#Russia international order

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Tom Nichols: 

I don’t often find myself agreeing with Senator Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina conservative who long ago rebranded himself as Donald Trump’s faithful valet and No. 1 fan. Last week, however, Graham lashed out in frustration at the dithering in Europe and America over sending more weapons to Ukraine. “I am tired of the shit show surrounding who is going to send tanks and when they’re gonna send them,” he said during a press conference in Kyiv, flanked by Democratic Senators Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut and Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island. “World order is at stake. [Vladimir] Putin is trying to rewrite the map of Europe by force of arms.

”Graham is right. Germany, for example, has been reluctant to send Leopard tanks to Ukraine; the Germans, for their part, would likely prefer to see the United States send American tanks first. But everyone in the West should be sending anything the Ukrainians can learn to use, because a lot more than mere order is at stake, and order, by itself, is not enough. 

As Rousseau wrote, “Tranquility is found also in dungeons,” but that does not make dungeons desirable places to live. Global civilization itself is on the line: the world built after the defeat of the Axis, in which, for all of our faults as nations and peoples, we strive to live in peace and cooperation—and, at the least, to not butcher one another. If Russia’s campaign of terror and other likely war crimes erases Ukraine, it will be a defeat of the first order for every institution of international life, be it the United Nations or the international postal union.

[desuke13]

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[progressive--american--politics]

America’s position as the sole great power within the international system has come to an end. The future of the liberal world order has become precarious.

[bkkblogs]

The Next Great War: The End of History and the Last Hegemon

Join me this week as I explore the competition between the US, China, and Russia, the battle for hegemony, and the potential for a great power war. Let’s also unpack the inability of academia to challenge great power revisionism together. Don’t miss out!

In the field of international relations, still marked by the memories of the great power wars from the first half of the previous century, the focus is primarily on understanding international conflict. This focus is particularly sharp when it comes to conflicts between great powers, as these are the actors that establish order within the system[1].  In this perspective, states are like…

[liberty1776]

Scott Ritter: Russia H@mas inflicting a defeat of Death By A Thousand Cu...

What is the US Essential To? Ukraine is out of funding! “What is the acceptable number of dead Palestinian children? What is too many?”

[kevinmmiller]

Global World Order: Introduction

Global World Order: Introduction The following is the introduction to an upcoming thesis about International Maintenance, and Security entitled "Global World Order" Excerpt Below:

The following is the introduction to an upcoming thesis about International Maintenance, and Security entitled “Global World Order” Excerpt Below: Introduction After studying previously disclosed, and aforementioned information in this era of Globalization, and bringing in a closer, and more introspective understanding of National Security Cultures, and the way they work and behave, I’m here…

[visionpostsdaily-blog]

The ICC's Historic Move to Prosecute a Powerful Leader May Mark a New Era in International Law

Introduction: The International Criminal Court (ICC) has made an unprecedented move by issuing an arrest warrant against Russian President Vladimir Putin and Commissioner for Children’s Rights Maria Lvova-Belova for alleged war crimes committed during the ongoing conflict in Ukraine. This move signals a shift in the ICC’s approach to prosecuting powerful leaders and sets a precedent that it will…

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Holy CRAP the UN Cybercrime Treaty is a nightmare

Support me this summer on the Clarion Write-A-Thon and help raise money for the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers' Workshop!

If there's one thing I learned from all my years as an NGO delegate to UN specialized agencies, it's that UN treaties are dangerous, liable to capture by unholy alliances of authoritarian states and rapacious global capitalists.

Most of my UN work was on copyright and "paracopyright," and my track record was 2:0; I helped kill a terrible treaty (the WIPO Broadcast Treaty) and helped pass a great one (the Marrakesh Treaty on the rights of people with disabilities to access copyrighted works):

https://www.wipo.int/treaties/en/ip/marrakesh/

It's been many years since I had to shave and stuff myself into a suit and tie and go to Geneva, and I don't miss it – and thankfully, I have colleagues who do that work, better than I ever did. Yesterday, I heard from one such EFF colleague, Katitza Rodriguez, about the Cybercrime Treaty, which is about to pass, and which is, to put it mildly, terrifying:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/07/un-cybercrime-draft-convention-dangerously-expands-state-surveillance-powers

Look, cybercrime is a real thing, from pig butchering to ransomware, and there's real, global harms that can be attributed to it. Cybercrime is transnational, making it hard for cops in any one jurisdiction to handle it. So there's a reason to think about formal international standards for fighting cybercrime.

But that's not what's in the Cybercrime Treaty.

Here's a quick sketch of the significant defects in the Cybercrime Treaty.

The treaty has an extremely loose definition of cybercrime, and that looseness is deliberate. In authoritarian states like China and Russia (whose delegations are the driving force behind this treaty), "cybercrime" has come to mean "anything the government disfavors, if you do it with a computer." "Cybercrime" can mean online criticism of the government, or professions of religious belief, or material supporting LGBTQ rights.

