Palestine Open Thread 2025-026

News & views related to the war in Palestine ...

Ukraine - Intensity Of War Has Decreased

Over the last month the war in Ukraine has become less intense.

The number of daily losses on the Ukrainian side, as provided by the Russia Ministry of Defense, has decreased from an average 2,200 per day in early November 2024 to an average of 1,600 per day in late January 2025.

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Ukraine has acknowledged that the level of violence has decreased (edited machine translation):

Cont. reading: Ukraine - Intensity Of War Has Decreased

Open (Neither Ukraine Nor Palestine) Thread 2025-025

Department of State @StateDept - 0:36 UTC · Feb 6, 2025

U.S. government vessels can now transit the Panama Canal without charge fees, saving the U.S. government millions of dollars a year.

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Panama Canal authority denies changes to charge fees after US claim - Reuters - 4:30 UTC . Feb 6, 2025

PANAMA CITY, Feb 5 (Reuters) - The Panama Canal Authority said in a statement late on Wednesday that it had not made any changes to charges or rights to cross the canal, after the U.S. State Department said that U.S. government vessels could transit the crossing without being subject to such fees.

"With total responsibility, the Panama Canal Authority, as it has indicated, is willing to establish dialogue with relevant U.S. officials regarding the transit of wartime vessels from said country," the authority said.

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News & views not related to the wars in Ukraine and Palestine ...

Trump Wants To Take Over Gaza, Announces 500,000 Dead

The king of Israel (with a red alpha tie) visited his vassal state in America where real-estate developer Donald Trump (blue beta tie) pushed the chair for his leader and offered him to cleanse the Palestinian population from all land the Zionists desire to take.

Via AP:

President Donald Trump on Tuesday suggested that displaced Palestinians in Gaza be permanently resettled outside the war-torn territory and proposed the U.S. take “ownership” in redeveloping the area into “the Riviera of the Middle East.”
...
The provocative comments came as talks are ramping up this week with the promise of surging humanitarian aid and reconstruction supplies to help the people of Gaza recover after more than 15 months of devastating conflict. Now Trump wants to push roughly 1.8 million people to leave the land they have called home and claim it for the U.S., perhaps with American troops.

“The U.S. will take over the Gaza Strip, and we will do a job with it too,” Trump said at an evening news conference with Netanyahu by his side.

The internationally acknowledged Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics' count of the population of Gaza in 2023 was 2,226,544. Trump wants to remove all Palestinians from Gaza and gives their number as 1.7 or 1.8 million:

Reporter: How many people are you thinking need to leave Gaza?
Trump: “All of them. Probably a million seven, maybe a million eight. They’ll be settled in areas where they can live a beautiful life.” (video)

This is an acknowledgement, by the president of the United States, that the genocidal Zionists have murdered up to 500,000 people in Gaza.

Despite that toll few in Gaza would move voluntarily:

Cont. reading: Trump Wants To Take Over Gaza, Announces 500,000 Dead

Lavrov vs. Rubio On Multipolarity

I have lauded Marco Rubio's view which declared that the short period of a unipolar world has come to an end.

The new Secretary of State had said:

"So it’s not normal for the world to simply have a unipolar power. That was not – that was an anomaly. It was a product of the end of the Cold War, but eventually you were going to reach back to a point where you had a multipolar world, multi-great powers in different parts of the planet."

If find that a much better concept than the 'rules based order'.

There are however different flavors of multipolarity.

The one Rubio likely thinks of is one in which might makes right. Several 'big dog' countries are sharing the globe, avoiding each other, while a number of small nations must do as they are told by whatever big power that can make them do so.

Witness the recent interactions between the U.S. and Colombia, Panama, Mexico and Canada. The Trump administration has threatened these countries with tariffs and other measures. After it had got what it wanted it pulled back at least a part of the threat (tariff). Unless it meets strong resistance it will repeat doing that again and again.

