I've been planning to write a thought piece about the decline of the US & of the "West" more broadly. In my latest newsletter for @justworlded I noted that this decline currently feels like the second phase of how Hemingway's protagonist Mike described how he went bankrupt: “Two ways,” Mike said. “Gradually and then suddenly.”mailchi.mp/justworldeduca…. Anyway, here's a thread: > > So I went back & revisited some of the notable work from earlier this century on the theme of American decline. I was looking for dispatches from the "gradual" phase of the decline. I couldn't find Wallerstein's iconic 2003 book "The Decline of American Power" but did find the NLR piece that summarized it. >

I’m old enough to remember the Israelis’ killing spree of 2003-04 when they murdered Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, Abdel-Aziz Rantisi, Ismail Abushanab & numerous other top leaders of #Hamas… & they imagined they had thereby “solved” the problem of Palestinian resistance to their brutal colonial rule… But the movement has always laid stress on lifting up & preparing successor generations. Read our book, people! @orbooks @ramikhouri @MouinRabbani

On the 9-month mark since Oct 7, @haaretzcom has a report on the IDF’s apparently broad use of the #Hannibal directive that day: (short 🧵)haaretz.com/israel-news/20… It’s important to understand the #Hannibal , which many Israeli spox & apologists have tried to claim is “no longer in operation.” From Haaretz’s reporting, it clearly is >

THREAD. UNSC #ceasefireresolution #2728 is a great start but it needs a speedy follow-on. Negoiations for that need to start NOW > The resolution has 3 operational clauses: >

Hearing Palestinian poet Fady Joudah recite this poem of his which he wrote as his reaction to hearing news of @itranslate123's murder, 3 months ago today, is a super-powerful experience. Fady's poem >

https://twitter.com/Trickstersworld/status/1765378640148136180

makes many clear references to Refaat's "If I Must Die" (the Kite poem.) Fady & his publishers placed this poem on the bacxk of his latest volume of poems, which dropped yesterday: >

THREAD: Time for the #GlobalMajority to break Washington's lockhold on managing all Arab-Israeli "diplomacy" > Yesterday's #FlourMassacre in Gaza should touch the hearts of decisionmakers everywhere. (Those that have hearts, that is.) Clearly this diplomatic quagmire in which the U.S. has staved off calls for a #ceasefire throughout the past 20-plus weeks has gone on far. too. long. >

THREAD: #Algeria, this month's Chair of the UN Security Council, is calling a special UNSC mtg on Wed to give "binding effect to the pronouncement of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on the provisional measures imposed on the Israeli occupation": > rfi.fr/en/internation… Worth noting that #Algeria was the country in which 's iconic liberation leader #NelsonMandela first met & bonded with leaders of the #Palestinian liberation movement. >S.Africa

THREAD: The application that South Africa made to the World Court (ICJ) on Dec 29 to get an order to Israel to stop #CommittingGenocide is lengthy but very well-compiled. Here's my quick guide to its contents > You can of course read the whole for yourself. Download the PDF here: >icj-cij.org/sites/default/…

SHORT THREAD: #RedSea shipping news update: This is an update to this thread I published Dec 20 about the impact of the #Houthi threats (& attacks) against #RedSea shipping, esp that related to #Israel: > threadreaderapp.com/thread/1737503… As we know, yesterday helicopters from the USN aircraft carrier USS Eisenhower and warship USS Gravely attacked some Yemeni Navy (Ansarallah/Houthi) small boats seeking to inspect a large Maersk container ship in the #RedSea. >

THREAD: The role of the 'monitoring mechanism' in the UN Security Council's #GazaCeasefire negotiations > Back on Monday, the UNSC started discussions on another UAE-provided draft for a #GazaCeasefire resolution. It has still not gone to a vote. News rpts indicate the hold-up is the desire to find wording that does not "force" the US to cast another veto >

THREAD: around 10 days ago, @mouinrabbani commented that the #Houthis in #Yemen didn't even really need to *hit* any of the ships passing thru the Bab El Mandeb in order to have a huge effect on global trade...> That map I used was of the ship-threatening incidents Nov. 18 thru Dec 18. Source: >gcaptain.com/navy-operation…

SMALL THREAD: This week, the US corporate media have returned to doing some thumb-sucking on the matter "#Gaza: the day after". What they're now reporting is actually much *less* substantive than when they did this in mid-November. E.g. the @washingtonpost, Sunday: Here's the lede: "TEL AVIV— The Israelis say they don’t want the job. Arab nations are resisting. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas might volunteer, but the Palestinian people probably don’t want him. /As the Biden administration begins to plan for 'the day after' in Gaza... the stakeholders face a host of unattractive options."

