It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Wednesday, August 05, 2020
VIDEO In Lebanon's Beqaa Valley, locals divided over legalisation of medical marijuana
For thirty years, the Lebanese government tried to crack down on marijuana production. But in May of this year, in a bid to save the ailing economy, the Lebanese parliament legalised marijuana for medical use. However, local villagers have greeted the move with suspicion. Our team reports from the Beqaa Valley in north-eastern Lebanon, where the marijuana harvest season has begun.
'How can I help?': Lebanon's diaspora mobilizes in wake of blast Issued on: 06/08/2020
Lebanese come together for a vigil held at Kensington gardens in central London to honour the victims of the Beirut blast on August 5, 2020. Tolga Akmen AFP
Los Angeles (AFP)
Lebanon's diaspora, estimated at nearly three times the size of the tiny country's populatio of five million, has stepped up to provide assistance following the massive explosion that laid waste to the capital Beirut.
Lebanese expats rushed to wire money to loved ones who lost their homes or were injured in the blast on Tuesday that killed at least 113 people, while others worked to create special funds to address the tragedy.
"I've been on the phone all morning with ... our partners in order to put together an alliance for an emergency fund in light of the explosion," said George Akiki, co-founder and CEO of LebNet, a non-profit based in California's Silicon Valley that helps Lebanese professionals in the United States and Canada. "Everyone, both Lebanese and non-Lebanese, wants to help." Akiki said his group, along with other organizations such as SEAL and Life Lebanon, have set up Beirut Emergency Fund 2020, which will raise much-needed money and channel it to safe and reputable organizations in Lebanon.
Many Lebanese expats, who almost all have loved ones or friends impacted by the disaster, are also helping individually or have started online fundraisers.
"As a first step, my wife Hala and I will match at least $10,000 in donations and later on we will provide more help towards rebuilding and other projects," Habib Haddad, a tech entrepreneur and member of LebNet based in Boston, Massachusetts, told AFP.
He said many fellow compatriots are doing the same, channeling their grief and anger toward helping their stricken homeland, which before the blast was already reeling from a deep economic and political crisis that has left more than half the population living in poverty.
"They're asking Lebanese emigrants around the world to try and help," said Maroun Daccache, owner of a Lebanese restaurant in Sao Paulo, Brazil, a country that has an estimated seven million people of Lebanese descent.
"I'm trying to help with something but here the business is not very good because of the pandemic. Still, we are much better off than those over there," Daccache said.
- 'Terrible and heartbreaking' -
Even before the tragedy, Lebanon heavily relied on its diaspora for cash remittances but these inflows had slowed in the last year given the country's political crisis.
Expats also usually visit home every summer, injecting much-needed cash into the economy. But the diaspora this year has largely been absent because of the COVID-19 pandemic and many had become increasingly skeptical and reluctant to send aid to a country where corruption is widespread and permeates all levels of society.
"People are outraged by the mismanagement of the country and they want to help, but no one trusts the people in charge," said Najib Khoury-Haddad, a tech entrepreneur in the San Francisco area, echoing the feeling of many Lebanese leery of giving money to a dysfunctional government.
"I heard that the government has set up a relief fund but who would trust them?" he added.
Ghislaine Khairalla, 55, of Washington DC, said one idea being floated was to pair a needy family in Beirut with one outside the country that could provide a safe and direct source of assistance.
"We (the diaspora) are the financial bloodline especially since the economy is not going to recover anytime soon," Khairalla, whose brother's home was reduced to rubble by the blast, said. "And we are lucky to have a kind of stable life here. We are physically outside Lebanon but our hearts and emotions are there."
Nayla Habib, a Lebanese-Canadian who lives in Montreal, said she planned to help in whatever way she can and expressed outrage at reports that the blast was caused by more than 2,700 tons of ammonium nitrate stored at the Beirut port, which is located in the heart of the densely populated city.
"My God, the state of our country is terrible and heartbreaking," Habib told AFP. "I donated before the blast to a lady that helps feed the poor and I will donate again.
"Whatever I give is like a drop in the ocean but it's necessary," she added. "I live in Canada but part of my heart is still there."
Ammonium nitrate, which Lebanese authorities have said caused the devastating Beirut blast, is an odorless crystalline substance commonly used as a fertilizer that has been the cause of numerous industrial explosions over the decades.
These include notably at a Texas fertilizer plant in 2013 that killed 15 and was ruled deliberate, and another at a chemical plant in Toulouse, France in 2001 that killed 31 people but was accidental.
When combined with fuel oils, ammonium nitrate creates a potent explosive widely used in the construction industry, but also by insurgent groups such as the Taliban for improvised explosives. Two tonnes of it was used to create the bomb in the 1995 Oklahoma City attack that destroyed a federal building, leaving 168 people dead.
Lebanese Prime Minister Hassan Diab said 2,750 metric tons of ammonium nitrate that had been stored for years in a Beirut portside warehouse had blown up, killing dozens of people and causing widespread damage to the Lebanese capital.
In agriculture, ammonium nitrate fertilizer is applied in granule form and quickly dissolves under moisture, allowing nitrogen -- which is key to plant growth -- to be released into the soil.
Generally strict rules on storage
However, under normal storage conditions and without very high heat, it is difficult to ignite ammonium nitrate, Jimmie Oxley, a chemistry professor at the University of Rhode Island, told AFP.
"If you look at the video (of the Beirut explosion), you saw the black smoke, you saw the red smoke -- that was an incomplete reaction," she said.
"I am assuming that there was a small explosion that instigated the reaction of the ammonium nitrate -- whether that small explosion was an accident or something on purpose I haven't heard yet."
That's because ammonium nitrate is an oxidizer -- it intensifies combustion and allows other substances to ignite more readily, but is not itself very combustible. For these reasons, there are generally very strict rules about where it can be stored: for example, it must be kept away from fuels and sources of heat.
In fact, many countries in the European Union require calcium carbonate to be added to ammonium nitrate to create calcium ammonium nitrate, which is safer.
In the United States, regulations were tightened significantly after the Oklahoma City attack.
Under the Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards, for example, facilities that store more than 2,000 pounds (900 kilograms) of ammonium nitrate are subject to inspections.
Despite its dangers, Oxley said legitimate uses of ammonium nitrate in agriculture and construction have made it indispensable.
"We wouldn't have this modern world without explosives, and we wouldn't feed the population we have today without ammonium nitrate fertilizer," she said.
"We need ammonium nitrate, we just need to pay good attention to what we're doing with it.”
