English LCCC Newsbulletin For Lebanese, Lebanese Related, Global News & Editorials
For April 20/2022
Compiled & Prepared by: Elias Bejjani
#elias_bejjani_news

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Bible Quotations For today
When you were younger you dressed yourself and went where you wanted; but when you are old you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go
John21/14-25/When they had finished eating, Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?”“Yes, Lord,” he said, “you know that I love you.”Jesus said, “Feed my lambs.” Again Jesus said, “Simon son of John, do you love me?”He answered, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.”Jesus said, “Take care of my sheep.” The third time he said to him, “Simon son of John, do you love me?”Peter was hurt because Jesus asked him the third time, “Do you love me?” He said, “Lord, you know all things; you know that I love you.”Jesus said, “Feed my sheep. Very truly I tell you, when you were younger you dressed yourself and went where you wanted; but when you are old you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go.” Jesus said this to indicate the kind of death by which Peter would glorify God. Then he said to him, “Follow me!” Peter turned and saw that the disciple whom Jesus loved was following them. (This was the one who had leaned back against Jesus at the supper and had said, “Lord, who is going to betray you?”) When Peter saw him, he asked, “Lord, what about him?” Jesus answered, “If I want him to remain alive until I return, what is that to you? You must follow me.” Because of this, the rumor spread among the believers that this disciple would not die. But Jesus did not say that he would not die; he only said, “If I want him to remain alive until I return, what is that to you?” This is the disciple who testifies to these things and who wrote them down. We know that his testimony is true. Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written.

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on April 19-20/2022
Beirut Port Explosion: Engineer Rami Saeed Fawaz, 48 father of two children, joins the martyrs of the explosion
Lebanon expects deal with World Bank on food security
Shea says Hizbullah seeking to 'drive a wedge' between Lebanese people, US
Report: Port probe shelved temporarily, perhaps permanently
Report: Hizbullah prevents Aoun-Berri clash over president's remarks
3 killed, 2 injured in huge blaze at Fanar factory
Mawlawi says theft not motive behind pharmacist's murder
Outrage in Lebanon after pharmacist found killed in her drugstore
Syrian embassy denies interfering in Lebanese elections
Miqati says no plans to eliminate depositors' rights, undermine banking sector
Protests held in Beirut against draft capital control law
Hezbollah's greatest ally: The lack of political speeches./Edmond Rabbath/Info3/April, 19/2022
Lebanese Journalist, Omar Al-Farouk Nakhal Decries Poster Of Qassem Soleimani Displayed At Beirut International Book Fair: It Represents The Culture Of Death Iran Is Trying To Spread Among Us/MEMRI/April 19, 2022

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on April 19-20/2022
US Firm on Nuclear Accord
Russia says opening corridor for Ukrainian troops in Mariupol
Russia Ratchets up Battle for Control of Eastern Ukraine
Ukraine war exposes how much Tehran has tilted toward Moscow
Israeli forces injure 72 Palestinians
Israel Hits Gaza after Rocket Attack
Gaza militants prepare tunnels as next conflict looms
Blinken urges Israel, Palestinians to ‘end the cycle of violence’
Ankara Announces Killing of 2 SDF Leaders in Northeastern Syria
Libyan PM Visits Algeria to Seek Mediation
Yemen's new leaders take office as hope glimmers for war-torn country
Canada imposes additional sanctions on close associates of Russian regime

Titles For The Latest LCCC English analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on April 19-20/2022
How Palestinians Desecrate Everyone's Holy Sites, Including Their Own/Bassam Tawil/Gatestone Institute/April 19/2022
The Ukraine War and the Fate of Western Liberalism/Ahmad Mahmoud Ajaj/Asharq Al Awsat/April 29/2022
This Is What Living With Long-Term High Inflation Feels Like/Allison Schrager/Bloomberg/April 29/2022
How to Develop Life-Saving Drugs Much Faster/Bill Gates/The New York Times/April 29/2022
That "Liberal, Post-Modern" Life/Alberto M. Fernandez/MEMRI/April 19/2022
Washington weighs up dropping IRGC from terrorist list/Kerry Boyd Anderson/Arab News/April 19, 2022

The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on April 19-20/2022
Beirut Port Explosion: Engineer Rami Saeed Fawaz, 48 father of two children, joins the martyrs of the explosion
LCCC/April 19, 2022
https://eliasbejjaninews.com/archives/108031/%d8%a7%d9%84%d9%85%d9%87%d9%86%d8%af%d8%b3-%d8%b1%d8%a7%d9%85%d9%8a-%d9%86%d8%b9%d9%8a%d9%85%d8%8c-%d8%a7%d9%84%d8%a3%d8%a8-%d9%84%d8%b7%d9%81%d9%84%d9%8a%d9%86%d8%8c-%d9%8a%d9%84%d8%aa%d8%ad%d9%82/
The gathering of the families of the martyrs, wounded and victims of the Beirut port explosion issued the following:
The tragedies continue and our wounds goes sore l day after day, and the truth about the crime of the Beirut port explosion is reeling.. While we have been waiting for appointments with the three presidents for more than a month and a half to sign a law to equalize our wounded with those of the Lebanese army, we are still losing the wounded victims one after another. Today, Engineer Rami Saeed Fawaz, 48, join the convoy of martyrs. He surrendered his soul today, after a long suffering with his surgeries, after he was hit in the head on the fateful day of August 4, due a glass plate that fell on him. We pledge to our wounded that we will continue, by all means, to extract their right to equal them with the wounded of the army, just as we took away the right of our martyrs to publicly relieve some of their pain. We also pledge our martyrs to continue the process of achieving justice and accountability by reaching the true truth about the crime of bombing the port of Beirut.

Lebanon expects deal with World Bank on food security
AP/April 19, 2022 22:08
Amin Salam said talks with the International Monetary Fund were progressing in a positive way
He said the IMF is focusing on three sectors that are improving — electricity, transportation and high-speed internet
BEIRUT: Lebanon is close to reaching an agreement with the World Bank in which the international agency would give the crisis-hit country a $150 million loan for food security and to stabilize bread prices for the next six months, the economy minister said Tuesday.
Amin Salam said talks with the International Monetary Fund were progressing in a positive way.
“Work is ongoing and the train is moving. I am optimistic,” Salam said in an interview with The Associated Press. He said the IMF is focusing on three sectors that are improving — electricity, transportation and high-speed Internet — because they can help reactivate the whole economy.
Salam said the government does not have immediate plans to lift bread subsidies, especially for flour used in making flat Arabic bread, the main staple in Lebanon.
Lebanon is in the grip of a devastating economic crisis that has been described as one of the worst in modern history. It imports most of its wheat and has faced shortages over the past weeks as the war in Ukraine leads to increases in prices of oil and food products around the world.
There have also been concerns that the government might lift wheat subsidies as foreign currency reserves drop to critical levels at the central bank. Any lifting of subsidies would sharply increase the price of bread affecting the poor in the Mediterranean nation where more than three quarters of its 6 million people, including 1 million Syrian refugees, now live in poverty.
“We are working with the World Bank to keep market stability for the next six months by getting $150 million,” Salam said. He added that the deal with the World Bank will stabilize the price of bread and wheat until a ration card policy is in force so that people in need can benefit.
Salam added that subsidies cannot continue forever, especially for flour that is used for making pastries and sweets. He said that such policies were implemented in Egypt and other countries where subsidies were lifted for wheat used in some products and left for the bread.
Salam said meetings were scheduled with officials from the World Bank on Wednesday, after which Lebanon will propose final recommendations to the bank’s board. Salam said there is tentative approval from the Lebanese state and the World Bank, adding that it could be effective in three weeks to a month.
He said that the war in Ukraine is forcing Lebanon to find new sources of wheat that are far away and more expensive.
Earlier this month, Lebanon and the IMF reached a tentative agreement for comprehensive economic policies that could eventually pave the way for some relief for the country after Beirut implements wide-ranging reforms.
Salam, who is part of the Lebanese negotiating team with the IMF, said the government, parliament and all Lebanese officials are fully aware that if Lebanon does not fully abide by the IMF program, conditions ″will become very difficult because there is no alternative plan.″
He said the banking sector has to be restructured because without a banking sector it is impossible to move forward with economic growth. Salam added that during the talks with the IMF the Lebanese side worked to make “the banking sector carry some of the losses without destroying the banking sector.”
He said whenever a final deal with the IMF is reached and there is political intention for success by authorities, Lebanon can start achieving tangible results in the next two to three years. And in five years “Lebanon can be in a very good place.”The Lebanese pound, which has lost more than 90 percent of its value since the economic meltdown began in October 2019, can become more stable, he said.
The staff level agreement that Lebanon reached with the IMF on April 7 lists five “key pillars” that should be implemented, including restructuring the financial sector, implementing fiscal reforms, and the proposed restructuring of external public debt, anti-corruption and anti-money laundering efforts.
Salam said the country’s 14 largest banks will be held up as a standard to work on restructuring the sector since they control about 80 percent of the market. The smaller banks that have problems should be taken over by bigger lenders. He said most likely people with deposits of up to $100,000 will eventually get their money back while those with much bigger balances will end up either getting treasury bills or become shareholders in banks or state institutions.
“The 100,000 figure will be a number that will be protected for everyone,” he said.
Breaking with the position of the prime minister, he suggested that central bank Gov. Riad Salameh should go. ″His situation has become tenuous,″ Salam said, saying it will be difficult for future governments in Lebanon to work with him. Salameh, who has been in the job since 1993, is facing investigations in Lebanon and several European countries into possible cases of money laundering and embezzlement. The governor is protected by several top officials, including the prime minister and parliament speaker. “I’m all for change,” Salam said. “No one is irreplaceable.”

Shea says Hizbullah seeking to 'drive a wedge' between Lebanese people, US
Naharnet/April, 19/2022
U.S. Ambassador to Lebanon Dorothy Shea has accused Hizbullah of seeking to “drive a wedge” between the Lebanese people and the United States, in a speech commemorating the victims of the April 1983 attack on the U.S. Embassy in Beirut. “Today is a solemn anniversary for us, as we remember the terrible attack that took 52 lives on April 18th, 1983. And in September of the following year – just over there – we lost 23 more lives,” Shea said in a speech. “These attacks were not against the United States alone; victims included Americans, locally employed Lebanese staff, as well as Lebanese Internal Security Forces officials. For this reason, today we stand united – as we have for every year since 1983 -- honoring those who lost their lives, both Americans and Lebanese, and in renewing our commitment to peace and security in Lebanon,” she added. She also emphasized that the United States has “maintained its resolve to pursue justice for the victims.”“We are pushing back against the negative influences of terrorist organizations like Hizbullah, which continues to seek to drive a wedge between us. But we are not daunted. We will continue to promote the bonds between our countries and peoples, particularly in these difficult times, as we try to help the Lebanese people emerge from the current economic crisis so that they can enjoy a brighter future,” the ambassador went on to say.

