...one has to wonder what the latest Blinken round of visits to the Middle East was supposed to accomplish, since all it did was expose our impotence. Even the Financial Times could not hide that the meetings with Netanyahu and then Arab leaders were a train wreck. Netanyahu rejected even any itty bitty ceasefire, branded a humanitarian pause, to get relief in, demanding that Hamas release all hostages first. The fact that Israel has welched or underperformed on its past begrudging promises to let trucks from Egypt in, would make that a non-starter even before getting to Hamas being sure to stick to its position of wanting to trade hostages for Palestinian prisoners. And of course the Arab states are not about to budge. Blinken got a more pointed version of what he was told before.
Antony Blinken faced intense pressure from regional allies to facilitate an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, laying bare the stark gap between US support for Israel and the outrage in Arab capitals over the siege and bombardment of the strip….
Sameh Shoukry, the Egyptian foreign minister, demanded an unconditional ceasefire, a commitment that Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu bluntly rejected after meeting Blinken on Friday.
Blinken had been expected to “brainstorm” with Arab diplomats the future of Gaza, home to 2.3mn Palestinians, after the war ends. Safadi bluntly rejected those talks as premature. “How can we even entertain what will happen in Gaza when we do not know how Gaza will be left?” he asked Blinken. “Are we going to be talking about a wasteland? Are we talking about a whole population reduced to refugees?”
This comes off as the sort of thing someone who had just read classic texts on negotiating trying to put in practice: “Gee, let’s get a dialogue going! Let’s get to ‘Yes’ on some less fraught issues to pave the way for further agreement!” In addition, “brainstorming” is cringemakingly American. You don’t do that with people who are mad at you. You don’t do that in a crisis. Between independent entities, you do not do that at the top level. You have low level people or emissaries float ideas. So why this exercise? The worst is that Biden and Blinken come off as so disconnected from reality that they though they might get someone to accommodate US needs.
Friendly reminder: when commenting about a news event, especially something that just happened, please provide a source of some kind. While ideally this would be on nitter or archived, any source is preferable to none at all given.
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against Israel. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:
UNRWA daily-ish reports on Israel's destruction and siege of Gaza and the West Bank.
English-language Palestinian Marxist-Leninist twitter account. Alt here.
English-language twitter account that collates news (and has automated posting when the person running it goes to sleep).
Arab-language twitter account with videos and images of fighting.
English-language (with some Arab retweets) Twitter account based in Lebanon.
English-language Palestinian Twitter account which reports on news from the Resistance Axis.
English-language PalestineResist telegram channel.
More telegram channels here for those interested.
Various sources that are covering the Ukraine conflict are also covering the one in Palestine, like Rybar.
The Country of the Week is still Lebanon! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.
Here is the map of the Ukraine conflict, courtesy of Wikipedia.
You're going to have to (hex)bear with me on the update this week. Have you been feeling generally pretty terrible this last month or so? So have I, and doomscrolling and archiving it all is my quasi-job at this point. Not good, folks, more and more people are saying it. I'll get over it eventually.
Links and Stuff
The bulletins site is down.
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Add to the above list if you can.
Resources For Understanding The War
Defense Politics Asia's youtube channel and their map. Their youtube channel has substantially diminished in quality but the map is still useful.
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have interesting analysis. Avoid the comment section.
Understanding War and the Saker: reactionary sources that have occasional insights on the war.
Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict. While he is a reactionary and surrounds himself with likeminded people, his daily update videos are relatively brainworm-free and good if you don't want to follow Russian telegram channels to get news. He also co-hosts The Duran, which is more explicitly conservative, racist, sexist, transphobic, anti-communist, etc when guests are invited on, but is just about tolerable when it's just the two of them if you want a little more analysis.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent and very good journalist reporting in the warzone on the separatists' side.
Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.
