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Nearly 80% of households in Lebanon don't have food or money to buy food
- anonu 5y agoYes it's bad. It's horrible actually. Lebanon has become a basket case of a country. But I think the headline may be exaggerating the direness of the situation. Yes it's bad but I don't think Lebanon is about to go into a famine situation which is what the headline portends to... Source: people on the ground in Lebanon.
- akomtu 5y agoWhat stops them from fixing their food supply?
- neom 5y agoCorruption and lack of organization. Since the explosion the government and the ability to systematically get things done has basically gone to zero.
- raincom 5y agoLebanon imports food. Who will provide them USD or EUR? Sure, exporters can. However, whatever they export accounts for 10% of imports. Basically, other countries have to donate food to Lebanon at this moment.
- recuter 5y agoWell, the currency lost something like 90% of its value over the last year since the blast. (https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/04/05/lebanon-currency-inflation-exchange-rates/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/04/05/lebanon-currency-inflat...) This April the black market rate dropped to 12,000 and caused minor riots. Now its at 18,000 and plunging in fits and starts. The median salary is now something like $30 a month (down from $600 couple years ago). The army no longer being able to afford to feed its soldiers has resorted to giving helicopter tours to tourists (https://english.alarabiya.net/News/middle-east/2021/06/29/Lebanon-army-offers-tourists-helicopter-joyrides-for-150-in-cash-payment https://english.alarabiya.net/News/middle-east/2021/06/29/Le...). There's gas shortages and riots everyday all over the place. This is Tripoli now: https://www.reddit.com/r/lebanon/comments/oaw4h5/tripoli_right_now/ https://www.reddit.com/r/lebanon/comments/oaw4h5/tripoli_rig... The foreign currency reserves have dwindled over the last year from $30 billion to $15, the minimum required by law is currently $14, and their very extensive food subsidies program is costing them 500 million a month and is about to be nixed. They can't maintain their electric grid and people get only a few hours of power a day. Also this whole time there hasn't been a government. All the key players are corrupt beyond belief and wanted for either terrorism, drug trafficking or embezzlement. Pretty sure they will indeed have a famine soon if nothing changes.
- devoutsalsa 5y ago> The foreign currency reserves have dwindled over the last year from $30 billion to $15, the minimum required by law is currently $14 Is that $15,000,000,000 or $15.00? Just curious :P
- aparsons 5y agoComments like these are generally not constructive to discussions. You are on the internet, on Hacker News, so I assume you’re probably living in a first-world country and completed secondary school or college. Which number do you think is more likely?
- andyana 5y agoWhat a dumb assumption on your part.
- glial 5y agoI went to Turkey in 2005. The 1 lyra note was also the 1,000,000 Lyra note.
- kingofpandora 5y agoOne million lira was equivalent to one new lira.
- glial 5y agoYes. I apologize for messing up the spelling. It just struck me as amazing that they still used the old bank notes, and just cut 6 0’s off for the conversion.
- indeedmug 5y agoI thought the guy was talking about $15 too. I figured that they completely ran out of foreign currency.
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- ArkanExplorer 5y ago50,000 people petitioned France last year to recolonise the country: https://www.euronews.com/2020/08/06/over-50-00-sign-petition-calling-for-france-to-take-control-of-lebanon https://www.euronews.com/2020/08/06/over-50-00-sign-petition...
- akomtu 5y agoWhy would they want to be colonized?
- throwaway316943 5y agoPresumably to be under the control of a less corrupt and more capable government?
- akomtu 5y agoAnd what would France get in return?
- PoignardAzur 5y agoSame things we get in Sahel: - A foothold in the region. - Access to negligible amounts of natural resources. - A shit-ton of bad press and diplomatic conundrums. - Needing to constantly fight islamist insurgents to stay in place. - Not having to deal with a refugee crisis ten years down the line. Macron has visited a few times, but considering he recently announced France would withdraw from Mali, I doubt he'll move towards any kind of re-establishment of the Lebanese protectorate any time soon. The christian-aligned population is lukewarm to the idea at best, and the muslim-aligned population will fight it to the death, so it would have to be an active invasion. It's not a realistic prospect by any consideration.
- AnimalMuppet 5y agoA basket case, which people will blame France for when it can't be fixed. Plus a battle for influence with Iran. If I were France, I wouldn't touch it with a 10-meter pole. (Completely off topic: I have seen a literal 10-foot pole. It had a hypodermic needle on one end. It was used to tranquilize a skunk caught in a (humane) trap, without getting sprayed.)