Report: Port probe shelved temporarily, perhaps permanently
Naharnet/April, 19/2022
The mission of Beirut port blast investigator Judge Tarek Bitar has likely been shelved indefinitely and perhaps permanently, a senior legal source said. The mission might be resumed during the next presidential tenure, the source added, in remarks to al-Liwaa newspaper published Tuesday. “Finance Minister Youssef Khalil’s refusal to sign the decree forming the general commission of the Court of Cassation openly means that Speaker Nabih Berri and Hizbullah are insisting on preventing Bitar from continuing his mission,” the source added. The August 4, 2020 monster explosion at Beirut’s port killed around 231 people, wounded around 7,000 and devastated entire neighborhoods of the capital. Two incumbent MPs and ex-ministers belonging to Berri’s Amal Movement have refused to appear before Bitar for questioning. The judge has also summoned former premier Hassan Diab, ex-ministers Youssef Fenianos and Nouhad al-Mashnouq and the heads of General Security and State Security.

Report: Hizbullah prevents Aoun-Berri clash over president's remarks
Naharnet/April, 19/2022
Hizbullah took part in behind-the-scenes political contacts over the past few hours in a bid to contain the repercussions of President Michel Aoun’s remarks from Bkirki, in which he accused the Shiite Duo of obstructing the probe into the Beirut port blast, a media report said. Aoun’s remarks came after Finance Minister Youssef Khalil, who is close to Speaker Nabih Berri, refused to sign the appointments of the heads of the Court of Cassation, which is looking into recusal lawsuits against the judge leading the investigations into the port blast case, Tarek Bitar. Quoting Ain el-Tineh visitors, ad-Diyar newspaper said Berri was dismayed by Aoun’s remarks but chose to remain silent. Sources close to Aoun meanwhile said that the president is not seeking an escalation and that his remarks were merely “a description of facts.”

3 killed, 2 injured in huge blaze at Fanar factory
Naharnet/April, 19/2022
Three people were killed and two others injured in a huge blaze Tuesday at a tubs factory in the Fanar neighborhood of Zaaitriye, the National News Agency said. “Red Cross and Civil Defense crews are still inspecting the site in search of possible victims,” NNA added. The reasons behind the fire are still unknown, the agency said. Speaking on live television, a resident of the neighborhood meanwhile demanded the permanent closure of the tubs factory and a chlorine factory in the same area.

Mawlawi says theft not motive behind pharmacist's murder
Naharnet/April, 19/2022
The motive behind the killing of the pharmacist Layla Rizk in her drugstore in Mrouj on Monday was not theft, Interior Minister Bassam al-Mawlawi said on Tuesday. CCTV “cameras have led to some threads,” Mawlawi added from Bkirki, noting that “the criminal will soon be brought to justice.”Media reports said the woman’s body was found by her daughter inside the pharmacy’s bathroom, as other reports said the woman had a troubled relation with her husband. Pharmacies across Lebanon closed on Tuesday in condemnation of the crime.

Outrage in Lebanon after pharmacist found killed in her drugstore
Naharnet/April, 19/2022
The pharmacist Layla Rizk has been found murdered inside her pharmacy in the Northern Metn town of Mrouj. Conflicting reports have since emerged on whether the pharmacy was robbed or not and on whether the woman was raped or not. “There are new developments in the case but the confidentiality of the investigation prevents revealing them. Until now there are conflicting reports on whether the pharmacy was robbed or not,” the head of the Order of Pharmacists of Lebanon, Joe Salloum, told Radio All of Lebanon on Tuesday. Describing the crime as “novel in its type and method,” Sallom called on authorities to “be strict in controlling the border and monitoring non-Lebanese residents.” In remarks to al-Joumhouria newspaper published in the morning, Salloum said the pharmacist’s throat was slit at 4pm Monday inside the pharmacy, stressing that a “robbery” took place. Other reports said the woman’s body was found by her daughter inside the pharmacy’s bathroom. Pharmacies across Lebanon meanwhile closed on Tuesday in condemnation of the crime.

Syrian embassy denies interfering in Lebanese elections
Naharnet/April, 19/2022
The Syrian embassy in Lebanon on Tuesday denied interfering in Lebanon’s parliamentary elections, stressing its “respect for Lebanon’s sovereignty.” “Some sides are continuing to promote claims about ‘political and security interferences by the Syrian embassy’ in the anticipated Lebanese parliamentary juncture,” the embassy said in a statement, describing the allegations as “attempts to reverse facts and fabricate enemies.”“We hope brotherly Lebanon will succeed in tackling its constitutional junctures away from the attempts of disruption and distortion by those who have grown used to pawning their agendas to foreign forces,” the embassy added, hoping the elections will lead the Lebanese to “safety, stability, prosperity and development.”

Miqati says no plans to eliminate depositors' rights, undermine banking sector
Naharnet/April, 19/2022
Prime Minister Najib Miqati on Tuesday reassured that authorities have no plans to “eliminate depositors’ rights or undermine the banking sector.”“The government’s priority in its economic approach is to preserve depositors’ rights and not to waste them,” Miqati told a delegation from the Association of Banks in Lebanon. “The recovery plan gives priority to preserving people’s rights, reviving all productive sectors, and also preserving the banking sector, which represents an essential element for economic recovery,” the premier added. “Everything being said about the elimination of depositors' rights and the undermining of the banking sector is aimed at stirring confusion and tensions,” Miqati reassured.

Protests held in Beirut against draft capital control law
Najia Houssari/Arab News/April 19, 2022
Formal capital controls are an International Monetary Fund policy recommendation
Depositors gathered in the vicinity of parliament to prevent MPs from attending the session
BEIRUT: Protests were held in Beirut on Tuesday against a draft capital control law, even as parliamentary committees discussed the proposed legislation.
Formal capital controls are an International Monetary Fund policy recommendation, and Lebanon hopes to secure an IMF aid package after the country’s financial system imploded in 2019, paralyzing the banking system and freezing depositors out of their US dollar accounts.
Depositors gathered in the vicinity of parliament to prevent MPs from attending the session. Members of the Free Professions Syndicates also held sit-ins at their headquarters in protest against the draft law.
They said it was unjust on depositors who they believed were being forced to bear the consequences of the country’s economic crisis and corruption.
Nader Kaspar, head of the Beirut Bar Association, said: “One of the most immoral issues in Lebanon is depositors’ money. It is a national, humanitarian, and social issue par excellence. We lost our entire life savings and now, after over two years, they want to talk about capital control.
“The banks did not shut down, and the owners still have their private jets and luxurious villas. Now they want to talk about distributing losses without any concrete plans?
“We will escalate our action. A strike is not enough. There is a constitution that must be respected and we will not accept laws that legitimize taking over people’s money.”
The Federation of Syndicates of Bank Employees in Lebanon said: “Touching depositors’ money is forbidden. The federation will join in every action to confront those trying to take over people’s money.”
The Lebanese Press Editors Syndicate also objected to the attempt to pass a capital control bill, along with the continued restrictions on union deposits and funds, and banking restrictions.
Syndicate head Joseph Kossaifi said: “The unions have deposits in banks and there are mutual funds that deposit large sums in banks, which are subscriptions and donations to ensure people’s pensions. Does this mean that the money of about a million people has evaporated?”
In a letter to Prime Minister Najib Mikati, the Association of Banks in Lebanon said: “The IMF’s proposal to make banks bear the losses is unfair, just as the proposal to charge a large part of these losses to depositors means exempting the state and the Banque du Liban from debt and losses.
“If this were to happen, banks, shareholders, and depositors would file lawsuits against the state and BDL, which benefited from the funds of the banks and depositors and still refuse to find satisfactory solutions to solve the issue.”
Mikati told an ABL delegation on Tuesday: “One of the government’s priorities in the economic process is to preserve the rights of depositors. The recovery plan gives priority to preserving people’s rights, reactivating the various productive sectors, and preserving the banking sector.”
With the government insisting on its amendments to the draft law and demanding that parliament approve it quickly having signed a staff-level agreement with the IMF, the head of the Administration and Justice Committee, MP George Adwan, said after the parliamentary committee meetings: “The government did not present any recovery plan. We have removed some articles of the draft so no one can say that parliament does not want the Capital Control Law.”
Adwan added that Mikati’s claims about not wasting people’s deposits were “mere words without any concrete action.”
Meanwhile, pharmacies across Lebanon closed on Tuesday in protest against the country’s security turmoil and the killing of a pharmacist at her workplace on Monday in the town of Mrouj in Mount Lebanon.
Leila Rizk was found dead in the pharmacy toilet on Monday evening.
Rizk, a mother of three, had been working as a pharmacist for 20 years.
Joe Salloum, head of the Pharmacists Syndicate, condemned the crime and demanded that the security forces protect pharmacies in light of the “ongoing security chaos.”
While the preliminary investigation did not reveal the reasons for the crime, information suggested that the crime was not about stealing money or drugs.
President Michel Aoun called Salloum and assured him that instructions had been given to the security services to “pursue and arrest” the perpetrators.
On Tuesday, Aoun met Lebanon’s ambassador to Saudi Arabia Fawzi Kabbara before he left for the Kingdom. Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to Lebanon, Walid Bukhari, returned to Beirut last week.
“The president’s directives have always been to ensure the best relations between Lebanon and the brotherly Arab countries in general, and the Gulf states in particular, especially Saudi Arabia,” Kabbara said.

Hezbollah's greatest ally: The lack of political speeches.
Edmond Rabbath/Info3/April, 19/2022
On October 17, 2019, for a $6 per month WhatsApp tax, thousands of Lebanese took to the streets to express their anger, demanding the government’s resignation.
Hezbollah's disguised agents quickly infiltrated the "thawra" to limit the demands. They protested to end the corruption, change the regime and attack the country's financial system. Unconsciously or consciously, the demonstrators limited themselves to these demands and avoided raising the issue of illegal weapons and the resignation of Michel Aoun. The parties that claimed to be sovereign refused to ask for the application of the 1559 resolution. They only mentioned the problem of corruption. A few die-hard demonstrators demanded the application of 1559 resolution, but they were a minority.
On August 4, 2750 tons, or what was left of it, of ammonium nitrate stored at the port by Hezbollah exploded, killing more than 220 people, injuring 6500 and destroying Beirut. This misfortune that could have been a historic turning point to end the Iranian militia’s dominance was missed once again.
The investigation that was supposed to take 5 days according to Michel Aoun, is still underway, 20 months later. The Judge Tarek Bitar has been forced to suspend the probe countless times, due to the relentless lawsuits against him, seeking his removal. He was even threatened by Wafic Safa, head of Hezbollah’s security. No arrest warrant has been executed and the suspects are still at large. Some are even running for the next legislative elections. In fact, Beirut Port Blast case has been completely paralyzed since last October.
Moreover, since the revolution in 2019, no corruption case has been tried despite all the scandals that have been widely spread and exposed on all TV channels.
Furthermore, Lebanon is under an Iranian occupation, justice is absent and yet the fight against corruption remains the priority for the majority of candidates running for the legislative elections.
In addition, despite the fact that Michel Aoun acknowledged having been informed of the presence of ammonium nitrate in the port before the explosion, without taking any action, no one is calling for his resignation.
With the beginning of spring, billboards have sprung up with all kinds of messages. There are those trying to seduce us by declaring that they want to and that they can, even if they have not done anything in the last few years in the parliament. Others are stating that Beirut needs a heart, even if theirs has never beaten in the last four years...
As for the civil society unable to unite, it continues to talk about “Manzoumeh” and corruption, and presents electoral programs as if we were living in Finland, the country of happiness. For the past two years, those who have been calling for early legislative elections have been saying that the elections are the stepping stone to the long-awaited change.
However, no political discourse was dominant in the face of Hezbollah, which continues to impose its hegemony, with the complicity of all those who refuse to end the Iranian occupation. No reform can be achieved, no corrupt person will be held accountable and no economic development will see the light if the monopoly of arms is not in the state’s hands to ensure the necessary security and restore the confidence of the international community and investors.
Elections must confirm a political discourse and it is not the demagogic promises that create change. As Jacques Chirac used to say: promises only commit those who receive them.
With almost a month left to the elections, it’s time to impose and unite around a single political discourse that can be summed up in one sentence: Ending the Iranian occupation as a first step to demand the resignation of Michel Aoun. Otherwise, Hezbollah will win the elections hands down, impose its candidate in Baabda and Lebanon will become the 32nd Persian province.
Sovereign people of all communities, let us unite to get rid of the Iranian occupation.
https://info3.com/?news=19645&text=long&lang=1&fbclid=IwAR02EWub1Vj54_1NIK_TYqhFO5q7Iat9btZLB5aDR1xKkefNHApVRqnIKFc

