Monday, August 17, 2020
PROTESTERS BLOCK LOGGING ROAD NEAR PORT RENFREW
By Darron Kloster, Times Colonist.
August 15, 2020
https://popularresistance.org/protesters-block-logging-road-nnear-port-renfrew/
Vancouver Island, BC – About 20 protesters have blocked a logging road near Port Renfrew, vowing they will stay until old-growth forests in a critical watershed area of the San Juan River are protected.
The protesters say they want the provincial government to prevent Teal Jones from building a road into the Fairy Creek headwaters. They say the logging company has already cut trees and blasted and bulldozed rock for the road, and are cresting a ridge into an area that contains old-growth yellow cedar, hemlock, Douglas fir and cedar.
The area is part of Tree Farm Licence 46, which is held by Surrey-based Teal Jones.
In a statement, protesters are calling on the province for the “immediate and permanent protection of the entire Fairy Creek Valley, [and to] nullify all cutbocks and road construction approvals in the watershed and contiguous old-growth forests.”
Bobby Arbess, a spokesman for the protesters, said Fairy Creek is the last unlogged tributary in the San Juan watershed and “is far too important to allow the status quo of industrial forestry to happen here.”
He said the “grass-roots” protest sprung up quickly as Teal Jones intensified its road-building operations. The group includes locals from Port Renfrew and Jordan River and others from as far away as Fanny Bay who are concerned about the rapid decline of old-growth forests, said Arbess, who said he’s a landscaper.
“Teal Jones is trying to get a foothold into the watershed, which is a way companies leverage for a cut-block application,” Arbess said. “They say, ‘We’ve already built the road, so let us log.’ ”
Tree Forest Lisences cover vast areas and companies who hold them must apply to log and build roads in areas within the licence area. So far, Teal Jones has not applied for a cutblock in the Fairy Creek watershed, but observers say cresting the ridge on tributary’s valley is too close.
A sub-contractor was taking photos of the protesters over the weekend, and Arbess expects Teal Jones to file a court injunction to have them removed.
A spokesman for Teal Jones said Tuesday the “company has no comment at this time.”
The protesters want Premier John Horgan — whose riding contains the tree-forest licence — to immediately release the recommendations outlined by an independent review on old-growth forests.
The review was completed April 30 and a response was expected by Forestry Minister Doug Donaldson within six months, although the minster has recently said it could be revealed by the end of summer or early fall.
The protesters expect that the report will recommend protecting old-growth forests and the critical habitats around them.
“We’re trying to send a strong message that the loss of critical old-growth affects habitats for so many [species] that it hurts diversity and it degrades salmon habitat,” Arbess said.
Arbess suggested the slow response from government might also have a political point, saying Teal Jones is headquartered in Surrey, which is a “critical swing riding for the NDP.”
Arbess suggested the Fairy Lake watershed would be a good park acquisition for the Capital Regional District, which has land from Salt Spring to Port Renfrew.
Port Renfrew has been reinventing itself after the decline of forestry and commercial fishing and now promotes itself as an outdoor recreation hub with trail heads to the West Coast and Juan de Fuca trails.
The local chamber of commerce uses “Tall Tree Capital of Canada’ to promote the region as tourists have been flocking to old-growth patches called Avatar Grove, Red Creek Fir and Lonely Doug.
dkloster@timescolonist.com
https://popularresistance.org/protesters-block-logging-road-nnear-port-renfrew/
Vancouver Island, BC – About 20 protesters have blocked a logging road near Port Renfrew, vowing they will stay until old-growth forests in a critical watershed area of the San Juan River are protected.
The protesters say they want the provincial government to prevent Teal Jones from building a road into the Fairy Creek headwaters. They say the logging company has already cut trees and blasted and bulldozed rock for the road, and are cresting a ridge into an area that contains old-growth yellow cedar, hemlock, Douglas fir and cedar.
The area is part of Tree Farm Licence 46, which is held by Surrey-based Teal Jones.
In a statement, protesters are calling on the province for the “immediate and permanent protection of the entire Fairy Creek Valley, [and to] nullify all cutbocks and road construction approvals in the watershed and contiguous old-growth forests.”
Bobby Arbess, a spokesman for the protesters, said Fairy Creek is the last unlogged tributary in the San Juan watershed and “is far too important to allow the status quo of industrial forestry to happen here.”
He said the “grass-roots” protest sprung up quickly as Teal Jones intensified its road-building operations. The group includes locals from Port Renfrew and Jordan River and others from as far away as Fanny Bay who are concerned about the rapid decline of old-growth forests, said Arbess, who said he’s a landscaper.
“Teal Jones is trying to get a foothold into the watershed, which is a way companies leverage for a cut-block application,” Arbess said. “They say, ‘We’ve already built the road, so let us log.’ ”
Tree Forest Lisences cover vast areas and companies who hold them must apply to log and build roads in areas within the licence area. So far, Teal Jones has not applied for a cutblock in the Fairy Creek watershed, but observers say cresting the ridge on tributary’s valley is too close.
A sub-contractor was taking photos of the protesters over the weekend, and Arbess expects Teal Jones to file a court injunction to have them removed.
A spokesman for Teal Jones said Tuesday the “company has no comment at this time.”
The protesters want Premier John Horgan — whose riding contains the tree-forest licence — to immediately release the recommendations outlined by an independent review on old-growth forests.
The review was completed April 30 and a response was expected by Forestry Minister Doug Donaldson within six months, although the minster has recently said it could be revealed by the end of summer or early fall.
The protesters expect that the report will recommend protecting old-growth forests and the critical habitats around them.
“We’re trying to send a strong message that the loss of critical old-growth affects habitats for so many [species] that it hurts diversity and it degrades salmon habitat,” Arbess said.
Arbess suggested the slow response from government might also have a political point, saying Teal Jones is headquartered in Surrey, which is a “critical swing riding for the NDP.”
Arbess suggested the Fairy Lake watershed would be a good park acquisition for the Capital Regional District, which has land from Salt Spring to Port Renfrew.
Port Renfrew has been reinventing itself after the decline of forestry and commercial fishing and now promotes itself as an outdoor recreation hub with trail heads to the West Coast and Juan de Fuca trails.
The local chamber of commerce uses “Tall Tree Capital of Canada’ to promote the region as tourists have been flocking to old-growth patches called Avatar Grove, Red Creek Fir and Lonely Doug.
dkloster@timescolonist.com
THE PANDEMIC REVEALED THAT CHILD CARE IS VITAL WORK
By Andrea Ringer, LAWCHA.org.
