Public rallies around gunman who surrendered after bank agreed to give him funds for father’s medical bills
An armed man has emerged as an unlikely hero in Lebanon after holding hostages in a central Beirut bank and demanding access to his own money – a move that generated broad public support.
Brandishing a rifle and threatening to douse himself with petrol, Bassam al-Sheikh Hussein, entered the Federal Bank branch about noon on Thursday and insisted on withdrawing part of his frozen savings of $210,000 (£172,000) to help pay for his father’s hospital bill.
Like nearly all Lebanese, the hostage taker’s funds have been off limits for more than two years. Banks, stricken by an economic crisis, have allowed depositors only token withdrawals of dollars each month that are insufficient to meet the most basic of needs.
News of the siege was quick to reach all parts of a country where nearly 80% of the population are now considered impoverished after the imposition of informal capital controls. Scenes of a defiant figure holding a bank to ransom resonated with hundreds of thousands of people held hostage by a staggering economic collapse that has crippled Lebanon and potentially wiped out billions of dollars in savings.
Soldiers and police who gathered near the bank as the siege unravelled have had their salaries reduced more than twentyfold since early 2020, with many now earning the equivalent of $70 a month. Bystanders spoke of their support for the audacious act, which many seemed to admire, despite the fact it closed down much of Beirut’s Hamra district.
A customer shouts her support outside the bank where Bassam al-Sheik Hussein was demanding his own money. Photograph: Hussein Malla/AP
“He’s not even a real robber,” said Ghassan Moula, in the street next to the bank. “He’s only asking for what is his. Our dear leaders sent all their billions to Swiss banks with the help of the central bank, and we’re all left to suffer. All of Lebanon wants to do this.”
By evening, the gunman’s stance appeared to have worked, with the bank agreeing to give him $30,000 after he rejected an earlier offer of $10,000. As night drew near, he allowed his hostages to be fed by a local restaurant, which delivered food to the bank’s door. Shortly afterwards he surrendered to police.
“No one will say he did the wrong thing,” said Ahmad Yatoum, another bystander. “Desperate people do desperate things. We are all like him, even the soldiers and the riot police liked him.”
The bank siege was the second of its kind this year, after another angry depositor doused customers in a regional bank with fuel in January and demanded his savings. He too was successful. Such acts of defiance have, however, been rare in Lebanon despite the profound and continuing suffering of its population.
Remittances from relatives abroad have long been a lifeline for Lebanese citizens, but with the local currency still falling, a political imbroglio continuing and no real sign that leaders are prepared to meet probity conditions that are essential for global rescue packages, they have been vital to keeping the country together.
Many depositors are restricted to receiving as little as $200 a month from the bank in addition to a hybrid version of the local currency, known as lollars, which is dispensed at about one-third of the market rate. There are widespread fears that dollar deposits in banks may be rendered worthless if and when a financial solution is found.
Most goods and services are now being sold at dollar values, which makes the availability of the currency even more essential to those who do not have access to offshore accounts or a ready flow of income from outside Lebanon.
“Hyperinflation has ruined us,” said George Haddad, a baker. “Even the most basic things in life like bread are out of the reach of many.”
In the last days of the campaign, the president is going all in on turning out his base. But base voters aren’t the only ones Republicans need.
The ad has drawn immediate comparisons to the infamous “Willie Horton” spot that Republicans used to attack the Democrat Michael Dukakis in the 1988 election, though as the Princeton historian Kevin Kruse notes, it’s actually worse: The makers of the Horton ad were at least ashamed of inflaming racial tension, while the president is proudly trumpeting his. (It’s also not running on television anywhere. Instead, the Trump team is relying on word of mouth and media coverage to spread it, so that even writing critically turns critics into abettors.)
.. It seems just as likely that
Trump is resorting to immigration at this stage because, even though the economy is strong, his signature policies, like a big tax cut, aren’t popular; because
without Hillary Clinton in the mix, he doesn’t have an effective villain against whom he can campaign.