Lebanese Journalist, Omar Al-Farouk Nakhal Decries Poster Of Qassem Soleimani Displayed At Beirut International Book Fair: It Represents The Culture Of Death Iran Is Trying To Spread Among Us
MEMRI/April 19, 2022
Iran, Lebanon | Special Dispatch No. 9910
A furor was sparked in Lebanon recently after one of the publishers at the 63rd International Book Fair in Beirut, which opened on March 3, 2022, put up a booth devoted to Iranian General Qassem Soleimani, commander of the Qods Force of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), who was assassinated by the U.S. in January 2020.[1] Erected by the Dar Mawadda publisher, which is close to Hizbullah, the booth featured a life-sized poster of Soleimani, as well as smaller posters and figurines of him and of Iranian ayatollahs Khomeini and Khamenei. This display angered many Lebanese, especially on social media, who saw it as an Iranian takeover of Lebanese culture and said that the fair had become "an Iranian book fair in Beirut" or "the fair of the Iranian occupation."[2] Lebanese activists even tried to dismantle the booth, and one of them tried to tear down the poster, crying "Beirut is free, Iran out!" In response, other visitors attacked the activists and beat them up.[3] Attempts by elements close to Hizbullah and Iran to ban music performances at the fair evoked protest as well.[4]
The display at the fair also drew criticism from Lebanese politicians opposed to Iran. Former minister Ashraf Rifi tweeted that the poster of Soleimani was "a provocation to the Lebanese, who have been burned by the flames of Iranian occupation."[5] Khodr Ghadban, a senior member of Walid Jumblatt's Progressive Socialist Party, tweeted: "The poster of Soleimani at the Beirut International Book Fair – excuse me, the Iranian Fair for Persian Books in Beirut – is an Iranian cultural invasion of Beirut."[6]
The Dar Mawadda booth at the book fair, with the posters and figurines of Soleimani, Khomeini and Khamenei (Source: Almodon.com, March 7, 2022)
Criticism was also expressed in Lebanese press articles. Among them was an article by Lebanese media figure ' , who slammed Iran's attempts to "culturally occupy" Lebanon as a follow-up to its political occupation of this country. Iran, he wrote, is trying to spread its ideology in Lebanon, which is a "culture of death," while acting to abolish all other forms of culture, such as literature, poetry and art. This cultural war, he added, is even worse than Iran's military wars of bloodshed and killing, and the Lebanese activists were therefore right to oppose it and cry out "Beirut is free, Iran out!"
It should be noted that this is not the first time criticism is voiced in Lebanon over the commemoration and veneration of Soleimani in the country.[7]
Iran quashes Lebanon by means of its takeover of the Beirut International Book Fair (Source: Facebook.com/MajdolineBlog, March 5, 2022.
The following are translated excerpts from Nakhal's article:[8]
"It would be an injustice to sum up the poor quality of Iran's cultural scene by [referring only] to the incident at the Beirut International Book Fair, [an incident] in which activists were beaten and injured for daring to oppose the display of a poster of Qassem Soleimani at one of the Iranian booths while crying out 'Beirut is free!'. The problem is much deeper than that.
"Iran's choices are poor even when it comes to timing its cultural attacks that offend the Arab and Lebanese national sentiments. The book fair [in Beirut] has for years been providing a cultural platform for revitilizing and cultivating these sentiments through conferences, forums and dialogues that form bridges between different cultural and even political viewpoints. [But] this was before the Iranian mullahs arrived [in Lebanon] with their hammers to quash this atmosphere, while interfering in the content and messages of the fair and preventing it from holding art and music activities, which are part and parcel of any complete cultural plaform…
"The expressions of Lebanese anger and opposition to this Iranian conduct clearly reflect the war [that is currently going on] between the culture of life and the culture of death and needless killing. [This culture of death] was encapsulated in the poster of the army general [Soleimani], who belongs to the circle of bloodshed and terror and of drowning our modern culture in the ashes of devastated capitals and the blood of endless massacres.
"By choosing to [infiltrate] the most authentic cultural platform in Beirut, Tehran forces the Lebanese to peruse books on death and war, and imposes this content as a cultural ideology that rejects painting, sculpture [and other] plastic arts, as well as literature, poetry and prose and culture and art events. With this stern message it means to spread its cultural occupation [in Lebanon], as a followup to its political occupation... Iran could have refrained from bringing this cultural stupidity into the Beirut International Book Fair, but sadly, in all its attacks it [always] insists on exporting the worst versions of its political, social and psychological demagogy. Fortunately, the free Beirut was unwilling to accept this, and stood up, armed with words and opinions, to oppose the concepts of death, killing and needless war!
"The gravest aspect of the book fair incident was that Iran officially declared its cultural stupidity in Beirut. Conversely, the best thing that happened was that Beirut exposed this stupidity by defining it as an [Iranian] war that is much more deplorable than its wars of killing, bombings, oppression, impoverishment and starvation. Using the weapons of our voice, words and free opinion, we say: Beirut is free, Iran out!"
[1] Almodon.com, March 6, 2022; Alhurra.com, March 8, 2022.
[2] Al-Quds Al-Arabi (London), March 7, 2022; Alhurra.com, March 8, 2022.
[3] Alhurra.com, March 8, 2022; Al-Nahhar (Lebanon), almodon.com, March 7, 2022.
[4] Al-Quds Al-Arabi (London), March 7, 2022; alhurra.com, March 8, 2022.
[5] Twitter.com/Ashraf_Rifi, March 7, 2022.
[6] Twitter.com/GhadbanKhodr, March 7, 2022.
[7] See MEMRI Inquiry and Analysis No. 1550 – Hizbullah's Widespread Campaign To Commemorate Qassem Soleimani Sparks Criticism In Lebanon, January 25, 2021; Special Dispatch No. 8568 – Statue Of Qassem Soleimani Put Up By Hizbullah In South Lebanon Sparks Criticism: It Is An Expression Of Iran's Patronage Over Lebanon, February 19, 2020.
[8] Asasmedia.com, March 8, 2022.

The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on April 19-20/2022
US Firm on Nuclear Accord
Asharq Al-Awsat/Tuesday, 19 April, 2022
The United States on Monday appeared to dismiss a key Iranian demand to salvage a nuclear accord as Tehran blamed Washington for the prolonged impasse.
Iran and the United States have been negotiating indirectly in Vienna for a year to restore the 2015 agreement, known formally as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, from which former US president Donald Trump withdrew. One key sticking point is Iran's insistence on removing the US designation made by Trump that the Revolutionary Guards is a terrorist organization."If Iran wants sanctions lifting that goes beyond the JCPOA, they'll need to address concerns of ours that go beyond the JCPOA," State Department spokesman Ned Price said when asked about the Revolutionary Guards' blacklisting. "If they do not want to use these talks to resolve other bilateral issues, then we are confident we can very quickly reach an understanding on the JCPOA and begin to reimplement the deal itself," Price told reporters. President Joe Biden's administration has offered to return to the agreement, under which Iran was promised sanctions relief for curbing its nuclear program, but has voiced frustration at the slow pace of negotiations. In Tehran, Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh said that more than one issue was pending between Iran and the United States. "Messages (from Washington) sent through (European Union coordinator Enrique) Mora these past weeks... are far from providing solutions that could lead to an accord," he told reporters. "The United States are responsible for these delays, because they are taking their time to give replies" that would be suitable for Iran, AFP quoted him as saying.
Mora, who coordinates the indirect US-Iran talks, visited Tehran last month for talks with Iranian officials and later went to Washington, saying he hoped to close the gaps in negotiations. Trump reimposed sweeping sanctions, including demanding other nations not buy Iran's oil, as he withdrew from the agreement negotiated by his predecessor Barack Obama. Iran, in response, began rolling back on most of its commitments under the accord.

Russia says opening corridor for Ukrainian troops in Mariupol
Naharnet/Tuesday, 19 April, 2022
Moscow said Tuesday that Russian forces had opened a humanitarian corridor for Ukrainian troops who agreed to lay down their arms to leave the embattled city of Mariupol. Some of the heaviest fighting of the Russian military campaign has focused around the strategic Sea of Azov port city.
"The Russian armed forces opened a humanitarian corridor for the withdrawal of Ukrainian military personnel who voluntarily laid down their arms and militants of nationalist formations," the defense ministry said, adding the safe corridor was opened at 2:00 pm (1100 GMT). To that end, Russian forces and troops of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic "halted any military activity" around the Azovstal steelworks plant, Mikhail Mizintsev, head of the Russian National Defense Control Centre, said in a statement. The ministry said the decision was made taking into account the "catastrophic situation" at the plant and "purely humanitarian principles". Humanitarian convoys have been deployed in "three directions" that include buses, cars and ambulances to transport and treat people. Temporary accommodation and first aid facilities have also been set up, the ministry said. Moscow urged Kyiv authorities to put pressure on the military "to stop the senseless resistance". "But realizing that the commanders of Ukrainian units may not receive such orders and commands from the Kyiv authorities, we urge them to make such a decision on their own and to lay down their arms," the ministry said. Mariupol offers a land bridge between Moscow-controlled parts of eastern Ukraine and the Kremlin-annexed peninsula of Crimea.

