#beirut port explosion

[zathebooknerd]

Wearing this skirt on my last day of school ever because I will never not carry them with me

“An Homage to my People”

I am half Lebanese. The world has not been kind to me.

I made this back in October. It is a piece for the victims of the Beirut port blast, and every other avoidable tragedy my people have suffered. A beautiful green skirt that carries the weight of forgotten handprints.

However, I made this after Israel began its genocide against Palestine. Being Middle Eastern, I know the piece will be seen by westerners as something related to that genocide, because individual countries do not exist to them.

This was not made for Palestinians, or any other of my suffering neighbors. But in being viewed as such, it has become a piece of solidarity as well as remembrance now. I wear it on strike days and on days where the fight feels slow.

Mourn the dead. Fight like hell for the living.

[sayruq]

NAHLA AL-ARIAN HAS been living a nightmare for the past seven months, watching from afar as Israel carries out its scorched-earth war against her ancestral homeland in the Gaza Strip. Like many Palestinian Americans, the 63-year-old retired fourth-grade teacher from Tampa Bay, Florida, has endured seven months of a steady trickle of WhatsApp messages about the deaths of her relatives. “You see, my father’s family is originally from Gaza, so they are a big family. And they are not only in Gaza City, but also in Deir al Balah and Khan Younis, other parts,” Al-Arian told me. Recently, the trickle of horrors became a flood: “It started with like 27, and then we lost count until I received this message from my relative who said at least 200 had died.” The catastrophe was the backdrop for Al-Arian’s visit last week to Columbia University in New York City. Al-Arian has five children, four of whom are journalists or filmmakers. On April 25, two of her daughters, Laila and Lama, both award-winning TV journalists, visited the encampment established by Columbia students to oppose the war in Gaza. Laila, an executive producer at Al Jazeera English with Emmys and a George Polk Award to her name, is a graduate of Columbia’s journalism school. Lama was the recipient of the prestigious 2021 Alfred I. duPont–Columbia Award for her reporting for Vice News on the 2020 explosion at the port of Beirut. The two sisters traveled to Columbia as journalists to see the campus, and Nahla joined them. “Of course, I tagged along. You know, why would I sit at the hotel by myself? And I wanted to really see those kids. I felt so down,” she said. “I was crying every day for Gaza, for the children being killed, for the women, the destruction of my father’s city, so I wanted to feel better, you know, to see those kids. I heard a lot about them, how smart they are, how organized, you know? So I said, let’s go along with you. So I went.” Nahla Al-Arian was on the campus for less than an hour. She sat and listened to part of a teach-in, and shared some hummus with her daughters and some students. Then she left, feeling a glimmer of hope that people — at least these students — actually cared about the suffering and deaths being inflicted on her family in Gaza. “I didn’t teach them anything. They are the ones who taught me. They are the ones who gave me hope,” she recalled. “I felt much better when I went there because I felt those kids are really very well informed, very well educated. They are the conscience of America. They care about the Palestinian people who they never saw or got to meet.” Her husband posted a picture of Nahla, sitting on the lawn at the tent city erected by the student protesters, on his Twitter feed. “My wife Nahla in solidarity with the brave and very determined Columbia University students,” he wrote. Nahla left New York, inspired by her visit to Columbia, and returned to Virginia to spend time with her grandchildren. A few days later, that one tweet by her husband would thrust Nahla Al-Arian into the center of a spurious narrative promoted by the mayor of New York City and major media outlets. She became the exemplar of the dangerous “outside agitator” who was training the students at Columbia. It was Nahla’s presence, according to Mayor Eric Adams, that was the “tipping point” in his decision to authorize the military-style raids on the campus.

On February 20, 2003, Nahla’s husband, Sami Al-Arian, a professor at the University of South Florida, was arrested and indicted on 53 counts of supporting the armed resistance group Palestinian Islamic Jihad. The PIJ had been designated by the U.S. government as a terrorist organization, and the charges against Al-Arian could have put him in prison for multiple life sentences, plus 225 years. It was a centerpiece case of the George W. Bush administration’s domestic “war on terror.” When John Ashcroft, Bush’s notorious attorney general, announced the indictment, he described the Florida-based scholar as “the North American leader of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Sami Al-Arian.” Among the charges against him was conspiracy to kill or maim persons abroad, specifically in Israel, yet the prosecutors openly admitted Al-Arian had no connection to any violence. He was a well-known and deeply respected figure in the Tampa community, where he and Nahla raised their family. He was also, like many fellow Palestinians, a tenacious critic of U.S. support for Israel and of the burgeoning “global war on terror.” His arrest came just days before the U.S. invaded Iraq, a war Al-Arian was publicly opposed to. The Al-Arian case was, at its core, a political attack waged by Bush’s Justice Department as part of a wider assault on the rights of Muslims in the U.S. The government launched a campaign, echoed in media outlets, to portray Al-Arian as a terror leader at a time when the Bush administration was ratcheting up its so-called global war on terror abroad, and when Muslims in the U.S. were being subjected to harassment, surveillance, and abuse. The legal case against Al-Arian was flimsy, and prosecutors largely sought to portray his protected First Amendment speech and charitable activities as terrorism. The trial against Al-Arian, a legal permanent resident in the U.S., did not go well for federal prosecutors. In December 2005, following a six-month trial, a jury acquitted him on eight of the most serious counts and deadlocked 10-2 in favor of acquittal on the other nine. The judge made clear he was not pleased with this outcome, and the prosecutors were intent on relitigating the case. Al-Arian had spent two years in jail already without any conviction and was staring down the prospect of years more. In the face of this reality and the toll the trial against him had taken on his family, Al-Arian agreed to take a plea deal. In 2006, he pleaded guilty to one count of providing nonviolent support to people the government alleged were affiliated with the PIJ. As part of the deal, Al-Arian would serve a short sentence and, with his residency revoked, get an expedited deportation. At no point during the government’s trial against Al-Arian did the prosecution provide evidence he was connected to any acts of violence. For the next eight years following his release from prison in 2008, Al-Arian was kept under house arrest and effectively subjected to prosecutorial harassment as the government sought to place him in what his lawyers characterized as a judicial trap by compelling him to testify in a separate case. His defense lawyers alleged the federal prosecutor in the case, who had a penchant for pursuing high-profile, political cases, held an anti-Palestinian bias. Amnesty International raised concerns that Al-Arian had been abused in prison and he faced the prospect of yet another lengthy, costly court battle. The saga would stretch on for several more years before prosecutors ended the case and Al-Arian was deported from the United States.

