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.
Do you think this shitshow will force the CCP to take aore overtly ideological stance as to push more for a is vs them narrative?
China has most likely calculated a variety of possible outcomes maybe even years before Trump was elected as president, unlike neoliberal countries who’s future is mostly obscured by maintaining capital, there is no “hundred year plan” for the west, much like the stock market, their moves are unpredictable, highly volatile, and dictated by the market.
China can only do the thing it has been doing and that is deepening relations with other countries and offering alternative solutions to the US. The US is doing all the “heavy lifting” by ostracizing themselves on a global level to the point where even the EU is more vocal about their distrust in the US hegemony. No doubt Nordsrresm and the Ukraine war has only made relations worse such as when Trump scolded Zelensky on display, Trump made it clear that Europe’s aid paled in comparison. And sure, Trump says whatever he says but this always comes at a cost for the rest of the country, Trump is the naked face of the American empire for what it truly is, so other nations do not shy away from this fact and act without having to put on the mask because diplomacy is a facade.
They don’t have to
I hope more markets will look to China as the US is weaned off and wonders why WalMart has empty shelves.
brace yourself for photos of empty Walmart shelves with comments that amount to “America has fallen to communism” or “what are we, a bunch of Asians?”
That’s what I mean, they could say “see that shit wouldn’t happen with us, we do this better”
Why would they? There’s no incentive to at this stage. The ideological superiority is evident in the material outcome.
they’re mao posting though
Whom among us has not decided to post On Protracted War when the US starts a trade war against you?
Oh I hadn’t seen that. Idk how seriously trolling should be taken as ideological propaganda, but then again, if that weren’t the case there would be no reason for the bear site to exist
I guess I’m just wishcasting
CPC PCC
No. I don’t hope for that much. I just hope for practical pushback.
There is zero hope of this unless the US moves seriously towards Taiwan, otherwise I’d be very surprised, the ideological rot goes all the way to the top.
Nobody is forcing Xi to make speeches even 10 years ago about how much he loves “globalization” and how there is realy no alternative and we should not seek to blame the current system or replace it.
There are further left tendencies within the CPC but they do not hold power. Xi was wishing Trump good wishes on his admin on day 1 even though the armchair bullshitters in here(including myself) could tell from a mile away, years ago that this is going to happen, Trump was after all the one who started the first “trade war” too.
Ask yourself if they learned anything from the Trump trade war in 2018 and I’ll show you a picture of Xi smiling holding Biden’s hand in 2024.
Besides, as I said, there is no ideological stance that the CPC can push since all they repeat constantly is globalization is good and it is not to blame for the suffering, exploitation and wars. Its merely a bad side, not an inherent flaw or something that must be fought against and replaced.
Us vs them mentality needs to be more than complaining asking to see the manager(UN/WTO) and complain about how the US is realy bad but again after almost a decade repeating these views it will take something far more drastic to force them to change.