Russia Ratchets up Battle for Control of Eastern Ukraine
Asharq Al-Awsat/Tuesday, 19 April, 2022
Russia ratcheted up its battle for control of Ukraine’s eastern industrial heartland, intensifying assaults on cities and towns along a front hundreds of miles long in what officials on both sides described as a new phase of the war. After a Russian push to the capital failed to overrun the city, the Kremlin declared that its main goal was the capture of the eastern Donbas region. If successful, that offensive would give President Vladimir Putin a vital piece of Ukraine and a badly needed victory that he could present to the Russian people amid the war’s mounting casualties and the economic hardship caused by the West’s sanctions. In recent weeks, Russian forces that withdrew from Kyiv have regrouped in preparation for an all-out offensive in the Donbas, where Moscow-backed separatists have been fighting Ukrainian forces for the past eight years and have declared two independent republics that have been recognized by Russia. While Ukraine’s president and other officials said the offensive had started, observers noted that it was just the beginning of a new massive onslaught. Ukraine’s military said early Tuesday that a "new phase of war” began a day earlier when "the occupiers made an attempt to break through our defenses along nearly the entire frontline.” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in an interview that "another phase of this operation is starting now.”In what appeared to be an intensification of attacks, Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov said that air-launched missiles destroyed 13 Ukrainian troop and weapons locations while the air force struck 60 other Ukrainian military facilities, including missile warhead storage depots. Russian artillery hit 1,260 Ukrainian military facilities and 1,214 troops concentrations over the last 24 hours. The claims could not be independently verified.
The Pentagon cast the stepped-up campaign as "shaping operations” setting the stage for a broader offensive in the mostly Russian-speaking Donbas region.The United States believes that Russian forces are "continuing to set the conditions for what they believe will be eventual success on the ground by putting in more forces, putting in more enablers, putting in more command and control capability for operations yet to come,” Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said Monday.
The assaults began that day along a boomerang-shaped front that stretches more than 300 miles (480 kilometers) from northeastern Ukraine to the country's southeast. Russia said it struck several areas with missiles, including the northeastern city of Kharkiv as well as as areas around Zaporizhzhia and Dnipro west of the Donbas. Five civilians were killed in a barrage on Kharkiv, Gov. Oleh Synyehubov said Tuesday. Moscow's troops seized control of one town in the Donbas on Monday, according to Luhansk Gov. Serhiy Haidai. The breakthrough in Kreminna takes the Russians one small step closer to their apparent goal of encircling Ukrainian troops in the region by advancing on them from the north and south and squeezing them against territory held by Moscow's troops to the east. Oleksiy Danilov, secretary of Ukraine’s national security council, said that the defensive line had held elsewhere.
The capture of Kreminna also takes the Russians closer to the city of Slovyansk, whose loss by the Russia-backed separatists represented a humiliating setback for Moscow in the early stages of the separatist conflict in 2014.
Key to the campaign to take the east is the capture of Mariupol, a port city in the region that the Russians have besieged since the early days of the war. Shelling continued there and Russia issued a fresh ultimatum Tuesday to the Ukrainian troops holed up there to surrender, saying those who come out will "keep their lives.” The Ukrainians have ignored previous such offers. Securing Mariupol would free Russian troops up to move elsewhere in the Donbas, deprive Ukraine of a vital port, and complete a land bridge between Russia and the Crimean Peninsula, seized from Ukraine from 2014.
Denys Prokopenko, commander of the Azov Regiment of the Ukrainian National Guard that is guarding the last known Ukrainian pocket of resistance in Mariupol, said in a video message that Russia had begun dropping bunker-buster bombs on the Azovstal steel plant where the regiment was holding out.
Civilians are also believed to be sheltering at the plant, which covers the territory of about 11 square kilometers (over 4 square miles). On Monday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a video address that a "significant part of the entire Russian army" is now concentrated on the battle for the Donbas. "No matter how many Russian troops are driven there, we will fight,” Zelenskyy vowed. "We will defend ourselves.”

Ukraine war exposes how much Tehran has tilted toward Moscow
AP/April 19, 2022
TEHRAN: During its 1979 Islamic Revolution, Iran embraced the protest cry of “neither East nor West,” rejecting both the US and the Soviet Union, then locked in the Cold War. The phrase to this day hangs over the doors of Iran’s Foreign Ministry. Russia’s war on Ukraine, however, has exposed just how much Tehran has tilted toward Moscow in recent years as the collapse of its nuclear deal with world powers stoked decades-old, hard-line anger at America. Members of Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard train on Russian surface-to-air missile systems and aircraft. Hard-line President Ebrahim Raisi visited Russian President Vladimir Putin on one of his first trips abroad. The war also exposes deeper fault lines even within Iran’s domestic politics. Among ordinary Iranians, there is a great deal of sympathy for Ukraine, a nation that staged a pro-democracy “Orange Revolution” similar to the “Green Revolution” that shook Iran more than a decade ago but was forcefully put down. Iran’s historic enmity with Russia has combined with a wider feeling among some that backing Moscow betrays the Islamic Republic’s often-stated message that it stands against the world’s major powers.
BACKGROUND
• Revolutionary Guard train on Russian surface-to-air missile systems, aircraft.
• President Raisi visited Russian President Putin on one of his first trips abroad.
“We have to help oppressed people of Ukraine as we do support people of Palestine and Yemen simply because they are targeted by powers,” said Zohreh Ahmadi, a mother of two in downtown Tehran’s Sarcheshmeh neighborhood. “A bullying power is killing children and women in Ukraine.”
Iran’s state-controlled television network, whose English-language service Press TV describes itself as “the voice of the voiceless,” hews close to Russian talking points.It used Moscow’s euphemistic term “special operation” to describe the war’s early days. Stories referencing the killings of civilians in Bucha by Russian forces include headlines falsely describing it as a “fake attack” or “provocation” on Press TV’s website. Part of the Iranian government’s anger at Ukraine likely stems from the aftermath of the Guard’s 2020 shooting down of a Ukrainian airliner, which killed 176 people on board. Tehran denied for days it shot down the plane before saying troops made a mistake after Iran fired ballistic missiles at US forces in Iraq in response to the killing of a top general.
Ukraine’s criticism of Iran grew more direct as time went on. That’s something Tehran’s Friday prayer leader, Kazem Sedighi, mentioned in a March sermon after Russia began its war on Ukraine. “In the case of the airplane, Ukraine misbehaved against us and misused it in support of the US,” Sedighi said.
He also engaged in the “whataboutism” common in both Iranian and Russian state media — bringing up a separate topic to charge hypocrisy while deflecting the issue at hand. “Wars claim the lives of innocent people in Yemen and Syria but there is huge propaganda over Ukraine and this is racism,” Sedighi said.
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has the final say on all matters of state, said his nation opposed “war and destruction” while blaming America for the conflict. He also brought up a longtime suspicion that he shares with Putin — that the US, rather than ordinary citizens, fuels what he described as the “color coups” that back democracy. For Khamenei, it is the memory of the Green Movement protests that followed Iran’s disputed 2009 presidential election that directly challenged the theocracy he leads. Iran’s security services used violence and mass arrests to put down the demonstrations. But unrest has re-emerged in recent years over economic issues. For Putin, it is Ukraine’s 2004 Orange Revolution and its later Maidan protest movement that dislodged the Kremlin-leaning politician Viktor Yanukovych.
On the streets of Tehran recently, 17 people were willing to speak to an Associated Press journalist about the war, with others declining. Of them, 12 supported Ukraine, three reiterated Iran’s official stance and two supported Russia. “I support Ukraine,” said Sajjad, a 26-year-old computer programmer. Like others, he spoke on condition he is identified only by his first name for fear of reprisals. “Russians are killing innocent people for nothing. Why should we remain silent?” A retired Iranian captain, Mehrdad, called Russia’s reasons for the war “ridiculous” and similar to those used by Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein to launch a bloody eight-year war on Iran in the 1980s. Saddam at the time pointed to supporting Iran’s Arab minority in its oil-rich southwest as a justification for his invasion. “It is stealing Saddam’s reasons for attacking Iran — possible threats by revolutionary Iran and supporting an ethnic group,” said Mehrdad, 75. “By this excuse, every country can attack others — even Russia.” Ali Nemati, a 64-year-old retired teacher, praised Putin as “very brave” for challenging NATO, also a new preoccupation of Iran’s hard-line government under Raisi. However, Iran has been living quietly next to Turkey, which joined NATO in 1952. “Iran should support Russia since it is alone in its fight against imperialism,” Nemati said.

Israeli forces injure 72 Palestinians
Arab News/April 19, 2022
RAMALLAH: On Tuesday, 72 Palestinians were wounded during clashes with Israeli forces in the West Bank village of Burqa. Meanwhile, in a phone call, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken reviewed the latest developments surrounding tensions over Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque.Blinken said Israel has been told that it should ensure Muslim worshippers’ access to the mosque. He affirmed the US rejection of Israeli settler violence, home demolitions, evictions of residents, and army incursions into Palestinian-governed territories.Meanwhile, the UAE summoned Israel’s ambassador to complain about the crackdown against Palestinians in Jerusalem.

Israel Hits Gaza after Rocket Attack
Asharq Al-Awsat/Tuesday, 19 April, 2022
Israel carried out its first airstrikes on the Gaza Strip in months early Tuesday in response to a rocket fired from the Palestinian enclave as tensions soar after a weekend of violence in Jerusalem. Warning sirens sounded in southern Israel Monday night after the rocket was fired from the enclave controlled by Hamas, the first such incident since early January.The projectile crashed into the sea off Tel Aviv. "One rocket was fired from the Gaza Strip into Israeli territory. The rocket was intercepted by the Iron Dome Air Defense System," the Israeli military said in a statement. Hours later the Israeli air force said it had hit a Hamas weapons manufacturing site in retaliation. Hamas claimed to have used its "anti-aircraft defense" to counter the air raids, which caused no casualties, according to witnesses and security sources in Gaza. No faction in the crowded enclave of 2.3 million inhabitants immediately claimed responsibility for the rocket but it comes after a series of attacks in Israel and a weekend of tensions in and around Jerusalem's flashpoint Al-Aqsa Mosque compound that wounded more than 170 people, mostly Palestinian demonstrators. Diplomatic sources said the United Nations Security Council was to hold a session on Tuesday to discuss the spike in violence. Similar violence in Jerusalem around the same time last year triggered repeated Hamas rocket fire into Israel which escalated into an 11-day war.