A Conversation With Memphis Advocates For Radical Childcare (M.A.R.CH.) Co-Founder Phuong Nguyen.
The COVID-19 pandemic has created several shifts across the labor landscape while exposing how piecemeal family care policies have left workers in precarious situations. The closure of schools at the end of the spring semester and uneven plans for reopening this fall have prompted questions about how a society and economy can function without sustainable care work. In this interview with M.A.R.CH. co-founder Phuong Nguyen, we discuss what the Memphis-based organization has meant within the vibrant social justice scene and how developing care policies in a right-to-work state could impact the future of childcare movements, both in and out of academia.
Andrea Ringer: Can you talk about the work that Memphis Advocates for Radical Childcare (M.A.R.CH.) does for social justice movements?
Phuong Nguyen: Our vision is a Memphis where anyone—parents, caregivers, and their children—can fully participate in social justice work. We envision childcare as a political act that sustains and regenerates the social justice movement. Childcare is just as much a vehicle of solidarity that supports movement work as it is integral and radical organizing in itself. We view childcare as often invisibilized and gendered labor that is an essential component of the ecosystem of front-lines organizing. How else can families, mothers, and working-class caregivers, fully participate in strikes, protests, marches, or any form of organizing, without a space or support for their children and young ones? Movements for justice cannot be successful unless they are inclusive and intersectional, which means marginalized women, children, and all people are invited to bring their full selves into the work. This community care concept allows for social justice work to be sustained by a truly intergenerational and inclusive coalition that also centers the political education and participation of our children in the movement.
AR: How do your mission, vision and values work to support social justice?
PN: M.A.R.CH. partners with social justice and community organizations to provide free volunteer childcare for activist and community meetings, events, and actions. Often, there are no intentional family-inclusive movement spaces and many spaces discourage participation of children and their caregivers. M.A.R.CH. aims to lead and promote radically engaging, compassionate, and safe childcare. By supporting activists, working parents, and organizers with childcare needs, we seek to center people who would otherwise play a peripheral role given the burden of this essential labor. To a degree, childcare means engaging in reproductive, gender, and economic justice. Additionally, we advocate for the comprehensive availability of resources supporting the unique needs of parents, caregivers, and their children in our community. This means being proponents of universal and accessible childcare and supporting the creation of alternative childcare models and mutual aid networks for families.
We are part of a nation-wide network of childcare collectives (Intergalactic Conspiracy of Childcare Collectives) from Chicago, to New York, DC, and the Bay Area who are all engaged in continuing a legacy community care. Civil rights and social justice groups have long viewed the necessity of intentionally caring for children as part of social justice and revolutionary work, from offering free breakfast programs, facilitating the political education of children, to marches that involve children and families and actions that are directly led by youth.
However, patriarchal culture de-prioritizes the expertise, labor, and leadership of caregivers—especially low-income, working class, immigrant, BIPOC women and mothers, hence, narratives promulgating care work as crucial to movement work often goes unnoticed. M.A.R.CH. values the contributions and wisdom of these often-excluded folks and we are intentional about centering their experiences and practicing the values that we are advocating for. To us, radical childcare is being committed to anti-racist, feminist, and intersectional thought. It is a practice of collective responsibility, community support, mutual aid, and sustainable resource-sharing. It is intergenerational engagement, co-learning, and liberation. It is valuing our children’s ability to understand and challenge oppression. It is a plethora of deeply held revolutionary principles and the embodiment of community resilience and interdependence.
AR: What inspired you to create this organization?
PN: M.A.R.CH. began as an interest group of diverse organizations and community members who first gathered in January 2016. Many of us parents, the objective was to create a solution to the childcare need in the movement community, beginning with the childcare need of Fight for $15 workers and other labor organizations. Among us were organizers from Fight for $15, Healthy and Free Tennessee, CoreAlign, Worker’s Interfaith Network, Memphis Single Parents Network, Planned Parenthood Greater Memphis Region, Center for Research on Women, Cooperative Memphis, H.O.P.E. Women and other members of the community. Together, we formed a collective that aims to sustain long-term movement work and build a healthier support community that respects, values, and shares caregiving work. But it all began with the Fight for $15 April day of action that year. Ever since, we have partnered with SisterReach, Choices, MidSouth Peace and Justice Center, Southeast Immigrant Rights Network, United Campus Workers and more. We seemed to have a natural affinity for labor and reproductive justice organizations, however, we have partnered with an array of groups under the broad helm of social justice.
AR: I first encountered M.A.R.CH. at a LAWCHA-sponsored labor colloquium in 2017, where you talked about your early organizing in Memphis. What was the initial response when M.A.R.CH. first came onto the social justice scene?
PN: M.A.R.CH. was wholly embraced and welcomed given the childcare need that we all recognized and shared in the movement community. The response was overwhelming at first and we did not have the capacity to meet the demands and often said “no” to certain requests for childcare or partnership. This is an ongoing challenge as we are strictly volunteer-based and our membership is in constant fluctuation. However, at times there are opportunities when we receive donations that help incentivize volunteer engagement and fund our supplies. Partner organizations recognize the value of our work and have been donating whenever possible.
AR: How does M.A.R.CH. operate within the community?
PN: We are a grassroots all volunteer-based collective. We have a small team of core members that meets bi-weekly and operate through consensus decision-making. Core members communicate with local organizations, receive requests, recruit and train new volunteers, fundraise, and coordinate childcare. In addition to the core, we have a team of childcare volunteers who are mobilized based on requests from partner organizations. Together, we form M.A.R.CH. and provide free childcare at events, actions, and meetings. We work to empower organizations to create non-judgmental, compassionate, imaginative, and safe spaces for children and involve them in the social justice and community work that their parents and caregivers partake in.
AR: United Campus Workers (UCW) is working on a state-wide campaign for paid family leave throughout campuses in Tennessee. It seems like an apt time, given Gov. Bill Lee’s initial decision to support it in his last State of the State address. Within the last few years, the University of Memphis and Austin Peay State University have extended six weeks of paid parental leave to their employees. What do you think a fair paid family leave policy, particularly for working-class people, would look like?
PN: Given that we have community partners and core members who work in higher education, we are aware of the issue of family and parental leave and commend the small steps toward progress. We know the shortcomings of the Family Medical Leave Act federal legislation, which is limited and does not guarantee paid leave unless workers use their accrued sick or vacation time. Idealistically and based on practices in other western modern societies, paid family leave should be a right and instituted for much longer than 6 weeks and up to a year. We know that is aspirational, particularly in an “at-will” state where workers’ rights are not recognized and undermined at every level. Still, as a radical childcare collective that acknowledges the value and need for universal childcare and fair labor practices that support working-class families, we believe parental leave is a right.
