Senate The Middle East Discussion Thread

That was back in 1940's. I remember seeing it mentioned in a documentary about the fertilizer plant explosion in Texas some years back. It also happened in a port but was on a ship. It threw the ship's anchor more than a mile and a half away from the blast site and killed over 500 people.

 

Looking at the list most of the accidental explosions happen in ports.

 

Never live near a port if you can help it

 

Lebanese authorities have detained 16 port workers and frozen the assets of port and customs managers as the investigation widens...

 

Top bloke this Macron is. Got to give credit where credit is due.

 

I know that Lebanon was already in bad shape before the explosion, but is it possible that this will be the final straw that breaks the country?

 

What do you mean 'breaks the country'?

 

The Lebanese people seem to be having quite a bit of anger at their government at the moment. Which isn't something that just happened overnight. This could be an event that might ultimately lead them towards vast efforts in improving the country. Plus I don't think the international community would stand by and allow Lebanon to become a failed state. That would sow chaos in the region. If it got to a breaking point, than the international community could potentially declare a humanitarian crisis and provide whatever assistance may be necessary to help prop them up.

I'm just spit balling here. I'm no Middle East expert by any means.

 

As I said I knew that they had a struggling economy at best and weren’t handling Covid that well either. Not a good mix.

 

Caught between Israel and Syria, Lebanon's been wrecked for years - if it isn't Syria doing stuff, it'll be an Israeli invasion for security / anti-terrorism / politician needs to look hard (delete as applicable).

 

Source - with more commentary on what the situation is.

 

The footage is extraordinary and heart-crushing... Hadn't seen anything like it since 9/11

 

I'm not saying stuff like it hadn't happened in the world, just that I hadn't watched it, personally. I'm not sure how much of the ones you mention were even shown in the mainstream US media; maybe they were and I wasn't watching at that time. Maybe they were never shown.

(Also, aren't the ones you mention things happening in places of armed conflict? I'm talking about such destruction in populated areas where some disaster comes completely out of the blue)

But again, I'm speaking exclusively from personal experience. The footage is really soul-crushing.

 

Wait, what? You haven't seen similar images in the past almost 20 years, war or not?

 

@DarthPhilosopher: You could always contribute to the conversation instead of just questioning what others wrote about it.

 

who made you a mod?

anyways, calling out or questioning ignorant posts is contributing to the conversation in my opinion.

 

This is excellent advise for a lot of folks, as well. I certainly didn't think I would ruffle any feathers simply by expressing a very personal POV on how hard this has struck me, personally. It's not even a controversial statement on Middle East politics.

For personal reasons I won't go into, I have a very visceral response to instances of violence, destruction, and human suffering. I'm sure sharing those while discussing the thread topic isn't against the rules... Just trying to participate in the discussion as thoughtfully and heartfully as I can.
It's easy to become cynical about the state of affairs in the world. But yeah, for some of us this strikes very hard.
My heart goes out to all the victims of this horrible accident, and to everyone in Lebanon going through a tough crisis already.

 

Somebody needs to do quality control with CNN's closed captioning, because yesterday as Wolf Blitzer was talking about the explosion, the captioning put the death toll at 137,000 dead, instead of the official much lower death toll.

 

Quoted from an entirely different thread. Slick move bud.

Nobody, obviously. People do that all the time here. No need to single me out for that.

And secondly, why not just say that then and state your reasons why you think somebody else's post is ignorant? Instead of just perpetually questioning what somebody else wrote and contributing nothing after. People usually aren't intentionally ignorant about something or are out of some malicious intent. So it's probably better to contribute to the discussion in a more meaningful way if you feel that what somebody else has said is ignorant.

 

A lot of shows these days use autogenerated captioning, with very little human supervision. I'm not sure if this is the case with CNN news, but I wouldn't be surprised. It's all about the cost-cutting for them.

 

I think asking questions to put someones post into perspective (I don't think Tina was being intentionally insensitive btw) is contributing to the conversation. Meanwhile (yes in another thread) that was your response to being called out on a genuinely sexist comment.

 

Okay, and it has no bearing on this conversation whatsoever.

And I disagree. Repeatedly asking questions to "put somebody else's post into perspective", while not providing any perspective of your own, isn't contributing to the conversation in any meaningful way.

 

I think I did give my perspective. I assume Tina is intelligent enough to understand the point I was making.