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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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://www.thelondoneconomic.com/politics/jeremy-corbyn-is-most-popular-politician-among-16-and-17-year-olds-395699/
The figures actually seem pretty tight, young people look open-ended to me and will require some very serious work. The left can not just expect them to fall in with us when figures like Clarkson and Tate have their ear.
Top Gear still highly influential for young people, most of whom weren't even alive when the Clarkson - Hammond - May trio were making the best episodes. 16 year olds were born in 2009, and the Top Gear phenomenon they weren't around for is almost as popular as the Mr Beast slop they grew up with. Wow.
Imagine if some left leaning figures could make a TV show/streaming thing anywhere near as good, we'd blow YouTube slop out of the water according to these metrics.
This isn't all Top Gear. Clarkson's had a farm thing on Amazon that's now had 4 seasons, he owns a farm. He's basically just a massive dickhead on the show that destroys everything he touches just like he was on Top Gear but he's funny while he does it so it's popular with people. I've watched it, it's about as watchable as Top Gear was, the guy is just a pretty good tv personality who taps into a lot of sentiments most people have about a lot of things. Interestingly he's clearly mellowed on his anti-environmental views over the course of running the farm as he's been forced to see for himself how serious climate change is, though he clearly avoids the topic it's obviously affecting his attitudes over time.
Needs someone that is the right amount of dickhead to pull it off. Gotta have the charisma and tone of EyupLovely but in front of cameras instead posting. A leftist dickhead.
Bit like Galloway tbh but without being a reactionary twat. Galloway and Clarkson are cut from the same cloth even if they are very far away from one another economically.
Anyway since everyone and their dog has Amazon Prime because it just makes sense to have it if you get deliveries the show has probably been seen by a lot of people.
Actually... Another thing to think about here is that this batch of 16 year olds being polled will be 20 by the next election. It's the current 11 and 12 year olds that matter.
This thought makes me deeply uncomfortable. With 16 as the voting age from an electoralist point of view the moment one election cycle is over it is necessary to begin preparing for the next one by targeting 11 year olds.
Why in the world is the voting age being reduced to 16?
Because if people can be expected to work and pay tax at that age they deserve a say in politics.
Also it was a manifesto pledge.
Also Corbyn would've done it too. It was in Corbyn's campaign too.
It's probably the one good thing this Labour government is doing and for the next 50 years the legacy libs will always go to will be "Yeah but Starmer gave 16 year olds the vote which was good". I guarantee it.
why shouldn't it?
The other thing to note in these figures is that for all figures the largest cohort is "don't know". political disengagement is a huge issue. Also, the fact that climate isn't even in the top 3 issues is hilarious. Fucking morons honestly, there's no excuse for that when your entire life is going to be dominated by that issue beyond all others.
The thing is with young people is a lot of them have a "i need to fully understand this to form an opinion" attitude and they're not embarrassed to admit not knowing the topics. A lot of them are disengaged because they don't believe they understand things.
What they don't yet realise is that a huge number of voters don't fully understand the things they're voting on.
The top 3 issues make sense to me. Reworded the issues can be interpreted as "cost of living", "NHS" and a tie between generic crime or Palestine. Immigration is a worrying one 4th there but not surprising, I imagine many teachers are trying their best to address the "small boats" shit that kids are being bombarded with every day and to add some nuance into their heads via the classroom. This also sorta benefits the left anyway since Greens are a libshit pro-nato party and can't be trusted to be any different to the libdems.
Watch them scrap the whole "reducing voting age to 16" after this lmao