Just because it’s a desperation play doesn’t mean it won’t work. But if it does, it will do so not by persuading swing voters, but by driving as many Trump-supporting voters to the polls as possible, and neutralizing Democratic advantages on enthusiasm and turnout. The problem is that while Trump’s base remains devoted, it’s also slowly shrinking. Along with others, I have argued for months that Trump’s strategy of only appealing to his hardest-core supporters and not making any effort to expand his coalition is a dangerous strategy, since his base remains a small share of the electorate. The president’s decision to go all in on immigration in the last week of the midterms will provide a crucial test of whether the base is indeed insufficient—or whether he once more knows something the political class doesn’t.
the taxonomy of White House leakage is a worthy study. A surprising number of leaks are the result of simple vanity — the desire to appear in the know. Other leakers are trying to embarrass or sabotage a rival. Some leaks result from deviousness — the attempt to box the president in on a policy matter.
The exposure of a White House briefing document telling President Trump “DO NOT CONGRATULATE” Russia’s Vladimir Putin on his sham election victory — leaked after Trump congratulated Putin on his sham election victory — falls into a different category. It seems to have been motivated by desperation.
.. Someone at the White House, presumably on the national security team, has taken a large personal risk to call attention to Trump’s mysteriously cozy relationship with a strategic rival. This is extraordinary — and extraordinarily frightening. In most administrations, the aides closest to the president have the greatest sense of loyalty. In this case, an aide close to the president is expressing panic. He or she cannot explain the hold that Putin has over Trump. This leak is a cry for help from within the White House itself.
.. The problem is Trump’s strange inability to confront Putin personally — about his oppressive rule, the disruption of America’s electoral process, human rights violations and even attempted murder on the soil of a NATO ally. Trump’s initial instinct is to explain such abuses away.
.. A president pulled into an investigation of improper ties to Russia might be expected to distance himself from disturbing Russian behavior. Such public criticisms are an easy and cheap form of damage control. But at every stage, Trump has been dragged kicking and screaming into the pursuit of self-interest.
.. Ronald Reagan’s diplomatic engagement of the Soviet Union did not translate into fawning subservience toward a dictator. Such self-abasement actually emboldens dictators. And it is rich for Trump to accuse other presidents of lacking “smarts” about U.S.-Russian relations in the course of a foreign policy explanation at the length and level of a fortune-cookie saying.
.. It says something that the most innocent explanation for Trump’s attitude toward Putin is authoritarian envy. Trump seems to admire the strength and efficiency of personal rule. “At least he’s a leader,” Trump once said of Putin
.. A Trump adviser once leaked to The Post: “Who are the three guys in the world he most admires? President Xi [Jinping] of China, [Turkish President Recep Tayyip] Erdogan and Putin.”
No matter the outcome of today’s special election in Alabama for a coveted US Senate seat, there is already one loser: Christian faith. When it comes to either matters of life and death or personal commitments of the human heart, no one will believe a word we say, perhaps for a generation. Christianity’s integrity is severely tarnished.
.. The Christian leaders who have excused, ignored, or justified his unscrupulous behavior and his indecent rhetoric have only given credence to their critics who accuse them of hypocrisy.
.. David Brody, a correspondent for the Christian Broadcasting Network, has noted the desperation and urgency felt throughout much of conservative Christianity. “The way evangelicals see the world, the culture is not only slipping away—it’s slipping away in all caps, with four exclamation points after that. It’s going to you-know-what in a handbasket.” The logic is then inexorable: “Where does that leave evangelicals? It leaves them with a choice. Do they sacrifice a little bit of that ethical guideline they’ve used in the past in exchange for what they believe is saving the culture?”
.. If evangelical means that, it has serious ramifications for the work of Christians and churches.”
That notion is bewildering to evangelical leaders who see Mr. Trump as their champion. They say that Mr. Trump has given them more access than any president in recent memory, and has done more to advance their agenda, by appointing judges who are likely to rule against abortion and gay rights; by channeling government funds to private religious schools; by recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel; and by calling for the elimination of the Johnson Amendment, which prohibits churches and charitable groups from endorsing political candidates.
