Image is allegedly of the note Trump wrote while editing a speech while on the way back from the G20 summit.
The top Russian-Chinese agent, Donald Trump, has decided that the pace of dedollarization and the decline of American financial hegemony is going too slowly. He has therefore decided to put tariffs on everybody; from America's largest trading partners to uninhabited islands. In the process, he is trying to create an autarkic America. Jokes aside, interpretation and analysis of this has ranged across a wide spectrum. I think we can broadly agree that the most idiotic are the "true believers"; those that actually believe Trump's every word, and that this will somehow bring back American manufacturing and whatever other inane promises he has made.
However, there is a much more interesting debate. The first camp are those who believe Trump is acting as an inadvertent accelerationist due to his lack of understanding about how the world economy and dollar hegemony functions (and that this will subsequently ensure that countries flock to China instead). The second camp are those who believe that Trump does know what he's doing, at least to a certain extent, and that the effective result of this period of madness will be countries kowtowing to the United States; renegotiating trade deals to be even more in favor of the US in order to get tariffs reduced. There's even a yet more cynical camp who believes that in fact, this entire trade war is just theater for further national wealth redistributions from poor to rich; that all these monumental international trade wars are more of a sideshow. To quote the linked article: "[...] out of the mountain of tariffs that threaten to turn into a global trade war will emerge the mouse of further tax cuts."
I'm not embarrassed to admit that I have absolutely no idea which one of these is the closest model to reality. We're in new economic and political ground, and even if the tariffs are quickly renegotiated and/or dropped, the impacts will continue to reverberate around the world for years. I'm sure we'll debate this for months to come here, though!
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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 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.
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.
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.
Simplicius, who publishes on Substack. Like others, his political analysis should be soundly ignored, but his knowledge of weaponry and military strategy is generally quite good.
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.
Apparently there are some reports that Isreal used a tactical nuke on syria last december
There were rumours that it was a nuke at the time, but I don't recall any strong evidence. I'm not exactly a weapons expert by any stretch of the imagination, but the US makes some really big conventional bombs, it was probably something like that.
It was not a nuclear explosion, it was a hit on a large ammunition depot in Syria with many secondary explosions, along with a hit on the air defence systems there, from video evidence and geolocation.
https://hexbear.net/comment/5740613
https://hexbear.net/comment/5776424
Here's some video of people even visiting the site of the explosion afterwards, it certainly does not look like a ground zero of a nuclear blast:
Twitter source
Xcancel mirror
Satellite imagery of the ammunition depot
Good YouTube video on the subject
Why are all these guys so weird. This particular guy Braun got fired from UCD for harassment and is now an "independent researcher" who thinks Nordstream was blown up with nukes.
https://www.irishtimes.com/news/social-affairs/aoibhinn-ni-shuilleabhain-contacted-by-ucd-president-with-personal-apology-1.4348022
His website where he talks about the Nordstream stuff: https://www.geophysical-forensics.ch/nordstream.html
Academia is rife with the most unhinged of conspiracy theorists, there is something about the in-depth knowledge in one specific field combined with the culture that creates the same irrational self-confidence you see like flat earthers (of which there are many in STEM, I've even met a NASA Engineer who is a flat earther) I know top level academics who believe the pyramids are an ancient geomantic power source.
This can also be seen in the works of Christopher Busby, whose work was linked here a few months ago regarding the use of depleted uranium by Israeli forces in Lebanon. He also has several nuke conspiracy theories that devolve into him claiming that several of his fellow researchers where assassinated because of their research into cold fusion and that Kennedy was shot because of the Kennedy Kruschev test ban. This is a man who was appointed to government advisory councils and top scientific boards, then went on to try and grift people with anti-radiation pills after Fukishima.
These particular theories are just believable enough that if you see a guy in a labcoat with a doctorate and some nice graphs you might just believe it if you never google them or meet them in person. Because the other thing about these guys is they are not shy about their theories either. They will gladly get up and talk about these things at conferences if you let them because of that air of self-confidence that arises inside the bubble of academia.
The crank circle with regards to nuclear weapons is something to behold. And then these nuclear weapons cranks get amplified by "alt media" and disinformation in "pro resistance" circles on social media (see Jackson Hinkle, Syrian Girl, Pepe Escobar, etc), and it just becomes one massive circlejerk with no facts present. See the other disinformation crank story about how Russia actually blew up a nuclear armed Israeli F-35 that was going to create an EMP in Iran, over Jordan during April last year. Just the craziest stories with zero evidence.
Damn, are they going to murder-suicide their NASA coworkers for being in on the conspiracy lol
Can't you test the soil for radiation?
Is there any further reading/keywords to find further reading on this? It's the first I'm hearing of it
I commented on it as it happened, it wasn't a nuclear explosion, but a hit on a large ammunitions depot in Syria. See my comment in this thread for further details.
Cheers comrade