Sunday, August 25, 2013

Anti-war and pro-economy

The aggregation of the "Chambers of Commerce, Industry and Agriculture" in Lebanon is sponsoring this ad which labels itself "anti-war and pro-economy" (do note that the US seems upcycles in the economy from the military conglomerate when it is at war), but the twist is the rationale they used - focusing on inter-faith marriages the first ad signals the presence of "400,000 inter-faith couples, who won't fight, and you?" the second signals their children "350,000 children resulting from inter-faith marriages, they won't fight, and you?".
The use of this angle is very interesting (not sure if anyone really has solid statistics about the topic though, but the figures above have been shopped by the media for a while now - even if a few years back speaker of the parliament Nabih Berri said that it was 300,000 but he was specifically referring to Sunni-Shiite inter-marriages).
Considering the tempest Lebanon is withering currently on the sectarian level, here's hoping that this campaign will resonate (I doubt, but one has to remain optimistic with a severe dash of realism).
On a lighter side note, statistically, it means that 7 out of 8 inter-faith couples do not have children (assuming the median number of children per couple is one... If more, then the average per couple becomes even more difficult to calculate).

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