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.”
lol bye bye USAID
or whatever fuckin agency it is that spreads that shit
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?
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’. "
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.
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.
This has been making the rounds on Lib Reddit. They’re all thinking he’s going to get murdered lmao. El Salvador isn’t Israel. Bukele knows he won’t get away with something like that and the shitstorm that would affect the entire region if he were to do it. What’s more likely is that they’ll deny him access with some bullshit excuse.
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
So Van Hollen met with Kilmar in El Salvador and Kilmar just had to go back to jail afterwards? Weren’t they outside at a restaurant?
havent posted in a few years, been lurking since october 23, my whole family is in Jenin, but I live in the so called united states. So I’ll try to post news from and about Palestine when I can as my contribution to the mega.
havent seen this posted yet but US killed 70+ civilians and injured over 200 at Ras Issa Port in Hodeidah, very significant escalation in my view
UPDATE | Sanaa’s ministry of health reports that the death toll of the US attack on Ras Issa Port in Hodeidah last night has reached 74 Yemenis.
At least 171 others were injured.
Rescue teams from the ambulance and civil defense are still identifying missing persons and searching for victims.
Source: The Cradle
Edit: it’s back https://www.techradar.com/pro/security/funding-for-the-critical-cve-security-detection-system-renewed-just-hours-before-deadline
US pulled funding for the CVE programIt gave cybersecurity folks across the globe common language and identifiers for problems that needed fixing; it’s gonna be a shit show for a little while until the EU steps in and takes that mantle.
I don’t have a good emoji for setting soft power on fire at the expense of a functioning internet.
Ending the CVE program is truly such an unforced error of incredible proportions for global soft power. Thank you nationbuilder Don
Of all the other bullshit this administration has pulled this is the one I cannot understand
I can wrangle my way to a hypothetical mental state and value structure that would support damn near any decision so far, but here I’m just bewildered. It doesn’t make security sense. It doesn’t make economic sense. It doesn’t make political sense. Even from the most ancap-brained take I can come up with–like a pure “government bad no touch business” mindset–just straight burning a standard and an incredibly valuable cyber-warfare resource seems completely illogical: why cut what you can sell, or why not exchange ownership for favors/bribes?
I am perplexed.
c-suites and rich guys fucking love cutting information technology budgets at any chance they can get
They’re not properly advised and/or too chauvanistic. Simple as, they’re dictated largely by market forces and when markets don’t make the value of something crystal clear it’s easy to get chopped by the money guys
Alessandro Di Battista on Pope Francis death:
In the coming days, we will witness the usual and hypocritical posthumous glorification by politicians and journalists. There will be broadcasts, television marathons, and miles of editorials written to commemorate “the innovative Pope,” “the reformist Pope,” “the pontiff from the end of the world.” World leaders will come to Rome to pay their respects at his funeral.
But remember this: many of those who will now praise him (politicians and journalists alike) are the same people who completely ignored him, treated him as irrelevant, when Francis dared to speak out against the arms industry, when he broke the veil of hypocrisy by discussing the origins of the war in Ukraine and NATO’s responsibilities, and above all when he cried out in absolute indignation over the ongoing genocide in Palestine.
“It is necessary to investigate whether a genocide is taking place in Gaza,” Francis said on November 17, 2024. Virtually no political leader (except for the Israelis who attacked him) commented on his words. Those who now glorify him ignored him when he denounced the horror (even last night, Israeli terrorists bombed displaced civilians) taking place just a few hundred kilometers from Rome. Hypocrites, merchants of the temple! Francis was a man of peace, and in times as dark as these, that seems to me an extraordinary merit.
Nadine Heredia was first lady between 2011 and 2016 and was considered very influential in the government of Ollanta Humala.
Article
The Brazilian government has granted political asylum to a former first lady of Peru recently sentenced to 15 years in prison for money laundering. Nadine Heredia was convicted on Tuesday along with her husband of laundering campaign contributions, including those from the infamous Brazilian construction conglomerate Odebrecht. Peru will allow Heredia and her youngest son to leave, following a formal request from Brazil, according to a statement from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Peru’s government previously acknowledged that Heredia had entered the Brazilian embassy seeking asylum. Heredia’s husband, former President Ollanta Humala, was arrested Tuesday following the sentencing. But Heredia did not physically attend the hearing and instead went to the Brazilian embassy seeking protection. Peru is famous for jailing more former presidents than virtually any other nation in the world, and legal problems often involve their partners as well.
Heredia was first lady between 2011 and 2016 and was considered very influential in Humala’s government, which ruled on a leftist platform akin to the leftist governments in place in Brazil at the time.
It makes sense, Humala’s government and his family were always close with Lula and the Workers’ Party.
I hope trump succeeds in his quest to get Powell fired from the Fed. Insert more chaos into the dollar
“More reaping and less sowing, please” says the Pentagon
China’s Halt of Critical Minerals Poses Risk for U.S. Military Programs
Oh no not the US military programs
Chinese President Xi Jinping concluded a 5-day tour of Southeast Asia to strengthen ties between nations. Last year, the countries of the ASEAN regional bloc were his main destinations, with a total of 586.5 billion dollars.
- Telesur English
Trump is Kamala-ing JD!
Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan on Thursday firmly rejected the notion of reviving the Karabakh movement, describing it as a serious risk to the country’s independence and sovereignty.
General Counsel of US DHS Joseph N. Mazzara says, if Kilmar Abrego Garcia showed up at a US port of entry, they would let him into the country per the court’s orders, then deport him to El Salvador:
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DHS has established processes for taking steps to remove domestic obstacles that would otherwise prevent an alien from lawfully entering the United States. I have been authorized to represent that DHS is prepared to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s presence in the United States in accordance with those processes if he presents at a port of entry.
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I have been authorized to represent that if Abrego Garcia does present at a port of entry, he would become subject to detention by DHS. In that case, DHS would take him into custody in the United States and either remove him to a third country or terminate his withholding of removal because of his membership in MS-13, a designated foreign terrorist organization, and remove him to El Salvador.
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