THREAD: 1956, 2023, and End-of-Empire Derangement Syndrome. I've been writing since Oct 17 that since Oct 7 Israel's political and military leaders have been acting in a seemingly deranged manner, as evidenced primarily by their use of extreme amounts of violence against #Gaza with no achievable political goal in mind. ("Eliminating Hamas" certainly doesn't fall into that category.) > Indeed, their use of such devastating amounts of force has seemed to stem much more from a blind desire for revenge than from pursuit of any recognizable political goal. (As Tom Friedman also seems to acknowledge, tho that doesn't make it any less true.) >

I just want to get this clear about the Israelis releasing #Palestinian prisoners. They've now rptdly released ~150 since Friday. But in the West Bank, they have detained that same number or more in these 4 days. But it's worse than that > > Since Oct 7 they've arrested several 1000 of additional Palestns in the West Bank. And in #Gaza, where the IDF had "instructed" all Palestns to leave the north & to travel south down Salaheddin St... >

(Thread) So intrigued to see that the Arab-Islamic committee charged with *ending* Israel's assault on #Gaza, led by Saudi Arabia, will be visiting China tmrw (Nov 20.) Back on October 31, I'd written (at ) that:

"The leaders of China and other representatives of the Global Majority most likely did not want to be launching an open challenge to Washington’s global power right now. But the intensity of the regional and global crisis that has been sparked by the Israel-Gaza war—an intensity that Pres. Biden has greatly magnified through the strength, partisanship, and hugely escalatory potential of the actions he’s taken since 10/7—is bringing ever closer the point at which the leaders of Global Majority states might need to stage an urgent diplomatic intervention in order to defuse and de-escalate these tensions.

"Actually, the sheer horror and devastation that Gaza’s 2.3 million people are currently suffering could well provide the entry-point for a Global Majority intervention that starts with decisive U.N. action... "

And then I provided a clear agenda for how they could proceed...globalities.org/2023/10/gazas-…

https://twitter.com/shen_shiwei/status/1726210319650009309

> Here's a screengrab of what I wrote on Oct 31: >

1/n There are 2 ways to read the @washingtonpost breathless reporting on the White House "Tiger Team" that's been "gaming out" confrontational scenarios re #Ukraine since November: washingtonpost.com/national-secur… > 2/n One way wd be to marvel at the "foresight" & smarts of Biden's forpol team. Another wd be to strongly suspect that this "Tiger Team" has been a major mechanism thru which Bidn's ppl have created & hyped the whole #UkraineCrisis. A couple of notes here: >

Can we say that what is happening in #Afghanistan is the #EndOfAnEra? Yes, in many different ways... (thread) > First, it's the end of this 20-year era in US/world politics bracketed by 2 searing, much-photographed incidents that each involved (a) airplanes & (b) desperate people falling out of the sky. >

Some ppl welcomed @hrw's latest report on #GazaIsrael fighting of May, saying it was appropriately tough on #Israel. I just gave it a close read & I'm not so sure (thread) > hrw.org/news/2021/07/2… > One thing that leapt out at me was @hrw's reflexive both-sides-ism, e.g. in 2nd paragraph. Note too that the link they give there goes to a report on website of Israel's foreign ministry! Objective source?? I don't think so... >

I am totally looking forward to my discussion this Wednesday, 1pm, with @BillFletcherJr in our #WorldAfterCovid series... We'll be discussing > > #BLM, its global resonance (which Bill points out "goes ways beyond just solidarity"), lesson the current pro-justice & anti-racist movements can learn from the struggles against #Apartheid & Portuguese colonialism in Southern Africa, + >

So here's how deeply the US govt has pissed off many allies including its former ally #Iraq'i PM Abdul-Mahdi. He was due to meet #Soleimani in Baghdad to hear S deliver Iran's response to a #Saudi letter re regional de-escalation. thenational.ae/world/mena/us-… > 2/ So Abdul-Mahdi sent a senior #Iraq'i security official, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, to the airport to meet #Soleimani. But @realDonaldTrump decided to kill both men by drone, near the airport. Later in this thread I'll go into the "thinking" behind Trump's outrageous decision >

#SabraAndShatila, never forget.

https://twitter.com/basemn63/status/1173594536427368448

Back in the 1970s, for a year or two I taught English to a group of teenage girls in Shatila refugee camp. Most of them, I never found out what had happened to them & their families during the #SabraAndShatila massacre. >