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 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.
https://xcancel.com/johnkonrad/status/1945308143212249566
lol. lmao
man, I love when Americans will label the most milquetoast of libs as communists for simply not being frothing-at-the-mouth psychos
The silver lining is the collapse of US infrastructure and the empire along with it
Funniest thing is the guy that's tweeting about this here wants to build battleships again lol. He really wants to see the US Navy eat anti ship ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and drones.
It seems as if a lot of Hegseth appointees are just straight up incompetent, they also want to cancel the E-7 wedgetail AWACS aircraft programme for some reason? They can't get shipbuilding started, they sat on their butts doing nothing on "Golden Dome" until Trump forced them too. If they don't start actually doing something, Trump, congress and the senate are just going to bypass them, and Hegseth and company will become a bunch of useless figureheads waffling for the media.
Arent they moving towards basicaly reaper drone design for the AWACS replacement program? Like not even some dedicated novel stealthy design like WZ-9 (which itself is complementary to the actual big ass normal AWACs china is churning out). This screams issues
The solution apparently is that the US wants to do all of it with radar satellites...
Even if the US could execute that procurement wise idk it doesnt seem viable from a physics perspective to actualy get the real time consistent coverage of erea given orbit and radar mechanics, energy requirements, latencies, feedback and brandwidth/resolution compared ground based Radars and AWACs. I assume there are workarounds for most individual problems but i cant see how it can work with todays resources and tech on a single platform
It can't, you're correct.
Love to see the "we need to cut social welfare spending to fund tax breaks for rich people" guys fighting with the "we need to cut social welfare spending to fund even more military equipment" guys.
At least some of these people genuinely expect to go to war with China in the next decade. What can you do but laugh
Guess they're not dumb and know every year they dont go for China is a year China catches up at an exponential rate
Ten years ago, they wanted it before 2027
Maybe we should hire China to build our naval vessels? They're very good at it.
China would probably do it too