…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
I enjoyed answering all the Lebanon AMA questions for the COTW event yesterday. Let’s do part 2 if you have any questions. Ask away hexbear homies
@IDF just spotted Hamas tunnels under White House and Pentangon
Sofia’s Mayoral Race Continues: Grigorova Refuses to Concede (Nov 6, 2023)
In the wake of a closely contested mayoral race in Sofia, Vanya Grigorova, the Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP) candidate, is set to challenge the election of Vasil Terziev as the city’s mayor.
She cited the proximity of the vote margin, estimated to be between 3,000 to 5,000 votes, as a significant factor in her decision to contest the results.
In a separate development, Blagovest Kirilov, who previously served as the deputy minister of e-governance, voiced concerns about the authenticity of the voting machines used during the election. He raised questions about the validation process and the trustworthiness of the generated hashcodes, suggesting that issues with authentication could potentially affect the accuracy of the results.
Kirilov also pointed to potential discrepancies in the handling of election protocols, emphasizing the need for a thorough examination of these documents.
New line spotted among fringe right wing circles in Poland: ‘Israel is not worthy of our support because they’re actually a woke society that has been allowing adoption by same sex couples since 2008’.
That’s similar posturing logic to when Trump said he actually doesn’t like Netanyahu because he didn’t get enough direct support from him during the Qasem Soleimani assassination. I wonder if the US patsocs will also make use of these ‘Israel is too soft for us’
as well. Also, even Scott Ritter keeps saying it’s all Netanyahu’s fault, as if the next politician in line will be some dove.It seems like a race against time for the Israelis. Eventually the genocide will put enough stress on their neighbors’ and allies’ political systems that their geopolitical situation will begin to deteriorate. How much genocide can they pull off in the meantime? I think they will keep going until something breaks, but once there are real geopolitical consequences the Israelis will have to attempt to deescalate. Whether that will work or not will depend on the particular breaking point. If the US gets forced out of Iraq and Syria by military attacks some kind of pause might be enough to stabilize the situation, if it’s a military coup in Egypt or Jordan de-escalation might not be an option. Israel will not stop of their own accord, and Hamas really only has the military power to delay the ethnic cleansing operation. There will be no big arrow counteroffensives or encirclements (outside of tactical ambushes), but they can make the Israelis pay for every block of Gaza City. Given all that the Israeli political leadership has on the line, there will be a greater than normal tolerance for casualties. They will lie about the numbers rather than jeopardize their ability to continue the operation. This situation is set up in such a way that the Israelis are going overplay their hand, and these kind of situations lead to horrible spirals of violence all the time in history. Even nuclear war is becoming a possibility.
have we talked about algerias parliament vote on Palestine yet??? its old but i dont think ive seen it.
Trying to break through a huge
wall of “it’s complicated” with my Dad on the Palestinian genocide. I told him about the March of Return protests in 2018-19.He also had no idea that the Palestinian Authority even existed with Israel’s full permission and that the West Bank was a separate piece of land from Gaza that has nothing to do with Hamas.
Just got back from a local protest, good size crowd but I showed up a few minutes late
Probably shouldn’t have responded to the counterprotesters but their genocidal bullshit was pissing me off and I may have gotten a little hot
Long story short, if tomorrow’s local paper has a big picture of me with the headline/quote “Hamas is protecting them!” then I’m either the dumbest motherfucker here or one of the coolest, maybe both
new type of confused pro israel guy: “how dare Hamas take hostages knowing full well the IDF would indiscriminately kill them”
Is there any centralized listing of pro-Palestine protests worldwide updated regularly? I’ve been playing with the idea of funding and running such a site myself.
Israel’s Propaganda Campaign (Nov 6, 2023)
Israel spending millions on social media propaganda ads targeting Western nations (Oct 22, 2023)
The campaign explicitly targeted France, Germany, and the United Kingdom among other nations, releasing a total of 88 ads in a short span from October 7 to October 19.
Geographically, the propaganda was heavily skewed towards Europe, with nearly 50 video ads in the English language directed at European Union countries.
Some videos would appear and disappear from the ad centre intermittently, suggesting a possible violation of YouTube’s ad guidelines.
Ads ranged from depicting severe forms of violence to playing lullabies against a backdrop of a rainbow, pleading with parents to empathize with those whose children had been killed during attacks on Israel.
Holy shit they are evacuating a whole town.
It cannot be ruled out that the magma tunnel goes under Grindavík
The police chief in Suðurnes in cooperation with Civil Defence have decided to evacuate Grindavík.
The Civil Defence Level of Emergency has come into effect.
All residents are required to evacuate their homes and leave the town.
It is essential that all family members know the evacuation plan. Everyone must remember to bring medicine and other necessities with them. People are asked to put a note in a window to show that the house is empty.
There will be strong law enforcement in and around the town in order to secure the belongings of the townspeople.
It’s massively fucking infuriating to me that the very moment Palestine stops dominating the news cycle, liberals are going to fall straight back into accusing Russia and China of committing genocides in Ukraine and Xinjiang without the slightest hint of self awareness.
