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.
Good article. I've been saying and suspecting as much as this for a time but this presents these points very saliently.
Particularly the strategic sequencing part of using Europe to hold down Russia while the US is free to engage elsewhere. We already see that they had success in Syria, if this continues I expect the US to pop something else off in the CIS or somewhere near Russia's borders like Moldova, Georgia, etc or just continue undermining multipolar allies in Africa while Russia is too bogged down in Ukraine to offer significant help. Bogging them down also means they can't and couldn't have helped Iran via simply selling them air defense systems even if they wanted to because theirs are all committed and over-extended already by Ukrainian drone raids and soon to be Ukrainian domestic medium-range missile production which we could see starting anytime in the next year or so.
While Russia is busy it can't help Iran, can't help China, can't help Sahel AES, etc. The division of labor is also an interesting point. The US is unable to defeat China but their goal is to create a maze of thorns, of armed to the teeth island bases, vassals, etc who China will be tempted to shirk from attacking despite the fact they host American war-planes, they host American missiles. This is about the island chains again and contrary to popular thinking they have more than just the first and second but real defense in depth, things like Diego Garcia for policing access to Africa and to the middle east, things like the zionist regime for policing strategic waterways along with their coterie of Arab vassals who while making eyes at China are thoroughly vassals to the US and will heed it when the time comes. That's where the US/NATO navy comes in, deep water supporting these far island chains beyond the reach of most cheap Chinese land-based missiles forcing China to over-extend its own navy and expend very expensive long-range hard to intercept advanced missiles while denying it a major advantage from its manufacturing base by making mass produced weapons not part of the equation or war at all as the US draws China's navy beyond their seas via enforced blockade and sanctions, picks them off with land-based power supplemented by sea patrols and helped by land-based aircraft and forces China to either take an L or expend itself enormously in a very expensive, very demanding, and very long fight on the high seas around the world against the US and its force multiplier vassal states who once attacked for hosting US missiles and war planes engaging China will deploy their own forces. It's a play you lose, don't play you lose type of engineered chessboard.
The author's points about how this strategy of ramping up production will hollow out nations and lead to instability is true but only in the long-run. The US still has probably 10 years (if not twice that) before that comes into play seriously and they clearly plan to make their move against China soon. I suspect within Trump's second term or in the first half of term of whoever follows him.