Nations that sign up to the Cybercrime Treaty will be obliged to help other nations fight "cybercrime" – however those nations define it. They'll be required to provide surveillance data – for example, by forcing online services within their borders to cough up their users' private data, or even to pressure employees to install back-doors in their systems for ongoing monitoring.

These obligations to aid in surveillance are mandatory, but much of the Cybercrime Treaty is optional. What's optional? The human rights safeguards. Member states "should" or "may" create standards for legality, necessity, proportionality, non-discrimination, and legitimate purpose. But even if they do, the treaty can oblige them to assist in surveillance orders that originate with other states that decided not to create these standards.

When that happens, the citizens of the affected states may never find out about it. There are eight articles in the treaty that establish obligations for indefinite secrecy regarding surveillance undertaken on behalf of other signatories. That means that your government may be asked to spy on you and the people you love, they may order employees of tech companies to backdoor your account and devices, and that fact will remain secret forever. Forget challenging these sneak-and-peek orders in court – you won't even know about them:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/06/un-cybercrime-draft-convention-blank-check-unchecked-surveillance-abuses

Now here's the kicker: while this treaty creates broad powers to fight things governments dislike, simply by branding them "cybercrime," it actually undermines the fight against cybercrime itself. Most cybercrime involves exploiting security defects in devices and services – think of ransomware attacks – and the Cybercrime Treaty endangers the security researchers who point out these defects, creating grave criminal liability for the people we rely on to warn us when the tech vendors we rely upon have put us at risk.

This is the granddaddy of tech free speech fights. Since the paper tape days, researchers who discovered defects in critical systems have been intimidated, threatened, sued and even imprisoned for blowing the whistle. Tech giants insist that they should have a veto over who can publish true facts about the defects in their products, and dress up this demand as concern over security. "If you tell bad guys about the mistakes we made, they will exploit those bugs and harm our users. You should tell us about those bugs, sure, but only we can decide when it's the right time for our users and customers to find out about them."

When it comes to warnings about the defects in their own products, corporations have an irreconcilable conflict of interest. Time and again, we've seen corporations rationalize their way into suppressing or ignoring bug reports. Sometimes, they simply delay the warning until they've concluded a merger or secured a board vote on executive compensation.

Sometimes, they decide that a bug is really a feature – like when Facebook decided not to do anything about the fact that anyone could enumerate the full membership of any Facebook group (including, for example, members of a support group for people with cancer). This group enumeration bug was actually a part of the company's advertising targeting system, so they decided to let it stand, rather than re-engineer their surveillance advertising business.

The idea that users are safer when bugs are kept secret is called "security through obscurity" and no one believes in it – except corporate executives. As Bruce Schneier says, "Anyone can design a system that is so secure that they themselves can't break it. That doesn't mean it's secure – it just means that it's secure against people stupider than the system's designer":

The history of massive, brutal cybersecurity breaches is an unbroken string of heartbreakingly naive confidence in security through obscurity:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/05/battery-vampire/#drained

But despite this, the idea that some bugs should be kept secret and allowed to fester has powerful champions: a public-private partnership of corporate execs, government spy agencies and cyber-arms dealers. Agencies like the NSA and CIA have huge teams toiling away to discover defects in widely used products. These defects put the populations of their home countries in grave danger, but rather than reporting them, the spy agencies hoard these defects.

The spy agencies have an official doctrine defending this reckless practice: they call it "NOBUS," which stands for "No One But Us." As in: "No one but us is smart enough to find these bugs, so we can keep them secret and use them attack our adversaries, without worrying about those adversaries using them to attack the people we are sworn to protect."

NOBUS is empirically wrong. In the 2010s, we saw a string of leaked NSA and CIA cyberweapons. One of these, "Eternalblue" was incorporated into off-the-shelf ransomware, leading to the ransomware epidemic that rages even today. You can thank the NSA's decision to hoard – rather than disclose and patch – the Eternalblue exploit for the ransoming of cities like Baltimore, hospitals up and down the country, and an oil pipeline:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EternalBlue

The leak of these cyberweapons didn't just provide raw material for the world's cybercriminals, it also provided data for researchers. A study of CIA and NSA NOBUS defects found that there was a one-in-five chance of a bug that had been hoarded by a spy agency being independently discovered by a criminal, weaponized, and released into the wild.

Not every government has the wherewithal to staff its own defect-mining operation, but that's where the private sector steps in. Cyber-arms dealers like the NSO Group find or buy security defects in widely used products and services and turn them into products – military-grade cyberweapons that are used to attack human rights groups, opposition figures, and journalists:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/10/24/breaking-the-news/#kingdom

A good Cybercrime Treaty would recognize the perverse incentives that create the coalition to keep us from knowing which products we can trust and which ones we should avoid. It would shut down companies like the NSO Group, ban spy agencies from hoarding defects, and establish an absolute defense for security researchers who reveal true facts about defects.

