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.
We're really going full speed ahead with the germ theory denialism, aren't we? I look forward to the spirited debates about whether miasma theory is true or whether the oppressive smell from untreated sewage collecting everywhere is actually good for you.
It's not even eugenics at this point, eugenicists had a coherent ideology, albeit one that needs to be destroyed. This is a reaction against the notion of public health, against the idea that social determinants of health exist, that health is anything but a consequence of an individual's choices as a consumer and their personal virtue. Anyone who dies from an easily preventable disease deserves it for not being a rugged enough individualist.
Any intervention on a scale larger than whatever some crank on social media is selling is basically communism and must be destroyed. This is an ideology that can only take root in people who have been the benificiaries of hundreds of years of millions of people's labor spent so they would have the privilege of not seeing infant and childhood mortality rates at pre-modern levels. It's pro-suffering for the sake of suffering.
Eugenics is tragedy, this is farce. A humane society would put people who sincerely believe this shit to work doing disease eradication. Let them go down to the countryside and live with the people their idealism is killing.
Even miasma theory is somewhat connected to observable reality (people who spend lots of time around yucky smelly stuff tends to get sick more often) and believing in miasma theory can lead to demand for public health measures (get rid of all the yucky smelly stuff). I think they will go right to using a mixture of moralising and conspiracy theories to explain disease: "You (a bad person) got sick because you were not a high value alpha male with the right hustle grindset" and "I (a good person) got sick because of the woke DEI poisoning the wells". This explanation leads to policy outcomes the far right wants: no public health provisions and persecution of their enemies.
I don't think we're actually going to recapitulate all the prior theories of illness leading up to germ theory, the reality of having the prosperity gospel guiding public health policy in the US is far worse. All this for what? What's even going to be left to rule over? I don't know that anyone's even thought that far ahead, all the clear-eyed ghouls who were pulling the levers of power are gone and the slapdicks who replaced them all seem to sincerely believe the shit they're peddling. I don't think they understand that the infinite variety of contagious diseases we're letting run rampant don't care how rich you are, or how many precautions you take that you won't let the masses have access to. Like the IRA told Margaret Thatcher: we only have to get lucky once, you have to get lucky every time. Plagues don't discriminate. Will it fuel pogroms? Sure, but it doesn't keep the instigators of those pogroms from dying agonizing, preventable deaths.
I don't know if miasma theory is completely off the tables, actually. I could see libs adopting it as some kind of counterproductive attempt to triangulate some kind of public health policy while ceding material reality to the fascists, that's their whole thing. Why organize effective resistance when you can fight battles already won and lost while chuckling at how clever you are?