- AlanYx 5y agoI was curious about the quotation from the linked article that says: "The World Bank has described what is happening in Lebanon as possibly one of the top three economic collapses seen since the mid 19th Century." It turns out that's in reference to the Reinhart and Rogoff "100 episodes" paper, which focused on examples of historical financial crises in largely western countries. Stalin's push for collectivization, Mao's great leap forward, etc. aren't included in that study. So the World Bank isn't implying that the current situation is as dire as those kinds of situations.
- mwint 5y agoWait a sec, this headline doesn’t pass the smell test. If you have no food, and no means to acquire food, you’ll die in short order. So are we saying 80% of Lebanon households will be dead in (however long starvation takes)? Or are we saying that they can’t get food meeting $standard in quality/quantity, yet are still surviving (albeit with nutritional or other drawbacks)?
- neom 5y agoThe former. The situation in Lebanon is indeed becoming quite dier, any food people have is given/shared. The entire government resigned last year over the explosion. It's not a good situation for the Lebanese people and I'd imagine there are a lot of people who are currently dying and the situation will progress as you'd expect. DW (the german broadcaster) has done a lot of good reporting on it (youtube), I'd encourage you to check it out if you're interested in this. https://www.transparency.org/en/blog/cpi-2020-lebanon-systemic-corruption-problems-require-systemic-response https://www.transparency.org/en/blog/cpi-2020-lebanon-system...
- neom 5y agobtw fwiw: the red cross has a specific Lebanon campaign: https://www.icrc.org/en/donate/lebanon https://www.icrc.org/en/donate/lebanon from my googling around on what I could do, seems like the best way to help.
- deregulateMed 5y agoI'm not sure "best" and "red cross" go together in recent times. But don't let that discourage you from supporting.
- neom 5y agoNo, I wouldn't ordinarily put them together either, in fact that's why I spent an hour googling, but outside of red cross there doesn't seem to be that much useful to do.
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- davidf18 5y agoIt is important that the people not starve. The UN should require that Hezbollah give all of their missiles pointed towards Israel in exchange for food. Israel would probably fund the deal in exchange for the missiles which are useless anyway.
- kilroy123 5y agoVery anecdotal but just today I was talking to a Lebanese person who is going home this weekend. They said the situation is very bad but life is still some what humming along. They're going to a wedding next week and plan to go out and party with friends. Maybe they're in the top part of society?
- anm89 5y agoTo be fair, just knowing foreigners is probably predictive of higher economic outcomes I would imagine this to be equally true of Americans
- MomoXenosaga 5y agoThere are entire countries living off Western Union. People in my country send food packages to the former colonies. And every summer tens of thousands of travel to Morocco.
- anm89 5y agoI'm talking about just socially randomly knowing people from other countries. It sounds like what you are talking about is more family\immigrant diaspora networks. Different definitions of "knowing foreigners Based on the way the parent said "a Lebanese person“ without mentioning a relationship I implied the former.
- raincom 5y agoThere are differences. For instance, filipinos or Indians working in the middle east, is different from filipinos or Indians in the EU/UK/USA/Canada--the economic status differs. Even the people who go to middle east are in a better state than many who don't.
- dragonwriter 5y ago> Maybe they're in the top part of society? People who are going home from foreign travel to a place where 80% have neither food nor money to buy it is, almost certainly, in an economic stratum several substantial steps above the middle, if perhaps not at the very top.
- bronzeage 5y agoI wonder if it's worth it for Israel to help get Lebanon stabilized. Maybe offer a lot of money in exchange for hizballah disarming? It could be less costly in the long term than the security cost of being constantly on guard for a war.
- teleforce 5y agoFun facts, Lebanon is a buffer state between Israel and the Arab worlds created by the western colonial powers [1]. For those who are in the IT backgrounds, it is a physical DMZ where virtual DMZ was originally modeled from. In principles, you'd probably do not want put any valuables in the the DMZ area. The fact that any of the buffer countries work at all is a miracle, but it is not by design. [1]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffer_state https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffer_state
- refurb 5y agoYou link says Lebanon is a buffer state between Syria and Israel, but Syria and Israel share a border?
- teleforce 5y agoLebanon as a buffer state is well documented by historians, please check them.
- refurb 5y agoHow can it be a buffer state if it doesn’t actually “buffer” two countries? I mean Syria and Israel have been fighting at their shared border for decades.
- teleforce 5y agoIt doesn't need to cover the entire border, the less area are exposed are better for your country's defense, this is security 101. Case in point, Belgium is widely considered as a buffer state between France and Germany because they have been fighting since forever, and it does not cover their entire border length.
- shagmin 5y agoFrom my understanding it's mainly because the shared border between Israel and Syria is mostly rugged terrain - easy to defend but hard to attack - known as the Golan Heights. For any land invasion on either side it's a lot easier to go through Lebanon.