John Fahd Touma

Engineering • Earth Science • Leadership
Likes and retweets are not endorsements.

[U.S. Embassy Beirut @usembassybeirut]

@SecRubio: “Met with Lebanese Prime Minister Salam today, reaffirming strong U.S. support as Lebanon implements the Trilateral Framework – the only path to a durable peace with Israel. The United States stands with a sovereign Lebanon, free from Hizballah and Iranian influence.”

[Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent @SecScottBessent]

Today, I met with Lebanese Prime Minister @nawafsalam and Finance Minister @JaberYassine to discuss the need for decisive action to disrupt Iranian and Hizballah financial networks, and the importance of key financial sector reforms to restore confidence in Lebanon’s banking system.

[Secretary Marco Rubio @SecRubio]

Met with Lebanese Prime Minister Salam today, reaffirming strong U.S. support as Lebanon implements the Trilateral Framework – the only path to a durable peace with Israel. The United States stands with a sovereign Lebanon, free from Hizballah and Iranian influence.

[Al Arabiya English @AlArabiya_Eng]

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio hosts Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam for talks in Washington, with the two appearing before the media following their meeting.

[Peter Mallouk @PeterMallouk]

A wonderful life lesson from Charlie Munger:
“Crooks, crazies, egomaniacs, people full of resentment, people full of self-pity, people who feel like victims … avoid them like the plague.”

[Lima @limalemonnn]

"You can cry all right, but you can't quit."

In his final interview, 99-year-old Charlie Munger spoke about losses that cannot be undone. His nine-year-old son, Teddy, had died of leukemia.

"I cried all the time when my first child died."

Munger said you cannot bring back the dead or fix every tragedy. If you have to walk through the streets crying for hours, you can keep going that way.

He called it "soldiering through." His words offer reassurance when you're struggling: crying doesn't mean you've given up.

Decades later, he described the pleasure it had given him to watch doctors learn to save children with leukemia. He couldn't bring Teddy back, but he could feel joy for families who now had a chance.

His words are in the two-minute clip below.

[Vatican News @VaticanNews]

As Pope Leo XIV flew from Lourdes to Metz on Monday morning, the papal plane was escorted by a French Air Force Dassault Rafale fighter jet.

[Ancient History Hub @AncientHistorry]

September 26, 1687. A Venetian mortar shell landed on the Parthenon and did more damage in one second than the previous 2,100 years had managed.

The Parthenon was finished in 438 BC and it had survived everything. It had been a temple to Athena, then a Christian church dedicated to the Virgin for roughly a thousand years, then an Ottoman mosque with a minaret built into the corner.

In September 1687 it was largely intact. Roof on. Columns standing. Most of the sculpture in place. It was the best preserved major building of classical antiquity in existence.

The Morean War was a Venetian attempt to take Greece back from the Ottomans, and Francesco Morosini had spent two years doing it successfully in the Peloponnese.

On September 21 a force of 10,750 men under Königsmarck landed at Eleusis while the Venetian fleet took Piraeus.

The Ottoman garrison pulled back onto the Acropolis to wait for relief from Thebes. Civilians went up with them, because a walled height is where people go.

And the Ottomans put their powder magazine and their ammunition inside the Parthenon.

That decision has been criticised for three centuries and the reasoning behind it was not stupid. It was the most solidly built structure on the rock, walls of solid marble, and they appear to have believed the Venetians would not deliberately shell a building of that significance.

They also demolished the small Temple of Athena Nike for stone to build gun positions, which tells you how the situation was being weighed.

Morosini put cannon and mortar batteries on the Pnyx and the surrounding heights.

On September 25 a shot hit a powder store in the Propylaea.

On the evening of September 26, a mortar shell came down through the roof of the Parthenon and into the magazine.

The explosion blew the building apart. The roof went entirely. The cella, the inner chamber, was destroyed. Columns on the north and south sides collapsed. A large section of the frieze came down. Marble was thrown across the Acropolis and the fires burned for two days.

About 300 people were killed.

Morosini, in his report, called it a fortunate shot.

The garrison surrendered on September 29 after a relief attempt was beaten off.

And then Venice could not hold Athens anyway. Ottoman cavalry controlled Attica, plague got into the army, the German contingent went home in December, and on the last day of the year the commanders decided to abandon the place. They evacuated in April 1688, taking four or five thousand Athenians with them because those people could not safely be left behind.

So the Parthenon was destroyed during a campaign that achieved nothing and was given up inside seven months.

There is one more piece.

