Image is from this article, of a Chilean copper quarry.
Title is a reference to Trump's social media post about copper, which was, as usual, mostly deranged.
Trying to follow Trump's administration is pretty difficult, but as of right now, he is threatening 30% tariffs on Mexico and the EU starting on August 1st, as well as new tariff announcements on a bunch of other countries (including, bizarrely, a 50% tariff on Brazil), and also apparently a 50% tariff on copper, which the US imports half its supply of and is, of course, a very important metal in many applications.
I'm not sure what the plan is to bring back domestic copper production beyond hoping that it just sorta works out, but prominent copper producers, such as Chile and Canada, seem both concerned and confused. Reuters had a line that made me chuckle:
Boric said he was awaiting official communication from the U.S. government, including whether the tariffs would include copper cathodes, and questioned "whether this will actually be implemented or not."
Big mood, Boric.
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.
It's been a while since I last posted this, but it's an excellent read on Russia's opening strategy from the Marine Corps Gazette's Maneuverist Papers
In short, at the start of the war, Russia was conducting three qualitatively different campaigns at the same time: the rush to Kiev in the north, avoiding urban areas to reach and encircle the capital as fast as possible- both for the chance of extracting a treaty in one blow, and also to pin all the troops in the region with the threat of attacking Kiev itself; actual territorial capture in the south, with city fighting in Melitopol, Mariupol and smaller towns in the vicinity, and the swift replacement of their civil structures by Russian-organized ones; and the roll-out and setup of artillery positions and logistics in the east, to prepare for a war of attrition against Kiev's entrenched positions there.
The article even argues that pinning the troops in Kiev so they couldn't immediately reinforce the army on the field in the east was the more important of the strategic goals of the northward push, because by the time those troops were free and able to move eastwards, Russian artillery was firmly entrenched and the Ukrainian logistics network had been severely disrupted. They took a gamble at ending the war immediately, while also engaging in the rest of Ukraine on the assumption that gamble would fail, and using the movement entailed by that gamble to improve their chance of success in the other theaters. And in fact, as already mentioned, the gamble succeeded! The west had to step in and cancel the peace treaty themselves.
Edit: And compare this with western military understanding, which seems to be "Bomb everything -> take the capital -> ??? -> win". Being able to construct campaigns like this is clearly a legacy of Soviet military doctrine and understanding.
Yes, this is the part that people keep missing. I really don't get it, why is the idea of "gamble that's not an all-in move, but actually involves a backup plan" apparently so difficult to grasp?
And this indeed reflects Soviet planning. A lot of people look at stuff like the 7 Days to the Rhine plans and assume that Soviet Cold War planning was all about blitzkrieg-style moves, which is an assumption that just falls apart upon the slightest further examination, given that everything else about the Soviets - the way they designed their equipment, the production rates, the massive stockpiles (so large that 30 years after the collapse of the Union, these old stockpiles made up a substantial portion of the equipment used in Ukraine), the massive bomb-resistant underground industrial complexes, the designing of civilian industry that could quickly convert to military production, etc. - indicates preparation for long attritional wars, not quick campaigns. Those WW3 plans are exactly such a style of move - a gamble to knock out the enemy quick, with the preparation for that gamble to not work and the conflict to shift into a conventional attritional phase (unlike the Nazi WW2 plans of "a gamble to knock out the enemy quick, and if that doesn't work... well, no need to worry, it is going to work!")