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.

    • carpoftruth [any, any]M
      ·
      4 months ago

      Yeah no this one is too gross. I'm removing it now. If you want to repost, do it with a cw and be really clear what the relevance of the story is

      • ziggurter [he/him, comrade/them]
        ·
        4 months ago

        Yikes. My bad. Apologies. The text I posted I thought was the entire article, because my browser (ad blocker?) left a huge empty space and I didn't think there was more after.

        The part I quoted was consistent with criticisms I'd seen of the re-written Title IX rules from the ACLU (but couldn't find, so I searched for and found what I thought was a summary of that). Obviously being gender-inclusive is not bad. It's the shit about lack of transparency and "due process" that allows schools to just "investigate themselves and find nothing wrong" that's shit.

    • VILenin [he/him]
      ·
      4 months ago

      This article is a transphobic screed written by a rabid TERF as a love letter to Betsy fucking DeVos.

      CW: EXTREME transphobia

      This change will allow for transgender students to choose which bathrooms and locker rooms they want to use and which athletic teams they wish to play on. It will pose both privacy and fairness concerns for female athletes – the same young women the law was originally supposed to help.

      “Title IX as we know it was passed more than 50 years ago, and its sole purpose was to give women equal opportunities and over time the focus of that centered around sports,” DeVos told me. “And with this Biden rewrite, it really does turn the tables and position the law to actually harm women by extending the definition of biological sex to include gender identity.”

      And a Gallup poll last year found that nearly 70% of Americans do not support transgender athletes playing on teams that match their current gender identity.

      So Biden’s Title IX rewrite seems out of touch with what most of the country wants.

      Author inserts link to another transphobic article:

      Medical review raises concerns: Cass Review raises red flags on gender-affirming care for trans kids

      These aspects of the new rules are bad enough. There are many others, too, laid out in the more than 1,500-page tome.

      For instance, a change expands the definition of “harassment,” which could mean students face disciplinary action if they use another student’s wrong pronoun. Speech that should be protected under the First Amendment also could get caught up in this.

      And the new set of rules is written in a way that discourages schools from informing parents about what their children – even young ones – are choosing to do at school in relation to their gender identity. That’s a huge blow to parental rights.

      ”And I think when it really sinks in with the American people, there’s going to be a real backlash,” DeVos said.

      Let’s hope so.

      The author deserves to be beaten to death with a stick, and please add a CW.

    • carpoftruth [any, any]M
      ·
      4 months ago

      This article is transphobic as, add a CW at minimum and tell us why you posted it

    • rayne [she/her]
      ·
      4 months ago

      Not the full text.

      And the links/citations in the article are to transphobic propaganda machines such as the Federalist.

      Edit: forgot an s.