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.
Looks like we have our first F-16 shot down by Russia in Ukraine now. Both Russian and Ukrainian sources (including Ukrainian President Zelenskyy) have confirmed that an F-16 was lost in combat.
Zelenskyy's statement
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As I've already discussed, the early model F-16s Ukraine got are roughly equivalent to their MiG-29s in capability, only being superior in electronic countermeasures (ECM) and native support for American munitions. These early 4th generation aircraft aren't a match for Russian 4.5 generation fighters in a straight fight.
The Ukrainian F-16s have also been relying exclusively on this ECM (provided by the external AN/ALQ-131 external pod) and terrain masking (flying low close to the ground) to suppress Russian Ground Based Air Defense (GBAD), and flying with no anti radiation missiles for suppressing these defences. While a successful tactic up until now, it's highly risky. If the ECM fails or is bypassed, the pilot has no way to suppress any GBAD firing at them. If you look at the Russian air campaign in Ukraine, the escort fighters or strike fighters carrying out the strikes themselves (in Su-35s and Su-34s) are always carrying at least one Kh-31P anti radiation missile. In the US Navy air campaign against Yemen, the EA-18G Growlers are flying escort missions with at least two AGM-88E anti radiation missiles, along with highly advanced ECM that is much more sophisticated than the AN/ALQ-131.
I'm not a fighter pilot, but if I was and you told me I had to fly a strike mission in a block 20 F-16 for Ukraine in Sumy, where our high level friendly Ukrainian GBAD (in an S-300V battery) has been destroyed, and I'm going up against the best of the best Russian GBAD and combat air patrols in S-400 GBAD and Su-35 fighter jets, and I'll have to fly a nap of the earth/terrain masking flight path to the launch point for my bombs, with only an ECM pod and no anti radiation missiles to suppress the Russian GBAD, and that there would be no allied Ukrainian aircraft higher up with anti radiation missiles to act as an escort, and all I have to try fend off the Russian Su-35s is the crappy radar on the block 20 F-16, along with 2 AIM-120 and AIM-9 air to air missiles, I would not fly the mission.
seems like terrain masking is a quite annoyance for surface to air missile systems. why they don't make more awac planes for this. yes they are expensive but honestly I don't know why they are that expensive
The Russian A-50s have started flying a few weeks ago, for the first time in over a year. So AWACS aircraft are back. They are expensive and hard to make because they require a lot of modern sophisticated electronics to work on the modern battlefield. You can't build an AWACS with 40 year old sensor equivalents and expect it to work against modern electronic countermeasures. Russia is working on building A-100 AWACS aircraft, with testing ongoing. The current Ukraine war and sanctions have hurt the modernisation programs (Su-57, Su-75, A-100), with focus moved to more pressing issues like artillery and armour production. Only the Su-57 appears to have survived.