“This case remains one of the most troubling chapters in this nation’s crackdown after 9-11,” Al-Arian’s lawyer, Jonathan Turley, wrote in 2014 when the case was officially dropped. “Despite the jury verdict and the agreement reached to allow Dr. Al-Arian to leave the country, the Justice Department continued to fight for his incarceration and for a trial in this case. It will remain one of the most disturbing cases of my career in terms of the actions taken by our government.” That federal prosecutors approved Al-Arian’s plea deal gave a clear indication that the U.S. government knew Al-Arian was not an actual terrorist, terrorist facilitator, or any kind of threat; the Bush administration, after all, was not in the habit of letting suspected terrorists walk. Al-Arian and his family have always maintained his innocence and say that he was being targeted for his political beliefs and activism on behalf of Palestinians. He resisted the deal, Nahla Al-Arian said. “He didn’t even want to accept it. He wanted to move on with another trial,” Nahla said. “But because of our pressure on him, let’s just get done with it [because] in the end, we’re going leave anyway. So that’s why.” Sami and Nahla Al-Arian now live in Turkey. Sami is not allowed to visit his children and grandchildren stateside, but Nahla visits often.

[collapsedsquid]

The MV Ruby has languished off the coast of Britain for more than a week, its hull cracked, its propeller damaged. Yet no port will let the ship dock, fearing that the thousands of tons of Russian fertilizer it carries could lead to a disastrous explosion. Over the weekend, the MV Ruby remained 14 miles off the coast of Kent, in southeastern England, where it has been since last month. For weeks now, the ship has sailed around northern Europe’s coastline, looking for a friendly port. But no country has allowed it to approach, fearing a repeat of the explosion in 2020 in Lebanon that destroyed the Port of Beirut and killed more than 190 people. The ship is reportedly ferrying 20,000 tons of ammonium nitrate, a substance used for fertilizer. An explosion of 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate devastated the Lebanese port and was felt as far away as Cyprus in the Mediterranean. The MV Ruby may be carrying more than seven times as much.

Problematic

[captain-price-unofficially]

4 Aug 2020, two thousand seven hundred and fifty tons of ammonium nitrate stored in Beirut's port, Lebanon, explodes with the force of 1.1 kilotons of TNT, causing at least 218 deaths, 7,000 injuries, and $15 billion in property damage, as well as leaving an estimated 300,000 people homeless.

The explosion was so large it physically shook the entire country. It was felt in Turkey, Syria, Palestine, Jordan, and Israel, as well as parts of Europe, and was heard in Cyprus, more than 240 km (150 mi) away

[girlactionfigure]

🟪 MORE SPIES CAUGHT, HAMAS HUMAN SHIELD STRATEGY PROVEN - Real time from Israel  

ISRAEL REALTIME - Connecting to Israel in Realtime

A Gut’a Chol HaMoed from Israel - happy Succot intermediate holy days.

( PHOTO - doing your best to make a Sukkah in Lebanon. )

🔅END OF DAYLIGHT SAVINGS TIME in Israel, this Saturday night 2:00 AM. Change clocks back 1 hour, computers and phones should auto-adjust.▪️

❗️MORE SPIES CAUGHT.. 7 residents of east Jerusalem were arrested on suspicion of planning to eliminate a nuclear scientist and a mayor - on behalf of Iran.

⭕LEBANON - ANTI-AIRCRAFT FIRE at IDF JETS from HEZBOLLAH per Al Jazeera with video (not shared here), 23 mm anti-aircraft fire.

⭕HEZBOLLAH FIRES LONG RANGE MISSILE(S) this morning, alerts from Zichron Yaakov through north Tel Aviv.

Hezbollah for long range launches 1-5 missiles (so far).  With the low number and longer flight time, interception has been 100%.  Because of high altitude and speed of the flight, the scatter pattern for the debris covers a huge area. That is why a small number of missiles results in a large alert area in central Israel.

The opposite is occurring in the north, where Hezbollah is firing 20-110 short range rockets in a barrage, therefore each alert area is 1 or multiple rockets inbound.

