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.
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news
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Always a good sign when the Druze OSINT source in Syria posts the following:
โ ๐ธ๐จ๐ Okay guys, time to take up arms, good luck to everyone and thanks for your attention!
ุฑุญู ุงููู ุฌูุงุฏ ุงูู ูุญุฏูู ุงูุฌุจูููู.โ
https://t.me/hawran_osint/861
For context, clashes between Bedouin tribes and the SMC escalated and now it seems like HTS are going to try and deal with the Druze in Suwayda permanently. Jolani has sent reinforcements while Israel has struck some Syrian tanks claiming to protect the Druze communities. Bad vibes all around
Context and videos
https://en.al-akhbar.com/news/clashes-escalate-in-suwayda-amid-growing-tensions
https://t.me/jharnous/8135
https://t.me/jharnous/8155
Can you lay out your analysis here a bit more? I'm struggling to pull the pieces into a cohesive whole.
It will be somewhat difficult, given that we don't yet know how much Israel will step in and how crushing the response from HTS will be. Did you read the Al-Akhbar article?
Visual outline of the situation, Damascus on top, Israeli occupied areas in blue, and the Suwayda Military Council area is in grey
Basically the Druze saw the attitudes of the central gov towards minorities and organized quicker than the Alawite communities did. They have so far been able to prevent the pogroms and massacres along the coast from repeating to them, but the deployment of HTS hasn't yet reached its peak, we've just seen media of convoys headed that way
Israeli airstrikes have happened in the last few hours while HTS has ignored them and focused on sieging the area currently fighting back. It seems desperate and I don't see Israel's token bombings as being sufficient to prevent the hammer from coming down. I started with the telegram poster taking up arms to illustrate the difficulty they're facing, despite being better than the horrors from earlier this year
In a vacuum, I would expect the Israelis to back the Druze in Syria. They have worked very hard to create a wedge in Golan by building up a relationship with the Druze, similar to what they have with the Kurds, and essentially labelling themselves basically as defenders of the Druze.
Two complicating factors are unclear to me. The first is if Israel can sustain another new front, either directly or through proxy, based on purely logistical contraints. It seems like no one in the West is going to turn the weapons spigot off, but the question is what do they even have to work with if they keep the Gaza bombardment up or even restart one of the other fronts? That's just from a proxy war/air-support perspective. There's even more logistical issues if they try to actually put troops deeper into Syria (I think that's unlikely).
The second thing is what the Arab/Turkish comprador states will do. I suspect the answer to that is they will be much more harsh in their response to Israel over fighting HTS than they will over anything they have done in Palestine.