Instead, the Cybercrime Treaty creates new obligations on signatories to help other countries' cops and courts silence and punish security researchers who make these true disclosures, ensuring that spies and criminals will know which products aren't safe to use, but we won't (until it's too late):

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/06/if-not-amended-states-must-reject-flawed-draft-un-cybercrime-convention

A Cybercrime Treaty is a good idea, and even this Cybercrime Treaty could be salvaged. The member-states have it in their power to accept proposed revisions that would protect human rights and security researchers, narrow the definition of "cybercrime," and mandate transparency. They could establish member states' powers to refuse illegitimate requests from other countries:

https://www.eff.org/press/releases/media-briefing-eff-partners-warn-un-member-states-are-poised-approve-dangerou

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/07/23/expanded-spying-powers/#in-russia-crime-cybers-you

Image: EFF https://www.eff.org/files/banner_library/cybercrime-2024-2b.jpg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/us/

[zvaigzdelasas]

[NewYorkTimes is Private US Media]

Over the past month, we’ve watched an astonishing, high-stakes global drama play out in The Hague. A group of countries from the poorer, less powerful bloc some call the global south, led by South Africa, dragged the government of Israel and, by extension, its rich, powerful allies into the top court of the Western rules-based order and accused Israel of prosecuting a brutal war in Gaza that is “genocidal in character.”

The responses to this presentation from the leading nations of that order were quick and blunt.

“Completely unjustified and wrong,” said a statement from Rishi Sunak, Britain’s prime minister.

“Meritless, counterproductive and completely without any basis in fact whatsoever,” said John Kirby, a spokesman for the United States National Security Council.

“The accusation has no basis in fact,” a German government spokesman said, adding that Germany opposed the “political instrumentalization” of the genocide statute.

But on Friday, that court had its say, issuing a sober and careful provisional ruling that doubled as a rebuke to those dismissals. In granting provisional measures, the court affirmed that some of South Africa’s allegations were plausible and called on Israel to take immediate steps to protect civilians, increase the amount of humanitarian aid and punish officials who engaged in violent and incendiary speech. The court stopped short of calling for a cease-fire, but it granted South Africa’s request for provisional measures to prevent further civilian death. For the most part, the court ruled in favor of the global south.[...]

The court was not asked to rule on whether Israel had in fact committed genocide, a matter that is likely to take years to adjudicate. Whatever the eventual outcome of the case, it sets up an epic battle over the meaning and values of the so-called rules-based order. If these rules don’t apply when powerful countries don’t want them to, are they rules at all?

“As long as those who make rules enforce them against others while believing that they and their allies are above those rules, the international governance system is in trouble,” Thuli Madonsela, one of South Africa’s leading legal minds and an architect of its post-apartheid Constitution, told me. “We say these rules are the rules when Russia invades Ukraine or when the Rohingya are being massacred by Myanmar, but if it’s now Israel butchering Palestinians, depriving them of food, displacing them en masse, then the rules don’t apply and whoever tries to apply the rules is antisemitic? It is really putting those rules in jeopardy.”[...]

The military campaign has “wreaked more destruction than the razing of Syria’s Aleppo between 2012 and 2016, Ukraine’s Mariupol or, proportionally, the Allied bombing of Germany in World War II,” the report quoted researchers as saying. The researchers, hardly some raving left-wing activists, are experts cited in one of the most respected news organizations in the world, The Associated Press.[...]

The International Court of Justice issued a nonbinding opinion in 2004 that the security barriers Israel was erecting in the West Bank violated international law, but that ruling has had no effect. The walls still stand.[...]

Indeed, what is a rules-based system if the rules apply only selectively and if seeking to apply them to certain countries is viewed as self-evidently prejudiced? To put it more simply, is there no venue in the international system to which the stateless people of Palestine and their allies and friends can go to seek redress amid the slaughter in Gaza? And if not, what are they to do?

For the cause of Palestinian statehood, every alternative to violence has been virtually snuffed out, in part because Israel’s allies have helped to discredit them. The most recent example is the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement that has, in many places, been successfully tarred as antisemitic or even banned altogether. Efforts to use the United Nations Security Council have drawn U.S. vetoes for decades. Is seeking redress at the appropriate venue for alleged violations of international law also antisemitic, as Israel’s defense minister said on Friday? Does no law apply to Israel? Are there no limits to what it may do to defend itself?[...]

The Biden administration has made the shoring up of the international rules-based order a centerpiece of its foreign policy but, unsurprisingly, has struggled to live up to that aspiration.[...]

Occasionally straying from your principles because circumstances require it is very different from being seen to have no principles at all, and that is precisely how much of the global south has come to regard the United States.

It seems especially shortsighted in these times that the Biden administration elected to wave away the carefully documented case prepared by South Africa. One of the biggest threats to the rules-based international order is the growing consensus in the poor world that the rich world will apply those rules selectively, at its discretion, when it suits the powerful nations that make up the global north, such as when Russia invaded Ukraine.[...]

As far as the rules-based order is concerned, when it comes to crimes like genocide and ethnic cleansing, it simply does not matter who started it. [...] The best way to shore up the rules-based order is to be seen, in word and deed, as committing to the institutions and moral commitments of that order.