(AFP)
I WORKED FOR LIQUID AIRE CANADA EDMONTON IN MY EARLY UNIVERSITY DAYS
IT WAS A GAS PLANT WE USED THIS IN OUR PLANT AS WELL PRODUCING OTHER DANGEROUS MATERIALS LIKE ACETYLENE, IN THE MIDDLE OF EDMONTON NOT FAR FROM WHERE I LIVE NOW. THE PLANT IS NOW A CLEANING PLANT, WAIT THATS JUST AS DANGEROUS
'State, what state?' Lebanese together in solidarity and rage THIS IS WHAT REAL ANARCHY LOOKS LIKE! MUTUAL AID, SOLIDARITY, DIRECT ACTION (DIY) Issued on: 06/08/2020
The day after a massive explosion at Beirut's port devastated the Lebanese capital's Mar Mikhail district, a spontaneous cleanup operation was underway
PATRICK BAZ AFP
Beirut (AFP)
In Beirut's beloved bar districts, hundreds of young Lebanese ditched beers for brooms on Wednesday to sweep debris in the absence of a state-sponsored cleanup operation following a deadly blast.
"What state?" scoffed 42-year-old Melissa Fadlallah, a volunteer cleaning up the hard-hit Mar Mikhail district of the Lebanese capital.
The explosion, which hit just a few hundred metres (yards) away at Beirut's port, blew all the windows and doors off Mar Mikhail's pubs, restaurants and apartment homes on Tuesday.
By Wednesday, a spontaneous cleanup operation was underway there, a glimmer of youthful solidarity and hope after a devastating night. Wearing plastic gloves and a mask, Fadlallah tossed a shard of glass as long as her arm at the door of the state electricity company's administrative building that looms over the district.
"For me, this state is a dump -- and on behalf of yesterday's victims, the dump that killed them is going to stay a dump," she told AFP. The blast killed more than 110 people, wounded thousands and compounded public anger that erupted in protests last year against a government seen as corrupt and inefficient.
"We're trying to fix this country. We've been trying to fix it for nine months but now we're going to do it our way," said Fadlallah. "If we had a real state, it would have been in the street since last night cleaning and working. Where are they?"
- 'Even a smile' -
A few civil defence workers could be seen examining building structures but they were vastly outnumbered by young volunteers flooding the streets to help. In small groups, they energetically swept up glass beneath blown-out buildings, dragging them into plastic bags.
Others clambered up debris-strewn stairwells to offer their homes to residents who had spent the previous night in the open air.
"We're sending people into the damaged homes of the elderly and handicapped to help them find a home for tonight," said Husam Abu Nasr, a 30-year-old volunteer.
"We don't have a state to take these steps, so we took matters into our own hands," he said. Towns across the country have offered to host Beirut families with damaged homes and the Maronite Catholic patriarchate announced it would open its monasteries and religious schools to those needing shelter.
Food was quickly taken care of, too: plastic tables loaded with donated water bottles, sandwiches and snacks were set up within hours.
"I can't help by carrying things, so we brought food, water, chocolate and moral support," said Rita Ferzli, 26.
"I think everyone should be here helping, especially young people. No one should be sitting at home -- even a smile is helping right now."
- 'This is it' -
Business owners swiftly took to social media, posting offers to repair doors, paint damaged walls or replace shattered windows for free.
Abdo Amer, who owns window company Curtain Glass, said he was moved to make such an offer after narrowly surviving the blast.
"I had driven by the port just three minutes earlier," the 37-year-old said.
He offered to replace windows for half the price, but said he was fixing some for free given the devastating situation for many families following the Lebanese currency's staggering devaluation in recent months.
"I've gotten more than 7,000 phone calls today and I can't keep up," said the father of four.
"You think the state will take up this work? Actually, let them step down and leave."
Outrage at the government was palpable among volunteers, many of whom blamed government officials for failing to remove explosive materials left at the port for years.
"They're all sitting in their chairs in the AC while people are wearing themselves out in the street," said Mohammad Suyur, 30, as he helped sweep on Wednesday.
"The last thing in the world they care about is this country and the people who live in it."
He said activists were preparing to reignite the protest movement that launched in October.
"We can't bear more than this. This is it. The whole system has got to go," he said.
Lebanon's main grain silo at Beirut port was destroyed in a blast, leaving the nation with less than a month's reserves of the grain but still with enough flour to avoid a crisis, the economy minister said on Wednesday.
Raoul Nehme told Reuters a day after Tuesday's devastating explosion that Lebanon needed reserves for at least three months to ensure food security and was looking at other storage areas.
The explosion was the most powerful to rip through Beirut, a city torn apart by civil war three decades ago. The economy was already in meltdown before the blast, slowing grain imports as the nation struggled to find hard currency for purchases.
"There is no bread or flour crisis," the minister said. "We have enough inventory and boats on their way to cover the needs of Lebanon on the long term.”
He said grain reserves in Lebanon's remaining silos stood at "a bit less than a month" but said the destroyed silos had only held 15,000 tonnes of the grain at the time, much less than capacity which one official put at 120,000 tonnes.
Ahmed Tamer, the director of Tripoli port, Lebanon's second biggest facility, said his port did not have grain storage but cargoes could be taken to warehouses 2 km (about one mile) away.
"I want to reassure all Lebanese that we can receive the vessels," he said.
Alongside Tripoli, the ports of Saida, Selaata and Jiyeh were also equipped to handle grain, the economy minister said.
But former Deputy Prime Minister Ghassan Hasbani said other ports did not have the same capabilities.
Hani Bohsali, head of the importers' syndicate said: "We fear there will be a huge supply chain problem, unless there is an international consensus to save us.”
Reserves of flour were sufficient to cover market needs for a month and a half and there were four ships carrying 28,000 tonnes of wheat heading to Lebanon, Ahmed Hattit, the head of the wheat importers union, told Al-Akhbar newspaper.
Lebanon is trying to transfer immediately four vessels carrying 25,000 tonnes of flour to the port in Tripoli, one official told LBCI news channel.
(REUTERS)
THEY ARE KNOWN AS SEX WORKERS NOW Controversial ‘Hookers for Jesus’ group to get more federal money as Bill Barr and Ivanka Trump announce anti-sex trafficking effort
AND THEY ARE NOT HAPPY ABOUT THEIR WORKING CONDITIONS Published on August 5, 2020 By Sky Palma The Las Vegas-based group Hookers for Jesus has won a grant from the Justice Department less than a year after whistleblowers raised red flags about federal funds being awarded to the organization, Reuters reports.
