Daily review 08/10/2024

Written By: - Date published: 5:30 pm, October 8th, 2024 - 3 comments
Categories: Daily review - Tags:

Daily review is also your post.

This provides Standardistas the opportunity to review events of the day.

The usual rules of good behaviour apply (see the Policy).

Don’t forget to be kind to each other …

3 comments on “Daily review 08/10/2024 ”

  1. tc 1

    Visit to the GP costing 51% more now, expected a rise not a hike.
    Thanks cigareti and company.

  2. SPC 2

    Lebanon has not had a President for two years. It has become a nation run by separate community groups, rather than a government.

    Lebanon’s prime minister at the time of its last war with Israel in 2006 has told the BBC his country has been abandoned by the international community.

    "We are now in a very difficult situation that requires real effort locally, as well on the Arab side and internationally.

    "Practically, Lebanon as a state has been kidnapped by Hezbollah. And behind Hezbollah is Iran.

    Siniora was also one of the architects of UN resolution 1701, the agreement which ended the 2006 war.

    Among its conditions was that a swathe of southern Lebanon – the area south of the landmark Litani river – should be kept as a buffer zone between the two sides, free of any Hezbollah fighters or weapons.

    Despite the deployment of the UN peacekeeping force Unifil and the presence of the Lebanese army, that didn’t happen. Hezbollah’s people, and its military infrastructure, remained bedded into the area.

    https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c70zke9lqjro

    https://news.un.org/en/story/2024/10/1155221

    Meanwhile the far-right faction in the current Israeli government are seeking Jewish settlement of Gaza and to the Litani River.

    • SPC 2.1

      The massive influx of displaced people into Beirut has pushed the city to "the limit of its tolerance", the city's mayor Abdallah Darwich tells the BBC.

      "If there is a ceasefire, Beirut will breathe out her stress. If there is no ceasefire, we will break," he says, following on from an earlier conversation where he said there was no safe place in the capital.

      When Israel’s recent escalation began, the mayor’s office returned to its plans from the previous invasion, in 2006. They soon discovered that those plans would cover less than 10% of the wave of people coming.

      "We did not imagine it could be this huge,” Darwich says. "Every day, our calculations have become larger and larger."

      Darwich has closed all of the city’s 139 public schools and repurposed them into shelters. But all are now full, holding 51,000 refugees in largely unsanitary conditions. More people are on the streets around Beirut.

      After the 2006 war, before Hezbollah became the major force in Lebanon, Gulf states donated vast sums of money to help the country rebuild. Banners hung in Beirut proclaiming, ‘Thank You Qatar’ and ‘Thank You Saudi’.

      "Now there is no ‘Thank You Qatar’, no ‘Thank You Saudi’,” the mayor says. “Now nobody is promising to help us rebuild.”

      The city was still reeling from the combined effects of the 2019 financial crisis, the port blast, and an earthquake, before this war began.

      “Give us peace in Beirut, and we can fix everything,” Darwich says. “But we cannot live in this cycle of destruction.”

      https://www.bbc.com/news/live/cqxryqvz9j4t