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
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’. "
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.
Existing liberal lines on the PRC are shattering, and those antagonistic towards the PRC are increasingly being opposed. The time is good to be correcting misconceptions about the PRC and explaining the benefits of siding with it over the US.
I may have to hand it to the accelerationists, Trump may go down in history as one of the accidentally best presidents in USian history.
The Chinese Century is well upon us, as we already knew, but increasingly liberals are accepting this. The Paper Tiger is dissolving.
US VP Vance asserts in a tweet that illegal aliens comprise at least 6% of the US populationmore than 20 million people
the entire population of El Salvador + the entire population of Honduras + the entire population of Panama
that's two entire Swedens
I can sum the populations of twenty two European countries without hitting that number
the 64th largest country in the world is actually just illegally living in the United States
illegal immigrants are actually the fourth largest US state, surpassing New York
that's NYC + LA + Chi-town + fuck Houston + hooked on Phoenix + Philly, (city limits only), all illegal
that's about spot on for the entire population of the New York City Metropolitan Area
That the administration wishes to deport
How long until libs say Bukele is evil because he is of Palestinian descent? Biden had all the chance in the world to remove Bukele from power, but nah, he was too busy attacking Nicaragua for no reason.
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.
Hamas statement regarding the passing of Pope Francis:
The Islamic Resistance Movement extends its deepest condolences and sincere sympathy to the Catholic Church worldwide and to all Christians on the passing of His Holiness Pope Francis, Pope of the Vatican, who passed away after a distinguished career in the service of human and religious values.
The late Pope Francis was a noted advocate of interfaith dialogue, calling for understanding and peace among peoples, and rejecting hatred and racism. On more than one occasion, he expressed his rejection of aggression and wars in the world, and was one of the prominent religious voices to condemn the war crimes and genocide being perpetrated against the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip.
While we, in the Islamic Resistance Movement movement, value his moral and humanitarian stances, we emphasize the importance of continuing the joint efforts between the bearers of divine messages and people of living consciences to confront injustice and colonialism, and to support the causes of justice, freedom, and the rights of oppressed peoples.
US lapdog submits to its master:
https://english.almayadeen.net/news/Economy/south-korea--will-not-fight-back--against-trump-tariffs--actFollowing Yoon Suk Yeol’s removal from office this month by the country’s constitutional court, Han Duck-soo, a technocrat serving as acting president, highlighted that “the role of the US was huge in making Korea what it is now.”
and to halt purchases of American-made aviation parts.
This is a big one as well. I guess China now has sufficient domestic production to replace all the Boeing jets? Because there is no way that Airbus can just allow Chinese companies to skip the line, they have to wait like everyone else.
i suspect it’s flexing, i don’t think they make whole engines (or their own plane would exist already)
They don’t have whole engines yet, but apparently aren’t far off
They have their own certified commercial plane, C919
Which uses American CFM engines, avionics and flight control systems, and almost died as an aircraft due to uncompetitive pricing and operational costs versus Boeing and Airbus, only 16 C919s are currently operational and they also lack foreign certification. The engine was a big deal, CFM and GE were not allowed to export their latest LEAP engines to China, and had to create a LEAP 1C variant based on the old CFM56 instead.
A “100% domestic” C919 would have to be reengineered to use Chinese engines (such as the CJ-1000A or WS-20) and avionics, get European certification, and also be competitive on unit price, fuel economy and operational costs with the latest Airbus A320 Neos. A tall order.
The ARJ21/C909 is Comacs most successful airliner, with over 170 built. It also uses American engines and avionics, has a wing made by Antonov, and was based on the McDonnell Douglas MD-80 and MD-90.
Cormac has plans for other airliners as well, such as the C929 to compete with the Boeing 787/Airbus A330, the C939 to compete with the Boeing 777/Airbus A350. There’s also the planned C949, a supersonic airliner to compete with the Boom Overture.
Yep, self sufficiency in commercial airliners is still some years away, but the benefit of being a state owned company is that its more important to build the infrastructure and institutional knowledge rather than focus purely on cost. With the kinks slowly being worked out in the WS-15/WS-20, we’ll see those techs make their way over to civilian applications soon™️. China doing import substitution to develop its own industries has proven to be extremely effective in the long term even if there’s an additional cost in the short term.
Tariffs related or simply a sensible approach to aviation safety?
China was already gearing to turn their massive economy towards consuming homegrown jets. So, in a way its just not letting a good embargo go to waste.
Yep they’ve been working on culminating a domestic consumption market to match their production, and this applies to literally everything. Massive managed economy W
Boeing
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
We have fed posting, but what about AI powered fed posting?
This ‘College Protester’ Isn’t Real. It’s an AI-Powered Undercover Bot for Cops
https://www.wired.com/story/massive-blue-overwatch-ai-personas-police-suspects/
https://xcancel.com/MayadeenEnglish/status/1911873227510690111France’s foreign minister announced that #Algeria has ordered 12 French officials to leave the country within 48 hours on Monday, a decision reportedly connected to the recent detention of three Algerian nationals in France.
“I am asking Algerian authorities to abandon these expulsion measures… if the decision to send back our officials is maintained, we will have no other choice but to respond immediately,” Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said.
The 12 include some members of the French Interior Ministry, a diplomatic source told Agence France Press (AFP).
did
came out as pettis head on latest true anon, or was she doing method acting of trump?in any case, if trump believes pettis, good luck to american comrades and all, but
he is the customer of the last resort guy, i listened to some podcast with him like 3 years ago, just breathtaking arrogant fuck who believes that usa provides service to the world by buying their stuff and allowing industries to develop (shade aside, it would be only kinda true if not for structural adjustments programs freezing any further development). he recently been advocating capital controls to couple with tariffs, which i’m sorry, but without ww3, the world will just excise usa as a tumor than accept worldwide currency rebalancing under auspices of usa. bankor is more workable than that shit
https://asiatimes.com/2025/04/michael-pettis-misleading-the-american-zeitgeist-on-china/
Great and quite funny Pettis-Trump Admin related article that droped yesterday. Author is a chinese National that apparently has had a pretty long and important career in US economic deep state instruments and funds. Now he mostly writes (correct) china glaze articles and shits on Pettis and Co. on twitter comments.
Singapore’s ex-foreign minister Kishore Mahbubani publicly stated that Fukuyama’s book gave America collective brain damage.
lmao
Author is a chinese National
article contradicts this though? maybe Chinese ethnicity but author claims to be American
For those who don’t know, Han Feizi is American – but destined to occupy a tiny niche in the American zeitgeist.
The two most dangerous ideas promulgated by Pettis are 1) China’s economy is wasteful, inefficient and on the cusp of stagnation, and 2) consumption creates value.
as delusional as End of History was
Pettis is a disciple of Gordon Chang basically
this guy teaches at Peking University?! jesus christ
Are there any places that provide English-language news on Burkina Faso? I keep seeing stuff on tiktok and ngl some of it is unsourced and possibly bogus
