Image is of Trump's initial set of reciprocal tariffs. Source is CNN and Reuters.
It's difficult to keep up with the news around the tariffs; they get instated, then dropped, then reinstated... for example, on Friday, Trump said that certain electronics like smartphones would be exempt, causing markets to rally a great deal, but now the Commerce Secretary has said that they might not be exempt? The state of play right now, if you haven't been keeping up this week, is that the US recently announced a 90-day global pause on implementing the tariffs he had planned (that is, 25% on certain Canadian and Mexican goods, and at least 10% on every other nation) but nonetheless increased tariffs on China to 145%.
Meanwhile, China has been - quite remarkably - standing their ground, increasing tariffs on the US to 125%, and putting restrictions on rare earths. Xi Jinping has been in Vietnam and has made statements against a tariff war there, saying that it would have no winners. Meanwhile, a Chinese spokesperson has essentially said that China can endure the tariff war due to the increasing demand from its domestic market in combination with its growing economic ties with other countries.
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.
Existing liberal lines on the PRC are shattering, and those antagonistic towards the PRC are increasingly being opposed. The time is good to be correcting misconceptions about the PRC and explaining the benefits of siding with it over the US.
I may have to hand it to the accelerationists, Trump may go down in history as one of the accidentally best presidents in USian history.
The Chinese Century is well upon us, as we already knew, but increasingly liberals are accepting this. The Paper Tiger is dissolving.
I was talking about China with some people and everytime they brought up some of the typical propaganda, I could just point out that America is literally doing what you are saying China is doing
Yep, and more frequently they fold afterwards than before this trade war.
"Everything under heaven is in utter chaos. The situation is excellent."
WHATABOUTISM!!! WHATABOUTISM!!!!
I proclaim as I terminate the pesky thoughts in my head.
Must not utilize compare and contrast… MSNBC told me this was a Russian fallacy
Saw a lib zoomer with Palestine, Ukraine and China flags in their display name.
Incredible mind palace on that lib, but genuinely a positive sign. Even the libs are slowly making progress, though obviously imperfect.
Libs will never be dissuaded on Ukraine. I've never seen a person flip on this
I've never seen a flip, but I have gotten people to see ending the war ASAP and not fighting to the last Ukrainian as the best option.
Any tips?
It's difficult to get them to this point, but highlighting that Ukraine cannot win this war because the US and Europe will never supply the support needed for them to win because they're more interested in making the conflict a drawn out resource drain on Russia than actually enabling Ukraine to mount a successful resistance has at least gotten libs in my life to move to the "the war should end" state
Works better IRL when you talk about the current tariffs and explain the purposes of Rare Earth restrictions, then show why that's such a big deal for Trump in the Ukraine negotiations. People arguing online are already assuming debate for debate's sake, but people IRL are normally more reasonable if you prove to be regularly on the correct side.
I’ve seen a lot of Liberals just collectively lose steam on Ukraine and stop talking about it altogether after they realized they believed complete bullshit like Russians with Shovels using washing machine chips and the economy would be destroyed by sanctions
Washing machine chips? Haven't heard that one
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/05/11/russia-sanctions-effect-military/
https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1774175/russia-economy-sanctions-effect
https://www.forbes.com/sites/erictegler/2023/01/20/is-russia-really-buying-home-appliances-to-harvest-computer-chips-for-ukraine-bound-weapons-systems/
https://time.com/6226484/russia-appliance-imports-weapons/
More of the usual imperialist propaganda and lies. Westoids who were really slava ukraini constantly fell for these types of things and articles about how Russia was out of missiles. Some of them got disillusioned after being proven wrong for the 50th time in a row.
You have to break the association that they have with Putin somehow being responsible for Trump first.
2/3 of the way there. Not long until they accept Juche thought regarding the Righteous War
It's about time we make "I stand with China" go viral.
anti-warism
Least incoherent American liberal
Anecdotally I've never had libs in my life be more receptive to positive Chinese news coverage and getting them to check out RedNote specifically has shattered their previous thoughts about China.
I cannot overstate how important getting libs into non-hostile media spheres is to breaking US propaganda.
I wish I could do that, my go-to strat is just to say that if you focus on industrialization, it's only a matter of time before you win against someone so heavily financialized. Breaking the "China is stupid/collapsing/inefficient" leg first lets you pivot to more positive areas like poverty reduction.
Turns out if you actually built factories and refineries and mines etc that even if money line go down the factories are still there, the refineries are still there, and the minerals are still in the ground to be exploited.
Compare this to the western economies which are 80% based on money laundering and embezzlement.
100%, that's exactly why this line of attack is so effective. Everything "clicks" into place after this.
It was won when my boomer dad praised Chinese electric cars. We have come a long way from the fetus soup incident.
Think it was mentioned here before but ishowspeed is traveling through China as the most popular streamer on youtube, there's like 100s of millions of gen Zers getting deprogrammed on China right now as well, excellent timing.