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.
Currently riding on a train through Xinjiang. Hopefully I’ll update later with more details.
I’ve noticed recently that Wikipedia has been a lot less pro-Israel recently. Like, they directly call it an Apartheid state and what Israel is doing a genocide without any qualifiers, and if you look at the Talk pages on those articles, any time someone tries to bring it up, they’re basically just like “No. We’ve already settled on this discussion.”
It’s a barometer of the opinions of normie college-educated liberals, they’re the ones who write it for the most part
Or because funding for US propaganda outfits got cut?
lol bye bye USAID
or whatever fuckin agency it is that spreads that shit
Had to wait until everyone had already made up their minds
From what I saw they were pretty early on it, citing scholarly opinion that it was a genocide long before I saw most libs really come around to calling it that. They do love their appeals to academic sources, and there was widespread agreement among scholars that Israel’s actions qualified as genocide.
Guess libs are getting off the Israel train because of Trump being in charge. Although the policy is exactly the same as Biden’s
The only difference is in tone: Biden feigned at it being an unfortunate necessity to destroy hospitals and starve babies, while Trump brags about it.
Yes. A repeat of the first Trump admin. Sadly, their opinions will just return to the right-wing status quo when the next Biden is president and in charge of the genocide again.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaza_genocide
The evidence is overwhelming that denial propaganda has to ignore or discourage people from investigating into the claims. It isn’t just the scale of catastrophic damage but the rhetoric of Israeli politicians, media, micro-celebrities in Israel, and the entire society espousing genocidal rhetoric on social media, interviews, and public statements. Netanyahu quoting Amalek was the huge and first red flag for special rapporteur Francesca Albanese, but even recently ministers like Smotritch claiming "it’d be a good, moral, righteous thing to let 2 million people starve but ‘the world won’t let us’. "
Well, well, well. Look at the completely predictable consequences of my actions
U.S. Chipmakers Fear They Are Ceding China’s A.I. Market to Huawei
New restrictions on semiconductor exports to China are scrambling sales and fueling concerns that the Chinese tech giant will become a chip-making powerhouse.
https://www.namibian.com.na/nandi-ndaitwah-dismisses-social-media-claims-of-american-deportations-from-namibia/ Ppl using AI spread fake news about namibia expelling Americans. social media is a disgrace
Prediction: Abrego Garcia will return home at some point. And then Trump and his ilk will spin it as “See? We’ll correct our mistakes when someone isn’t a criminal!” And then the Democrats will treat that as the big victory, so they don’t need to do anything about this anymore whilst the same shit still keeps happening, like Derek Chauvin’s conviction.
Javier Milei’s party comes in third in Argentina’s first electoral test of the year (Spanish Only)
Article Translated
The elections were to elect those who will reform the Constitution and also local offices.
The party of Argentine President Javier Milei came third in Sunday’s elections in the province of Santa Fe, where the coalition of Governor Maximiliano Pullaro won in the opening of an electoral year with national legislative elections in October.
Santa Fe, to the north of Buenos Aires, elected this Sunday those who will reform its Constitution and also local offices. Sixteen months ago, the ultra-liberal Milei obtained there 62.8% of the votes in the ballot that led him to the presidency, but now his candidates reached 14%, according to provisional results.
The district is the third most important in Argentina and its electorate represents 8% of the electoral roll.
With 98.7% of the votes counted, Governor Maximiliano Pullaro, who headed the list of his political space, a coalition of the Unión Cívica Radical, Propuesta Republicana and Socialist parties, won with 34.6% of the votes.
He was followed by the candidate of the Justicialist Party (Peronist), Juan Monteverde, with 15.2%, according to the provisional scrutiny.
The local aspirant to the Constituent Convention of Milei’s force La Libertad Avanza (LLA), the national deputy Nicolás Mayoraz, added 14.11% of the votes.
The beginning of the electoral calendar took place two days after the support given by the International Monetary Fund to the government program, with a loan of 20 billion dollars to strengthen the reserves, in the midst of an exchange crisis which forced the Central Bank to sell more than 1.8 billion dollars in two weeks.
The vote also took place after Milei announced the elimination of the exchange control as from this Monday, when a fluctuation of the value of the currency between bands of 1,000 to 1,400 pesos will be in force.
The head of the local public opinion consultant, Roque Cantoia, said that these elections do not represent “a plebiscite for the national government”, but the first stop in the race towards the national parliamentary elections of October 26.