AR: Shifting to the current moment, COVID-19 has brought the issue of childcare to the forefront in new ways. What are your thoughts on these conversations happening around the country?
PN: The pandemic has revealed to many that care work is vital work but often dismissed. When schools and daycares closed and government stay-at-home mandates and orders were implemented, suddenly, the importance and essential nature of childcare to the normal functioning of our economy were brought to the forefront. Employers were forced to reckon with the dependence that all sectors of the economy have on childcare and that our current social infrastructure was deeply lacking. A perspective and analysis on community interdependence that social justice movements have long had. Now, we have federal legislation (Families First Coronavirus Response Act) recognizing the impact the pandemic has on families and requiring that certain employers provide limited paid leave for families when schools and daycares are closed due to COVID-19. At the same time, we see employers practicing some flexibility with families struggling with the challenge of caring for children while maintaining their full-time jobs remotely from home. As the economy “re-opens”, we also see largely working-class families having no real choice but to take higher risks of COVID-19 exposure by registering their children to daycare and in-person learning because it is the only viable option to maintain their jobs. The conversations happening are highlighting the social disparities that adversely impact under-resourced and working-class families and bringing light to the social and economic importance of childcare.
AR: Tennessee recently announced that it would offer free childcare to workers that are deemed essential during the pandemic. What do you think about this decision and what does it mean for future conversations about childcare and working-class people?
The potential that these conversations are opening up is a good thing. Although the state subsidizing free accessible childcare through YMCA and other organizations to essential workers is a temporary emergency measure, this initiative also exposes the truth that we as a society can viably implement a universal childcare model. M.A.R.CH. ascribes to the ideology of interdependent community care and this seems to open up that collective vision for families. Currently, that initiative has been expanded to include workers across different sectors including education. However, we also acknowledge that this expansion was largely motivated by business interests and rushed efforts to “re-open” the economy. We know that childcare workers being identified as essential during this pandemic means increased risk of exposure to COVID-19 in the workplace. Hence, now more than ever, we must advocate for sustained investment in our care infrastructure–the backbone of our economy- which includes fighting for the rights of our essential childcare workers and supporting a fair and living wage for all.
HOW THE US HELPED PUSH LEBANON TO THE BRINK OF COLLAPSE
https://popularresistance.org/how-the-us-helped-push-lebanon-to-the-brink-of-collapse/
By Ben Norton, The Grayzone.
August 15, 2020
| EDUCATE!
Now Us Threatens More Sanctions.
While the media blames the crisis in Lebanon solely on corruption, the US government unleashed a “maximum pressure” campaign to push regime change and crush Lebanese resistance with sanctions and aggressive hybrid warfare.
As the people of Lebanon suffer through one of the worst economic crises in their nation’s conflict-ridden history, the Donald Trump administration is exploiting the disaster to force regime change and weaken Lebanese resistance groups.
A massive explosion on August 4 devastated Lebanon’s capital Beirut, killing more than 150 people, wounding thousands, leaving hundreds of thousands homeless, and ravaging a sizable chunk of the city.
The massive blast also destroyed Lebanon’s most important port, where 80 percent of food was imported into the country.
Even before the apocalyptic incident, Lebanon was enduring an economic calamity that had caused hyperinflation and wiped out the wealth of much of the country, fueling widespread food shortages and 20-hour blackouts.
Lebanon’s economy is now in a state of total collapse. The value of its national currency has plummeted by 80 percent, and more than half of the population is languishing in poverty.
Political kingpins, activists, Western government-funded NGOs, and international corporate media have blamed Lebanon’s problems solely on corruption. And there is no question that widespread financial impropriety and outright theft was a key factor in bringing the country to such a dismal point.
But an even more important element that has been conveniently left out of this picture is the role of the United States, and its allies in Israel and Saudi Arabia, which have pursued a concerted policy of destabilization, or what they call “maximum pressure.”
Washington has suffocated Lebanon and its neighbors with aggressive economic warfare, explicitly aimed at paralyzing the country and weakening Hezbollah, one of the most powerful and popular resistance forces in the region, which has successfully resisted US and Israeli interventionist designs, helped defeat ISIS and al-Qaeda, and even expelled the Israeli military after two decades of brutal military occupation of south Lebanon.
Hezbollah has a political arm that is democratically elected, holding 12 seats in Lebanon’s parliament, and which has been a member of the country’s governing coalition for a decade. Because of the resistance movement’s presence in government, Washington and Tel Aviv have refused to recognize the legitimacy of Lebanese democracy, and have desperately pursued regime change.
The crushing sanctions Washington has imposed on Syria and Iran have not only devastated the economies in the area; they have produced a ricochet effect back in Lebanon, severing the country from regional trading partners.
Then there is the nine-year Western-backed proxy war on the government in Damascus, which has destabilized Lebanon’s neighbor and unleashed a historic refugee crisis, putting enormous pressure on Beirut.
All of these factors have led to a catastrophe in Lebanon.
Trump Administration Pushes ‘Maximum Pressure’ Campaign On Lebanon
The response of the Trump administration to the fateful Beirut blast was more sanctions.
The Wall Street Journal reported on August 12 that the US government was preparing to impose new sanctions “against prominent Lebanese politicians and businessmen in an effort to weaken Hezbollah’s influence.”
The newspaper noted that the blast “has accelerated efforts in Washington to blacklist Lebanese leaders aligned with Hezbollah.” It added that US officials see the post-explosion chaos as “an opportunity to drive a wedge between Hezbollah and its allies as part of a broader effort to contain the Shiite force backed by Tehran.”
Top US officials want to “turn the screws in Lebanon,” the Journal reported. It quoted an unnamed official who remarked, “I don’t see how you can react to this kind of event with anything other than maximum pressure” – a reference to the Trump administration’s “maximum pressure” campaign to bring about regime change in Iran.
Senior US officials remarked bluntly that they want Lebanon’s current government to be replaced with a “technocratic” regime that shuns Hezbollah.
This demand confirmed a 2019 report in The Grayzone by journalist Rania Khalek, which detailed how Western-backed NGOs in Lebanon were exploiting anti-corruption protests to advance a strategy to remove Hezbollah from the country’s governing coalition and install US-aligned, IMF-friendly technocrats.
The Wall Street Journal also acknowledged that the Trump “administration’s existing sanction programs against Hezbollah” have already “taken an economic toll” on Lebanon.
Washington has therefore made it clear that it has no problem pushing Lebanon deeper into the economic abyss, to the edge of state collapse, in hopes of neutralizing Hezbollah.
