...an Iranian colony situated on the eastern Mediterranean, conveniently adjacent to Israel. Formerly inhabited by hardy Phoenecian traders, its official language is now Arabic, with the usual unpleasant side effects. The Leb civil war, between 1975 and 1990, lasted a little over 145 years and produced 120,000 fatalities. The average length of a ceasefire was measured in seconds. The Lebs maintain a precarious sectarian balance among Shiites, Sunnis, and about a dozeen flavors of Christians. It is the home of Hezbollah, which periodically starts a war with the Zionist Entity, gets Beirut pounded to rubble, and then declares victory and has a parade. The Lebs have the curious habit of periodically murdering their heads of state or prime ministers...at a donor conference organised in Gay Paree by French president Emmanuel Macron and the United Nations
...boodling on the grand scale...
"The objective of this conference is for us to unite today to definitively pool our resources in the coming days and weeks to address the needs of Beirut's population," said president Macron as the conference began.
He later pointed that aid given to Lebanon should come with reforms under the watchful eye of the UN and "directly to the Lebanese people", away from the corrupted hands of the Lebanese government.
"It is up to the authorities of the country to act so that the country does not sink, and to respond to the aspirations that the Lebanese people are expressing right now, legitimately, in the streets of Beirut," Macron said during the virtual conference.