This is Jacobin Radio. I am Susie Wiseman. On today's program we look at the August 4th horrific explosion in Lebanon.

Nearly 3,000 tons of ammonium nitrate that had been sitting in the port of the city for seven years

ignited leaving hundreds dead thousands injured and hundreds of thousands homeless.

Gilberashkar joins us with his analysis. and hundreds of thousands of thousands homeless.

Gilbert Ashkar joins us with his analysis, outlining Lebanon's decades-long history of

neoliberal rule.

Ashkar characterizes the political classes rule as marked by corruption, criminal

neglect, sectarian divisions, and utter disregard for the population. This

catastrophic explosion comes on the heels of economic collapse in the midst of a pandemic that derailed one of the largest and brought us protest movements from 2019 and is now in the streets again demanding an M to the regime in power.

We get Gilbert Ashkar's take.

All this when our program returns in just a moment. This is Jacobin Radio. I'm Susie Weisman Radio. I'm Susie Weisman and today we're going to begin and I'm pleased to have

Gilbert Ashkar back with us. We're going to be talking about the aftermath and perhaps even the forerunner,

two, the gigantic explosion in Lebanon on August 4th, one of the largest in the world, if not the largest in the world thus far.

And we'll get that information from Gilbert.

But what we do know now is that hundreds were killed, thousands were injured, and perhaps 300,000 people lost their homes.

Gilbert's family was affected and we'll find out about that too, but the size and scope of this are almost hard to believe.

And if you read the newspapers of record around the globe they all begin with

something like neglect set this up that the 2,750 metric tons of ammonium nitrate.

We're sitting in the port,

and that's not like somewhere offshore,

nowhere near a city, but right near the city center

for years.

...