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.
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.
The EU may look back at some point in a decade or two and rue the decision to snub Türkiye, but Türkiye has long been expected to go along with the wishes of NATO and the EU despite often being treated like a second-class citizen. The failure of Türkiye’s EU accession is just one of many examples.
As mentioned above, the US threatening to torpedo the nuclear power plant in Türkiye is representative of another. The US sanctions Turkish individuals and companies for “aiding Russia,” for “aiding Iran,” and the US is already threatening to slap on more sanctions over Turkish firms’ exports to Russia. A quick search on the US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control site turns up a whopping 232 sanctioned Turkish individuals or entities. This is not a great look when Türkiye is going through its worst economic crisis in two decades.
There have also been, from the Turkish point of view, a lack of consideration of Turkish defense needs. In the 1990s, Ankara asked NATO multiple times to deploy early warning systems and Patriot missiles to Türkiye, but it never came to pass. In 2017 Russia sold Türkiye its S-400 missile defense systems, which are arguably superior to anything the West has. In response the US expelled Türkiye from its F-35 program and sanctioned the country’s defense industry organization and its leaders.
While the US keeps slapping more sanctions on Turkish entities, the economic relationship between Türkiye and SCO countries is growing exponentially.
The Influence of Sea Power upon History by Alfred Thayer Mahan lays down the clearest strategic plan for an American Empire. It would have been so easy to follow.
After WW2 America and its much weaker allies had control over the Skagerrak straight, the Dardenelles and Aegean, the Strait of Gibraltar, the Suez Canal, the Panama Canal, and all the built up ports in the gulf and red seas.
It would have been so easy to allow other nations everywhere else figure out their own shit and focus on keeping these areas under control either by force or by diplomacy.
Instead the Cold War intelligence network decided fighting wars everywhere all at once was a good idea. They decided that expanding conflict into landlocked countries or adding landlocked nations to NATO was more important than running an effective empire.
It’s the thing that prevents me from going conspiratorial and instead believing the fundamental drive for the American political class is individual greed and promotion. There is no better place to rise through the ranks than in a conflict zone.
After WW2 America and its much weaker allies had control over the Skagerrak straight, the Dardenelles and Aegean, the Strait of Gibraltar, the Suez Canal, the Panama Canal, and all the built up ports in the gulf and red seas.
As well as the Straits of Malacca (Singapore/Malaysia) and the Philippine Sea.
the thing that prevents me from going conspiratorial and instead believing the fundamental drive for the American political class is individual greed and promotion.
This is a fantastic point and it's something I need to pay more attention to. I'm guilty of viewing the west/US as a unified entity, when really it's best viewed as a multi-headed snake, and all the heads are biting each other for control.
Like you said, all they had to do was focus on the naval aspect of the empire. But if they did that, then certain people/factions wouldn't be able to extract their profit.
I think they consider Greece to be a threat. Right now it seems pretty silly to imagine them going to war, but given their bitter history and NATO coming under pressure from Russia as they deplete Western weaponry reserves, it's not impossible that they'd fight again in 5, 10, 20 years if there's a disintegration of Western alliance structures. Other than that, probably Iran, maybe Armenia.