Exactly the right point. They pandered and grovelled while Zelensky stood his ground.

A great result for Linke in the German elections. A bright, radical party led by a young, combative woman leader who wears her political DNA on her left arm. Hopefully Linke’s new generation will build on this result and remain the home on all opposed to fascism and xenophobia.

The American half of me sincerely apologizes for the completely unhinged conduct of our president. Gaining insufficient attention for his attempts to dismantle the state and bully all of our allies, he wants to know if mass ethnic cleansing might get you to take him seriously.

Gyorgy Cziffra was possibly the best interpreter of Franz Liszt's fiendish piano solo compositions. His rendition of the Rakoczy March (Hungarian Rhapsody No.15) truly stands out. www.youtube.com/watch?v=vo6e...

“For the past 15 months, #Israel media has focused on a narrative of inevitable victory against #Hamas -- but footage from #Gaza today is plastered across media, showing well-equipped #Hamas fighters in charge. “It's like a bad dream," per one contact in #Israel.” @charleslister1.bsky.social

Through kind courtesy of all those around the world who aided and abetted this mattanza - perfect Italian term to describe it - vocally, logistically and politically in past 18 months.

The short and not very sweet gist of most Western media and political figures, including Starmer, to Gaza today: the three living Israeli hostages are only worth mentioning. The hundreds of Palestinian civilians killed by IDF after the ceasefire was supposed to take effect can be safely ignored.

So there *are* crimes against humanity that Baerbock isn’t comfortable with. Interesting

ME Highlights of 2024, in no particular order: - Annus Horribilis for Iran, with loss of Syria, much of Hezbollah top brass, Raisi. Putative new beginnings with Pezeshkian, but so far achievements have been cosmetic and minimal. Major reckoning over what to do in Trump era beckons.

Why did it take so long to confirm what 972mag reported a year ago? When Ronen Bergman (one of the NYT authors) was asked in May about Israel’s use of AI in mass killing,he mocked the claims as something from a Netflix show. We've long known about the AI-enabled genocide👇 jacobin.com/2024/12/term...

Colossal, historic crimes are underway in Gaza. And the true, full toll — all the mortality not just from bullets and bombs but from disease and exposure and hunger and debilitation — is utterly unknown yet dreadfully enormous.

Carter’s presidency was irredeemably shaped by the Iranian Revolution. His early human rights agenda contributed to the dire prison conditions of political detainees improving in mid-1977, so much that they started owing it to “Jimmicracy”.

Skilful blending of the human story with the politics of a Shia Lebanese family, the South, and Hezbullah: ‘Death is not a stranger in our house’ www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

The continuous crash of the Iranian currency riyal has created design issues for the main rate-reporting website Bonbast, which started activities when the Pounds was 4-5000 tomans. Six figures were likely not predicted in the original design.

Return of normal life to #Damascus #Syria 💚

Very good, informative and cautionary analysis on the current state of Syria. Well worth the read.

"By almost every metric, the harm to civilians from the first month of the Israeli campaign in Gaza is incomparable with any 21st century air campaign. It is by far the most intense, destructive, and fatal conflict for civilians that Airwars has ever documented." gaza-patterns-harm.airwars.org

I would certainly preserve/avoid destroying the building itself, and turn it into a permanent museum on the regime's repressive methods and mechanisms.

A good and sanguine take on what lies ahead for Syria, with necessary emphasis on the meddling of many regional actors: Israel, Turkey in particular. The return of full authority of a central government over the whole of Syria is still very much in the balance.

The Onion always makes sense of it all.

Of course too early to tell whether these documents are genuine or complete. But assuming they are, these documents do provide us with a tantalising glimpse of what the archives of the Assad regime could tell us about past and present dealings of Syria with the main regional actors.

Shows how comfortable Israel was with the armed forces situation under Assad and how deeply insecure it now is.

Iranians are inveterate masters of two things: 1) Blaming their own defeats on others 2) Endlessly repeating “We told you so”

We are getting a steady stream of reports of people suddenly discovering their loved ones are alive, well over a decade after being told they were dead. The anguish they felt over that period, and the readjustment now are frankly impossible to feel for the rest of us. x.com/muslimdaily_...

Vital update 🚨⬇️ "The Association of Detainees and Missing Persons of Sednaya Prison and its team present inside confirm 1. that all of its buildings (white and red) are empty of detainees. 2. The last detainee was released from Sednaya Prison yesterday, Dec. 8, 2024, at 11:00 Damascus Time."