⭕HAIFA PORT WORKERS GET THREATENING SMS.. Haifa port workers received messages Monday which stated that the port's system had been hacked and that they should leave the place as it would be the target of a missile attack.

⭕HAIFA - KRAYOT.. strong explosion without warning as an incoming rocket hits a nearby open area.

♦️LEBANON - HEAVY OVERNIGHT AIRSTRIKES across parts of Beirut and other areas.

♦️LEBANON - news report: boy killed working his shop due to Israeli STRIKE ON THE ROCKET LAUNCHER IN THE BACK space being rented by Hezbollah - reported straight like that.

♦️LEBANON - MASS EXODUS from Beirut continues, both sides of the highway going OUT.

♦️LEBANON - BUNKER UNDER HOSPITAL CAUSES PANIC.. Following the IDF spokesman's announcement regarding the Hezbollah cash-vault bunker under the al-Sakhal hospital in Harat Kharik in Dahiya in Beirut, hysteria began in the area surrounding the hospital as people tried to flee assuming an incoming IDF attack.

🔹US VS HOUTHIS $$.. The cost of the damage suffered by the US military so far is $186 million just from the downing of the MQ-9 Reaper drones.

❗️HAMAS’s MANIPULATIONS & INTENTIONAL HUMAN SHIELDS.. (WSJ) “As Arab mediators tried to speed up cease-fire talks, (Hamas leader) Sinwar urged his comrades in Hamas’s political leadership based outside of Gaza to REFUSE concessions. High civilian casualties would create worldwide pressure on Israel, Sinwar said in a message.

Sinwar messaged Hamas officials, urging them to refuse a hostage deal. Hamas had the upper hand in negotiations, Sinwar said, citing internal political divisions within Israel, cracks in Netanyahu’s wartime coalition and mounting U.S. pressure to alleviate the suffering in Gaza.”

▪️SERIOUS CRIMINAL INCIDENT - KFAR QASIM.. (Israeli Arabi/Bedouin town near Rosh Ha’ayin) 3 young people, ages 17, 17, 20, stabbed, critical condition, CPR.

▪️TRUMP SAYS.. Trump on the talks for a ceasefire in Lebanon: I spoke with people from Lebanon and to my surprise they want it (the attacks on Hezbollah) to continue as long as possible.

▪️AID PROFIT..  IDF: Paul Landes, head of the economic warfare staff at the Ministry of Defense, refuses to answer the question of whether Hamas makes money from humanitarian aid.

[yuri-alexseygaybitch]

Super cool how the official Wikipedia page for the 2020 Beirut port explosion has random digressions about some nebulous Hezbollah conspiracy theory for absolutely no reason at all

[fursasaida]

The amount of confusion and horror swirling around what Israel did in Lebanon yesterday is so awful. I keep thinking of something a woman said in a short film about the port explosion (my translation):

"This thing we are living is unnatural, this thing that we - we are subjected to explosion after explosion, after assassinations, after murders, after violence, violence, violence."

- from Shattered Beirut: 6:07, dir. Carol Mansour

The quotation is not only about Israeli violence and occupation. It is also about Lebanon's specific and unique suffering, which is certainly inextricably related to Israel but still more than that. Just like with the port explosion, this hurts in a very specific way that comes with caring about Lebanon. (This is not more or less significant than other pains, like the pain of Gaza or of Abkhazia or of pogroms. It's just qualitatively unique, as all of those and more also are.) This thing we are living is unnatural.

This was done during the anniversary of the Sabra and Shatila Massacres. It is absolutely crazy watching some people argue that this is the most targeted, most discriminate of attacks. Doctors treating victims of the explosions are afraid to use their pagers in hospitals.

I feel a strangely desperate desire to know exactly how Israel did this. Not because it will improve anything or make Mossad look ~cool again (tfu7). It will clarify the longer-term implications of this event and it will, perhaps, shed some light on what the planners thought they were doing, but that's not where my emotion comes from. I have to know because too many of the terrible things that happen in and to Lebanon are mysterious in some sense. You can squint and see the overall shape, get a good idea of who something probably came from and why, but the details of what the fuck exactly happened so often remain inaccessible. And I just can't bear it at the moment. This thing we are living is unnatural.

[mariacallous]

On March 2, she was gone. The Belize-flagged, British-owned bulk carrier Rubymar sank in the narrow water lane between the coasts of Yemen and Eritrea. The Rubymar was the first vessel that has been completely lost since the Houthis began their attacks on shipping in the Red Sea—and its demise, with 21,000 metric tons of ammonium phosphate sulfate fertilizer, spells ecological disaster. A similar substance—ammonium nitrate—caused the devastating explosion at the Port of Beirut in 2020. It had been stored there after being abandoned on a vessel and authorities intervened to prevent an environmental disaster.

Because the Houthis have no regard for the environment, there are likely to be more such disasters. Indeed, groups set on destruction could also decide to attack the carbon storage facilities now beginning to be built underneath the seabed.

For two weeks after being struck by a Houthi missile in the Red Sea, the Rubymar clung to life despite listing badly. The damage caused by the missile, though, was too severe. At 2:15 a.m. local time, the Rubymar disappeared into the depths of the Red Sea. The crew had already been rescued by another merchant vessel that had come to the Rubymar’s aid, but there was no way anyone could remove its toxic cargo.

