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!
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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.
As fun as it is to watch the S&P500 tank, this unfortunately does nothing to destroy capitalism. Like capitalism predates stock markets, and there's nothing inherent about capitalism that requires finance like this. The name of the game is changing, but it's still the same game at the end of the day. Capitalism is not in crisis like it was post-WWI, only the current iteration of neoliberal globalized supply chains is staring down the barrel of a gun. No amount of big guy bumbling about not knowing wtf a tariff is and destroying the economic basis of the post-war global order is going to radically alter the capitalist structure writ large, unfortunately.
I think this does show the giant cracks in the capitalist system however. Neoliberalism was basically invented to cover up those cracks, because if the cracks were allowed to show then communists could start gaining footholds. Capitalists will need to invent something else to further hide the decline in order to prevent widespread unrest in the imperial core. Or they'll just agree to go back to full on fascism and/or feudalism and hope that this time the power they have gained through technological advances can keep the fully subservient populace in line. They may not need to hide the flaws in the system anymore, how would a group of workers possibly hope to compete with the sort of war technology that exists today?
So I guess we'll see. Neoliberalism requires stocks, it requires capital investments. If they're willing to let neoliberalism end then it means they're either ready to deal with the consequence by using infinite and incredible violence, or they don't understand or remember why neoliberalism came about in the first place. I'm willing to bet its the former, but if it's the latter then this is a tremendous opportunity for the global left to make serious strides. Regardless I don't see their replacement plan, at the very least I don't see how whatever their replacement plan is could possibly keep the general populace in the imperial core happy. In my opinion anyway.
In and of itself, totally agree.
I do think though, we are approaching an unavoidable crisis as the rate of profit was already getting squeezed. Not unlike the 1910s or the 1930s or the 1970s. Every time so far, capitalism as found a way to wriggle out of the jam. The gains from neoliberalism (what solved the profitability crisis in the 70s) have been exhausted. How the contradictions resolve themselves this time is anyone’s guess.
Yeah I think that's the right level of existential risk to the system we're talking about here. Clearly we have reached new paradigm time, and how that contradiction is resolved who knows. But at the end of the day it'll just be capitalism 8.0 or whatever. The system will not collapse without our doing, unfortunately. It needs a push or it'll just reconfigure to capitalism but even worse.
Get pushing, comrade.
Counterpoint: Line going down is funny
spoiler
Agree thoOh no doubt, this shit is still funny as hell