This is powerful, robust reporting which lifts the veil completely on the repressive mechanism of the Baath state. Note how all of this went on till the very end. It is impossible for Assad’s allies not to have been privy to all of this, and maybe even contributed to the prison population.

Waiting for the Italians to finally fumble about why they appointed a full fledged ambassador to Damascus just a couple of months ago. Meloni’s obsession to eradicate migration made the usually smart Italian foreign service make a thundering blunder.

The Hunt | She wanted an opulent Moscow palace that could remind her of home back in Damascus. He wanted a pied-à-terre on a low floor with no windows and a built-in Geiger counter. Which did they choose?

Access to the archives of fallen authoritarian regimes is always crucial. With Saydnaya we have the excruciating, archival evidence of the brutal, uncompromising nature of the Baath police state, something its backers were also fully aware of.

A very important point. Access to the Baath Party archives, a virtually untapped resource thus far, could unlock remarkable avenues in the study of the modern Middle East and entire reshape fields such as the study of authoritarianism.

The proverbial dustbin (trashcan) of History. Obligatory cover photo for any survey book on the History of Modern Syria moving forward.

It’s a good day for Mahmoud Darwish — “The Prison Cell”

Mind boggling. And I am sure there are more similar stories to come.

Two "lasts" - Last Ambassador to present credentials to the Syrian Arab Republic (from South Africa), and last foreign state representative to visit Assad in his office (not surprisingly, Foreign minister of Islamic Republic of Iran).

This is a straight parallel with the way the monarchy came to an end in Iran on 11 Feb 1979: The army ordering soldiers back to barracks in the capital and elsewhere, after realising the impossiblity of facing the now-armed (for the past 48 hours) opposition.

Historical moment. Whatever comes next for Syria as it takes a big step into the unknown this is a defining and enduring moment: the material and symbolic end to decades of police state as embodied through the storming of prisons filled to the brim in every corner of the country.

An enduring image of popular reaction to the end of government rule in settlements of any size in Syria is the toppling of statues, posters and other public signs celebrating the Assad family. The pervasive cult of personality imposed by Hafez on the country is coming into full view these days.

While browsing Le Figaro for my current project on the Iranian Revolution, I came across these snippet on the failed attempt to unite Baathist Syria and Iraq in 1979. While the Iraqi actors in this story have been long consigned to History, the final moments of the Baath era in Syria are upon us.

Current events in Syria are particularly valuable for historians looking back at the various actors which sought to build it in the post-Ottoman era. I would strongly recommend Joshua Landis' brief historical excursus you Al Jazeera today, x.com/joshua_landi...

Noted anti-Semite and Hamas supporter Moshe Ya'alon says Israel is committing ethnic cleansing in Gaza: "There's no Beit Lahia. There's no Beit Hanoun. They're now operating in Jabaliya. They're basically cleaning the territory of Arabs." www.nytimes.com/2024/12/01/w...

Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition covers the gamut of emotions and moods, particularly in these testing times. One of the most enthralling renditions is Sviatoslav Richter's mesmerising, legendary and regrettably very acoustically imperfect Sofia 1958 Recital - www.youtube.com/watch?v=h60P...

Raz Segal discusses the crisis in Holocaust and Genocide studies, particularly during the ongoing genocide in Gaza, in an article for the Journal of Palestine Studies. Tomorrow, he joins editor @srseikaly.bsky.social for a conversation on this & settler antisemitism. Register in 🧵

I scanned a collection of cartoons from the US occupation of Japan 1945 to 1946 I found on ebay. As a historical source, they allow us to explore and critically analyze the US occupier’s racist and sexist depictions of the Japanese. Handle with care: archive.org/details/toky... (2022 tweet archive)

Giving BRISMES' Annual Lecture yesterday, Ghassan Abu Sitta pointed out that the devastation of #Gaza has reached such a point that the primary function/effect of bombing is indirect, i.e. to maintain the ripples of deathly consequences of destroying infrastructure sustaining #life.

Hello Bluesky! We are looking forward to sharing all the latest news and events from the School of History here at the University of St Andrews #skystorians

Same here, 6 years and counting and those parts of the train ride on the sea are never boring or repetitive!

Why do some epistemic frameworks of scholarly 'orthodoxy' produce '#failure' in their scholarly & political Others? How is that failure elided so that it doesn't challenge orthodoxy but reproduces it, legitimizing the #epistemicide of alternatives?

North and South Korea according to the North Korean magazine 화살 1961.9.

Are you ready for the 1942 Blue Book ("stories of adventure for men, by men") retelling of the history of the assassination of Queen Min? "The Bell of Chong-No" (brace for cringe in both text and illustrations) archive.org/details/blue...