News & views (not related to the wars in Ukraine and Palestine) …

Only for news & views directly related to the war in Palestine.

EU's Borrell says Israel is provoking famine in Gaza – Reuters, Mar 18 2024

EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said on Monday that Israel is provoking famine in Gaza and using starvation as a weapon of war, an accusation Israel's foreign minister rejected.

"In Gaza we are no longer on the brink of famine, we are in a state of famine, affecting thousands of people," Borrell said at the opening of a conference on humanitarian aid for Gaza in Brussels.

"This is unacceptable. Starvation is used as a weapon of war. Israel is provoking famine."

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The neoconservatives have launched their probably last attempt to save their project in Ukraine.

Edward N Luttwak @ELuttwak – 13:42 UTC · Mar 16, 2024

In Ukraine the age of conscription is 27, that is when people have started to work & have children. Naturally not many show up. Now they are discussing lowering the age to 25, still absurd. 18 is the right age, with bodies of growing strength. The Ukraine army is much too small

Following Luttwak's urging, a neocon Senate stooge jumped in:

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) called on Ukrainian lawmakers Monday to quickly pass a mobilization bill that would make more citizens eligible to be drafted into the military, and he sharply questioned exempting men under 27 from the fight.

Graham called for the swift legislative action — even as U.S. lawmakers remain unable to reach their own consensus on aid for Ukraine — while visiting Kyiv, his first trip to the Ukrainian capital since he abruptly turned against a $60 billion aid package for the country last month.
…
Ukraine is already short of soldiers and ammunition, and Russia is advancing on the battlefield, having recently seized the eastern city of Avdiivka after a Ukrainian retreat. Ukraine’s new mobilization law, which has been under debate for months as the country faces a severe shortage of battle-ready troops, proposes lowering the country’s draft age to 25. Although citizens can voluntarily join the military starting at age 18, and men between 18 and 60 are banned from leaving the country under martial law, the draft has until now protected younger men — many of whom are students — from being forcibly mobilized.

“I would hope that those eligible to serve in the Ukrainian military would join. I can’t believe it’s at 27,” he told reporters Monday. “You’re in a fight for your life, so you should be serving — not at 25 or 27.”

“We need more people in the line,” he said.

Hmm – who is this "we" please? Is this meant as a pluralis majestatis or as an admission that the whole war is not about Ukraine but about the selfish aims of some lunatic clique in Washington DC?

Cont. reading: Ukraine’s Demographics Again Dictate To End The Fight

This morning I read through some curious stories.

U.S. citizens, answering anti-buy-lobby call, protest as shops open

NEW YORK – Citizens protested against rampant consumerism by forming large lines just as shops opened – answering calls by Back-To-Nature to buy less, and undercutting preliminary reports of record sales.

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Holiday travelers, answering leaders call, protest as check-ins open

Cont. reading: Selling A Predicted Behavior As Protest?

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The current open thread for other issues is here.

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Only for news & views directly related to the war in Ukraine.

The current open thread for other issues is here.

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Last weeks posts on Moon of Alabama:

• March 11 – Why Non-White Voters Are Moving Away From Democrats
  Related:
  – Young and non-White voters have shifted right since 2020 – Washington Post, Feb 7 2024

• March 12 – A Gaza Sea Port Theater
  Related:
  – Israeli human rights groups accuse country of failing to abide by ICJ’s Gaza aid ruling – Guardian, Mar 16 2024
  – U.N. Documents More Than Two Dozen Attacks on Gazans Waiting for Aid Since January – New York Times, Mar 16 2024
  – War on Gaza: Torture, executions, babies left to die, sexual abuse… These are Israel’s crimes – Jonathan Cook / MEE, Mar 15 2024

  – They're Really Going To Try To Lay All The Blame For Gaza On Netanyahu – Caitlin Johnstone, Mar 17 2024
  – Governing post-war Gaza – Abdel Bari Atwan, Mar 13 2024

• March 12 – French Defense Reports Acknowledge Ukraine Is Done With
• March 15 – Ukraine – France Already Lost In Odessa
  Related:
  – France all dressed up and nowhere to go – Indian punchline, Mar 14 2024
  – U.S. anticipates grim course for Ukraine if aid bill dies in Congress – Washington Post, Mar 15 2024
  – Ukraine faces ammunition crisis as air defence missiles dwindle – Telegraph/MSN, Mar 16 2024

