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.
Maybe im naive but the Trump administration, despite being staffed to the brim with insane China hawks, folding on its "anti-china economic warfare" before even starting it can be spinned into a more optimistic view on the prospects of hot US-China war. The murikans dont seem to have it in them. With the first sign of things getting tough, the US folded like a cheap tent. Just the prospect of things going to shit was enough. No prices have increased, nobody lost their job, nobody has been deprived of anything real. Some numbers on screens went up or down and the powers that be forced Trump’s hand. Even if instead of chaotic and incompetent it was some calculated and competent plan for a US-China clash, at some point most of these pressures and prospects would have arisen all the same and at the end of the day it wouldnt have much better chances to win against China. Will they really decide to destroy everything in a nuclear holocaust when the decision for a hot war is there when they couldnt even let the bond market freak out for more than 5 days ? Just as them losing the trade war (or at least not having the capacity to execute it without country breaking consequences) became obvious within days, the fact that they would lose any war close to China shores in 2028 or whenever will also sink in. Especially with the trajectory of both countries. It may still be possible to sustain that delusion in the big 2025 and rig war games to barely tie the engagement but its rapidly becoming less possible, especially after this whole debacle conlcudes
The treats must flow. As seen by the various tantrums on social media about the price of the Nintendo Switch 2, US society is unable to accept the treats (cheap electronic consumer goods) being shut off. Hence tarrifs exemptions of electronic consumer goods. Truly a sad society.
This was obvious when Covid hit. People had temper tantrums over wearing cloth on their faces. Can you imagine USians eating war rations in some hypothetical hot war?
The current US would do war rations in some annoyingly stupid way that renders criticism of it seem right-wing even though it sucks ass and could be done better by an actual communist government. Instead it further alienates the people from any idea of government programs.
You will need to have an X, the everything app (formerly Twitter) account to access your rationing cards. Unless you have a paid X, the everything app (formerly Twitter) account, rationing cards will disappear at random. You will need to swear loyalty to "Israel" and provide proof of citizenship to be able to sign up. Owners of large pickup trucks would get extra gasoline rations, veterans and cops would get extra beef rations. There would be no special provisions for vegetarians/vegans nor for the sick, the pregnant or breastfeeding women. For some weird reason the number of rationing cards needed to buy food at McDonald's or other fastfood chains connected to the regime would be suspiciously low.