Society

Every war leaves behind its share of the forgotten. Yet one group is rarely mentioned – or poorly understood: animals. In a Lebanon, where abandonment is already widespread, war has only deepened a crisis long exacerbated by years of economic crisis. To human suffering is thus added a silent, invisible anguish – one that rarely finds a place in the collective narrative. This phenomenon also reveals a deeper fracture. Abandoning an animal in wartime is not always an act of deliberate cruelty, but sometimes the result of collapse. When everything is scarce – food, medicine, shelter – the hierarchy of needs asserts itself with brutal force. In such circumstances, the animal can come to be seen as an additional burden.

Along the front line at Lebanon’s southern border with Israel, several Christian villages lie directly in the path of the fighting. As violence intensifies in this area, the Holy See has not remained indifferent to the precariousness of the Christian presence under current conditions. Pope Leon XIV, deeply moved by the plight of civilians caught in the shadow of war, solemnly spoke of the death of Maronite priest Pierre Rai of Qlayaa – a symbol of a tragedy that strikes indiscriminately. According to retired General Khalil Gemayel, former commander of the southern Litani sector, the Christian border towns include Alma el-Chaab (Tyr district), Rmeich, Aïn Ebel, Debel, Qowzah and Yaroun (Bint Jbeil district), as well as Bourj el-Moulouk, Qlayaa, Jdeidet Marjeyoun, Ibl el-Saqi and Deir Mimas (Marjeyoun district). In the Hasbaya district, there are also Rachaya el-Foukhar, Kawkaba, Abou Qamha and Mazraat Serda.

Almost three weeks of war and nearly a million displaced people. The axe has fallen. Displaced people who have essentially chosen the capital, already stifled in a Lebanon bleeding economically and, above all, devoid of political will to change a status quo that has become totally obsolete. A state of affairs that not only hinders progress but is, let's say it without ambiguity, responsible for all our ills. No country in the world, without a strong or at least respected state, can exist. Today, it is essentially the Shiites who are displaced. The very people that Hezbollah claims to protect. And the most frightening thing is that, destitute in tents and in the rain, many continue to swear allegiance to this party which has no god but itself. One can question the effectiveness of the indoctrination exercised by this militia, but it primarily reveals a political fact: the military entity and the political entity mutually nourish each other and regain strength in a context where the State, incapable of enforcing its sovereignty, finds itself powerless to regulate or integrate an entire community.

The Intelligence Monopoly Ended. For most of human history, one assumption remained unquestioned: intelligence belonged to us alone. We were the only species capable of abstract reasoning, scientific accumulation, technological scaling, and political organization. Intelligence was our monopoly — and therefore our power. That monopoly is now over. Artificial intelligence systems already outperform humans in pattern recognition, large-scale code generation, protein folding, predictive modeling, and increasingly in scientific hypothesis formation. In domain after domain, the ceiling of human cognition is no longer the frontier.

Cinema, Architecture, and Power Seen some time ago, it is the season of year-end film rankings that brings The Brutalist, Brady Corbet’s film, back to my mind. The film appears in several rankings, since although it is a 2024 production, its international release took place in 2025. And, by sheer coincidence perhaps, this film resurfaces at a timely moment in my life, as it coincides with a period in which the notion of power manifests itself in all its forms: in its moral perversions, through the Epstein affair; in its arrogance, through the capture of Maduro; in its violence, through the repression of protesters in Iran; and in its new incarnations. I am thinking in particular of the importance now granted to the control of digital space, symbolized recently by Israel’s intention to invest in ChatGPT in order to influence its responses in a direction favorable to its interests.

All the thinkers and political leaders who continue to reflect on the unveiling of the countless facets of the Lebanese war, all those drawn to what Michel de Certeau called “cultural poaching, through which non-specialists and the dominated fashion a space of their own,” were struck by the passing, on November 8, of a friend and leading figure who was, and will remain, the essayist Jean-Claude Guillebaud (1944–2025). A journalist and editor, winner of the Albert Londres Prize in 1972, a great reporter and war correspondent (notably for Le Monde, Sud-Ouest, La Vie, among others) for more than two decades, and co-founder and president of Reporters Without Borders (RSF) from 1987 to 1993, Guillebaud authored some forty reports and essays, dazzling in the richness of their references. An editor with a luminous instinct, curious about everything, his books leave one with the impression that he had read everything, noted everything.

In Lebanon, women remain acutely vulnerable to a wide range of abuses and acts of violence, largely because there is still no political will to enact meaningful legislative reform to dismantle entrenched discrimination. The figures speak for themselves: up to November 2025, 89% of all reports made to hotline 1745 – dedicated to domestic violence – came from women. In 57.5% of these cases, the aggressor was the husband. In 2024 alone, at least 17 women were killed; in 60% of those cases, the perpetrator was their spouse. Confronted with this alarming reality and staying true to its mission since its creation in 2005, Kafa – an NGO fighting gender-based violence and exploitation – is calling for the adoption of a comprehensive law, an “essential tool”, it argues, to prevent and combat this phenomenon. To highlight the urgency of such legislation, the organization launched “Ayb”, or “Shame on You”, on 25 November, marking the start of the international “Sixteen Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence Against Women and Girls”, which runs until 10 December, International Human Rights Day.

Lebanon is preparing for its first papal visit since Benedict XVI’s trip in 2012. But behind the figure of the Supreme Pontiff arriving this Sunday for an official visit lies another story: nearly four decades spent in Peru by Archbishop Robert Francis Prevost — now Pope Leo XIV — where he forged his pastoral mission. A small statue of Martin de Porres stands to the right of the altar in the Vianney parish on the outskirts of the Peruvian city of Chiclayo. The image of this 16th-century saint, born to an enslaved mother, resonates deeply with Lisbeth, a teacher and Venezuelan refugee. It was in this very church that she saw Archbishop Robert Prevost — today Pope Leo XIV — celebrate International Migrants Day, embodying the Church’s social doctrine through action.

The city of Iznik, ancient Nicaea, marked a key stop on Pope Leo XIV’s visit to Turkey, as the pontiff led a service dedicated to Christian unity on the shores of Lake Iznik, south of Istanbul. The ceremony brought together Orthodox and Protestant leaders for a prayer service among the ruins of a submerged 4th-century basilica. The Mass commemorated the 1,700th anniversary of the First Ecumenical Council of Nicaea, convened in 325, twelve years after the Roman Empire legalized Christianity. Standing beside Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople and other church leaders, Pope Leo XIV recited the Nicene Creed — a statement of faith still recited by millions of Christians worldwide. The creed was first adopted at the very council that gathered in Nicaea almost 17 centuries ago.