...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.
Maybe it’s because I just had my covid booster but it just feels so overwhelming and depressing like. It’s mask off genocide and the democrats apparently can’t even be driven by self interest, totally willing to tank their own numbers and maybe throw an election just to prop up fascism Make it make sense
Because democrats are also genocidal freaks just like the republicans
I think there's a sizable number of Democrats and/or politicians behind the scenes who can see this all happening and going "Ah fuck, we should probably like, pressure Israel to stop it because we're destroying our credibility in front of the whole planet right now," but they're also totally unwilling to actually give Israel any consequences or punishments, so it just amounts to "Pretty please can you tone it down a little? We'll send our submarines and carriers if you tone it down by just 20%!" and then when Israel doesn't tone it down, they don't do anything. And then, of course, there's the (probably larger) number of politicians who are complete monsters lacking even a shred of empathy like your Nulands and such, who won't lose a second of sleep over 2 million Palestinians being either killed or ethnically cleansed.
So in total, both camps come to the exact same position, so it's ultimately a distinction without a difference
The difference between popular opinion and the government on this issue is the most obvious sign that USA is crumbling. The people are unhappy and the government is stoking an unpopular war while losing a massively funded proxy war. Had the republicans been in power for all this the democrats would have swooped in on the discontent to save the government by toning down the rhetoric but now there is nobody to do that.
This is the "time of monsters" but "the situation is excellent." Don't lose hope it is always darkest before the dawn and it may get darker yet but dawn is coming. Don't let the suffering make you depressed let it make you angry. Don't be disillusioned, be invigorated.
Class consciousness is rising. People are seeing the contradictions of capitalism. Its staring them in the face. Agitation is super important right now. We need to be sewing the seeds of communism. You don't need to know all the theory you just need to know that it is all imperialist capitalism's fault and tell everyone. If we don't act on the current discontent it will sour and turn to populist fascism.
What can non Americans do to help y’all? I’m in Canada and I find posting in general spaces too mentally taxing but it’s hellish sitting on the sidelines watching what’s happening down there
I'm not american but my country much like yours might as well be. Agitation is best done in person and is best done with simple phrases. "that's capitalism for you" Just redirect other people's frustrations with specific issues back to their source cause, capitalism. "Things" are not bad Capitalism is bad and the thing they are frustrated with is just a symptom. "Made in China" isn't why things are cheap and break, Capitalism's "infinite growth" makes the need to sell multiple units per user by lowering durability and quality. Food costs aren't too high, profit margins are too high, Investor's dividends are too high. Keep it simple, everything is capitalism's fault. When you get a positive reception you mention theory. "its like Marx/Lenin/Mao said..." Don't try to reinvent the wheel just point people to theory.
Good advice cheers
It makes sense when you consider that they aren't a distinct political party from the Republicans, and it doesn't actually fall outside of their self-interests for Republicans to win. The time when Democrats need to step up and act is when there's so much popular hatred of what Republicans are doing that they must present the controlled-opposition option so as to make absolutely sure that no true alternative can present itself. The rest of the time they just need to keep their "opposition" on a low simmer. And never does that "opposition" need to constitute an actual, material difference.