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Beirut Port Explosion

forensic-architecture.org

141–150 of 226 posts

Re: Beirut Port Explosion

#141
post #140
post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No direct evidence as you would expect. We only have circumstantial evidence such as selection of topics to cover and general view regarding covered events, which align quite well with position demonstrated by intelligence services. It also has some questionable funding sources (e.g. National Endowment for Democracy and Integrity Initiative), but I would say it also nothing more than circumstantial. One recent analys…

Haven't watched the video, but is it from Shariy? If yes, then you wildly misrepresented him.

How so? I wrote only factual, easily verifiable information about him.

If someone does not want to judge by the video content alone and wants to learn more about the author, you can read the following wiki links:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatoly_Shariy

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Party_of_Shariy

Re: Beirut Port Explosion

#142
post #79

From a laymen's perspective, it's hard to imagine just how negligent the port authorities could have been in managing the warehouse. 2750tons high-explosive Ammonium Nitrate? Check. 50tons Ammonium Phosphate? Check. Stacks of flammable wooden pallets among Ammonium Nitrate? Check. 1000 flammable rubber car tires? Check. 23tons of explosive fireworks? 5 rolls of detonator cord? Check. I mean... how/why?

From what I understand, the warehouse was a collection of confiscated goods by customs at the port. So I can easily see that the managers at the warehouse didn't know and didn't care about proper safety storage procedures for these hazardous goods, since they hadn't been planning to acquire them in the first place. (In US legal terms, this would be recklessness). However, evidently some people (their affiliation is n…

My takeaway: some stuff is better not to confiscate / store as evidence. No one would store a jar of milk in a warehouse. No one would store piles of TNT or dynamite in such conditions. But they were storing just "goods". Lacking understanding of what those goods are and how they must be stored.

Re: Beirut Port Explosion

#143
post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But creating two extreme positions, and then lumping everyone into those positions, is called politics American politics. The amount of bipartisan countries in the world can be counted on one hand. But I get what you're saying and I agree completely.

America is certainly not the only country that divides things into "us vs them". I can think of several notable events in the past few years in various European countries that were exactly "us vs them" subjects. Even when there are multiple political parties in European politics the parties still tend to split into one of two major coalitions and those coalitions cause the people who support people in those coalition…

Sure, fair enough. But then again those coalitions aren't generally static, but formed around circumstances, and thus don't necessarily create the same kind of blind team mentality that we see in sports for example. And the parties within the coalitions are still aware of their internal differences, they just choose to work together for a common cause, for a period of time.

Re: Beirut Port Explosion

#145

There is a youtube channel run by the US Chemical Safety Board that provides similar reconstruction videos of chemical safety incidents: https://www.youtube.com/user/USCSB/videos?disable_polymer=1

Offtopic, but disable_polymer doesn't do anything anymore.

Re: Beirut Port Explosion

#146
I'm not sure I buy the argument that smoke plumes 1 and 2 have different fuels. The color change is fairly continuous, and smoke color changes continuously with the availability of oxygen.

Re: Beirut Port Explosion

#147

This is incredible and I can only imagine how much time this took to create. Definitely also worth taking a look at their previous investigations at https://forensic-architecture.org/ .

They also have a YouTube account: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEeyMdTjYEYESf_8HyiCRAg

That has some good videos on it, including one showing evidence of Russian military directly involved in the Ukraine invasion:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OldnzVNE71E

Re: Beirut Port Explosion

#148
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed - this is great and deeply fascinating to me. How did I not know about this before! :) Bye-bye to getting any work done for the rest of the day!

I'm exactly the same, what an incredible organisation. The use of computer vision, VFX, modelling and VR is inspiring.

The models they've created are in Blender (OSS) and Cinema 4D (not OSS) file formats.

Watching some of their video's, they seem to use Blender a lot. :)

Re: Beirut Port Explosion

#149
post #139

The point the video makes towards the end is a good one: just basic storage standards were not followed. Forget for one moment that this makeshift bomb laid dormant for years and nothing was done despite constant warnings from officials. Had port officials followed basic storage etiquette, like placing the AN in manageable clusters, separating those clusters from each other by a moderate distance, and not storing oth…

If it wasn't hot days maybe, and no welding work close to combustible materials, then what you notice (but not 'just' only), then not 'confined and contaminated' (9:45) in the chain of failures..

That's why my question (†) - if it could be really avoidable at the last moment, as the video suggest.

(†) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25154599

Re: Beirut Port Explosion

#150
post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

America is certainly not the only country that divides things into "us vs them". I can think of several notable events in the past few years in various European countries that were exactly "us vs them" subjects. Even when there are multiple political parties in European politics the parties still tend to split into one of two major coalitions and those coalitions cause the people who support people in those coalition…

Sure, fair enough. But then again those coalitions aren't generally static, but formed around circumstances, and thus don't necessarily create the same kind of blind team mentality that we see in sports for example. And the parties within the coalitions are still aware of their internal differences, they just choose to work together for a common cause, for a period of time.

That’s how it works in the U.S. as well. The political parties are made up of coalitions of voters and over time certain groups shift or change affiliation.
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