The ship’s owner had tried to get it towed to the Port of Aden—where Yemen’s internationally recognized government is based—and to Djibouti and Saudi Arabia, but citing the environmental risk posed by the ammonium phosphate sulfate, all three nations refused to receive it.

Now enormous quantities of a hazardous substance are about to spread into the Red Sea. IGAD, a trade bloc comprising countries in the Nile Valley and the Horn of Africa, points out that the Rubymar’s fertilizer cargo and leaking fuel “could devastate marine life and destroy coral reefs, sea life and jeopardize hundreds of thousands of jobs in the fishing industry as well as cut littoral states off from supplies of food and fuel.”

Not even shipping’s option of last resort, salvage companies, seems available. “The salvage companies that normally recover vessels are reluctant to go in,” said Cormac Mc Garry, a maritime expert with intelligence firm Control Risks. That’s because salvage ships and crews, too, risk being targeted by Houthi missiles. “If a salvage company knows it’s likely to be targeted, it will hesitate to take on the task. It has a duty of care for its crew,” said Svein Ringbakken, the managing director of the Norway-based maritime insurance company DNK.

It was only a matter of time before a Houthi missile brought down one of the many tankers and bulk carriers that still traverse the Red Sea every day. (In the first two months of this year, traffic through the Red Sea was down by 50 percent compared to the same period last year.) “The Houthis have no regard for life and even less for the environment,” Ringbakken said. “They shoot missiles at ships even though they know that there are humans and hazardous cargo on them.”

For years, the Houthis allowed an oil supertanker ironically named Safer that was moored off the coast of Yemen to rust away even though she was holding more than 1 million barrels of crude oil. By the beginning of last year, the Safer was close to disintegration: an event that would have cost hundreds of thousands of Yemenis their livelihoods because it would have killed enormous quantities of fish. Indeed, had the Safer’s oil leaked, it would even have forced the Houthi-controlled ports of Hudaydah and Saleef to close, thus preventing ordinary Yemenis from receiving food and other necessities.

It would, of course, also have caused permanent damage to all manner of marine life, including coral reefs and mangroves, in the Red Sea. Then the United Nations pulled off an almost impossible feat: It got Yemen’s warring factions, international agencies, and companies to work together to transfer the oil off the Safer. Disaster was averted. “It was a massive undertaking,” Ringbakken noted. “But for years and years and years, the Houthis were adding impediments against this undertaking, even though the Safer was sitting just off the Yemeni coast.”

Indeed, maritime terrorism itself is not new. “Besides guerrillas and terrorists, attacks have been carried out by modern day pirates, ordinary criminals, fanatic environmentalists, mutinous crews, hostile workers, and foreign agents. The spectrum of actions is equally broad: ships hijacked, destroyed by mines and bombs, attacks with bazookas, sunk under mysterious circumstances; cargos removed; crews taken hostage; extortion plots against ocean liners and offshore platforms; raids on port facilities; attempts to board oil rigs; sabotage at shipyards and terminal facilities; even a plot to steal a nuclear submarine,” researchers at RAND summarized—in 1983.

Now, though, the Houthis have upped the nihilism, and unlike the guerrillas, terrorists, and pirates of the 1980s, they have the weaponry to cause an ocean-going vessel to sink. The joint U.S.-U.K. military operation against the Houthis has failed to deter the Iranian-backed militia’s attacks; indeed, not even air strikes by U.S. and U.K. forces have convinced the Houthis that it’s time to stop. On the contrary, they’re escalating their attacks. They do so because they’re completely unconcerned about loss of life within their ranks or harm to their own waters.

It’s giving them a global platform. That, in turn, is likely to encourage other militias to also attack ships carrying toxic substances—even if it ruins their own waters. The local population is hardly in a position to hold a militia accountable. Indeed, militias interested in maritime terrorism could decide that the world’s growing sea-based infrastructure is an attractive target. And there’s a new form of sea-based infrastructure they could decide to make a preferred target, not just because it’s set for explosive growth but because attacking it would guarantee a global platform: CO2 storage.

With the world having failed to reduce its carbon-dioxide emissions enough to halt climate change, CO2 storage has become an urgent priority. Through this technique, carbon dioxide can be captured and buried underground, typically underneath the ocean. Norway has, for example, begun auctioning out licenses for CO2 storage exploration on its continental shelf. So has Britain. The United States has 15 carbon-storage sites, and another 121 are being developed. Even Big Oil has discovered carbon storage. ExxonMobil is buying offshore blocks to use for carbon storage instead of oil drilling.

Carbon storage sites are, of course, designed to withstand both natural perils and man-made attacks, but that won’t prevent destructive groups—especially ones backed by a powerful state—from trying. And because groups like the Houthis are so unconcerned about all forms of life, it won’t matter to them that releasing concentrated CO2 would cause extreme harm to the planet—including themselves. Even a tiny carbon-storage leakage of 0.1 percent per year can lead to additional CO2 emissions of 25 giga-tonnes, researchers have established.

