Lebanon, a Nation Destroyed

"We have nothing in the port: not an arms depot, nor a missile depot nor missiles, nor rifles, nor bombs, nor bullets, nor nitrate."                                                          Hassan Nasrallah, head, Hezbollah

"We will hang the gallows."                                                                                    "We are anticipating tens of thousands of people to protest in Beirut and other cities in Lebanon on Saturday."                                                                             "We are likely to see a return to the earliest days of the protest movement that began in October. But the anger and devastation wrought by the explosion coupled with the sharp decline in quality of life -- means that the upcoming period is likely to be more violent than before."                                                                                                 Joel Gulhane, analyst, Risk Advisory Group, United Kingdom

"It is a complete disaster."                                                                                     "We are working without water, without electricity -- we have a corrupt government. Now with what happened, I don't believe we can do anything anymore."             "How do we fix the elevators, water supply, electricity?"                                              "[Our family home and business look like] an atomic bomb has gone off."              "If you want to buy aluminum, you want to buy glass, you want to buy paint, you want to buy anything -- you need fresh money ... If you go to the bank, they cannot give it to you."                                                                                                            "I don't think we'll get anything from the government, all we can hope for is money from the international community."                                                                                Yusef Karam, Beirut resident, 230 metres from the blast site

"Lebanon barely produces any glass, so how do we rebuild any of this?"            "I've owned this pharmacy for 35 years, I lived through the war. I have never seen such a moment. Within ten seconds, I lost everything."                                           Paul, pharmacy owner, Gemmayzeh area, Beirut

French President Emmanuel Macron (L) walks with Lebanese President Michel Aoun upon his arrival at Beirut airport, on August 6, 2020 two days after a massive explosion devastated the Lebanese capital in a disaster that has sparked grief and fury. French President Emmanuel Macron visited shell-shocked Beirut on August 6, pledging support and urging change after a massive explosion devastated the Lebanese capital in a disaster that left 300,000 people homeless. Thibault Camus / POOL / AFP

Hundreds of thousands of residents of Beirut struggle with thoughts of the future, unable to visualize how they will ever be able to restart their lives after a catastrophic blast that destroyed Beirut's port, surrounding buildings and thousands of homes, leaving an estimated 300,000 people homeless. An estimated 150 people died in the explosions, which left 5,000 people injured, flooding Beirut's already stressed and overcrowded hospitals at a time when they were coping with COVID-19 admissions.

A country already struggling with a severely depressed economy, begging for loans to keep itself afloat, where a massive unemployment figure reflects the fallout of the global pandemic lockdown hitting an already depressed financial situation, where banks will not release funds to people desperate for cash. The blast that destroyed the warehouse carrying the incendiary ammonium nitrate, all 2,750 tons of it, is considered to have been ignited by fireworks that began a fire in the warehouse they were stored in, where a welder is held to have sparked the initial reaction.

The giant silo next to the warehouses which stored 80 percent of the nation of 6 million's wheat storage means a desperate shortage of food, with its destruction. Rescue teams searching for survivors have discovered a tunnel and underground rooms beneath the destroyed port. Which certainly sounds consistent with the terror group Hezbollah importing/smuggling/receiving munitions shipped through the port and stored subterraneously. Those aware of insider information speak of Hezbollah control of the port.

Certainly, port authorities who had attempted over the six years of the incendiary chemicals' storage to convey to the ruling elite the dangers inherent in storing the ammonium nitrate among a large civilian population, and they were desperate to have the material removed, but their pleas went nowhere. Even so, government authorities claim to have had no knowledge that the material was even stored at the port. Someone authorized their retention and storage from an impounded and finally owner-abandoned vessel.

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Lebanese have been through decades of war and insecurity, sectarian and tribal suspicion and violence.  Moored in a period of financial strain, coping with a global pandemic, stress between Hezbollah and those who wish them gone, resentment at the manipulative influence of the Islamic Republic of Iran, hosting a million Syrian refugees fleeing their government's lethal violence against its rebellious citizens, the people of Lebanon hardly expected that things could get any worse.

Now they're adamant; they want the entire government to resign. This is not a new demand by any means; it began in the third quarter of 2019, and continues, strengthened to the present day, hugely exacerbated by the destructive blast that levelled a third of the city. Searching desperately for someone to blame, President Michel Aoun suggested a missile aimed at the port by a foreign enemy source would have been the catalyst of the two explosions.

He will not agree to an international investigation, insisting the blast could have been caused by "negligence or foreign interference through a missile or bomb", leaving one thinking 'now who could that foreign interference conceivably be?', the question speedily answering itself. When all else fails, place the blame on the Jewish state. That experts have swiftly discounted such a theory in pointing to a fire burning at the port warehouse initiating the explosion, that too is rejected. 

Many foreign countries have offered assistance, ranging from search and rescue special units, to medical professionals to aid in dealing with the crisis, and the government of Lebanon simply has no interest in these offers stating baldly that it will accept cash in aid, keep the rest away. Lebanese leaders quite simply refuse to take any responsibility. And for that the Lebanese population is beyond furious, exacerbating an already tense situation.

One member of the Lebanese parliament and one of its ambassadors has chosen to resign, agreeing with those who claim the blast resulted from decades of corruption and mismanagement. According to Tracy Chamoun who served as ambassador to Jordan, the disaster resulted from corrupt political elites in power since the 1975 --1990 civil war. "They all must go. This is total negligence", she fumed. 

