Image is sourced from this Guardian article.
The Pope's fucking dead.
He gave JD Vance three chocolate easter eggs, exchanged pleasantries for 17 minutes, and then keeled over and died.
What a way to go.
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.
Apple aims to source all US iPhones from India in pivot away from China
Only the assembly stage is being moved to India, internal components will still be manufactured in China
HEAVILY DOUBT this. You can't just double an enormous number of assembly lines without a lot more infrastructure, new engineers and technicians, adequately training them, time to build and validate the lines, etc. That is a multi-year project
India and Pakistan might also turn themselves into nuclear waste, in a year, at the rate this shit is going.
Apple has already moved a lot of the assembling process to India because of the Indian government's own taxes for imports and that labour in India is far cheaper. They can use that to supply Americans.
shitpost
Thinking so intensely my nose is bleeding
Modi... Assembly... Great Again [𝐄𝐗𝐓𝐑𝐄𝐌𝐄𝐋𝐘 𝐋𝐎𝐔𝐃 𝐈𝐍𝐂𝐎𝐑𝐑𝐄𝐂𝐓 𝐁𝐔𝐙𝐙𝐄𝐑]
Make Assembly Gujarat... [𝐄𝐗𝐓𝐑𝐄𝐌𝐄𝐋𝐘 𝐋𝐎𝐔𝐃 𝐈𝐍𝐂𝐎𝐑𝐑𝐄𝐂𝐓 𝐁𝐔𝐙𝐙𝐄𝐑]
Modi Assembles GPU... [𝐄𝐗𝐓𝐑𝐄𝐌𝐄𝐋𝐘 𝐋𝐎𝐔𝐃 𝐈𝐍𝐂𝐎𝐑𝐑𝐄𝐂𝐓 𝐁𝐔𝐙𝐙𝐄𝐑]
Maharashtra-America Gr... [𝐄𝐗𝐓𝐑𝐄𝐌𝐄𝐋𝐘 𝐋𝐎𝐔𝐃 𝐈𝐍𝐂𝐎𝐑𝐑𝐄𝐂𝐓 𝐁𝐔𝐙𝐙𝐄𝐑]
Didn't they try to start pivoting to India years ago and found that the quality control standards were really hard to maintain because of the difference in working conditions and culture?
I predict "assembly" will amount to bolting the case on.
Good point, maybe they will "assemble" the finished product into the box
What are the predicted side effects of this?
I don’t think it will actually happen. They have been saying for some time that it would take at least a decade to move the supply chain out of china- and I think that is an overly optimistic one given that they are probably basing their predictions off of how things went in china, where they are used to effective state support and a highly educated workforce. … there are other issues, like how all of the glass utilized in smartphones is made by like, one factory/company in china…. China could also just utilize the infrastructure there to sell what is effectively the iphone but without the rentier rates charged by apple… that isn’t even getting into the mineral resources smartphones require- like rare earth metals that china controls the production of
idk, maybe they are saying that to get trump off of their back, or help him save face… and/or ease skittish investors
All components and electronics of the iPhone will still be manufactured in China, only the assembly stage for US bound phones will be moved to India, which should be an easy process
so it sounds like they want to make a distinction without a difference.. but china and the us may both be upset- the us for having 100% of its parts manufactured in china still… china for trying to “leave china” to avoid tariffs… the cost of moving assembly might still be expensive and take time to occur. anything that takes more than a few business cycles, let alone 4 years when the political situation could change. apple has deep pockets from all the chinese labor they have exploited, so maybe they could get away with that, but what would it even accomplish?
also how the fuck do they stop china from saying "no we're not sending the assembly part to india" ?
China probably doesn't give too many fucks.
In fact, they might even favor losing Apple's Foxconn contracts if the iPhone explodes in price globally while the SMIC-produced chips featured in Huawei phones are reaching parity in quality with those of TSMC.
If the tariffs cause the west to add avoidable extra costs to their products by "friend-shoring" them during final assembly, it will give 100% Chinese-made products a price advantage in global markets.
On the price/tariff side of things Apple expects assembly will cost around 5%-10% more compared to china, so iPhone for USA prices will rise. All of this may not actually let iPhones avoid tariffs, as most of the parts inside will still be manufactured in China.
China has warned against companies and countries avoiding China due to Trump's tariffs, but how the CPC will respond, if it all, is unknown