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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Y'know, I wouldn't exactly consider US military command to not be grifters, given the whole history of US military procurement, and I'm not sure why we should consider them to be significantly smarter than the typical US politicans given the performance of the US military in, like, everything since WW2? It isn't '91 anymore, the guys "understating" capabilities may well be right for the wrong reasons (like, the military facing a recruitment crisis is objective fact, and is already having effects - but it's obviously not because of "woke").
Does the Tomahawk have ground-launch capability? From what I read, there was the old Gryphon system from the Cold War, but that was dismantled as per the INF treaty, and more recently, with the INF becoming irrelevant - the Typhon system, but that was only introduced in 2023, and there's still just a handful of them around so none are going to Ukraine. Tomahawks don't have air-launch capability either, so... this is entirely irrelevant to Ukraine?
The same applies to the SM-6, although that one has an air-launch variant in development, but only the F/A-18E/F seems to be capable of carrying it, and it's too fresh of a system to send to Ukraine. So again, not relevant.
JASSMs could work, but how likely is it that Ukrainian F-16s could actually manage to successfully launch them? Just recently an F-16 went down down while doing air defense, has the F-16 fleet been able to fly any particularly extensive bombing missions?
Do we have precise numbers on how many ATACMS were sent until now? The Ukrainians did manage to destroy some air-defense systems and planes with them, but how effective that counts as really depends on the numbers they expended for such results. What I could find was "at least 500", which they have mostly expended by now. The Russians have also shown themselves to be capable of both intercepting ATACMS, and efficiently destroying the launchers themselves, so again - if the Ukrainians receive them, could they actually perform more than a handful of effective attacks with them before their launchers get tracked down and got?
The PrSM has been in service for a year-and-a-half, I highly doubt they'd send something this new. It literally just entered mass production, and the numbers for it up until now that I could find seem to be 42 (in 2023) + 110 missiles (2024), and some proportion of the 230 planned for 2025 - so, let's call it ≈270 up until July of 2025, and some of these would have been used up in testing and military exercises. Hardly a sufficiently large stockpile for the US to start handing these out willy-nilly, and the more advanced Increment 2 phase of the procurement process has already been delayed once.
The Typhon launchers you mentioned + Rouge Fires (four wheeled unmanned ground vehicle capable of launching a single TLAM) can launch TLAMs. Though the Marines cancelled the TLAM capable Rouge Fires.
The key part of the Typhon is the Mk 70 Payload Delivery System, which is a large shipping container containing four Mk 41 Vertical Launch System canisters, the same VLS used to launch TLAMs from inside guided missile destroyers/cruisers, but inside a shipping container. The US equivalent to the Russian Club-K system, but a lot bigger. The Mk 70 containers are also designed to be deployed on the rear decks of littoral ships to give them TLAM capability. Sending a bunch of Mk 70 containerised systems to Ukraine is not a complicated endeavour, should the decision be made. Some Mk 41 VLS canisters could also be given standalone, the US conducted a ground launched TLAM test right after exiting the INF treaty with some standalone Mk 41 VLS canisters. If Ukraine were to get SM-6, it would be launched from Mk 41 VLS canisters, they don't have the aircraft to launch them, as you said. The anti ship version of the JASSM, the LRASM, can also be launched from Mk 41 VLS canisters.
JASSM launches should possible, if Ukraine can launch Storm Shadow/SCALP-EG cruise missiles from Su-24s, they can launch JASSMs from F-16s. High altitude launch from the rear lines while being escorted by other aircraft with anti radiation missiles to suppress ground based air defence. F-16s, along with MiG 29s and Su-27s, have been used for low altitude frontline bombing runs with glide bombs and rocket assisted bombs (GBU-39s for the F-16 in particular), the aircraft approaches at low altitude, quickly climbs, lobs the bombs, and quickly descends. High risk missions and the maximum range of the bombs is quite limited. The F-16s have been doing this for months, and one aircraft has been lost to Russian ground based air defence. Two other F-16s have been lost on air defence missions, and one was lost to friendly fire.
ATACMS, exact numbers are unknown. However, by the time Ukraine was allowed to strike into internationally recognised Russian territory by the Biden administration, they had already expended the vast majority of ATACMS, and only had around 50-60 left. They only have 15-20 left now. The concern is that more ATACMS are delivered, without any restrictions.
