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.
Article is too long to post here so, tl;dr: Over 100,000 Israelis have stopped appearing for reserve duty. Attendance rates for the reserves have reportedly dropped to 50-60 percent.
https://www.972mag.com/israeli-army-refusal-crisis-gaza-war/
The US transferred an entire Patriot SAM battalion (24-36 launchers) from INDOPACOM (near China) to CENTCOM (Middle East).
I know this is to protect against retaliation if they strike Iran, but coupled with other events it kinda feels like they are also encouraging China to move on Taiwan.
BREAKING: This is now the worst three-day performance for the S&P 500 since October 1987.
Too poor and apathetic to really care at this point but saw something about consecutive 5% losses on three days for the first time since 1929 that started the great depression lmao
Chat is that bad for the economy?
Colombia: President Gustavo Petro said at the CELAC Summit in Honduras that no Latin American government should accept that its citizens be treated as criminals and sent to prisons in El Salvador.
- Telesur Twitter
The “CEO” of Praxis, the tech-ghoul backed venture that intends to build a libertarian paradise, has begun a tour of the world to determine where this techno utopia will be built with announced stops in Nuuk (Greenland), Buenos Aires, Rome, Athens, Auckland, Marrakesh, Tokyo, Kyiv, and Santo Domingo. He is backed by the likes of Peter Theil and Sam Altman, and some people are speculating that this is among the reasons why Trump wants to buy Greenland.
Choice quote from the article:
Brown said that many of Praxis’s prospective dwellers are technology founders and workers from Silicon Valley, seeking to pursue innovation in a less regulated environment. In Brown’s view, the creation of these high-tech hubs and the potential positive spillovers in terms of technological advances and new jobs would incentivize governments to welcome Praxis.
I’m honestly fine giving these people a couple billion dollars to actually build Rapture as long as I never have to hear from them again (
)Black Monday was temporarily postponed
you’ll love this next part
CNE results site: Daniel Noboa holds a 12-point lead over Luisa González with 80.53% of votes counted.
- Kawsachuan News
I guess Noboa is going to win. CIA/US wins once again
By my reckoning, this means Trump plans to impose 20% + 10% + 34% + 50% = 114% tariffs on China. Jfc…
Maybe he’ll hit the wrong button on the calculator and the USA’ll wind up owing China more money.
Bold of you to assume that a calculator was used and not a premium subscription to ChatGPT Co-Pilot Mega Plus Infinity X Pro.
I’m 100% convinced that they vibed the original terrifs with Grok, then came out later with that formula after asking if his it got those numbers.
It’s the only way to explain not only the formatting errors (they got the formula in Python, then asked it to translate it to LaTeX so they could put it in a PDF and it kept the * multiplication from the Python code), but because the reasoning and the formula are constantly flip flopping between 2 different ways to write that formula (2 separate Grok conversations).
We are currently being governed by an anti-woke AI and vibe coders…
illegal subsidization of companies
What?
I speak neoliberal economist, so I actually understand this one. Any state-owned enterprise or private company that receives any subsidy is “interfering with the free market”, and thus is unfair. Companies should be allowed to freely compete with each other without any subsidies, so the most efficient company will eventually win (obviously this is horse shit, but that’s the line at least)
I’m just hung up on the “illegal” part. Illegal where? In China? Is Trump saying China is violating their own laws?
Legal: giving needed assistance to our poor agriculture industries (I mean, “farmers”) so we can have food security.
Illegal: anything anyone else does.
He means “illegal” by vague “rules based international order” trading rules. Which is a totally incorrect understanding of course.
I wonder if he hates Biden enough that he’d call the CHIPS act illegal
It’s the line before “except for Elon Musk”
WTO regulations. If countries subsidize exporting industries, a complaint can be registered at the WTO, which can grant the complainant permission to impose tariffs on the subsidized companies
Damn ok, there is a kernel of truth to it https://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/scm_e/subs_e.htm
keep in mind though that the US (Trump and Biden) has blocked the seating of new judges at the WTO dispute settlement body since 2017, so the WTO can’t actually hear any complaints anymore. They did this because countries in Latin America and Africa kept suing the US for unfair trade practices and winning, the WTO “international rules based” trading order has been dying for years at America’s hands, now trump just nailed the coffin shut.
Didnt he also suspend funding for the WTO too?
wait no that was WHO
All the Trump-supporting midwestern farmers right now:
Idk what to think but there are some utterly apocalyptic ideas floating from and around the administration and the surrounding hack economist and advisor sphere and they even get credible coverage and op-eds in mainstream financial publications and media in the last weeks. Especialy if things detariorate debt parameter wise , there is a Fed-administration crisis and/or the less insane Miran/Bessent plans A/B dont work or even have time to work. Stuff like the administration trying to unilateraly turn all US government bonds into 100 year bonds or taxing capital flows/capital controls. Can they be that suicidal towards the dollar hegemony?
I’m sad that we won’t get the 1987 drop forecasted.
Oh well, line go down, not as much.
Yowzer,
Critical support for JDPON Don in his struggle against finance capital.
Hamas tries to sue
https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/hamas-terrorism-uk-marzoukAssuming that the tariffs stay in place for some time, this really will be an interesting experiment. I hope that Trump saved the game before he implemented the tariffs.
What happens if the US keeps provoking China and China sells off treasuries and uses the cash to pay off Latam and African debt?