Gaza militants prepare tunnels as next conflict looms
Agence France Presse/Tuesday, 19 April, 2022
In a "tunnel city" under the sandy soils of southern Gaza, Palestinian militants are preparing for the next conflict with Israel, as tensions in Jerusalem threaten to escalate. The underground passageways leave no trace on the surface. But in a wooded area near Khan Yunis, seven masked men in military fatigues carried a collection of machine-guns and grenade launchers into a tunnel entrance discretely tucked into the foot of a small hill. The fighters wear headbands of the Al-Quds Brigade, the armed branch of Islamic Jihad which is the second-largest armed faction in Gaza, after the Hamas Islamist movement that rules the territory. The tree branches covering the hole reveal a narrow passageway walled and topped with concrete blocks. Complete with electric lights, a ventilation system and telecoms cables, the tunnels also have small rooms for storing weapons and ammunition. An Islamic Jihad official told AFP during a media tour that the movement has both defensive and offensive tunnel systems. The latter "is used for taking Israeli soldiers captive, repelling Israeli ground offensives and carrying out various field operations", said the commander. As he was talking, he received a radio alert of a "security incident" east of Gaza City -- a false alarm. Last May during an 11-day war, Israel launched multiple strikes against what it called the "Gaza Metro", a network of tunnels that had allowed fighters to move around without being spotted by Israeli drones and to take Israeli targets by surprise.
KFC and rockets
Residents of Gaza, a cramped, besieged coastal territory home to 2.3 million people, have long experience of using tunnels since 2007, when Israel imposed a crippling blockade in response to Hamas seizing power in the Strip. Smugglers stablished a network of tunnels on the border with Egypt, enabling them to import everything from desperately needed household goods to cars and even Kentucky Fried Chicken -- as well as weapons. In recent years, Egypt has destroyed most of those tunnels. Israel, for its part, has boosted its forces around the territory, reinforcing a hyper-secure barrier with an underground steel wall it hopes will prevent tunnels reaching into Israeli territory. Israeli commanders fear militants could use such tunnels to seize Israeli personnel or civilians for use as bargaining chips in prisoner exchanges. But even if Islamic Jihad's tunnels cannot reach Egypt or Israel, they are still "a strategic weapon for the resistance," said Al-Quds Brigade spokesman Abu Hamza. "We will let the days and the battles to come do the talking about the ability of the resistance to break through this so-called (Israeli) barrier," he told AFP. Weeks of deadly violence including angry demonstrations and a police crackdown around Jerusalem's Al-Aqsa Mosque have prompted Islamic Jihad to threaten an escalation. After two deadly attacks in the coastal Israeli city of Tel Aviv, the Israeli army carried out large-scale raids in the West Bank, notably the Jenin area from which the attackers hailed. Those operations sparked intense firefights which killed several fighters from Islamic Jihad, which is supported by Israel's nemesis Iran. And on Monday evening, a rocket was fired from Gaza into Israel, prompting an Israeli air strike against a weapons factory. No faction has yet claimed responsibility, but the incident -- the first of its type since January -- heightened fears of a further escalation. A couple of hours' drive from Gaza City, "the tunnels have been repaired and the rocket stocks have been replenished" since last year's war, according to Abu Hamza, who praised Iran for its support. The spokesman would not be drawn on the size of the organization's tunnel network or how many fighters it has. But another Al-Quds Brigade source, who asked not to be named, said it had "a large number of offensive tunnels that stretch deep into (Israel) and are linked up to a system of drones". He said the group also had rockets capable of reaching the whole of Israel. A short distance from one of the tunnel entrances, a group of fighters sit chatting under the trees. "We've received instructions to mobilize and be on high alert to defend the Al-Aqsa Mosque and Jerusalem," said one. "The rockets are on high alert and we're waiting for the leadership to decide."

Blinken urges Israel, Palestinians to ‘end the cycle of violence’
AFP/April 20, 2022
WASHINGTON:: US Secretary of State Antony Blinken urged Israeli and Palestinian leaders Tuesday to “end the cycle of violence” after a sharp escalation in tensions between the two sides in recent days. In separate calls with Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas and Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid, Blinken stressed “the importance of Israelis and Palestinians working to end the cycle of violence in Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza by exercising restraint and refraining from actions that escalate tensions,” the State Department said.

Ankara Announces Killing of 2 SDF Leaders in Northeastern Syria
Ankara - Saeed Abdulrazek/Asharq Al-Awsat/Tuesday, 19 April, 2022
Turkey announced on Monday the killing of two senior leaders of the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG), the largest component of the Washington-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). Two “terrorist” leaders of the YPG were eliminated in an air raid targeting their location in the al-Hasakah governorate, northeastern Syria, Turkish intelligence sources told Anadolu Agency. The Turkish intelligence service was able to “neutralize” YPG leader Muhammad Aydin in the city of al-Darbasiyah in al-Hasakah, reported Anadolu. Sources pointed out that Aydin joined the ranks of the Kurdish units in 2005 after coming from Iran. He operated in the countryside of Tunceli province in eastern Turkey and in the southern Hatay province between 2010 and 2013. In 2013, he became a “regiment official” in Ain al-Arab (Kobani) in the Syrian countryside of Aleppo, and in 2015 a “front official” in Afrin in the countryside of Aleppo. He later assumed responsibility for the Amuda and Darbasiyah regions. Sources stated that Aydin had previously participated in the process of detaining and threatening to kill villagers in the Dortyol district in Hatay in 2013. Local sources in northeastern Syria revealed that the operation that targeted Aydin also killed Sarfaraz Nidal, also known as “Yildiz.” Yildiz was a member of the Kurdish Organization of the Marxist-Leninist Communist Party. The organization is affiliated with the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). Yildiz joined the group in 1991 and was arrested by Turkish intelligence in 2012 and released in 2017. Sources said the SDF had buried Aydin and Yildiz in the village of Al-Daoudia in the countryside of al-Hasakah. Separately, an operation led by Turkey’s National Intelligence Organization led to the arrest of two ISIS terrorists in Syria, security sources said on Monday. The terrorists, identified as Orhan Moran and Mustafa Kilicli, have been brought to Turkey, said the sources, who requested anonymity due to restrictions on speaking to the media. They were handed over to gendarmerie forces in Turkey’s southeastern border province of Hatay, the sources said.

Libyan PM Visits Algeria to Seek Mediation
Cairo - Khalid Mahmoud/Asharq Al-Awsat/Tuesday, 19 April, 2022
Libya’s Prime Minister of the Government of National Unity, Abdul Hamid Dbeibeh, visited on Monday Algeria at the head of a delegation that included several ministers and top security officials. Dbeibeh is seeking to obtain Algeria’s support and break the political isolation of his government. The PM wants Algiers to mediate to solve the current crisis after Tunisia refused to intervene, and his visit to Egypt was not a success. According to a statement by his government, Dbeibeh intends to hold talks with the Algerian side, focusing on “issues of mutual concern” and “enhancing collaborative relations between the two brotherly countries.” Meanwhile, Fathi Bashagha, the appointed prime minister by the eastern-based parliament, tried to appease the UK by asserting his attempt to combat terrorism and illegal migration. Bashagha pledged to intensify efforts to combat terrorism and organized crime, address the deteriorating security conditions, and secure Libyan ports and borders. He announced that Libya would boost cooperation between security and military institutions and judicial authorities, hoping the UK would provide training and technology expertise to the security forces. Speaking to the British newspaper Express, Bashagha said he is a great fan of the UK. “I understand the reasons the British people made the decision to leave the EU. That was a matter for the people, and their verdict was decisive.” He hoped the UK and Libya can agree on new trading arrangements, noting that Brexit provided the opportunity to forge new relationships, and now, with Libya on the path to stability, the two nations must work closer together. But he pointed out that his country is also suffering from actions by Vladimir Putin’s regime with Russian “Wagner mercenaries” fighting in the civil war, asserting there is no place in Libya for the Wagner Group or any other Russian or Chechen soldiers. “Stability, human rights, and peace in Libya can only benefit the UK. We had already seen how cooperation could succeed when in July 2019, we handed Hashem Abedi – involved in the Manchester bombing -over to British authorities," said Dbeibeh. "I was Minister for the Interior, and during my tenure, our Courts agreed to extradite Mr. Abedi to the UK because he was a British citizen. It was the right thing to do."He outlined his priorities by saying, “My focus will always be on peace, security, and the rule of law. I will always fight terrorism and extremism. The UK should engage with us, invest in Libya and look to future trade and security cooperation with Libya.”“I will restore stability in our country and build a state based on justice, law, and equality.”

Yemen's new leaders take office as hope glimmers for war-torn country
Agence France Presse/Tuesday, 19 April, 2022
Yemen's new leaders took a ceremonial oath of office under tight security on Tuesday, completing a major shake-up aimed at ending seven years of war with Iran-backed Huthi rebels. The newly formed, eight-man leadership council performed a largely symbolic swearing-in in Aden in front of members of a parliament elected in 2003, as hundreds of soldiers patrolled the southern city, a government official told AFP. Ex-president Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi, who fled to Saudi Arabia when the war started in 2015, handed over his "full powers" to the new council in a televised address on April 7. The ceremony was not announced in advance and was held at an undisclosed location for security reasons. In December 2020, about 20 people died in an attack on Aden airport as government officials arrived. Iran-backed Huthi rebels took over the capital Sanaa in 2014, prompting a Saudi-led military intervention the following year and a war that has caused the world's worst humanitarian crisis, according to the United Nations. A fragile, UN-brokered truce has been holding since April 2, the start of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, providing a rare respite from fighting.UزNز special envoy Hans Grundberg attended the swearing-in, along with ambassadors from European and Arab countries, the government official and parliament members told AFP.

