...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.
Can someone explain why every leftist (online and on the streets) seems to support PFLP but not DFLP? Did DFLP do something bad, or is it that DFLP just isn't doing enough in their eyes? DFLP is also part of the Democratic Alliance List with PFLP, supports a one-state solution, and the Omar Al-Qasim Forces (their militant wing) have been active alongside the Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades (PFLP's militant wing) in storming IDF watchtowers and fighting the IOF. And the DFLP doesn't have any recent history of massacres at synagogues or killing teenagers... Yet I never hear any support for them, see their flags at marches, etc.
Also, noting PSL being accused of opportunism yesterday, can someone explain the beef between PSL and FRSO? Is it ideological or just personal drama?
I am pretty plugged out so please forgive me if these questions sound like attacks.
My understanding of PSL/FRSO is that both these orgs have near identical lines on almost everything despite reaching them independently and coming respectively from different ideological sects.
I suspect that beef between them is mostly caused because they're stepping on each other's toes and being so close in party lines just makes their overlap into competitive drama. That's an outside perspective though and I don't know anything about this specific incident.
As a PSL member the level of discussion about FRSO in the party is basically none at all. They're very small.
My basic understanding would be that the dflp is more obscure. Idk
I mean, PFLP is also extremely obscure as it is. With the amount of support I see for them online and in protests, I would assume them to be a significant political force in Palestine, when in reality their largest voter turnout in electoral history was 4%. Third Way is arguably the only other political party besides Hamas and Fatah that ever had any sort of political influence, as they are the only other party to have members serve as Prime Minister (Salam Fayyad) or Minister of Finance or Education (Hanan Ashrawi).
The ideological wing of the PFLP is extremely popular, at least it was back in its heyday. Ghassan Kanafani and Naji al Ali are both popular in the middle east. But I think the party affiliation gets lost during those discussions where their names get brought up.
Wasn't the DFLP created by Arafat (or heavily supported by him) to weaken the PFLP against Fatah? I remember hearing that on some palestine podcast, and it tracks with the "maoist anti-ussr splinter group created to attack pro-soviet party" trend at the time.
I'm skeptical of that claim because DFLP originally had a much larger presence in Palestine than PFLP did (during the 1996 general elections, DFLP won 10.18% of the vote against Arafat, whereas PFLP was not on the ballot). The idea that it exists solely to weaken the leftist movement in Palestine also doesn't make sense when they have previously formed coalitions with the other smaller leftist parties -- including the Palestinian Communist Party (PPP) and the Democratic Union (FIDA) -- via The Alternative, and were set to form a coalition with PFLP called the Democratic Alliance List in the cancelled 2016 election.
I'm not sure where "anti-USSR" comes from, either -- both PFLP and DFLP received considerable support from the Soviet Union and PRC and both presently operate out of Damascus under the protection of Assad. They were and are mostly the same people, DFLP just didn't support committing aircraft hijackings and suicide bombings outside of Israel early on and now doesn't support suicide bombings anywhere.
I could be mixing up names, thanks for the info
Pretty Freakin' Large Penis