#suez nation

[agentfascinateur]

All this...for the planned "Ben Gurion Canal":

Gaza is currently being bombed to oblivion by the deranged Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu who wants to deliver The Ben Gurion Canal Project. Yes, Tel Aviv already has a name for the canal which was first proposed back in the Sixties. It would connect the Gulf of Aqaba on the Red Sea to the Mediterranean Sea, and would even be named after the first prime minister of Israel.

To be built on the blood sacrifice of Palestinian children...

[snugglyporos]

// the fun thing about history is that it's so messy

so the US can be a horrible colonial power and also be one of the biggest forces of anti-colonialism in the world at the same time

like the mid-20th century is just the US having to deal with Britain and France and the Dutch trying to save their empires despite the fact that these are bad things

and then at the same time that it's trying to get them to stop that it's also setting up anti-commie states at any cost which leads to a mess

absolutely baffling foreign policy of 'anything but communism' which leads to somehow being both imperialist and anti-colonialist

only the US could be so baffling and against itself

[agp]

'the international community' greenlighting current israeli policy is one thing but americans insisting that biden can dictate israeli policy is another thing entirely. yes his green light is providing the most leverage. yes americans have heavy influence over israeli policy. but they do not dictate it.

israel is a bourgeois state like any other and its policy reflects the interests of its ruling class. it is a settler colonial enterprise for the exploitation of natural and human resources. it is a site of capitalist productivity, just like bidens america. both he and israeli political leadership are beholden to these class interests.

any pressure american politicians put on their israeli counterparts is done within the delicate balance of these interests - that is, in a context of bourgeois dictatorship. which is to say if anything is dictating israeli policy, it is its national bourgeoisie, and other factors are secondary to their interests.

what complicates things is how much the israeli bourgeoisie has depended on western governments for material, financial, and diplomatic support in their settler colonial project. this does not suddenly reverse the relationship of class and politics, but leads to greater political consideration of american, canadian, british, french, german, etc interests, which i repeat are the interests of their own national bourgeoisie under the current political arrangement.

america may be an imperialist superpower with puppets, and we can argue all day about whether israel qualifies as a one, but my point here is that even the most heavily controlled bourgeois imperialist puppet gets its strings pulled not directly from the imperialist power that enforced the establishment of a local bourgeoisie, but by the existing social relations of production and the classes they produce. imperialism can enforce capitalism, but it is ultimately the becoming-proletarian and becoming-bourgeois of the colonized by their very relationship to labor and production that dictates policy under capitalism.

to reiterate, biden doesnt dictate israeli policy, let alone american policy. the ruling class does

[drsonnet]

Blue Helmet Bureaucrats

مراجعة كتاب (بيروقراطيو/نمطيو الخوذ الزرق أبريل2023: عمليات الأمم المتحدة لحفظ السلام وإعادة اختراع الاستعمار، 1945-1971). ثبت أن الأمم المتحدة كانت تعبيرا عن المصالح الاستعمارية والحرب الباردة للدول القومية في هذه الفترة. -عدد مايو 2024 https://academic.oup.com/ia/article-abstract/100/3/1312/7663893

Blue helmet bureaucrats: United Nations peacekeeping and the reinvention of colonialism, 1945–1971

Blue Helmet Bureaucrats: United Nations Peacekeeping and the Reinvention of Colonialism, 1945–1971 by Margot Tudor | Goodreads

Blue helmet bureaucrats: United Nations peacekeeping and the reinvention of colonialism, 1945–1971

By MargotTudor. Cambridge University Press. April, 2023.  310 pp.

£85.00.

ISBN978 1 00926 492 1. Available as e-book.

