Lebanon - August 4 2020 Breaking news The explosions in Beirut only increase the infinite hardships that the masses already suffer Lebanon is not a failed state. The capitalist system is failed, which starves, shoots and bombs the workers and the peoples in Maghreb and Middle East to death The conditions of misery of the Lebanese masses are umprecedented. US dollar, whose official exchange rate is 1500 Lebanese Pounds, today can only be bought in the black market at 8000 pounds, that is to say, local currency has collapsed. This not only devaluated the wages of the Lebanese workers to extreme degree, but also the cost of living has sky-rocketed, since the prices are dollarized. Prices went up 200% only last month. The registered inflation last month was 53%, in annual terms (and considering the accumulated) is 462%, that is to say Lebanon has entered in hyper-inflation. There's also shortage of basic products, such as flour and diesel. Diesel is essential not only for transport but also for the electricoty generators. The Lebanese infrastructure collapsed some time ago and the state company only provided a few hours of electricity per day (total of 8 hours but spread along the day in larger cities and 2-3 hours in small towns). Besides, the power energy is so low that the 220 volts that it usually provides now fell to 160v and only 5A, which only can be used for 2 or 3 lamps, a TV and get the fridge working for the time it has electricity. Now, with the shortage of diesel, there is no other source than those few hours of the state company. Even the shops in downtown Beirut are working without electricity. There are not even dollars in Lebanon, banks say. This way, they do not give back the dollars that many Lebanese have in their saving accounts. Those deposits, which were the people's savings, along with every green buck in Lebanon, were taken by the IMF and the imperialist banks for the recollection of the foreign debt. They plundered the country, leaving some coins to their partners from the different local bourgeois gangs, accomplices of this embezzlement, and lay all the whole crisis burden on the masses. Lebanon today has an unpayable debt. It is the third most indebted country in the world in relation to its GDP, more than 170% of it. As if this were not enough, a month ago there was a new outbreak of Covid-19, increasing the number of cases after they had decreased in May. Then the government, at the end of last week, again ordered the quarantine and the closure of borders and airports. Under this situation of hunger and unprecedented suffering, the masses were taking to the streets in successive waves of demonstrations, roadblocks, clashes with the Lebanese repressive forces -both with the police and the army, and even with the Hezbollah guards, who are part of the government and have come to repress the demonstrations with the same brigades that went to Syria to massacre the revolution and support al-Assad. And the masses are still on the streets, despite the outbreak of the coronavirus, because the situation can no longer be bared. Amid the catastrophic situation for the exploited, a series of huge explosions occurred today that shook Beirut and the whole Lebanon. Until now it is known that the explosion was in the port area of ​​the capital city, but there are many versions, still none of them proven, about the cause and what actually exploded. One of them is that a Zionist drone bombed a building housing Hezbollah weapons storage. It is not improbable, since Zionism could have done it to continue to strengthen itself in the US plan to recover fire power and be the great key gendarme of imperialism in the region. In fact, there has been some exchanges of attacks between Zionism and Hezbollah in border areas. But there are other versions that have also trascended, like it was a ship that caused a fire that expanded until it made a deposit of highly flammable material to explode in the port, or that it was actually a warehouse for firearms and missiles of Hezbollah that exploded either due to poor maintenance and lack of prevention or due to an external attack. But whatever it was that caused them, the explosions only mean greater hardships for the masses, even more than those who had already suffered. So far, there are 73 dead and more than 3,700 injured, with countless buildings devastated. Not to mention the cloud of toxic gas that is now over Beirut, which is why they are recommending people not to leave their homes. This scenario is what the Syrian masses have suffered during 9 years of massacre at the hands of al-Assad and Putin. Now the Lebanese government, using the explosions as a pretext, has announced the complete militarization of the country. The regime gets reinforced against the masses, trying to get them off the streets and if it succeeds the sufferings of the masses will only deepen. Yesterday, the Lebanese foreign minister, Nassif Hitti, resigned, saying "Lebanon is going bankrupt" and becoming "a failed state".  But it is imperialism, the IMF, the great bankers of Wall Street, the cities of Paris, London and Europe, with their local billionaire partners of Hezbollah, the Maronite and the Sunni bourgeoisies, that have led Lebanon to bankruptcy. The only failed thing here is the capitalist system and the imperialist looting, which is dragging the nations that it oppresses to barbarism. This explosion, which horrifies the world, have occurred by tens of thousands in Syria in the last 9 years, taking its cities to the Middle Ages. In Syria there were 600,000 massacred, more than 100,000 tortured, 55,000 political prisoners in its jails and 15 million refugees living in tents outdoors under unprecedented sufferings. This is how the agents and murderers of imperialism such as al-Assad, Putin or Zionism act. Huge hardships hit the masses in the region, for example in Iraq, where there is no electricity or running water, or Tunisia where unemployment has reached very high levels, especially among the youth, or Sudan, a mutton exporting country where the exploited can't taste a bite of it. It has already become an immediate, imperative task, that of overthrowing the government, that the Lebanese regime falls, the expropriation of all the banks, and imposing a provisional worker and peasant revolutionary government to stop the disintegration to which the bourgeoisie and imperialism are leading the Lebanese nation and for getting the masses out of this dire situation. Only a worker and peasant Lebanon, as brothers and sisters in the same struggle with the exploited from the Middle East who have risen up as in Iraq, Tunisia or Iran, can give a solution to the masses. The immediate iron alternative in Lebanon and the Middle East is either the socialist revolution reaches victory or the barbarism that imperialism has brought will increase. Editorial board of the paper “The Truth of the Oppressed”, speaker of the socialists of Syria and Middle East