Canada imposes additional sanctions on close associates of Russian regime
April 19, 2022 - Ottawa, Ontario - Global Affairs Canada
The Honourable Mélanie Joly, Minister of Foreign Affairs, today announced that Canada is imposing new sanctions under the Special Economic Measures (Russia) Regulations in response to the Russian regime’s illegal and unjustifiable invasion of Ukraine.
These new measures impose restrictions on 14 close associates of the Russian regime, including Russian oligarchs and their family members. This includes President Putin’s two adult daughters.
These actions demonstrate that Canada will not relent in holding Russian President Vladimir Putin and his associates accountable for their complicity in the Russian regime’s invasion of Ukraine.
The Moscow Mechanism report delivered by OSCE experts last week confirmed that the Russian forces are committing serious atrocities and human rights violations in Ukraine, including war crimes and likely crimes against humanity. Canada will also continue to implement further measures in response to the atrocities perpetrated by the Russian leadership, including a relentless pursuit of accountability.
Canada continues to monitor the situation and coordinate actions with its partners in the international community to respond to the Russian regime’s barbaric acts.
Quote
“Canada continues to stand by the brave men and women fighting for their freedom in Ukraine. We will continue to impose severe costs on the Russian regime in coordination with our allies and will relentlessly pursue accountability for their actions. They will answer for their crimes.”
- Mélanie Joly, Minister of Foreign Affairs
Quick facts
Since Russia’s illegal occupation and attempted annexation of Crimea in 2014, Canada has imposed sanctions on more than 1,200 individuals and entities. Many of those sanctions have been undertaken in coordination with Canada’s allies and partners. Canada’s latest sanctions will impose asset freezes and prohibitions on listed individuals and entities.
Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, Canada has imposed sanctions on more than 750 individuals and entities from Russia, Ukraine and Belarus.
Canada has referred the situation in Ukraine to the International Criminal Court (ICC) in concert with other ICC member states as a result of numerous allegations of serious international crimes committed by Russian forces in Ukraine, including war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The Latest LCCC English analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on April 19-20/2022
How Palestinians Desecrate Everyone's Holy Sites, Including Their Own
Bassam Tawil/Gatestone Institute/April 19/2022
"We salute every drop of blood spilled for the sake of Jerusalem. This blood is clean, pure blood, shed for the sake of Allah. Every martyr will be placed in Paradise, and all the wounded will be rewarded by Allah." — Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, MEMRI, September 16, 2015.
The small number of Jews who have peacefully toured the outdoor Temple Mount area in the past few years have never even set foot inside the Aqsa Mosque or on the nearby Dome of the Rock. The Jewish visitors do not go there to assault or humiliate Muslims. They go there as part of organized tours that are coordinated with the Israeli authorities.
Blinken's remarks show that he considers the construction of new homes for Jews more dangerous than the murder of Israelis on the streets of Israeli cities.
This is all happening while the Biden administration airily disregards endless Palestinian blood libels and vicious incitement against both Israel and the Jews.
Prominently, Blinken did not threaten to suspend US financial aid to the Palestinians over the payments to the families of terrorists who murdered Jews and the ongoing incitement to attack Israelis.
Take note: as long as Blinken considers the construction of apartments for Jews a greater threat than shooting and stabbing Israeli men and women at shopping malls and bars, the Palestinians will not cease their blood payments and murderous incitement.
Unless the US administration makes it unmistakably clear that the Palestinians will pay dearly for continuing to reward terrorists and their families, the Palestinians will not even slow down either desecrating holy sites or committing their terror attacks.
"The Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Church of the Holy Sepulcher are ours. They are all ours, and they [Jews] have no right to defile them with their filthy feet. We salute every drop of blood spilled for the sake of Jerusalem. This blood is clean, pure blood, shed for the sake of Allah. Every martyr will be placed in Paradise, and all the wounded will be rewarded by Allah." — Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.
Palestinians have once again been caught lying to the world by claiming that Jews are "desecrating" the Islamic holy sites, in particular the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem.
If anyone is desecrating the mosque and other holy sites it is Palestinians themselves.
In 2002, Palestinian terrorists stormed into the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, but the global Christian response was muted. The terrorists stayed inside the church for 39 days and left behind dirty blankets and mattresses, lighters and cigarette butts and "the reek of fecal matter." One priest complained that the terrorists had also desecrated the church by smoking and drinking alcohol.
On Friday morning, April 15, hundreds of Palestinian "worshippers" barricaded themselves inside the Aqsa Mosque and clashed with Israeli police officers.
The rioters, armed with rocks, iron bars and fireworks, arrived at the mosque early in the morning and were seen bringing rocks into the mosque and blocking its main gate with wooden and metal barriers.
The "worshippers" arrived at the mosque because their leaders had lied to them -- told them, incorrectly, that Jews were planning to "storm" the mosque and "defile" its courtyards.
As soon as the rioters entered the mosque compound on the Temple Mount and before clashing with the police, they raised flags and banners of Hamas, a Palestinian group designated as a terrorist organization by the US, European Union, Canada, Australia, Japan and other countries.
Apparently Palestinians do not consider bringing rocks, iron bars and other light weapons into a mosque an act of desecration.
Apparently Palestinians do not consider hoisting the flags and banners of a terrorist organization at a holy site an act of desecration.
Apparently Palestinians do not consider hurling rocks and glass bottles at people at the nearby Western Wall, the most sacred site in the world used by the Jewish people for prayer, an act of desecration.
Apparently Palestinians do not consider throwing rocks and shooting fireworks at police officers at the mosque compound an act of desecration.
The riots that were initiated by the Palestinians at the Temple Mount on April 15 were completely unprovoked. The violence erupted after Palestinian leaders and groups falsely claimed that "Jewish extremists" were planning to conduct a ritual of animal sacrifice at the site to celebrate the Passover holiday.
Israel denied the allegations and sent messages to the Palestinians assuring them that Jews would not be permitted to carry out any "provocations" on the Temple Mount.
Even senior Hamas official Saleh al-Arouri admitted, hours before the violence broke out, that his group did receive such assurances. According to al-Arouri, the Israeli message was relayed to Hamas through unnamed "mediators."
Yet all the attempts by Israel to refute the false allegations of the Palestinians did not help.
The Palestinian blood libel concerning the alleged desecration of the Islamic holy sites by Jews originated several years ago with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas himself. In 2015, Abbas said:
"The Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Church of the Holy Sepulcher are ours. They are all ours, and they [Jews] have no right to defile them with their filthy feet. We salute every drop of blood spilled for the sake of Jerusalem. This blood is clean, pure blood, shed for the sake of Allah. Every martyr will be placed in Paradise, and all the wounded will be rewarded by Allah."
Shortly after Abbas's speech, Palestinians launched a wave of terrorist attacks that included stabbings, shootings and car-rammings.
The Palestinians who set out to murder Jews thought they were heeding the call of their president to defend their mosque against the "filthy feet" of Jews. By murdering dozens of Jews for the sake of the mosque, the terrorists were actually themselves defiling the sanctity of the Aqsa Mosque. How? They invoked the name of the mosque to justify a murder spree against innocent Jews.
The small number of Jews who have peacefully toured the outdoor Temple Mount area in the past few years have never even set foot inside the Aqsa Mosque or on the nearby Dome of the Rock. The Jewish visitors do not go there to assault or humiliate Muslims. They go there as part of organized tours that are coordinated with the Israeli authorities.
If anyone is assaulted, harassed and degraded, it is the Jewish visitors. Videos of Palestinians cursing and shouting at the Jewish visitors have been circulating for years on social media platforms. In addition, Palestinians have attempted to physically attack the Jewish visitors.
Notably, the renewed Palestinian claims about Jews desecrating the Islamic holy sites came even as Palestinians vandalized Joseph's Tomb in the Palestinian city of Nablus.
The site, where according to Jewish tradition the biblical figure Joseph is said to be buried, was attacked and vandalized twice by Palestinian rioters in the past week.
This was not the first time that Palestinians attacked and damaged Joseph's Tomb. Although some reports claimed that the Palestinian Authority promised to help renovate the site, in the end it was the Israeli army that had to send large forces to repair the damage.
Joseph's Tomb was targeted by Palestinians for one reason: to prevent Jews from arriving there to pray. Two religious Jewish men who tried to arrive at the site after learning of the vandalism were shot and wounded by Palestinians.
The vandalism and the attempt to deny Jews access to Joseph's Tomb is actual desecration of a holy site, as opposed to peaceful tours of Jews to the Temple Mount and the free access Muslims have to all their mosques in Jerusalem.
The international community, meanwhile, continues to ignore the Palestinian desecration of holy sites. Journalists are reporting how Israeli policemen "raided" the Aqsa Mosque compound on Friday morning, without pointing out that Palestinian rioters had filled the mosque with stones and iron bars hours before the police entered.
The Palestinian claims that Jews are defiling the holy sites are intended not only to incentivize Palestinians to carry out terrorist attacks, but also to rally all Muslims against Israel. The false accusations promote antisemitism and provide fuel to Israel-haters around the world, especially, sadly, on US university campuses.
This is all happening while the Biden administration airily disregards endless Palestinian blood libels and vicious incitement against both Israel and the Jews. During a recent visit by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken to Ramallah, the de facto capital of the Palestinians, he stated:
"We'll work to prevent actions by either side that could raise tensions. That includes settlement expansion, settler violence, home demolitions, evictions, payments to people convicted of terrorism, incitements to violence."
Blinken's remarks show that he considers the construction of new homes for Jews more dangerous than the murder of Israelis on the streets of Israeli cities.
Prominently, Blinken did not threaten to suspend US financial aid to the Palestinians over the payments to the families of terrorists who murdered Jews and the ongoing incitement to attack Israelis.
Take note: as long as Blinken considers the construction of apartments for Jews a greater threat than shooting and stabbing Israeli men and women at shopping malls and bars, Palestinians will not cease their blood payments and murderous incitement.
Unless the US administration makes it unmistakably clear that the Palestinians will pay dearly for continuing to reward terrorists and their families, the Palestinians will not even slow down either desecrating holy sites or committing their terror attacks.
*Bassam Tawil is a Muslim Arab based in the Middle East.
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The Ukraine War and the Fate of Western Liberalism
Ahmad Mahmoud Ajaj/Asharq Al Awsat/April 29/2022
Since the emergence of Vladimir Putin’s Russia and China’s rise under Xi’s leadership, skepticism shadowed the liberal system and its validity as a global model. These doubts were also heard from within Western liberal circles, with the appearance of the populist movement and the extremist right, along with calls for religious and ethnic nationalism.
The Syrian emigration crisis played a role in the European arena. Consequently, the left and the center right had to pursue populist policies that are hostile to liberal principles. Liberal democracy seemed fragile. Many countries, which had long aspired to be in the Liberal Club, have gradually began to move towards the Chinese and Russian model.
Following the defeat of Donald Trump, President Joe Biden has curbed this tendency, declaring that liberal democracy was capable of stability and victory. He depicted the conflict with China and Russia as between authoritarian regimes and democracy. Hence, liberalism got a case, and shifted from the defense side to the attack.
The liberal system, unlike the authoritarian regime, does not impose on people a certain way of life. On the contrary, it gives the freedom to the members of the society to live as they want to. While the system aspires to maintain the people’s safety and ensure security in society, authoritarian regimes are based on racial, ethnic or religious considerations.
Thus, we see how China deals with the Uyghur minority, for example, and what happens in Myanmar with the Muslim minority. The authoritarian regimes tend to impose historical and cultural identity on society, while liberal systems try to build a universal identity, based on political principles such as openness, moderation and tolerance.
This authoritarian orientation was reflected in Putin’s justification for the invasion, saying there was nothing called Ukraine… that the Ukrainian people were historically part of Russia and that he will save them from Nazism and the subversion of the West.
Patriarch Kirill, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, agreed with Putin, claiming that the Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian people should be united as one spiritual people, and that invading Ukraine was part of the metaphysical (religious) conflict against the morally torn Western civilization, which worships materialism and economic globalization and promotes homosexuality.
Raising nationalist, ethnic and religious slogans in the face of liberalism, contributed to a breach of European Liberal House. In Hungary, right-wing populist Prime Minister Viktor Orban won with an overwhelming majority, extremist President Alexander Vucic achieved victory in Serbia, and in France, right-wing candidate Marine Le Pen received 24 percent of votes to compete in the second round with Emmanuel Macron.
Alike Putin, all of them rely on the same foundations, including ethnicity, nationalism and culture mixed with religion.
Thus, Marine Le Pen saw in Putin a possible ally for France after the end of the war in Ukraine. Orban, for his part, said he would not allow arms to pass through his country to Ukraine.
This confirms that the liberalism does not face a challenge only from China or Russia, but from within its societies.
The consequences of authoritarian regimes on the global level include the lack of trust in the supreme power of international law and the legalization of the de facto policy that justifies invasions and the discrimination and exclusion of minorities.
The prevalence of this concept will inevitably lead to liberal corrosion, and to a declining trust in globalization, as well as conflict of cultures at the internal and global levels. It will lead to a significant change in the existing global order – a change that could portend the return to the conflict of nations through wars, as was the case, in the nineteenth century.
This scenario could also lead to the fall of the US sovereignty and the American liberal foundations, with China’s dominance as a national and anti-liberal model. Thus, the United States is deploying all efforts to prevent this path and would not allow Putin to achieve full victory in Ukraine, nor China to expand its influence in East and South Asia.
In this context, US officials are focusing on the use of harsh descriptions, pointing to the brutality of Vladmir Putin and accusing him of war crimes. They are calling on China to declare its commitment to the sanctity of international law and human rights, or else publicly announce its support for Putin.
These descriptions are accompanied by images broadcast by the liberal media about developments in Ukraine. They have created a new reality that pushed Europe to join the ranks of the US. France, for example, sent a team to investigate alleged war crimes in Ukraine. Europe, which had long believed in action through trade, began to arm, such as Germany, whose liberal system is at risk.
These moves, accompanied by popular support in Europe, will undoubtedly contribute to curbing populism within the European system.
This liberal tide will not be thwarted by the success of Orban. In fact, the latter’s victory was shadowed with doubts… Certainly, Orban will be trapped by the European Union and will not be able to convince his people to head east.
There’s no doubt that the war of Ukraine, despite its tragedies, has put back the liberal system at the forefront, raising a new slogan, democracies against suppressive countries.
If Russia fails to achieve its goals, such confrontation will restore the US global role, and neither China, nor any other country, will be able to question the American leadership.