“The national key lies in the fact that it is the first electoral instance since Milei is president, and it can give us an idea of the power that the brand has to transfer political flow”, said Cantoia, to underline that it was an election “without Milei on the ballot”.
The Argentine electoral schedule will continue on May 11 in the provinces of Salta, San Luis, Chaco and Jujuy, and on May 18 in the City of Buenos Aires.
lol
#popecrash
JD Vance killed the pope
In some good news, it appears that the Easter temporary ceasefire in the Russia - Ukraine war is largely holding on both sides, at least for now, 10 hours into the 30 hour ceasefire, according to accounts of activities from Russian and Ukrainian sources. So despite reports that Ukraine did not accept Russia’s unilateral ceasefire, the activity on the battlefield says otherwise. There has been a large reduction in frontline activity, a bit of fighting still went on, but on the whole the temporary ceasefire is holding. AMK Mapping, someone who has been following the conflict for years and produces reliable reporting and maps, and also translates Ukrainian and Russian sources into English, has noted a drastic decrease in reported frontline activity compared to the usual.
AMK Mapping twitter report on frontline activity over the past 10 hours
Russia’s Putin declares unilateral Easter ceasefire in Ukraine, 19 April 2025 - Reuters
Before anyone gets too excited, this unilateral Russian ceasefire is just for this Easter Saturday evening and Sunday, starting at 15:00 UTC today 19 April (almost two hours ago), and ending on Sunday at midnight Moscow time, presumably 21:00 UTC 20 April. So just for Easter, a 30 hour unilateral ceasefire. It’s unknown how Ukraine will respond to this action, if they will continue attacking or also cease fire. There was also a large prisoner of war exchange today, at at 1:1 ratio of 246 prisoners between Russia and Ukraine.
The idea of an Easter ceasefire was first discussed in the leaked 100 day peace plan for Ukraine discussed and linked here, so it’s very interesting that at least Russia is publicly committing to this idea of an Easter ceasefire.
Honestly… The TPP probably might have been more effective at boxing out China than these tariffs. And trump got rid of that. Now hes trying to do the same thing with worse leverage
I think the notion that liberals are just better stewards of empire than the reactionaries always pans out. You can say that Obama and Biden’s ideological constraints meant that they never went far enough. Like with the CHIPS act becoming a money sinkhole instead of a proper industrial policy, mostly because the government was unwilling to make the long term investments in education or, worse, was even less willing tell companies not to blow all the subsidies into stock buybacks. But that was still a better plan than embargoing the whole world and collapsing your own state’s ability to finance itself. The TPP could have encircled China with markets where the US is the top rentier. Instead we have the East Asian trifect talking to each other about countering US policy.
‘Won’t stay silent’, China responds to White House’s 245% retaliatory tariffs
China responds: ‘We don’t want conflict, but won’t stay silent’
Reacting to the tariff hike, China’s foreign ministry reiterated that it seeks no confrontation but will not remain silent in the face of US pressure. “If the US truly wants to resolve issues through dialogue, it must stop exerting maximum pressure,” a spokesperson stated, adding that the ball was now in Washington’s court.
Spokesperson Zhang Xiaogang condemned the US for what he called its “wanton” use of force, warning that such tactics won’t restore American greatness.
Oh no, China will have to buy soybeans from Brazil?!
Meanwhile there’s no substitute for many Chinese goods the US buys.
The US ain’t winning this folks.
And now US Soybeans have nowhere to go but domestic markets. This is a plot by communist china to feminize american men
I looked away for a second, we’re up to 245% now??
“wanton” use of force
Growth Of Ukraine’s Azov Units Follow Path Of The Waffen-SS | Moon of Alabama
(no brainworms detected)
ICE nuking tourism by kidnapping random tourists.
BDS America in action!
Currently on a break from Anglo political content while visiting family in El Salvador. I did decide to come back just to relay some interesting information from leftists in the country.
CECOT is actually the prison with the best conditions in the entire country and it certainly looks like it from the outside. I’ve seen much worse looking ones since arriving.
But it isn’t the industrial extermination camp people think it is. The real one is under the radar and it’s at Izalco. There’s an unmarked graveyard rumored to be inside or nearby it while no such thing has been heard of at CECOT.
So I’m off for another couple of days.
Also an obligatory fuck you to anyone still looking to “punish” or invade El Salvador.