Before leaving, Morosini decided to take the sculptures off the west pediment home to Venice as trophies. The figure of Poseidon and the horses of Athena's chariot.

His men did not know how to rig it. The tackle failed, the sculptures came down, and they shattered on the rock.

So the pieces of the west pediment that had survived the explosion were destroyed by the attempt to carry them off.

The Venetians settled for what was portable. They took the marble lions from Piraeus, and the largest of them stands outside the Arsenal in Venice today with Norse runes carved into its shoulder by Varangian mercenaries in the eleventh century.

The last part is the one people argue about most.

The Parthenon then sat as an open ruin for 120 years, its sculpture exposed, unguarded, and steadily removed by travellers or burned for lime by locals.

In 1801 Lord Elgin obtained a permit from the Ottoman authorities and took roughly half of the surviving sculpture to Britain.

Every argument about the Elgin Marbles, in both directions, runs back through the evening of September 26, 1687. Because whether those sculptures were rescued or stolen depends entirely on what state the building was in, and the building was in that state because of one mortar shell fired by a European power that had come to Greece to liberate it.

The Parthenon stood for about 2,125 years. It has been a ruin for 339.

[John Fahd Touma @ToumaFahd]

@athenaeumbc So insightful.

[Athenaeum Book Club @athenaeumbc]

St. Augustine argues that without justice, an empire is ultimately no different from a large-scale criminal organization:

“Remove justice, and what are kingdoms but gangs of criminals on a large scale? What are criminal gangs themselves but petty kingdoms? A gang is a group of men under the command of a leader, bound together by a compact of association, in which the plunder is divided according to an agreed convention. If this villainy is enlarged by the accession of abandoned men to such a size that it acquires territory, establishes a base, captures cities and subdues peoples, it then openly arrogates to itself the title of kingdom, which is conferred on it in the eyes of the world, not by the renouncing of aggression but by the attainment of impunity.”

[Mark Rutte @SecGenNATO]

Honoured to speak at the 9/11 Memorial Museum, a powerful place of remembrance

The 9/11 attacks changed lives and they changed the world

25 years later, we remain united in our determination to safeguard our freedom, protect from aggression & make sure an attack like 9/11 never happens again

[Ricardo Karam ريكاردو كرم @RicardoRKaram]

In these unusual times when Europe is questioning its identity, France is debating the place of faith in a secular republic, and the world is struggling with war, division and the erosion of human dignity, @Pontifex comes to Paris with a message that transcends the Church. 
From Notre-Dame to UNESCO, his visit raises a fundamental question: Can Europe defend its values without losing its humanity?
Freedom without responsibility, progress without ethics, and politics without compassion will never be enough.
Perhaps the real challenge facing Europe today is not simply to preserve its identity, but to remember the human values that give that identity meaning.
#PapeÀParis #PapeLéonXIV
*Video taken now in Paris.

[Emmanuel Macron @EmmanuelMacron]

Bienvenue en France, Très Saint-Père.

[Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation & Institute @RonaldReagan]

President Reagan and Nancy Reagan walking the Great Wall of China during an official state visit in 1984. The trip marked the third time a U.S. president had traveled to China.

[Lebanese Forces @LFPartyOfficial]

انتصرت الكلمة على السلاح.

25 أيلول، ذكرى محاولة اغتيال #مي_شدياق
@DrSamirGeagea @may_chidiac

[OSINTtechnical @Osinttechnical]

In a major move, France will deploy soldiers and air defense systems to Saudi Arabia to help protect Yanbu’s critical oil-export facilities from Houthi attacks -French President Macron

Macron did not rule out an additional French Air Force fighter deployment as well.

[America Magazine @americamag]

Annie Dillard on converting to Catholicism: “You go to a Catholic church, and there are people of all different colors and ages, and babies squalling. You’re taking a stand with these people."
https://t.co/R7kWM2yB0C

[Hiba Nasr @HibaNasr]

‼️ ‼️ Photo of the meeting between President Trump, GCC, Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan & Iraq .

[Foreign Ministry 🇸🇦 @KSAmofaEN]

#NewYork | Foreign Minister HH Prince @FaisalbinFarhan participates in a multilateral meeting at the invitation of U.S. President Donald Trump, attended by heads of delegations from the GCC countries, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and Türkiye, on the sidelines of the High-Level Week of #UNGA81.

#SaudiArabiaAtUN🇸🇦🇺🇳

[Department of State @StateDept]

PRESIDENT TRUMP: I do want to thank also Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who has been fantastic.