...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 enjoyed answering all the Lebanon AMA questions for the COTW event yesterday. Let's do part 2 if you have any questions. Ask away hexbear homies
What's something about your country you wish people knew or understood better?
How fucked we're economically. Every single young person I know wants to leave
How convoluted and destructive the civil war was. Literally nothing about Lebanon can be explained without understanding the civil war. I recommend the 15 part Al Jazeera doc on YT
what's a lebanon
Prank gone too far
This is art
Lebanon a prayer famous song by bon jovi
What sports are popular in Lebanon? What are some of the most well known teams / leagues?
Football (soccer) is the big one of course. The Lebanese national team has done pretty well recently and there's some newfound excitement that hasn't been present in the past 20 years or so. The Lebanese football league fucking sucks though, with Ahed (shia club) and Ansar (sunni club) dominating in the past 30 years, so most Lebanese people watch European football. Basketball has recently grown as well and we lost the Asia Cup final last year. We played in the FIBA World Cup a few months ago and it was pretty exciting despite getting wrecked. We do kinda suck at sports, but we love watching foreigners on TV
is it possible that there is a big misunderstanding from when Zionists originally read the name "Lebanon" they thought it was "lebensraum"?
The existence of Lebanon is pretty much lebensraum for the pro-france weirdos from Mount Lebanon, so the zios wouldn't be completely off base here
What is the general feeling towards russia or china in lebanon?
General feeling from Muslims is generally positive, as most Shias like the Russian role in the Middle East and generally hate the Americans, so they support Chinese and Russian efforts to undermine American hegemony. Sunnis also hate America, but the more religious ones don't like Russia because they helped save Assad. Christians are more divided, Maronites in particular are often very pro-West and really like America and France, and naturally dislike Russia and China. I'd say that most Lebanese people in Lebanon prefer Russia and China to America these days, but most don't really like or care about China and Russia
What is your favourite Lebanese dish that is vegan/veganizable?
Some of the best Lebanese dishes are vegan or veganizable. Falafel, the poor man's lunch, is a delicious vegan dish from the condiments to the falafel itself. You also have mujadara, warak enab and kousa as vegan or easily modifiable dishes. A favorite of mine when I was a kid is kibbeh stuffed with potatoes instead of meat.
My partner makes mean falafel and mujadara. I've had dolmades before - are those different than warak enab? We made some this year with grape leaves we grew ourselves. I've never had kousa though. I'll look into that. We're well out of squash season now but it looks great. Thanks!
'Warak enab' (ورق عنب) is how you say 'grape leaves' in arabic, so, that's the same dish yeah, they're stuffed with rice mainly
You listening to any Lebanese jams lately?
I've been listening to lots Abeer Nehme recently, her voice is angelic. I like El Rass as well, who is pretty much the founder of modern Lebanese rap. I've also gotten into listening to old Levantine ataabas, which is a cool poetic type of music that is very unique. The classics are always on rotation of course, you can never go wrong with Fairouz, Wadi Al Safi or Julia Boutros
Have you ever been to the Mleeta museum?
No, haven't been there sadly.
Is there a national or popular way to serve tea in Lebanon? Always fascinated to hear about tea culture in different parts of the world!
Nothing special, it's basically the same as the tea culture in the rest of the Levant area, Turkey and Iraq. Small glass teacup with no handle, with a little glass plate under it. Filled with sugar, served scarily hot
I just want to say that Lebanese garlic sauce is absolutely delicious