28 Jan 24

[billiewena]

THREE YEARS SINCE NOV 5TH, 2020 as summed up by Supernatural (sequel to this and this)

image ID & context below:

[image ID: screenshots of Supernatural paired with screenshots of various tweets, news headlines and Tumblr posts.

A screenshot of Ed and Harry in SPN 3x13 Ghostfacers saying "You gotta be gay for that poor dead intern" with a screenshot of Misha Collins at the SPNNJ 2023 convention saying "I got a call from Warner Bros and they were like hey uh...is there any world you just let it go?" This is in reference to an incident in 2022 where Misha accidentally made headlines after a comment that seemed to be referring to his sexuality. His comments at this year's panel imply that the studio in fact did not want him to retract the comment and make the apology that he posted, but to instead just roll with it.

A screenshot of Bobby saying "Time travel?" and Dean saying "Yeah" in SPN 6x18 with a headline that says "Jensen Ackles' Explains The Winchester's Multiverse Twist & Supernatural Connection." This is about the series finale of Jensen's Supernatural spinoff "The Winchesters", in which it is revealed Dean and the Impala somehow traveled the multiverse to the alternate timeline the show takes place in.

A screenshot of Dean in SPN 15x08 saying "He's back, and he's out of control" with a screenshot of Misha Collin's first Tumblr post in seven years, a video with him and his brother being a public nuisance on public transportation. Also included are screenshots of various Tumblr users reacting with tags from various tumblr users. becauseofthebowties: "mishacollinsofficial tumblr account back from the dead???" myboobsarentsentientbeings: "this is the first thing he posts? after nearly 7 years???" casismybestfriend: "RED FUCKING ALERT MISHA IS BACK ON TUMBLR" cannabiscasgate: "who the fuck gave you back your password"

A screenshot of two news anchors in SPN 14x20, with one (named Jack) telling his co-host "I love you" and her replying "Jack?" with screenshots of the Destiel/Supernatural Confession meme trending multiple times this year with other current events topics like Russia, Titanic, etc. There is also a screenshot of a post by saintedcastiel that says "I cannot believe that since we started using the destiel meme as a breaking news alert that there hasn't been ONE destiel news anchor AU fic where they're co-anchors on the morning news. cas confessed on accident while they're on air and dean doesn't know how to respond so he just reads the next thing on the teleprompter."

A screenshot of Dean in SPN 5x14 as Cupid says "I-I was just following orders" with a screenshot of an anonymous Tumblr ask to user luxshine. The ask says "Hey! I was wondering if you have any updates on the LATAM dub situation and if you were/will able to contact the dub director". luxshine says "Hi! Well I could get the translator (you know, our dear rogue translator) and he told me that while he doesn't remember it completely (because he translates a lot of series) if Dean said "And I you" it's because the script he got said "And" I you" and the video he saw said "And I you" because he doesn't add stuff." This is in reference to a change in Spanish LATAM dub of Castiel's confession SPN 15x18, which added a line where Dean reciprocates, which was previously suspected to be a change added by the LATAM dubbing director or translator

A screenshot of a detective from SPN 8x08 saying, "[Chuckles] Whatever you say Scully" with a screenshot of the tumble blr blog ao3topshipsbracket's poll "AO3 Top Relationships Bracket - Round 2 Side 1" with Fox Mulder/Dana Scully (The X-Files) vs. Castiel/Dean Winchester (Supernatural.) In the final results from 51,514 votes, Mulder/Scully won by 53% and Castiel/Dean won by 47%. In early 2023, Tumblr added a polls feature which has led to numerous content, debates, and bracket polls similar to this.

A screenshot from SPN 11x15 where Dean says "No money, no glory" with a headline that says "Supernatural creator Eric Kripke gets 'zero' residuals from Netflix"

A screenshot of Dean rising from his grave in SPN 4x01 with a screenshot of a post from the official CW Supernatural Instagram with a clip from the pilot episode and the caption "And the story continues..." and a comment from a user that says "THE STORY CONTINUES?? WTF ARE YOU TRYING TO TELL US?? I HAVE ANXIETY YOU CAN'T DO THIS TO ME." For context, no one is sure if the post was supposed to reference new content from Supernatural or not but it has led to speculation.

A screenshot of SPN 8x01, with the onscreen lyric "Another year has passed me by."

[determinate-negation]

"Jewish Marxists have always rejected Zionism. In 1906, a leading member of the Bund published this polemic in Die Neue Zeit, the theoretical journal of the German Social Democracy. "A national economy would mean a territory where the Jewish people — and in the capitalist mode of production: the Jewish bourgeoisie — form the majority and oppress peoples who are in the minority, just as they have been oppressed until now." "Do the Zionist socialists intend to introduce … exceptional laws for immigrant, non-Jewish workers?"

Many people claim that Zionism and Judaism are identical, as if the Jewish people, for thousands of years, had obviously longed to return to Jerusalem. Yet Zionism is a relatively new political movement — a product of the era of bourgeois nationalism and colonialism. Theodor Herzl's programmatic manifesto only appeared in 1896, at a time when Jewish socialist groups had been active in London and other cities for more than two decades. Long before anyone thought of colonizing Palestine, Jewish revolutionaries had been fighting for socialism.

