Free Republic

NEWSRAEL: Former Finance Minister, Khalil is considered the right-hand man of Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri who heads the Shiite Amal Movement. Berri has already trashed this decision. Judge Tarek Bitar was forced to stop the investigation for two months as he himself was sued, but lately, the suits were proven to be a smoke screen and dismissed. The order to arrest the minister was given in the first meeting of the investigation. It proves that Judge Bitar is willing to go "all the way" and is not afraid of his distractors. If we look at the history of modern Lebanon,...

Beirut's Minet al-Hosn construction site does not contain the remains of a Phoenician port as maintained by the Directorate General of Antiquities and the former Culture Minister, according to an archaeological report obtained by The Daily Star. The Archaeological Assessment Report on the Venus Towers Site states: "While the site ... is intriguing, it does not fit the known parameters for a port, shipyard, or shipshed facility." The report, written by Dr. Ralph Pederson of Marburg University following an extensive investigation, maintains that there is nothing to connect the site to ships or shipbuilding. "The trenches could not have functioned...

The details of the shootout in Beirut over the weekend which killed seven people and injured dozens remained unclear on Sunday morning, as the investigation and finger-pointing continued and as Lebanon prepared to mark two years since anti-government protests swept the nation. The shooting began as Shi'ite Hezbollah and Amal supporters marched through the Tayouneh area of Beirut where it meets Ain El Remmaneh and Chiyah, a site famous for sectarian clashes between Shi'ites, Sunnis and Christians during the 1975 civil war in Lebanon, as it marked the border between east and west Beirut. The Lebanese Forces have rejected the...

“Proper Prior Planning Prevents Piss-Poor Performance” As I reflect on the recent news of leaving Afghanistan, it reminds me of the evacuation I participated in as a junior enlisted marine in Beirut, Lebanon in 1984. Despite both the differences and similarities between these two operations, the main thing to remember is, as Marines, soldiers, or whatever branch of service, we receive our orders from the top. Our orders descend from the commander-in-chief to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, through the chain of command, all the way down through the lowly private standing next to you. We go and we accomplish...

Investigation doesn’t give reason for discrepancy or share where rest of ammonium nitrate may have gone — adding to suspicions that much of it went missing before port explosion Many officials in Beirut say privately that much of the shipment was stolen, Reuters said, adding that another theory heard is that not all of the cargo detonated. The 2013 shipment was being transferred from Georgia to Mozambique on a Russian-leased cargo ship when the captain says he was instructed to make an unscheduled stop in Beirut, Reuters said, adding that the shipment never ended up leaving from there and the...

20 May 1975: Palestinians from the Tel el-Zaater camp attacked the Dekkwaneh neighborhood in East Beirut killing tens of civilians. 10 September 1975: The Christian village of Deir Ashash in the north of Lebanon was attacked, with the slaughter of three very elderly priests and forcing inhabitants from their homes. 11 September 1975: The Christian village of Beit Mallat was attacked, leaving seven people killed while ten were kidnapped. 9 October 1975: The Christian village of Tal Abbas in the northern Akkar region was attacked with 15 people killed. A local church was set alight. 30 October 1975: The...

BEIRUT, LEBANON (7:30 P.M.) – The Turkish presidency announced that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan will receive in Istanbul tomorrow his Ukrainian counterpart, Vladimir Zelensky, against the backdrop of the new escalation in the Donbass region. In a statement, the Turkish presidency confirmed that Erdogan and Zelensky would chair in Istanbul the ninth meeting of the high-level strategic cooperation council between the two countries.The statement indicated that the meeting, which will be held in the presence of the relevant ministers, will review “all aspects of Turkish-Ukrainian relations that rise to the level of strategic partnership and the steps that can be...

An al Qaeda operative at Fort Bragg By JOHN SULLIVAN and JOSEPH NEFF Raleigh News & Observer November 13, 2001 FORT BRAGG, N.C. - A former sergeant at Fort Bragg who became a close adviser to Osama bin Laden obtained sensitive documents describing how U.S. special operations units function. Ali A. Mohamed, a trusted trainer in bin Laden's al Qaeda network, walked the halls of the U.S. military's top warfare planning center at Fort Bragg for more than two years as an Army sergeant. From 1987 to 1989, he acquired sensitive documents describing how special operations units work and a...

Violent protests erupted across Lebanon on Saturday after the country’s currency plummeted to a new record low, amid an economic crisis that poses the biggest threat to its stability since the 1975-1990 civil war. The Lebanese pound has lost roughly 85 percent of its value in recent months and slid to a record new low on Saturday, falling to 12,500 pounds to the US dollar on the black market, though the official rate remains at roughly 1,500 pounds to the dollar. In response, there was a protest near the parliament in Beirut, during which protesters briefly stormed a reinforced gate...

