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
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.
That's a good statement from the PSL, found myself agreeing at all of the points they made. It's weird, a lot of leftists I know irl have said they had bad experiences with the PSL, but all of their messaging seems good. I wonder if my local branch sucks. (Also granted a lot of the negative stuff I've heard was about the upper leadership being bad, their leader being a terf etc). I haven't been able to find any confirmation of the terf allegations online but enough people have mentioned it irl that I believe it
While I have my own opinions of PSL as a member of a party that often interacts with PSL in the areas we operate in, and from my interaction with PSL members here on hexbear, I'll keep them to myself. (It's a mixed bag, don't assume I mean either positive or negative. I got dialectics on the mind)
That said, touching on your actual comment, not everyone is able to be in political organizations as Americans are some of the most politically disorganized and individualistic peoples on earth. This means people who think they're the hottest revolutionary to ever fall out of the coconut tree will join and immediately act like they're the reincarnation of Lenin commanding the the October revolution, only to quickly walk out of the party and drag mud over its name just because they didn't get their way.
That's why you have to respectfully yet carefully listen to who's talking, their message, and the length of time they were a part of whatever party they left. Which is mainly why if you have less than a year in a party unless you have some serious shit that can be backed up with concrete proof I'm generally going to shrug and put in a mental file box with other complaints to get a more aggregate analysis - with an added note for the people that are notorious for constantly jumping parties to be more skeptical of their claims
Thanks for taking the time to write out that response
I will try to keep that in mind going forward. The people who have had negative comments were not people who had tried to become part of the party, mostly just individuals who had interacted with local party members before. That being said I totally agree that American leftists can be super disorganized and it would not surprise me given some of the people I know locally if small disagreements got blown out of proportion. Also most of my friends lean more towards anarchism while I'm more of an ML person (no shade on anarchists or on my friends I love them) so that might also be coloring some of the stuff I hear. I think that since the PSL seems to be an active org in my area that is consistently taking good positions on things and seems to be actually organizing for local issues well I might try to get more involved and make my own opinions about them. I am finally getting to a place where I have enough stability in my living situation where I can spend energy getting involved and helping others while would be really nice to start doing
Make sure you have a solid foundation for your living first and foremost. Any sort of political work will come after your livelihood is secure.
I've been working with the PSL and it's been genuinely wonderful. Thanks to other PSL members here for getting me in touch with the right people
. However, yeah, before you can be involved in political action consistently you should prioritize your own living situation; not only is it a better idea for you but it'll help you deal with the potential stresses of organizing even better.
Terf accusations are extremely baseless. It's a party packed to the gills with trans people and has absolutely no anti-trans positions whatsoever.
Thanks for the response, the terf stuff I heard was about La Riva specifically and that the org had basically forced her to keep it quiet, but it's the kind of rumor that's basically impossible to verify and you're right there are a lot of trans people involved with the org (they were also at our local trans rights demonstration this year) so I guess even if those rumors are true they don't seem to be impacting party policy which is good