...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.
Javier Milei, mere days before the final election debate and the election day, posted this absolute gem to his Instagram account a few hours ago. It contains a number of supposed "Fake News" about him, and boy are they fucking awesome.
spoiler
First the simple ones: He is supposedly against selling organs and children. He did say in the past the selling organs should be okay and that "is just another market". Apparently he now claims this is false. As for children, I don't know, I think he said something similar to the organs selling thing. Privatization of Health and Education yeah, he's an ancap so he wants both of them. Gun ownership, also true, he said he wanted to implement a Bolsonaro-style gun ownership law.
Ticket at $1100 pesos and bus ticket at $700 pesos are not things, I think, he said but rather his opponents claim he'll do. I don't care, either way. Train and bus rides are subsidized and he said he'll get rid of pretty much al subsidies so, these fees are probably realistic.
Milei is a "NAZI", well, he kinda is. Still, he doesn't have to go doing the Seig Heil all around the place to be a piece of shit. Being an ancap is enough to me.
Now the super spicy one: "He fucked his sister". Yeah, there's a big rumor that he actually... fucked his sister, that his sexual partner is his actual sister. Where does this comes from? I truly do not know, but his relationship with his sister is weird, super weird. She works with him on campaign management, as some sort of silent advisor. She's always seen next to him. SUS. Also, one time he was having a debate with some sort of christian socialist when he was asked by the moderator "What would you do if tomorrow was your final day on Earth" and he said "I would spend the day doing finances, with my dogs and my wif... my sister". He slipped lmfao, he almost called his sister "his wife". SUS x2.
"Milei has psychological problems", which he does. He has violent outbursts, he yells a lot. I spoke about this in an older mega.
"Milei hates Cuarteto", I don't know where the fuck this comes from lmfao. Cuarteto is a very specific music genre originating from the province of Córdoba. It's super cool, it's very party-like. Here's two samples from Rodrigo, cuarteto's most famous singer: La Mano de Dios, tribute song to Maradona and Soy Cordobés. You can't hate that lmfao.
Then there's a bunch of random shit like "He won't cut pensions" or "he will not dollarize using the savings of people". Then there's the "He will give the Islas Malvinas", to who? We don't own them lmfao, we can't decide shit over them. Plus back in the day he said he admires Thatcher (CRINGE). He also claims that trade with Brasil and China will not end, even though he said he'll suspend all diplomatic and economic relationships with China because "they're communists and I don't deal with communists".
Then another wild one: "He communicates with dead dogs". Yeah, apparently he does speak with his old dead dogs. Through his sister, who's not only his lover but also a medium. Christ.
"He doesn't hate women", even though his campaign had a number of sexual harassment scandals.
Also not sure why he's using the "Argentinian Presidency" official logo, does he think he won already?
Milei habla con los perros muertos = FALSO
lmao man is a lunatic
my "doesn't talk to dead dogs" t-shirt has people asking a lot of questions already answered by my shirt
Don't forget that he talks to the dead dogs through his sister, whom he also sleeps with...
what
One of them is that he sleeps with his sister.
And this is the guy a bunch of idiots are voting for?
Holy shit this song slaps
what does it mean by he is "caste"?
His whole campaign revolves around him being against the "political caste", as an "outsider". Think of it like "draining the swamp", some well-established politicians who have been in the Senate or in the Chamber of Deputies for decades while achieving nothing. Well he is accused of being the caste now, as he struck a deal with Mauricio Macri, even as Milei himself said Macri was part of this caste.
I found YouTube links in your comment. Here are links to the same videos on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Link 1:
Link 2:
yo what a cool bot
Really throwing the LBJ strategy into disarray there