By Sandy Fitzgerald — newsmax.com — Visa and Mastercard announced Saturday they will stop all credit card transactions connected with Russian clients and financial institutions in the upcoming days over the deadly invasion of Ukraine following a plea made by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to members of the Senate earlier in the day. “We are compelled to act following Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, and the unacceptable events that we have witnessed,” Al Kelly, chairman and chief executive officer of Visa Inc., said in a press release posted on Business Wire. “We regret the impact this will have on our valued colleagues, and on the clients, partners, merchants, and cardholders we serve in Russia. This war and the ongoing threat to peace and stability demand we respond in line with our values.”

The credit card giant said this means that effective immediately, Visa will be working with clients and partners inside of Russia to stop all Visa transactions, including through merchants and ATMs. Once complete, all transactions that are initiated with Visa cards that were issued in Russia will no longer work outside the country, and cards that were issued by financial institutions outside of Russia will not work within the Russian Federation, the company said. Mastercard, in a separate statement Saturday, said they are also ceasing all operations in Russia over the invasion. “For more than a week, the world has watched the shocking and devastating events resulting from the Russian invasion of Ukraine,” the company said. “Our colleagues, our customers, and our partners have been affected in ways that most of us could not imagine.  Just after the invasion, Mastercard blocked multiple financial institutions from its payment network, while saying it was continuing to work with regulators to abide by compliance obligations.

By Douglas Perry – oregonlive.com — By Douglas Perry | The Oregonian/OregonLive 00 Mohammed bin Salman continues to insist he did not order the 2018 murder of Washington Post contributing columnist Jamal Khashoggi. In an interview with The Atlantic, the 36-year-old crown prince of Saudi Arabia, widely known as MBS, said Khashoggi wasn’t important enough to kill. “I never read a Khashoggi article in my life,” he said. He added: “If that’s the way we did things, Khashoggi would not even be among the top 1,000 people on the list. If you’re going to go for another operation like that, for another person, it’s got to be professional and it’s got to be one of the top 1,000.”

The Atlantic reporter Graeme Wood writes that, throughout the interview, MBS “gave relaxed, nonpsychopathic answers to questions…” But Wood makes plain that he believes MBS is, indeed, a psychopath. He also suggests that the crown prince is transforming Saudi Arabia in ways that are, in many respects, good for the people of the oil-rich nation, turning it from “one of the world’s weirdest countries into a place that could plausibly be called normal.” The crown prince, needless to say, agrees that his reforms are a boon for his country. “Where is the potential in the world today?” MBS said, directing his comment to U.S. politicians and companies. “It’s in Saudi Arabia. And if you want to miss it, I believe other people in the East are going to be super happy.” When asked about the Biden Administration’s concerns about political repression in Saudi Arabia — and its public release of the CIA assessment that MBS was directly responsible for Khashoggi’s brutal murder — the crown prince said President Biden should worry about his own country. “We don’t have the right to lecture you in America,” he said. “The same goes the other way.” — 

By Kyle Alspach — venturebeat.com — Whatever you might think about the risks involved with Ukraine’s IT army — and there are some big ones — available data shows that the initiative is, in fact, making an impact against Russia. The Ukraine IT army is also starting to expand beyond basic attacks, known as distributed denial-of-service (DDoS), and into cyberattacks that may prove more difficult for targeted Russian sites to defend against. My source on this is security professional Chris Partridge, who has been tracking the status of Russian internet properties targeted by Ukraine’s IT army. On GitHub, Partridge has been posting data every day since Sunday — the day after the initiative was announced — about what percentage of targeted Russian sites were still online. The bottom line for the findings: More than half of the Ukraine IT army’s targeted sites have faced partial or total outages in Russia, based on the samples collected.

In other words, Ukraine’s IT army is so far a success — at least as far as what it’s aiming to do. “IT Army’s stated goal is simply that people should use whatever force they can to disrupt these sites,” Partridge said in a message to VentureBeat. “In that sense, they’ve galvanized a massive number of people to action, and I believe the data shows the galvanized mob can clearly impose cost and chaos on many targets.” Outside of Russia, the percentage of targeted sites that have gone offline is “much higher,” he noted. While the potential impact of doing that is smaller, it’s still no doubt disruptive.

Building an army

By Timour Azhari and Tom Perry — BEIRUT, (Reuters) – Lebanon’s Bank Audi has closed more than 30 accounts belonging to UK nationals or their close relatives since a London court ordered it to transfer funds stuck in the crisis-hit banking sector to a British client, a depositors’ union said. The Feb. 28 order requiring Bank Audi and its peer SGBL to transfer $4 million is the first UK ruling obliging Lebanese banks to transfer dollars out of the paralysed financial system, potentially encouraging similar claims. read more A Bank Audi official told Reuters the bank was “asking that the UK residents apply the terms applicable to anyone opening a new account: no international transfers, no cash withdrawals”. “If this is not accepted, then the bank has no choice but to close the account”.