Fully agree with you on PrSM, I think it's quite unlikely. But the hypothetical possibly is still there.
But wouldn't such systems be incredibly vulnerable? The containers themselves obviously cannot move - you need to be on a vehicle, but ships are big and not very fast-moving. Ground-based launchers are really key to allow them to reposition and conceal themselves in order to avoid being taken out by counter-battery fire, or airstrikes, or drones, or ballistics. Ships seem like they'd be sitting ducks.
The Typhon system also includes a battery operations center - I assume this is pretty important, and just the containers without all the extra stuff related to programming and commanding the missiles won't be very effective.
Sending them might not be complicated - actually getting them to the country and using them is different. The Russians have struck numerous Ukrainian ammunition sites, including some alleged strikes on Western shipments. These containers are pretty big, and would likely attract attention. I guess the idea is to commit perfidy and disguise them as regular civilian cargo, but the Russians have already struck several vessels carrying grain (according to the Ukrainians of course), so they're not above just blowing up anything suspicious.
Bringing them by sea on the whole doesn't seem likely (in fact, isn't the Black Sea extensively mined at this point, at least around the Ukrainian shore?). I guess you could try bringing them via trucks over the Romanian border, straight to Odessa or something like that? But can regular civilian-seeming trucks carry such heavy containers? The US military itself is using one of its heavier models of truck for the Typhon.
Have they inflicted much actual damage? You're not at as much risk if you're not lobbing bombs at actually important targets, and the ability of Russian infantry to keep advancing doesn't seem to indicate they're being suppressed much by bombardment.
They'd probably be lugged around on land, because of the range of the system a TLAM launched from Lviv can still hit Moscow and St Petersburg. I highly doubt that Ukraine has suitable ships to carry the Mk 70 system, the "Ukrainian Navy", if it can be called that, mainly consists of unmanned surface vessels that can be rigged with explosives, launch short range surface to air missiles, or launch drones, manned patrol boats to shoot down incoming drones, and Neptune missiles. I doubt that Russia has the capability to take out launchers on land in Lviv in a time sensitive manner though. However they aren't being sent yet (according to public information), so this is very much talking about hypotheticals. But it is very much technically possible. As for delivery, a Mk 70 container can fit in the back of a C-17 that lands in Poland, and be sent over the Polish border by land. The super heavy trucks and support vehicles/command centres from the Typhon aren't required, just need a truck that can tow the container and an energy source, and some ability to program the missile, if the goal is to shoot some missiles deep into Russia. Effectiveness would be comprised as you rightfully point out, but if the primary goal is to launch missiles into Russia, it's still doable. Throughout the war, Ukraine and NATO have been willing to heavily compromise on optimal effectiveness in order to get a capability on the battlefield, which is what I'm basing my thoughts on here. Jerry rigging Storm Shadow/SCALP-EG cruise missiles to be launched from Su-24s, and HARM anti radiation missiles from MiG 29s and Su-27s as escorts, is in no way optimally effective for instance. But Ukraine still did it, and have at least hit things of note with these attacks, including damaging a Kilo class submarines and damaging or destroying multiple landing ships.
Ukrainian airstrikes on Russia have mainly been more of an annoyance up until now, targeting warehouses, drone operator locations, and trenches/fortified positions, but they are progressing as Ukraine gets more planes. Recently they started destroying bridges with JDAM ER glide bombs, and deploying multiple aircraft at once. The Russian response is very much "kill the archer and not the arrow", bombing Ukrainian airbases, airports, and support infrastructure during their nightly air raids. The low altitude attack vector limits the kind of airstrikes Ukraine carry out, but it also limits Russian ground based air defences ability to shoot down Ukrainian aircraft. If Russia wants to shoot down Ukrainian strike packages directly, Russian fighter jets are going to have to get closer to the line of contact and engage in closer range fights, with R-77 missiles at least. Launching R-37Ms from safely within Russian controlled skies is no longer working to disrupt strikes. Ex Russian Air Force pilot FighterBomber alluded to such a few weeks ago, that Russian commanders were finally allowing the air force to engage in closer range fights (he sarcastically compared it to the moon landing in terms of significance). Russia has the capability to suppress Ukraine's efforts before the Ukrainian Air Force becomes a more serious threat (even if it means Russia taking losses now), so it would be an error to allow Ukraine to rebuild the air force.