[B0ycey]

It was in warehouses that were under de facto control of HEzbollah. Again, you don't need to put 1 to 1 together to figure out why would they need that nitrate.

The Nitrate was impounded and stored for years. I suspect it might have been preserved for weapons but the port officials are under house arrest and I guess we will never really know why it wasn't moved away from Beirut. The only thing I am sure of is that the fireworks were exploding first and the warehouse was on fire before the nitrate exploded and that if anyone actually thought the port was in immediate danger of attack they would have moved the Ammonium nitrate because of the danger. I am no fan of Israel but I won't just blame them for a clear government fuck up.

[JohnRawls]

The Nitrate was impounded and stored for years. I suspect it might have been preserved for weapons but the port officials are under house arrest and I guess we will never really know why it wasn't moved away from Beirut. The only thing I am sure of is that the fireworks were exploding first and the warehouse was on fire before the nitrate exploded and that if anyone actually thought the port was in immediate danger of attack they would have moved the Ammonium nitrate because of the danger. I am no fan of Israel but I won't just blame them for a clear government fuck up.

As much as i see it right now:
1) There was a fire in the port which ignited the nitrate so it is not Israel. Fires break out a lot of the time and this is not the first event of nitrate exploding in the world due to the fire. It happened in many places by now. So Israeli involvement here is super unlikely.

2) Hezbollah intentionally kept the nitrate there in their warehouses to make bombs and rockets if needed. Such a large amount of nitrate is only needed for large scale warfare which they haven't been participating in. Basically it was kept as a supply to fight Israel if a war breaks out between Lebanon and Israel.

3) Incomeptence of the port management along with the general government corruption and closing eyes to obvious violations of any kind of safety regulations. I mean who the fuck stores so much nitrate in a port near other warehouses, especially firecrackers etc. This is the pinnacle of stupidity. At least the events that happened like this in China or US were at factories where the Nitrate was being used.

So everything coupled together caused this tragedy.

[wat0n]

As much as i see it right now:
1) There was a fire in the port which ignited the nitrate so it is not Israel. Fires break out a lot of the time and this is not the first event of nitrate exploding in the world due to the fire. It happened in many places by now. So Israeli involvement here is super unlikely.

2) Hezbollah intentionally kept the nitrate there in their warehouses to make bombs and rockets if needed. Such a large amount of nitrate is only needed for large scale warfare which they haven't been participating in. Basically it was kept as a supply to fight Israel if a war breaks out between Lebanon and Israel.

3) Incomeptence of the port management along with the general government corruption and closing eyes to obvious violations of any kind of safety regulations. I mean who the fuck stores so much nitrate in a port near other warehouses, especially firecrackers etc. This is the pinnacle of stupidity. At least the events that happened like this in China or US were at factories where the Nitrate was being used.

So everything coupled together caused this tragedy.

Is there any evidence of point 2)? I'm hardly a fan of Hezbollah, but 1) and 3) suffice for an explanation.

[B0ycey]

As much as i see it right now:
1) There was a fire in the port which ignited the nitrate so it is not Israel. Fires break out a lot of the time and this is not the first event of nitrate exploding in the world due to the fire. It happened in many places by now. So Israeli involvement here is super unlikely.

2) Hezbollah intentionally kept the nitrate there in their warehouses to make bombs and rockets if needed. Such a large amount of nitrate is only needed for large scale warfare which they haven't been participating in. Basically it was kept as a supply to fight Israel if a war breaks out between Lebanon and Israel.

3) Incomeptence of the port management along with the general government corruption and closing eyes to obvious violations of any kind of safety regulations. I mean who the fuck stores so much nitrate in a port near other warehouses, especially firecrackers etc. This is the pinnacle of stupidity. At least the events that happened like this in China or US were at factories where the Nitrate was being used.

So everything coupled together caused this tragedy.

Hezbollah deny storing Nitrate at the port. And the port officials have basically told everyone they alerted the government of the dangers of storing Nitrate there so where is the evidence that Hezbollah ran the warehouse? I guess there will be a scapegoat but my gut feeling is that the Nitrate was stored by government orders because it needed to be stored somewhere if you were perhaps planning to use it one day. However if there was any form of risk of attack it would have been moved. I guess nobody thought of accidental fire.

Apart from that I agree with most of your other points.

[skinster]

@skinster I just can't close my eyes to this. What you are essentially doing with some posters like @ingliz is trying to use this tragedy to spread hatred of Israel and the Jews by linking them as the main masterminds of this tragedy with no evidence whatsoever.