Until recently, sea-based infrastructure was only lightly guarded, because it was in everyone’s interest that it worked. The sabotage of Nord Stream and various other pipelines and undersea cables over the past two years have demonstrated that such peacefulness can no longer be taken for granted. The new CO2 sites will need not just AI-enhanced monitoring but regular patrolling to communicate to potential attackers that it’s not even worth attempting an attack.

And for now, attacking merchant vessels remains a promising and economical strategy for the Houthis and their ilk. It doesn’t seem to matter that ammonium phosphate sulfate will soon be poisoning Yemeni waters and thus depriving locals of their livelihoods. Indeed, other bulk carriers and tankers may soon join the Rubymar on the bottom of the sea, poisoning the future for even more Yemenis.

For the Houthis, what matters is not the outcome: It’s the attention. That’s what makes them such a vexing problem for the U.S. Navy and other navies, shipowners, maritime insurers, and especially for seafarers. But there is another group that should be just as worried about the rampant insecurity on the high seas: ocean conservationists.

There is, in fact, a woman with an unsurpassed green platform who could make the growing scourge of maritime terrorism her new cause. (Nearly) everyone would thank you, Greta.

[zvaigzdelasas]

[N12 is Israeli Private Media]

[Machine Translation]

If it turns to war in the north, Israel will have to determine what the required achievement is for it. It would have to be an achievement that she could also withstand, because she cannot be dragged into a long campaign. This requires Jerusalem to generate international legitimacy for action and an international umbrella. In this case, Israel will be required to use weapons and weapons systems that it has never used before [!!!]. If it does not use these measures, it will not be able to stop the shooting from Lebanon into Israeli territory.

The head of the National Security Council, Tzachi Hanegbi, and the Minister of Strategic Affairs, Ron Dermer, asked to hear from their American counterparts if there is a change in US armaments policy that Israel should know about. The answer received from the Minister of Foreign Affairs, the Minister of Defense and the National Security Adviser was negative; They claimed that there is no arms embargo policy, and that any delay concerns only technical matters.[...]

Among other things, it was reported that Hezbollah has many weapons at the airport in Beirut. The timing of the publication is not accidental; Whoever [sic] leaked this to the foreign media sought to achieve at least two things: First, to mention the disaster that occurred in Lebanon exactly 4 years ago, the explosion in the port of Beirut. This is an attempt to incite the Lebanese public against Hezbollah, as after the explosion in the port there was very sharp criticism against Hezbollah.

In addition, planes of foreign airlines arrive at the airport. Attacking the planes of foreign companies is an attack on the sovereignty of a foreign country. In this way, Israel wants to link the international community to the situation in Lebanon

24 Jun 24

[longreads]

The Top 5 Longreads of the Week

The incalculable human cost of institutionalization. An homage to rappers gone far too soon. A profile on the trans son of an anti-trans zealot. A summer camp that helps children to process grief, and bearing witness to the survivors of the 2020 explosion at the Port of Beirut. 

All this and our audience award winner in this week’s edition of the Longreads Top 5. 

[catboyattorney]

a few years ago after the beirut port explosion i saw other lebanese people say on twitter that to be lebanese is to grieve. i thought i understood it then but it's incomparable now. it's bone deep

[all-things-are-nothing-to-me]

From Food Not Bombs Lebanon

"For a year now Lebanon has endured daily bombing and shelling from Israel to the south. Now as the Israeli occupation expands its war of terror, Lebanon is now facing the worst bombing and violence of a generation. Already we have more refugees per capita than any other country in the world and are suffering crushing poverty and constant crisis. Now due to the bombings there is chaos as hundreds of thousands more are displaced and fleeing their homes. Most are desperate for basic needs, food, medicine, places to sleep & grieving the destruction of their homes and the killing of their loved ones.

In response Food not Bombs Lebanon is working to establish community support in various neighborhoods in Beirut. Currently there are two kitchens working to provide food and comfort to those arriving. Unfortunately our resources are limited and costs have risen rapidly. In order to keep up feeding those in dire need and expand our kitchens we are in desperate need of funding.

With your help we can buy ingredients to keep making food and make more of it, cover gas to transport things, as well as start purchasing other essentials like mattresses and blankets. We want to be able to help as much as we can and expand the ways in which we will support the displaced.

Food not Bombs Lebanon is an independent project that first formed in 2020 when we worked to help people survive and recover from the Beirut port explosion. After a hiatus we have now reformed to address the newest catastrophe that our homeland is facing. Our hope is that we can work to not just to respond to this disaster but to build towards a longer-term model of community care and mutual aid."

[darkmaga-returns]

A Russian ship loaded with over 22,000 tons of explosives has just docked in a UK port, according to reports.

The docking is provoking fears among Brits within the potential blast radius of the ship dubbed the “Floating Megabomb.”

The ship, called Ruby, has been allowed to dock at a British port after weeks moored off the coast.

The vessel is carrying seven times the amount of explosives that devastated Beirut in 2020.

It was anchored off the coast of Margate, Kent, for weeks amid fears it was too deadly to pass through the busy Channel crossing.

Ruby, which had previously been turned away from ports in several other countries, is now moored near Great Yarmouth, in Norfolk, according to the global tracking website Marine Traffic.

It is alongside a facility in Gorleston-on-Sea, with the ship now based just a few hundred yards away from a densely populated residential area, a school, several businesses, and a college.

While the vessel is Malta-flagged, it has been packed with explosives from Kandalaksha in northern Russia.