This Is What Living With Long-Term High Inflation Feels Like
Allison Schrager/Bloomberg/April 29/2022
If you are under 45 and live in America or Europe, the odds are this past year has been your first real experience with inflation. Other than a blip in 2008, inflation has barely topped 3% in the last 30 years.
But now inflation is back; up more than 8% last month, and it may get worse before it gets better. Some of the drivers of price increases today, supply chain disruptions and war in Ukraine, will eventually abate. But there are reasons to believe we aren’t going back to 2% inflation anymore. The economy is different and the new baseline for inflation will be 4% or 5%.
Americans used to get along just fine when higher inflation was the norm. But the world is different now; 4% poses new costs and benefits to a new generation.
So what does it mean for living your life or conducting your business if inflation hovers between 4% and 5% instead of the 1.5% to 2.5% we've taken for granted for so long? To paint that picture, we need to assume a reasonable degree of stability. If inflation is higher, but remains in a tight range, it won't cause too much damage. The average inflation rate was 4% or 5% for many years and the economy still grew.
That said, much has changed since the late 1980s when inflation hovered around 4%. That rate is almost twice what people now are used to, and all segments of the economy will have to adapt. Getting a pay raise was less critical when inflation was 1% or 2%. Employers got used to giving smaller increases. The last time inflation was high, unions negotiated annual cost-of-living raises built into the pay of many workers. Now most will need to demand it for themselves. For workers who don't — or can't — negotiate raises that keep pace with inflation, their real compensation will shrink each year as their pay is worth less. Even if you do get a decent raise, those increases generally come just once a year, while inflation happens continuously, eating away at your buying power.
Business Impact
Companies won't get off easy either. They'll face higher costs for labor, rent and the goods they use. They will need to increase their prices more frequently, which risks alienating their customers. It puts smaller firms at a disadvantage, shifting demand to large companies with fatter profit margins that can afford to absorb some of the inflation so that they pass on less of the pain to the consumer.
Inflation will be a bigger problem for small business than it was in the 1980s because big firms dominate the market now — odds are your local mom-and-pop hardware store is already barely hanging on against Home Depot. The online marketplace that brought prices down by increasing transparency will continue to make it harder to raise prices above competitors, which will be another strike against small companies.
Housing
Interest rates will go up because the Fed will raise rates to keep inflation in check, and investors will demand higher rates to compensate for inflation. That will mean more expensive mortgage loans. That would usually weaken housing prices, but as long as demand outpaces supply — which we're seeing now — and if the rental market continues to go up, you can’t count on housing prices falling. However, if you already own a home with a fixed-rate mortgage, your wages will go up, while your monthly mortgage payment will stay the same, meaning your real housing costs will fall (though not your property taxes or upkeep costs).
Nest Egg Strategy
Saving and investing will also be more challenging. Right now, banks are paying basically about zero interest on your savings. If inflation increases, they will pay a little more interest, but don’t expect the 8% rates paid on certificates of deposit in the 1980s. Banks have less need for retail banking than they did in the 1980s, so odds are they will be less inclined to increase rates to woo customers to open accounts.
Government bonds offer another low-risk investment option, and those rates will increase, too. But they may not increase enough to compensate for inflation because, compared with the 1980s, safe assets are still in hot demand by foreign governments and banks for regulatory reasons. So if you want to protect your savings from getting eaten away by inflation, you’ll need to invest in riskier assets.
And if you are being pushed into riskier assets, diversification will be key. Holding many stocks reduces your risk without lowering your expected return. The easiest and cheapest way to gain risk exposure and diversification is to buy a simple, broad stock index fund, such as the S&P 500. Or if you want even more diversification, choose a global stock fund. These investments are a good hedge for inflation, are well diversified, and very liquid so you can sell them if you need cash.
If you desire more risk and more diversification you can include a commodity fund or a bond fund that includes corporate or municipal bonds. The key is to find funds that charge low fees, are liquid, and include as many different securities as possible. Real estate is also considered a good inflation hedge, but it's less liquid and has higher fees, so it's less advisable unless you plan to own it for a long time.
Retirement Fix
Retirees are normally the most harmed by inflation because they live on a fixed income. The good news is Social Security is indexed to inflation. But when inflation was low, some pension plans cut back on their cost-of-living adjustments, which didn't seem like a big deal at the time. With inflation at 4% or 5%, though, retirees will notice. Those with 401(k)s or IRAs are normally encouraged to invest in short-term government bonds as they age to protect against market risk. But if these bonds don’t keep up with inflation — and they probably won't — people will feel pressured to keep more of their nest egg in risky assets. That could make their income, and spending ability, much less predictable.
Debt’s Silver Lining
Higher inflation will have some benefits, especially if you have more debt than savings, as your income should rise while the amount of your borrowings stays the same, so you have more money to make payments or pay it off altogether. This will be a boon to student debt holders and homeowners with fixed-rate mortgages.
So if we do get to that place of higher, but stable, inflation, Americans will probably have an uncomfortable period of adjustment learning to live with rising prices at the grocery store, in restaurants, and everywhere else we’ve become accustomed to stable costs of living. But our economy and personal finances will adapt as price increases flow through and wages follow. While 4% inflation isn't what it used to be, this is a new economy and we'll all need to adjust how we invest and develop a strategy to defend against inflation. Certainly, though, it will be a long time before anyone again feels complacent about inflation.

How to Develop Life-Saving Drugs Much Faster
Bill Gates/The New York Times/April 29/2022
The Covid-19 pandemic would look very different if scientists had been able to develop a treatment sooner. The death rates are likely to have been far lower, and it may have been harder for myths and misinformation to spread the way they did.
In the early days of the pandemic, I expected a treatment to come along well before any vaccines were available. I wasn’t alone: Most people I know in the public health community felt the same way. Unfortunately, that’s not what happened. Safe, effective Covid vaccines were available within a year — a historic feat — but treatments that could keep large numbers of people out of the hospital were surprisingly slow out of the gate.
It wasn’t for lack of trying. As soon as the coronavirus was identified, researchers started looking for the holy grail of treatments: an antiviral drug that’s cheap, easy to administer, effective for different variants and capable of helping people before they get too sick. Scientists explored dozens of potential treatments, including hydroxychloroquine, dexamethasone, remdesivir and convalescent plasma. Some showed promise, but all had drawbacks.
In late 2021, a few of their efforts paid off — not as soon as would have been ideal, but still in time to have a big impact. Merck and its partners developed an antiviral called molnupiravir, which was shown to significantly reduce the risk of hospitalization or death for people at high risk. Soon after, another oral antiviral, Paxlovid, made by Pfizer, also proved to be very effective, reducing the risk of severe illness or death by nearly 90 percent among high-risk, unvaccinated adults. These drugs are useful tools for combating the pandemic, but they arrived much later than they should have and, for many, they are still difficult to access.
By the time these treatments were available, a large share of the world’s population had received at least one dose of a vaccine. But just because there is a vaccine doesn’t mean therapeutics aren’t important, in Covid or any other outbreak. It’s a mistake to think of vaccines as the star of the show and therapeutics as the opening act you would just as soon skip.
We’re lucky that scientists made Covid vaccines as quickly as they did — if they hadn’t, the death toll would be far worse. But in the event of another pandemic, even if the world is able to develop a vaccine for a new pathogen in 100 days, it will still take a long time to get the vaccine to most of the population. This is especially true if you need two or more doses for full and continued protection. If the pathogen is especially transmissible and deadly, a therapeutic drug could save tens of thousands or more.
Even once there is a vaccine, we’ll still need good therapeutics. As we’ve seen with Covid, not everyone who can take a vaccine will choose to do so. And, along with non-pharmaceutical interventions, therapeutics can reduce the strain on hospitals, which would prevent the overcrowding that ultimately means that some patients die who otherwise wouldn’t.
With good therapeutics, the risk of severe illness and death could drop significantly, and countries could decide to loosen restrictions on schools and businesses, reducing the disruption to education and the economy. What’s more, imagine how people’s lives would change if we’re able to take the next step by linking testing and treatment. Anyone with early symptoms that might indicate Covid (or any other viral disease) could walk into a pharmacy or clinic anywhere in the world, get tested and, if positive for the virus, walk out with antivirals to take at home.
All of which is to say: Therapeutics are fundamentally important in an outbreak. To understand what caused the delay in drugs and how we can avoid such delays in the future, we need to take a tour through the world of therapeutics: what they are, how they get from the lab to the market, why they didn’t fare better early in this pandemic and how innovation can set the stage for a better response in the future.
Treating disease is nothing new to humans. The practice of using roots, herbs and other natural ingredients as healing agents dates to ancient times. Some 9,000 years ago, Stone Age dentists in modern-day Pakistan drilled into their patients’ teeth with pieces of flint. The ancient Egyptian architect and physician Imhotep cataloged treatments for 200 diseases nearly 5,000 years ago, and the Greek physician Hippocrates prescribed a form of aspirin — extracted from the bark of the willow tree — more than 2,000 years ago. But it’s only in the past couple of centuries that we’ve been able to synthesize medicines in the lab rather than by extracting them from things we found in nature.
While some of the drugs we rely on today were invented intentionally through painstaking research, others are products of pure accident. In the 1880s, for instance, two chemistry students at the University of Strasbourg were testing whether a substance called naphthalene — a byproduct of making tar — could be used to cure intestinal worms when they stumbled upon a solution to a problem they weren’t even looking to solve. Naphthalene didn’t get rid of worms — but to the students’ surprise, it did break the person’s fever. After further investigation, they realized they hadn’t even administered naphthalene at all, but rather a then-obscure drug called acetanilide, which the pharmacist had given them by mistake. Soon, acetanilide was on the market as a cure for fevers, but doctors found that it had an unfortunate side effect: It made some patients’ skin turn blue. Eventually, they derived a substance from acetanilide that had all the benefits without the blue hue. It was called paracetamol, which Americans know as acetaminophen, a.k.a. Tylenol.
Today, drug discovery still relies on a mixture of good science and good luck. Unfortunately, when an outbreak appears to be headed toward a pandemic, there’s no time to count on luck. The next time we’re faced with a contagion, scientists will need to develop treatments as fast as possible, much faster than they did for Covid.
So let’s suppose we’re in that situation: There’s a new virus that looks like it could go global, and we need a treatment. How will scientists go about making an antiviral?
The first step is to map the virus’s genetic code and figure out which proteins are most important to it. These essential proteins are known as the “targets,” and the search for a treatment essentially boils down to defeating the virus by finding things that will keep the targets from working the way they should.
Until the 1980s, researchers trying to identify promising compounds had to rely on slow trial and error to identify the right ones. Today, using 3-D modeling and robotic machines that run thousands of experiments at a time, companies can test millions of compounds in a matter of weeks — a task that would otherwise take a team of humans years to complete.
Once a promising compound is identified, the scientific teams will analyze it to determine whether it’s worth further exploration. Once they’ve found a good candidate, they will typically spend several years in the “preclinical” phase, studying it to determine whether it is safe and triggers the desired response. The first studies will be done in animals. (Finding the right animal is not easy. Researchers have a saying: “Mice lie, monkeys exaggerate and ferrets are weasels.”)
If all goes well in the preclinical phase, the drug will move into the riskiest and most expensive part of the process: clinical trials in humans. With permission from a government regulator — in the United States, it’s the Food and Drug Administration — scientists will start a small trial involving a few dozen healthy adult volunteers. They will be looking to see whether the drug causes any adverse effects and to zero in on a dosage that’s high enough to be beneficial but not so high that it makes the patient sick.
Assuming all goes well once again, it will move on to larger and larger trials. Finally, after three phases, if they believe the drug is safe and effective, the scientists will go back to the regulatory agency and apply for approval. Then — assuming they get the green light — it’s time to start manufacturing.
At this point, a team of chemists will work on finding a consistent way to produce the key part of the drug, known as the “active ingredient.” Then, the scientific team will address the next big question: How to make sure it actually reaches everyone who needs it. Not at all an easy problem to solve.
As you can see, drug development is a complex and labor-intensive science, and each step is fraught with scientific and logistical obstacles — but we need to accelerate the process. The faster researchers are able to produce safe, effective drugs for quick-spreading pathogens like Covid, the more lives will be saved and the more we can reduce the burden on health care systems. Fortunately, there are ways to speed up and streamline the process without sacrificing safety.
One of the keys to ensuring that health care workers have better treatment options in the next big outbreak than they did for Covid will be investing in large libraries of drug compounds that researchers can quickly scan to see whether existing therapies work against new pathogens. Some of these libraries exist already, but the world needs more. We need libraries that cover many types of drugs, but the most promising, in my view, are those known as pan-family and broad-spectrum therapies — either antibodies or drugs that can treat a wide range of viral infections, especially those that are likely to cause a pandemic.
Researchers could also find better ways of activating what’s known as “innate immunity,” which is the part of your immune system that kicks in just minutes or hours after it detects any foreign invader — it’s your body’s first line of defense. By boosting your innate immune response, a drug could help your body stop an infection before it takes hold.
To deliver on these promising approaches, the world needs to invest more into understanding how various dangerous pathogens interact with our cells. Scientists are working on ways to mimic these interactions so that they can quickly figure out which drugs might work in an outbreak.
A few years ago, I saw a demonstration of a “lung on a chip,” an experimental device you could hold in your hand that operated just like a lung, allowing researchers to study how different drugs, pathogens and human cells affect one another. With advances in artificial intelligence and machine learning, it’s now possible to use computers to identify weak spots on pathogens that we already know about, and we’ll be able to do the same when new pathogens arise. These technologies are also speeding up the search for new compounds that will attack those weak spots.
With adequate funding, various groups could take the most promising new compounds through Phase 1 studies even before there’s an epidemic, or at least have several leads that can be turned into a product quickly once we know what the target looks like.
In short, although therapeutics didn’t rescue us from Covid, they hold a lot of promise for saving lives and preventing future outbreaks from crippling health systems. But to make the most of that promise, the world needs to invest in the research and systems we’ll need to find treatments much faster. That’s why my foundation has supported a therapeutics accelerator at Duke University, but broader initiatives will be necessary to make lasting change. This will require substantial investment to bring together academia, industry and the latest software tools. But if we succeed, the next time the world faces an outbreak, we’ll save millions more lives.