Zionism was far from hegemonic among Europe's Jews. In the largest Jewish communities, in the Pale of Settlement on the western edge of the Tsarist Empire, far more Jewish people were drawn to socialism. The most important organization of the Jewish proletariat was the General Jewish Labour Bund in Lithuania, Poland, and Russia, or the "Bund" for short. The Bund opposed the Zionist program of emigration with a program of class struggle and "doikayt," or hereness.

Herzl's Zionism was bourgeois, and he sought support from the Tsar's antisemitic ministers, the organizers of terrible pogroms — he saw they had a common interest in getting Jews to leave the Empire and stay away from revolutionary organizations. After the 1905 revolution, the rise of class struggle in Russia and the radicalization of Jewish workers led to the emergence of various hybrid forms of socialism and Zionism. "Socialist Zionism" was founded by Ber Borochov, and its most important organization was Poale Zion (The Workers of Zion).

Poale Zion had a contradictory program: sometimes it said that Jewish workers should focus on emigrating to Palestine in order to build a socialist society there; at other times its emphasized class struggle, while the construction of a Jewish national home in the Holy Land was declared to be a goal for the distant future. Due to this contradiction, Poale Zion did not last long; after the Russian Revolution, the left wing joined the Communist International, while the right wing became a reformist and colonialist party that founded the State of Israel.

In this 1906 essay, Chaim Yakov Gelfand, a leading member of the Bund, explained why socialist Zionism was a reactionary utopia. Socialism and Zionism were fundamentally incompatible: the former depended on the political independence of the working class, whereas the latter required long-term collaboration with both the Jewish bourgeoisie and with the imperialist colonial powers. This text appeared in Die Neue Zeit, the theoretical journal of the German Social Democracy, edited by Karl Kautsky. In his own book on the question from 1914, Kautsky also declared that oppressed Jewish workers should aim for a "revolution in Russia" instead of emigration to Palestine.

Gelfand's essay is tragically prophetic. Even in 1906, it was clear that Palestine was far from uninhabited, and that the establishment of an exclusively Jewish nation-state would inevitably lead to conflicts with the indigenous population. Marxists understood that colonization would create new forms of oppression and also new hatred against Jews. Gelfand made clear that a Jewish state could only be built in cooperation with imperialism and would therefore never be socialist.

It's interesting to read about the progressive ideals of sections of the early Zionist movement, prior to the foundation of the State of Israel. The contradictions of this "socialist" colonial project proved to be insurmountable. Over the decades, numerous young Jewish activists turned away from socialist Zionism and joined the Trotskyist movement — in some cases only after arriving in Palestine.

The most famous of them is undoubtedly Abraham Leon, a scholar-warrior who wrote a Marxist history of the Jewish people while leading the underground fight against the Nazis in Belgium, before being murdered at Auschwitz at 26. Left-wing Zionists from Berlin such as Martin Monath and Rudolf Segall also became Trotskyists — the former in exile in Belgium, the latter while working at a kibbutz in Palestine. Both, like many other former Zionists, became leaders of the Fourth International.

Today, the internationalist traditions of Jewish revolutionaries are being erased. This text, in its first English translation, is a reminder that Zionism is only a small and controversial part of Jewish history. Jewish-led protests against the war in Gaza are reviving these internationalist traditions."

[sayruq]

There has been major developments in the region in the past few days that indicates regional war is imminent. Again the tweets and articles will be in chronological order.

American war ships are in the Mediterranean and Red Seas. Russia responded to that by sending planes to the Black Sea and China by sending warships to Kuwait.

We got our usual back and forth on the ground operation in Gaza

The American media is not really reporting these recent attacks on their military bases. In fact, the military is downplaying the strength of the responses by Yemeni and Syrian groups to the Gaza genocide. This is either because they want to avoid regional war or because they want to be better prepared for regional war.

This statement below seems to indicate that Iran is coming to the conclusion that open warfare is the only thing that will deter America and Israel

As for Yemen, they've declared Israeli ships will be targeted if the attack on Gaza continues (you'll see later that this is no empty threat)

By the way, Israel bombed an Egyptian military site along the border and claimed it was an accident. The Egyptian people have been calling for their government to intervene militarily and I don't think this will ease the pressure.

On the 22nd, Israel sent a small team to infiltrate Gaza. They didn't get very far

They're also struggling against Hezbollah

This meeting by the Russian foreign minister is a big deal as you'll see later

America responds to the escalating tension by deploying 'defensive systems' all over West Asia. It risks stretching itself too thin as multiple countries are already involved in the Palestian resistance with countries like Egypt and Jordan facing internal pressure to do something about the Gazan genocide

Republican Mitch McConnell has recently called Iran, Russia and China 'the new axis of evil'. It seems this is the new angle that the West has chosen because Rishi Sunak has also been comparing Hamas to Russia. This can only lead to Russia getting close to Iran which would ultimately help Hamas.