It steadily made its way to the Canary Islands after it left Russia on August 22.

[newstfionline]

Friday, October 11, 2024

Millions are without power after Milton tore through Florida (NYT) Hurricane Milton carved an uneven path of destruction across Florida. It maintained hurricane-strength winds from its landfall on the Gulf Coast last night until its exit this morning into the Atlantic Ocean. Coastal neighborhoods were swallowed by storm surge, inland towns were flooded with rain and nearly three million homes and businesses—about a quarter of the state—remain without power. The storm also caused several intense tornadoes on Florida’s Atlantic coast that killed at least five people, including some in a retirement community. Two other hurricane-related deaths were confirmed, and emergency workers rescued hundreds of people from damaged buildings and flooded vehicles. But the densely populated Tampa Bay region appeared to have been spared from the worst-case projections of the storm’s potential damage.

FEMA spent nearly half its disaster budget in just 8 days (Politico) Eight days into the fiscal year, the federal government has spent nearly half the disaster relief that Congress has allocated for the next 12 months. The rapid spending—which is likely to accelerate as aid flows to states pulverized by Hurricanes Helene and Milton—soon will force the Federal Emergency Management Agency to restrict spending unless Congress approves additional funding [and Congress is in recess until the election]. FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell disclosed that as of Tuesday, FEMA had spent $9 billion of the $20 billion that Congress put in FEMA’s disaster fund Oct. 1 for the fiscal year that runs through Sept. 30, 2025.

For Lebanese Americans, calm at home is surreal as Israel strikes Beirut (Washington Post) Rashad Assir started a recent Monday with a 45-minute phone call in which his mother described how she had cracked open the windows of their family home in Lebanon to reduce the pressure wave from potential explosions. She was about to leave Beirut for the mountains in the north to try to escape Israeli airstrikes. Then Assir tuned in to a Zoom call to discuss the language and graphics for his tech company’s next marketing campaign. Assir, a Lebanese American tech worker based in New York, was in a state of disbelief about his different realities, he said. Several people of Lebanese descent in the United States, a community of at least 685,000 people, according to the 2020 Census, told The Washington Post that they are feeling a sense of dystopia and isolation from those around them. In recent weeks, Sara Harb-Fisher, 29, a Lebanese American nursing student from southern Mississippi, said she has been worrying about her “family in Lebanon that is being bombed.” “My day-to-day is overwhelming,” she said. “As I’m dropping my girls off at school, logging in to class or preparing lunch, I’m constantly wondering if my grandmother is still alive.”

They Flew 7,000 Miles to Fight Haiti’s Gangs. The Gangs Are on Top. (NYT) If the burned-out cars, bullet-riddled schools, demolished buildings and desolate streets in downtown Port-au-Prince weren’t enough evidence of the terrible things that happened here, someone left an even more ominous hint: skulls in the middle of the street. A human head propped up on a stick with another on the ground beside it in front of a government office was apparently intended as a menacing message from gang members to the Kenyan and Haitian police officers trying to restore order to Haiti: Beware, we rule these streets. A Kenyan police officer wearing a bulletproof vest and helmet and patrolling in an American armored personnel carrier took a photograph with his cellphone, while another maneuvered the vehicle around the skulls. The patrol offered a glimpse into the enormous challenges the Kenyan force faces in trying to wrest control of Port-au-Prince from armed groups that have unraveled life in the country, killing indiscriminately, raping women, burning neighborhoods and leaving hundreds of thousands hungry and in makeshift shelters.

Iranian covert operations in Europe (AP) According to the head of Britain’s national intelligence agency, the country is experiencing a “staggering rise” in assassination attempts, sabotage plans, and other crimes plotted by other countries. On Tuesday, MI5 Director General Ken McCallum revealed that his agency had stopped over 20 “potentially lethal” plots backed by the government of Iran over the past two years, and warned that Tehran might cook up even more plots if the conflict in the Middle East continues to grow. All of those plots targeted Iranians living abroad in the U.K., not British politicians or leaders.

North Korea says it will cut off all roads to the South (BBC) North Korea will sever road and railway access to South Korea from Wednesday in a bid to “completely separate” the two countries. Its military said the North would “permanently shut off and block the southern border” and fortify areas on its side. The Korean People’s Army (KPA) described the move as “a self-defensive measure for inhibiting war”, claiming it was in response to war exercises in South Korea and the frequent presence of American nuclear assets in the region. It marks an escalation of hostility at a time when tensions between the Koreas are at their highest point in years. The declaration is a largely symbolic step by Pyongyang. Roads and railways leading from North Korea to the South are rarely used, and have been incrementally dismantled by North Korean authorities over the past year.

Israel Fires on U.N. Peacekeepers (Foreign Policy) Israeli forces fired on several positions used by United Nations peacekeepers in southern Lebanon on Wednesday and Thursday. According to the Lebanese mission, known as UNIFIL, Israeli soldiers targeted its headquarters at Ras Naqoura, “hitting the entrance to the bunker where peacekeepers were sheltering, and damaging vehicles and a communications system.” Two peacekeepers from Indonesia were injured. “Any deliberate attack on peacekeepers is a grave violation of international humanitarian law,” UNIFIL said, adding that it was following up with the Israeli military, which also “deliberately fired at and disabled” U.N.-operated perimeter-monitoring cameras. Israel has not commented on the incidents. Israel has recently accused UNIFIL of failing in its mission by allowing Hezbollah to entrench itself along the Blue Line. Some Israeli operations have hit near U.N. Post 6-52, where 30 Irish UNIFIL peacekeepers remain stationed despite Israel warning them to evacuate.