  – In this Ukrainian village, almost no men are left – Washington Post, Mar 15 2024
  – Due to mobilization, livestock is being slaughtered in Ukrainian villages. (in Russian) – Strana, Feb 1 2024
  – Ukraine needs 500,000 military recruits. Can it raise them? (archived) – FT, Mar 15 2024

• March 14 – Transgender – The Inability To Distinguish Facts From Wishes
  Related:
  – Gen Z adults identify as LGBTQ at much higher rates than older Americans, report shows – CNN, Jan 25 2024

—
Other issues:

Cont. reading: The MoA Week In Review – OT 2024-080

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The French president Emmanuel Micron has gone a bit crazy:

Europe’s credibility will be destroyed if Russia is allowed to win in Ukraine, Emmanuel Macron has warned, as he defended his refusal to rule out sending troops to the country.
…
The war in Ukraine is “existential for our Europe and for France”, Mr Macron said in the interview on France 2 and TF1.

“Do you think that the Poles, the Lithuanians, the Estonians, the Romanians and the Bulgarians could remain at peace for a second [in the event of a Russian victory in Ukraine]?” he asked. “If Russia wins this war, Europe’s credibility would be reduced to zero.”

Micron fails to recognize that Europe does not have any credibility it could lose. Just ask those ~150 countries who have not sanctioned Russia. They know very well that the 2014 U.S./EU coup in Kiev started the mess and that the failure, especially of France and Germany, to force Kiev to implement the Minsk agreements led to its escalation.

Failing as the guarantor of agreements without any attempts to enforce them leaves one's credibility behind.

Trying to regain land for Ukraine that it had lost a decade ago is similar nonsense:

"We are doing everything we can to help Ukraine defeat Russia, because I will say it very simply: There can be no lasting peace if there is no sovereignty, if there is no return to Ukraine's internationally recognized borders, including Crimea," Macron said during the TV interview.

Interestingly Micron does not say how he will attempt to achieve that. The front is cracking everywhere and Ukraine is running out of men who are capable and willing to fight.

France could probably send 30,000 troops to Ukraine but what good could those do? It does not have the troops and equipment for a real fight with Russia. The logistics alone, vulnerable to Russian attacks, would be a nightmare.

The France dream of ruling Odessa already died during the chaos at the end of the first world war 105 years ago (edited machine translation):

December 12, 1918. Renault tanks unloading in Odessa – bigger

Cont. reading: Ukraine – France Already Lost In Odessa

Matt Taibbi opines on the latest piece of transgender nonsense:

The Dumbest Cover Story Ever – Racket News, Mar 13 2024
New York Magazine's "Freedom of Sex" is the ultimate example of the lunatic nihilism that's consumed America's intellectual class

New York Magazine has a new cover story, by the trans writer Andrea Long Chu: “The moral case for letting trans kids change their bodies.” A jeremiad in support of the idea that children must have absolute political agency, it makes the Unabomber manifesto read like a Shakespeare sonnet. The money passage:

We must be prepared to defend the idea that, in principle, everyone should have access to sex-changing medical care, regardless of age, gender identity, social environment, or psychiatric history.

A lot of the piece is standard-issue woe-is-me fuck-everything cartoon nihilism you’d hear from any laptop-class liberal arts product, arguing for a generalized smashing of the patriarchy, among other things by attacking the biological conspiracy to produce those units of material labor value known as babies. Complete abolition of norms would be an “impossible task,” Chu notes sadly, but that doesn’t preclude their “collective reimagining” by an alliance of intersectional victims working toward a Marxian paradise free of “oppressive systems,” which of course include the nuclear family.

The nihilism Taibbi points to is also the major theme the French anthropologist Emmanuel Todd takes on in his book "The Defeat of the West".

From its New York Times review:

This Prophetic Academic Now Foresees the West’s Defeat (archived) – New York Times, Mar 9 2024

Cont. reading: Transgender – The Inability To Distinguish Facts From Wishes

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News & views (not related to wars in Ukraine and Palestine) ….

The French president Macron has recently pushed for an engagement of foreign troops in Ukraine. The idea was immediately rejected by every country that would be able to send a reasonable number.

The question is why Macron suddenly came out with this.

A series of recent reports from the French defense establishment might have caused his irritation.

The French magazine Marianne got access to "several confidential defense reports" from the French army on the situation in Ukraine.