Washington’s All-Out War On The ‘Resistance Axis’
The crisis in Lebanon cannot be understood outside of the wider context of the overarching, obsessive US strategy aimed at crushing what is known as the “Resistance Axis,” in which Hezbollah serves as a key actor.
The ongoing, nearly decade-long war on Syria looms large in this situation. When the US government and its allies in Israel, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey initiated a regime-change war against Syria in 2011 and 2012, Hezbollah immediately recognized the proxy conflict as an attack on all resistance forces in the region, which would inevitably swallow Lebanon as well.
So while Washington and the Wahhabi Gulf monarchies poured billions of dollars into arming and training Salafi-jihadist rebels groups in Syria, giving birth to ISIS and fueling the spread of al-Qaeda, Lebanese Hezbollah helped to prevent state collapse in Damascus, battling Western proxies that threatened to turn the country into a failed state, as they did in Libya after the 2011 NATO regime-change war.
Some US lawmakers openly argued in Congress that it was a “good thing” that ISIS and other Sunni extremists were attacking “Hezbollah and the Shiite threat to us.” And an Israeli think tank funded by the US government and NATO even insisted in 2016 that ISIS should not be defeated, precisely because it could “be a useful tool in undermining” Hezbollah, Syria, and Iran.
Meanwhile, as Israel treated al-Qaeda militants in its hospitals and Israeli officials said they preferred ISIS staying in power, Hezbollah played a key role in the fight to defeat ISIS and al-Qaeda, both of which had crossed from Syria into Lebanon and took over Sunni-majority border towns, which they subsequently used as bases to launch attacks on Shia- and Christian-majority Lebanese villages.
Hezbollah successfully expelled these extremist Salafi-jihadist groups, and defended Lebanese sovereignty, in collaboration with Christian militias, Sunnis and Druze, and the Lebanese national army itself.
Faced with its own failure in the military component of the war in Syria, Washington then turned to full-scale economic warfare.
US Economic Warfare On Lebanon, Syria, And Iran
In June, the US government imposed a crushing unilateral coercive measures regime on Syria known as the “Caesar” sanctions. The Grayzone editor Max Blumenthal detailed how the US and European sanctions on Syria effectively amount to a medieval-style siege of the entire country, and all of the millions of civilians who live inside of it.
Humanitarian experts have even warned that the Western economic warfare could unleash a famine. The United Nation Food and Agriculture Organization’s Syria representative, Mike Robson, cautioned there may soon be bread shortages in Syria. “There is already some evidence of people cutting out meals,” he stated.
The economic blockade has also damaged the economy in Lebanon, which has been virtually unable to do business with one of its most important trading partners. In 2017, Lebanon was by far the largest recipient of Syrian goods, receiving nearly 32 percent of its exports. Now, the sanctions have made that exchange nearly impossible.
The US ambassador in fact explicitly stated that Lebanon would not be allowed to buy energy from Syria due to the Caesar sanctions. The US-imposed severance of the two neighbors has exacerbated the electricity crisis in Lebanon, where there are often power shortages for up to 22 hours per day.
The US economic blockade of Iran has also caused a fuel shortage in Syria, forcing people to wait in lines for hours to get gasoline.
Moreover, Damascus had relied on the Beirut port for imports prior to the explosion. Now that its crucial economic lifeline has been destroyed, both Lebanon and Syria are facing extremely severe crises and the serious possibility of famine.
A Syrian-American economist, financial analyst, and prominent online commentator known by the pseudonym Ehsani told The Grayzone “there is little doubt” that the Syria war has terribly impacted Lebanon’s economy.
While disastrous, fiscally unsound policies overseen by the Lebanese central bank – which is also heavily influenced by the US embassy – played an important role in pushing the nation to the economic brink, the war on Syria has also hurt the Lebanese economy “in a big way,” Ehsani said.
“Economic growth clearly decelerated since 2011,” the start of the war in Syria, he explained. “And it ground to a halt in the past few years, leading up to the financial crisis. Between 2016 and 2019, Lebanon’s economic growth was practically zero. And it kept declining from its pre-2011 levels steadily.”
While corruption is an endemic problem in Lebanon, it has plagued the country for decades. Yet a pivotal economic shift occurred with the introduction of the US policy of exacerbating the crises in the region to destabilize independent governments and weaken the Resistance Axis, explained journalist Elijah J. Magnier, a war correspondent who has covered the region for decades.
“The US sanctions crippled the Syrian economy due to the restriction of the flow of cash, oil, and machinery needed to re-boost the local economy,” Magnier told The Grayzone. “Moreover, the US presence in north-east Syria and their control of the oil and gas prevented the country not only from vital energy but also from the rich agriculture resources the area is known for.”
“The US sanctions on Syria stopped all Arab and Gulf countries from rebuilding the country and pushed back all possible financial investment,” he said. “This has caused the devaluation of the local currency and prevented the Lebanese market from offering an alternative to Syria for fear of direct sanctions on the Lebanese government.”
Magnier added: “As far as it concerns Lebanon, the US asked a local bank to collect over $20 billion in cash and to ship it abroad, creating a real thirst for foreign currency in the country. Moreover, the US imposed sanctions on wealthy Lebanese living abroad and on more than one bank, injecting real fear among the population of being accused of supporting terrorism or seeing their savings confiscated by the US authorities abroad. That has starved Lebanon of several billion dollars in cash that family members used to send back home to their relatives.”
US Boasts Of Impact Of Sanctions On Lebanon, And CENTCOM Commander Visits
While imposing de facto economic blockades on Syria and Iran, the United States has hit Lebanon with several rounds of what it calls “targeted sanctions.” These US Treasury sanctions on Lebanon have sought to punish Hezbollah and its allies in the government and business sector.
While Washington portrays targeted sanctions as supposed humanitarian measures that do not hurt civilians, economic experts say this is patently false.
Ehsani, the Syrian-American economist, told The Grayzone, “The effects of the US sanctions on the region is to push most business transactions underground. Lawless rogue elements typically fill the void as more legitimate businesses exit the scene. Such legitimate businesses do this because most global organizations opt to follow an ‘over-compliance’ posture to avoid any chance of getting entangled in such transactions.”
US sanctions have also hurt Lebanon by “the loss of potential money inflows that had fallen under significantly more scrutiny from US Treasury,” Ehsani added. “How much of the average $7-8 billion yearly inflow got affected by these sanctions is hard to ascertain.”
“While Western capitals speak of ‘smart sanctions,’ the fact is that even industries exempt from sanctions tend to quickly fall under the sanctions regime. This can be seen with importers of raw materials for medicine for example,” he explained.