Another flavor of multi-polarity, one which Russia and China will likely support, is acknowledging that all countries, big or small, have equal rights. This is the base of the United Nations system which was born during allied talks in Yalta and Potsdam at the end of World War II.

Sergei Lavrov, the long term Foreign Minister of the Russian Federation, is arguing for upholding it:

The UN Charter Should Become the Legal Foundation of a Multipolar World - Global Affairs, Feb 4 2025

Cont. reading: Lavrov vs. Rubio On Multipolarity

Thoughts On Musk's Raid Of USAID

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has announced to reconfigure U.S. foreign policy from a unipolar view to a multi-polar concept of strong states.

But, as Brian McDonald warns, that does not mean that the U.S. has given up hope of being the biggest dog in town:

A Washington that stops pretending to rule the world and starts playing smart could be a tougher competitor for Beijing and Moscow than the one we’ve seen desperately clinging to a crumbling 'rules-based order.' The era of unipolarity might be over, but the game is far from done.

'The game is far from done' can also be said about Elon Musk's raid of USAID:

The Trump administration and its allies moved to tighten control of the U.S. Agency for International Development over the weekend, signaling an intent to act forcefully to bring the U.S. foreign policy apparatus in line with the president’s “America First” approach to engaging with the world.
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Over the weekend, Musk repeatedly denigrated USAID without offering evidence that those working there were corrupt. On X, he called the long-standing government agency “evil” and a “viper’s nest of radical-left marxists who hate America.”

“USAID is a criminal organization,” he added. “Time for it to die.”

Established in 1961 by President John F. Kennedy, USAID oversees a vast portfolio of programs designed to provide humanitarian relief, combat poverty, support global health and more.

The rarely spoken of 'and more' part of USAID involves billion of dollars for regime change operations with the help of 'civil society' manipulations via U.S. subsidized media and Non-Government Organizations.

The Trump administration will kill parts of that and reintegrate the rest of USAID into the state department. The CIA offshot National Endowment for Democracy (NED) will likely meet a similar fate.

In their current configuration USAID and NED are under institutionalized congressional oversight. Taking away their independence by putting them under executive control will increase the White House' power. Neither is likely to completely stop their dirty work but it will become more difficult to detect and expose it.

Trump's MAGA is not against doing regime changes in foreign countries. Its main beef with USAID is about its abuse by the Democrats which pushed it to promote their ideologies and to incite foreign societies against Trump.

In a world where the U.S. is no longer trying to be the unilateral power, regime change may not longer be needed that much. In a multi-polar world the U.S. does no longer need to create and confront adversaries but can restrict itself to coerce allies to pay up via tariffs, weapon sales or otherwise. Pax Americana may well become Tax Americana.

Palestine Open Thread 2025-024

News & views related to the war in Palestine ...

Ukraine Open Thread 2025-023

News & views related to the war in Ukraine ...

The MoA Week In Review - OT 2025-022

Last week's posts on Moon of Alabama:

• Jan 27 - Ukraine - Organizational Chaos, Commanders Fired
• Jan 31 - CIA/NYT Remove North Korean Troops From Ukraine's Front Line
  Related:
  - Nazi Propaganda at Sundance? - Moss Robeson
  - Exclusive: U.S. wants Ukraine to hold elections following a ceasefire, says Trump envoy - Reuters
  - Servility and political mimicry by Ukraine's pro-Western elites as they face military defeat - AlMayadeen
  - ‘Everybody is tired. The mood has changed’: the Ukrainian army’s desertion crisis - Guardian
  - AP Interview: Zelenskyy says excluding Ukraine from US-Russia talks about war is ‘very dangerous’ - AP

• Jan 28 - On Biden/Blinken Etc. - Matt Taibbi On Tucker Carlson's Show
  Related:
  - Tucker & Piers Morgan Debate Foreign Aid, Hate Speech, NATO, Gun Control, & Is Zelensky a Dictator? (video) - Tucker Carlson Show
  - Musk's Junta Establishes Him as Head of Government - Doomsday Scenario

