Image is of legal adviser to Israel's foreign ministry Tal Becker and British jurist Malcolm Shaw at the ICJ hearing.
The ICJ case against Israel might not achieve much for the Palestinian cause directly, given that Israeli politicians have explicitly stated that the Hague will not stop them - and I believe them. The Resistance will be what stops them, and they are doing quite well for themselves. Hezbollah has hit highly sensitive and important Israeli military sites over the last couple weeks, and in general persist in several border attacks every day. The battles in Iraq and Syria also continue. Hamas remains largely intact, and is successfully forcing Israeli forces in the northern Gaza Strip to retreat, and other parts of the Gazan Resistance are continuing to battle down in Khan Yunis. And, last but not least, Yemen is firmly dedicated to the blockade, warding off another ship literally minutes before I started writing this paragraph.
What the ICJ is battling over isn't Palestine and Israel - not really - but the legitimacy of international law itself, and to what degree victimized countries can rely on it to solve problems, versus needing to take more militant routes for justice. In a weird sense, it might be an L for Israel either way. If international law sides with Palestine, then when Israel refuses to stop, it will invalidate international law. If international law sides with Israel, then it will invalidate international law. There is no conceivable way for the West to come out of this looking good.
The South African portion detailing Israeli atrocities against Gaza was largely ignored by the western media. They have instead, obviously, decided to focus on the Israeli portion. Their defense appears to amount to "We didn't do it, Hamas did it. And if we did do it, it doesn't matter, because that's just urban warfare for you. Please get this whole thing thrown out on a very dubious technicality so we don't have to advance to the next stage."
From Craig Murray, who has been physically going to the Hague:
It is important to realise this. Israel is hoping to win on their procedural points about existence of dispute, unilateral assurances and jurisdiction. The obvious nonsense they spoke about the damage to homes and infrastructure being caused by Hamas, trucks entering Gaza and casualty figures, was not serious. They did not expect the judges to believe any of this. The procedural points were for the court. The rest was mass propaganda for the media.
...I am sure the judges want to get out of this and they may go for the procedural points. But there is a real problem with Israel’s “no dispute” argument. If accepted, it would mean that a country committing genocide can simply not reply to a challenge, and then legal action will not be possible because no reply means “no dispute”. I hope that absurdity is obvious to the judges. But they may of course wish not to notice it…
What do I think will happen? Some sort of “compromise”. The judges will issue provisional measures different to South Africa’s request, asking Israel to continue to take measures to protect the civilian population, or some such guff. Doubtless the State Department have drafted something like this for President of the court Donoghoe already.
I hope I am wrong. I would hate to give up on international law. One thing I do know for certain. These two days in the Hague were absolutely crucial for deciding if there is any meaning left in notions of international law and human rights. I still believe action by the court could cause the US and UK to back off and provide some measure of relief. For now, let us all pray or wish, each in our way, for the children of Gaza.
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Israel-Palestine Conflict
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. - Telegram is @IbnRiad.
English-language Palestinian Twitter account which reports on news from the Resistance Axis. - Telegram is @EyesOnSouth.
English-language Twitter account in the same group as the previous two. - Telegram here.
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.
Russia-Ukraine Conflict
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Sources:
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.
Pro-Russian Telegram Channels:
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
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 Telegram Channels:
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.
We’re not talking about the full scale reindustrialization of the imperial core, just the restarting of the war machine specifically. Germany and the US currently rank in as the 4th and 5th largest manufacturing economies respectively (China, India, Japan are 1-3). Just because less profitable industries got shipped overseas and factories that used to employ hundreds now just need 50 dudes and a ton of automation doesn’t mean the imperial powers lack heavy production abilities. Additionally factors of profitability concerns are moot in instances of direct government funding like defense contracting (tho inflation risks being an issue, Russia is currently undergoing a minor inflation crisis due to their commitment to military production tho this is minor compared to the economic benefits from the overall economic growth). The only thing lacking is a political will to commit to a war economy in the core.