The situation in Iraq continues to deteriorate as America evacuates its embassy and warns its citizens not to use the Baghdad International Airport due to attacks by Iraqi military groups.

Here we have an Israeli commander admitting that Israel is largely on the defensive against Hezbollah and their soldiers are both traumatised and disheartened. Remember, Hezbollah has yet to officially enter the war

Blinken said that the US 'will be prepared' if Iran escalates its attacks which gives weight to that idea that the US is only trying to deescalate because its not ready yet.

A few hours ago, American bases in Syria were targeted. It's becoming clear that a major goal in the plan to defeat Israel is removing America from the picture in the region

The White House then blames Iran for the attack

More military bases targeted in Iraq

Meanwhile IDF is trying to infiltrate Gaza again. Reminder that a ground operation means that Hezbollah will officially enter the war and begun using its vast numbers of missiles and rockets. They're also attacking the West Bank, the resistance fighters have ambushed them

Yemen follows through on the threats it made by attacking a US warship with drones

Ansarullah claims there was a direct hit but the US Navy says that all drones were intercepted (using days old pictures).

So what now? First, do not expect a ceasefire. Tbh the Palestinian resistance hasn't even called for ceasefire, just an exchange of hostages.

Second of all, America itself does not believe that Israel can win this war so let's all stop acting like Palestine has already lost

Thirdly, regional war is looking more and more like reality

[probablyasocialecologist]

Geoffrey Nice, a human rights barrister who led the prosecution of former Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic at an international criminal tribunal, has told Al Jazeera that the opinion issued by the highest UN court will surely affect Israel’s standing in the world.

“For a long time, there has been real concern that the so-called world order supported by the world legal system has been prepared to play second fiddle to and be cowed down by political pressure,” he said, adding that the ICJ and the International Criminal Court are changing things now.

“As a result of what’s happened in Russia and Ukraine, and more particularly perhaps in Israel and Gaza, the two senior international courts have emerged from periods of slow or no activity and they’ve shown that they are prepared to do that which they were set up to do,” Nice said.

“It’s something the public would want, and it puts countries that are suppressing the application of international law, in particular the US and also Britain, in a difficult position.”

Nice said the UN General Assembly could now potentially move forward with suspending Israel’s activities at the organisation.

“Israel is going to suffer. Is it going to suffer because of trade sanctions or matters of that sort? It’s hard to tell at this stage. But it’s going to suffer almost inevitably in the approach that is going to be taken by countries to the ongoing war between Israel and Gaza,” he said.

19 July 2024

[matan4il]

Israel Has Created a New Standard for Urban Warfare. Why Will No One Admit It? | by John Spencer

The Israel Defense Forces conducted an operation at al-Shifa hospital in the Gaza Strip to root out Hamas terrorists recently, once again taking unique precautions as it entered the facility to protect the innocent; Israeli media reported that doctors accompanied the forces to help Palestinian patients if needed. They were also reported to be carrying food, water and medical supplies for the civilians inside.

None of this meant anything to Israel's critics, of course, who immediately pounced. The critics, as usual, didn't call out Hamas for using protected facilities like hospitals for its military activity. Nor did they mention the efforts of the IDF to minimize civilian casualties.

In their criticism, Israel's opponents are erasing a remarkable, historic new standard Israel has set. In my long career studying and advising on urban warfare for the U.S. military, I've never known an army to take such measures to attend to the enemy's civilian population, especially while simultaneously combating the enemy in the very same buildings. In fact, by my analysis, Israel has implemented more precautions to prevent civilian harm than any military in history—above and beyond what international law requires and more than the U.S. did in its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The predominant Western theory of executing wars, called maneuver warfare, seeks to shatter an enemy morally and physically with surprising, overwhelming force and speed, striking at the political and military centers of gravity so that the enemy is destroyed or surrenders quickly. This was the case in the invasions of Panama in 1989, Afghanistan in 2001, Iraq in 2003 and the failed illegal attempt by Russia to take Ukraine in 2022. In all these cases, no warning or time was given to evacuate cities.

In many ways, Israel has had to abandon this established playbook in order to prevent civilian harm. The IDF has telegraphed almost every move ahead of time so civilians can relocate, nearly always ceding the element of surprise. This has allowed Hamas to reposition its senior leaders (and the Israeli hostages) as needed through the dense urban terrain of Gaza and the miles of underground tunnels it's built.

Hamas fighters, who unlike the IDF don't wear uniforms, have also taken the opportunity to blend into civilian populations as they evacuate. The net effect is that Hamas succeeds in its strategy of creating Palestinian suffering and images of destruction to build international pressure on Israel to stop its operations, therefore ensuring Hamas' survival.

Israel gave warning, in some cases for weeks, for civilians to evacuate the major urban areas of northern Gaza before it launched its ground campaign in the fall. The IDF reported dropping over 7 million flyers, but it also deployed technologies never used anywhere in the world, as I witness firsthand on a recent trip to Gaza and southern Israel.