The complaint from union officials says the group, which is run by a born-again Christian survivor of sex trafficking and operates a safe house for adult trafficking victims, got its grant due to political favoritism.A previous Reuters report revealed that the group required residents of the safe house to go to church, complete Christian homework, and banned them from reading “secular magazines with articles, pictures, etc. that portray worldly views/advice on living, sex, clothing, makeup tips.” As Reuters points out, recipients of federal funds are not allowed to use the funds to promote religion.
The group will now receive $498,764 in new federal funding, which is part of a $35 million grant to trafficking victims unveiled at the White House on Tuesday by Attorney General William Barr and Ivanka Trump.
Chief Aritana Yawalapiti, one of Brazil's most influential indigenous leaders who led the people of Upper Xingu in central Brazil and helped create an indigenous park there, died on Wednesday from COVID-19, his family said in a statement
His death underscores the threat that Brazil's indigenous people are facing from the novel coronavirus pandemic that has spread to their vulnerable communities, infected thousands and killed hundreds.
Aritana, 71, was rushed to a Goiânia hospital two weeks ago in a risky 9-hour drive from the western state of Mato Grosso, breathing with the aid of oxygen tanks so that he could get to an intensive care unit. He died at the hospital from lung complications caused by the disease.
His doctor Celso Correia Batista, who serves the indigenous people in the Xingu region, first drove Aritana 10 hours to the small Mato Grosso town of Canarana, where his lung condition deteriorated.
With no ICU and unable to find a doctor willing to transport Aritana by air, Batista decided to drive on to Goiânia.
One of the most traditional indigenous leaders in Central Brazil, Aritana led the people of the Upper Xingu and was one of the last speakers of the language of his tribe, Yawalapiti.Daily newsletterReceive essential international news every morningSubscribe
Aritana worked with the Villas-Bôas brothers to create the Xingu National Park, the first vast protected indigenous area in the Amazon where 16 tribes live.
According to Brazil's largest indigenous umbrella organization APIB, 631 indigenous people have died from COVID-19 and there have been 22,325 confirmed cases in the community so far.
The Ministry of Health reports a smaller number of 294 deaths among indigenous people and 16,509 confirmed cases, because it does not count indigenous people who have left their lands and moved to urban areas.
Half of Brazil's 300 indigenous tribes have confirmed infections.
(REUTERS)
Trump’s unhinged fans get even more detached from reality as his chances fade
A pandemic is spiraling out of control and Donald Trump’s reaction is to roll his eyes and say, “It is what it is.” Unsurprisingly, polling data shows that his Democratic opponent, former Vice President Joe Biden, is pulling ahead, not just in national polls, but in a number of battleground states like Pennsylvania, Michigan and Florida, none of which Trump can afford to lose. After all, the incumbent has nothing real to run on. The economy is the worst it’s been since the Great Depression of the 1930s, Americans are losing health insurance by the millions, and Republicans are responding by trying to shortchange unemployment benefits for the millions of people who’ve lost their jobs.
With nothing real to hang on to, it’s no surprise that conservatives — already prone to spreading misinformation — are increasingly addicted to conspiracy theories, wallowing in paranoid fantasies to justify the ludicrous notion that there’s any reason to keep on supporting Trump and the Republican Party.
Unfortunately, this turn towards even greater conspiratorial thinking on the right is also extremely dangerous. There’s already a strong link between right-wing paranoia and right-wing violence. Add the increasing likelihood of Trump’s defeat, the rising stress from the coronavirus, and a blitz of violent propaganda, and there’s a real chance that right-wing conspiracism will lead to even more domestic terrorism, hate crimes and neofascist goons in the streets.
Jones claimed to have reports that “Maoists” (which is fringe-right code for anyone to the left of Republicans) are stockpiling “explosives and weapons and trucks loaded with ammonium nitrate and chlorine gas” in the cities in preparation to wage war against all true-believing Americans. So “the best thing to do in a defensive way,” Jones said, “is kill as many of them as quickly as possible.”
Jones of course insisted that he was only talking about “defensive” tactics and warned viewers about not “jumping first,” but that rhetoric is mostly a weak attempt at ass-covering to disguise an effort to incite terrorist violence from the right.
For one thing, Jones is just making up the threat that his audience is supposed to be “defending” themselves against. No leftists are not stockpiling weapons or bomb-making materials, and there is no progressive conspiracy to wage war on right-wingers. For another thing, Jones painted a clear picture of the kinds of people he imagines killing as quickly as possible, specifically naming “the establishment perverts and pedophiles” who he believes run society, as well as people who “show up in black uniforms and burn down your local courthouse.” The former is a reference to Democratic politicians, whom far-right conspiracy theorists have been accusing, under the banner of “Pizzagate,” of running a secret pedophile ring for at least the last four years now. The latter is a reference to Black Lives Matter protesters and anti-fascist activists, the vast majority of whom are peaceful. The right has been demonizing them as violent because of some graffiti and sporadic episodes of vandalism. Neither group is involved in a plot to kill conservatives (or anyone else), but by claiming that they, Jones is setting up a narrative clearly meant to incite or justify violent attacks.
On the Christian right side of things, similar conspiracy theories about progressives are spreading. As Right Wing Watch has documented, popular Christian right activist Scott Lively has claimed that “Democrat-controlled population centers” will soon be burned to the ground, as part of an elaborate conspiracy by liberals to get out of paying pensions to police officers.
Online searches for QAnon have reportedly exploded tenfold. Similarly, “QAnon pages and groups on Facebook had nearly 10 times more likes at the end of last month than they did last July” and there has been “a 190% increase in the daily average number of tweets with popular QAnon hashtags since March as compared to the seven months prior.”
QAnon followers believe that a shadowy “elite” — which they conflate with Democrats — runs both the country from the shadows and, oh yeah, that they also have a massive pedophilia ring, and that Trump is secretly masterminding a plot to destroy this elite cabal. (In real life, Trump’s reaction to people who run pedophile rings is to say they like “beautiful women” on “the younger side” and also to say “I wish her well.”) It’s a testament to the kinds of pretzels people will tie themselves into in order to believe that there’s anything noble or moral about Donald Trump, or some valid reason to support him.
The rise in interest in QAnon isn’t surprising, as the White House is actively encouraging their voters to get involved with this unified-field conspiracy universe. As Media Matters has reported, Trump has retweeted QAnon Twitter accounts at least 185 times, and “members of Trump’s family, his personal attorney, current and former campaign staffers, and even some current and former Trump administration officials have also repeatedly amplified QAnon supporters and their content.”
