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.
Please check out the RedAtlas!
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.
With today's negotiations between the USA and Russia over the Ukraine war now concluded in St Petersburg, and negotiations between the USA and Iran taking place tomorrow in Oman, what's everyone's thoughts on this? It would be cool if we could all give our opinions and discuss, even if we disagree with each other of course. Open debate is always best, even with such highly serious topics. These are some of the most important negotiations in modern history. If they fail, we could be looking at large scale warfare and associated events that could lead to the death of many and seismic shifts in the world economy that would make tarrifs look small. Or not, hopefully.
My view is quite simple and not very insightful, the losing sides have to offer up large concessions to halt ongoing war or prevent war. Ukraine is suffering losses and losing to Russia in Ukraine, so for any "peace deal" to go through, Ukraine and the USA will have to offer some substantial concessions to Russia, such as the four oblasts in the east (or even more territory) becoming effectively Russian, future elections, no NATO, etc. If those concessions are not offered, Russia will continue the war until it reaches it's ultimate conclusion. On the other hand, Iran has suffered some substantial losses in its Axis of Resistance network, and it's deterrence is at a historical low (no Operation True Promise III/Israeli attack on Iranian soil not responded to, large US military buildup in the region), so Iran will have to offer some substantial concessions to the USA and Israel around it's uranium enrichment levels, nuclear program and potentially other assets like the Axis of Resistance, otherwise I believe the USA and Israel will go to war against Iran.
Do hexbears think the fate of Ukraine and Iran is linked somehow between the two potential deals? Can Russia play an important role in preventing war against Iran and brokering a "nuclear deal"? Can the USA play a vital role in getting Ukraine to offer up large concessions in exchange for pausing the war there and achieving a "peace deal"? I certainly hope that in both cases peace can be achieved obviously, but if war is inevitable it will happen.
On a lighter note, is Pezeshkian the Iranian Gorbachev? Is Zelenskyy the Ukrainian Churchill?
I feel like the US has an advantage if only because they're making deals with two different parties, Russia and Iran, while Russia and Iran are two different countries with different diplomatic officials. The US knows what offers and counteroffers they will give to Russia and Iran and know the offers and counteroffers Russia and Iran give to them by virtue of being one party (presumably US diplomatic officials tasked with Russia aren't completely cloistered off from US diplomatic officials tasked with Iran). Meanwhile, there's no guarantee Russia/Iran will tell Iran/Russia everything that transpired in their dealings with the US, which means operating with incomplete information.
The chief negotiator for both potential Russian and Iranian deals on the US side is literally the same guy, Steve Witkoff. He visited Russia on Friday, and will visit Oman on Saturday, the day after. So he has the closest thing to complete information and the complete trust of Trump. Witkoff also negotiates with Israel, and has even been rumoured to have made contact with Hamas. So he has the closest thing to a complete picture of anyone involved.
When you mention Hamas are you referring to the side deal that was sidestepping israel?
Yeah apparently the US tried to negotiate with Hamas independently without Israel. Witkoff was rumoured to have said something along the lines of: we [the USA] care more about getting the hostages out than Israel does. But there's no confirmation on that quote, it's a rumour.