...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.
I don't think the Egyptian people will let Cici stay in power without intervening.
Israeli escalation in Lebanon will cause Hezbollah to be more engaged.
Likewise, Iran.
This part is my speculation:
If you were in power in an Arab nation around Israel and you know Israel wants to take the whole peninsula. Do you want to fight today with Biden in charge or in 2024 with a Republican in charge? You're watching what Israel will do. Iraq knows how this goes.
I feel (and this is vibes only tbf) that the large carrier group parked right outside are persuasive to Lebanon Egypt and Iran to maintain the status quo.
I don't disagree but that math is: do you want to fight Israel with the weakest US president in history commanding the carriers or do you want to fight Israel with a weak US president who is a lunatic believing the end times arrive only with a strong Israeli state?
I don't believe nukes are on the table with Biden. With any Republican especially trump, I think they are. If you start the war now and Biden loses, you get status quo air strikes in the region no matter what happens. Which is bad but not nuclear annihilation. In realpolitik terms, this also gives any regime legitimacy by blaming any internal social or material problems on US intervention.
The alternative for these countries is doing nothing but protest at the UN. The problem with that approach from their perspective is that it's ineffective. They have to recognize that Israel is a threat to all Arab nations and they know the people living in the region are aware that Palestinian genocide represents Israeli intentions. So making proposals and speeches at US controlled UN does nothing to satisfy the general population.
The hard math they have to face is: do they keep US support and US $$$ but lose the support of the people? Or do they go all in and think they can win? The other math they have to face is the past history of the US abandoning it's allies as soon as it's not politically profitable (or just profitable). If there's an uprising today and Cici toes the Israeli line, Egypt might get military aid and "peacekeepers". But if the US decides that Israeli support is unpalatable politically and Cici toes the Israeli line, he might get the Qaddafi treatment.
This is all armchair analysis from a white dudebro in the Midwest. Have a whole bag of salt with it.
I agree.
But i still can't get out of my head the " making proposals and speeches at US controlled UN does nothing to satisfy the general population." Has been a perfectly acceptable means of governance for us in the west in relation to our democracies. Foreign policy only matters to a state in direct proportion to its control of its domestic audience. It's way cheaper and easier to just oppress some locals tranquilize others instead of trying to co-ordinate them all for war against an external force.
Consider that the " Big pretty talk , but slowly make worse anyway" approach is the very root of Democrat thinking for the last 50 years . And it's worked. The West has far more ability to stop this then the rest of the Levant . We are obviously not going to.
I can imagine that joe biden might make the money printer go brr enough that the Israeli orbit states will seriously consider hypocrisy and lib incompetence as the correct play. Just take the money and do some hand wave shit it's worked for us bro.