Honestly, the supposedly mainstream conservative network Fox News is just as dangerous at this point. Most Fox News hosts are careful to avoid overtly endorsing QAnon, but network content in recent weeks has been perfectly situated to validate and amplify the paranoia about Democrats and progressives who are supposedly gearing up to wage war on conservatives.
Day in and day out, Fox News has broadcast scary images of protesters fighting with police, clouds of tear gas and people running through city streets in the middle of the night, all to make rural and suburban viewers, who are even more shut-in than usual, believe that American cities are war zones right now. Fox News is also blatantly lying to its viewers, blaming “radicals” and “antifa” for the scary images, and not telling viewers that in most cases what they’re seeing is cops provoking conflict, often by chasing down, beating and tear-gassing peaceful protesters.
As those of us who actually live in American cities can attest, they don’t look like war zones, but pretty much like the same places they were before the pandemic and the protests (with a lot less traffic). Even when it comes to the protests themselves, despite some looting and vandalism back in early June, the vast majority of protests have been entirely nonviolent, at least as long as law enforcement isn’t attacking protesters without cause.
In spreading this bald-faced propaganda, Fox News — which tries to position itself as the voice of the Trump-era mainstream right — is working in tandem with cuckoo-for-Cocoa Puffs conspiracy theorists like QAnon and Alex Jones. Fox News viewers see all these misleading images and hear all this talk about “antifa” and the “radical left,” and it feels like concrete evidence that the conspiracy theorists are right and that “progressives” or “radicals” are starting a civil war. This not only reinforces conspiratorial thinking, but encourages more conservatives to seek out these outrageous theories.
Taken together, the Trump White House, the online conspiracy fringe and Fox News are enveloping Republican voters in this paranoid fantasy that they’re under violent assault from the leftists — and that they need to “defend” themselves through pre-emptive action. There’s already been a rash of violence against protesters, who have been run over with cars or shot down in the streets. Rather than toning it down, Trump and his allies in both “mainstream” and fringe right-wing media have ramped up their rhetoric, painting a lurid and entirely false picture of the supposed threat. Either implicitly, as on Fox News, or explicitly, as with Alex Jones, conservatives are being encouraged to respond to this imaginary threat with violence.
There’s no reason to expect this situation to improve as the November election nears — or after that either, quite likely. Right-wingers are sore losers on a good day, but now they’ve whipped themselves into a paranoid frenzy that is utterly detached from reality and could lead to tragic violence.
Ron DeSantis admits GOP sabotaged unemployment with ‘pointless roadblocks’ so fewer people would sign up
Published on August 4, 2020 By Matthew Chapman In an interview with CBS4 Miami’s Jim DeFede, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) admitted that Florida Republicans, led by his predecessor, deliberately crippled the state’s unemployment system so that fewer out-of-work people would apply for benefits.
“Do you believe that the system was in part put together the way it was to discourage people from being able to collect unemployment?” asked DeFede.
“I think that was the animating philosophy,” said DeSantis. “I mean having studied how it was internally constructed, I think the goal was for whoever designed, it was, ‘Let’s put as many kind of pointless roadblocks along the way, so people just say, oh, the hell with it, I’m not going to do that.’ And, you know, for me, let’s decide on what the benefit is and let’s get it out as efficiently as possible. You know, we shouldn’t necessarily do these roadblocks to do it. So we have cleared a lot of those.” When DeFede pointed out to him the current system was designed by former Gov. Rick Scott, now a senator and ally of DeSantis, he replied, “I’m not sure if it was his, but I think definitely in terms of how it was internally constructed, you know. It was definitely done in a way to lead to the least number of claims being paid out.”
For months, Florida Republicans have faced allegations that the unemployment system was broken by design. It has been a massive obstacle as the coronavirus pandemic has shuttered businesses and left millions out of work and reliant on unemployment insurance.
New report accuses Trump of ‘intentional disregard’ and attack on democracy throughout failed COVID-19 response
“What is becoming clearer each day is President Trump’s intent to use this chaos to create a crisis for our democracy.”
A new report published Wednesday details months of willful failures to confront the coronavirus pandemic by the White House and paints President Donald Trump’s authoritarian tactics during that national crisis as an overt assault on the nation’s democratic institutions ahead of elections in November.
As evidence to support its thesis, Common Cause points to the president’s repeated claim that mail-in voting—favored by 58% of Americans according to a Politico/Morning Consult poll released Wednesday—will result in a “rigged” election. The report also shows how the administration is actively undermining the U.S. Postal Service by naming a top GOP donor with no USPS experience as postmaster general.
“None of President Trump’s efforts to thwart oversight of his administration’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic come as a surprise. Throughout his presidency, Trump has abused his power to avoid accountability and install loyalists in key oversight positions.” —Common Cause
“The Trump administration’s failed response to the Covid-19 pandemic has created an unprecedented public health crisis leading to a worsening economic crisis. What is becoming clearer each day is President Trump’s intent to use this chaos to create a crisis for our democracy,” said Common Cause president Karen Hobert Flynn.
“Intentional Disregard” catalogues the administration’s steadfast refusal to treat the pandemic as a serious threat, starting on January 3 when a Chinese official first informed the CDC of the Covid-19 outbreak in Wuhan.
Though the president received several classified, urgent briefings about the threat in early 2020, one of the administration’s earliest responses to the public health crisis was to ignore federal vaccine expert Rick Bright when he “he raised concerns in January about the need to prepare for the coronavirus” and insist that he invest in procuring hydroxychloroquine “without proper scientific vetting.” Bright was dismissed from his role at the Health and Human Services Department (HHS) when he refused.
Common Cause writes in its report that Trump’s response to Bright was indicative of a larger attack on inspectors general at federal agencies, including Christi Grimm. Grimm was ousted from her role as principal deputy inspector general at HHS on May 1, weeks after she published a report about Covid-19 testing supply shortages and widespread shortages of personal protective equipment at U.S. hospitals.
“None of President Trump’s efforts to thwart oversight of his administration’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic come as a surprise,” Common Cause reports. “Throughout his presidency, Trump has abused his power to avoid accountability and install loyalists in key oversight positions.”
The administration’s aversion to oversight during the pandemic has extended to the appropriation of funds under the $2 trillion CARES Act in March.
