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Best of the Web: Nasrallah denies Hezbollah involvement with Beirut port, says investigation into explosion must be impartial if Lebanon is to survive (Full Speech)

lecridespeuples
resistancenews.org
Sat, 08 Aug 2020 18:20 UTC
Full speech by Hezbollah Secretary General, Sayed Hassan Nasrallah, on August 7, 2020, devoted to the explosion at the port of Beirut
Lider Hezbolaha Hassan Nasrallah
© AP
Source

Translation: resistancenews.org

Key points
  • The tragic context requires a sacred union, in order to overcome the humanitarian crisis, and not to settle political accounts; Hezbollah has mobilized all its resources to help the victims
  • All the accusations claiming Hezbollah is somewhat responsible are outrageous, because Hezbollah has never had any activity, no warehouse and no role or control over what goes on in the port; this slanders constitutes an incitement to civil war
  • At this stage of the investigation, no hypothesis can be ruled out as to the intentional or accidental nature of the explosion, but criminal negligence seems to be proven in all cases.
  • An impartial investigation must identify and severely punish all the culprits, and break with the traditional sectarianism of the judicial system which judges people according to their political and religious affiliation; without a fair & transparent trial and full accountability, Lebanon will always be a failed State
  • The Lebanese army is the body most able to carry out this investigation, and all the calls to form an international commission of inquiry are only delaying tactics aimed at perpetuating the establishment and impunity.
  • Lebanon must use the current opportunities to overcome the US embargo and revive its economy
  • All those who hope to weaken Hezbollah through this crisis demonstrate their moral bankruptcy and lack of lucidity
Transcription

Prior to this terrible event, I had announced a speech for Wednesday (August 5), and I intended to speak about several issues which were the hottest news at the time, namely:
  • the situation on the border between Lebanon and occupied Palestine, and the ongoing clash between Hezbollah and the Israeli enemy;
  • the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (and the expected verdict) on August 7 (concerning the assassination of Rafik Hariri in 2005);
  • the coronavirus, its development and the recent increase of cases in Lebanon;
  • the oil shortages and the gasoline crisis in the country;
  • other questions related to the regional situation.
But when the catastrophic event happened on Tuesday (August 4), I decided to postpone my speech, and today I am not going to bring up any of these topics, but only talk about one point, namely the cataclysmic event that occurred (in the port of Beirut) and the humanitarian crisis that engulfed Lebanon and the Lebanese people in recent days.

Comment: See also:

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Info

Best of the Web: Trump promises to 'act under my authority' if congress won't pass economic stimulus bill


Sputnik
Fri, 07 Aug 2020 23:42 UTC
trump
© REUTERS / Joshua Roberts
US President Donald Trump has vowed to use his executive powers to get an economic stimulus bill into legislation if congressional Democrats and Republicans fail to reach an agreement in the near future.

Speaking from Bedminster, New Jersey, on Friday, Trump remarked that Democrats in Congress are holding up federal economic relief with "radical left-wing" demands.

"If Democrats continue to hold this critical relief hostage, I will act under my authority as president to get Americans the relief they need," he said.
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Vader

Best of the Web: Irish govt announces 'first of many' regional lockdowns as 'dozens' of Covid-19 cases reported

Philip Ryan
Independent.ie
Sat, 08 Aug 2020 10:35 UTC

Comment: And yes, by 'lockdown', they mean house imprisonment every bit as stringent as what the whole country went through from March to May. Which means many more unnecessary deaths to come...


police ireland checkpoint covid-19
Irish police issue govt orders at checkpoints: 'Stay home, stop living, watch TV'.
More lockdowns of counties will be rolled out across the country in a bid to stamp out clusters of Covid-19 at their source.

Gardaí [police] are to mount checkpoints in Kildare, Offaly and Laois for the next two weeks in an attempt to keep 385,000 residents in effective lockdown.

Non-essential travel to and from the counties is now banned, while restaurants, pubs and other industries have been told they must close their doors.

The move was met with a backlash from some business representatives, who described it as a "knee-jerk reaction" that would cost jobs.

Comment: All this for a grand total of "1,768 Covid19-related deaths in Ireland."

Over 6 months.

It looks like the One World Govt - especially in the anglosphere - isn't relinquishing its deathly grip on western populations any time soon. 'Liberal' fascism is here to stay.