Review: Hamish McDougall

International Affairs, Volume 100, Issue 3, May 2024, Pages 1312–1313, https://doi.org/10.1093/ia/iiae117

Published: 07 May 2024

The ongoing violence in Gaza, Myanmar, Ukraine and Yemen is a confronting reminder, if one was ever needed, of the ineffectiveness of the United Nations and other elements of the international system to keep peace. Anyone pondering how and why we got here would benefit from reading Margot Tudor's new book, which provides a history of UN peacekeeping efforts via a series of case-studies from the second half of the twentieth century. It is now reasonably well established that the UN was an expression of the colonial and Cold War interests of nation-states in this period. Conversely, it was also a vehicle to advance the interests of the recently decolonized or ‘non-aligned’ states of the global South (frequently termed ‘the Afro-Asian bloc’ in this book). Less well known, and providing a large part of this book's value, is that the UN was not just a tabula rasa for nation-states, but it was also an actor in its own right. In other words, the UN created, executed and perpetuated particular norms, cultures and actions around the world.

Summary

The end of the ’spirit of Bandung’ in the late 1960s coincided with the passing and retirement of most of the key UN officials involved in the development of the peacekeeping project. By 1971, the Cold War obstructed the UN forums from authorising any new armed peacekeeping missions. Weaving together the contributions of previous chapters, the conclusion reiterates the how UN peacekeepers’ racial prejudices and technocratic logic perpetuated international hierarchies of power, colonial structures, and further suppressed the self-determination of peripheral or minority populations. It addresses the role of the UN peacekeeping missions in supporting - if not, openly enabling - the United States’ anticommunist aggression across the Global South during the decolonisation period. Rather than being passive in this process, however, this book has demonstrated how the UN officials agreed that anticommunism was a peacebuilding strategy for global security. Ultimately, peacekeepers’ unique role in the field shaped the formation of the post-colonial international order, embedding uneven hierarchies of race, expertise, and diplomatic power within newly independent nations and populations.

Blue Helmet Bureaucrats (cambridge.org)

[medicatingwithfiction]

Honestly some of the greatest poetry I've ever read

two years ago...

[just2bruce]

Rail freight inducements hope to drive new loads

Several national rail agencies are actively working to increase rail traffic, with a focus on reducing costs and emissions.

This interesting article ties together several efforts by national rail agencies to drum up more traffic. The countries range from Russia to the UK. When you have a national railroad, rather than private enterprise, you can make quick changes that will reduce costs for the kinds of shipments you want. The article focuses on Russia, which is losing lots of cargoes from the Far East headed for…

[itssideria]

Genuine question, really not sure what to do/who to vote for- uh do you have any suggestions? Protesting yes, but what now- today's like endless bad news

hey, anon.

i'm assuming you're referring to my post on the 'vote blue no matter what' gang — i wrote that in a complete (and justified) fit of anger. i should start by saying i am not american, or palestinian — i am an arab who grew up in an arab country, though, and all of us have long since grown sickened and enraged with american imperialism.

my honest answer? i don't know. i'm not american. i'm not a politician. maybe i'm some horrifically idealistic piece of shit but i just think that brazenly funding a genocide, lying about it, and then bombing the only country that tries to prevent it should earn you the death penalty, but oh well.

@/fairuzfan has posted a lot about this — she's a palestinian in the states. not tagging her bc we aren't mutuals. she has stated that she won't vote in the presidential elections at all, but rather at local levels and congress. one person has stated that they are engaging in activism more than ever, forming communities, movements, working their way up. other people will be voting for a third party candidate they agree with, such as Cornel West or Claudia de la Cruz — you can read up on their stances for yourself, i'm not active in US politics. some will threaten to withhold their vote from Biden, whether they are serious of pretending, as that may scare him into changing his tactics.

none of these are foolproof. most of them prevent nothing. i am aware that for americans this shit feels like life and death — it's what all of you say, every four years.

however, and i cannot state this enough, i am so past the point of caring. my entire region has been fucking devastated by your nation. egypt can't threaten suez access because it'll get invaded. yemen and syria and iraq are dealing with past and current bombing. the entire fucking gulf sucks your country's dick to get oil money to build vanity projects and hire more slave labour. and palestine? palestinian blood will run thick with the weight of the crimes the us committed against them.

for once in their stable, unaffected fucking lives, i want americans to pretend—pretend!—the rest of the world exists. for ONCE, i want americans to say "fuck this, he committed genocide, i will never write his name on my ballot". for ONCE, i want americans to sacrifice something, ANYTHING—you barely live under a democracy as is. poc americans report no improvement under biden compared to trump. white queer people think they'll be protected and so shout at the need to throw the developing world under the bus.

there are no good options. but dear God, just don't put the name of the man funding a genocide on your fucking ballot. it didn't save anyone four years ago. it won't now.

