was steadying its breath, once more. I understood: safety is not something you own. Only something you borrow. Their plane took off. They landed in Istanbul. A short message: we're fine. A photo — they're on the floor, or in airport lounge chairs. The children are smiling despite the exhaustion. Then the road to Lille. I breathe. Not for long. The breaking news keeps coming. I read, I don't believe it, I read again: the region is burning. Arab capitals are being bombed. My people are there — my mother, my brothers, half my family. I pick up my phone. I hesitate. I don't want to pass on what's shaking inside me. And I return to the same question, the family ritual: Are you fine? But what kind of fine is measured by the number of airports crossed in peace? And what kind of reassurance needs confirming every few hours? Fine — because the plane took off and landed. Fine — because the sky stayed open before the shells came and the ground shook. Fine — because the danger stayed a possibility. For a few more minutes. I think of that moment in the square, hearing myself explain Beirut to my relatives. I didn't know that a few days later I'd be living a new lesson in how fragile geography is. The city whose history I told in my French laced with English comes back to remind me: its chapters are written as we walk through them. Are we really fine? Fine how? What country is this? What region? What peace? What life? We are a generation that tracks flight patterns and the maps of zones about to be bombed and the trajectories of missiles — the way others track the weather. We have mastered the art of backup plans before daring to dream of a plan. We live on chronic exhaustion. We carry a strange, wordless capacity for waiting. We love, we shake, and we try to survive each day — from everything. That evening the region began to burn… And at the dawn of Monday, Lebanon burned. And I — I am still holding on to a small phrase: Let me see your faces. Fine.

An Israeli commando in Nabi Chit; Pezeshkian 'apologizes' to Arab countries!

