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.

    • Greenleaf [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
      0·
      2 months ago

      I don’t doubt that Trump thinks Project 2025 is nerd shit and can’t be bothered to learn about it. Like, I expect he asked one of his advisors what it was and then cut him off 10 seconds into the explanation.

      Trump is on the far right in many aspects but (relatively) centrist in other areas like abortion, to the extent he actually has true opinions. And in a lot of other topics he just doesn’t care. I honestly think the only topics Trump actually cares about and has core beliefs about are immigration and government spending.

    • AssortedBiscuits [they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
      0·
      2 months ago

      IMO, she’s taking marching orders from someone. The purpose of AOC, Bernie, and the squad is to sheepdog, discredit, and instill ideological confusion among what could become the US left. That’s their real purpose within the US government.

      Pelosi and Obama having second thoughts about Biden while Bernie continues to humiliate himself by supporting Biden to the bitter end is completely by design. Whether Bernie genuinely believes this because he’s Biden’s friend or whether he’s forced to do it by gunpoint doesn’t matter in the end because they got what they want: a so-called progressive who has repeatedly debased himself and the movement he represents for the sake of some white supremacist imperialist that even other white supremacist imperialists have second thoughts about. The fact people here are going, “wtf Bernie why are you still doing this? I want my fucking money back, you fucking fraud” means Bernie is fully committed to playing the role he has been assigned to.

      AOC is more or less doing the same thing. Since AOC has time and time again shown herself to be a careerist and opportunist, most likely she’s doing this because she has been promised something that will help her political career if she’s willing to humiliate herself and further discredit US progressives. It’s the political equivalent of “I’ll give you $1000 if you eat this banana on the ground that I’ve stepped on.”

    • BynarsAreOk [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
      0·
      2 months ago

      AOC: Joe Biden actually stomps among old people, who are hard for Democrats to win. Those are not people who are on Twitter but they vote more than any other bracket. You can’t assume those voters will transfer to any other candidate.

      I’m sorry but she is a complete idiot.

      Most Biden voters are just anti-Trump It is getting worse most people who were coping with themselves saying they support Biden are now admitting they just don’t like Trump. This is insane, this is the worst possible scenario.

      But no acshually Biden is really popular with the right voting group. Not only go fuck yourself, this is just the 12th different version of the same copium shit.

      One of the latest polls Biden is only 41 v 58% voting intention for people over 65.

      Transfer what vote from old conservative dipshits? You dumbass he already doesn’t have any.

      This idea that there are Biden or bust voters out there is absolutely insane period. There is no world in which a 60yo boomer democrat is going “uhm acshualy even though my boy Biden endorsed his literal VP I wont vote for her because turns out I actualy prefer the other racist fascist!”.

      The rest is some garbage nonsense pearl clutching about possible litigation even though Biden is not the nominee yet.

      Also how can the party that simultaneously say democracy is at stake Trump must not win will turn around and say “uhm acshualy idk about the legality of substituting our shit candidate that is not even our candidate yet, better not bother I guess. Anyway democracy is at stake if you don’t vote!”

  • mkultrawide [any]@hexbear.netEnglish
    1·
    2 months ago

    Senator Bob Menendez was convicted on 16 counts, including including bribery, extortion, honest services fraud, obstruction of justice and conspiracy (bullshit crime). This guy beat a corruption case in 2017 and apparently decided he had not yet flown close enough to the sun. His lawyers blamed his hoarding of cash and gold on the epigentic trauma of his gusano parents fleeing Cuba. He filed to run as an independent in the 2024 NJ senate race after in June after “dropping out” of the Democratic primary.

    Wishing a happy “you’re going to die in prison” to the most vocal pro-embargo Democrat (and probably senator, for that matter). Armenians of hexbear, sorry your guy in the Senate took the L.

  • Redcuban1959 [any]@hexbear.netEnglish
    0·
    2 months ago

    Just saw some post on reddit saying stuff like this:

    “You do not have the privilege of getting the exact person you want in office. Accept this fact, and help us get CLOSER to where we CAN, because I can guarantee you we won’t get what we want under Trump.”

    Whoever the Democratic party pick as their presidential nominee, you HAVE to vote for. If it’s Joe Biden, you HAVE to vote for him. if it’s someone else, good, but you have to vote for them!!!

    If we split the democratic voter base, we will lose 2024 like we lost 2016 when we joked about Hillary, and thus we WILL be killing many American women, trans, gays people!!!

    Even if Biden gets nominated, elected, and is then deemed unfit to hold office, Kamala will take over

    Think not about what could happen if Biden gets reelected, think about what will happen if Trump is allowed to take control of the country. People will be killed, and it will be your fault if you helped make it happen.

    ???