Nearly a Million Civilians Flee War in Lebanon, U.N. Says (NYT) Hezbollah militants fired rockets at Israeli towns and fought ground battles with Israeli troops in southern Lebanon on Wednesday, as the United Nations warned that nearly a million Lebanese had fled the spreading war between Israel and Iranian-backed groups in the Middle East. In a sign of the war’s growing scale, Israeli evacuation orders now cover a quarter of Lebanon’s land area, according to the United Nations, which says the calls have sent people fleeing from more than a hundred villages and urban areas. More than 600,000 people of Lebanon’s 5.4 million have been displaced within the country, threatening to overwhelm shelters, U.N. officials warned, and 300,000 others have fled abroad. Half of Lebanon’s public schools have been turned into shelters, the aid group Save the Children said on Wednesday.

Doctors, Nurses and Paramedics: What We Saw in Gaza (NYT) Dr. Sidhwa is a trauma and general surgeon who worked at the European Hospital in Khan Younis, Gaza, for two weeks in March and April: I worked as a trauma surgeon in Gaza from March 25 to April 8. I’ve volunteered in Ukraine and Haiti, and I grew up in Flint, Mich. I’ve seen violence and worked in conflict zones. But of the many things that stood out about working in a hospital in Gaza, one got to me: Nearly every day I was there, I saw a new young child who had been shot in the head or the chest, virtually all of whom went on to die. Thirteen in total. At the time, I assumed this had to be the work of a particularly sadistic soldier located nearby. But after returning home, I met an emergency medicine physician who had worked in a different hospital in Gaza two months before me. “I couldn’t believe the number of kids I saw shot in the head,” I told him. To my surprise, he responded: “Yeah, me, too. Every single day.” Through personal contacts in the medical community and a good deal of searching online, I was able to get in touch with American health care workers who have served in Gaza since Oct. 7, 2023. 44 doctors, nurses and paramedics saw multiple cases of preteen children who had been shot in the head or chest in Gaza.

Adré snapshot: refugee camp life (Worldcrunch) In what is probably the world’s biggest refugee camp, the desert town of Adré, Chad, the refugees from Sudan exhibit a remarkable sense of dignity. Next to some of the huts, they have built from branches and plastic sheeting, flowers grow neatly in beds surrounded by bricks. There is hardly any rubbish on the muddy paths of the town. The people organize committees to clean the toilets, which are provided by aid organizations. People help one another. Anyone who has anything left from the far-too-small food rations shares it with the community—even if they are very hungry. That is what Sudanese culture dictates. And they have brought their culture with them to the neighboring country of Chad. Since the war between Sudan’s army and the Arab militia Rapid Support Forces (RSF) escalated 17 months ago, tens of thousands have been killed in the fighting. It is simultaneously the largest humanitarian crisis and the largest refugee crisis in the world; 10 million people have been displaced, and 2 million have moved to the already fragile neighboring countries. Chad, one of the poorest countries in the world, is bearing the greatest burden with 780,000 refugees.

With roads often blocked by rebels in Congo, boats are the only alternative (AP) The overcrowded boat that capsized in eastern Congo last week killed eight members of Serge Nzonga’s family along with 70 others. Days later, he was back on the same route that claimed their lives in yet another boat lacking safety measures. Nzonga and hundreds of other passengers, including Associated Press journalists, lined up at the seaport in Goma, eastern Congo’s largest city, getting ready to board a locally made boat bound for Bukavu city on the other side of Lake Kivu, a perilous journey they would rather undertake than travel Congo’s treacherous roads. The capsizing of overloaded boats is becoming increasingly frequent in this central African nation as more people are abandoning the few available roads for wooden vessels crumbling under the weight of passengers and their goods. The roads are often caught up in the deadly clashes between Congolese security forces and rebels that sometimes block major access routes. Hundreds have already been killed or declared missing in such accidents so far this year.

Virginia congressional candidate creates AI chatbot as debate stand-in for incumbent (Reuters) After Don Beyer, a Democratic congressman in Virginia, declined to agree to any further election debates before November—Bentley Hensel, a software engineer and long-shot independent candidate in the race, is planning instead to debate an AI chatbot that he has created. DonBot, as the AI is playfully known, is being trained on Beyer’s official websites, press releases, and data from the Federal Election Commission. The debate, slated to stream October 17 online, will pit Hensel and David Kennedy, another independent, against DonBot.

[girlactionfigure]

How to End the New War of Attrition

Welcome to that familiar location, the one between a rock and a hard place.

Since the day after the invasion and massacre on 7 October, Hezbollah has been waging a successful war of attrition against Israel. More than 80,000 Israelis have been displaced from their homes on the northern border, and more than 50 have been killed by rockets and antitank weapons. Border towns and kibbutzim have become wastelands. Homes and other structures have been destroyed, and fields burned.

