Image is of Joseph Robinette Biden, who has stepped down and will not run against Trump in the 2024 election.

In the aftermath of Trump surviving an assassination attempt, many professional opinion-havers are now talking about the scourge of “political violence” that has overtaken, or will soon overtake America, and how we must not let chaos rule. This is, of course, patently absurd. The American government and its allies have been the greatest force of political violence on the planet since the beginning of colonialism, and the foundations of the country are made of corpses. Today, America commits political violence by forcing Ukrainians into the maw of Russian artillery instead of trying to reach a peaceful settlement, which Russia has repeatedly expressed interest in and offered Ukraine relatively favourable terms. They supply Israel with endless weaponry to destroy entire cities and populations, while Biden supporters insist that somehow things could be worse than daily massacres and mass starvation.

In May 1945, French police fired on protestors, causing retaliatory attacks on French settlers, killing about a hundred. In response, the French murdered 45,000 Algerians in a little under two months, in a frenzy of political violence called the Sétif and Guelma massacre. As the massacre was being completed, the International Court of Justice was established. It goes without saying that Algeria never benefited from the ICJ, and the War of Independence from 1954 to 1962 was made inevitable. Over a million Algerians were killed before France could bear the fighting no longer and gave up, and Algeria won itself a state. Comparisons to the ongoing war of independence and genocide in Palestine are obvious.

While the means of colonial violence have evolved over the centuries, the basic structure of it has not. As in Algeria, Vietnam, and Cuba, resistance groups in and around Palestine are fighting for a world with less political violence. The American government would drown every city in the developing world in blood to prevent peace.

The COTW (Country of the Week) label is designed to spur discussion and debate about a specific country every week in order to help the community gain greater understanding of the domestic situation of often-understudied nations. If you’ve wanted to talk about the country or share your experiences, but have never found a relevant place to do so, now is your chance! However, don’t worry - this is still a general news megathread where you can post about ongoing events from any country.

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

Please check out the HexAtlas!

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

Israel-Palestine Conflict

If you have evidence of Israeli crimes and atrocities that you wish to preserve, there is a thread here in which to do so.

Sources on the fighting in Palestine against Israel. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:

UNRWA daily-ish reports on Israel’s destruction and siege of Gaza and the West Bank.

English-language Palestinian Marxist-Leninist twitter account. Alt here.
English-language twitter account that collates news (and has automated posting when the person running it goes to sleep).
Arab-language twitter account with videos and images of fighting.
English-language (with some Arab retweets) Twitter account based in Lebanon. - Telegram is @IbnRiad.
English-language Palestinian Twitter account which reports on news from the Resistance Axis. - Telegram is @EyesOnSouth.
English-language Twitter account in the same group as the previous two. - Telegram here.

English-language PalestineResist telegram channel.
More telegram channels here for those interested.

Various sources that are covering the Ukraine conflict are also covering the one in Palestine, like Rybar.

Russia-Ukraine Conflict

Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict

Sources:

Defense Politics Asia’s youtube channel and their map. Their youtube channel has substantially diminished in quality but the map is still useful. Moon of Alabama, which tends to have interesting analysis. Avoid the comment section.
Understanding War and the Saker: reactionary sources that have occasional insights on the war.
Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict. While he is a reactionary and surrounds himself with likeminded people, his daily update videos are relatively brainworm-free and good if you don’t want to follow Russian telegram channels to get news. He also co-hosts The Duran, which is more explicitly conservative, racist, sexist, transphobic, anti-communist, etc when guests are invited on, but is just about tolerable when it’s just the two of them if you want a little more analysis.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent and very good journalist reporting in the warzone on the separatists’ side.

Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.