[hungwy]

Some facts about my birthday (October 29):

1390: First trials of witchcraft in Paris

1618: Walter Raleigh, colonialist statesman, soldier, and explorer, is tried for treason and executed

1682: The founder of Pennsylvania, William Penn, lands at what is now Chester, PA

1740: James Boswell, diarist and biographer, is born

1863: The International Red Cross is formed in Geneva

1882: Jean Giradoux, playwright and novelist, is born

1888: The Convention of Constantinople allows for free maritime passage through the Suez Canal; Li Dazhao, co-founder of the CCP and mentor of Mao, is born

1889: N.G. Chernyshevksy, author of "What is to be done?", dies

1897: Joseph Goebbels, the nazi, is born

1901: Leon Czogolsz, anarchist, is executed for the assassination of William McKinley

1910: A.J. Ayer, logical positivist, is born

1914: The Ottomans enter WWI

1923: The Ottoman Empire dissolves; Turkey becomes a republic through the efforts of Atatürk

1924: Zbigniew Herbert, poet, is born

1929: Black Tuesday, the crash of the New York Stock Exchange and the beginning of the Great Depression

1938: Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, president of Rhodesia, is born; Ralph Bakshi, animator, is born

1940: The US begins its first peacetime military draft

1948: Franz de Waal, ethologist, is born

1949: George Gurdjieff, philosopher and mystic, dies

1956: The Suez Crisis begins

1962: The Beach Boys release "Surfin' Safari"

1967: Musical "Hair" opens off Broadway

1969: The first computer-computer link established on ARPANET

1971: Ma Huateng, co-founder of Tencent, is born; Winona Ryder, actor, is born

1975: Franco's 36-year long leadership of Spain ends

1985: Evgeny Lifshitz, physicist, dies

1991: The spacecraft Galileo makes the first ever visit to an asteroid

1995: Terry Southern, screenwriter of Dr. Strangelove, dies

2004: Al-Jazeera broadcasts Osama Bin Laden taking responsibility for 9/11; European Union leaders sign the first EU constitution

It is the Christian feast day of:

Abraham of Rostov

Blessed Chiara Badano

Colman mac Duagh

The Duai Martyrs

Gaetano Erico

Michele Rua

Narcissus of Jerusalem

Theuderius

It is a public holiday in:

Cambodia (Coronation Day)

Turkey (Republic Day)

It is a private holiday in:

USA (National Cat Day)

Everywhere (my birthday)

[enriquemzn262]

Found my dad’s old United Nations bracelet, dated 1957, when he was part of the Batallón Colombia #2, Colombia’s contribution to the first United Nations Emergency Force, formed to deal with the Suez Crisis between Egypt and Israel.

I quite like it! For something almost 70 years old, it’s in surprisingly great shape.

[transit-fag]

A boat crashed in the Suez again, let's use a mode share that's actually reliable, like rail to move both people and goods again. Nationalize the railways.

[useless-englandfacts]

No offence but isn't this an England blog and not a Palestine blog?

full offence but here's some homework for you! a list of things i want you to google:

the balfour declaration

the sinai and palestine campaign during WW1

what happened to the ottoman empire at the end of WW1

the league of nations' mandate for palestine

mandatory palestine, 1920-1948 (pay close attention to the flag because i think it'll appear quite familiar)

the peel commission

the woodhead commission

suez crisis (more to do with egypt but still relevant vis a vis israel)

so weird how britain pops up in every single one of those incidents!

also i shouldn't have to say this but there are some things in the world that are more important than keeping a tumblr blog 'on theme'.

