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.
After a few good days for “Nothing ever happens” gang, the we’re so fucked caucus rises;
*SEMICONDUCTOR, ELECTRONIC TARIFFS WILL COME IN A MONTH OR SO, LUTNICK SAYS
*PHARMACEUTICAL TARIFFS ALSO COMING IN NEXT MONTH OR TWO -LUTNICK
China has officially halted shipments of several rare earth minerals to the US.
Some good news;
TRUMP TARIFF DRAMA DEEPENS AS MUSK PUBLICLY CLASHES WITH ADVISERS, DEFIES CABINET PROTOCOL – POLITICO
During a pro-Palestine demonstration at the National Assembly in Cape Town, activist and leader of Cape Town Intifada Uzair Mohamed was unlawfully detained by authorities, in a pattern that resembles similiar crackdowns in the US and Europe. Following immediate outrage of an illegal arrest, the charges were shifted to wearing a mask (which isn’t illegal).
The Western Cape province is also headed by the pro-Western, liberal
Diet ApartheidDemocratic Alliance party and some of the most fanatical pro-piSSraeli entities such as the SAJBD draw large amount of support in Cape Town. A few days after the arrest, several Members of Parliament of both the Democratic Alliance and Patriotic Alliance also had made a trip to the Nazi state on the opposite end of the African continent.The illegal arrest of Uzair Mohamed and attempts to suppress pro-Palestinian activism is largely only unique to Cape Town and are at most, infrequent in other major cities such as Johannesburg, Pretoria or Durban. - SAJFP, Salaamedia
German reaction to Israel killing 15 red cross workers. “Footage brings up questions” Rotten country.
this anti drone system china is developing is interesting https://www.scmp.com/news/china/military/article/3306199/chinese-weapons-giant-develops-anti-drone-barrage-system-counter-wartime-swarm-tactics
Lmao, apparently Trump is now calling the tariff exemption “fake news.” Here’s the content of his Truth Social post, which is apparently now how trade policy is being “clarified.”
spoiler
NOBODY is getting “off the hook” for the unfair Trade Balances, and Non Monetary Tariff Barriers, that other Countries have used against us, especially not China which, by far, treats us the worst! There was no Tariff “exception” announced on Friday. These products are subject to the existing 20% Fentanyl Tariffs, and they are just moving to a different Tariff “bucket.” The Fake News knows this, but refuses to report it. We are taking a look at Semiconductors and the WHOLE ELECTRONICS SUPPLY CHAIN in the upcoming National Security Tariff Investigations. What has been exposed is that we need to make products in the United States, and that we will not be held hostage by other Countries, especially hostile trading Nations like China, which will do everything within its power to disrespect the American People. We also cannot let them continue to abuse us on Trade, like they have for decades, THOSE DAYS ARE OVER! The Golden Age of America, which includes the upcoming Tax and Regulation Cuts, a substantial amount of which was just approved by the House and Senate, will mean more and better paying Jobs, making products in our Nation, and treating other Countries, in particular China, the same way they have treated us. The bottom line is that our Country will be bigger, better, and stronger than ever before. We will, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!
Monday is going to be wild.
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/
Not primary source, but (BadEmbanada) video which summarizes and cites them.
Jews Have Religious Right to Genocide, Says Israeli Supreme Court [“Israel is Jewish ISIS”]
Israeli Supreme Court cites the Bible to justify starving Palestinians, ethnic cleansing, explicitly refusing to follow international humanitarian law and distinguish between civilians and military targets, etc.
Quite a fucking confession.
Stranger still, is that the gap isn’t narrowing much as the CNE count progresses through provinces where the RC excels. CNE’s figures suggest that Luisa didn’t gain votes even with all the endorsements she received in round 1. Not even Pachakutik’s votes? Inconceivable.
