[author flagged as a spammer - redacted]

https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2020/04/09/public-holds-broadly-favorable-views-of-many-federal-agencies-including-cdc-and-hhs/

The large, windowless square structure is grain storage. It blocked some of the blast but represents a large fraction of Lebanon's grain supply.

More details from https://www.moonofalabama.org/2020/08/beirut-blast-wrap-up.html#more

-------------------------%<--------------------------------%<------------------------------ RFERL spoke with the captain of the ship that had unintentionally brought the ammonium nitrate to Lebanon. He confirms the ship's arrest. It also reports the cause of the incident:

Lebanon's LBCI-TV reported on August 5 that, according to preliminary information, the fire that set off the explosion was started accidentally by welders who were closing off a gap that allowed unauthorized entry into the warehouse.

LBCI said sparks from a welder's torch are thought to have ignited fireworks stored in a warehouse, which in turn detonated the nearby cargo of ammonium nitrate that had been unloaded from the MV Rhosus years earlier.

Independent experts say orange clouds that followed the massive blast on August 4 were likely from toxic nitrogen dioxide gas that is released after an explosion involving nitrates.

There is a short video of firefighters at the initial fire. Reportedly none survived when the fireworks fire set off the ammonium nitrate. Another video shows the initial fire caused by welding. It burns a while and then sets off fireworks in a first explosion. This takes the roof off the warehouse. A few minutes later the fireworks cause the huge explosion of the ammonium nitrate.

Reuters provides another detail:

The source said a fire had started at port warehouse 9 on Tuesday and spread to warehouse 12, where the ammonium nitrate was stored.

That the ammonium nitrate was stored for seven years was not the responsibility of the port management but was caused by some judicial quarrel:

The head of Beirut port and the head of customs both said on Wednesday that several letters were sent to the judiciary asking for the dangerous material be removed, but no action was taken.

Port General Manager Hassan Koraytem told OTV the material had been put in a warehouse on a court order, adding that they knew then the material was dangerous but “not to this degree”.

“We requested that it be re-exported but that did not happen. We leave it to the experts and those concerned to determine why,” Badri Daher, director general of Lebanese Customs, told broadcaster LBCI.

Two documents seen by Reuters showed Lebanese Customs had asked the judiciary in 2016 and 2017 to request that the “concerned maritime agency” re-export or approve the sale of the ammonium nitrate, which had been removed from cargo vessel Rhosus and deposited in warehouse 12, to ensure port safety.

Why aren't (some) officials questioning the pension liabilities? In many cases it could be because Republicans at least tend to let the pensions go bankrupt then allow agencies off the hook for the retirement packages many worked a lifetime to earn, so why worry? Oddly, when it's multi million retirement packages for CEOs of companies being bailed out, the same people insist it's a contractual obligation that can't be ignored.

The armed anarchists causing trouble are the same right wing gun toters you claim are anti tyranny not the Black Lives Matter protesters, and they're fighting/killing police, children, and peaceful protesters, lighting fires, and building bombs...all while carrying their manifesto which explains in language plain enough even you can understand it that their violent criminality is designed to get BLM and Antifa blamed for their acts and trigger tyrannical government response and race wars.

It worked....but only on ignoramuses so moronic they get their misinformation from Trump and OAN and ignore what police and federal agencies have all agreed is fact. Antifa is NOT the instigator of violence and damage, right wing groups are, consistently.

65% of Americans support BLM, <35% support the response.
You are correct that this isn't tyranny being stopped....because no one's stopping it.

This isn't anarchy being stopped, it's making blatantly fake excuses for why peaceful protests are being attacked by the right and police, and excuses for sliding into tyranny quick before the election. You support armed anarchy when it's right wingers doing it....Bundys.

Duh.
Police departments and federal agencies have both determined nationwide that the riots, arsons, shootings, assaults with vehicles, bombings, etc are being perpetrated by right wing extremists, not by antifa. They've said so both publicly and privately.

The violence is largely being CAUSED by federal agencies and local law enforcement...not stopped by them. They instigate violence by attacking non violent protests repeatedly. Americans know it, and are overwhelmingly on the peaceful protesters side.

If this was some brilliant strategy to prove federal intervention is needed, why hide who they are? No identification at all is not how you sell the idea that the feds are above board, helping. It's great evidence of the opposite, that they're doing so much damage they don't even want their department identified, much less the thugs themselves.

I can only imagine the outrage if Obama sent in the troops against the wishes of the governor and mayor, unidentifiable troops in unmarked vehicles rounding up right wingers and dragging them away to who knows where. You would be calling for another civil war.
Just duh.

Liar.
Outright bold faced moronic liar. Especially dumb lies too. No one is buying your insane bullshit stupidity. Only your ilk believe Trump over their own eyes, ears, and videotapes.
Everyone else on the planet knows Democrats closed their states first against Trump's wishes, Democrats took it seriously from before case 1 in America, Trump called it a hoax or at worst a cold until late March if not later, Democrats pushed for funding and federal help for ppe, hospital beds, equipment, personnel, and funding, Trump repeatedly said they were on their own, find it all on the market, then directed agencies to intercept the equipment they found, turn it over to federal resellers for free, have them sell it back to desperate states at 1000% markups from pre-pandemic prices, then inform the feds so they can intercept the shipments and repeat the process.

Your lies are getting lazy, dumber, and reek of desperation. I almost feel sorry for you....almost. It's hard to empathize with a lying troll though.
2021-25 are going to be the death of you, with congress and the executive under democratic control and the populous wanting your party gone.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/cia-veterans-who-monitored-crackdowns-abroad-see-troubling-parallels-in-trump-handling-of-protests/20
20/06/02/7ab210b8-a4f6-11ea-bb20-ebf0921f3bbd_story.html

A taste....
Other former CIA and national security officials rendered similarly troubled verdicts.