Guerre en Ukraine : de la prudence à l'affolement… Ce que cache le virage de Macron (archived) – Marianne, Mar 7 2024

Arnaud Bertrand has translated large parts of it:

The situation looks exceedingly bleak for Ukraine, which might in part explain Macron's recent declarations around sending troops to Ukraine. I translated the important parts of the article:

"A Ukrainian military victory now seems impossible"

The reports Marianne consulted write that Ukraine's counter-offensive "gradually bogged down in mud and blood and did not result in any strategic gain" and that its planning, conceived by Kiev and Western general staffs, turned out to be "disastrous": "Planners thought that once the first Russian defense lines were breached, the entire front would collapse […] These fundamental preliminary phases were conducted without considering the moral forces of the enemy in defense: that is, the will of the Russian soldier to hold onto the terrain".

The reports also highlight "the inadequacy of the training of Ukrainian soldiers and officers": due to a lack of officers and a significant number of veterans, these "Year II soldiers" from Ukraine – often trained for "no more than three weeks" – were launched into an assault on a Russian fortification line that proved impregnable.

Somehow people who had never heard of the Battle of Kursk convinced themselves that Russian soldiers in defensive positions would run away as soon as they would hear a tank rumbling towards them. They of course did not do so.

These Russian troops are well managed and cared for:

Cont. reading: French Defense Reports Acknowledge Ukraine Is Done With

The stupid idea of building an 'emergency' sea port in Gaza gets sold as being somewhat in defiance of Israel's genocidal blockade of Gaza:

The details for the pier and causeway plan, President Biden’s latest idea to get around Israel’s blocking of aid deliveries via all but two land crossings, were outlined by the Pentagon press secretary, Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder, in a news conference on Friday.

Aid organizations have welcomed the plan, which was announced on Thursday, days after the U.S. military began airdropping supplies into Gaza.

The whole idea of the port is in fact an Israeli one:

The plan for a maritime route to Gaza via Cyprus to provide humanitarian assistance for Palestinians was initiated by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in collaboration with US President Joe Biden, a senior diplomatic source told The Jerusalem Post on Sunday night.

"Netanyahu took the initiative to establish maritime humanitarian aid for the civilian population in the Gaza Strip, in collaboration with the Biden administration,” the source stated.

According to the source, on October 22, two weeks following the war's outbreak, Netanyahu discussed with President Biden the concept of "delivering humanitarian aid to Gaza via the sea, contingent on an Israeli inspection in Cyprus."
…
Years before the Gaza war, Israel Katz, now the Foreign Minister, had drawn up plans for a maritime route via Cyprus involving a floating island.

The project was never executed. But he revived it after the war began on October 7.

Biden is again following Netanyahoo's plans.

The route through Cyprus will allow for a more stringent Israeli control and easier shutoff of all supplies for Gaza. It will allow Israel to shut off all land routes into Gaza while burdening others with the consequences and costs of doing so.

The bigger idea behind this is that Israel will no longer be held responsible for its occupation of Gaza.

Biden could of course easily press Israel to change its behavior and to open all land routes to Gaza. The withholding of all U.S. military and financial support, even for only a week, would do wonders in that regard.

Alas Biden has been a livelong racist and Zionist and is way too old to change his ways.

The Democrats fear that they are losing support from non-white voters.

Polling data indeed shows that parts of the non-white voters are shifting away from the Democrats and towards the Republicans.

John Burn-Murdoch, chief data reporter for the Financial Times, has looked at the reasons why that is being the case.

John Burn-Murdoch @jburnmurdoch – 14:39 UTC · Mar 11, 2024

NEW 🧵:

American politics is in the midst of a racial realignment.

I think this is simultaneously one of the most important social trends in the US today, and one of the most poorly understood.

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Last week, an NYT poll showed Biden leading Trump by less than 10 points among non-white Americans, a group he won by almost 50 points in 2020.

Averaging all recent polls, the Democrats are losing more ground with non-white voters than any other demographic.

A further investigation of this trend finds that there are three factors involved in this.

Cont. reading: Why Non-White Voters Are Moving Away From Democrats

Only for news & views directly related to the war in Palestine.

The current open thread for other issues is here.

Please stick to the topic. Contribute facts. Do not attack other commentators.

Only for news & views directly related to the war in Ukraine.

The current open thread for other issues is here.

