Bulletins and News Discussion from January 15th to January 21st, 2024 - International Clowns and Jesters - COTW: South Africa

Image is of legal adviser to Israel's foreign ministry Tal Becker and British jurist Malcolm Shaw at the ICJ hearing.

The ICJ case against Israel might not achieve much for the Palestinian cause directly, given that Israeli politicians have explicitly stated that the Hague will not stop them - and I believe them. The Resistance will be what stops them, and they are doing quite well for themselves. Hezbollah has hit highly sensitive and important Israeli military sites over the last couple weeks, and in general persist in several border attacks every day. The battles in Iraq and Syria also continue. Hamas remains largely intact, and is successfully forcing Israeli forces in the northern Gaza Strip to retreat, and other parts of the Gazan Resistance are continuing to battle down in Khan Yunis. And, last but not least, Yemen is firmly dedicated to the blockade, warding off another ship literally minutes before I started writing this paragraph.

What the ICJ is battling over isn't Palestine and Israel - not really - but the legitimacy of international law itself, and to what degree victimized countries can rely on it to solve problems, versus needing to take more militant routes for justice. In a weird sense, it might be an L for Israel either way. If international law sides with Palestine, then when Israel refuses to stop, it will invalidate international law. If international law sides with Israel, then it will invalidate international law. There is no conceivable way for the West to come out of this looking good.

The South African portion detailing Israeli atrocities against Gaza was largely ignored by the western media. They have instead, obviously, decided to focus on the Israeli portion. Their defense appears to amount to "We didn't do it, Hamas did it. And if we did do it, it doesn't matter, because that's just urban warfare for you. Please get this whole thing thrown out on a very dubious technicality so we don't have to advance to the next stage."

From Craig Murray, who has been physically going to the Hague:

It is important to realise this. Israel is hoping to win on their procedural points about existence of dispute, unilateral assurances and jurisdiction. The obvious nonsense they spoke about the damage to homes and infrastructure being caused by Hamas, trucks entering Gaza and casualty figures, was not serious. They did not expect the judges to believe any of this. The procedural points were for the court. The rest was mass propaganda for the media.
...I am sure the judges want to get out of this and they may go for the procedural points. But there is a real problem with Israel’s “no dispute” argument. If accepted, it would mean that a country committing genocide can simply not reply to a challenge, and then legal action will not be possible because no reply means “no dispute”. I hope that absurdity is obvious to the judges. But they may of course wish not to notice it…
What do I think will happen? Some sort of “compromise”. The judges will issue provisional measures different to South Africa’s request, asking Israel to continue to take measures to protect the civilian population, or some such guff. Doubtless the State Department have drafted something like this for President of the court Donoghoe already.
I hope I am wrong. I would hate to give up on international law. One thing I do know for certain. These two days in the Hague were absolutely crucial for deciding if there is any meaning left in notions of international law and human rights. I still believe action by the court could cause the US and UK to back off and provide some measure of relief. For now, let us all pray or wish, each in our way, for the children of Gaza.

The weekly update is here on the website.

The Country of the Week is South Africa! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.

The bulletins site is here!
The RSS feed is here.
Last week's thread is here.

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Back to our regularly scheduled programming. Weekly update is here (really, covering both last week and the week before).
The Country of the Week is South Africa!
As mentioned in the preamble, feel free to post or recommend any material related to South Africa, whether from a thousand years ago or yesterday. You can post it anywhere in the thread, but you can also reply to this comment if you wish.
If you're feeling particularly ambitious and want homework, you could take on any or all of these questions (no reward, but I'll be very proud of you):
Who are the main political actors? Are they compradors, nationalists, international socialists, something else?
What are the most salient domestic political issues; those issues that repeatedly shape elections over the last 10, 20 years. Every country has its quirks that complicate analysis - for example, Brexit in the UK.
What is the country's history? You don't have to go back a thousand years if that's not relevant, and I'm counting "history" as basically anything that has happened over a year ago.
What factions exist, historically and currently? If there is an electoral system, what are the major parties and their demographic bases? Are there any minor parties with large amounts of influence? Independence movements? Religious groups?
How socially progressive or conservative are they? Is there equality for different ethnic groups, or are some persecuted? Do they have LGBTQIA+ rights? Have they improved over time, or gotten worse?
What role do foreign powers play in the country’s politics and economy? Is there a particular country nearby or far away that is nearly inseparable from them, for good or bad reasons? Is their trade dominated by exports/imports to one place? Are they exploited, exploiters, or something in between?
If applicable, what is the influence of former colonial relationships on the modern economy and politics?
Is the country generally stable? Do you think there will be a coup at some point in the future, and if so, what faction might replace them?
The previous country was Ethiopia.
This is our Geopolitics Reading List so far! Please chime in with suggestions!
General Theory:
Super Imperialism, by Michael Hudson.
Imperialism in the Twenty-First Century: Globalization, Super-Exploitation, and Capitalism’s Final Crisis, by John Smith.
Superexploitation and the Imperialist Drive of Capitalism: How Marini's 'Dialectics of Dependency' Goes beyond Marx's 'Capital', by Andy Higginbottom.
Capital Volume 3 Lecture Series, 32 videos, 10-15 minutes each, by Andy Higginbottom.
World-Systems Analysis: An Introduction, by Immanuel Wallerstein.
Geopolitical Economy: After US Hegemony, Globalization and Empire, by Radhika Desai.
Capitalism, Coronavirus and War: A Geopolitical Economy, by Radhika Desai.
Canada:
Canada in the World: Settler Capitalism and the Colonial Imagination, by Tyler Shipley.
Chile:
1000 Days of Revolution: Chilean Communists on the Lessons of Popular Unity (I cannot personally find an online version).
Santiago Boys Podcast, analyzing Allende's government and Cybersyn.
Lebanon:
A History of Modern Lebanon, by Fawwaz Traboulsi.
United States:
Drug Cartels Do Not Exist: Narcotrafficking in US and Mexican Culture, by Oswaldo Zavala.
Venezuela:
Objective Conditions in Venezuela: Maduro’s Defensive Strategy and Contradictions Among the People, a longform article by Steve Ellner.
- This is what the apartheid regime was pushing out in its final days: https://nitter.cz/muhammadshehad2/status/1746541205465264428
  Most of the people in the clip are white and half of the Black people are playing a musical instrument lol

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