More than $100 billion remains stuck in a banking system paralysed since 2019, when the economy collapsed due to decades of unsustainable state spending, corruption and waste. In the absence of formal capital controls, banks have largely blocked dollar withdrawals and transfers abroad, sparking numerous legal challenges, with mixed results. Since the UK order, Bank Audi, one of Lebanon’s biggest, has told dozens of clients their accounts had been closed and a cheque issued for the balance at a notary public, lawyer Dina Abou Zour of the Depositors Union told Reuters. They were told the accounts could be reopened if they signed a form waiving the right to make international transfers or to withdraw dollars in Lebanon, and accept that a cheque was due payment of the balance. Abou Zour said the total amounts involved were in the tens of millions of dollars. Banks have already closed many dollar accounts by issuing cheques which cannot be cashed and instead change hands in the market, currently at about a quarter of their face value.

by By Abbas Al Lawati and Nadeen Ebrahim — msn.com — The Middle East found itself dragged into coverage of the conflict in Ukraine over the past week as journalists descended on the country to cover the biggest European war in decades. Western war reporters, more used to being deployed in Middle East conflict zones, were quick to make comparisons. Some of those comparisons went overboard, causing outrage in the Arab world. “This isn’t a place, with all due respect, you know, like Iraq or Afghanistan that has seen conflict raging for decades,” said CBS News foreign correspondent Charlie D’Agata, referring to Ukraine. “You know, this is a relatively civilized, relatively European… city.” He later apologized.

Other news outlets poured sympathy on Ukrainian victims, with interviewees and correspondents pointing out that, unlike Middle Eastern refugees, Ukrainian victims were “white,” “Christian,” “middle class,” “blonde” and “blue eyed.” In a matter of days, hashtags, and even t-shirts, featuring the phrase “civilized” surfaced in the Middle East in protest. The media coverage prompted the New York-based Arab and Middle Eastern Journalists Association to issue a statement condemning the “pervasive mentality in Western journalism of normalizing tragedy” in places like the Middle East.

by Christopher White — ncronline.org — FLORENCE, ITALY — Lebanon’s top Catholic leader Cardinal Bechara Rai says a much anticipated visit from Pope Francis will help keep “hope alive” after years of political and economic upheaval have brought the once bustling Middle Eastern country to the brink of collapse. But when Pope Francis arrives in the country — possibly even later this year — he will not come as “political or economic savior,” says the Maronite Catholic patriarch, Cardinal Bechara Rai, but “as one man close to the people.” “He knows that sometimes the human person needs someone who is close, someone who listens to them, someone who can understand their problems,” Rai said during an interview on Feb. 26. “The Lebanese on the margins count on it a lot because they feel abandoned.”

Rai spoke with NCR during his visit to the Italian city of Florence, where he joined mayors and religious leaders from 20 countries around the Mediterranean gathered for a five-day meeting to discuss collaboration on a range of issues facing the region, including migration, climate change and education. And the issues facing Lebanon, which has the largest percentage of Christians in the Middle East, are particularly severe: surging poverty rates and an economic meltdown, a widespread fuel shortage, and schools and hospitals facing an uncertain future to name only a few. “The best doctors and best university professors and best bankers and best nurses went elsewhere to be able to have a salary that allows them to live,” said Rai, adding that the country’s currency has lost much of its value and its trade opportunities with other countries have been “hemorrhaging.” Rai, 82, who has led the Lebanese church since 2011, says the church has been on the front lines in responding to the mounting crises. “The church maintains its institutions, schools, universities, social centers, development centers,” but despite doing all it can to help people find work, he lamented, “people manage to leave.”

لا يَتوقّفُ وجهُ الشَبهِ بين لبنان وأوكرانيا على الموقعِ الجيوسياسي، بل يَمتدُّ إلى المآسي التي فَتكَت بالشعبَين وإلى روحِ المقاومةِ التي يتميّزان بها. لقد استخفّ فلاديمير بوتين بقدرةِ الشعبِ الأوكرانيِّ على الصمودِ بوجهِ جيشِه مثلما قوّاتُ الاحتلالِ العديدةُ في العقودِ الأخيرةِ استَخفَّت بعزيمةِ الشعبِ اللبنانيِّ. غَفَلَ على جميعِ هؤلاءِ أنَّ إرادةَ اللبنانيّين أقوى من قوتِّهم وقادرةٌ على الالتفافِ على موازينِ القوى. كلُّ شعبٍ أقوى من عدُّوِه إذا تَوحّدَ وقاومَ وصَمد. في لبنان، بحكمِ تَعدُّدِ الولاءاتِ والصراعِ حولَ هُوّيةِ لبنان والاختلافِ على لائحةِ الأعداء، كلُّ فريقٍ قاومَ وحيدًا عدوًّا غيرَ عدوِّ الآخَر. ورغمَ ذلك انتصَرنا مداورةً، ثمَّ بدَّدنا الانتصاراتِ بالأحقادِ والأنانيّةِ والمقايضةِ والتسوياتِ وبعدمِ توظيفِها في بناءِ دولةِ القانون. هكذا، فَقدَت الانتصاراتُ مفعولَها الوطنيَّ وانسحبَ الأعداءُ وبِتنا أعداءَ بعضِنا البعض.