• Jan 29 - Halt Of USAID Exposes Malign Foreign Influence
  Related:
  - Trump is wreaking havoc at USAID. Is the goal to shut it down? - Politico
  - End the Aid Charade - Trump and Rubio put foreign assistance under the microscope. - AmCon
  - A career official tried to undo Trump’s purge at USAID. He was then purged, too. (archived) - Washington Post
  
  - Did a Trump executive order just cripple the global US regime change network? - Grayzone
  - US aid was long a lifeline for Eastern Europe. Trump cuts are sending shockwaves through the region - AP
  - Development as a Tool of Economic Statecraft - A Net Assessment of U.S. and Chinese Approaches - RAND

• Jan 30 - Syria - New York Times Claims Mysterious Coalition Installed Dictatorship
  Related:
  - Syria enters new era amidst uncertainties - Indian Punchline
  - Ahmad al-Sharaa's Address to the Syrian Nation - Translation and Overview - Aymenn AlTamimi
  - Syria’s Al-Qaeda Branch Dissolves, Says Goals Completed by Regime Change - Antiwar

• Feb 1 - Rubio: "It’s not normal for the world to have a unipolar power."
  Related:
  - Did the US Declare the End of the Unipolar World Order? - Glenn Diesen
  - Trump says he ordered air strikes on Islamic State group in Somalia - BBC

Brian McDonald @27khv - 11:31 UTC · Feb 2, 2025

A lot of glee on X over Marco Rubio admitting the US is no longer the unipolar hegemon Of course, accepting the reality of a multipolar world—where powers like China and Russia act in their own interests—could lead to a more peaceful global order.

But here’s the catch: a humbled US that recognizes its limits might actually become more effective. Without the costly burden of maintaining global dominance on every front, it could shift focus to sharper, more calculated moves, like strategic trade wars and targeted alliances.

A Washington that stops pretending to rule the world and starts playing smart could be a tougher competitor for Beijing and Moscow than the one we’ve seen desperately clinging to a crumbling 'rules-based order.' The era of unipolarity might be over, but the game is far from done.

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Other issues:

Cont. reading: The MoA Week In Review - OT 2025-022

Rubio: "It’s not normal for the world to have a unipolar power."

President Joe Biden showed a lunatic believe of being 'the leader of world'. He cherished the extension of the 'unilateral moment' when the U.S., after the breakdown of the Soviet Union, could act globally without restrictions and without fear of consequences.

There is some dread abroad that President Donald Trump, with his boarish demanding style of negotiation, would also follow that view.

But Trump's choice as Secretary of State, former Senator Marco Rubio, is offering a different perspective. In an extensive interview with Megyn Kelly, Rubio is doing away with the unilateral moment and starts to endorse multipolarity.

He is asked for his big picture overview:

QUESTION: It’s such a tricky time to be Secretary of State, especially as a Republican, because you look at the Republican Party and it’s fractured internally about where we should be on foreign policy. [...] So how – just give me the 30,000-foot-level view of how you’re going to navigate that fracture.

Rubio seems to have thought quite a bit about this. Foreign policy as practiced over the last years, he says, has lost its focus:

I think the mission of American foreign policy – and this may sound sort of obvious, but I think it’s been lost. The interest of American foreign policy is to further the national interest of the United States of America, right? [..]

[A]nd that’s the way the world has always worked. The way the world has always worked is that the Chinese will do what’s in the best interests of China, the Russians will do what’s in the best interest of Russia, the Chileans are going to do what’s in the best interest of Chile, and the United States needs to do what’s in the best interest of the United States. Where our interests align, that’s where you have partnerships and alliances; where our differences are not aligned, that is where the job of diplomacy is to prevent conflict while still furthering our national interests and understanding they’re going to further theirs. And that’s been lost.

To recognize that the other side is pursuing its own (at least subjectively legitimate) interests is indeed what had been lost at the basis of U.S. diplomacy.

Rubio expands on that:

Cont. reading: Rubio: "It’s not normal for the world to have a unipolar power."