Taline Becharraoui

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The night of Friday, March 6 to Saturday, March 7, was marked by an Israeli helicopter-borne intrusion into a village in the Beqaa Valley, the apparent objective of which was to search for the remains of Ron Arad, an Israeli airman who disappeared in 1986 after his plane was shot down. The inhabitants of several Lebanese regions, notably Mount Lebanon, heard the incessant noise of Israeli low-altitude aviation throughout the night from Friday to Saturday. The operation itself took place in a village in Baalbeck in the northern Beqaa, Nabi Chit, which was the scene of a commando unit's operation. In the middle of the night, the presence of soldiers on the ground attracted the attention of Hezbollah members and local residents. A confrontation therefore took place, resulting in a particularly heavy toll on the Lebanese side, with no less than 41 dead and as many injured (according to the Lebanese Ministry of Health) and a scene of total devastation in the village, as shown by videos circulated on Saturday morning. Indeed, to evacuate its soldiers, Israeli aviation heavily bombed the locality. While Hezbollah reported this confrontation in one of its communiqués, claiming to have «repelled» an incursion, the explanation came from the Israeli army a little later: it seems that information provided by a Hezbollah member held prisoner by Tel Aviv put the Israelis on the trail of clues regarding the fate of the pilot who disappeared in Lebanon in 1986, Ron Arad. According to a message from the Arabic-speaking spokesperson for the Israeli army, Avichay Adraee, Ron Arad's remains were not found on the site. Mr. Adraee specified that the operation did not result in any casualties among the military personnel involved. Is the search for the remains of a man missing for 40 years, however important it may be, sufficient to explain this dangerous operation, or could there be a more rational justification that has not yet been revealed? The most serious aspect of the matter is the involvement of the Lebanese army in the incident, as three of its soldiers are among the dead. The army specified in a communiqué that its patrols had spotted unusual movement of Israeli helicopters even as violent bombings continued in the surrounding villages. However, according to the text, the exchanges of fire mainly took place with the «inhabitants» of the region. Blue Helmets injured The other important news of the last 24 hours is the targeting of a UNIFIL position on the Lebanese-Israeli border, which resulted in injuries among Ghanaian peacekeepers. The UN reacted strongly, warning against overflows in South Lebanon. Furthermore, Israeli bombings, preceded – or not – by warnings on social media, continue almost incessantly on the southern suburbs of Beirut, and on the regions of South Lebanon and the Beqaa Valley. And evacuation orders continue on both sides: the latest launched by the Israelis once again concerned the entire area south of the Litani, and particularly that of Tyre. The city was later targeted by a devastating bombardment. Hezbollah retaliated by calling on residents of the Nahariya and Kiryat Shmona settlements (a few kilometers from the border with Lebanon) to evacuate the area. The launching of rockets, missiles, or drones by Hezbollah has not ceased, attracting increasingly violent reprisals on Lebanese regions. This is despite the Lebanese government's decisions to consider these activities «illegal»: in this regard, sources from Justice Minister Adel Nassar indicate that he is «studying» the possibility of initiating legal proceedings against Hezbollah's Secretary General Naim Qassem. To be continued. As he does almost daily, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz issued threats against Lebanon, this time directly naming the Lebanese government and urging it to disarm Hezbollah «not to pay a very heavy price.» For her part, the UN representative in Lebanon, Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert, called for direct talks between Lebanon and Israel, at a time when the sound of boots far outweighs the voices of diplomacy. A discourse and its opposite From Iran's side, the most significant event in recent hours was the almost surreal speech by Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, in which he «apologized» to neighboring countries for the strikes against their territory. He also announced a «suspension» of these strikes, «unless an attack is launched from these countries.» As if to contradict his statements, Iranian attacks against Gulf countries have been particularly virulent in recent hours. Notably, missiles directly targeted Dubai airport, leading to the suspension of flights to and from that airport. No fewer than ten drones were also launched towards Qatar almost simultaneously. And Bahrain says it intercepted dozens of missiles and drones. The Revolutionary Guard, for their part, claimed responsibility for attacks against Iraqi Kurdistan. On this front, it should be noted that American and Israeli aviation bombed positions of the mullahs' regime on the Iraqi-Iranian border on Saturday. This bombing comes as there is increasing talk of a ground offensive, towards Iran, by Iranian Kurdish opponents stationed in Iraq. In any case, President Pezeshkian's «apologies» to the Gulf countries and his commitment that missile launches against these countries would not recur were contradicted by new missile launches on Saturday morning against Qatar, Bahrain, and Dubai, where the airport was targeted, temporarily interrupting air traffic. Is the apparent contradiction between Pezeshkian's statements and the reality on the ground a tactic or an indication of a real schism beginning to appear within the regime, already severely shaken by the American-Israeli offensive? Nevertheless, Iran continues to be violently pounded for the eighth consecutive day. Israel announced that it had carried out an offensive with 80 fighter jets that disabled various airports. And US President Donald Trump, as if responding to the Iranian president who assured that his country «would never surrender,» threatened Iran with an intensification of strikes, promising for Saturday «a very harsh strike» on «areas and groups never before targeted.» Hot hours ahead.

How Did We Get Here?

