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.
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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.
Thoughts on Heritage foundation Project 2025? All the wrong people I hate (annoying, terminally online lib commentators) are hysterical, they said Trump gonna shut down NOAA, EPA, become dictator and ends democracy. Is it UN Agenda 21 (Hobbit homes, eat bugs) panic for Blue MAGA, or fascists telling us exactly what they are gonna do?
It’s essentially just a shopping list that right wing cranks have wanted since at least the nixon administration. the heritage foundation was founded in ‘73, and it is heir to a tradition that includes things like the john birch society and the federalist society. the american far right has been advancing a plan of judicial capture for decades, and it’s finally coming to a head. the democrats argue we can either have it in 2025 or delay it to 2029.
the democrats are broadly not wrong to say that the contents of the project are bad. they will kick a lot of protections down to the state level, where obviously the red controlled state govs will gleefully strip away everything they can. the reason the democrats are bringing it up so much is because, rhetorically, they only have fear and negative claims to support them. there is no democratic platform, or anti-2025 project, or coherent vision of the future, or anything. the only pitch they have is the same pitch they’ve had for decades, except now it’s more tired than its ever been: the other guy is really bad, this is an important election, you have to vote blue. hunter s. thompson wrote about being tired of holding his nose for unpopular candidates in the 70s.
it’s closer to the fascists telling us what to do then agenda 21, but they’ve been telling us for eighty years. the recent emphasis on it is a combination of it playing well on tiktok to young people who are critically looking at the character of USamerican civil society for the first time and the utter intellectual bankruptcy of the democratic party.
I expect a lot of it will come to pass. The libs are justified in freaking out. The problem is, the only thing liberals know how to do is flog the dead-end policies and candidates which brought us to this exact point. They still view the Democrats as the solution, rather than the cause of this problem, and are actively causing harm by defending them.
I think the question is “have things gotten bad enough yet that the deep state has to batten down the hatches and bring the frontier home (aka fascism)” and while things have gotten pretty bad, I don’t think we’re there yet. I generally hold fast to the prediction that things will get slightly worse year-on-year rather than getting massively worse very quickly, in order to contain public anger.
I very much doubt the more hysterical parts of it, like saying that Trump will make himself a dictator and end elections - it would erode the propaganda immensely if the charade of Western democracy ended, and there’s simply no real reason to do so. fascism has only really occurred when there’s a genuine threat to capitalism in a country - Italy and Germany were in revolutionary situations and communists had to be crushed with an iron fist. where is that genuine threat to American capitalism? there’s nothing domestically which could challenge it on a national or even regional scale, and even local attempts get smashed fairly quickly by the piggies. even China isn’t really exporting the revolution or anything like the USSR once did; lots of massive American CEOs depend to a greater or lesser extent on Chinese manufacturing, and they’re generally reticent about cutting them off, even if some of them are making vague bleating about moving to India (which will never work) and Vietnam (could work). ending elections implies that the American people have a power that I don’t think they have ever had, because they’re unorganized potatoes in a sack.
tbh I also doubt the whole thing of deporting tens of millions of migrants. the many, many businesses that rely on cheap immigrant labour aren’t gonna be happy with that, even if it could logistically be done (though I suppose if there’s one thing the American state is still competent at, it’s cruelty to minorities). but Trump will probably make an attempt anyway just like with the wall thing, and even if “only” hundreds of thousands are deported from their homes, that’s still very, very bad. and the situation at the border will undoubtably become even more atrocious than it already is.
so yes, project 2025 is real and it’s bad. for what it’s worth though, the Democrats don’t seem to be opposing it much. Biden seems determined to stay in even if another candidate would do better, and he’s had years to improve conditions, challenge/change the Supreme Court, etc.
its heritage not hate dreams. if libs were serious about it, they would have packed the courts 3 times over already and divested presidential powers, instead of doing their apoplectic civility bits. (so they know its bs). Cultural stuff (aside from ) just not gonna happen, onlyfans founder will personally murder every republican talking about that after election
Moreover, I don’t think porkies would want to move quickly - if say epa just ceased to exist, your average dupont would still be waiting to see backlash to even try to invest in radically polluting project, it takes 5-10 years to readjust your processes at that scale. They would be happy not to pay fines, but they don’t already.
Democracy stuff is pure fearmongering. trump is old, who will succeed him? jd fuck hillbillies vance? barron?
It is inevitable because Democrats don’t have anything close to an anti-Project 2025 program and you can’t keep the Republicans away from the White House forever. And given its inevitability, you should just ignore the scaremongering but instead prepare and act accordingly.
Unlike agenda 21, project 2025 is absolutely going to happen. The conservatives already made homelessness illegal and exempt from protections against cruel and unusual punishments, and have already gotten rid of Roe v Wade.
That was just a taste of what they’re going to do after November. It’s terrifying and honestly if anyone is thinking about leaving the US, now is your absolute best time to start planning your alternative.
To be fair, making homelessness illegal and the negation of roe both happened under a Democratic administration that did absolutely nothing to stop them or to fight back against those actions. That’s where the people who think voting for democrats will stop it are going wrong. They won’t even stop the shit when they’re in power.
Democratic mayors and governors like Newsom even filed amicus briefs in the Grants Pass case.