Marc Polymeropoulos, who formerly ran CIA operations in Europe and Asia, was among several former agency officials who recoiled at images of Trump hoisting a Bible in front of St. John’s Episcopal Church in Washington after authorities fired rubber bullets and tear gas to clear the president’s path of protesters.

“It reminded me of what I reported on for years in the third world,” Polymeropoulos said on Twitter. Referring to the despotic leaders of Iraq, Syria and Libya, he said: “Saddam. Bashar. Qaddafi. They all did this.”

Your guy and his cronies literally quote Nazi propaganda, openly support Nazis, openly support and laud dictators while denigrating democracies and democratic process both within the US and in other countries. At the same time a concerted effort has been in effect the past years to stack the courts and public service so heavily with blindly subservient ideologues to the point where laws and the constitution often have no bearing on judicial decisions any more if they impact the president or his allies.

In short, Trump has been engaging in one of the most transparently dictatorial power grabs of the twentieth and twenty-first century.

And you're worried about a report from a news agency known for inaccurate and biased reporting that maybe his opponent might have been involved in something shady (but without any actual evidence to back up their claims)? I mean it's not like Biden personally sees that money. China gives a shitload of money to US universities in general. If you want to connect the dots there, go look at Harvard, they receive a billion dollars a year from China, and yet you'd rather trace a few million because they happened to go to a school with Biden's name on it. Great detective work, Mr. Magoo!

If Trump came out in public tomorrow with a toothbrush mustache and a Nazi armband you'd still support him, wouldn't you?

If it walks like a Nazi, quacks like a Nazi, and supports Nazis, it is a Nazi.

I hope you can fill in the blanks, @bobknight33

I hope it's just that you just don't realize what you've become and you still somehow believe you're doing "the right thing", but honestly your lack of any semblance of integrity strains that perception. The alternatives, that you're intelligent and fully aware of what you're doing, or you're a propagandist for a foreign power who is merely acting in support of his own nation's goals are the less kind (but sadly more likely) interpretations.

"Like that"? Explain....if you can. You mean fact checking? How dare they?!

Fox has acted hyper partisan, divisive, and vitriolic for decades. Where have you been? I guess you've forgotten Trump's fake news birther movement.
Trump has tried multiple times on the record to have various agencies and even other countries spy on Biden, just like he invited Russia to spy on Clinton. Obama had nothing to do with Carter Page being caught acting as an undeclared foreign agent or lying about his Russian contacts....nothing....proven repeatedly. Derp.
What?! I guess you don't recall the 90's at all. It's all the Republicans did for 8 years....and again with Obama for 8 years.

Fight back? By shitting on the constitution and flushing? Jebus, you are so unAmerican and delusional it's astonishing. He wants to fight perceived censorship (fact checking isn't even related to censorship btw) by private companies on their private platforms by using the government to censor them.

*facepalm.
https://videosift.com/video/Why-You-Always-Lying

Let's not forget his executive order due this morning, drafts of which now released show him contradicting the first amendment to the constitution and directing the FBI, FTC, FCC, and DOJ to harass, punish, fine, and censor private businesses if they fact check HIS lies on their private platforms in any way....or apparently if the Whitehouse makes any complaints about them...and directed all federal agencies to not advertise on any platform the Whitehouse deems "unfair" (so soon the government will only advertise on OAN).

Where are the right wing 2a nutjobs now? They often claim the 2a exists to protect the other amendments...get to it people. If you don't go armed to the Whitehouse to protest this direct violation and decimation of the constitution, you are admitting that argument is bullshit and so is the 2a. You people went armed to state government buildings to forcefully protest public health orders because you were told they might violate your rights somehow. This time there's no "might" about it, Trump declared an executive order that is a direct, blatant, undeniable violation and attack on the constitution so clear even you can see it without Glen Beck telling you it is one.

Two days prior to the remarks Mark Grenon told Trump that chlorine dioxide – a powerful bleach used in industrial processes such as textile manufacturing that can have fatal side-effects when drunk – is “a wonderful detox that can kill 99% of the pathogens in the body”. He added that it “can rid the body of Covid-19”.

Paradoxically, Trump’s outburst about the possible value of an “injection” of disinfectant into the lungs of Covid-19 sufferers came just days after a leading agency within the president’s own administration took action to shut down the peddling of bleach as a coronavirus cure around the US.

i.e capricious, grasping at straws and dangerous.
Unfortunately deperate and or stupid people do take inspiration from his moronic suggestions.

Administration's current budget (before today's emergency declaration) didn't have the budget to pay. That's why he had the deer in the headlights look. I mean, if I give him credit for having some intellectual process behind this. Of course, this is the guy whose agency released a faulty test to the states (faulty reagent) and did not release authority to the states or independent labs until today (along with FDA)---he kept trying to hold the authority and center for all tests in Atlanta; which had worked with Ebola and Zika. But; he didn't understand or was badly served by his lieutenants in understanding that this virus and occasion were different. I hope he hasn't killed a million people with a delay.

I know what you mean.

I'll stoop to watch those sometimes, but as a starting point that needs (sometimes lengthy) investigation to know if I'm listening to obscure but real stories or the next round of BS propaganda. They're usually awful, full of mistakes or misrepresentation paired with feigned naivete or ignorance, and are often created by foreign agencies that use the computer voice to hide their accents. When I do visit those rabbit holes, I excuse myself by pretending I'm only getting prepared to contradict it with fact when someone uses it in a discussion....but that assumes I'll follow up with the investigation.