Image is from this article, of a Chilean copper quarry.
Title is a reference to Trump's social media post about copper, which was, as usual, mostly deranged.
Trying to follow Trump's administration is pretty difficult, but as of right now, he is threatening 30% tariffs on Mexico and the EU starting on August 1st, as well as new tariff announcements on a bunch of other countries (including, bizarrely, a 50% tariff on Brazil), and also apparently a 50% tariff on copper, which the US imports half its supply of and is, of course, a very important metal in many applications.
I'm not sure what the plan is to bring back domestic copper production beyond hoping that it just sorta works out, but prominent copper producers, such as Chile and Canada, seem both concerned and confused. Reuters had a line that made me chuckle:
Boric said he was awaiting official communication from the U.S. government, including whether the tariffs would include copper cathodes, and questioned "whether this will actually be implemented or not."
Big mood, Boric.
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The Imperialism Reading Group is here.
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The bulletins site is here. Currently not used.
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Israel-Palestine Conflict
If you have evidence of Israeli crimes and atrocities that you wish to preserve, there is a thread here in which to do so.
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.
Always a good sign when the Druze OSINT source in Syria posts the following:
โ ๐ธ๐จ๐ Okay guys, time to take up arms, good luck to everyone and thanks for your attention!
ุฑุญู ุงููู ุฌูุงุฏ ุงูู ูุญุฏูู ุงูุฌุจูููู.โ
https://t.me/hawran_osint/861
For context, clashes between Bedouin tribes and the SMC escalated and now it seems like HTS are going to try and deal with the Druze in Suwayda permanently. Jolani has sent reinforcements while Israel has struck some Syrian tanks claiming to protect the Druze communities. Bad vibes all around
Context and videos
https://en.al-akhbar.com/news/clashes-escalate-in-suwayda-amid-growing-tensions
https://t.me/jharnous/8135
https://t.me/jharnous/8155
It's hard to have any real emotions about this situation other than hoping for as little bloodshed as possible. On one had you have the Al Qaeda headchoppers led by America's favourite jihadi, Mr Jolani himself. On the other side you have the Druze who are running a quasi-separatist movement that is openly backed by Israel and directly surviving due to the Israeli air force. I hope everyone fighting has fun as long as poor civilians are spared as much as possible.
i wonder, has there been some info on the selling out of syrian army generals? did they get the monies and live in dubai or did they get got?
Not sure about the selling out specifically. This article goes into how it fell apart pretty well, despite being written before the dust settled. It was hollowed out so thoroughly that I don't think some generals getting the bag and dipping is out of the question.
"More seriously, these [Facebook complaint] pages began accusing the 30th Division in general, and the 47th Regiment in particular, of being infiltrated by opposition sympathizers over the past year. These accusations became even more explicit as opposition forces began conducting successful raids against 30th Division positions in western Aleppo this year. A 47th Regiment 67th Battalion point was attacked in Qabtan al-Jabal on the night of March 16, losing two tanks and triggering accusations that one of the unitโs members was an opposition โagent.โ This same battalion had been accused for months of being rife with corruption. On September 2 a 30th Division position in Kabashin was attacked and two soldiers captured, triggering a new round of complaints explicitly calling for the โcleansingโ the division of sleeper cells. Within hours of the initial attack on November 27, one SAA complaint page wrote a scathing post addressed to Bashar al-Assad"
Saw the clips of Israel doing some tank plinking of HTS tanks earlier. Messed up situation.
Can you lay out your analysis here a bit more? I'm struggling to pull the pieces into a cohesive whole.
It will be somewhat difficult, given that we don't yet know how much Israel will step in and how crushing the response from HTS will be. Did you read the Al-Akhbar article?
Visual outline of the situation, Damascus on top, Israeli occupied areas in blue, and the Suwayda Military Council area is in grey
Basically the Druze saw the attitudes of the central gov towards minorities and organized quicker than the Alawite communities did. They have so far been able to prevent the pogroms and massacres along the coast from repeating to them, but the deployment of HTS hasn't yet reached its peak, we've just seen media of convoys headed that way
Israeli airstrikes have happened in the last few hours while HTS has ignored them and focused on sieging the area currently fighting back. It seems desperate and I don't see Israel's token bombings as being sufficient to prevent the hammer from coming down. I started with the telegram poster taking up arms to illustrate the difficulty they're facing, despite being better than the horrors from earlier this year
In a vacuum, I would expect the Israelis to back the Druze in Syria. They have worked very hard to create a wedge in Golan by building up a relationship with the Druze, similar to what they have with the Kurds, and essentially labelling themselves basically as defenders of the Druze.
Two complicating factors are unclear to me. The first is if Israel can sustain another new front, either directly or through proxy, based on purely logistical contraints. It seems like no one in the West is going to turn the weapons spigot off, but the question is what do they even have to work with if they keep the Gaza bombardment up or even restart one of the other fronts? That's just from a proxy war/air-support perspective. There's even more logistical issues if they try to actually put troops deeper into Syria (I think that's unlikely).
The second thing is what the Arab/Turkish comprador states will do. I suspect the answer to that is they will be much more harsh in their response to Israel over fighting HTS than they will over anything they have done in Palestine.