I'm not "spreading hatred" by saying Israel is likely responsible for this. I'm going by Israel's history with Lebanon and how Israel has done and continues to do the exact same thing of attacking weapons depots and other targets in Iraq, Iran, Syria and Palestine every other week and Lebanon. Israel has been violating Lebanon's airspace on a daily basis this year. People giving Israel the benefit of the doubt given Zionists long history of this type of thing as well as threatening Lebanon over and over again, including hours before the attack = because Israel doing something like this is so godarn outlandish.

The Saudi-Neocon-Zionist axis of evil is definitely the prime suspect but the Chicoms also had means motive and opportunity. A disaster like this could force Lebanon deeper into Belt and Road while casting suspicion on Chicom geopolitical rivals and it's not like the Chinese wouldn't do something like that if they thought could get away with it. My money's on the axis of evil being the culprits but as Escobar pointed out Beirut is a freaking le Carre spook fest so if it wasn't an accident there's no shortage of suspects and it's a real grand chessboard level whodunnit.

Ha, the Chinese being responsible for this attack is a new one, I'll give you that.

Anyway, that aside, my position has always been the Israelis fucked up. - That is Israel likely carried out the attack but did not intend for damage of this magnitude.

Agreed.

It was in warehouses that were under de facto control of HEzbollah.

Hezbollah didn't control it. Your favourite Apartheid state's intelligence admitted this too.

[Rich]

I don't get it. You foster all this hate for Israel and the Jews

Yes but often you have to generate hate. I don't think the result of the Second World War was predetermined. I greatly appreciate Tooze's work but I just don't accept the economic determinism of some of Tooze's fanbois. Everyone seems to think that defeating Hitler was a really important thing, but I just don't believe France, Britain and the Soviet Union could have done it without fostering hate for Germans.

The Americans managed to get away without major fostering of hate, but then the Americans never really broke sweat fighting Germany in either world war when they finally got round to swanning into the conflicts. But its notable that they did need to generate hate in order to go into the jungles and dig out the Japanese. And of course when the Americans attempted to go back into the Jungles to root out the Vietnamese Communists they came unstuck, in significant part because a lot of Americans were very confused about who they were meant to be hating on. Americans became similarly confused about who they were meant to hate in Iraq. George W Bush lacked the skill of George R. R. Martin in being able to replace his baddies when he killed them off.

Sometimes hate is good. Sometimes hate can serve a greater love, as sometime lies can serve a greater truth. I'm not anti Israel myself, but demanding that its opponents mustn't generate hate seems unreasonable to me. Its like I wasn't pro Al Qaeda at all. I don't even support so called moderate Islam, but I was utterly outraged by these demands that Osama Bin Laden wasn't allowed to blow up buildings. Osama Bin Laden wasn't allowed to slaughter civilians. This idea that some how radical Muslim were cheating if they used suicide bombers or suicide pilots.

[skinster]

[ckaihatsu]

I didn't bring Ancient history into the thread. I was responding to the Jewish supremacist lie, that hatred of Jews is the oldest hatred in the world. I notice this trick in politics where an ideological grouping or groupings will repeat a lie over and over and over again. And then when you focus on exposing their lie or lies, they say why are you obsessed about this. I first noticed this tactic with Christians. Christians love to lie to the ignorant, the last thing they want is someone hanging around and questioning their nonsense.

Note I have never, ever, ever attempted to conflate Jewish Supremacism with Cultural Marxism. I have never ever tried to conflate Jewish Supremacism with Marxism. But both groups have or at least have had a common interest in demonising mainstream racially European Culture, but for very different ends. Certain wiser more intelligent Zionists like Netanyahu are now starting to question the strategy of continually seeking to demonise racially European Gentiles. Of course its very easy to exaggerate one's self importance, but I can't help feeling that things I've been saying on the forum for some time are starting to find their way into the wider political discourse. I have a strong suspicion for example that Melanie Philipps has been picking up things I have been saying.

I'll tell you what -- if you can *generalize* these critiques into a general critique of *all religion*, particularly *ruling class* *ideological* religion, then I would agree with you.

My beginning in societal consciousness is as an atheist, but as a political person I don't dismiss *all* beliefs, because, as Marx notes, religion is a *drug* for most people, and I'm not anti-drug.

Religion can bring people together at the ground level, which is good, but I still despise religion personally, and especially when it's used hegemonically for social control of the minds of the masses.

If you pick on *individual* religions, as *you* do, you'll be opening yourself up to charges of *bias* and even racism. I think it's better to critique *all* religions as being the narrative-centric storytelling of the ancients, for lack of modern-day scientific knowledge on the subject matter.

[skinster]

^ You guys keep going wildly off-topic again.

