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.
What a funny man
The stock market is still down like ~15% and that is with the market not realizing that most of the tariffs are still in place.
Guessing a dead cat bounce, today will be solidly in the red.
Edit: looks like I was on the money (heh).
I don’t think so, Trump has been basically begging Xi to call him. He’ll cave shortly.
Trump: “First of all, during the trade war, everybody has problems, even you. But you have nice ocean and don’t feel now. But you will feel it in the future. God bless –”.
Xi: “You don’t know that. You don’t know that. Don’t tell us what we’re going to feel. We’re trying to solve a problem. Don’t tell us what we’re going to feel.”.
Trump: “I’m not telling you. I am answering on these questions.”
Xi: “Because you’re in no position to dictate that.”
Lin Jian: “That’s exactly what you’re doing.”
Xi: “You are in no position to dictate what we’re going to feel. We’re going to feel very good.”
Trump: “You will feel influenced.”
Xi: “We are going to feel very good and very strong.”
Trump: “I am telling you. You will feel influenced.”
Xi: “You’re, right now, not in a very good position. You’ve allowed yourself to be in a very bad position –”
Trump: “From the very beginning of the trade war —”
Xi: “You’re not in a good position. You don’t have the cards right now. With us, you start having cards.”
Trump: “I’m not playing cards. I’m very serious, Mr. President. I’m very serious.”
Xi: “You’re playing cards. You’re gambling with the lives of millions of people. You’re gambling with World War III.”
Trump: “What are you speaking about?”
Xi: “You’re gambling with World War III. And what you’re doing is very disrespectful to the country, this country that’s backed you far more than a lot of people said they should have.”
Lin: “Have you said thank you once?”
Trump: “A lot of times. Even today.”
Lin: “No, in this entire meeting.”
Trump: “No.”
Lin: “Offer some words of appreciation for the paramount leader of China who’s trying to save your country.”
Trump: “Please. You think that if you will speak very loudly about the trade war, you can –”
Xi: “He’s not speaking loudly. He’s not speaking loudly. Your country is in big trouble.”
Trump: “Can I answer —”
Xi: “No, no. You’ve done a lot of talking. Your country is in big trouble.”
Trump: “I know. I know.”
Xi: “You’re not winning. You’re not winning this. You have a damn good chance of coming out OK because of us.”
A+
We will have to see how that goes. Trump seems to want to have his cake and eat it too. I really can’t see this ending without total capitulation of Trump, and I can’t see that happening in the short run, without legitimate pressure. He wants China to bend and break, meanwhile the CPC is tweeting out On Protracted War and posturing from a point of strength. We will see what happens.
All true, but one thing about Trump-style politics is that he can totally capitulate and at the same time convince himself and the Republican base that he actually won and still appear strong.
If he’s smart he’ll just push for stronger fentanyl export restrictions and do literally nothing else, then claim that he finally ended China’s illegal fentanyl cartel by his genius business acumen and all of his base will absolutely eat it up. It’s a get out of jail free card and an extremely small price to pay for China. Gives him a way to drop all the tariffs and claim he won and got everything he wanted and the only thing China loses is face with people China has no face with anyway.
So he definitely won’t do this but that’s his easy ticket out at this point
For sure, which is why I’m not confident, but still guess.