The slow-motion disaster is accelerating.
From Save the Children, August 27:
The amount of food on the table for children in Lebanon is shrinking by the day, Save the Children said today, as bread prices soar by another 11% due to the worsening crisis. A months' ration of bread now sets families back by almost half a monthly minimum wage.
A bag of flatbread costs 5,000 Lebanese Pounds in supermarkets, over three times as much as last year- a knock-on effect of fuel prices soaring and the economy collapsing. Lebanon's poorest families likely need at least two bags of bread a day amid their inability to afford nutritious food such as rice, lentils, and eggs.
This means the monthly cost of bread consumption (around 300,000 pounds) is around 44% of the monthly minimum wage, which is 675,000 pounds[i].
Poverty is plunging families into a deep hunger crisis. Save the Children recently revealed that families need almost ten times the minimum wage just to secure the basics. Currently, almost a quarter of the Lebanese population and half of Syrian refugees in Lebanon are facing food shortages.[ii]
Jennifer Moorehead, Save the Children's Country Director in Lebanon, said:
"No family can go without bread in Lebanon. If bread will fall out of reach - which is already happening in some cases - there is no plan B besides hunger....
....MUCH MORE
Recently:
Lebanon On The Brink As Fuel And Electricity Shortages Grip The Country
And related:
Shipping: "CMA CGM Proposes $600M Plan to Rebuild Port of Beirut"
August 2020
French Shipping Major CMA CGM Returns to Normal Operations at Beirut Port
With
all the connections between France and North Africa/the Levant - Syria
you'd assume CMA CGM would get it done but this seems remarkably
fast....
October 2020
"Lebanon spymaster holds ‘positive’ US talks on hostages and sharing intelligence"
It looks as though France might not be alone in its efforts to rescue Lebanon before it becomes another Somalia.
And
with memories of the ammonium nitrate explosion still fresh, feelings
toward Hezbollah—the assumed de facto owner of the stuff that goes
boom—are as negative as they have been in years....
