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.
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The bulletins site is here!
The RSS feed is here.
Last week's thread is here.
Israel-Palestine Conflict
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.
Can't reiterate enough that there is no left in American politics, there's two right wing capitalist parties arguing over how best to do fascism
CPUSA, the squad, "progressive" PACs and unions are all in on biden too though. It's not just the liberal politicians, it's the entire squishy western left
Yeah I just don't see any of those groups as left, except maybe CPUSA and even then only on a technicality
I don't give them that much credit, I think of them all as radlibs at best - they're all-in on Ukraine, etc
edit: maybe a better way to phrase it would be, if they were left there's no way they would be backing Biden, who I would describe charitably as a 90s Republican
The "left" in question
They're also not leftists lol
I was making the point that there is no left in USian electoral politics. The US government is just a formal council for managing the affairs of the land owning class of a settler empire in the Global North.
Liberals are not leftists
na but they've contracted the
contagion. Not many vaccines available...
They align with bourgeois white supremacist interests. They might as well be white.
It’s an often known play known as the, “false prophet” play. They pretend to be more left-leaning than they are and promise sweeping changes like stronger climate regulations and more power to labor. Maybe even throw in some student debt. There’s no real left presence in the country so the average person looks at them and thinks that’s as far left as it gets. Even the people on tv say that all the time!
Then you vote them in and excite yourself for the presidency that will change the country for the better. Only they aren’t. This can’t be possible. They said they would do so much more than what they are. Oh, but look. Those dastardly republicans and rogue democrats are making things hard for everybody. How could Newt Gingrich, John Boner (lol), Mitch McConnell, and McCarthy do this! And they’re saying the prophet is false. That can’t be. You know he’s the real thing. You saw it yourself.
And hence the average Lemmy user and r/politics poster is born.
The western Marxism/New left both originate with anticommunism, and their retreats into academia away from more prole jobs,, at some point the alienation is too great and the reward for carrying water is too precious. The chatter class of the blue Maga "left" commiserates supporting Biden because it fits their position. They're trying to fool us into supporting him too.
radlibs who get the most freaked out about "fascism" get easily sheepdogged backed into being social fascists
Because they aren’t union members but it sounds cool so they say it.
Most beliefs are not held rationally. Most beliefs are held to provide psychological comfort. They see themselves as a good person, and they understand good people are pro-labor, yadda yadda yadda “if I like Biden then he must be pro-labor”
Probably they were promised comfy little committee appointments and the establishment not being out for their blood in the next round of primaries. Promises which may or may not actually be kept, but "progressive" liberals don't know how to actually do politics (or are happy bootlicking instead of doing real politics, whether or not they know how), so to them it would appear to be the same thing anyway.
Rank and file democrats truly believe he is the most pro-labor president. They'll lecture you about how he stood up fir the rail unions and got them everytjing they asked for, and will insult or ignore you if you point out otherwise
Chauvinism. The uneducated, rowdy browns don’t know what’s best for them. They need the help of the smart western man
They kinda forgot biden sanctions the genocide of palestine, but they only care about the not-currently happening genocides under trump- guess then they will finally do something?