Beirut Suffers While Demanding Answers
President Trump’s favorite news source, “Fox News”, falsely reported that the Port of Beirut was controlled by Hezbollah, the Lebanese political party and resistance movement. Hassan Koraytem is the General Manager of the Port Authority of Beirut, and a member of former Prime Minister Saad Hariri’s “Future Party”, which controls access to the Port. During the street protests which rocked Beirut from October 2019, and continued until the COVID-19 lockdown began, fireworks were used extensively as a weapon directed against the police and security forces, and it was reported that the “Future Party” had distributed the fireworks. The “Future Party” is opposed to Hezbollah, and is aligned with the US and Saudi Arabia.

On August 3, the Israeli Defense Forces had announced that it had suspected Hezbollah of an attempted operation on the Israeli border, and PM Netanyahu had threatened Hezbollah with retaliation.

United States Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s 2019 meetings in Lebanon, which included sessions with President Michel Aoun and the then Prime Minister Saad Hariri, were for the express purpose to denounce Hezbollah and its allies in the government. Pompeo’s trip was seen as appeasement for Israel:

“Lebanon and the Lebanese people face a choice: bravely move forward as an independent and proud nation or allow the dark ambitions of Iran and Hezbollah to dictate your future,”

The Foreign Minister, Gebran Bassil, who is an ally of Hezbollah, countered Pompeo saying,

“For us, Hezbollah is a Lebanese party, not terrorists. Its members of parliament were elected by the Lebanese people, with high popular support.”

On August 7 in a televised speech, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah denied claims that the armed group had any weapons stored at the warehouse.

“We have nothing in the port: not an arms depot, nor a missile depot nor missiles nor rifles nor bombs nor bullets nor ammonium nitrate,” Nasrallah said. He called for accountability and the need for a just and transparent investigation.

President Michel Aoun said the investigation of the blast would have three parts:

“First, how the explosive material entered and was stored, second whether the explosion was a result of negligence or an accident, and third the possibility that there was external interference.”

On April 28, 2012, the Lebanese Navy seized three containers of weapons destined for the Syrian terrorists aboard the “Letfallah II”. The load consisted of heavy machine guns, shells, rockets, rocket launchers, and explosives loaded in Libya, and had made a port call at Alexandria, but was seized by Lebanese authorities on its way to Tripoli, Lebanon. Labeling on one box said it contained fragmentation explosives, and one was marked Tripoli/Benghazi, Libya. Three containers of weapons were taken to the Port of Beirut while under military and helicopter escort.

On May 4, 2012, a military prosecutor Judge indicted 21 people, including customs agents and crew members of the “Letfallah II”, and they were charged with buying and shipping large quantities of weapons, munitions and explosive supplies from Libya to Lebanon and with forming an evil group, and with the intention of carrying out terrorist acts by means of these weapons. The Syrian ambassador to Lebanon, Ali Abdel Karim Ali, accused Qatar and Saudi Arabia of involvement.

Youssef Shehadeh, an employee at the Port of Beirut, reported his first-hand account that the explosion of August 4 involved the Letfallah II, which had been at berth 10, and near to warehouse 12, which was home to the 2,700 tons of ammonium nitrate.

Boris Prokoshev, the former captain of the ship MV Rhosus that brought almost 3,000 tons of ammonium nitrate to Beirut, recalled he started on September 23, 2013, from the port of Batumi in Georgia on the way to Mozambique and reached the port of Beirut to take on several pieces of heavy machinery; however, the machinery proved too heavy to load, and the ship was impounded by the Lebanese authorities for failing to pay port fees, and never left the port again.

WHO spokesman told the UN that containers with thousands of personal protection equipment (PPE) items used to prevent the spread of COVID-19 have also been destroyed in the Port blast, which also wiped out 500 beds from local hospitals.

The US has pledged over $17 million in initial disaster aid for Lebanon, according to the US embassy. The European Union announced the release of 33 million euros ($39m) in emergency aid to Lebanon.

Russian military expert Viktor Morahofski raised doubt as to the exact amount of ammonium nitrate present in the explosion. He estimated about 300 tons had exploded because nearly 3,000 tons would have leveled the city. If his estimate is correct, it begs the question: who had been selling off the ammonium nitrate stored between 2014 to 2020, and to whom?
https://www.globalresearch.ca/beirut-su ... rs/5720610

Related: Israel attacked a refugee camp in Gaza on Friday and tonight.

[ckaihatsu]

I really don't think many slave owing Europeans hated Black Africans, but a lot of Black Africans hated racial Europeans.

I find it strange that you're simply *emotionalizing* the empirical reality of *slavery*. The *exploitation* of people is what's at-issue here, not the interpersonal *feelings* between the exploiter and the exploited. The same goes for *today*, with exploited and underpaid *wage-slaves*.

The Black-African Haitians genocided the Europeans, Black African slaves committed genocide in the one chance they really got. But the Europeans never really attempted to genocide the Black-Africans.