A person draped in a Lebanese flag reacts before the ravaged port of Lebanon's capital Beirut on Sunday. International donors pledged $398.7 million Cdn in emergency aid after the capital was rocked by a deadly explosion on Aug. 4. (Patrick Baz/AFP via Getty Images)

International Allies Versus North Korea

"The meeting of the Vancouver Group is going to be another visible sign that the international community is acting in concert to speak to the government of North Korea and to say this is threatening us all, and the pressure will increase until the behaviour changes."
"Having said that, we are confident that this campaign of international pressure will lead to the best outcome for the whole world, I think the only outcome for the whole world, which is a diplomatic path to a resolution to this crisis."
Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Christia Freeland

"At this stage, we are not sure what kind of meeting it will be. We have not made decisions."
"The danger which Canada may feel will be more and more. Canada should be one of the main players."
Japanese official

"What's important for North Korea to know is that this pressure campaign will not abate, we will not be rolling any of it back, it will only intensify as time goes by."
U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson

Diplomacy has accomplished nothing with North Korea in the past; pacts have been signed, promises made and flouted. Attempts to wheedle North Korea away from its inexorable path to nuclear weaponry and intercontinental ballistic missiles, along with threats have been hugely disappointing. Efforts to appease the Kims have resulted in nothing but temporary and largely illusory halts in the regime of the People's Republic's steady and accelerating mission, and to continue to rely on the hope that further talks could conceivably result in an understanding and accommodation on the part of Kim to backtrack on his trajectory remains an illusion.

The uncompromising stance of defiance and bellicose threats emanating from Kim Jong Un remain unchanged. He heeds no one, not the leader of the most powerful nation on Earth, nor the Chinese patrons who have supported the Kim dynasty whose presence represents a dike in the Chinese regime's castle. Now news that Kim has reacted with the ultimate finality toward a principal architect of his nuclear program by 'dismissing' him from existence through execution. Park In Young, officially responsible for the Punggye-ri nuclear test site is no more.

That news carried to South Korea through the defection of yet another North Korean soldier. This man, formerly chief of Bureau 131 of the ruling Central Committee supervised military facilities such as the Punggye-ri underground nuclear test facility and the Sohae Satellite Launching Station. Some feel his execution is linked to the October nuclear test, the country’s sixth, a 100-kiloton hydrogen bomb seven times more powerful than the atomic bomb the U.S. dropped on Hiroshima in 1945.

The test facility is located south of a mountain, Mantapsan, and a series of small earthquakes shook the area after a September test launch, leaving fears the mountain, may no longer be stable. A number of tunnels collapsed, killing up to 200 people. "If North Korea were to attempt to continue testing under this mountain , then we would expect to see new tunneling in the future near the North Portal, still under Mt. Mantap,". explained Frank Pabian and Jack Liu, researchers who wrote a report published on the North Korea monitoring website 38 North.

A South Korean scientist shows seismic waves taking place in North Korea on a screen at the Korea Meteorological Administration center on September 3 in Seoul. More than 200 people are believed to have died in underground tunnels after a collapse at North Korea’s Punggye-ri nuclear facility. North Korea is believed to have punished an official responsible for the test site, according to reports in Japanese newspaper Asahi

So there is some internal destabilization linked to North Korea's indelible venture to destabilize the parts of the world he ascribes threats emanating from, toward North Korea. An stealth American training initiative that almost sounds like a combination of Bay of Pigs and Osama bin Laden assassination has been underway, where American soldiers have been training with their South Korean counterparts in potential rescue operations should war break out. According to South Korea's Yonhap news agency, the exercise was meant to simulate "infiltrating North Korea and removing weapons of mass destruction in case of conflict." 

In the meanwhile, the United States, Japan, South Korea have been placed on notice that they are all tagged by North Korea as possible targets should Kim Jong Un feel convinced at any time that his country is under direct threat of invasion, when a missile carrying a nuclear payload could be armed and aimed in their direction. As far as Canada is concerned, in aiming for the U.S. mainland, such a missile could conceivably go astray and fall short of its target, hitting Canada. A reality that brings Canada into the planning fray.

Canada offered Vancouver as a meeting site, for a meeting called the "United Nations Command Sending States Meeting", outlined in a briefing by a U.S. State Department official. The countries in question were members of the United Nations Command representing military grouping countries such as South Korea, the United States and fifteen others, including Canada, all of which contributed to defense of the South during the 1950 to 1953 Korean war. All the Korean war states are to be invited to attend along with Japan, India and Sweden.

Japan, the one nation that has suffered two ICBMs flying over and into its airspace, falling into the Sea of Japan, appears to be uncertain about the purpose and the potential outcome of such a conference. Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Kono hesitated to commit his country to any move before year's end. The Japanese offer a realistic point of view that dialogue simply for the sake of dialogue is essentially meaningless. The strategy at present is to place sufficient pressure on North Korea through economic sanctions to force it to seek a mutual agreement.

This too has never worked in the past. While ordinary people in the North become ever more impoverished and the spectre of starvation hangs over the countryside, Kim Jong Un's privileged officials will never lack for both fundamentals and luxury items to ease their passage in life. And China, while genuinely expressing alarm over the impetuously dangerous actions that Kim mounts -- deliberately oblivious to the danger he places himself and his country in, using the blackmail of imposing mass death and destruction on the South -- yet hesitates to abandon its client state.