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!
Last week's thread is here.
The Imperialism Reading Group is here.
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The bulletins site is here. Currently not used.
The RSS feed is here. Also currently not used.
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.
He published an op-ed through his lawyer at the Columbia University newspaper a few days ago. I will not discuss its contents here in MT because it is struggle session adjacent. (He says something about Assad having been a brutal dictator, I'm tryna be neutral here, there's positive aspects of the article, too).
https://www.columbiaspectator.com/opinion/2025/04/04/a-letter-to-columbia/
Today, a Louisiana judge gave Govt lawyers a deadline of Friday to submit evidence that he's deportable or they will release him: https://www.msnbc.com/top-stories/latest/mahmoud-khalil-deportation-trump-evidence-rcna200390
MSNBC article
Judge gives Trump admin a deadline to produce evidence for deporting Mahmoud KhalilA judge said the government must provide evidence to justify its attempt to deport Khalil — evidence his attorneys say they have not seen.
An immigration judge in Louisiana has given the Trump administration roughly 24 hours to provide evidence to support its claims against Mahmoud Khalil, a prominent pro-Palestinian activist and legal U.S. resident it is seeking to deport, or she may rule to dismiss.
Judge Jamee Comans said the U.S. government has until Wednesday evening to produce evidence to justify its attempt to deport Khalil. She scheduled a hearing Friday, when she said she intends to decide whether Khalil can be deported or she will “terminate” the case.
“If he’s not removable, I don’t want him to continue to be detained,” Comans said. “I will have him released.”
Khalil, 30, was arrested by federal immigration authorities in New York last month and whisked to a Louisiana detention center. The Trump administration has argued that Khalil’s presence in the U.S. would have “serious adverse foreign policy consequences,” citing an obscure provision in immigration law. The government also accused Khalil of failing to disclose his employment at the Syria Office in the British Embassy in Beirut and at the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) in his permanent residency application.
Khalil has not been charged with any crime or convicted of any terror-related activity. Civil rights experts have said his case is a litmus test for how far the Trump administration is willing to go to suppress free speech.
Khalil’s attorneys have called his detention and the administration’s efforts to deport him “retaliation for his political beliefs.” They have said the government has not provided any evidence to them to support the allegations against him.
“The government has not produced a single shred of evidence to date to support any of its allegations or charges in this case including its outrageous position that Mahmoud’s mere presence and activities in this country have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences,” said Marc Van Der Hout, one of his attorneys, after the hearing Tuesday.
Van Der Hout also bristled at a potential ruling on whether Khalil can be deported, saying that would deny his client due process and the opportunity to challenge the government’s accusations.
“If this turns out to be what happens Friday, it would be an uncalled-for rush to judgment that would completely deprive Mahmoud of any due process, which is a foundation of our legal system,” he said.