This is an incorrect characterization -- you're serving to *whitewash* the Haitian Revolution:

Dessalines and Pétion join Haitian forces

Dessalines and Pétion remained allied with France until they switched sides again, in October 1802, and fought against the French. As Leclerc lay dying of yellow fever and heard that Christophe and Dessalines had joined the rebels, he reacted by ordering all of the blacks living in Le Cap to be killed by drowning in the harbour.[100] In November, Leclerc died of yellow fever, like much of his army.[23][101]

His successor, the Vicomte de Rochambeau, fought an even more brutal campaign. Rochambeau waged a near-genocidal campaign against the Haitians, killing everyone who was black.[100] Rochambeau imported about 15,000 attack dogs from Jamaica, who had been trained to savage blacks and mulattoes.[100] (Other sources suggest the dogs may have been dogo cubanos sourced in their hundreds from Cuba rather than Jamaica.)[102] At the Bay of Le Cap, Rochambeau had blacks drowned. No one would eat fish from the bay for months afterward, as no one wished to eat the fish that had eaten human flesh.[100] Bonaparte, hearing that most of his army in Saint-Domingue had died of yellow fever and the French held only Port-au-Prince, Le Cap, and Les Cayes, sent about 20,000 reinforcements to Rochambeau.[100]

France's Leclerc Expedition to Haiti in 1804

Dessalines matched Rochambeau in his vicious cruelty. At Le Cap, when Rochambeau hanged 500 blacks, Dessalines replied by killing 500 whites and sticking their heads on spikes all around Le Cap, so that the French could see what he was planning on doing to them.[100] Rochambeau's atrocities helped rally many former French loyalists to the rebel cause. Many on both sides had come to see the war as a race war where no mercy was to be given. The Haitians were just as brutal as the French: they burned French prisoners alive, cut them up with axes, or tied them to a board and sawed them into two.[98]

The rebels finally managed to decisively defeat the French troops at the Battle of Vertières on 18 November 1803, leading the first ever group of enslaved peoples to successfully create an independent state through a slave revolt.[103] Having sold the Louisiana Territory to the United States in April 1803, Napoleon accepted defeat in his failing ventures in the Western Hemisphere. Dessalines won a string of victories against Leclerc and Rochambeau, becoming arguably the most successful military commander in the struggle against Napoleonic France.[104]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haitian_R ... ian_forces

---

3 Million Indians died in the Bengal famine, but few British people if any hated the Bengalis.

Source?

[QatzelOk]

Hezbollah

Hezbollah

Hezbollah

skinster, stop spreading hate

[ness31]

So what’s that amount of ammonium nitrate worth? Even if it didn’t have huge monetary value it was clearly still a valuable asset for ‘other purposes’.

So, don’t you take care of your assets? It’s not every day you get a ship load of ammonium nitrate dropped off on your doorstep..or is that just par for the course in the Middle East?

[Patrickov]

:lol:

While I did not think of Hezbollah at all, you seem to suggest even mentioning Hezbollah is wrong.

No wonder you and Member skinster are so fond of Communist Police States.

[B0ycey]

So, don’t you take care of your assets? It’s not every day you get a ship load of ammonium nitrate dropped off on your doorstep..or is that just par for the course in the Middle East?

It was taken care of. It was stored in a warehouse. Clearly nobody thought of the impact of accidental ignition otherwise it would have been stored somewhere else. Although apparently the port officials informed the government of the dangers.

Nonetheless what I find amazing is that everyone is more focused on conspiracy theories then questioning why this cargo was stored for six years at such an important site without being destroyed. I guess there was a motive to keep it however the same motive of safe storage wasn't equal. Idleness and ignorance costs lives. And I suspect the person who made the call just thought that really it doesn't matter where you store it as long as it doesn't explode - which it did.

[skinster]

Nonetheless what I find amazing is that everyone is more focused on conspiracy theories then questioning why this cargo was stored for six years at such an important site without being destroyed.

It might not be so amazing if you looked into some details on this story which can lead you to the understanding that port officials and customs officials had been trying to get rid of the cargo for years.

[JohnRawls]

https://twitter.com/asadabukhalil/status/1292670618551246848





It might not be so amazing if you looked into some details on this story which can lead you to the understanding that port officials and customs officials had been trying to get rid of the cargo for years.

So why they couldn't do it? What is your hypothesis?

[skinster]

That's what they're investigating.

[Sivad]

Ha, the Chinese being responsible for this attack is a new one, I'll give you that.

Well if we're gonna do a cui bono analysis we'd be remiss not to include the Chinese. I'm not saying they did it, just that they had means motive and opportunity and I wouldn't put it past them.

[skinster]

As I said:

[ckaihatsu]

Well if we're gonna do a cui bono analysis we'd be remiss not to include the Chinese. I'm not saying they did it, just that they had means motive and opportunity and I wouldn't put it past them.

The *butler* did it.