That "Liberal, Post-Modern" Life
Alberto M. Fernandez/MEMRI/April 19/2022
It was aimed at explaining – and insulting – Russians but it wound up illuminating a lot more beyond Russia. In an April 12 interview on German television, German researcher Florence Gaub (a citizen of both Germany and France) said the following:
"We should not forget that, even if Russians look European, they are not European. In a cultural sense, they think differently about violence or death. They have no concept of a liberal, post-modern life. A concept of life than each individual can choose. Instead, life can end early with death. Russian life expectancy is quite low, you know, 70 years for men. That is why they treat death differently, that people simply die."
Gaub's comments caught a bit of a stir, especially on social media. Her comments sounded a bit too redolent of past German rhetoric about Russians as brutal Asiatic hordes and she was mercilessly pilloried on Twitter, bombarded with photos of European colonialism and Nazi death camps. Gaub herself is no Nazi but rather almost a poster-child for the continent's Eurocratic elite: Deputy Director of the European Union Institute for Security Studies (EUISS), a member of the World Economic Forum's (WEF) Global Future Council on Frontier Risks, formerly worked at the NATO Defense College, study at the Sorbonne and a doctorate from Berlin's Humboldt University. Far from being some sort of rightist, Glaub worked in the past for SPD (Germany's Social Democrats) parliamentarians. If anything, this is the type of person that is very much in sync with the Davos and EU elite's zeitgeist.
Facing online criticism for her remarks, Gaub doubled down, pointing to broad Russian support for Putin's war in Ukraine and even more tellingly she tweeted out a copy of the Ingelhart-Welzel World Cultural Map from 2020 noting that "if we consider 'European' to be a set of values, let's take a look at the World Values Survey which clusters the world into different cultural hubs."
I have been fascinated by this map since it came out but for perhaps very different reasons than Gaub. First of all, it is a very strange way of justifying her remarks since it would indeed show that Russia has different values than particularly Protestant Northern Europe, but so does Ukraine. The mindset of both peoples fighting in the Russia-Ukraine War is, not surprisingly, very similar. Indeed, if one follows her logic neither Russia nor Ukraine nor NATO and EU-members Romania, Bulgaria and Greece have those much vaunted "European values."
The other great irony of using such a diagram to underscore what countries have those "liberal, post-modern" European values is that if Russia and Ukraine do not have them, neither do the waves of migrants seeking to break into Europe from Africa and the Middle East. They are even "farther down" – more traditional societies focused on survival – than those of Orthodox Eastern Europe. It is precisely that part of Germany's population that is youngest and most fertile.
What the diagram and the research of the World Values Survey sought to show was, among other things, that "in a liberal post-industrial economy, an increasing share of the population has grown up taking survival and freedom of thought for granted, resulting in that self-expression is highly valued." The idea was that as such countries "progress," they will become less traditional, less focused on survival and more liberal and tolerant and likely richer too. This research has been, probably rightly, decried as too "Eurocentric, simplistic and culturally essentialist."
But I find value in the diagram, less as a guide toward a liberal future than toward a traditional one. When I first saw it a few years ago, I was fascinated by the countries at the left-hand bottom, many of them Islamic but not all, in the "African-Islamic" cultural sub-group. It reminded me of an incident back in 2015 when a publication associated with Germany's uber-progressive Catholic Church mocked African Catholics as "simple" people who have "nothing but their faith." The soft racism of the Germans toward Africans back then echoes in the soft racism of Germans like Gaub today.

Washington weighs up dropping IRGC from terrorist list
Kerry Boyd Anderson/Arab News/April 19, 2022
Talks to revive the nuclear deal with Iran recently hit the one-year mark. Reports suggest that the parties are close to an agreement — a key time when breakthroughs can happen but also when talks can fall apart. At this critical moment, Iran demanded that Washington remove the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps from its Foreign Terrorist Organization list. The demand has prompted debate within the Washington foreign policy community.
Former US President Donald Trump designated the IRGC as an FTO in 2019, the first time that a state-run entity had been added to a list that was designed for nonstate actors. Now, that designation is a potential point of leverage and a potential stumbling block in returning to the deal that Trump tried to sink.
The debate in Washington over removing the IRGC from the FTO list largely breaks down along the lines of supporters and opponents of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. JCPOA supporters see a deal as crucial to constraining Iran’s nuclear program, and many believe that the FTO list is not worth risking a nuclear-armed Iran. JCPOA opponents do not believe that saving the deal is worth removing the IRGC from the FTO list. Partisanship also informs the debate; however, among knowledgeable experts, the debate cuts across some partisan lines with more nuanced discussion.
Many JCPOA supporters — primarily Democrats and centrists — argue that Biden should seriously consider removing the IRGC from the FTO list to reach a deal. Their starting point is that the JCPOA is a valuable agreement that is worth some compromises. Their second main point is that the FTO designation for the IRGC has limited or no practical value. They note that the IRGC’s malign actions have increased since 2019, suggesting that designating it as an FTO did nothing to change its behavior. They see the FTO as primarily or entirely symbolic. Furthermore, the FTO already has a political history that undermines its role as a credible list of terrorist organizations.
A key part of the argument in favor of delisting the IRGC revolves around the fact that the US has many other sanctions against the IRGC. Understanding US sanctions law requires specific expertise, and commentators on both sides of the FTO issue often misunderstand or oversimplify sanctions. However, sanctions experts on both sides of the debate note that the IRGC is listed under multiple other US sanctions and that the FTO designation did very little to materially constrain or punish it.
Foreign policy commentators who oppose removing the IRGC from the FTO include centrists, Republicans and former Trump administration officials; most, but not all, also oppose the JCPOA. Some of their arguments will have little influence with the Biden administration.
Removing the IRGC from the list could damage US relations with partners in the region, primarily Israel and the Gulf states.
Those who oppose the JCPOA tend to oppose any compromise with Iran. Some opponents have expressed concern that removing the IRGC from the FTO would reduce sanctions pressure but have little evidence for this. This group of commentators have spilled much ink in cataloging the evidence that the IRGC engages in terrorism, but the other side does not dispute this.
Some opponents to delisting the IRGC make more persuasive points that might have influence with the Biden team. While the FTO designation has little material impact on the IRGC, that does not mean that its symbolic value is worthless. If removing the IRGC from the FTO list is important to Iran, then it must have meaning. It is reasonable to argue that the IRGC’s behavior should merit removal before taking it off the list. Removing the IRGC from the list could damage US relations with partners in the region, primarily Israel and the Gulf states, especially after the Biden administration removed the Houthis from the list in 2021. Furthermore, Iran has insisted that negotiations focus only on nuclear issues, but its FTO request implies a broader scope.
While Biden has not publicly taken a clear position, statements from US officials provide clues. State Department spokesman Ned Price suggested on April 18 that, if Iran wanted to expand the scope of negotiations beyond nuclear issues, then Washington would expect Iran to address US concerns “that go beyond the JCPOA.” Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley recently said that the IRGC’s Quds Force should not be delisted. A State Department spokesperson said that the president agrees that the Quds Force is a terrorist organization, according to Al-Monitor. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on April 6 that he was “not overly optimistic” about reaching a deal. Biden wants a revived JCPOA, but, if he removed the IRGC from the FTO, Republicans would accuse him of giving in to Iran and terrorists.
Fortunately, Washington has options. Several experts have suggested ways to use Iran’s demand as leverage in negotiations. There are reports that the Biden team might remove the IRGC from the FTO list while specifically designating the Quds Force as an FTO, though Iran reportedly has rejected the idea. Other reports suggest that Washington might offer to delist the IRGC in exchange for a public pledge from Tehran to de-escalate regional tensions and halt attacks on Americans. Washington Post writer Jason Rezaian, who was held hostage in Iran, also proposed steps to specifically sanction IRGC officials who have engaged in human rights violations and to demand that Tehran make payments granted by US courts to victims of Iranian hostage-taking and acts of terrorism.
While the FTO list has little material impact on the IRGC, it has symbolic value. Washington should not concede this point without gaining something from Iran in return. The Biden team wants to revive the JCPOA, but there are limits on what it will concede.
• Kerry Boyd Anderson is a writer and political risk consultant with more than 18 years of experience as a professional analyst of international security issues and Middle East political and business risk. Her previous positions include deputy director for advisory with Oxford Analytica. Twitter: @KBAresearch