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!
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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.
Trump - Netanyahu interview now. I'll try provide a transcript.
Netanyahu has just said that Israel will "eliminate" all tarrifs and eliminate the trade deficit to get the American tarrifs off of Israel.
The trade deficit is the key. The only way to get the United States to remove the tarrifs as it currently stands, is to eliminate your trade deficit.
Trump has also said that they are in direct talks with Iran over a nuclear deal. No pause on tarrifs, and said that Japan would have to import American goods (with a focus on American cars) to reduce tarrifs.
Trump is now talking about how China has to open up it's economy to US companies and goods.
Trump has just said that Ansarallah/the Houthis locally produce "highly sophisticated" weapons and missiles in Yemen. And admitted that they shoot down the 17 MQ-9 Reaper drones, saying that they shoot down "flying objects".
US military budget is going to be $1 trillion dollars, the biggest in history.
The USA had a direct meeting with Iran on ~~Saturday, April 5~~ next Saturday, on a nuclear deal.
The EU was formed to "harm the US on trade", according to Trump. Says the EU must import American cars and agricultural products, and mainly energy, for fair and reciprocal trade, talking about eliminating the trade deficit there.
Trump is now talking about "clean coal". Trump is now talking about lowering the price of eggs and groceries, a "beautiful and old fashioned" word.
Trump is now saying that the Hamas abused and slapped the hostages in the 3.5 feet high pipe tunnels, no signs of love or affection, according to talks he had with the hostages.
Says that EU rules and regulations are designed to prevent the imports of US cars, calls it non monetary barriers to prevent trade. Also says that artificially lowering the value of currency makes trade unfair, with regards to selling tractors as an example.
The US wants to "reset the table" on trade. Talks about eliminating the trade deficit globally, in the context of China. Says it's the only chance the US has to perform this reset. Calls NAFTA the worst trade deal in the history of the United States, and re-industrialising the United States. Says that the US was the wealthiest it's ever been between 1870-1913.
Trump says that Gaza is an incredible piece of real estate, and talks about his ethnic cleansing plan for Gaza, and turning it into an American protectorate. Netanyahu is saying that they must give people a choice to leave Gaza, in this context.
Says that there are no tarrifs on Russia because there is no business being done with Russia, and says that the bombing campaigns are horrible in Ukraine.
Virtually every country wants to negotiate with the United States over tarrifs, according to Trump, saying that they are offering things the US would never even bother asking for, talking about eliminating the $36 trillion dollar debt.
If talks aren't successful with Iran, Iran will be in great danger, Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. October 7th was a horrible day, one of the worst days in the history of history of the world. Of 59 hostages, only 24 were alive, according to Trump.
Trump says that they have $7 trillion dollars of commitments for companies for re-industrialising the USA. Says that companies will get their own power plants with record quick approval for this.
On Turkey in Syria: says he can solve any problem Israel has with this by negotiating with Erdogan, congratulates Turkey in taking over Syria via proxy.
Interesting admittance about Ansarallah. Thought the line they always stuck to was that they were a proxy for Iran and got everything from Iran and Iran was completely in control of them.
Not sure how all these deals will work in practice, though. You can't fix our trade deficit with everyone over night, we don't produce enough things for that. Every country in the world is going to start buying our cars? Do we have enough for that?
With Ansarallah, it's likely that they have local production of Iranian missiles and variants built/engineered further from that. Iran probably assisted them in setting up underground production facilities (similar to missile production facilities and "cities" in Iran), in Yemen itself. Russian state media TASS reported that Ansarallah were locally producing an anti ship version of the Iranian "Raad-500" MaRV capable ballistic missile, called the Tankeel, last year, dubbed Yemen's first "hypersonic weapon". Some components might still be imported from Iran or even North Korea, but a lot of the production takes place in Yemen. Hence US airstrikes trying to destroy industrial capacity in Ansarallah controlled areas of Yemen itself, to stop the manufacturing of weapons.
In Trump's mind, it's clear that this is a long term thing, not an overnight thing. He scoffed at a reporter asking about what Americans should do in the meantime.
I wish them luck in resisting the big bunker buster weapons.
Get fucked, I guess...
lol no who tf wants to drive those massive ass things. yank trucks and SUVs probably wouldn't even fit into half the streets and parking stalls in Europe or Japan.
Do you have any idea how strict Japan is with car sizes? The mfs actually have government regulators come with a tape measure to your house.
I tried to make this as coherent as possible, which was very difficult considering that Trump was doing most of the talking in his usual cadence, vocabulary and tone, as well as going off on tangents about Biden and Afghanistan.