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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The bulletins site is here. Currently not used.
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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.
It has been a tense week around the globe and uncertainty of the future is what is the most frightening part of this trade war. Some small businesses in China are adding “America fee” for American tourists so if you want to buy a product with an identification they will add a surcharge which I find amusing and you should too. Each hour the unpredictable nature of this situation creates spikes of anxiety across China and many of us are scared that this can escalate to a kinetic war. I have even heard of some rumors of a draft being implemented but these were not verifiable yet, I don’t think kinetic war is something we see anytime soon but this is a start.
Will China sell treasuries? They have already started doing so… but to think they will “dump” them (sell them all) is out of the question, although I have seen that suggested here in a post or two, unless this is a jest then I would say that mutual economic destruction would be the result- yes economies want to move away from the US globalized order, but the move takes time hence the opportunity for BRICS to flourish and deeper trade partnerships with other nations. Reacting poorly to the decisions of the US in this current time will only impact more people, not just Americans. The reciprocal tariffs is a way of mitigating the consequences and in turn a show of solidarity with the Chinese people and other nations who may be too scared to war with the US. Partnerships like that of Korea, Japan and China only reinforce the Chinese ability to mitigate conflicts and show it is able to play the part of a good global superpower and this is what globally people want, they don’t want an empire which will attack them as its doing now. They just want support.
Rumors: Now for the scary part. Rumors that an all out war will begin are just rumors, but at the same time we have to take into consideration that wars have started over less. Trade wars are essentially hurting economies and the people living in those countries. As America approaches recession, unemployment goes up, people lose jobs, homes, and they die. The Chinese infrastructure is a lot kinder so there are safety nets implemented which prevents people from feeling a full impact, although they will still be affected no doubt. I feel for other countries as well who do not have adequate safeguards in place, in the US however the worker always feels the brunt of the force, the working class will always pay to fix the issues of the country which will possibly lead to some sort of nation wide unrest which is when Trump will enact the insurrection act and install martial law, it is funny that the liberals who were so adamant China was the harbinger of oppression and martial law of certain populations within China (lies) are now starting to understand to some degree that they themselves are living in such a regime. But we should still not trust the liberals as they always side with the fascists in the end, they may cry about it now until their face of the party tells them “sending Americans to El Salvador is good actually” and then they will keep quiet like they did on Palestine. Anything that infringes on their optics and reality of living within a Marvel movie takes them out of their artificial reality, the only reason the liberals complain now is because the cost of empire rises, but when the leash is tugged they will obey. So while the US may start to usher in martial law, they have already boasted their incentive of increasing their military budget to one trillion dollars. This is meaningless and more posturing, the US is in decline and knows it. This is a rat trapped in a corner move and one that increases stock prices of death capital (manufacturers of war products) and nothing more.
They are right to be scared. Warfare can't be so neatly divided between kinetic warfare vs economic warfare vs cyberwarfare. War is war. And when an adversary flounders in one type of warfare, they will move on to another type if the adversary feels they can still accomplish political objectives. This is why I didn't mind that China wasn't making 10-d chess moves with regards to de-dollarization. If the dollar is the strongest weapon of economic warfare the US has, then de-dollarization itself is a form of economic warfare against the US to strip the US of its most powerful weapon of war. And war, especially war between two great powers, comes at a great cost. I did not know whether Chinese society was willing to pay that price, and actions of China up until that point demonstrate that the CPC at least didn't think Chinese society as a whole was willing to pay that price.
But with recent developments, this question is sorta moot. Perhaps China could be criticized for not being assertive enough. The Rubicon has been crossed. China is on the path towards war with the US. And both parties will use whatever tools at their disposal. Kinetic warfare doesn't seem likely for now, but it's not going to just be the usual hacking by the CIA on Chinese government websites or Hollywood films being part of the US's soft power strategy against China. Things are going to escalate to assassinations and sabotage. The US almost assassinated Zhou Enlai, after all, and I could see assassination attempts against Chinese officials coming back. The Chinese state will also begin to psychologically prepare the populace for war. I know a few people who lived through the Cultural Revolution who mentioned that for a while, they were eating out of military rations despite being kids. It wasn't because China didn't have enough food but because they were being mentally conditioned for a potential war against the Soviet Union. Conditioning the populace towards war ranges from making the populace be more willing to face hardship from economic sanctions to willing to die for the motherland. The US is also doing the same with Trump's talk of open annexation. They don't make that much sense from an economic or geopolitical perspective since those countries don't have independent foreign policy anyways, but it makes a lot more sense if those talks of annexation are seen as a way to condition the US populace to see themselves as conquerors of foreign land willing to "get their hands dirty."
Good analysis, great to have you back!
One tradition people in México and China share
As the material conditions for American workers plummets, brutal policing and reactionary narratives will be the administrations tools. Unfortunately, this will mean more sinophobia and red scare propaganda as consent for a war is manufactured.
Throwing more money at the Pentagon, a beacon of government inefficiency, will not help us in the slightest. A pivot to Asia will never succeed off the heels of stoking a regional war in the middle east. Chinas technological dominance will only continue to increase.
I pray that any kinetic wars will be fast and utterly embarrassing for the US. The trade war will be long and painful, and similarly result in an embarrassing defeat.
Good to have you back
In the short term, the big concern with regards to kinetic warfare is war with Iran. The USA is basically already in a cold war with Iran, with what's happening in Yemen and the current US military buildup in the Middle East.
Its really you, I was not sure if someone is larping.
wb xiaohongshu, always glad to see dedollarization's strongest soldier posting