في هذا السياقِ، يتأكّدُ أنَّ تجويعَ اللبنانيّين وإفقارَهم، وهم ليسوا بفقراء، خُطّةٌ مدبَّرةٌ لقتلِ روحِ المقاومةِ والكرامةِ والثورةِ فيهم ولإذلالِـهم وإخضاعِهم. تظنُّ المنظومةُ المتحكِّمةُ بالبلدِ ــــ ومَن وراءَها خارجًا ــــ أنَّ ما لم تأخُذْه بالقوّةِ ستأخُذُه بالجوع. لكنّنا نُطمِئنُها بأنّها لن تأخذَه لا بالقوّةِ ولا بالجوع. اتّكالُنا هو على أنفسِنا أوّلًا. سَبق للاتّحادِ السوفياتيِّ أن جوَّعَ شعبَ أوكرانيا عمدًا بين سنتَي 1931 و1933 بُغيةَ إخضاعِه. لجأ السوفيات إلى تنظيمِ “إبادةٍ بالمجاعة” مع أنَّ أوكرانيا غنيّةٌ زراعيًّا وخَصبةٌ بإنتاجِ القمحِ وتُدعى “أهراءاتِ” أوروبا الوسطى. آنذاك نفى ستالين التسبُّبَ بتلك المجاعةِ التي أدّت إلى موتِ نحو ثلاثةِ ملايينَ أوكرانيٍّ. لكن بعدَ سقوطِ الاتّحادِ السوفياتيِّ، نُشرِت الوثائقُ السريّةُ وتَبيّن أنَّ ستالين استغلَّ المجاعةَ الجماعيّةَ لإخضاعِ أبناءِ الريفِ الأوكرانيّ. وسنةَ 2008 بادرَ البرلمانُ الأوروبيُّ إلى إصدارِ توصيةٍ يَعتبر فيها الـــ (Holodomor)، أي “الإبادةَ بالمجاعة”، جريمةً مروِّعةً وضِدَّ الإنسانيّة.

by lb.usembassy.gov — A senior delegation from the U.S. Department of the Treasury concluded a three-day visit to Lebanon on March 2. The delegation met with members of the Lebanese government, civil society, and the banking sector to reiterate the U.S. government’s commitment to stand with the Lebanese people during this time of economic turmoil. […]

by Michael Young — thenationalnews.com — There has been much speculation lately about whether Lebanon will go ahead with its parliamentary elections, scheduled for May. While most of the country’s major parties may have an interest in postponing the vote, the obstacles to this are very significant, suggesting that there is a better than even chance that elections will be held. Certainly, parties such as Hezbollah and its electoral allies, the Amal Movement of Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri and the Free Patriotic Movement of President Michel Aoun and his son in law Gebran Bassil, might favour a delay. Amal and especially the FPM are expected to lose some seats, and therefore prefer to retain their present share in Parliament. As for Hezbollah, it controls, with its various allies, a parliamentary majority, and has no enthusiasm to see this eroded. There are several problems with this, however. The first is that an election can only be postponed if Parliament extends its constitutional term, requiring a two-thirds majority vote. Mr Berri can probably find the numbers, but that’s unlikely to be enough, as he will also be seeking broad sectarian support as well, in order to lend national legitimacy to what is bound to be a controversial decision.

The big question mark is how the main Sunni bloc, controlled by former prime minister Saad Hariri, will vote. Mr Hariri withdrew from politics in January, in a decision widely believed in Lebanon to have been encouraged by Saudi Arabia. If he were to order his bloc to vote for extending Parliament’s term, this could be seen as a surreptitious way of trying to remain active politically, which he doubtless does not want to do. While most of the country’s major parties may have an interest in postponing the vote, the obstacles to this are very significant

By Catholic News Service — ROME — Catholic leaders from Europe, the United States and Canada called on their governments to support Lebanese Cardinal Bechara Rai’s appeal for an international conference to protect Lebanon. In a joint statement issued March 1, the leaders said such a conference must find guarantees that uphold Lebanon’s “independence, sovereignty and neutrality”; safeguard Lebanese citizens’ right to free and fair elections; and help establish “good governance, honesty, transparency and accountability in the service of Lebanon’s people.” Rai, patriarch of the Maronite Catholic Church, repeatedly has called for an international conference to protect Lebanon, and for many Lebanese the past year has been “marked by pain, poverty and despair,” said the bishops. “

We have heard the warning of Pope Francis that ‘Lebanon is in great danger’ and his appeal for us to turn our minds to the ‘unprecedented crisis’ it faces. We support the Holy See’s continued efforts to seek peace in Lebanon,” the bishops said, adding that they prayed the recent visit of the Vatican foreign minister, Archbishop Paul Gallagher, and his calls for dialogue would bear fruit. “The global community must stand alongside all those working to keep alive the principles that shaped Lebanon’s constitution and helped to end conflict through achievements such as the 1989 Taif Agreement and 2008 Doha Agreement,” the bishops said. The Taif Agreement sought to end Lebanon’s civil war, and the Doha Agreement, signed by rival Lebanese factions in Qatar, marked the end of a year-and-a half political crisis.