“What has been clear is that benign sanctions are a myth,” Ehsani said. “Sanctions are akin to carpet bombing the standards of living of the average citizen.”
Before the August 4 explosion, Washington itself acknowledged that its sanctions were stinging Lebanon.
Just two weeks before the Beirut blast, the US government-run media outlet Voice of America (VOA) celebrated the effect its coercive measures were having. “US Sanctions on Syria Leave Hezbollah More Isolated in Lebanon,” it gloated.
The VOA report noted that Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah had described the US sanctions as part of an “economic war” aimed at “starving both Syria and Lebanon.”
The neoconservative group United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI) approvingly tweeted the VOA article, insisting that the resistance “network is vast, but it can be reined in.”
This VOA report came on the heels of a quiet yet important visit that the commander of US Central Command (CENTCOM), General Frank McKenzie, took to Beirut on July 8, to pressure the Lebanese Army to distance itself from Hezbollah and strengthen its bonds with the US military.
The US embassy in Lebanon reported that the CENTCOM commander met with top Lebanese political and military officials. Lebanese President Michel Aoun tweeted a photo of a meeting with McKenzie and the US ambassador, Dorothy Shea.
Saudi monarchy-backed media outlet Al Arabiya reported gleefully on the CENTCOM visit, chirping, “US general affirms support for Lebanon; Hezbollah supporters burn Trump photos.”
The quiet US junket demonstrated that, on the eve of the Beirut blast, Washington was already ratcheting up its pressure on Lebanon’s government.
Western Governments, NGOs, And Media Try To Pin Beirut Blast On Hezbollah
The August 4 explosion appears to have been the result of the explosion of thousands of tons of ammonium nitrate that the Lebanese government confiscated from an abandoned ship in 2013 and improperly stored at the Beirut port, violating safety protocol.
The Lebanese government, which resigned a week after the blast, officially attributed the incident to negligence. But President Michel Aoun acknowledged it could have possibly been the result an attack.
Some Beirut residents told Asia Times that they saw and heard military aircraft flying overhead moments before the explosion.
Asia Times also reported, citing unnamed Western officials, “that Western reconnaissance craft were in the skies above the Lebanese coast at the time of the blasts,” although the officials denying carrying out an attack.
A US Central Command official told Asia Times that the “cause of the first fire/explosion is still an unanswered question,” adding that there is no “actual evidence to support or confirm that” it was caused by ammonium nitrate, and that “other alternatives” are possible.
Although the incident appears to have been an accident, some Lebanese analysts have suggested the blast could have potentially been an attack by Israel, which militarily occupied south Lebanon for more than 20 years and waged a devastating war in 2006, brutally bombing Lebanon and leaving more than 1,000 Lebanese dead and parts of the country in ruins.
Israel violates Lebanon’s sovereign airspace on a daily basis. In 2019, the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon reported an average of 96.5 violations each month. UN Secretary-General António Guterres even spoke out against the Israeli aggression, stating, “I reiterate my condemnation of all violations of Lebanese sovereignty and my call for Israel to cease its violations of Lebanese airspace.”
Despite the presence of Western aircraft during the explosion, the history of Israeli attacks, and the constant Israeli violations of Lebanese airspace, there has been a concerted campaign to try to pin the blast on Hezbollah, waged by the US and Israeli governments, a coterie of hawkish think tanks, and a sizable portion of the corporate media.
There is not even a scintilla of evidence linking Hezbollah to the explosion. In fact, the Lebanese resistance group would have everything to lose if it were involved.
But this didn’t stop the Atlantic Council, NATO’s de facto think tank, which is funded handsomely by the governments of the United States, Britain, and United Arab Emirates, along with top weapons and oil corporations. The Atlantic Council’s Gulf monarchy-backed Rafik Hariri Center tried to link Hezbollah to the blast with nothing more than insinuations.
Then there was the hawkish executive director of Human Rights Watch, Kenneth Roth. Never one to let something like a dearth of evidence get in the way of his mindless speculation about Washington’s foreign adversaries, Roth immediately implied after the blast that Hezbollah was responsible. He did not provide a shred of evidence; it was just his gut instinct.
Pro-Western protesters in Lebanon have also seized on the chaos to call for the dissolution of the Lebanese armed resistance.
Following the explosion, anti-Hezbollah groups took over Lebanese government buildings and unfurled banners calling for Beirut to demilitarize — an obvious demand for Hezbollah to put down its weapons and end its fight against Israel.
The US embassy in Beirut openly welcomed these demonstrations, tweeting openly, “We support them.”
US Pledges ‘Aid’ While Intentionally Exacerbating Lebanon’s Economic Crisis
Even as the Trump administration threatens to impose more aggressive sanctions on Lebanon, seeking to punish forces that support the Resistance Axis, the US government has pledged humanitarian aid to the country.
Moments after the explosion, Washington put its public relations operations into hyperdrive, seeking to portray itself as a noble protector of Lebanon.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo – the former CIA director who quipped, “We lied, we cheated, we stole; we had entire training courses” – promised support following the blast.
The United States Agency for International Development (USAID), a soft-power arm that Washington uses to destabilize foreign governments it has targeted for regime change, announced it would be providing Lebanon with humanitarian aid.
John Barsa, the hardline neoconservative Trump loyalist recently installed as head of the USAID, who has explicitly used the ostensible aid agency as a weapon to overthrow the progressive governments in Latin America, announced support for Lebanon the next day.
US Central Command revealed that they were working with USAID to distribute medical supplies to Lebanon.
Ironically, in the weeks before the explosion, as Lebanon’s government begged for an economic lifeline, Washington was dragging its feet.
As millions Lebanese citizens struggled to put food on the table, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) also refused to play ball. This baffled many international observers. Left unmentioned in coverage of the IMF’s behavior was the de facto veto the US holds in the organization, which it wields as a neoliberal instrument of Washington’s economic power.
“The IMF conditions include privatization and taxes the Lebanese society can’t afford,” the journalist Elijah Magnier explained to The Grayzone. “Moreover, the IMF is controlled by the US administration, which is asking for a new government without Hezbollah. That is not feasible because Hezbollah represents 13 MPs and enjoys the support of the majority of the parliament.”
Magnier also emphasized that when Lebanon had assembled a new government in the middle of the crisis, under Prime Minister Hassan Diab, Washington waged a destabilization campaign.
“With the formation of a new government, the US boycotted it and pressured Europe and the Gulf countries to cease any support, defining it as ‘Hezbollah’s government,’” Magnier said. “These measures contributed in the hectic financial situation in the country, which was also triggered by decades of corruption and mismanagement by the US friends who ruled Lebanon for all these years.”
