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.

  • Torenico [he/him]
    ·
    2 months ago

    Here's a bit of news that have been circulating around the football world like wildfire lately. But first things first CW: Racism and Transphobia.

    Argentina won it's second consecutive Copa America trophy a few days ago, and during the post-match celebrations, midfielder Enzo Fernandez turned on an Instagram live stream to show them. Players and staff were chanting football songs during the celebrations, but at one moment someone began to chant an extremely racist and transphobic song that calls out the French national football team for having "all blacks coming from Angola" and makes transphobic remarks about french star player Kylian Mbappé because he once had (or still has) a trans girlfriend. Fernandez immediately turned off stream moments after this chant began. This chant does not originate from the national team circles but from a group of insanely racist fans who travelled to Qatar in 2022 for the World Cup and began to sing it.

    This of course sparked controversy as French players began to call out the Argentinian national team for being racist with their chants. The French Football Federation issued a formal complaint, Chelsea (where Enzo Fernandez plays and where some of the french football players attacked are his own teammates) began an internal investigation and FIFA also spoke about it. Enzo Fernandez issued an apology and everything seemed to go down the natural route of "nothing will be done regarding racism" until ancaptain stepped in.

    Milei removes Sport Undersec who said Messi should apologize for racist chants

    The Argentine presidency announced it on X, claiming that ‘no government can tell the national team or any other citizen what to say, think or do’

    Argentine President Javier Milei fired Sports Undersecretariat Julio Garro on Wednesday following his comments urging Argentine men’s national football team captain Lionel Messi to apologize for the team’s racism incident.

    I'm not entirely sure Messi is directly involved in this incident, I can't see him during the live stream from Fernandez. But since he's the captain and main icon of the team, the Secretary thought he should come out and apologize publicly. Which I don't think it's a terrible idea even though it never fixes the underlying issue of racism.

    “[We] inform that no government can tell the World Cup and two-time Copa América winning national team or any other citizen what to say, think or do. For this reason, Julio Garro is no longer the Sports Undersecretariat,” confirmed the announcement on the President’s Office X account.

    I love when ancaps present themselves as the ultimate freedom champions. People are without food right now, that is the government telling them what to do: starve.

    Earlier that day, Garro told radio station Urbana Play that Albiceleste captain Lionel Messi should “offer the appropriate apologies” as the incident “leaves Argentina looking bad as a country.” On Tuesday, a clip went viral of Argentina midfielder Enzo Fernández’s live stream of the team’s bus celebrations following their 2024 Copa América win. Fernández and other players can be heard singing a chant which mocks French players for their African heritage. Fernández later apologized via Instagram, admitting there’s “no excuse for these words” and that he stands “against discrimination in all forms.”

    An Interior Ministry spokesperson told the Herald he understood Garro’s comments were personal, rather than institutional, in nature. Garro later rejected the idea he had asked Messi to apologize on his X account. Garro’s position was rejected by President Javier Milei, who retweeted a post on X which claimed that asking for Messi to apologize for the chant went against the president’s ideology.

    Garro said this and immediately went on twitter to say he didn't say it lmao. Also milei communicates government decisions by liking tweets from pro-government trolls, which make up an official but irregular spokesperson corps.

    Vice President Victoria Villaruel also weighed in on the matter, claiming Argentina “never had colonies or second-class citizens” and “never imposed its way of life on anyone”, and that the government wouldn’t tolerate that being done to Argentina, in reference to the French Football Federation’s announcement that it would sue its Argentine counterpart.

    I love the ancap's and fascist's fake ass nationalism. First yes, Argentina had colonies -- the entire Patagonia region was colonized by the Argentine State in the late 1800s. Second, we totally had and still have second-class citizens, the colonized subjects (also known as indios) who still live in reservation-like regions are absolutely second-class citizens. The underclass of Argentinian society, the extremely poor, are also second-class citizens. But at the same time, the government allows for the US to build a military base in it's own soil, allows for foreign companies to pillage Argentina's national resources for the sake of "investments" and continues to ask the IMF for more and more loans.

    She went on to add that “Argentina was built on the sweat and courage of the Indians [sic], the Europeans, the Creoles and the Blacks” and issued her support for the national team. Upon the announcement, Garro thanked Milei on his X account and apologized for his comments, claiming that he had put forward his resignation.

    This article doesn't mention the other part where milei and his VP weighed in: They said this football chant was "telling the truth" about France. Look, Enzo already apologized and we know that doesn't do anything but the guy is trying to step away from this on his own, then comes the fucking president and says "Yo, don't back down, racism is super cool actually". Insanity.

    The song itself is awful, it just attacks black french players for being black and of african descent, even though all but very few of them were born IN FRANCE.. it's just racism for the sake of being racist. And only one player was born in Angola, Eduardo Camavinga, so they picked Angola as the target country just because racism. All it does is reinforces the french right wing narrative that France is a white society, that black french people or french arabs are not truly french and thus not welcome. Trying to pin this on french colonialism while attacking the COLONIZED SUBJECTS THEMSELVES is not the own they think it is, it makes it 100% worse.

    I hate it. I hate this fucking boys mentality. Look, it's never women making comments like these, it's always men. ALWAYS.

    Milei is set to travel to France soon for the innauguration ceremony of the Olympics in Paris. I hope he gets killed by a mob as he arrives tbh.

    • Noven [any]
      ·
      2 months ago

      Enzo Fernandez has 7 (SEVEN) black French teammates at Chelsea and is on contract until at least 2030 alongside most of them, genuinely the dumbest footballer of all time.

    • thethirdgracchi [he/him, they/them]
      ·
      2 months ago

      For what it's worth, reports are now saying Messi specifically told them not to taunt anybody in their chants, and this was on the bus to the airport from Miami. Given that Messi lives in Miami he wasn't even on the bus, so it's like they did their racist chants when their dad was away.