“The ink of President Trump’s signature on the CARES Act was not even dry yet when he issued a statement indicating that he would not comply with the oversight provisions” in the bill, according to the report.
The president named White House lawyer Brian Miller as the inspector general for pandemic recovery, while Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin only agreed to release the names of companies which received aid under the CARES Act after public outcry over his initial refusal to disclose the names.
In a number of ways, the report explains, Trump and his top officials have used the pandemic to divide rather than unite people across the U.S. and to use the crisis to his own political advantage, even as the death toll rose to 1,000 people per day in July.
“We know the government can do better,” said Paul Seamus Ryan, Common Cause vice president for policy and litigation. “Other governments around the world are doing a much better job than our own handling this pandemic. Trump’s decision to politicize everything, including public health guidance, sets us apart from the world.”
The report detailed the president’s politicization tactics including:
his refusal to wear a protective face mask as advised by the CDC, pitting Trump supporters and detractors against one another by speculating in June “that people were wearing masks not as a preventivemeasure but as a way to signal disapproval of him”;
his claim that Democrats are pushing to keep public schools closed unless the federal government devises and fully funds a plan to mitigate the spread of Covid-19 in classrooms;
and
his stoking of outrage over state and local lockdown measures, with groups affiliated with the Trump campaign bankrolling sometimes-violent anti-quarantine protests attended by a small, vocal minority of Americans. “These groups have had the advantage of being amplified through the social media platform of President Trump,” the report states. “This includes the president tweeting things such as ‘LIBERATE MICHIGAN!’ and ‘LIBERATE MINNESOTA!’ When asked about whether he would urge protesters to follow the rules of local authorities, Trump all but confirmed that the protesters are following his rhetoric closely by saying, ‘I think they listen to me. They seem to be protesters that like me and respect this opinion.'”
A section of the report draws attention to the president’s attempts at “information manipulation,” including his undermining of the USPS.
As Common Dreams reported last week, following Trump’s appointment of former Republican National Committee chair Louis DeJoy as postmaster general, members of the postal workers union have raised alarm about new mail sorting procedures and overtime cuts that have already led to mail delivery delays in battleground states.
“Congress must step up to stop Trump from undermining the postal service by turning it into a partisan weapon as we head toward national elections, which will depend on the postal service more than ever,” Common Cause writes, as voters across the country will rely on a vote-by-mail system during the 2020 elections to cast ballots without risking Covid-19 infection.
Although Trump himself voted by mail in the 2018 election and several states including solidly-red Utah have held elections via mail for years, the president has repeatedly claimed voting by mail will be used to rig the presidential election in Democrats’ favor.
“Trump’s claims against vote-by-mail are simply NOT true,” tweeted Bette Marchant, chief financial officer at Common Cause.
The report alleges that Trump “continues to spread lies” and rebukes the president for threatening to withhold federal assistance to states that implement robust vote-by-mail strategies. “It seems that he believes he is the only person who should be allowed to exercise his right to vote while protecting his health during the Covid-19 pandemic,” it states.
Ryan, speaking for Common Cause, said the November elections will be the “opportunity for Americans to hold government accountable” and that his group’s focus nationwide will be that “every eligible voter is able to cast a ballot safely and securely.”
In its report, Common Cause recommends a number of steps lawmakers must take to ensure U.S. democracy survives the coronavirus pandemic and that Americans are afforded the opportunity to remove Trump from office in November, including: passing the HEROES Act and the For the People Act, both of which have been approved by the Democratic-led House and would expand vote-by-mail and fund this year’s elections; ensuring federal oversight of Covid-19 relief through the passage of the Coronavirus Oversight and Recovery Ethics Act of 2020 (CORE Act); and protecting inspectors general from firing without cause by passing the Inspector General Independence Act.
“Enactment of these reforms would make the government more responsive and accountable to the American people and less susceptible to authoritarians like President Trump,” the group said.
HERE, HERE! ‘America is out of its mind’: Texas doc goes on viral rant about pushing schools to reopen during pandemic
A doctor based in Austin, Texas this week uncorked an angry rant about President Donald Trump’s push to force schools to reopen in the middle of the novel coronavirus pandemic.
Writing on Twitter, Dr. Pritesh Gandhi argued that American schools are in no condition to reopen at the moment, especially given that the disease is still infecting tens of thousands of people every day.
“America is out of its mind thinking we are even remotely prepared for school this fall,” wrote Gandhi, who earlier this year made an unsuccessful run for the Democratic nomination for the House of Representatives in Texas’s 10th Congressional District. “We are definitely NOT ready & if people say we are, it’s either out of ignorance or arrogance.”
Gandhi explained that the inability to rapidly turn around test results will become particularly dangerous in the fall, especially when hospitals are also dealing with an influx of flu cases.
“When stay-at-home dad has a fever, waiting one week for test results does nothing for his 3 young children & their school,” he wrote. “Americans do NOT have access to care. Americans do NOT have the $$ to pay for testing & treatment. And, our states by and large are still not prepared for massive contact tracing.”
All of this was the result, he added, of “the absolute disregard for life by this administration & its enablers.”
Gandhi’s rant has since gone viral and has been retweeted more than 33,000 times.
“It ought to be the people’s vaccine, not a new taxpayer burden.”
Consumer advocates warned Wednesday that pharmaceutical giant Moderna is “taking taxpayers for a ride” after the company announced plans to charge between $32 and $37 per dose for a potential Covid-19 vaccine developed entirely with funds from the U.S. federal government.
“Taxpayers are paying for 100% of Moderna’s Covid-19 vaccine development. All of it,” Peter Maybarduk, director of the Access to Medicines Program at Public Citizen, said in a statement. “Yet taxpayers may wind up paying tens of billions more to Moderna to buy our vaccine back, if it proves safe and effective.”
“Taxpayers are paying for 100% of Moderna’s Covid-19 vaccine development. All of it. Yet taxpayers may wind up paying tens of billions more to Moderna to buy our vaccine back.” —Peter Maybarduk, Public Citizen
“The so-called Moderna vaccine belongs in significant part to the people of the U.S,” said Maybarduk. “We paid for it. Federal scientists led the way. It ought to be the people’s vaccine, not a new taxpayer burden.”
The experimental vaccine is currently undergoing a Phase 3 clinical trial that is expected to enroll around 30,000 adult volunteers who do not have Covid-19, according to the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Trial results are expected as early as October.
“Results from early-stage clinical testing indicate the investigational mRNA-1273 vaccine is safe and immunogenic, supporting the initiation of a Phase 3 clinical trial,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said in a statement last week.
