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.
Last week’s thread is here.
The Imperialism Reading Group is here.
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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.
The “Hague Group” announced measures against Israel at Bogotá conference.
Around 30 countries participated at the meeting (including, Spain, Portugal, Ireland, and China), though it’s unclear which states are willing to join this initiative in September.
The measures:
Not sure how relevant most of these are to most of the countries participating. The first three are important, for sure, but who in this list is providing arms to Israel? The last two just seem like international law magical thinking.
I’m getting whiffs of BDS across the board, but the last three points are bloated with legalese and they feature the same red flags that misled the student encampments… Commitments not to concrete action, but to “reviews”, “investigations”, and “support [for existing frameworks]”.
Hopefully this leads to actual organized action against the entity and its material base
This is such a minor point but I don’t think the student encampments were misled because the students know the reviews are a farce. I think the student movement is still ongoing, but in the US it has slowed down due to violent repression and expulsion of participating students.
If not the protestors being misled, the broader movement (i.e., of allied students and bystanders) was weakened by a lot of misinformation. There was so much headlines and hearsay celebrating BDS wins when universities promised nothing more than a meeting, a review, a vote, etc.
But to be fair, protestors dodging the violent police crackdowns and disgusting harassment by zionist agitators were victories in self-preservation.
And sadly, where student movements are ongoing, many of them are a fraction of a fraction as strong as they were last year. It was a really incredible moment that ended so depressingly.
Yeah the misinformation has a huge impact because it makes other students more hesitant to join. In the US the movement might have become weaker but in my country it hasn’t and universities are slowly capitulating. From what I gather in most EU countries the movement is still going strong or growing.
Dual-use items is the big thing there, it means a lot of construction material.
Also, when they say risk of it being sent to Israel, would that include countries that may relay the items to Israel?
I think you mean this item? (unabridged text from the PDF)
I think the answer is Yes. If you are just a stop along the way you are a “conduit”.
I don’t know how much ports or the nations they live in know about the planned destinations or current cargo or what cargo it will later pick up? How viable is enforcement on this?
I somehow completely missed the PDF button despite reading the article lmao. Logistics and shipping are far outside of my area of expertise, so no clue outside of effectively blocking port use for countries continuing to service the Zionist entity, but I double that’s the intent. Still reading through the PDF though, so in an ideal world (hah!) I’m dead wrong.
Yes, I agree completely, doesn’t sound like much, unless other countries join this shouldn’t be much of a deterrent for Israel.
Spain and Ireland makes sense but where did you see that Portugal participated? We have an extremely cucked right wing government right now solely focused on tailing the far-right on immigration and other issues I would be extremely surprised if they’re supporting this. Can’t find anything on national news here
I found this article that mentions Portugal:
Though, it’s unclear how much any of these countries will do, seems so far they just participated in the meeting.
Basically no domestic coverage of this, which might mean that the government isn’t even interesting in talking about how it’s participating.
Thank you for finding it!
Wouldn’t it be these ones?
No, these are the countries which have already committed to the initiative (hence the “immediately”). The September deadline is for additional countries to join the initiative. So the question is whether more countries will truly commit to it, and how many.
At least as far as I understand these 12 countries are starting to implement these measures immediately, and on 20 September they will invite more UN states to join the initiative. It’s likely that potential states that will be willing to join are among the ones that attended the meeting, but there doesn’t seem to be a commitment from participants that they will also implement the measures come September.
Oh I see what you meant is which additional ones might join by the September deadline. Sorry I misunderstood.