Israel has made over 70,000 direct phones calls, sent over 13 million text messages and left over 15 million pre-recorded voicemails to notify civilians that they should leave combat areas, where they should go, and what route they should take. They deployed drones with speakers and dropped giant speakers by parachute that began broadcasting for civilians to leave combat areas once they hit the ground. They announced and conducted daily pauses of all operations to allow any civilians left in combat areas to evacuate.

These measures were effective. Israel was able to evacuate upwards of 85 percent of the urban areas in northern Gaza before the heaviest fighting began. This is actually consistent with my research on urban warfare history that shows that no matter the effort, about 10 percent of populations stay.

As the war raged on, Israel began giving out its military maps to civilians so they could conduct localized evacuations. This, too, has never been done in war. During my recent visit to Khan Yunis, Gaza, and the IDF civilian harm mitigation unit in southern Israel, I observed as the army began using these maps to communicate each day where the IDF would be operating so civilians in other areas would stay out of harm's way.

I saw that the IDF even tracked the population in real time down to a few-block radius using drone and satellite imagery and cell phone presence and building damage assessments to avoid hitting civilians. The New York Times reported in January that the daily civilian death toll had more than halved in the previous month and was down almost two-thirds from its peak.

Of course, the true number of Gaza civilian deaths is unknown. The current Hamas-supplied estimate of over 31,000 does not acknowledge a single combatant death (nor any deaths due to the misfiring of its own rockets or other friendly fire). The IDF estimates it has killed about 13,000 Hamas operatives, a number I believe credible partly because I believe the armed forces of a democratic American ally over a terrorist regime, but also because of the size of Hamas fighters assigned to areas that were cleared and having observed the weapons used, the state of Hamas' tunnels and other aspects of the combat.

That would mean some 18,000 civilians have died in Gaza, a ratio of roughly 1 combatant to 1.5 civilians. Given Hamas' likely inflation of the death count, the real figure could be closer to 1 to 1. Either way, the number would be historically low for modern urban warfare.

The UN, EU and other sources estimate that civilians usually account for 80 percent to 90 percent of casualties, or a 1:9 ratio, in modern war (though this does mix all types of wars). In the 2016-2017 Battle of Mosul, a battle supervised by the U.S. that used the world's most powerful airpower resources, some 10,000 civilians were killed compared to roughly 4,000 ISIS terrorists.

And yet, analysts who should know better are still engaging in condemnation of the IDF based on the level of destruction that's still occurred—destruction that is unavoidable against an enemy that embeds in a vast tunnel system under civilian sites in dense urban terrain. This effects-based condemnation or criticism is not how the laws of war work, or violations determined. These and other analysts say the destruction and civilian causalities must either stop or be avoided in an alternative form of warfare.

Ironically, the careful approach Israel has taken may have actually led to more destruction; since the IDF giving warnings and conducting evacuations help Hamas survive, it ultimately prolongs the war and, with it, its devastation.

Israel has not created a gold standard in civilian harm mitigation in war. That implies there is a standard in civilian casualties in war that is acceptable or not acceptable; that zero civilian deaths in war is remotely possible and should be the goal; that there is a set civilian-to-combatant ratio in war no matter the context or tactics of the enemy. But all available evidence shows that Israel has followed the laws of war, legal obligations, best practices in civilian harm mitigation and still found a way to reduce civilian casualties to historically low levels.

Those calling for Israel to find an alternative to inflicting civilian casualties to lower amounts (like zero) should be honest that this alternative would leave the Israeli hostages in captivity and allow Hamas to survive the war. The alternative to a nation's survival cannot be a path to extinction.

John Spencer is chair of urban warfare studies at the Modern War Institute (MWI) at West Point, codirector of MWI's Urban Warfare Project and host of the "Urban Warfare Project Podcast." He served for 25 years as an infantry soldier, which included two combat tours in Iraq. He is the author of the book "Connected Soldiers: Life, Leadership, and Social Connection in Modern War" and co-author of "Understanding Urban Warfare."

[dontforgetukraine]

"In response to attacks and accusations being directed at our film, 'Russains at War,' and myiself, I want to be clear that this Canada-France co-production is an anti-war film made atg great risk to all involved, myself especially. I unequivocally believe that Russia's invasion of Ukraine is unjustified, illegal and acknowledge the validity of the International Criminal Court investigation of war crimes in Ukraine. The suggestion that our film is propaganda is ludicrous given that I'm now at risk of criminal prosecution in Russia. I also understand and empathize with the pain and anger that the subject matter may provoke in those who have suffered from this conflict. My mother emigrated to Canada, from Russia, so that we could live in a country that is devoted to freedom of expression and human rights. My hope is that our film can be assessed and discussed based on its scope and not agendas and assumptions beyond its frame, and that ultimately such discussions contribute to the war's end." —Anastasia Trofimova, Director/Producer, Russians at War (Source)

Bullshit. She's a director and producer for RT with most if not all of her films funded by RT. I guess she apparently wasn't vetted by the Canada-France co-producers.

