General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsThey are protesting on the streets of Beirut
The Lebanese Government locked down the country like so many elsewhere, but it seems like it is rather difficult to tell people to saty indoors when you offer no social security and then shut all of the banks so people cannot access any reserves they may have. Based on the reporting I saw tonight, the relationship between the banks and the government stinks to high heaven with each propping the other up using the people's money. As money is not currently coming in to support what essentially sounds like a Ponzi scheme, they just shut all the banks. So the people are being told, stay at home, but with no money and no food... as one protester said tonight, Covid may kill me, but starvation definitely will if things to do not change right now (para phrasing).
Two things come to mind:
1. I think we will begin to see social unrest on a hither too unseen scale in the the emerging economies. People will put up with most things but they will not tolerate watching their children starve.
2. Because Trump does not care for anywhere not America, watch Putin and China fill the gap in the chaos that may ensue/
roamer65
(36,748 posts)Some event is going to set it off soon.
Under The Radar
(3,406 posts)abqtommy
(14,118 posts)crickets
(25,990 posts)Revolution of hunger. In October 2019, people across Lebanon took to the streets to protest rampant corruption and an ailing economy, prompting Prime Minister Saad Hariri and his cabinet to resign. A new technocratic government was formed in January by Prime Minister Hassan Diab, but observers noted it still had ties to the countrys elite that oversaw years of economic mismanagementnow compounded by coronavirus shutdowns. Lebanon is facing its biggest economic crisis since the end of the civil war in 1990.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/06/opinion/lebanon-protests-coronavirus.html
Protesters in several towns, including Tripoli and Beirut, broke the nighttime curfew, blocking roads and setting fire to banks for allowing big depositors to smuggle billions out of the country while the poorest can no longer afford lentils.
The new wave of protests has an edge of desperation that wasnt there before. The army has responded with shocking violence, using tear gas, rubber bullets and live bullets to crush the protesters.
Poor Lebanon. The people there don't deserve this. Scarily enough, in many ways our own predicament is not so different from theirs.
Igel
(35,387 posts)It's not a new thing. It's just got an additional reason.
There was a mild dust-up on DU where the Trump admin opted not to send Lebanon a pile of aid.
That was already a couple of months into anti-corruption protests in which the claim was that the government leaders, militia leaders, politicians had basically stolen a lot of money from the government.
Why anybody would want to send that particular government hundreds of millions of dollars is a mystery to me. I guess because Trump said "no" they had to say "yes." There are many ways to let Trump run your life--blind compliance and blind contrariness.
What was interesting was that even Hezbollah supporters were in on the protests.
This is not an unimportant situation. The Houthi rebels in Yemen have thrown in with Hezbollah to signal their virtue. Iran backs Hezbollah in its struggle for Shi'ite dominance and victory over "uppity Jews". And Hezbollah's up to its neck in Syria and helping private Shi'ite militias in Iraq.
Tipperary
(6,930 posts)They want to open the economy here ASAP so they are not pressured to provide another stimulus check.