The pro-Israel lobby group the American Jewish Committee (AJC) let the cat out of the bag when it tweeted on August 9 that international assistance to Lebanon following the explosion “must be conditioned on the long-promised, long-avoided disarmament of Hezbollah.”
AJC made it clear that Western aid will be hung over Lebanon like a sword of Damocles, adding, “Unless the malignant role of Iran’s terror proxy is addressed there will never be meaningful change for the people of Lebanon.”
Magnier also pointed out that the amount in international aid being offered to Lebanon is relatively little. “35 countries gathered all to offer to the UN and NGOs in Lebanon $300 million, the equivalent of what Hezbollah spend in less than five months in the country, only on salaries,” he said.
Meanwhile, as millions of Lebanese civilians suffer, financial analysts expect the US campaign of economic warfare and “maximum pressure” to only continue going forward.
“The sanctions policy are likely to stay,” Ehsani told The Grayzone. “This policy is more acceptable to the average Western electorate than direct military involvement. Policy makers are therefore likely to make more use of them post the Iraq debacle. Regional governments and average citizens will bear the brunt of this silent evisceration of their economic well being.”
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Now Us Threatens More Sanctions.
While the media blames the crisis in Lebanon solely on corruption, the US government unleashed a “maximum pressure” campaign to push regime change and crush Lebanese resistance with sanctions and aggressive hybrid warfare.
As the people of Lebanon suffer through one of the worst economic crises in their nation’s conflict-ridden history, the Donald Trump administration is exploiting the disaster to force regime change and weaken Lebanese resistance groups.
A massive explosion on August 4 devastated Lebanon’s capital Beirut, killing more than 150 people, wounding thousands, leaving hundreds of thousands homeless, and ravaging a sizable chunk of the city.
The massive blast also destroyed Lebanon’s most important port, where 80 percent of food was imported into the country.
Even before the apocalyptic incident, Lebanon was enduring an economic calamity that had caused hyperinflation and wiped out the wealth of much of the country, fueling widespread food shortages and 20-hour blackouts.
Lebanon’s economy is now in a state of total collapse. The value of its national currency has plummeted by 80 percent, and more than half of the population is languishing in poverty.
Political kingpins, activists, Western government-funded NGOs, and international corporate media have blamed Lebanon’s problems solely on corruption. And there is no question that widespread financial impropriety and outright theft was a key factor in bringing the country to such a dismal point.
But an even more important element that has been conveniently left out of this picture is the role of the United States, and its allies in Israel and Saudi Arabia, which have pursued a concerted policy of destabilization, or what they call “maximum pressure.”
Washington has suffocated Lebanon and its neighbors with aggressive economic warfare, explicitly aimed at paralyzing the country and weakening Hezbollah, one of the most powerful and popular resistance forces in the region, which has successfully resisted US and Israeli interventionist designs, helped defeat ISIS and al-Qaeda, and even expelled the Israeli military after two decades of brutal military occupation of south Lebanon.
Hezbollah has a political arm that is democratically elected, holding 12 seats in Lebanon’s parliament, and which has been a member of the country’s governing coalition for a decade. Because of the resistance movement’s presence in government, Washington and Tel Aviv have refused to recognize the legitimacy of Lebanese democracy, and have desperately pursued regime change.
The crushing sanctions Washington has imposed on Syria and Iran have not only devastated the economies in the area; they have produced a ricochet effect back in Lebanon, severing the country from regional trading partners.
Then there is the nine-year Western-backed proxy war on the government in Damascus, which has destabilized Lebanon’s neighbor and unleashed a historic refugee crisis, putting enormous pressure on Beirut.
All of these factors have led to a catastrophe in Lebanon.
Trump Administration Pushes ‘Maximum Pressure’ Campaign On Lebanon
The response of the Trump administration to the fateful Beirut blast was more sanctions.
The Wall Street Journal reported on August 12 that the US government was preparing to impose new sanctions “against prominent Lebanese politicians and businessmen in an effort to weaken Hezbollah’s influence.”
The newspaper noted that the blast “has accelerated efforts in Washington to blacklist Lebanese leaders aligned with Hezbollah.” It added that US officials see the post-explosion chaos as “an opportunity to drive a wedge between Hezbollah and its allies as part of a broader effort to contain the Shiite force backed by Tehran.”
Top US officials want to “turn the screws in Lebanon,” the Journal reported. It quoted an unnamed official who remarked, “I don’t see how you can react to this kind of event with anything other than maximum pressure” – a reference to the Trump administration’s “maximum pressure” campaign to bring about regime change in Iran.
Senior US officials remarked bluntly that they want Lebanon’s current government to be replaced with a “technocratic” regime that shuns Hezbollah.
This demand confirmed a 2019 report in The Grayzone by journalist Rania Khalek, which detailed how Western-backed NGOs in Lebanon were exploiting anti-corruption protests to advance a strategy to remove Hezbollah from the country’s governing coalition and install US-aligned, IMF-friendly technocrats.
The Wall Street Journal also acknowledged that the Trump “administration’s existing sanction programs against Hezbollah” have already “taken an economic toll” on Lebanon.
Washington has therefore made it clear that it has no problem pushing Lebanon deeper into the economic abyss, to the edge of state collapse, in hopes of neutralizing Hezbollah.
Washington’s All-Out War On The ‘Resistance Axis’
The crisis in Lebanon cannot be understood outside of the wider context of the overarching, obsessive US strategy aimed at crushing what is known as the “Resistance Axis,” in which Hezbollah serves as a key actor.
The ongoing, nearly decade-long war on Syria looms large in this situation. When the US government and its allies in Israel, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey initiated a regime-change war against Syria in 2011 and 2012, Hezbollah immediately recognized the proxy conflict as an attack on all resistance forces in the region, which would inevitably swallow Lebanon as well.
So while Washington and the Wahhabi Gulf monarchies poured billions of dollars into arming and training Salafi-jihadist rebels groups in Syria, giving birth to ISIS and fueling the spread of al-Qaeda, Lebanese Hezbollah helped to prevent state collapse in Damascus, battling Western proxies that threatened to turn the country into a failed state, as they did in Libya after the 2011 NATO regime-change war.
Some US lawmakers openly argued in Congress that it was a “good thing” that ISIS and other Sunni extremists were attacking “Hezbollah and the Shiite threat to us.” And an Israeli think tank funded by the US government and NATO even insisted in 2016 that ISIS should not be defeated, precisely because it could “be a useful tool in undermining” Hezbollah, Syria, and Iran.