For context, the $32-$37/dose Moderna cites for smaller volume agreements of #COVID19 vaccine is 60% more (on low end) than Pfizer price of $19.95/dose agreement with U.S. govt. Moderna notes price would be lower for larger volume agreements. Price would go up after pandemic. https://t.co/eki26YgK07 — Meg Tirrell (@megtirrell) August 5, 2020
Under pressure from advocacy groups to publicly disclose how its potential vaccine is being financed, Moderna told Axios Wednesday that U.S. taxpayers are providing “100% funding of the program.”
Since April, the Massachusetts-based pharmaceutical company has received nearly a billion dollars in taxpayer grants to develop a vaccine as part of the Trump administration’s so-called Operation Warp Speed.
“The company received $483 million from the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority in April to support its vaccine development,” CNBC reported. “Last month, it announced it received an additional $472 million from the U.S. government.”
Dean Baker, senior economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, wrote in a blog post Wednesday that “this funding paid for the research and testing” and “it also meant that the government took all the risk.”
But Public Citizen noted the absurdity of charging the public anything at all for a vaccine developed entirely with taxpayer funding.
“They want us to buy back a vaccine developed with our tax dollars,” the group tweeted.
Herbivores face higher extinction risk than predators: study
Herbivores face a higher risk of extinction than predators, whether they are mammals, birds or reptiles, according to an extensive study of 24,500 species both living and extinct that was published Wednesday.
The paper, which appeared in Science Advances, suggests herbivores have suffered a higher extinction rate over the past 50,000 years compared to other parts of the food web and the trend continues to this day
This contradicts the idea, based on anecdotal evidence, that predators are the most vulnerable because they have extensive home ranges and slow population growth rates.
The threat is greatest for reptile herbivores, such as turtles, and large herbivores, like elephants.
There is so much data out there and sometimes you just need someone to organize it,” said Trisha Atwood, an ecologist at Utah State University and the first author of the study.
Researchers first looked at modern day extinction risk patterns among herbivores, omnivores and predators in mammals, birds and reptiles at different levels of the food web.
They performed the same analysis on species from the late Pleistocene epoch, beginning 11,000 years ago for Africa, North America and South America, and 50,000 years ago for Australia
Finally, they examined how body size and position in the food web affected the threat status among 22,166 living species.
The authors wrote that though there are probably several reasons for the trend, certain man made interventions seemed to affect herbivores more than others.
“Invasive vertebrates (e.g., rats), insects (e.g., fire ants), and plants (e.g., Hottentot fig) have all been implicated in the decline and even extinction of several reptiles,” they said.
What’s more, invasive species, pollution and habitat alteration appeared to affect small herbivorous birds disproportionately.
There are certain exceptions: predators living in marine habitats did face an elevated extinction risk, suggesting they faced existential pressures than their land-dwelling counterparts.
Ilhan Omar Didn’t Expect “A Red Carpet Welcome” To Congress
Ilhan Omar, facing a primary based in part on her national image, said in an interview her image and identity justify her politics.
molly Hensley-Clancy BuzzFeed News Reporter Posted on August 3, 2020 Eman Mohammed For BuzzFeed News Representative Ilhan Omar, poses for a portrait during an interview at a cafe in Washington DC in 2018.
There have been many fights over the past two years, and for Ilhan Omar, all of them have deep roots in her own identity: as an immigrant, a refugee, a Muslim, and a Black woman.
She draws a direct line from her identity to her place at the center of two years’ worth of attacks from the right, the news stories, the controversies, and now to the well-funded and bitter primary challenge she is facing in her deep-blue district in Minneapolis.
“No one has ever been in Congress who represents as many of the marginalized identities that I represent in one body, and who has been a first in the ways that I’ve been a first,” she told BuzzFeed News.
“To be the only member in Congress that comes from a country that is currently on the president’s Muslim ban — I did not expect there to be a red carpet welcome situation.”
In a 30-minute interview ahead of the primary election next week, Omar spoke about the ways her identity has shaped every facet of her time in Congress.
Omar believes her identity has fueled attacks against her. But just as directly, Omar says, it has shaped the work she has done — and the battles she has waged — on the floor of Congress.
“My constituents knew that I wasn’t just going to use my voice and resources in uplifting these communities,” Omar said. “They knew I was going to use my own experience to bring about change and shift the narrative.”
Omar’s primary race with Antone Melton-Meaux, a local lawyer, has commanded the same kind of outsized national attention that she has drawn her entire career.
With no previous political experience or public profile, Melton-Meaux has raised huge sums of money to challenge Omar, much of it from the many people who dislike her. Though Omar’s campaign released internal polling showing her far ahead of Melton-Meaux, her staff have been telegraphing differently, treating him as a serious challenger. Her campaign released its first attack ad against him last week.
At the core of Melton-Meaux’s campaign is Omar’s national profile — and the “distractions” that have come from a list of partly self-created controversies, including her use of anti-Semitic tropes and repeated questions over her campaign sending hundreds of thousands of dollars to her husband’s political firm.
Both campaigns have papered the district with a flood of mailers, an unusual occurrence in a district that is one of the most liberal in the country. One flyer, from Melton-Meaux, declares: “Ilhan Omar Is in the News Again.”
Omar is also in the forefront of President Donald Trump’s latest attack ad against Joe Biden, alongside Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, which Trump’s campaign says is now airing on TV in key swing states.
So far, Omar said, very little of what she has faced in Congress has surprised her.
"I did expect it to be this way," she said. “I did expect it to be as relentless as it’s been.”
What has been a surprise, Omar said: the work she believes she's been able to accomplish in the House. She first ran, she said, expecting huge roadblocks to success in “a place that was not built for me.”
One of the first votes the House took when she arrived was on a new policy allowing members like her to wear religious head coverings on the floor of Congress: “Our first challenge was even making that happen, so that I could actually sit as a member of Congress and represent the 708,000 people who had elected me,” she said.
Omar has sat on several major House committees. Of the bills she has introduced, some, like a bill to cancel all rent, are symbolic, amounting to a progressive pipe dream — a fact that has drawn criticism from Melton-Meaux. But a bill Omar introduced to expand access to school meals during the coronavirus pandemic was passed into law as part of the stimulus package.
For Omar, all of that, too, is directly tied to her identity. As a refugee, she said, she had experienced what it was like to not know where your next meal was coming from.
She has more recently been tightly drawn into the protests against systemic racism.
