To avoid being assassinated, most of Lebanon’s party leaders have withdrawn to their hometowns and strongholds. Their fear and response may be legitimate, but the fact that they can hardly communicate is proving increasingly inconvenient. They can’t meet, and eavesdropping prevents them from using their phones for contact.
Forget about SMS, VoIP, Soraya phones, scramblers and what have you; telecom interceptors have become cheap and so easy to operate that even the dense can use them.
Perched in mountain heights these leaders can still defy the snoops. Use messenger pigeons, I say. These animals are dependable: they take the shortest path to destination and do not leak the message en route.
All what these leaders have to do to protect themselves and their telecom equipment is mind the kitten and bird flu.
The sophisticated may want to use doves to send conciliatory messages or messages to allies, and would dispatch angry messages with angry-looking hawks. This would give a new interpretation to McLuhan’s axiom that the medium is the message.
But lo and behold, hope glimmers from the nation’s rooftops. They have started revolting as they finally realized that both dovish and hawkish strains are no more than clay pigeons waiting to be downed.