[thoughtportal]

Ben Gurion Canal Project

The Ben Gurion Canal Project[citation needed] is a proposed canal project through the state of Israel. It would connect the Gulf of Aqaba to the Mediterranean Sea.[1][2][better source needed] David Ben Gurion, for whom it would be named, is considered the Founding Father of Israel and was the first Prime Minister of Israel.

The canal would rival the Suez Canal, which runs through Egypt and has had many disturbances in its history, such as the Israeli blockage through the Suez Canal and Straits of Tiran, Closure of the Suez Canal (1956–1957), Closure of the Suez Canal (1967–1975), and the 2021 Suez Canal obstruction.[1] It would be slightly more than 50% longer than the 120.1 mi (193.3 km) Suez Canal, at around 182 mi (292.9 km).[2]

Canada/US' quiet motive for backing Israel's genocide: the Ben Gurion Canal

from November 14, 2023 The United States, Israel, Canada and their allies are fiercely determined not to permit a ceasefire, considering their aligned interests. Their deliberate and joint offensive in the Gaza Strip is a clear indication of a long-term strategic plan, characterized by continuous air and ground attacks. This collaboration, which has tragically led to the loss of over 10 000 Palestinian lives, including a significant number of children, is not just a coincidence. It is the result of a well-coordinated military strategy, driven by shared economic and geopolitical objectives among these nations.

[vanessalocke]

[France was once expected to join the Commonwealth]

Today I found some interesting information.

As I said in the previous post, I was very surprised to read on 2 wiki pages that France almost joined the Commonwealth. However, in the previous post I was a bit hasty in making the judgment that the UK would not let France join the Commonwealth. In fact, the UK was VERY EXCITED about the idea of ​​France joining the Commonwealth, but…

The whole story is like this: around 1956, France was trying to deal with Egyptian President Gamel Abdel Nasser's desire to nationalize the Suez Canal, so the French prime minister secretly negotiated with the British prime minister to prevent this from happening. In general, the whole Suez Canal affair was a mess and there is nothing to say, but that is not the main point of this post. Here is the main point:

In order to attract Britain to cooperate and tolerate it completely, France proposed an Anglo-French "alliance". Original text: "When the French Prime Minister, Monsieur Mollet was recently in London he raised with the prime minister the possibility of a union between the United Kingdom and France."

British Prime Minister Anthony Eden refused because it sounded too absurd. So Mr Mollet proposed another solution: how about France joining the Commonwealth and swearing allegiance to the King/Queen?

Reading this far, I was like:

???????

In fact, the British Prime Minister was EXTREMELY EXCITED about the proposal for France joining the Commonwealth :D and I think one of the reasons why Britain agreed to participate in the Suez Canal plan was because of this crazy proposal. This is just my personal opinion, that is, Britain wanted to declare the French monarchy for hundreds of years without abandoning it, even putting that wish on the Canadian flag, so the idea of ​​France joining the Commonwealth and swearing allegiance to the King/Queen is no different from Britain's wildest dream coming true :)

But the problem is, the British and French plan in Egypt was not successful. And because of the Suez Crisis, the whole of West Asia became hostile to colonialism, and the US also squeezed the British and French and kicked Britain out of its imperial position. And because the Suez Canal campaign failed, the agreement for France to join the Commonwealth was no longer valid.

This proposal of Prime Minister Mollet was classified as a state secret document, and was only declassified at the beginning of the 21st century. Historians and politicians who read this were shocked.

All of this is summarized from the BBC: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/6261885.stm

Well, this reminds me of something quite interesting in APH.

Do you remember this strip?

Yes, I assure you, the reason Himaruya drew these two as if they were about to get married was because of the BBC article that I just linked above =)))))))))))) because the title of the article was "When Britain and France nearly married" =))))))))))))))))))

However, Himaruya seemed to want to "bend" the event to fit his character setup or something, or because of his point of view, he turned this into a comedy proposal between England and France. The half-joking, half-serious style, France forced England to sign the marriage papers while England flatly refused LOL. Himaruya also didn't mention the Commonwealth agreement.