Israel has responded in a carefully measured, tit-for-tat fashion which, as anyone familiar with the Middle East knows, sends a message of weakness and an invitation for further depredation. There are three apparent reasons for this:

The IDF does not want to fight a two-front war.

Hezbollah has between 130,000 to 200,000 rockets, missiles, and drones that it can launch at Israel, some of them with precision guidance systems that can strike within a few meters of a target. The home front is expected to suffer thousands of deaths and massive destruction of property and infrastructure.

The American administration has told Israel that if it attacks Hezbollah preemptively, it will not support us (presumably with weapons deliveries or at the UN).

On 28 July, a Hezbollah rocket with a 50 kg warhead struck a soccer field and playground in Majdal Shams in the Golan Heights. 12 children and teenagers were killed and numerous others injured, some critically. There was an alert, but it came only a few seconds before the explosion, and the children did not have time to reach a nearby concrete shelter. One child was missing for a day, before it was determined that his body had been blown to bits.

Majdal Shams is the “capital” of the Golan Druze. The Druze mostly live in Lebanon, Syria, the Golan, and the Galilee region of Israel. They have a unique religion, and a tradition of loyalty to the states in which they live. They also have a military tradition, and Israeli Druze serve in the IDF and Border Patrol. They are considered among the best fighters and officers and have paid a high price in blood in Israel’s wars.

The entire region is watching to see how Israel will react to the murder of 12 children. Such an atrocity demands a disproportionate response. If the reaction is typical of the recent past, our enemies will know that the understanding that murdering Israeli civilians is normal behavior is still in effect. The Druze will know that Israel does not care about them or value their contributions to the state. After all, we hit the Houthis’ oil industry and port after they killed one Jew in Tel Aviv.

The Americans have already informed us that yes, we are allowed to retaliate, but no, it cannot be disproportionate. And we may not touch Beirut, where Hezbollah boss Hassan Nasrallah is holed up.

When we were invaded on 7 October, the Biden Administration expressed its horror at the massacre of 1200 Israelis and expressed its support. But in the following days it tried to delay or prevent a ground invasion of Gaza. Once the ground war started, it supported Egypt’s demand that not one Gazan would be allowed to cross the border; but at the same time it complained about civilian casualties in the Strip. Then it tried to prevent us from entering Rafiah and taking control of the border between Gaza and Egypt to cut off Hamas’ weapons supply. Even after we demonstrated that it was possible to move civilians out of the way, it continued to throttle our supply of ammunition, to “protect” them. The administration also delayed the delivery of “smart” munitions which enable precise strikes at military targets! All during the war it has pressed for a hostage deal on terms that would leave Hamas in control of Gaza. And it has encouraged the “bring them home at any price” movement in Israel, as well as the forces opposing PM Netanyahu, who wants to keep fighting. Following the philosophy of never allowing a crisis to go to waste, the Biden administration wishes to turn the “day after” the war into a “two-state solution” that would put most of Israel into jeopardy from 7 October-style invasions.

Many seem to have forgotten that on 13 April of this year, Iran launched a direct attack on Israel, launching more than 300 ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and drones against us. Israel – with some help from the US and others – succeeded in shooting most of them down (at an estimated cost of $1 billion). But had a large number of them reached their targets, the destruction and death would have been beyond estimation. It was an attempt to destroy the fabric of our nation and demanded a suitable response. Instead, we bombed an Iranian air defense radar installation. We were told this would “send a message” to Iran. It did, but not the intended one. It informed them that it’s acceptable to shoot at Jews, and they should keep trying. After all, what do they have to lose?

The Majdal Shams attack cannot be allowed to go unavenged. We cannot afford to allow our deterrence to erode further. The wolves are circling. Yesterday, the little pisher of Turkey, Tayip Recip Erdoğan, threatened that he too could invade Israel. Why not? Everyone is doing it. But still more important: we cannot betray our Druze citizens (and those in the Golan who still hold Syrian citizenship but more and more are becoming Israelis). We owe them, and we need them.

There is little chance that we can make the Americans agree. I would like to think it is because they don’t understand the Middle East, and it’s partly that, but it’s also because the Democratic administration is still following the pro-Iranian policy established by Barack Obama. Nevertheless, we have no alternative but to do it anyway.

But what about the danger from Hezbollah’s arsenal? Many analysts think that Israel could not survive the full force of the blow it could inflict. Of course the state of Lebanon would also be bombed into the stone age, but the Iranian puppeteers are perfectly happy in sacrificing the hosts of their proxies if it will achieve their goal.

We are in a bad spot, but there is one strategy that might succeed: that is to strike a massive blow at the Iranian regime and Iran’s infrastructure, to cut off the head of the snake, so to speak. If this could be done quickly and effectively, Hezbollah would be left high and dry, and could be persuaded to avoid the mutual devastation that would result from all-out war with Israel.

Would it work? How would we do it? I am not a military expert. But I do know that we cannot continue along the road we are following today, because it leads only to destruction.

[rraskolnikov]

i’m thinking about august 4 2020 today. my cousin did his masters at the american university of beirut, working for the LEAP program. i remember seeing the news and video of the port of beirut explosion on twitter and the brief time it took to get a hold of him afterwards as being some of the most horrifying moments of my life. i just can’t stop thinking about how many people are going through exactly this and worse, how many loved ones are never going to pick up the phone. unforgivably evil world we live in