As a Black woman, Omar said she had long seen the failures of the Minneapolis Police Department. After George Floyd, a Black man, was killed in police custody in the heart of Omar’s district, she joined calls to defund the Minneapolis police, replacing them with what Omar called a “reimagining” of public safety.
Nationally, calls to defund the police have also provided fuel for Republicans, who see it as an issue unpopular with swing voters. But Omar said her focus, in calling for defunding and abolishing the police, was squarely on Minneapolis.
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“For me, it was really important to distinguish the call for defunding nationwide from our call for dismantling,” Omar said. “Our police department has failed to investigate and solve 50% of homicides; they’ve engaged, reportedly, in destroying rape kits; and they’ve lost credibility with many institutions that would partner with them. The failure of attempted reforms are laid bare in our case.”
Omar’s identity also shaped her decision to endorse Joe Biden — even though she had been a prominent supporter of Sen. Bernie Sanders, and Rep. Rashida Tlaib, another prominent Sanders backer and member of the so-called Squad of Democratic women of color, has declined to do so.
“That was not really a question for me,” Omar said of endorsing Biden. “There is, personally, too much at stake for me, and there is personally too much at stake for many people who share the marginalized identities that I represent.”
Trump Vaccine Adviser Warns That Scrutiny Of Him Will Delay Arrival Of Coronavirus Vaccine
HHS assistant secretary Michael Caputo went even further, arguing the media doesn't want a vaccine to succeed before the election. “I believe that all the way in my aorta.”
Paul McLeod BuzzFeed News Reporter Posted on August 3, 2020 Drew Angerer / Getty Image President Donald Trump and Moncef Slaoui in the Rose Garden
The chief adviser to Operation Warp Speed, the Trump administration’s program investing billions of dollars into discovering a coronavirus vaccine, says media scrutiny of his stock ownership may delay a vaccine or make its discovery less likely because it is distracting him from his work.
Moncef Slaoui made the remarks on the official Health and Human Services podcast, released Friday, while being interviewed by Michael Caputo, HHS assistant secretary of public affairs. The interview quickly descended into a lengthy rant about the media.
“The American people need to understand that the media often times are lying to them because they don’t want a vaccine, in order to defeat Donald Trump,” Caputo said at one point.
The two men took extensive issue with news stories about Slaoui. He is working as a contractor voluntarily, drawing payment of only $1. As news reports have outlined, this exempts him from ethics rules that would apply to federal employees.
Slaoui worked for 30 years in senior roles at pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline. He still holds significant stock in the company. The HHS inspector general ruled that he can continue to own stock in the pharmaceutical industry and is exempt from disclosure rules that would apply if he joined the government.
After introductions, the podcast interview pivoted to the media’s treatment of Slaoui. Caputo said that by joining Operation Warp Speed, Slaoui put a target on his back. Slaoui agreed and said he was naive. He said the media attention has distracted him and hurt the development of a vaccine
“I’m amazed that I’m being attacked on a personal basis in a way that frankly distracts my energy and the energy of all the teams we’re working together with to deliver, and therefore decreases our chances or the speed with which we try to help humanity and the country resolve and address this issue,” he said.
Slaoui said he is convinced the press has only one objective, which is “to distort information in a way that allows them to shape an opinion.”
Caputo then praised Slaoui for working for free and ridiculed the notion of him trying to enrich his former company. “I don’t recognize the media anymore,” he said. “I’m convinced that the reporters don’t want a vaccine, sir. They don’t.”
Slaoui said on the podcast that the news stories have been “insulting to the deepest of my personal fibers” and challenged the media on what they are doing to help during the pandemic. Caputo singled out one reporter who wrote about Slaoui in particular, Noah Weiland of the New York Times. “I can tell you, sir, I will not speak to Noah Weiland. He calls my phone, I don’t answer it. It’s unethical reporting.”
Caputo then turned to Democrats who have questioned Slaoui’s contract arrangement, saying they do not want there to be a vaccine until after the Nov. 3 election. “I don’t want to talk about politics here,” Caputo said before adding “they don’t want a vaccine now because of politics.”
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Slaoui said he also didn’t want to talk about politics and is focused on discovering a vaccine. “I am resentful for actions that knowingly or unknowingly curtail that effort. That’s inappropriate, that’s wrong, that’s unethical,” he said.
“It’s inhumane,” said Caputo.
Slaoui responded, “I agree.”
Caputo then outlined his theory that the media are writing stories about Slaoui to try to get him to leave Operation Warp Speed because they want it to fail. Reporters are doing this because they are “so deeply unethical and so filled with hatred.”
Lest anyone think he was merely being hyperbolic, Caputo stressed that he believes this worldview “all the way in my aorta.”
Patients Over Pharma is one of the progressive groups that has questioned whether former pharmaceutical executives should oversee a project that will dispense billions of dollars to the industry. Spokesperson Eli Zupnick said Monday that everyone wants Slaoui to succeed, but there’s no reason he can’t do that while adhering to transparency and ethics guidelines.
“Dr. Slaoui doesn’t seem to understand that what he perceives as attacks aren’t personal and they aren’t ‘fake news,’” said Zupnick. “They are about making sure that the public can trust that Operation Warp Speed is operating in the best interests of patients and public health and not engaging in the cronyism and corruption that is so pervasive through the Trump administration.”
Paul McLeod is a politics reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in Washington, DC.
Elizabeth Warren Wants To Know Why This Company Was Spying On BLM Protesters
A group of Democratic lawmakers is demanding answers about protester surveillance conducted by data broker Mobilewalla.
Four lawmakers, including Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, said Tuesday that they have "serious concerns" about data-mining company Mobilewalla following a BuzzFeed News story in June that showed the company had used cellphone location data to predict the race, age, gender, and home location of more than 17,000 Black Lives Matter protesters.
In a letter sent Tuesday to Mobilewalla CEO Anindya Datta, Warren, Sen. Ron Wyden, Rep. Mark DeSaulnier, and House Committee on Oversight and Reform Chair Carolyn Maloney demanded more information about the data that the company collects and how it’s used. They also asked which, if any, American and non-American governments have accessed the data.
The lawmakers, who said they were “concerned that data collected by Mobilewalla or other data brokers could be used to enable state-sponsored retaliation against protesters,” demanded Datta respond by Aug. 17.
“In June, your company released a report that disturbingly revealed that location data collected from cell phones was used to identify specific characteristics of American protesters at Black Lives Matter demonstrations around the United States,” the letter read. “We have serious concerns that your company’s data could be used for surveillance of Americans engaging in Constitutionally-protected speech.”