Meanwhile, as Israel treated al-Qaeda militants in its hospitals and Israeli officials said they preferred ISIS staying in power, Hezbollah played a key role in the fight to defeat ISIS and al-Qaeda, both of which had crossed from Syria into Lebanon and took over Sunni-majority border towns, which they subsequently used as bases to launch attacks on Shia- and Christian-majority Lebanese villages.
Hezbollah successfully expelled these extremist Salafi-jihadist groups, and defended Lebanese sovereignty, in collaboration with Christian militias, Sunnis and Druze, and the Lebanese national army itself.
Faced with its own failure in the military component of the war in Syria, Washington then turned to full-scale economic warfare.
US Economic Warfare On Lebanon, Syria, And Iran
In June, the US government imposed a crushing unilateral coercive measures regime on Syria known as the “Caesar” sanctions. The Grayzone editor Max Blumenthal detailed how the US and European sanctions on Syria effectively amount to a medieval-style siege of the entire country, and all of the millions of civilians who live inside of it.
Humanitarian experts have even warned that the Western economic warfare could unleash a famine. The United Nation Food and Agriculture Organization’s Syria representative, Mike Robson, cautioned there may soon be bread shortages in Syria. “There is already some evidence of people cutting out meals,” he stated.
The economic blockade has also damaged the economy in Lebanon, which has been virtually unable to do business with one of its most important trading partners. In 2017, Lebanon was by far the largest recipient of Syrian goods, receiving nearly 32 percent of its exports. Now, the sanctions have made that exchange nearly impossible.
The US ambassador in fact explicitly stated that Lebanon would not be allowed to buy energy from Syria due to the Caesar sanctions. The US-imposed severance of the two neighbors has exacerbated the electricity crisis in Lebanon, where there are often power shortages for up to 22 hours per day.
The US economic blockade of Iran has also caused a fuel shortage in Syria, forcing people to wait in lines for hours to get gasoline.
Moreover, Damascus had relied on the Beirut port for imports prior to the explosion. Now that its crucial economic lifeline has been destroyed, both Lebanon and Syria are facing extremely severe crises and the serious possibility of famine.
A Syrian-American economist, financial analyst, and prominent online commentator known by the pseudonym Ehsani told The Grayzone “there is little doubt” that the Syria war has terribly impacted Lebanon’s economy.
While disastrous, fiscally unsound policies overseen by the Lebanese central bank – which is also heavily influenced by the US embassy – played an important role in pushing the nation to the economic brink, the war on Syria has also hurt the Lebanese economy “in a big way,” Ehsani said.
“Economic growth clearly decelerated since 2011,” the start of the war in Syria, he explained. “And it ground to a halt in the past few years, leading up to the financial crisis. Between 2016 and 2019, Lebanon’s economic growth was practically zero. And it kept declining from its pre-2011 levels steadily.”
While corruption is an endemic problem in Lebanon, it has plagued the country for decades. Yet a pivotal economic shift occurred with the introduction of the US policy of exacerbating the crises in the region to destabilize independent governments and weaken the Resistance Axis, explained journalist Elijah J. Magnier, a war correspondent who has covered the region for decades.
“The US sanctions crippled the Syrian economy due to the restriction of the flow of cash, oil, and machinery needed to re-boost the local economy,” Magnier told The Grayzone. “Moreover, the US presence in north-east Syria and their control of the oil and gas prevented the country not only from vital energy but also from the rich agriculture resources the area is known for.”
“The US sanctions on Syria stopped all Arab and Gulf countries from rebuilding the country and pushed back all possible financial investment,” he said. “This has caused the devaluation of the local currency and prevented the Lebanese market from offering an alternative to Syria for fear of direct sanctions on the Lebanese government.”
Magnier added: “As far as it concerns Lebanon, the US asked a local bank to collect over $20 billion in cash and to ship it abroad, creating a real thirst for foreign currency in the country. Moreover, the US imposed sanctions on wealthy Lebanese living abroad and on more than one bank, injecting real fear among the population of being accused of supporting terrorism or seeing their savings confiscated by the US authorities abroad. That has starved Lebanon of several billion dollars in cash that family members used to send back home to their relatives.”
US Boasts Of Impact Of Sanctions On Lebanon, And CENTCOM Commander Visits
While imposing de facto economic blockades on Syria and Iran, the United States has hit Lebanon with several rounds of what it calls “targeted sanctions.” These US Treasury sanctions on Lebanon have sought to punish Hezbollah and its allies in the government and business sector.
While Washington portrays targeted sanctions as supposed humanitarian measures that do not hurt civilians, economic experts say this is patently false.
Ehsani, the Syrian-American economist, told The Grayzone, “The effects of the US sanctions on the region is to push most business transactions underground. Lawless rogue elements typically fill the void as more legitimate businesses exit the scene. Such legitimate businesses do this because most global organizations opt to follow an ‘over-compliance’ posture to avoid any chance of getting entangled in such transactions.”
US sanctions have also hurt Lebanon by “the loss of potential money inflows that had fallen under significantly more scrutiny from US Treasury,” Ehsani added. “How much of the average $7-8 billion yearly inflow got affected by these sanctions is hard to ascertain.”
“While Western capitals speak of ‘smart sanctions,’ the fact is that even industries exempt from sanctions tend to quickly fall under the sanctions regime. This can be seen with importers of raw materials for medicine for example,” he explained.
“What has been clear is that benign sanctions are a myth,” Ehsani said. “Sanctions are akin to carpet bombing the standards of living of the average citizen.”
Before the August 4 explosion, Washington itself acknowledged that its sanctions were stinging Lebanon.
Just two weeks before the Beirut blast, the US government-run media outlet Voice of America (VOA) celebrated the effect its coercive measures were having. “US Sanctions on Syria Leave Hezbollah More Isolated in Lebanon,” it gloated.
The VOA report noted that Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah had described the US sanctions as part of an “economic war” aimed at “starving both Syria and Lebanon.”
The neoconservative group United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI) approvingly tweeted the VOA article, insisting that the resistance “network is vast, but it can be reined in.”
This VOA report came on the heels of a quiet yet important visit that the commander of US Central Command (CENTCOM), General Frank McKenzie, took to Beirut on July 8, to pressure the Lebanese Army to distance itself from Hezbollah and strengthen its bonds with the US military.
The US embassy in Lebanon reported that the CENTCOM commander met with top Lebanese political and military officials. Lebanese President Michel Aoun tweeted a photo of a meeting with McKenzie and the US ambassador, Dorothy Shea.