Telegram Channels
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
Pro-Russian
https://t.me/aleksandr_skif ~ DPR's former Defense Minister and Colonel in the DPR's forces. Russian language.
https://t.me/Slavyangrad ~ A few different pro-Russian people gather frequent content for this channel (~100 posts per day), some socialist, but all socially reactionary. If you can only tolerate using one Russian telegram channel, I would recommend this one.
https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts.
https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday ~ Patrick Lancaster's telegram channel.
https://t.me/gonzowarr ~ A big Russian commentator.
https://t.me/rybar ~ One of, if not the, biggest Russian telegram channels focussing on the war out there. Actually quite balanced, maybe even pessimistic about Russia. Produces interesting and useful maps.
https://t.me/epoddubny ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/boris_rozhin ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/mod_russia_en ~ Russian Ministry of Defense. Does daily, if rather bland updates on the number of Ukrainians killed, etc. The figures appear to be approximately accurate; if you want, reduce all numbers by 25% as a 'propaganda tax', if you don't believe them. Does not cover everything, for obvious reasons, and virtually never details Russian losses.
https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses ~ Pro-Russian, documents abuses that Ukraine commits.
Pro-Ukraine
Almost every Western media outlet.
https://discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.
Last week's discussion post.
I have a lot to say about Myanmar, but little time to write about it rn. The junta in myanmar essentially had identical politics to the LDP (if not more reactionary), but this is mostly a conflict that is born from the new cold war with china. The military leadership saw the situation with US imperialism baring down on China and saw that there was an opportunity to remove Aung San Suu Kyi (who was essentially personal rivals to the military leadership, not fundamentally different on policy/politics) with little recourse. The US and China were both unable to respond to the military junta in a forceful way because both camps want/need Myanmar. ASSK had essentially been a celebrity politician who had surrounded themselves with sycophants, so there was no real leadership when she was arrested. This has soured the national bourgeoisie's feelings towards her, and she didn't really represent a fundamentally different politic from the military anymore. They are essentially both capitalists who are okay with US imperialism/capital, or okay with playing "both sides" for the benefit of Myanmar.
The United States needs Myanmar on its "side"particularly after the withdrawl from Afghanistan, as it benefits from instability in the region as a way to funnel money and arms right on the border with China. So the sanctions and intervention will always be limited by that to some degree, they will not really challenge the government but the US will continue to flood the region with weapons while also attempting to maintain the status quo. China has its hands tied, as there are legitimate grievances and a long-waged national liberation movements tied to the resistance movement, and taking to strong a stance on either side will alienate them from the country (either the resistance movements identify the military government with china and become US-camp-ists, or the military government is alienated and intentionally damages relations/trade with china). The resistance seems to be a broad mix of US backed neolibs, national liberation movements, and even a newly resurgent Communist Party of Burma. There is more to say, and I could be out of date in terms of events, but this is my understanding of the situation
This is like the least important part of what you said (thanks for sharing, btw) but why are they using the name Burma? Is it for a politically significant reason regarding the country itself, to identify with the old party which was called that, or some other reason?
sorry for the late reply. i could be way off, but i think that there is an element of historic continuity. I think whatever remnants of the CPB existed fled to the border regions of China. Where they were likely, predominantly ethnic Barmar, and identified as Burmese exiles in China, for whatever it is worth. I think the CPB surrendered one year before the english name changed to Myanmar…. The term Burmese vs Myanmar (which is mostly only an issue in english) is somewhat/sometimes tied to discontent with the military government, which the CPB was in violent struggle against… but honestly it might also just be something that people in Myanmar aren’t thinking of too closely because the words are essentially interchangeable ... I think the real contention with using the term Myanmar vs Burma is more common in pro-western exile communities in the english-speaking world, and it has been 30 years… so there is a political contention to the whole thing, but probably not in Myanmar itself? … but then again i don’t really consider myself an expert so i could honestly be incorrect
Thanks for letting me know! No worries about the delay, I appreciate you sharing your perspective.