In my opinion, the "nearly married" part of the British newspaper title does not refer to the Anglo-French union proposed by Mollet as in the APH strip above, but only to the later proposal, that France join the Commonwealth =))))))))))) because the British immediately rejected the idea of ​​uniting the British and French as one, but considered the idea of ​​France joining the Commonwealth very, very seriously. You guys just read the newspaper link above, when the British side received that proposal, they were very excited.

Let's move forward a bit to this year. France was expected to join the Commonwealth and that event was compared by the BBC to "nearly married". In 2024, France became the FIRST NON-COMMONWEALTH country to attend the Changing of the Guard ceremony at Buckingham Palace, British soldiers guarded the Élysée Palace and French soldiers guarded Buckingham Palace. Make sense yet?

Ps: at the end of the BBC article, the author did not forget to mention the EEC ha ha ha ha.

[matan4il]

Daily update post:

Two independent terrorist attacks against Israelis took place over the last 24 hours. Yesterday, a Hamas terrorist stabbed in the back a 49 years old Israeli reserves soldier, who stopped to buy something at a shop in a gas station, on his way home. The soldier turned around and, despite being injured, pursued the terrorist, shot and wounded him. The terrorist was later arrested, he had a permit to work in Israel. In the second one, a terrorist started shooting at civilian vehicles passing by, and ended up injuring a 27 years old woman. Thankfully, a baby who is 1.5 months old, who was in the car with her, was not injured, despite at least 10 bullets being retrieved from her vehicle. The IDF is searching for the terrorist.

Israeli soldiers have found and confiscated suitcases with 5 million shekels in cash from the home of a senior Hamas terrorist in Gaza. I want everyone to understand that this sum is currently 1,369,507 $ (yes, I checked with professor Google), and that most Israelis will never see that kind of money. I imagine a majority of "privileged" westerners never will, either. And this kind of money was just lying around in this terrorist's home...

The IDF has exposed and is now in control of what is likely the biggest Hamas terror tunnel. It is about 4 kilometers long (roughly 2.5 miles), and it is wide enough for vehicles to comfortably drive through it. Israeli soldiers have also found footage showing Muhammad Sinwar, the brother of Hamas leader in Gaza Yahya Sinwar, doing exactly that, in addition to footage showing the construction of this terror tunnel...

I don't post every single day about the Israeli soldiers injured and killed in Gaza, because the truth is that it has become technically difficult and emotionally painful to keep track. Yesterday, five more soldiers were confirmed as killed, one of them having been injured last week, and he has now succumbed to his wounds. So far, 128 soldiers were killed in Gaza.

Last month, there was a cyber attack on Israeli hospital Ziv, trying to derail its medical activity. Israel has confirmed today that it has traced Iran and Hezbollah as responsible for the attack. If we count the cyber war (and in terms of requiring manpower and resources, as well as in terms of the potential loss in human life, there is no reason not to count it), then Israel has been defending its citizens on no less than six fronts.

The Iran-funded terrorist Houthis in Yemen have been attacking ships unconnected to Israel, for simply passing through territory close to Yemen. A lot of shipment companies from around the world have announced they will not be sailing through this area for at least a time, which means they would have to sail all around Africa, to pass goods between the far east and the western world. This will hurt the entire world's economy, as shipment prices are expected to rise (think of the Evergreen ship blockade of the Suez Canal... these ships will not be trying to get anywhere near the canal. Symbolically, Evergreen is one of the companies announcing they will no longer sail through the Red Sea due to the threat of the Houthis). This will financially hurt so many countries, including Egypt (which operates the Suez Canal), the US and China (this means Iran's move has created a rare moment when American and Chinese financial interests align). The biggest question is, when will the world fully take in the fact that the biggest threat to world peace is the Islamist regime in Iran, and start acting accordingly?

This is Haj Amin al-Husseini.

