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.
You know it’s the most logical and efficient system of economics when the speculative value of major corporations swings by 5-10% every time a 78-year-old makes a social media post.
Stock bros are mad right now, calling for an investigation and jailtime. Lol good luck with that.
(Misread this comment, I’m talking about whoever spread the 90-day pause lie this morning)
I’m still surprised the guy behind the blue-checked “Insulin is free now” tweet never got Donzigered.
Pro-capitalism clowns will tell you stock prices reflect what the market thinks future cash flow will be (ie profits the company makes in the future).
Except, crypto breaks that entirely, it has no cash flows, no real assets, no dividends yet it behaves like a tech stock.
Crypto is like gold but if gold was the hallucination of a tech bro and the “mining” of gold was continuous rather than a one time deal and if gold was not shiny or pretty and used for objects of great beauty
I mean, it’s logical (if not efficient) in that Trump’s tariffs will have a major negative impact on profitability in the future should they hold. Honestly IMO current prices assume Trump will back down… if it becomes clear he won’t, then stocks will completely melt down.
They’re talking of sending fired civil servants into manufacturing jobs lmao Trump is not gonna back down. The century of humiliation has just begun
Every country in the world seems to be begging and pleading to get the tarrifs off them, offering to buy American stuff, remove all their own tariffs, etc. I’m guessing people are hoping his mad man theory will work out and some deals will be worked out in the last minute.
According to Trump
The workers/“consumers” in most of these countries should be ecstatic about these tarrifs. It’ll immediately tank domestic prices for regular goods, as the majority of American trade surplus is cars and military equipment.
This means that food prices will drop, probably so low that massive government programs will be needed to sustain the agribusiness that loses profitability. Meaning conditions are ripe for the state to gain control over food.
It’ll also force countries into new trading blocks on virtually equal footing without the US being involved. The US will lose access to cheap raw material and intermediate goods required to maintain their military. Meaning actual “free trade” will be possible and new economic blocks will form.
US workers and consumers will feel the squeeze as the basic necessities for social reproduction skyrocket out of reach and the feedback loops of collapse start up.
Because there isn’t enough time to rebuild industrial capacity, any war effort by the US will be immediately stifled by lack of access to skilled labor and intermediate products. As well as apathy from the populous. Apathy that only has one possible outlet which is domestic government. It’ll take a bit, but this will be the beginnings of the balkanization of America.
The weight of these tarrifs will force internal trading blocks to form between states and we’ll start seeing those blocks trying to form international relations outside the realm of the federal government as is atrophies and collapses.
This is of course all contingent on the “things happen sometimes” gang winning.