Luc Dockendorf

Wrote about this sort of thing in my chapter in our book on the Arab state— with Israeli surveillance of Palestine the most dystopian case of information collection and lethal deployment which still failed to deliver control.

Bless OCHA for continuing to try.

Systematically obstructing the delivery of humanitarian aid is against international humanitarian law and can be a war crime but cautious, hypothetical diplomatic language, slap bang in the middle of the genocide against the Gazans, really doesn't seem appropriate.

Now, questioning power is good. But questioning the guardrails that we have built over decades against unaccountable power, that's really fucking bad.

Not being able to tell the difference between the two kinds of questioning – that's an open door to fascism.

There was a saying somewhere that one of the defining features of fascism is that it constantly questions established consensus on, say, democracy, human dignity, and equality; but I can't remember who said/wrote this and where. Does anyone know?

80 Years After Hiroshima, Nuclear Risks Are Rising New channels of communication and wider support for the IAEA can help prevent catastrophe.

As we mark 80 years since Hiroshima, the global nuclear order is under real stress. Escalation risks in Europe, South Asia, and the Korean Peninsula are intensifying. It’s time for bold, preventive action.

My piece in @foreignpolicy.com

foreignpolicy.com/2025/08/05/h...

Scenario idea: the Knokke Heist

For anyone with a faltering memory: the Tigray war was fought from 2020-2022 (although violence and deaths continued for quite some time afterwards) and it was monstrous, with hundreds of thousands of deaths. There was even an international Commission of Inquiry: www.ohchr.org/en/hr-bodies...

It would be really interesting to learn what role this realisation played in building the much more egalitarian society that Finland is today, also because Finland is arguably one of the (or the) most resistant societies/polities to malicious foreign influence/information manipulation.

My thoughts exactly
bsky.app/profile/lucd...

One very compelling reason to tax billionaires until they’re millionaires is not only that the money can used to fight poverty and the climate crisis, but also to get that money out of politics.

I can't remember off the top of my head who used this formulation first ("If Russia stops fighting, the war will end; if Ukraine stops fighting, Ukraine will end."), so can't properly attribute it, but it remains 100% true today.

Death toll from Russian strikes on Kyiv rises to 31 as Ukraine calls for UN security council meeting – Europe live Over 150 injured making Thursday one of the deadliest days for the Ukraine capital since start of war

Russia is waging a monstrous war of aggression against Ukraine and it can't be repeated often enough that the war would end TODAY if Russia stopped fighting and withdrew all of its forces from Ukraine's territory.

If Ukraine stopped fighting, Ukraine would end.

www.theguardian.com/world/live/2...

States & @UN @UNFCCC @UNDP have #HumanRights obligations to tackle #ConflictOfInterest linked to #FossilFuels at #COP30 in #Brazil

particularly after @CIJ_ICJ Opinion shorturl.at/Z0KAD

👉 shorturl.at/xcEzE

@srenvironment.bsky.social @caadcoalition.bsky.social @shwetanarayan30.bsky.social

Yes here is a list of receipts research.un.org/en/docs/sc/q...

A UN peacekeeping force under Chapter VII of the UN Charter needs to be authorised by the UN Security Council and the resolution setting up the mandate would require 9 out of 15 votes and no dissenting vote from one of the Council's permanent members.

quoteinvestigator.com/2016/01/05/d...

least *bloody (relatively speaking, of course)

The one time I respond to a famous international law professor and there’s a typo. Body ducking autocorrect.

Trump plans massive renovation of White House The $200 million effort will add a state ballroom to the White House grounds.

They have money for this but not affordable healthcare??

www.politico.com/news/2025/07...

U.N. Relief Chief: Gaza is a man-made famine, the politics is a sideshow | CNN Christiane Amanpour speaks with Tom Fletcher, U.N. Emergency Relief Coordinator, about the “desperate… impossible conditions” inside Gaza and what he says are the “bureaucratic impediments” preventing...

Gaza is starving.

We want to believe sustained international pressure will allow us to save as many lives as possible in Gaza. But so far we’re not seeing the scale of change we need.

My interview on @cnn.com with @camanpour.bsky.social : www.cnn.com/2025/07/31/T...

Among other things, they also run Europe’s main regional biennial R2P conference. www.r2pconference.com

And Ljubljana is a lovely city.

Ten-Day War - Wikipedia

The Slovenians got very lucky after the breakup of Yugoslavia; their conflict was the shortest and least body of a decade of wars that defined the 1990s for Europe and the Balkans. They take international law and obligations VERY seriously. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten-Day...

Executive Director Alex de Waal & fellow @fletcherschool.bsky.social Professor @tomdannenbaum.bsky.social call on all states with any leverage at all over Israel to use it without delay to demand comprehensive, full-spectrum, sustainable, & coordinated humanitarian action.

Meanwhile

bsky.app/profile/davi...

Time Has Run Out: Mass Starvation in Gaza and the Global Imperative It is time for comprehensive, full-spectrum, sustainable, and coordinated humanitarian action. States globally must act without delay on that imperative.

Now @justsecurity.org

I join Alex de Waal (@worldpeacefdtn.bsky.social) to call on all states with any leverage at all over Israel to use it without delay to demand comprehensive, full-spectrum, sustainable, & coordinated humanitarian action.

Time has run out

www.justsecurity.org/117962/mass-...

Billions of people have hard lives and the UN was founded 80 years ago to "save them from hell". It does that on a shoestring budget.

It would be INSANE to impose the same austerity measures that have ruined public services in countries around the globe on the United Nations now. #UN80

The title of the B'Tselem report: "Our Genocide"

On the day of the resumption of the Two-State solution conference in New York, B'Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights Israel present reports determining that Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza:
www.btselem.org/publications...
www.phr.org.il/en/genocide-...

What crushes me is not so much the complicit silence – rather, there is a cacophony of well-meaning and rightfully outraged voices denouncing the genocide – but the meticulously learned helplessness of those who are being called upon to “do something!” We confuse speaking out with diplomatic action.

How very sad. He was a sweet man. I remember him from his time leading the UN Mission for Emergency Ebola Response. Those were tense months in 2014 but he was always calm and collected.

Especially cowardice masquerading as pragmatism or “realism”.

Because almost all people in positions of power, authoritarian or democratic, have decided that politics and interests must triumph over the law and principles. A mix of cowardice, failure of imagination, eroded institutions, and learned helplessness is doing the rest. Truly the banality of evil.