Dark thought but I see a return to the US abusing Latin and South America in the face of a shrinking empire as the justification to revamp the imperial death machine. The current crop of GOP primary candidates has already openly discussed invading Mexico. A wounded US empire forced to withdrawal from the fringes may concentrate its violence more heavily within its own sphere of influence to secure what territory it can still control
There are very concrete obstacles other than just willingness to invest regardless of profitability for instance we would have to upgrade the electrical grid.
Less concrete but no less real than suddenly having good planning there is the bizarre political opposition to some stuff required to do this like anti-nuclear power brainworms.
Our broken ass raii system, crumbling bridges and roads, too. Moving a lot of materials around will expose more weaknesses here in the US.
At the end of the day, the US still has the Mississippi. If the US wanted to, it could move pretty much infinite resources down the Mississippi and it's tributaries. It won't, but it could.
There wee issues in '22 where barges backed up in the Mississippi because the water levels were too low and they were running at half capacity to avoid bottoming out for a while.
Yeah y'know what fair enough lol
How has this worked out for semiconductors
Great point. The bourgeoisie simply pocketing the cash and refusing to actually produce anything is a major issue for the US’s ability to actually accomplish anything. They would need to bring their capitalist class to heel lest they collapse under the weight of their own contradictions, though I’m of the mind that historically empires rarely just collapse suddenly and instead erode over the course of centuries.
Imo the US is primed for a bonapartist figure and the instatement of a new social compact as we deal with the death of neoliberalism and a new profit crisis. Though I don’t agree with all their conclusions, I think Brenner & Riley are pulling at the edges of something real in their piece I cited, specifically the idea of state dictated capitalism or political capitalism as they call it. I think the mode of state capitalism outlined by China and to a lesser extent Russia wherein a state apparatus utilizes the capitalist class as a patronage network to produce the commodities necessary for state projects could become the dominant economic model of the coming century (tho of course everyone will have their own versions. Europe had social democracy when we had fordism and China will have socialism with Chinese characteristics while we get the megacorp imperium). America’s tendency towards monopoly capital makes me think we might just see a fusion between the private and public sectors where the regulatory administrative state is overtaken by private firms operating on a pRiVaTe-PuBlIc PaRtNeRsHiP basis.
Historically wars have been a great place to build new social compacts from and from which bonapartist figures can emerge out of. Maybe the current regional conflict in the mid east expands and the US gets smoked by a Houthi/Hezbollah/Iran coalition and we have our own Russo-Japanese war that inspires a retooling of the American economy and plenty of “stabbed in the back” narratives about the ruling elite that failed us. Or maybe we instead experience a political defeat as China’s efforts to link Iran and Saudi Arabia sees the US’s influence pushed out of the region. MBS has already made indications of a desire to go his own way more separate from US hegemony rather than remaining a junior partner. I’m this instance again I could see the US turning its sights south to secure access to oil reserves there if our relationship with the Saudis becomes fraught. A situation like Venezuela-Essequibo could provide the justification to put troops into SA. Either way I think the American brain pan has a unique craving for global violence. We saw that the number one thing that’s tanked Biden’s approval was his withdrawal from Afghanistan and both parties seem intent on jumping in feet first to any conflict that presents itself. The only disagreement is about which wars to be fighting
Neoliberalism has also left US infrastructure in a sorry state. Underinvestment in roads, rails, grid. You name it, it has been left to crumble
The CHIPS act hasn't even sent out money to TSMC/Samsung yet. It was all smoke and mirrors and unsecured IOUs.
The only money granted so far has been to BAE Systems to expand a New Hampshire plant manufacturing military chips.
https://www.commerce.gov/news/press-releases/2023/12/biden-harris-administration-and-bae-systems-inc-announce-chips
Skilling up workers for this is also an issue while we're focusing on financially milking our universities etc etc
Universities are already dying. It wouldn’t surprise me to see the humanities fully gutted (halfway there!) and a full switch towards a STEM focus as a means of outsourcing the technical jobs training needed to work these production jobs. Just imagine the new engineering building of your university sponsored by Raytheon. Feels like it’s just around the corner
I find it hard to imagine the difference between this and the Steve Ballmer center for whatever here at UW