- Kawsachuan News
Removed by mod
I’d say that’s not quite right because the “rules based international order” was never really used to describe the WTO/UN/Free-trade/multilateral international system which the US and its allies constantly violates while China and most of the rest of the world try to follow. The “rules” in the RBIO are the key, the point isn’t that you can’t violate these rules, it’s that America arbitrates when you can violate these rules, the UN might say “you can’t invade a country or apply unilateral coercive measures (sanctions)”, the RBIO says “you can’t invade a country unless we’re cool with it”, that’s why russia broke the RBIO for invading ukraine but Azerbeijan didn’t break it for invading Armenia. There are more examples
Since as far as i can tell China is still not selling UST and is holding it for the right momment, what if the chinese “plan” if all this continues is to wait as other UST holders keep this yield pressure on the bond market (since this situation continues pressuring asian-euro UST holding hedgefounds and BoJ given their currency and monetary state) then once the Fed is forced to do QE, China dumbs and exits USD. Inflation & rates would explode/ USD would devalue. US may not pay up or impose capital controls, but that means USD will lose GRC status
There will always be a market for treasuries if fed is willing to do qe or similar. The issue is selling all the dollars you get selling treasuries in the forex market or trying to purchase real goods with it. There is only so much forex liquidity and supply.
US will always be able to pay up dollars but whether it wants to, idk. Capital controls are such a terrible idea for the US but who knows with Trump. Preventing conversion of USD to other currencies or gold undermines the point of dollar itself which is that it has deep markets provided not everyone (or someone large) sells at once.
This is why I think pegging treasury yields and letting the exchange rate handle all the adjustment of US shooting itself is a better idea. Regardless, it doesn’t solve the problem that Trump’s tariffs mean rest of the world is less willing to hold US financial assets (that’s the future flows not just the existing stock of treasuries held by China and others from past surpluses) That can only be somewhat reversed if Trump goes on the TV and publicly apologizes to everyone, reverses it all, says he won’t ever talk tariffs again.
Trump needs to be more efficient at corruption. Instead of funneling money to the MiC via gov contracts and all the various forms of corruption he can just invite all the CEOs into a signal group and pump and dump the equity markets together using options. You can literally “make” hundreds of millions to billions of dollars overnight.
Removed by mod
it’s a thing but why not just stop the shenanigans with the other types of corruption? it’s destroying the earth. he needs to green corruption.
The US Supreme Court upheld (without dissent) (most of) the lower court’s order that government has to try to get the “accidentally” imprisoned Maryland guy released from the Salvadoran prison.
No real hope that this will have any material affect for the dude,
but I think this is the first supreme court appeal from this administration that hasn’t immediately succeeded.(I was wrong, they overturned the foreign aid freeze in March)https://xcancel.com/TheStalwart/status/1910690262176747760
BOOM:
*US TOLD CHINA TO REQUEST A XI-TRUMP CALL: CNN
Plz Xi, talk to me, plz.
told china to request a meeting? Am i reading this right? Why dont the us just request the meeting? Is this some fragile masculinity bullshit?
Trump has been bragging about leaders of other countries “kissing his ass”. They desperately want the Chinese to make the first move in calling him, so they can spin it in such a way to make Trump look like the winner in all this. That’s how pathetic they are.
short answer: it’s fragile masculinity bullshit
my comment on the CNN article posted to c/news here:
Trump is waiting for Xi to call. The Chinese see it differently
Two senior White House officials tell CNN that the US will not reach out to China first. Trump has told his team that China must be the first to make the move, as the White House believes it is Beijing that has chosen to retaliate and further escalate the trade war.
lol this is the dumbest middle school drama bullshit
That stance has been conveyed to Beijing for roughly two months, with Trump’s team clearly telling Chinese officials that Xi should request a call with Trump. But Beijing has repeatedly refused to arrange a leader-level phone call, according to three sources familiar with the official communications.
One hurdle, Trump’s team believes, is Xi’s desire not to be seen as weak by making the first move and approaching the US for talks.
Listen folks, this is all CHINA’s fault! More and more people are saying it. It was them who started it. We had the BEST tariffs, beautiful tariffs, and we put them on CHINA. And then they went and started a trade war for NO REASON by retaliating! Very rude! Very disrespectful!
Leaving him on read lol
noHere’s my number, Xi call me maybe.
No
Douglas Murray vs. Douglas Murray on “Lived Experience”
Excited and anxious at the same time for my trip on Sunday. Getting ready for a 6 hour train ride to Ürümqi, which is the last station for that railway line. I have not seen my cousins in five years so it will be nice to see them all again. Wish me a safe journey please! If I have time to remember I will send a photo of the train.
