...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 realised last night that I might have disappointed the news mega community by not making any Lebanon effortposting for the COTW event despite being the semi-official Lebanese guy of this thread. I'm not really in the mood for effortposting, but let's do a little Lebanon AMA in the replies here.
Just for context, I'm half-Lebanese and half-Syrian. Wife is Iraqi and I've spent a good amount of time in all three countries. Throw any random question related to Lebanon and I'll do my best to answer. Questions related to Iraq and Syria are okay as well of course. Let's go
Your post on your return from Lebanon / Syria was heartbreaking. I appreciate you taking the time and mental fortitude to answer questions.
What's the general perception of Hezbollah? Are they seen as radicals?
I mean they're radical, even in a Lebanese context. All Sunnis believe that, 90% of Christians believe that, and maybe 25% of even Shias know that as well. I would argue though that their radicalism has saved Lebanon at least twice now and that their radicalism is what makes them useful.
I know the domestic political situation there is pretty fucked - do you see it just melting away in favor of Hezbollah, or does Hezbollah not have those kinds of aims?
Last week I would say that war is inevitable, but I've softened my stance post-Nasrallah speech and now leaning towards no major Hezbollah intervention as long as Israel doesn't do a major operation towards Lebanon out of nowhere. Axis of resistance and all that is relevant of course, but Hezbollah has to consider the Lebanese perspective first, and we're fucked tbh. Hezbollah has shit to lose, unlike Hamas who were in a chokehold and had almost nothing to lose when they broke out of jail on October 7th.
for someone who grew up in the US, how difficult (if at all) would it be to adjust to life in the Middle East? my parents left Iran in the '90s and I tell them I'd really like to go back to live in the Middle East some day - and they always say stuff like "you couldn't last 5 minutes there", like it's a different planet or something.
Hmm that's a good question. Going by my preconceptions, Iranians in the West are weirdly invested in portraying Iran really badly. My parents never tried that with me, and we travelled to Syria and Lebanon as much as possible during my childhood. If it wasn't for the economy being fucked, I'd genuinely move to Beirut asap. Life is so much more satisfying and beautiful there, even when you're poor. I was way more negative towards the ME when I was a kid, but I have completely changed my outlook recently and really want to live my last years there at least
I think with my parents, a lot of it is just the time they lived there. they lived through the Iranian revolution, then fought in/lived through the Iran-Iraq War. things probably weren't great for a while. also, there's this thing with Christians in the region where some of them come out super racist and hate Islam/Muslims and blame them for everything.
I've been looking into Beirut recently actually, seems like a really cool place. I hope things stabilize there soon - hard to imagine when you have a psychopathic neighbor and their 'Dahiya doctrine'.
I've seen this too, but it's not all of them but there's a lot of it and it's got the same energy as all the gusanos hanging out in Miami crying about their grand/parents 'stolen' 'property'
Did Assad ordered opening fire on his people?
Yes.
Chemical attacks too? Or?
Ghouta 2013: leaning towards yes
Khan Sheikhoun 2017 and Douma 2018: clear no imo
The Syrian government became less erratic and brutal post-Russian intervention in late 2015, as Russian military officers slowly reformed the chaotic structure and stamped out the organizational chaos that led to the massive losses in 2013 and 2014. The government was brutal and psychotic from the start of the protests in 2011 until 2015, the radicalization of the opposition didn't happen in a vacuum. One of my relatives in Aleppo was out protesting the government peacefully in 2011, he was snatched up and tortured to death. The way his life ended is just one example of the government's wild brutality until the Russians and the Iranians stepped in more heavily.
I'm trynna make dinner tonight. Any lebanese recommendations?
The poor man's dinner is the best. Falafel, some simple flatbread, tahini and random vegetables
Mujadara (I'm only spiritually Lebanese).
Do you condemn Hamas? Do you have a hummus recipe? Does Lebanon have Hamams?
No.
my mom has a top tier hummus recipe, gotta ask her
We have hamams, but they're aren't as cool as the ones in Damascus
Two questions:
When I see pictures of Lebanon, I usually think “hmm, looks a lot like Southern California”. If you’ve been to California before, does that comparison seem correct.
I was reading about the Lebanese Forces back in the early 80s. I saw a description of them as “Maronite Christians” and “anti-communist”. Is there a strain of anti-communism within the Christian community in Lebanon? They way they were described made me think they sound a lot like the Contras in Nicaragua and other right wing death squads - is that broadly accurate?
I haven't been to Southern California so it's hard to make a comparison, but I googled Southern California and it's not a bad comparison if you just remove all the cactus trees.
The Lebanese Forces were representative of the most racist and pro-colonial tendencies within Maronite Lebanese communities. Pierre Gemayel literally modeled the LF after German Nazis and Italian fash from the 30s. Anti-communism is pretty much the default position in such communities. It's hard to explain exactly how deeply right wing lots of Maronites were without going too deep into history. Lebanon was literally created by France to reward the most reactionary Maronites, so imagine how protective they were of their little racist experiment.
What would life be like for a sincere and curious white westerner who wanted to live in Iraq for a bit (considering Lebanon and Syria are closer to being on the cusp of conflict)?
Life in Baghdad is honestly pretty good these days as long as you have money and can live in one of the new apartment developments with fully stable electricity and hot water. Life in the normal Baghdadi suburbs is kinda acceptable, but it gets a bit tiring in the summer with the electrical grid failing under the insane heat. Food is extremely cheap, you could have two shawarmas and a nice cold Pepsi for like two bucks. Groceries are also very cheap outside of fresh meat. The art and leftist youth scenes are slowly growing, there are communities for literally everything and people love foreigners there.
how many ruins are there , like are they all a "attraction" or are there so many that some are only localy known ?
Probably tens of thousands of ruins everywhere if not more. There are some big attractions that are known for tourists, but some mountain villages have lots of cool small ruins like old poles and old churches.
Is Hamas pronounced "Khamas" in arabic or is that solely a hebrew/Israeli thing?
Palestinians say Hamas, israeli say KKKKHAMAS