Saudi monarchy-backed media outlet Al Arabiya reported gleefully on the CENTCOM visit, chirping, “US general affirms support for Lebanon; Hezbollah supporters burn Trump photos.”
The quiet US junket demonstrated that, on the eve of the Beirut blast, Washington was already ratcheting up its pressure on Lebanon’s government.
Western Governments, NGOs, And Media Try To Pin Beirut Blast On Hezbollah
The August 4 explosion appears to have been the result of the explosion of thousands of tons of ammonium nitrate that the Lebanese government confiscated from an abandoned ship in 2013 and improperly stored at the Beirut port, violating safety protocol.
The Lebanese government, which resigned a week after the blast, officially attributed the incident to negligence. But President Michel Aoun acknowledged it could have possibly been the result an attack.
Some Beirut residents told Asia Times that they saw and heard military aircraft flying overhead moments before the explosion.
Asia Times also reported, citing unnamed Western officials, “that Western reconnaissance craft were in the skies above the Lebanese coast at the time of the blasts,” although the officials denying carrying out an attack.
A US Central Command official told Asia Times that the “cause of the first fire/explosion is still an unanswered question,” adding that there is no “actual evidence to support or confirm that” it was caused by ammonium nitrate, and that “other alternatives” are possible.
Although the incident appears to have been an accident, some Lebanese analysts have suggested the blast could have potentially been an attack by Israel, which militarily occupied south Lebanon for more than 20 years and waged a devastating war in 2006, brutally bombing Lebanon and leaving more than 1,000 Lebanese dead and parts of the country in ruins.
Israel violates Lebanon’s sovereign airspace on a daily basis. In 2019, the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon reported an average of 96.5 violations each month. UN Secretary-General António Guterres even spoke out against the Israeli aggression, stating, “I reiterate my condemnation of all violations of Lebanese sovereignty and my call for Israel to cease its violations of Lebanese airspace.”
Despite the presence of Western aircraft during the explosion, the history of Israeli attacks, and the constant Israeli violations of Lebanese airspace, there has been a concerted campaign to try to pin the blast on Hezbollah, waged by the US and Israeli governments, a coterie of hawkish think tanks, and a sizable portion of the corporate media.
There is not even a scintilla of evidence linking Hezbollah to the explosion. In fact, the Lebanese resistance group would have everything to lose if it were involved.
But this didn’t stop the Atlantic Council, NATO’s de facto think tank, which is funded handsomely by the governments of the United States, Britain, and United Arab Emirates, along with top weapons and oil corporations. The Atlantic Council’s Gulf monarchy-backed Rafik Hariri Center tried to link Hezbollah to the blast with nothing more than insinuations.
Then there was the hawkish executive director of Human Rights Watch, Kenneth Roth. Never one to let something like a dearth of evidence get in the way of his mindless speculation about Washington’s foreign adversaries, Roth immediately implied after the blast that Hezbollah was responsible. He did not provide a shred of evidence; it was just his gut instinct.
Pro-Western protesters in Lebanon have also seized on the chaos to call for the dissolution of the Lebanese armed resistance.
Following the explosion, anti-Hezbollah groups took over Lebanese government buildings and unfurled banners calling for Beirut to demilitarize — an obvious demand for Hezbollah to put down its weapons and end its fight against Israel.
The US embassy in Beirut openly welcomed these demonstrations, tweeting openly, “We support them.”
US Pledges ‘Aid’ While Intentionally Exacerbating Lebanon’s Economic Crisis
Even as the Trump administration threatens to impose more aggressive sanctions on Lebanon, seeking to punish forces that support the Resistance Axis, the US government has pledged humanitarian aid to the country.
Moments after the explosion, Washington put its public relations operations into hyperdrive, seeking to portray itself as a noble protector of Lebanon.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo – the former CIA director who quipped, “We lied, we cheated, we stole; we had entire training courses” – promised support following the blast.
The United States Agency for International Development (USAID), a soft-power arm that Washington uses to destabilize foreign governments it has targeted for regime change, announced it would be providing Lebanon with humanitarian aid.
John Barsa, the hardline neoconservative Trump loyalist recently installed as head of the USAID, who has explicitly used the ostensible aid agency as a weapon to overthrow the progressive governments in Latin America, announced support for Lebanon the next day.
US Central Command revealed that they were working with USAID to distribute medical supplies to Lebanon.
Ironically, in the weeks before the explosion, as Lebanon’s government begged for an economic lifeline, Washington was dragging its feet.
As millions Lebanese citizens struggled to put food on the table, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) also refused to play ball. This baffled many international observers. Left unmentioned in coverage of the IMF’s behavior was the de facto veto the US holds in the organization, which it wields as a neoliberal instrument of Washington’s economic power.
“The IMF conditions include privatization and taxes the Lebanese society can’t afford,” the journalist Elijah Magnier explained to The Grayzone. “Moreover, the IMF is controlled by the US administration, which is asking for a new government without Hezbollah. That is not feasible because Hezbollah represents 13 MPs and enjoys the support of the majority of the parliament.”
Magnier also emphasized that when Lebanon had assembled a new government in the middle of the crisis, under Prime Minister Hassan Diab, Washington waged a destabilization campaign.
“With the formation of a new government, the US boycotted it and pressured Europe and the Gulf countries to cease any support, defining it as ‘Hezbollah’s government,’” Magnier said. “These measures contributed in the hectic financial situation in the country, which was also triggered by decades of corruption and mismanagement by the US friends who ruled Lebanon for all these years.”
The pro-Israel lobby group the American Jewish Committee (AJC) let the cat out of the bag when it tweeted on August 9 that international assistance to Lebanon following the explosion “must be conditioned on the long-promised, long-avoided disarmament of Hezbollah.”
AJC made it clear that Western aid will be hung over Lebanon like a sword of Damocles, adding, “Unless the malignant role of Iran’s terror proxy is addressed there will never be meaningful change for the people of Lebanon.”
Magnier also pointed out that the amount in international aid being offered to Lebanon is relatively little. “35 countries gathered all to offer to the UN and NGOs in Lebanon $300 million, the equivalent of what Hezbollah spend in less than five months in the country, only on salaries,” he said.
Meanwhile, as millions of Lebanese civilians suffer, financial analysts expect the US campaign of economic warfare and “maximum pressure” to only continue going forward.
“The sanctions policy are likely to stay,” Ehsani told The Grayzone. “This policy is more acceptable to the average Western electorate than direct military involvement. Policy makers are therefore likely to make more use of them post the Iraq debacle. Regional governments and average citizens will bear the brunt of this silent evisceration of their economic well being.”
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