Six Flags Over Beirut
The Cincinnati Enquirer has this interesting report on a theme park (avec Wild West motif) being built in Lebanon.
When the proposed park - originally a remote dale of olive trees and dust about a 30-minute drive from downtown - is completed in 2004, it will be a symbol to the West that the people of Lebanon had put a bloody past on a shelf and were ready to have fun.
Not sure where this sort of thing fits into the Bush admin's road map for the Middle East, but this sort of commercial development is certainly heartening.
A few months back, Reason Senior Editor Chuck Freund penned a fable that discussed how commerce could help defuse that region. "The Tale of Many Jerusalems" is online here.
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Heartening indeed, Nick. Especially when we acknowledge that ?fun? is not something that?s reserved for western society. Kids the world over like to play, no matter what their age.
I have a feeling this park will be a success and go over quite well. Blue jeans-wearers in the near and far east; Pepsi in the Middle East, Coke and McDonald?s almost everywhere; and now Western-style theme parks in the middle east . . . Sure, why not. The future of peace-through-market looks good, so far.
You guys are a riot.
(Still laughing.)
But, hey, regarding moist tumidities, scale back your expectations a bit -- the Islamic clerics would never allow it.
Snow White, Cinderella, and fluttering Tinkerbell would all be wearing burkas and face rags.
They should turn large chunks of the middle east into one huge theme park - "Holy Land" - and let Disney run it.
All I'm sayin' is Spring Break Baghdad: The Vagina of Civilization.
"So Moist, So Tumid"
Yes! An encouraging development. The opposite certainly dosen't work. The Israeli government has banned almost all enterprise in the occupied lands for years.