Pro-Russian Telegram Channels:

Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.

https://t.me/aleksandr_skif ~ DPR’s former Defense Minister and Colonel in the DPR’s forces. Russian language.
https://t.me/Slavyangrad ~ A few different pro-Russian people gather frequent content for this channel (~100 posts per day), some socialist, but all socially reactionary. If you can only tolerate using one Russian telegram channel, I would recommend this one.
https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts.
https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday ~ Patrick Lancaster’s telegram channel.
https://t.me/gonzowarr ~ A big Russian commentator.
https://t.me/rybar ~ One of, if not the, biggest Russian telegram channels focussing on the war out there. Actually quite balanced, maybe even pessimistic about Russia. Produces interesting and useful maps.
https://t.me/epoddubny ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/boris_rozhin ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/mod_russia_en ~ Russian Ministry of Defense. Does daily, if rather bland updates on the number of Ukrainians killed, etc. The figures appear to be approximately accurate; if you want, reduce all numbers by 25% as a ‘propaganda tax’, if you don’t believe them. Does not cover everything, for obvious reasons, and virtually never details Russian losses.
https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses ~ Pro-Russian, documents abuses that Ukraine commits.

Pro-Ukraine Telegram Channels:

Almost every Western media outlet.
https://discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.

    • TheGamingLuddite [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
      41·
      2 months ago

      I think the hype around a 2024 Trump victory is massively overblown and chronically online. The Republican party is a freakshow that offers zero appeal to anyone not already bought in to its absurd culture war spectacle.

      They have their dug-in solid 60+ demographic but their messaging about mass deportation and children’s genitals is profoundly alienating to the average American, more alienating than most people could guess based on available data.

      • BynarsAreOk [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
        29·
        2 months ago

        What do you even mean though. The “panic” only exists exactly because people “online” know that Biden is such a shit candidate that this is a much closer election than it should be. The majority of people went from voting for Biden to just admitting they’re voting against Trump.

        Any other competent Dem would have read the room and ditched the Israel shit even it was clear 6 months ago that the majority of Americans favor a ceasefire.

        There was no need for that whole student protest shit which was very politically damaging. But then people back then would also say “hey don’t bother because most people IRL are fascists and will vote for Biden anyway” despite the landmark uncommitted vote campaign.

        This is 2016 again and he is far worse than Hillary, she had an “excuse”, she won the popular vote in fact. There is no poll that shows Biden winning anywhere close to the popular vote let alone the EC.

        They have their dug-in solid 60+ demographic but their messaging about mass deportation and children’s genitals is profoundly alienating to the average American, more alienating than most people could guess based on available data.

        This is true but how does that compare to having a literal walking corpse embarrassing America on live TV multiple times in the past 6 months? The same Americans that believe Trump is a creep idiot(most people) are also the same people that believe Biden will either shit his pants or have a heart attack every time he goes on camera.

        The polls are pretty clear which is the most pressing concern and besides, Genocide Joe isn’t exactly giving out a compelling argument either. Remember even if we ignore Gaza the media spent 2023 pushing Bidenomics shit gaslighting everyone who can’t afford food or rest that the economy is fine actualy and the US is “growing” only because Europe is being destroyed and the stock market is a megacorp mafia anyway.

        I used to say last year the race was close but Biden had the advantage he could give out concessions. Time ran out and little genocidal bro still thinks bragging about NATO is the real concession lol. Even as the media tries to push Biden out they still have to say “oh but he was a great president”. Nobody believes that, see his job approval.

        Its Joever, they wont give concessions as I thought they would. Their plan is to gaslight everyone with Bidenomics while Biden tells you 20 times a day how great NATO has become.

        • TheGamingLuddite [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
          4·
          2 months ago

          I think it’s true that Biden is a shit candidate who damaged his own credibility as well as the credibility of the democratic party and liberalism in general by digging in his heels on Israel and bashing the student protests.

          I think it’s also true that Trump only won in 2016 because he promised some kind of change that never materialized. I’ve also heard word of him gutting every structure of the Republican party he touches which could impact the election more than people assume.

          These are two world-historically unpopular and disliked candidates who are both profoundly stupid and inept. The difference could end up being that the Democrats are still more or less a political machine and the Republicans are being run by slumlords who don’t really care if the building collapses long term.

      • Commiejones [comrade/them, he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
        27·
        2 months ago

        How does this differ from the democrats?

        As shitty as the republican policy situation and rhetoric is, the democrats only exist in the shadow of “we’ll stop the republicans evil plans” they have nothing new to offer anyone either.

        • TheGamingLuddite [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
          1·
          2 months ago

          I just elaborated on this in another comment but my theory on this is that the democrats are still functioning as a political party while the Republicans have been gutting their own structures for short term financial profit.