this post was submitted on 27 Jan 2025
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Bulletins and News Discussion from January 27th to February 2nd, 2025 - Tariffs in Trump's Imperium - COTW: Colombia
(hexbear.net)
Image is of Colombian President Gustavo Petro giving a speech at the UN in 2022.
Trump has arrived in office with the force of an avalanche; ~~ending~~ slowing a genocide on the one hand, while simultaneously promising a total nightmare for minorities and the poor throughout and outside the United States on the other hand. [edited for clarity; I do not actually think Trump has ended the Palestinian genocide obviously, I was making a joke - but the ceasefire is a genuine improvement in conditions for millions of people right now who are on the edge of death, so it cannot be dismissed]
It's still far too early to truly compare and contrast his imperial strategy with Biden's, but initial signs show that there does appear to be somewhat of a reorientation. Biden was famous for being two-faced; ostensibly offering aid and stability, while also blowing up your pipeline to ensure you did not actually have an alternative to his idea. Trump, meanwhile, seems only really capable of aggression, threatening several "allied" nations with what may as well be sanctions because of the economic harm they'd do. I suspect we'll be debating for a long time how much of this can be attributed to the specific characteristics of Trump, or whether he merely embodies the zeitgeist of imperial decline - a wounded empire lashing out with extreme violence to try and convince everybody, including themselves, that they can still be the world imperialist hegemon.
I'll admit it: I did not believe that Trump would actually try and go ahead with putting tariffs on basically anybody who annoys him. And while the threat could still be empty in regards to countries like China and Canada, Colombia is the first indication of the potential of his strategy. Despite some fiery words from President Petro, after Trump's administration revealed the punishment if Colombia did not agree, it appears that Colombia will in fact be accepting deported migrants after all. It's funny how that works.
Last week's thread is here. The Imperialism Reading Group is here.
Please check out the HexAtlas!
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.
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So the labor unions went the 20s spd path?
Our labour unions are really odd. They like going on TV and complaining about various government initiatives, and then when push comes to shove, they always call things off for a 3% raise. I genuinely have no idea how most of the union-leadership isn't constantly getting couped by the rank and file, given that they have produced nothing of value for the workers they are supposed to represent. When the government declared that they were going to get rid of a public holiday to afford the increased military budget (thanks Biden), the unions went bleeping to the media about a general strike, and then when the government actually got rid of the holiday, nothing fucking happened and instead the union leadership walked away with a triumphant smile, because the government had agreed to let them be racist to polish people.
So they are like modern day labor unions in Germany? My own father left his local labor union because they reduced his salary by like 30% because he had too much overtime- imagine getting less money for not working more.
Yeah it's basically the same in all of Europe / the EU I think. Our workforce in Denmark is quite heavily unionized, but all the unions are led by end-of-history-there-is-no-alternative neoliberals. Though I should also add, that I'm personally quite sour on Danish unions because I happen to belong to the single most useless one in the country, and I'd argue that my union is also one of the most well known.
It's the same deal as our unions in America isn't it? Any actual trade-unionist/communist in leadership was forced out during the red scare and the leaders are collaborationist with the companies.
Actual communist have been forced out since like 1940 when the Germans invaded and immediately began hunting them. After the war, when socialism was at its most popular in Denmark, a bunch of our leaders began purging the unions of anyone with suspected leftist sympathy (i think this happened at roughly the same time as we entered NATO, which is probably a coincidence).
I should also add, Denmark did have it's own local Gladio-type organisations, but according to the book "NATO's secret armies", the danish version was entirely recruited from the young conservatives and was so entirely incompetent that they accidentally revealed their existence while trying to rig an election at the University of Copenhagen in the 70s.
I think one should add "the labour movement's information centre" AIC to the list of Gladio organisations in Denmark. The AIC was a succdem intelligence agency set up to spy communists, do anti-communist propaganda, purge them from unions and to make lists of known communists.
The AIC were so good at their job that the CIA effectively outsourced their Danish anti-communist espionage to them. They worked close together with top leadership of the succdem party and organised labour and acted as an incubator training future party leaders.
And yes, they worked with "the company", the other Danish Gladio organisation.