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Attention

Best of the Web: "Masks make us slaves" Massive protests in Germany over C0VlD lockdown

Ben Swann
YouTube
Mon, 03 Aug 2020 00:01 UTC
ben swann
Massive protests in Berlin, Germany over the weekend as reports of 10's of thousands up to possibly a million or more people took to the streets to protests C0VlD lock-downs. What are the people truly asking for? Some say, a return to Democracy.

Comment: More from Ben Swann:

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Cross

Best of the Web: Auto-genocide: Lockdown in UK killed 2 people for every 3 who 'died of Covid-19'. And that's just the OFFICIAL figure...

Danyal Hussain
Daily Mail, UK
Sat, 08 Aug 2020 10:16 UTC
boris Johnson
Alexander 'Boris' Johnson finally won the premiership, steering the British 'ship of state' out of the EU... and into the Corona World Order.
Lockdown killed two people for every three that died of the coronavirus, shocking new government figures have revealed.

It is thought that as many as 16,000 people died because they didn't get medical care between March 23 and May 1.

In the same period, 25,000 Britons died of the virus.


Comment: Emphasis on 'of', i.e., not necessarily 'from'.


The new figures were presented to the Government's Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) in the middle of July.

They were calculated by the Department of Health, the Office for National Statistics (ONS), the Government Actuary's Department and the Home Office.

The 16,000 people who died included 6,000 who didn't go to A&E during lockdown because they feared catching the virus.

Another 10,000 people are thought to have died in care homes after early discharge from hospital and a lack of access to care.


Comment: Actually, the British Medical Journal reported that that figure was more like 20-30,000.


A further 26,000 people could die by next month because of the restrictions, while in total 81,500 people could lose their lives in the next 50 years because of the virus.

Comment: "We healthy ones did alright, Jack. Screw the unhealthy and the elderly."

Recall that their entire premise for the lockdown was to "do it NOW to save the elderly!"...

The only 'positive' thing about this news is that the ratio of unnecessary deaths to actual 'deaths-from-Covid-19' is probably way worse.

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Bell

Best of the Web: There's no medical reason for keeping schools shut. In fact, it is causing much more harm to children than Covid-19 ever could

Malcolm Kendrick
RT
Fri, 07 Aug 2020 07:09 UTC
Watlington Primary School
© REUTERS/Eddie KeoghChairs are pictured on top of tables in a classroom at Watlington Primary School during the last day of school, amid the coronavirus disease outbreak, in Watlington , Britain, July 17, 2020.
Keeping schools closed, as many teaching unions want, will cause more injuries and deaths to children and long-term damage to their educations. Yet the threat from Covid-19 to them - and to their teachers - is tiny.

Has the world ever been more frightened of something less frightening? For people aged seventy and above, who have underlying health problems, Covid-19 is something to be extremely concerned about. For those under twenty, the risk of death is almost non-existent.

Since the start of the pandemic the total number of deaths in England and Wales of people under the age of twenty is... fourteen. With no additional deaths, at all, in the last month. Overall, this represents a risk of death that is significantly less than one in a million.

Of course, each death in this age group is a tragedy. To lose a child is a terrible thing, and everyone would much rather that figure was zero. In reality a risk of less than one in a million is, effectively, zero. In this age group, each and every year, significantly more children die of drowning, or car accidents, even homicide.

Comment: See also:

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X

Best of the Web: Draconian lockdown measures increase grocery prices due to supply chain disruption and restaurant closures

Danielle Wiener-Bronner
CNN
Wed, 05 Aug 2020 01:41 UTC

Comment: For years we assumed food shortages would first be caused by extreme weather events, but it looks like Covid-19 has pre-empted that...


grocerystore
© Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post/Getty Images
Grocery prices have skyrocketed during the coronavirus pandemic. That has Americans spending more at the supermarket than they have in years.

Prices are spiking — and not just because people are buying more groceries as they spend more time at home.The pandemic has had a strong impact on grocery prices this year, according to seasonally adjusted data released Friday by the Bureau of Economic Analysis.

The BEA tracks personal consumption expenditures to help measure inflation. From February to June, meat and poultry prices rose nearly 11%, with beef and veal prices seeing the highest rise, spiking 20%. For pork the increase was about 8.5%. People are paying more for other staples, too: During the same time period, egg prices shot up 10%, and shoppers shelled out 4% more for cereals and fresh vegetables.
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Fire

Best of the Web: Large fire breaks out in Abu Dhabi residential building


TheNational.ae
Fri, 07 Aug 2020 12:00 UTC

Comment: Wow, what are we up to now, 20 major fires/explosions in major cities across the Middle East, all in the space of 3 days??