Please stick to the topic. Contribute facts. Do not attack other commentators.

Last week's post on Moon of Alabama:

Empire:

• March 4 – Supreme Court Puts States Into Their Place
  Related:
  – Early polling of Biden’s State of the Union doesn’t quite match the hype – Washington Post, Mar 8 2024
  – Who Could Have Predicted the U.S. War in Somalia Would Fail? The Pentagon. – Intercept, Mar 7 2024
  – Invented Narratives and the Outrage Industry – Teri Kanefield, Mar 9 2024

Ukraine:

• March 5 – Ukraine – Cookie Monster Retires
• March 6 – Ukraine SitRep: The Slow Grind – New Bombs – Calling For Talks
  Related:
  – NATO Should Be Honest With Kiev – American Conservative
  – ‘Novorossiya’ rising from ashes like phoenix – Indian Punchline, Mar 9 2024
  – Time Is Running Out in Ukraine – Dara Massicot / Foreign Affairs, Mar 8 2024
  – Mutual Frustrations Arise in U.S.-Ukraine Alliance (archived) – New York Times, Mar 7 2024
  – Pope says Ukraine should have 'courage of the white flag' of negotiations – Reuters, Mar 8 2024
  – NATO Can Have Ukraine or the USA—Not Both – Sen. Mike Lee / American Conservative, Mar 9 2024
  – Russia’s new guided bomb inflicts devastation and heavy casualties on the Ukrainian front lines – CNN, Mar 10 2024

  – The Top Onlyfans in Ukraine in 2024 – Village Voice, Mar 8 2024

Palestine:

• March 8 – Finding The Right Words On Gaza
• March 9 – Israel 'Coerces' UN Workers – By Outright Torturing Them
  Related:
  – Israel: Quietly Fraying? – Naked Capitalism, Mar 8 2024
  – Chief Sephardic rabbi says ultra-Orthodox will bolt country if forced into army – Times of Israel, Mar 9 2024

  – AS`AD AbuKHALIL: Hamas’ Official Account – Consortium News, Mar 7 2024
  – The Biden doctrine in Gaza: bomb, starve, deceive – Aaron Maté, Mar 8 2024
    The White House unveils a new PR stunt for Gaza aid while hiding US arms transfers to Israel.
  – US plan for temporary pier in Gaza a "glaring distraction" – Doctors Without Borders, Mar 8 2024
  – Providing Both Bombs and Food, Biden Puts Himself in the Middle of Gaza’s War (archived) – New York Times, Mar 8 2024

  – Hezbollah Thwarts Israeli Infiltration Attempts into Lebanese Territory – Al Manar, Mar 6 2024
  – Hezbollah Won’t Stand Down Without a Cease-Fire in Gaza – Sam Heller / World Politics Review, Mar 8 2024

—
Other issues:

Cont. reading: The MoA Week In Review – OT 2024-074

Every time one thinks that the depravity of Zionist fanatics has finally reached a limit they will proudly present even worse behavior.

UNRWA report says Israel coerced some agency employees to falsely admit Hamas links – Reuters, Mar 9 2024

The U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees said some employees released into Gaza from Israeli detention reported having been pressured by Israeli authorities into falsely stating that the agency has Hamas links and that staff took part in the Oct. 7 attacks.

Coerced, pressured, … Maybe they had a harsh talk?

No. They outright tortured, Abu Graibh like, these UN workers. Some of them to their death:

The document said several UNRWA Palestinian staffers had been detained by the Israeli army, and added that the ill-treatment and abuse they said they had experienced included severe physical beatings, waterboarding, and threats of harm to family members.
…
In addition to the alleged abuse endured by UNRWA staff members, Palestinian detainees more broadly described allegations of abuse, including beatings, humiliation, threats, dog attacks, sexual violence, and deaths of detainees denied medical treatment, the UNRWA report said.
…
Reuters could not independently confirm the accounts of coercion of UNRWA staff and mistreatment of detainees, although the allegations of ill-treatment accord with descriptions by Palestinians freed from detention in December, February and March reported by Reuters and other news media.

Remi Brulin @RBrulin – 0:44 UTC · Mar 9, 2024

“We tortured some folks” is pretty bad

“We tortured some folk so we could destroy a huge relief organization that’s indispensable in dealing with a huge humanitarian crisis that we created in the first place” is…. something else

What are civilized people supposed to do with these miscreants?

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