As BuzzFeed News reported, Mobilewalla analyzed location information data it collected from thousands of protesters' cellphones at protests in Minneapolis, New York, Los Angeles, and Atlanta between May 29 and May 31. Mobilewalla used this data to predict if protesters were male or female, young adult (18–34); middle-aged (35–54), or older (55+); and “African-American,” “Caucasian/Others,” “Hispanic,” or “Asian-American.” By using long-term location data, Mobilewalla also attempted to predict whether protesters were from the city of the protest or out of town. These findings were compiled in a report titled “George Floyd Protester Demographics: Insights Across 4 Major US Cities.”
Asked in June why Mobilewalla conducted this research, Datta offered little in the way of explanation. “It’s hard to tell you a specific reason as to why we did this,” he said. “But over time, a bunch of us in the company were watching with curiosity and some degree of alarm as to what’s going on.”
In their letter, the lawmakers said Mobilewalla had surveilled people who were “participating in First Amendment-protected activities." They also suggested that if the company gave cellphone data to a government agency, it may have violated a 2018 Supreme Court ruling which requires police to get a warrant first. There's currently no federal law that regulates how data brokers like Mobilewalla can buy, repackage, and sell people’s information.
In its privacy policy, Mobilewalla says it gets people’s information by purchasing mobile location data, browsing history, and device information from advertisers, data brokers, and internet service providers. Using artificial intelligence, the company then analyzes that information to predict people’s race, age, gender, zip code, and personal interests. It sells this information to advertisers to help them target people with ads.
However, Mobilewalla also has a history of working for political groups. As Motherboard reported, the company has worked with Republican super PACs, including efforts that targeted evangelical voters during the 2016 presidential election. Mobilewalla CEO Datta said in a podcast interview with Nathan Latka that the company monitored the movements of possible evangelicals on Election Day and told campaign workers how many of them were near a voting location.
Police have sometimes retaliated against protesters violently, using weapons like tear gas, batons, mace, and their own police vehicles. In cities like Portland and New York, plainclothes federal offices have arrested demonstrators by sweeping them away in unmarked vans.
In their letter, the lawmakers asked Datta if Mobilewalla has collected and analyzed data from protesters in Portland, and if the company planned to put out a report or provide that data to law enforcement.
Caroline Haskins is a technology reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in New York.
'An earthquake': Beirut blasts heap further misery on crisis-wracked Lebanon
For the Lebanese people, who have watched helplessly as their economy has collapsed in recent months, the devastation wrought by Tuesday's blasts in Beirut is one disaster too many.
The deadly blasts struck at a time when Lebanon's currency has plummeted against the dollar, businesses have closed en masse and poverty has soared at the same alarming rate as unemployment.
"It's an earthquake," said Kamel Mohanna, founder of the Amel Association International charity founded during the 1975-1990 civil war.
"I've been working in humanitarian aid in Lebanon for 47 years, and I've never seen anything like this," he said as hospitals were overflowing with wounded and the capital was reeling in shock.
Lebanon's government has declared a two-week state of emergency following Tuesday's devastating blasts, which killed more than 100 people and injured thousands more.
For months already, many Lebanese struggling in the country's worst economic crisis in decades have turned to charities once largely dedicated to the nearly two million Syrian and Palestinian refugees living in Lebanon.
Amid the economic turmoil, cash shortages, pandemic and street protests, Lebanon's middle class — teachers, civil servants, nurses — have already seen their lives turned upside down.
Now, after the massive explosions that ravaged Beirut's port, officials estimate that an additional 300,000 residents will be left homeless.
And the disaster damage bill for an indebted country that was already asking for help from international donors is expected to range between $3 billion and $5 billion dollars.
'Asking for alms'
Maya Terro, founder of Food Blessed, a local charity that distributes food aid, now expects a huge additional demand. Beirut's port, which was flattened by the explosions, is the main gateway for imports.
"Lebanon imports 80 percent of its food," Terro said. "Immediately I thought: empty supermarket shelves, increased prices due to shortages."
Inflation of basic food goods already soared by 109 percent between September and May, according to the UN's World Food Programme (WFP).
The UN's Food and Agriculture Organization warned Tuesday that, after huge wheat stockpiles at the port were destroyed, "we fear that we will soon have a problem with the availability of flour for the country".
Even before the explosions, life was a daily struggle against poverty and hopelessness, Gaby, a former civil servant in his fifties living in a suburb of Beirut, told AFP several days before the disaster.
Gaby, who used to fire up the grill twice a month for a family barbecue, said he now has no choice but to go to a charity to get rice and pasta.
"I feel like I am asking for alms," he said.
With hyperinflation, neither his pension — worth $1,600 at official rates, but just $300 on the black market — nor his work as a taxi driver or his wife's salary as a nurse are enough to support family needs.
"We deprive ourselves of a lot," said the father of four. "We used to have meat four times a week. Today, nothing at all, not even chicken."
'Everything is difficult'
Nearly half of Lebanese now live below the poverty line, according to official statistics.
Economic difficulties were a key driver of mass protests that began last year against a political system widely seen as corrupt and inept.
The economic crisis has been compounded by the loss of income caused by restrictions to stem the Covid-19 pandemic.
Two-thirds of Lebanese households have seen their income drop, according to a WFP survey in June, while two-fifths of those questioned had gone into debt to buy food or pay rent.
WFP, working with the government, was planning to boost aid to help 697,000 people this year, up from just under 140,000 in 2019, spokesperson Malak Jaafar told AFP before the explosions.
Amel Association International said that, even before the blasts, it was already seeing a rise in numbers of Lebanese citizens seeking aid in its more than 20 centres, especially for its medical services.
"The first three months of 2020 saw a 30 percent increase in the number of Lebanese beneficiaries," said health programme coordinator Mohammed Al-Zayed.
"In Lebanon the healthcare is based on the private sector. As a result, services are expensive, and people have reached a point where they can no longer pay."
Doctors Without Borders in June received 81 Lebanese patients, about three times the normal number, said Axelle Franchomme, medical director of the Bar Elias hospital in the eastern Bekaa region.
One of those patients was Ihsane, a woman in her thirties, who had turned to the medical charity for their free gynaecological surgery due to a lack of funds.
"My husband has been out of work for a while," said Ihsane, explaining how they had already sold one of their two cars to raise cash.
"Everything has become difficult, everything is expensive," she said. "We cannot have the same life as before".
