Here are the front pages of various major US outlets on the day that the count of bodies discovered in mass graves in Gaza hospitals nears 400, some showing signs they were buried alive. Here's the New York Times. The "Israel-Hamas" war only makes it in further down (see pic 2), and then only to mention the US & allies calling on Hamas to release hostages + memorial to slain aid workers. A snapshot from the morning (pic 3) focuses entirely on campus protests.

People who spent 21 mths talking about Ukr. agency & doing whatever "Ukrainians" want are silent at new evidence the US/UK scuttled early peace talks. That's cause throughout the war, these lefty buzzwords have exclusively been deployed only in service of war. A thread: From the start, it's been clear a considerable no. of Ukrainians didn't fit the image we were sold of happy warriors who'd fight forever & pay any cost to win. Many Ukrainians, incl. leftists, backed negotiations. The pro-"agency" crowd simply pretended they didn't exist.

I remember vividly 2011's Libyan intervention, how quickly it was declared a success, and how just 5 years later it was such a disaster everyone responsible disowned it. As the Niger crisis shows, even 12 years later we live with its unintended consequences. A brief history: The intervention was 1st made possible by an overwhelming media & political narrative that painted an over-simplistic picture of what was happening and threw around charges of impending genocide, comparisons to Rwanda etc. Only years later was it challenged and disproven.

Is it true that after 5 years of the Squad in Congress, the Left has nothing to show for it? That AOC et al are no different to establishment Democrats?

I did something novel and did reporting, actually talking to advocacy orgs, unions, activists. They painted a diff picture: Like Sanders, AOC has had success attaching successful amendments to larger bills - her repeal of the Clinton-era Faircloth Amendment passed the House, for e.g. The Squad also played a leading role in a 2019-20 win against mass surveillance.

Why does the "failing bank" exception - the loophole JPMorgan just used to get dangerously bigger, which lets already too-big banks get even bigger as long as they do it by buying collapsing banks - even exist? The official rationale is, regulators view it as a public service: Of course, this ignores the public interest in *not* letting banks get dangerously huge, and the costs of subsequent bailouts for unstable institutions, as critics pointed out at the time. But no matter.

Since the invasion, the Zelensky govt's repression of the Ukrainian Left, anti-war voices, and other dissidents has ramped up dramatically, along w/ centralising power & "de-Russification." And it's being directly enabled by its US & European partners. A thread: To start with, a few major figures who have been targeted w/ prosecution for what are now considered dissident views, starting with Volodymyr Chemerys, a famed leftist dissident who's played a leading role in just about every major recent protest movement in the country.

This piece on how law, human rights standards, and what we regard as basic democratic principles are at odds with Ukraine's security is a good e.g. of the country's authoritarian lurch since the war. See the next tweet for who funded this.
visegradinsight.eu/how-pro-russia… Yes, the fellowship program under which the above was written gets 70% of its funding from the ironically named NED. Moscow's invasion is, sadly and as is often the case, only one part of the story of the political misfortune this country's been put through.

Fascinating interview with ex-Israeli PM Naftali Bennett about Rus-Ukr peace talks early in the war. Arguably the biggest tidbit is he says outright that NATO govts blocked a ceasefire that both Putin & Zelensky wanted. A lot else in there too...
Firstly, here is the timestamp where he says the West blocked it. Note that in Bennett's view, them doing so was "legitimate" & maybe a good thing, for the usual reason that you hear: to send a message to other aggressors around the world.

Some select passages from the new report from RAND, a DoD-funded think tank, about how a long war in Ukraine isn't good for anyone. You'll note many of these points are/have been dismissed by Western commentators, often by calling them Kremlin propaganda: Russian nuclear use is not a mere bluff, as evidenced by the high costs Putin has been willing to pay for Ukraine - which it notes has a special place in Russian FP thinking. A Russian nuke could also easily spark wider nuclear war.