Jawad Pakradouni

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Yet another return to war, a war that is still not ours, one to avenge the death of a theocratic dictator. It is said that in times of misfortune, solidarity is in order, and that we should only settle our scores afterwards. This is, moreover, what moralistic voices advocated in 2023-2024. No! Today more than ever, we must once and for all denounce the causes of our misfortunes. Our misfortunes are obviously due to Hezbollah, but also to political complacency, to the acquiescence to a state of affairs, from all parties. Complacency to avoid 'civil war'; acquiescence which translates into unnatural alliances, for the sharing of positions or to preserve confessional quotas. Political hypocrisy! That is the real source of the problem. This hypocrisy was reflected in the government's latest decision: 'Hezbollah's military and security actions are illegitimate'. It is astounding to (still) make a distinction between the military and political branches of this militia, especially since the two are combined: the leader of the parliamentary group is himself the number 2 of this paramilitary organization. What led us to disaster is the weakness of a political system that preferred accommodation to truth. In November 2024, we were told that stability had to be preserved, not to provoke the sensitivity of the losing side, not to blame them for anything, the fault being solely that of the 'oppressor enemy' who only dreams of establishing Greater Israel... We were also told that criticizing Hezbollah amounted to dividing the Lebanese, as if the division did not come precisely from the existence of an armed organization that alone decides on war and peace. As if national unity could exist when some citizens live under the authority of the law and others above it. In reality, this attitude was nothing but a gradual surrender. Every concession made in the name of 'preserving social peace' further eroded the sovereignty of the State. The ink of the council of ministers' decision banning Hezbollah's military actions had not yet dried when the militia launched rockets and drones on Israel. The truth that suffers no interpretation: as long as the anomaly persists, Lebanon will remain condemned to endure wars that are not its own, with its share of deaths and destruction. We are as responsible as Hezbollah for what is happening to us. Our silence and our complacency are far more dangerous than its arsenal. Learning from our mistakes, even in wartime, so that if peace ever returns, we will finally be able to preserve it....

The Time to Dare to Speak!

Youssef Mouawad

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Should we mourn Ali Khamenei? Shall we join the procession of the grieving, or perhaps name an avenue in our capital after this martyr? In their complacency, our governments once even gave the name of Hafez al-Assad to a busy street, celebrating in sæcula sæculorum his so-called golden age on our land.* After all, the Iranian Supreme Leader did indeed shape Lebanon and rule it just as the usurpers Assad—father and son—did. And even if it was through intermediaries, he left indelible marks on our history, violating our institutions and tearing apart our uniquely fragile social fabric. For decades, our country was nothing more than a Syrian-Iranian condominium, a strip of land along the Mediterranean where Damascus and Tehran simultaneously exercised their joint sovereignty. Our successive heads of state, our prime ministers, our commanders-in-chief, and their second-tier aides—those gray eminences—saw no problem with this arrangement as long as their respective interests were safeguarded, their camarilla prospered, and their close relatives could build financial empires and vast real-estate fortunes. Fear Imposed and Profit Promised The axis of defiance ( al-moumana’a ) did not abandon the Lebanese stage after the withdrawal of Syrian troops in 2005. Having penetrated the state since the mandate of Elias Hrawi, it had installed its “creatures” at every level of the civil and military administration. It had infused its poison and corroded the machinery of the state. Worse still, it imposed its official narrative upon the media. Whether willingly or not, we had to adopt its single line of thought glorifying the “Resistance.” We ended up chanting its refrains almost involuntarily. The collaboration of our elites was only natural: as everywhere in the world, it was driven by the fear imposed by Hezbollah and by the profits it allowed people to hope for. The free press remained muzzled, and the ordinary citizen gradually developed a bad habit—that of no longer calling things by their proper names. Silence—whether called muteness or discretion, that politeness of cowards—did the rest. But now, at this precise moment of American interventionism, at this breaking point, what prevents the Lebanese—rebellious as they are—from exclaiming: “It is enough! Iranians out! Your henchmen behave here as if in a conquered land!” The Apology of Physical Liquidation The American bombing has settled accounts with Allah’s vicar in Tehran. Mitra Hejazipour, a chess champion and Iranian refusenik, openly welcomed the news. In her “insolence,” she did not restrain her exultation—unlike many of our political leaders who live in fear of a backlash. “For decades,” she said verbatim, “millions of Iranians have awaited the end of this man and what he represented. Nothing will bring back the victims of this regime; nothing will erase the shattered lives, the torture, the executions, the humiliations. But after forty-seven years of this criminal dictatorship ruling Iran, this is the first time…” Lebanese who remain gagged by fear—disguised as temperance—take example from Mitra Hejazipour, or from our pop star Elissa, who dared to call Hezbollah a terrorist organization. An Iranian woman and a Lebanese woman have dared. What are you waiting for to denounce the unbearable? *The street was later renamed after Ziad Rahbani, commemorating a memory far more melodious.