Image is of a protest in San Diego against ICE.
On January 7th, 37-year-old Renee Good was murdered by an ICE agent in Minneapolis. While a considerable amount of the discussion online has been about the direction her wheels were turning and things like that, truthfully, I think it's just fundamentally bad to shoot a person to death with a gun if you happen to be a state mercenary enforcing an incredibly racist federal policy, regardless of the circumstances.
The murder has since prompted a wave of vigils and protests, not only in Minneapolis, but also in virtually every major city in the country. The demands are justice for Good in particular, and the abolition of ICE in general, to avenge its many victims. The Trump administration has done all they can to inflame the situation, designating Good a "domestic terrorist" and saying that the agent who shot her will be immune from prosecution.
Protests and resistance to this administration's policies have, encouragingly, had an element of international solidarity - not only are flags from countries throughout Latin America (and also Palestine) present, but speakers in protests have even been actively condemning the recent imperialist actions against Venezuela. For it is, of course, one joint struggle. The imperial boomerang always returns - and in the modern day, it returns rapidly.
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.
The Zionist Entity's Genocide of Palestine
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against the temporary Zionist entity. 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.
Mirrors of Telegram channels that have been erased by Zionist censorship.
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.
New China-Canada trade deal.
China is slashing tariffs on some Canadian agricultural products and Canada is allowing 50k electric BYD cars to be sold with almost no tariffs. Canadians will also be allowed visa free access to China. There are plans to increase Canadian exports to China in the long term as well (+50% by 2030).
For context, Canada sells a few million cars every year, although not that many are EVs. They let their EV rebate program end about a year ago, which cratered sales.
So in exchange for less tarrifs on canola oil sold to China, Canada is going to destroy their domestic automotive manufacturing industry to stick it to Trump? Talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face. This is the kind of deal China usually makes with global south/third world nations, not a country like Canada, it's absurdly in favour of China. Has Canada gone mad?
The Canadian automotive industry depends on selling to the US. 95%+ of automotive product is shipped to the US. Canada put the tariff on Chinese vehicles because they wanted to maintain the US as a customer and investor, not because flooding the market with Chinese vehicles would affect the domestic market.
The Chinese agricultural tariffs were a response to the automobile tariffs, so again, just a consequence of choosing the US over China.
Trump has been actively destroying the status quo with the trade war and efforts to reshore manufacturing, so the downsides of pissing off the US by trading with China are already in effect.
The alternative to making a deal with China would be maintaining tariffs against China, and letting China maintain tariffs on Canadian exports, despite the fact that the US is already treating Canada like a bad trading partner. To maintain that status quo would make zero sense.
Forgive me if I’m misunderstanding you, but saving the Canadian automotive manufacturing industry wasn’t an option on the table. It was either make a deal with China, or let Trump destroy the industry regardless while maintaining an unfavorable trade status with China.
I mean given they're now openly saying they will declare war on the United States if they go for Greenland, something not even Denmark has said, yes it seems they have.
Think as China and the USA continue to pull off 5% annualised GDP growth, while the EU (and Canada in this case) stagnate at 1-2% GDP growth, we're going to increasingly see situations like this, with deals more and more in favour of the US and China, political leaders in the EU and Canada forced into uncomfortable positions saying absurd things as they struggle to accept their new situation. The "global southification" of these former great powers as the US and China pull ahead.
Honestly Craney here with his statements on this and Greenland sounds like some despot. The kind of leader that gets satirised in a Sacha Baron Cohen film from the 2000s. Shooting off his own leg to spite the US, and talking about waging war against the US while having zero ability to do so.
I really don't think these nations realise how much they benefitted from US hegemony, and how brutal "multipolarity" is going to be for them unless they get their heads out of their arses.
imagining canada begging for chinese military weapons like they're a hb poster rn lol, literally sending china "pwease xi send dongfeng missles and j-35s" is the only way canada could do literally any tiny amount of damage to amerikkka in a war, let alone actually putting forward any meaningful resistance
I already posted this but this is actually the expected outcome.
We already know that China switched from Venezuelan to Canadian crude since last November after the Trump-Xi meeting:
So the US already gave China ample time to reroute its oil supply before the recent operation in Venezuela. It’s not hard to see that the US is picking off the anti-American countries one by one, from Venezuela to Iran, to gain control in Latin America and the Middle East.
In other words, China gets access to Canadian trade in exchange for the US getting Venezuela and by extension, the Latin America as a whole (and whatever deals that we’re not privy to). I cannot see Beijing turning down this offer - commodity and market access in Canada is as good as it’s going to get. Whether Canada itself agrees to this or not is irrelevant, as they were never invited to the negotiations table.
Meanwhile, China’s rapprochement with South Korea recently is also to be expected as the US withdraws from the Asia-Pacific region and letting Japan to take the brunt.
Notice that Washington is quiet about China making deals with South Korea and Trump even explicitly approved the China-Canada deal - Trump says Canada should do trade deals with China The Hill:
If you think the US’s goal is to defeat China, then you’re thinking too small. The US wants to eat the entire globe, and the ultimate goal with respect to China is to open up its financial markets.
drawing some pretty big conclusions for a 1.7% change in supplier. this post is pretty misleading given that context
The simple answer is to wait a few months then you’ll know if this line of thinking is correct or not. Let’s wait…
What is the meaning of a domestic Canadian automative industry? Spend the chip, comrades.