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.

  • egg1918 [she/her]
    ·
    5 months ago

    In light of Ursula Von Der Leyen (wack name lmao) being reelected as president of the European Commission, I went digging into her past to see where in the family tree are the Nazis.

    From her grandfather's wiki page:

    Albrecht belonged to a family of wealthy cotton merchants; his father was the cotton merchant Carl Albrecht (1875–1952) and his mother was the American-born Mary Ladson Robertson (1883–1960), who belonged to a prominent planter family from South Carolina. His father was a grandson of Baron Ludwig Knoop, one of the leading industrialists of the Russian Empire in his lifetime.[2]

    Based on my knowledge of every rich European being a Nazi, it's very strange that there's absolutely no mention of the war. soviet-hmm

    Also, isn't it just perfect that the highest ranking EU official is descended from slavers?

      • egg1918 [she/her]
        ·
        5 months ago

        Incredible. I love learning about this shit.

        Her great grandfather also owned a load of industry in Russia. However, all the machinery, managers, and technicians were Br*tish in order to prevent those dastardly Russians from industrializing.

        They really have been doing everything they can to colonize and exploit Russia for over a century. You could not find a more perfect encapsulation of the EU than Ursula and her evil family history. Actually you probably could, every bourgeois pig in that awful continent has a Nazi past.

        • Frank [he/him, he/him]
          ·
          5 months ago

          Word. The war in ukraine isn't a new war, it's been ongoing for centuries and this is just the latest time when the war has gone hot.

    • Teekeeus
      ·
      1 month ago

      deleted by creator

    • SoyViking [he/him]
      ·
      5 months ago

      Ursula von der Leyen's father was named Ernst Albrecht. Being born in 1930 he came too late to be a proper Nazi but he grew up to be a piece of shit anyways. He was a CDU ghoul who ruled as the minister president of Lower Saxony from 1976 to 1990.

      NATOpedia writes the following about the minister of justice, responsible for prisons and police, appointed by Albrecht:

      In 1976, Albrecht made Hans Puvogel his minister of justice. During his tenure, Puvogel was particularly active in combatting notions of more liberal penal and rehabilitation systems. He had already set out justification for his stance in a 1935-1936 doctoral thesis. There, he wrote of the “inheritance of criminal tendencies”, of “constitutionally predisposed criminals” and “inferior people”, who would have to be “eliminated from the community”. “Only a person of value to the race” would have “a right to exist within the national community”.

      Albrecht was not only tough on crime, he also supported the veterans (again from NATOpedia):

      The state government under Ernst Albrecht used every opportunity to court former Nazis. In a 1978 speech, Deputy Premier Wilfried Hasselmann (CDU) greeted the Association of Knight's Cross Recipients, a league of former Wehrmacht (Hitler's army) officers and SS men, certifying that they had “shown courage and given an example to others”. Hasselmann declared he was “deeply impressed by the solidarity of your order. You have fulfilled your duty as soldiers in an exemplary manner. This will continue to be evident to a younger generation”.

      During his tenure he was involved in several scandals, including the so-called "Celle Hole" a false flag operation in which the Lower Saxon secret police in collusion with the paramilitary force GSG 9 attempted to feign an escape from the federal prison in Celle and pin it on the RAF. The operation was a complete failure and and was later discovered to be a false flag.

      Albrecht did a short stint in the federal parliament before leaving elected office in 1992. After that he became a business investment entrepreneur. German NATOpedia writes the following:

      Albrecht became the chairman of the supervisory board of EHW Thale AG [a collectively owned metal factory in Democratic Germany] after leaving government service. Since the Treuhandanstalt [West German organisation set up to facilitate and organise the plunder of Democratic Germany after the annexation] couldn't find an investor for the company, Albrecht bought it on January 1, 1993, together with the Bremen merchant Hans Henry Lamotte, for a symbolic price of one Deutsche Mark, with Albrecht holding 95% and Lamotte 5% of the shares. The state of Saxony-Anhalt took over the complete remediation of old environmental damages and guaranteed 80% of the company's old debts. The company's children's and recreation center in Güntersberge, which was supposed to be excluded from the sale and transferred to the state of Saxony-Anhalt, was "accidentally" transferred to the investors according to parliamentary state secretary Joachim Grünewald (CDU). The investors were not willing to transfer it back to the state for free but demanded 5.5 million DM for it, while its market value was estimated at 4.4 million DM. The terms under which the Treuhand eventually repurchased the recreation center were kept secret. In April 1997, Albrecht sold the company again for one Mark to the Schunk Group.

      So rest assured, our supreme figurehead comes from the finest family possible.