...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.
Redditors are whining about (very few) Palestinian militants not wearing uniforms... HOLY FUCK DUDE I AM GOING TO LOSE IT
Sure, the Nazis were evil, but have you considered that some resistance fighters DIDN'T WEAR UNIFORMS
These are the same people who were cheering it on when Ukraine was handing out assault rifles to civilians on the street.
afaik under the laws of war you don't need more than literally just an arm band.
For clarity - To comply with the laws of armed conflict and be entitled to protection under the Geneva convention Palestinian forces should wear some identifying mark at all times. But war is hell and you don't always have the luxury of doing things by the books. I'm not making any kind of judgement, I've just been reading the laws of armed conflict for ammo for arguments and there's some really interesting stuff in there that directly bares on how Israel violates international laws and customs, and also the complicated position of irregular forces in modern warfare.
it's also a good example of how the US is a rogue state; The whole concept of "Unlawful enemy combatants" is absolute bullshit. International law governs who is a legal member of an armed force, not assholes like John Yoo.
so dope-ass headbands are both legal and sick looking?
AFAIK, yeah. Militias and irregular forces have been deemed to be in-uniform just for having colored arm-bands denoting their allegiance, so I assume PFLP and Hamas headbands would count.
I don't know how Israelis treat Palestinian prisoners of war (except that it's not good). I have no idea if or to what degree they comply with the Geneva Conventions and the norms and traditions of armed conflict. The fact that they categorically denounce all Palestinian resistance as terrorists, that is as criminals engaged in illegal violence, suggests to me they do not obey international law and custom in this matter.
Oh yeah I definitely agree, there's no way Israel is following the Geneva conventions or any other international law regarding Palestinians
Or handing out assault rifles to settlers...
Maybe if the US gave billions to Hamas they could afford more consistent uniforming for all their forces. Come on biden do it.
Also also because I always have more to say I wonder if anyone in the west would ever not wear a uniform while fighting. Couldn't be. They'd never be hypocritical.
https://www.newsweek.com/libya-air-force-reveals-failed-us-special-forces-mission-406867
Why are they dressed like that? They look like thru-hikers from Seattle.
"Bro, where's the matcha?"
"Sorry. I ran out of time. There isn't any."
"No matcha?"
"Sorry. There's a war on - you know?"
Somebody pipes in: "I have some herbal tea bags."
He ignores them. "Who is that person and why are they taking to me?" Scuffs - "Herbal tea bags."
They probably are lol
It's our birthright as Americans.
5.11 casual
5.11 sucks. They used to be okay, but now they're just an operator flavored sports-wear line.
as it is with all garment companies as soon as they make a name for themselves
Also, if anyone is wondering, no they're not hiding as civilians, the soldiers Al Qassam sends to run into tanks wearing camouflage or Kevlar because if they fail they'll get blown up, neither of these can protect against that
Under the laws of armed conflict one of the important parts of wearing some kind of uniform or identifying mark is that it effects your right to be treated as a POW if you're captured alive. Obviously that hardly matters with Israel, but compliance with the law requiring identifying marks is as much for the protection of soldiers and their rights as POWs as it is anything else.
Saw this in a Twitter thread as well. But they'll eat up all of Israel's excuses for bombing hospitals, places of worship, and schools.
These people are why we will make no excuses for the terror during and after the revolution.