Even if promoting Russian propaganda wasn't her intention, it can't be separated from the content. The damn trailer has soldiers saying propaganda narratives in it. (Kyiv Independent)

"Russia and Ukraine have always been inseparable. I miss the brotherly Union" reinforces the false narrative that Ukraine cannot exist as an independent state, that Russia and Ukrainian history are inseparable. Even Putin has said similar things.

“I came (to war) today so that my kids don’t go tomorrow,” conveying the belief that their military aggression in Ukraine is somehow just.

"An order was given. We went." Ah, yes, I was just following orders. Where have we heard that one before, I wonder. Not only that, it reinforces the narrative that ordinary Russians are powerless and blameless in this conflict. This isn't their war, but Putin's war. Fuck that. We know many sign up willingly such as for the money or a clean slate if they are a convict.

You can't separate the propaganda ordinary russians have been stewing in for decades and don't fight back against from this film, sweetheart. It's part of the damned context and you don't get to ignore that. Either she actually realizes that but doesn't want to say it, or she's a useful idiot. It doesn't matter which, because the result is the same.

"The fog of war is so thick that you can't see the human stories its made of."

Yes we can! This isn't the era of WW2. We can see it on Telegram! All the war crimes that are willingly committed and recorded and posted pridefully! All the ethnic slurs said to Ukrainians! All the interviews between journalists and POWs. The translations by volunteer translators showing what "ordinary Russians" on the street actually think about Ukrainians and the war. Even what the families of russian soldiers think. Never before have these stories been more accessible. That's not agendas or assumptions.

We. Can. See. It.

Just because you don't like what's in the information space doesn't mean it's not supremely relevant to the topic you're trying to shape into a narrative.

[qqueenofhades]

Hwy dod we even need to send more money to Ukraine tho like we’ve already supported them plenty! But let Europe pull their weight and we can go back to spending that money on American policies

Do you read like, any news outside Tumblr, any Ukrainian perspectives, any basic analyses of the conflict, any rationale from Democrats or Congress, or anything? Because, in brief:

Ukrainians are currently facing a full-scale genocide. It has been going on for over a year and Russian military leadership has every plan to continue until fruition. If they stop resisting, there will be no more Ukraine or Ukrainians. So all the "appeasers" or "realists" insisting that Ukraine should "give up land for peace" (which notably worked so well with Czechoslovakia and Hitler in 1938) are basically deciding that it's fine to let the genocide be carried out, if it's even minorly inconvenient for us. Putin and cronies have repeatedly stated that if they are successful in taking Ukraine, they will go further. This is the exact scenario that leads to the "escalation" and/or WWIII that various people keep wringing their hands over. It is far more just and safe for Ukraine to be supported now and to stop that before it gets even worse.

America is not actually giving over buckets of black cash, regardless of what various bad-faith takes claim. They are handing over weapons valued at various amounts of money, along with some financial and budgetary aid. A lot of these weapons are older and would cost more to decommission than they cost to give to a sovereign democracy fighting for its life against an imperialist autocratic neighbor. This is some tiny amount like 5% (if that) of America's bloated military budget. And again: it's actual weapons valued at a certain dollar amount. These cannot be spent on American domestic policies.

The idea that helping Ukraine is directly coming out of our own pockets or preventing us from spending as needed on our own needs is propaganda. It is not good to repeat it.

I wrote this post the other day about why Putin is trying so hard to break American/Western support for Ukraine, and why the hard-right MAGA has enabled him in it. Putin's Russia is the motivating nexus, coordination, and funding center for Russian/European/American far-right theocratic fascism. This whole "America Only" is the exact rationale that appeals to said far-right domestic fascists and gives Putin and other imperial expansionist kleptocrats the justification to just throw away post-WWII international order and declare that any larger and more powerful state can systematically eradicate any neighboring country, claim its territory, destroy its government, kill its people, and get away with it. Because why would they stop, if there aren't any consequences and they are rewarded for it?

Putin has repeatedly interfered in American elections to help Trump and the Republicans. That should tell you something about who he sees as most favorable to his interests and what he would do again if allowed to emerge victorious.

Europe IS actually pulling its weight! They just brought all 27 defense ministers to Kyiv, they have been working on Ukraine's accession talks, they have committed all types of weapons (including the long-range missiles that the US still won't clearly authorize), they've committed a new tranche of 5 billion euros in long-term assistance, etc. But the whole "we should pull out of NATO and leave Europe to fend for itself" was a key isolationist and xenophobic Trump idea. We can see what that led to.

American aid is vital to Ukraine's continued existence as a sovereign country, period, and it is in American interests to continue to provide it as agreed upon. Not least because such an egregious betrayal of a democratic ally would empower the fascists of the world, both Russian and American, and because as noted, if this conflict was not stopped and got bigger, it would then involve American troops. It is a moral, democratic, political, and ethical imperative. This is not a difficult call or a complicated situation, regardless of what the Online Leftist tankies and the MAGA-world nutcases (because horseshoe theory) want you to think.

Слава Україні.

The end.