Out of all of the people who helped shape the Israeli-Arab conflict, he's probably the most influential one, an antisemite, a Nazi collaborator, and a believer in pan-Arab nationalism (he didn't want to fight Jews to establish a Palestinian state, he wanted to exterminate the Jews and establish a greater Arab Islamic state, a new chaliphate, if you will. There is a FASCINATING docu series in Israel, dedicated to the Arab and Muslim leaders who have fought Jews and Israel, interviewing intelligence agents from many countries. The ep dedicated to al-Husseini is unbelievable, and I wish everyone could watch it. It's available online, but sadly, only in Hebrew. The truth is, I don't think anyone can understand the Israeli-Arab conflict without understanding the role of al-Husseini in it, and how different things could have been, if only the more moderate Arab leaders in the Land of Israel at the time had managed to squash his influence, or if the British hadn't tried to "tame" him by appointing him to the position of Jerusalem's grand mufti.

This is the Belchassan family, 31 years old Yuval and Ofir, and their two years old son Tai.

On Oct 7, Yuval left Ofir and Tai to hide in the bomb shelter, and went out to fight off the Hamas terrorists. He and his friends saved their kibbutz, but now, as Ofir is due to give birth to a daughter, they have no home to bring her back to.

(for all of my updates and ask replies regarding Israel, click here)

[girlactionfigure]

IDF OPERATION "OUTSTRETCHED ARM" SPECIAL UPDATE

Today, July 20th, 2024, Israeli Air Force fighter jets struck military targets belonging to the Houthi terrorist regime in Yemen. All of the pilots returned home safely.

The strike was conducted in response to the Houthis' ongoing terrorist attacks on Israel in recent months. These attacks have included the launch of hundreds of aerial threats, one of which resulted in the death of Israeli citizen Yevgeny Ferder z”l and the injury of several other civilians.

Israeli Air Force jets executed an extensive operational strike over 1,800 kilometers away from Israel, targeting locations in the area of the Al Hudaydah Port in Yemen. The Al Hudaydah Port serves as an entryway for Iranian weapons to the Houthi terrorist regime and is a significant economic source for them. This strike is one of the furthest from Israeli territory ever conducted by the Israeli Air Force.

In recent months, the Houthis have been working to destabilize the Middle East. Their terror attacks, funded and directed by Iran, harm maritime freedom in the area, regional ports, the Suez Canal, and global trade as a whole.

Under Iran's guidance, attacks against Israel and Western nations are conducted by Iranian-funded, armed, and directed proxies. This strategy allows Iran to hide and avoid the consequences of war.

The IDF will continue to defend the State of Israel against terror threats wherever necessary and will maintain the security of Israeli civilians.

[zvaigzdelasas]

The United States has announced the launch of a multinational force to protect trade in the Red Sea after attacks by Yemen’s Houthi rebels forced at least a dozen shipping lines to suspend operations.

US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said on Monday that Bahrain, Canada, France, Italy, the Seychelles and the United Kingdom would be among the countries joining the 10-nation “multinational security initiative”.[...]

Mohammed al-Bukhaiti, a senior Houthi official and spokesperson, told Al Jazeera on Monday that the group would confront any US-led coalition in the Red Sea.

The coalition might also include Egypt and Jordan as additional Arab nations to Bahrain, as they have a vested interest in ensuring the safe passage of ships, said Al Jazeera’s Sara Khairat, reporting from occupied East Jerusalem[...]

19 Dec 23

“Reading between the lines, it’s a very difficult situation for some of these Middle Eastern countries. You have Saudi Arabia, which is very close, it seems, to signing a deal with the Houthi rebels in Yemen,” she added. “You have Egypt, which doesn’t want to be seen as going against the Houthis’ message on Gaza – which is for Israel to stop the war on the enclave.”[...]

At least 12 shipping companies, including the Italian-Swiss giant Mediterranean Shipping Company, France’s CMA CGM and Denmark’s AP Moller-Maersk, have suspended transit through the Red Sea due to safety concerns. UK oil giant BP on Monday became the latest firm to announce it would avoid the waters.[...]

Houthi attacks have effectively rerouted a significant portion of global trade by forcing freight companies to sail around Africa, imposing higher costs and delays for energy, food and consumer goods deliveries. About 12 percent of global trade passes through the Red Sea, which connects to the Mediterranean Sea via the Suez Canal, including 30 percent of container traffic.