Protesters closed all major roads leading to the Lebanese capital on Monday ... small groups of demonstrators blocked the southern, northern and eastern entrances to Beirut with burning tires and by parking vehicles on the main roads. In other parts of Lebanon, army soldiers briefly opened some roads only to have protesters close them again shortly afterward.

BEIRUT: Israeli jets flew very low over parts of Lebanon early Friday, terrifying residents on Christmas Eve, some of whom reported seeing missiles in the skies over Beirut. Minutes later, Syria’s official news agency reported explosions in the central Syrian town of Masyaf. Other Syrian media said Syrian air defenses responded to an Israeli attack near the town in the Hama province. The Syrian Ministry of Defense issued a statement saying Israel “launched an aggression by directing a barrage of rockets” from the north of the Lebanese city of Tripoli toward the Masyaf area. It said Syrian air defense “confronted...

The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC) continues to occupy a special place in the pantheon of Syrian terror surrogates. Of all the major Palestinian and Lebanese paramilitary groups sponsored by Damascus, the PFLP-GC exercises the least strategic and operational autonomy. While the perks of this servitude are considerable (it is the only group to have received tanks from the Syrian government), so too are the limitations (its lack of independence has precluded the growth of a strong popular following). Despite its relatively weak presence in the West Bank and Gaza, the PFLP-GC has played a vital...

Security sources said the blast had caused a number of injuries. An arms depot of the Iran-backed Shi'ite Muslim group Hezbollah exploded in southern Lebanon on Tuesday, a security source said, injuring several people and sending a new shockwave across a nation grappling with its deepest crisis in three decades. The security source said the arms depot blast, which sent a huge column of black smoke into the sky, was caused by a "technical error." The al-Manar television station run by Lebanon's Hezbollah said the cause of an explosion in southern Lebanon on Tuesday was not yet clear. The explosion...

A huge blaze broke out in Beirut's port on Thursday, just weeks after a massive blast at the same site laid waste to the capital city, killing nearly 200 people. The cause of the fire was not immediately clear, but the Lebanese army said in a statement that it began at a warehouse where oil and tires are kept in the port's duty-free market. Videos taken at the scene showed a warehouse engulfed in flames and a large plume of black smoke rising into the sky. Many Beirut residents sharing clips on social media expressed their dismay that yet another...

Lebanon's army said on Thursday it had found 4.35 tonnes of ammonium nitrate near the entrance to the Beirut port, the site of a huge blast last month caused by a large stockpile of the same highly explosive chemical. Lebanese army engineers were "dealing with it", according to an army statement carried by the state news agency NNA. The statement said the chemicals were found outside entrance nine to the port. Army experts were called in for an inspection and found 4.35 tonnes of the dangerous chemical in four containers stored near the port, according to the military. There were...

A month after a devastating blast tore through Beirut, a moment of silence is planned for Friday, while rescue workers continue searching for a possible survivor in the rubble. A vigil and march were planned for Friday, as well as a moment of silence at 6:08 p.m., local time -- or 11:08 a.m. ET -- the moment that marked the time of the blast on Aug. 4. At least 191 people were killed and more than 6,000 injured when nearly 3,000 tons of ammonium nitrate ignited at the port in early August.

Since the devastating explosion of a store of ammonium nitrate in Beirut’s port on August 4, Lebanese citizens have taken to the streets in shock, outrage, and grief. Above all, they have demanded answers: Where did the nearly 3,000 tons of explosive chemicals come from, and who owned it? Why did the rickety ship that brought the hazardous material to Lebanon end up stranded in the city’s port in late 2013? And how could the impounded chemicals sit for over half a decade in an unsafe warehouse before tragedy finally struck? In Lebanon itself, the causes of the disaster appear...

By: Hassan.Mahmoudi Drowning in a miscellany of crises, the Iranian regime and its administration under Rouhani is clutching at straws as a tool of survival. On August 9, 2020, one could hear Rouhani crying ‘Eureka! Eureka!’ at a session of the administration’s headquarter for Economic Coordination. And what precisely was this brilliant discovery; his administration planned to pre-sell 220 million barrels of oil to the ordinary people and the private sector for $42 a barrel and then return the money to them in two years’ time with 19% interest! Wow! With such a decision Rouhani is trying to confront the...

New York City’s Democratic Socialists of America chapter ignited a firestorm Friday for drawing up a survey asking City Council candidates if they will pledge to not visit Israel and support a boycott of the Jewish state. The questions about Israel come at the end of the 12-page questionnaire, which was sent out late last month and was obtained by The Post.

This month, someone left an anonymous note on my home, and on several lampposts around my block, telling me to delete a tweet the stalker didn’t like. The printed black-and-white note added the leftist refrain “hate has no place here” and accused me of celebrating the deaths in the explosion in Beirut. Of course I had done no such thing. I had mocked the idea that it was a fireworks factory that had exploded, a lie disproved as more details emerged. The stalker either misunderstood it or willfully misread my tweet. My bet is the latter. She had been waiting for...