.. “I believe that God answered our prayers in a way we didn’t expect, for a person we didn’t even necessarily like,” said Stephen E. Strang, author of “God and Donald Trump” and founder of Charisma Media, a Christian publishing house.
“Christians believe in redemption and forgiveness, so they’re willing to give Donald Trump a chance,” said Mr. Strang, who is a member of the president’s informal council of evangelical advisers. “If he turns out to be a lecher like Bill Clinton, or dishonest in some kind of way, in a way that’s proven, you’ll see the support fade as quick as it came.”
Mr. Strang said that those who talk about Mr. Trump tarnishing the evangelical brand “are not really believers — they’re not with us, anyway.”
.. You cannot underestimate the impact of being raised to think that morality was so important that impeachment was justified, and then see the very same people who instilled that belief in you to jump into bed with Donald Trump–a man just as morally debauched as Clinton, but without the advantage of competency or even enough of a sense of decency to know that his lecherous behavior isn’t something to brag about.
.. The key problem is in, as Galli says it, “the desperation and urgency felt throughout much of conservative Christianity.” The New Testament tells us repeatedly, in many different ways and through the examples of the apostles, that Christians should not fear or worry — and certainly not feel desperation! — even in the face of persecution. I was glad to see that he addressed the proper scriptural ways of dealing with such situations: turning the other cheek, forgiving, and doing good to our enemies.
Christians who rationalize compromising our testimony out of desperation are simply not trusting the one they claim to follow.
.. for the first time I can remember, the appearance of Danielite and Johannine apocalyptic imagery in both sermons and discussions on the left. (This isn’t entirely unwelcome, and I think it’s totally appropriate about environmental stewardship, but I am more interested in seeing the left pull the right out of their foxhole than in the left digging our own.)
.. “evangelical” seems to have been co-opted as a political label and makes no distinction between a theological disposition and a cultural identifier. It seems, anymore, to simply mean “non-mainline Protestants,”
.. The older Evangelicals are treading on dangerous ground and alienating their next generation by putting political power over living by Christ’s example.
.. The fault line in the schism is whether one takes a culture war-dominionist posture or faithful minority counterculture posture. This fault line — which also divides Christian generations — has lain hidden for a while, but Trump has exposed it, because the dominionists think they can use the Strongman for their own purposes and, maybe, by being his chaplaincy, even make a true believer of him.
The counterculturalists — usually younger evangelicals — think that’s a delusional misreading both of Trump and of the actual standing of Christianity in our nation, and that in the meantime going all-in with this Administration means shredding theological clarity and moral credibility.
.. In terms of Trump he is politician and in a rare moment of listening to his advisers, Paul Manafort was right that Mike Pence was correct choice for VP to ensure the evangelical vote came out for him.
.. But as they explain it, it was because of the supreme court, lesser of two evils, etc. Fine. I get that. What I don’t get is people trying to make Trump out to be the last best hope for the evangelical church.
.. In this sense, Trump and Roy Moore are in the tradition of the Emperor Constantine, whose interest in Christianity was purely for its use as a political tool. Ever since Constantine, there have always been Machiavellian leaders who used the Church for their own cynical purposes, and there will always be such leaders.
.. I suspect “evangelicals” were among the many “Christians” a few years ago who professed to see no contradiction between Christianity and the ideas of Ayn Rand. In other words, many self-identified “evangelicals” are really just identifying their cultural background, not their theology. (And they don’t know their theology.)
.. However, I think that evagelicals were already hated by elite culture
.. “There is no way we can please them, they are going to hate us no matter what. We might as well support the bad ass who will fight for us, or at least not ramp up the persecution of elite culture against us.”
.. This strategy will also most likely fail, since Trump is likely to fail, and horribly. But I understand the despair and desperation that motivates it.
.. I’m one such libertarian, who recently left the PCA for the ECUSA. I felt that the social conservatives were becoming a professional liability for me. If I agreed with them, that would be fine. But I don’t. I don’t believe in criminalizing early-term abortion and I’m fine with civil same-sex marriage. And I’m not willing to suffer socially for views that I don’t hold and that IMO represent bad policy.