Abu Dhabi fire
© Abu Dhabi PoliceFirefighters tackle a blaze at a residential building in Al Nahyan area of Abu Dhabi.
A large fire broke out in a residential building in Abu Dhabi on Friday night.

Residents of Al Nahyan area reported hearing a loud bang at around 8.30pm followed by numerous sirens as fire trucks from Civil Defence rushed to the scene.

The fire quickly spread along a 12-storey residential building on Al Marwu Steet, near Mediclinic Al Mamora, as police cordoned off the area and turned residents away.

Comment: This is just the latest fire to be reported following the explosion in Beirut, and, while all of them may not be related, as fires in residential buildings in the Emirates are not unheard of, the sheer number of as yet unexplained fires lately is notable:
beirut fires unexplained UAE Iraq
The Beirut blast and some, but not all, of the subsequent fires.


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Bomb

Best of the Web: 'Possibility of external interference': Lebanon's president expands blast probe, Hezbollah denies presence of weapons depot


Ahram Online
Fri, 07 Aug 2020 20:20 UTC
Aoun
© AFPLebanon's President Michel Aoun (C) wears a protective face mask as he visits the site of a massive explosion the previous day in the heart of the Lebanese Beirut on August 5, 2020.
Lebanon's president said on Friday an investigation into the biggest blast in Beirut's history would examine whether "external interference" had a role, as residents tried to rebuild their shattered lives and homes after the explosion.

The search for those missing intensified, as rescuers sifted rubble in a race to find anyone still alive after Tuesday's explosion that killed 154, smashed up a swathe of the city and sent shockwaves around the region.

"The cause has not been determined yet. There is a possibility of external interference through a rocket or bomb or other act," President Michel Aoun said in comments carried by local media and confirmed by his office.

He said it would also consider whether it was a result of negligence or an accident. He previously blamed negligence in the storage of highly explosive material for years at the port.

The United States has previously said it has not ruled out an attack. Israel, which has fought several wars with Lebanon, has also previously denied it had any role.

Comment: Hezbollah leader Nasrallah has denied accusations that the port was being used to store Hezbollah arms:
"I absolutely deny that we have any weapons warehouse [at the port]," he said, adding that broader claims that Hezbollah runs Beirut's ports "are lies."

"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," he said, adding that any investigation will confirm this.

Nasrallah pointed out that Hezbollah members were among those killed and injured in the blast, and stressed that only an impartial investigation will reveal the truth about what happened. He emphasized that the investigation must be transparent and thorough, that "nobody should be protected," and that those responsible must be held to account.

Nasrallah suggested that the military, as an institution trusted by all sectors of society, should be allowed to conduct the investigation into the blast if the country's political forces agree. Alternatively, he said, a mixed committee including the army and other forces can be formed.
Another video of the explosions has come to our attention. It shows both the fire, then the first explosion, followed about 20 seconds later by the major blast. Curiously, you hear the sound of what seem to be jet engines just before the first explosion.


See also:

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Book 2

Best of the Web: Ex-NYT reporter publishes new anti-lockdown book, calls out '90% of media' on parroting same lines on Covid responses


RT
Wed, 05 Aug 2020 18:36 UTC
covid protests
© REUTERS/Bryan R Smith
Alex Berenson's latest chapter in a series of books about Covid-19, the first of which was briefly censored by Amazon, questions both the media's coverage of the pandemic and the effectiveness of lockdowns.

"I think it's really important, at a time when 90 percent of media... is saying the same thing, with very little pushback or smart questioning, to get different perspectives," Berenson told Fox News about the self-published 'Unreported Truths about COVID-19 and Lockdowns: Part 2: Update and Examination of Lockdowns as a Strategy.'

"Even if you disagree with me completely, it's always good to know what other people are thinking," he added.

The first part in the reporter's series of Covid-19 books was censored by Amazon for allegedly spreading misinformation about the pandemic. The e-commerce company refused to publish the work, which questioned the hysteria around coronavirus, but ultimately folded after many blasted the company, including SpaceX founder Elon Musk, who accused the company of being a "monopoly."

The main theme of Berenson's second book is questioning whether lockdown measures taken by various states in the US are a good strategy in battling the spread of a virus.

Comment: See also: Amazon backs down after many, including Elon Musk, slam it for censorship of book questioning Covid-19 threat

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