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.
Explosion rips through Tesla Supercharger
spoiler
Just a few years ago, the idea of someone targeting a Tesla charging station in a bombing attack would’ve seemed unthinkable. Today, it’s just the latest sign of growing anger aimed directly at Elon Musk. Authorities in Washington State believe an explosive device might have been planted at a Supercharger station, destroying part of the site and taking the entire location offline. Now, Tesla, the FBI, and local law enforcement are all trying to figure out what happened.According to Lacey Police, a call came in around 1:30 a.m. reporting a “loud noise in the Sleater Kinney area.” When officers showed up at the local Target on 655 Sleater Kinney Rd, they found a severely damaged Supercharger station. Photos from the scene show one of the main cabinets of the charging station in several pieces. A Supercharger stall also has a piece missing.
The Lacey Police Department is calling the incident “malicious mischief” and said that it’s working with the FBI to sort out exactly what happened. In response to news of the event, Tesla itself responded on X to say that it’s working with the LPD and FBI to provide security camera footage. “Don’t mess with critical infrastructure,” it concluded.
Notably, Tesla says it’s also working with Puget Sound Energy to get the Supercharger station back to full functionality so hopefully, those who rely on it won’t be without power for too long. This is, sadly, far from the first example of this sort of damage in recent months.
Protests span across not just the USA, but the world at this point. While most have been peaceful, a growing handful of incidents in the States and abroad are violent and or dangerous. Elon Musk has blamed the surge in Tesla-related vandalism on backlash to his leadership of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which has become a lightning rod thanks to deep federal budget cuts and significant government job losses. He has also claimed that criticism from Democratic leaders has fueled hostility toward Tesla and its supporters.
It’s becoming clear that some protesters see Tesla as a proxy for Elon Musk himself—an easy, visible target to vent frustration. Unfortunately, that means owners, many of whom have no connection to Musk’s politics or public persona, are getting caught in the crossfire. In response to the uptick in vandalism, the FBI has launched a task force to investigate attacks on Tesla property. Even so, the broader wave of unrest shows no signs of slowing down.
that's just the battery exploding
I still stand that some dude walking their dog near an exploding Tesla infrastructure due to faulty battery will be sent to a Gulag.inc in the near future
hell yeah, great band