Can the Two-State Solution Be Saved? Debating Israel’s One-State Reality
Some of the responses to the Foreign Affairs “One-State Reality” article are ludicrous, the article’s authors do a great job dismantling them. See also Marc Lynch.
Finished reading: The Assassination Bureau, Ltd. by Jack London 📚
The concept: a secret society of assassins carries out “socially useful” murders, but is convinced to accept a commission to kill its own leader. Wonderful turn of the century story with dandy anarchist overtones.
Syrians in Turkey facing uncertain future whether Erdoğan stays or goes | Turkey | The Guardian
An estimated 4 million Syrians live in Turkey and their relationship to their adopted home deepened over the past decade despite an increasingly hostile climate. When polled, at least 80% of Turks say they want Syrians to return. This sentiment has found an increasing home across the political spectrum in Turkey, amid a rise in openly anti-immigrant xenophobic parties and where a broad coalition trying to unseat the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has attacked him from the right on immigration.
The result has been a tug-of-war between Erdoğan’s governing coalition and the nominally social democratic opposition Republican People’s party (CHP) over the fate of Turkey’s Syrian community. Both parties are openly competing to see who can promise to crack down harder on immigration and swiftly restore relations with Assad. When Turkey heads to the polls on Sunday the Syrian community is poised to endure loss no matter who wins.
Marcos Makes Mark on Foreign Policy in Push for Closer U.S.-Philippines Ties - The New York Times
If he makes a mean gumbo, can he be all bad? This reminds me of the coverage of Gamal Mubarak and Basshar Al-Assad (and Seif Qadhafi and many others) in the 2000s.
Until last year, it was never clear where Mr. Marcos personally stood on the United States, given his family’s history. But by inclination and background, he has demonstrated that he is pro-Western in his leanings. He went to Oxford University in England. He enjoys watching Formula 1 and loves rock music, particularly Eric Clapton and the Beatles. He also loves cooking for his family and makes a mean gumbo, according to Matthew Marcos Manotoc, Mr. Marcos’s nephew and the governor of Ilocos Norte, the stronghold of the Marcos family.
A number of international news websites blocked in Egypt after reporting the capture of Egyptian troops in the current fighting between military and RSF forces.
Leaker of U.S. secret documents worked on military base, friend says - The Washington Post: “The man behind a massive leak of U.S. government secrets that has exposed spying on allies … is a young, charismatic gun enthusiast who shared highly classified documents with a group of far-flung acquaintances searching for companionship amid the isolation of the pandemic.”
As a watch geek, this article irked me. The writer clearly does not know watch terminology: terms like “sports watch” mean something specific (nothing to do with fitness), and there is no such thing as a “Rolex Day-To-Date”. The men trading their Rolexes for plastic sports watches | Financial Times
New website for Saudi sovereign wealth fund’s venture arm reveals ties to more than 50 VC and PE firms including Blackstone, KKR, Andreessen Horowitz, CVC and Apollo.
Russian dissident Vladimir Kara-Murza’s final statement to the court handling his sham trial is remarkable: “But I also know that the day will come when the darkness over our country will dissipate. When black will be called black and white will be called white; when at the official level it will be recognized that two times two is still four; when a war will be called a war, and a usurper a usurper; and when those who kindled and unleashed this war, rather than those who tried to stop it, will be recognized as criminals.”
Fascinating piece on an attack on musicians who play Nazi favorites Strauss and Wagner in Israel: Jascha Heifetz in the Case of the Violinist and the Fanatical Doorman - The New York Times
This is a great resource on who owns Lebanon’s banks (and profits from the protection they currently enjoy): ‘They’ Have Names: Who’s Behind Lebanon’s Banks & State - Badil | The Alternative
Economic Predation in Egypt’s Prisons - TIMEP “When outside visits were temporarily suspended during the pandemic… guards complained to their captive audience that they were losing more than 50 percent of their salary because they could not elicit bribes from visiting families.”
“Whatever the outcome of these protests, a state that considers equality an existential threat can never be a democracy. The reason Palestinians are not participating is because we have known this all along” Youssef Munayer in Foreign Policy For Palestinians, Israel’s Supreme Court Upholds Jewish Supremacy and Apartheid
How the record Boeing deal was caught between Washington and Riyadh | Semafor: Riyadh paused deal after US backlash on OPEC+ move in October 2022, forcing Brett McGurk and other officials to come in to salvage it and US to back down on threats.
Science is broken | Semafor: “An astonishing number of scientific studies, especially in medicine and the social sciences, are wrong. Statistical naïveté, poor practice, and outright fraud have meant that scientific journals have filled up with false information. Systematic attempts to replicate the findings of old studies have failed in between a half and two-thirds of cases.”
Truffle Hunting in Syria, Once a Beloved Pastime, Is Now a Danger - The New York Times: “At least 84 people have been killed so far this year hunting truffles in the country’s central and eastern desert… Some were killed by land mines, others shot by gunmen or kidnapped and killed later.”