Western hypocrisy on foreign policy is not just "whataboutism," nor irrelevant. It turns out there's a real, tangible cost - for both hard-headed US interests & for earnest believers in a just world order - to years of it. Let me summarise in a thread:
currentaffairs.org/2023/01/us-hyp… First, let me outline the various hypocrisies and double standards - not in the distant past, but happening right now - that make a mockery of Western rhetoric & policy on Rus & Urk. First among them is the steadfast Western backing of the Saudi autocracy's war on Yemen:

A little more info on Zients' role as cost-cutter-in-chief under Obama and what it looked like in practice: mandating arbitrary cuts from agencies, relentless performance reviews meant to decide if something was "waste" or not. It also... ...involved an entirely pointless fire-sale on federal real estate - which was to save very little money in the long run and the CBO estimated would actually *add* to the deficit - and, v. relevant to today, permitting reform that would get projects through enviro. review quicker

Scores of previously unreported diplomatic cables show US officials were warned expanding NATO to Ukraine would lead to civil war in the country, deteriorating US-Russian relations, a more hawkish, nationalist Russia, and a Russian invasion. A thread:
usrussiaaccord.org/acura-viewpoin… NATO allies France, Germany, Italy and Norway all warned Washington it could provoke Moscow or cross its "tripwires," and that, prophetically, Ukraine's accession was the most likely cause of war in Europe - that Russia could end up doing something like it did in Prague 1968.

Jacobin has been publishing pieces critical of Russiagate and the "bots stole the election" narrative for at least the last five years. I know cause I wrote a bunch of them.

https://twitter.com/jimmy_dore/status/1614472363479007236

As just one example: jacobin.com/2018/05/russia…

An extraordinary and alarming report that the CIA is directing sabotage operations within Russia, and which are being carried out by an unnamed NATO ally's spy agency. Merry Christmas everyone.

Quite a few things to say about this:
jackmurphywrites.com/169/the-cias-s… 1. At this point, Washington & whichever NATO govt is doing this seem to be relying to a disturbing degree on continuing Russian restraint to stop this becoming a wider war. Remember the below, from a report about US giving Ukr. the ok to strike within Russia.

We're all appalled by authoritarianism and human rights abuses and want to stop them. But well-meaning people must also think critically about why there's media saturation of certain govts' abuses and not others, and what this can lead to.
theguardian.com/world/2022/nov… For another e.g., see the govt of Egypt, whose repression and brutality has been off the charts since its current dictator seized power. That brutality extends to US & other foreign citizens, who have been tortured in hideous ways this last decade.

ICYMI: The 2022 midterms were one of the best ever for the US Left, starting with the new "Squad" members, who have solid records of progressive legislative accomplishment. Besides this... ...Fetterman & Peter Welch's wins put two solid progressives and specifically Sanders allies in the Senate, while the Working Families Party has emerged as a budding national force. And...

This entire episode should be a reminder to everyone, including myself, not to jump to conclusions, not to assume what's plausible is true, to wait for evidence, and to be careful with the claims of anon officials. Best practice anyway, but esp in this war
apnews.com/article/russia… Once more, it was establishment, "authoritative" sources that most powerfully spread misinformation, in this case in a way that could've led to something really dangerous. It started with AP reporting the false claim of a nameless US intel official...
apnews.com/article/nato-a…

The establishment of both US parties is hostile to working class interests, but what the GOP is planning if they win is nothing less than an all-out assault on working families, labour, and global stability. Examples below:
jacobin.com/2022/11/republ… Biden's refusal to abolish the debt ceiling has handed the possible GOP a majority a crucial point of leverage to force planned Draconian spending cuts and neoliberal reforms to entitlements, welfare, and more.

The view that diplomacy is bad and the war should go on is held by former colonial powers in the Global North representing, generously, 13% of humanity. It's Global South states representing ~65% of the world's people calling for negotiations. Colonial reflex indeed. Given the deadly risks to states in the Global South from a US-Russian nuclear war, and the suffering already being borne by the developing world from this war, this is not surprising. Neither, sadly, is the total indifference to this in Western discourse.

From a Post story based on Biden officials' version of events:
washingtonpost.com/national-secur…

https://twitter.com/mattduss/status/1587411574121177091

Duss' claim here that the Kremlin's reaction to Finland & Sweden joining NATO was to say "no big deal" is flat out false. The initial Russian response was very threatening. They *later* toned it down, though continued to make threats.

https://twitter.com/democracynow/status/1587785647971913728

60 years ago, we luckily avoided nuclear holocaust. A review of media coverage at the time shows diplomacy wasn't taboo, while today's liberal establishment's adopted nearly word for word the rhetoric of Cold War hawks who would've killed us all. A thread:
jacobin.com/2022/10/cuban-… Calls for military action, which would've almost certainly led to a US-Soviet war and nuclear catastrophe, began immediately. In fact, they if anything got more strident after Kennedy told the public about the nukes six days later.