Image is allegedly of the note Trump wrote while editing a speech while on the way back from the G20 summit.
The top Russian-Chinese agent, Donald Trump, has decided that the pace of dedollarization and the decline of American financial hegemony is going too slowly. He has therefore decided to put tariffs on everybody; from America’s largest trading partners to uninhabited islands. In the process, he is trying to create an autarkic America. Jokes aside, interpretation and analysis of this has ranged across a wide spectrum. I think we can broadly agree that the most idiotic are the “true believers”; those that actually believe Trump’s every word, and that this will somehow bring back American manufacturing and whatever other inane promises he has made.
However, there is a much more interesting debate. The first camp are those who believe Trump is acting as an inadvertent accelerationist due to his lack of understanding about how the world economy and dollar hegemony functions (and that this will subsequently ensure that countries flock to China instead). The second camp are those who believe that Trump does know what he’s doing, at least to a certain extent, and that the effective result of this period of madness will be countries kowtowing to the United States; renegotiating trade deals to be even more in favor of the US in order to get tariffs reduced. There’s even a yet more cynical camp who believes that in fact, this entire trade war is just theater for further national wealth redistributions from poor to rich; that all these monumental international trade wars are more of a sideshow. To quote the linked article: “[…] out of the mountain of tariffs that threaten to turn into a global trade war will emerge the mouse of further tax cuts.”
I’m not embarrassed to admit that I have absolutely no idea which one of these is the closest model to reality. We’re in new economic and political ground, and even if the tariffs are quickly renegotiated and/or dropped, the impacts will continue to reverberate around the world for years. I’m sure we’ll debate this for months to come here, though!
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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.businessinsider.com/us-military-planes-flew-entire-patriot-battalion-pacific-middle-east-2025-4
The US transferred an entire Patriot SAM battalion (24-36 launchers) from INDOPACOM (near China) to CENTCOM (Middle East).
I know this is to protect against retaliation if they strike Iran, but coupled with other events it kinda feels like they are also encouraging China to move on Taiwan.
I doubt China would make such a rash move. Iirc, Xi has stated that China is happy to wait. The alternative is war, and that’s not something China is interested in.
Wait for what? They can bide their time, but the point of biding your time is that you make a move at the opportune moment. They need to actually seize Taiwan at some point
They are waiting for Taiwan to read the writing on the wall and voluntarily unify
Yeah that’s not gonna happen.
Not in the next five years, no, but China is planning a lot longer term than that. The prosperity of China will compel Taiwan to unify eventually.
America is going to push the situation and arm them directly with missiles, jets, anti-air systems, etc. before they ever decide to all do an about face on decades of policy and randomly stop being sinophobic reactionary compradors for some reason. If they ever do decide to swap to China their chip infrastructure will be destroyed and bombed by the US. Taiwan will never join China until it is forced to, and it will start a war and be a Ukrainian-like proxy in a much shorter time frame.
This is a situation where the Chinese official policy is delusional and naive. On many foreign policy issues they have their heads in the sand.
No it won’t. Taiwan isn’t nearly as corrupt is Ukraine. People here have shit to do, money to make.
You are being mislead by US propaganda. The stuff Taiwan buys is old and useless. Even the highly touted HIMARS is jammed 100% of the time by Russia right now. Taiwan has ZERO offensive ability and can’t even do shit about a simple blockade. There is no equivalent between Ukraine and Taiwan. Ukraine has been and continues to murder it’s civilians in the independent republics. What did Taiwan do? Get forced by the US to spread China-bad propaganda, thus hurting the feelings of CPC officials?
Taiwan buys arms from the US because it’s a mafia racket where Taiwan pays the US “protection money” in order to get their “support” to protect it from China. This is common knowledge in Taiwan.
It’s not like Ukraine at all because the ROC military will not die for a bunch of DPP shitheads on their one-way ticket to Tokyo and DC. The DPP are also facing political opposition from the TPP. The DPP has neither the military muscle nor political support from the populace to turn Taiwan into a true comprador state no matter how much Taiwanese separatists want this to be so.
Taiwan imports more than 95% of its energy. And every time these naval drills happen, Taiwan has to dig into its oil reserves since containers are obviously not going to sail through a live military exercise. I suspect this is what a blockade will look like. The drills will just happen more and more until it’s a de facto blockade since ships will no longer want to sail for Taiwan. Once their reserves run out, they will capitulate, most likely by the ROC military orchestrating a coup and (re)establishing KMT one-party rule with Taiwanese separatism being outlawed (again). I could see some 5-d chess moves being played where a post-DPP ROC still exists as a separate geopolitical entity but has an identical foreign policy with the PRC and does what the CPC tells them to do. Libs will see Taiwan as a “Chinese neocolony.”
Keep in mind that all this rethoric about Taiwan dependency on China is true, it also may not matter if you compare to Ukraine.
Russia occupied ZNPP almost from day one and that supplied a significant part of Ukrainian energy. Then they took the eastern regions that had most of the heavy industry and finaly they knocked out most energy grid repeatedly over the years.
For what effect? So that soon 4 years later it is still the US calling the shots, so that there is a nazi government still openly oppressing any political alternatives, so that even the liberal “democracy” fetishism doesn’t hold up anymore because it doesn’t matter how you justify it Zelensky still must remain etc.
The situation could and maybe is most likely to be the same in Taiwan too. Chinese blockade? Who gives a fuck, unless China does an actual amphibian invasion and a knockout the government by literally killing them all the war could take months.
China should absolutely learn by the Russian mistakes in Ukraine like Russia should have militarized straight during that Surovikin shit and gone for a full out war not this grinding out Ukrainian army nonsense. Mistakes were made and China should be learning from them, but what you write here is basically begging to repeat them. Putting your bets on a local citizen coup to win a war? Realy?
This entire block of comment you write is basicaly what the Russian mil bloggers were all saying about Ukraine in 2022. “Zelensky is finished” is almost a Russian mirror image of the Trump meme.
You think America will be backing Taiwan in a decade? Come on.
You also lack the long term perspective on this. By long term I mean decades.
Yes America will provoke WW3 with China within the next few decades due to its internal contradictions and need for war to destroy fixed capital. Every single American politician and general has been saying it loud and clear. Taiwan will be their foothold, and China will be at a strategic disadvantage if they don’t seize it before hostilities escalate fully. It’s the difference between WW3 battles taking place in the Pacific or on the Chinese coasts.
At the first opportunity China must seize Taiwan by force. Otherwise they are dooming probably millions to death from a longer and more drawn out war closer to the mainland. Just like Putin seizing Crimea by force in 2014 was the correct move, and the current Ukraine war would be much larger if he had not done that - and failing to take the Donbas in 2014 proved a costly mistake.
It will literally NEVER happen because that’s not how things work. China is a foreign country to Taiwanese. Why would they let a foreign country take over? Keep in mind I’m the only Taiwanese person on hexbear (probably). I know what people here think, what the media is saying.
There IS possibility of Taiwan relations warming with the CPC but they need to DROP their dumbass claims from the 60’s. They are simply not reality based. The KMT does NOT represent Taiwan. They were invaders. Nobody asked them to take over Taiwan. CPC officially needs to stop LARPING that KMT and their claims somehow represents Taiwan. Chinese nationalists here and on reddit also do this larping.
I want Taiwan to be independent from the US mafia and handing your country to a foreign country is not the solution.
You don’t need to convince me, you need to convince the Chinese. I’m sure they’ve got a tip line somwhere.
I’m pretty sure that the CPC prefers peaceful reunification, and sees little military value in kicking off a hot war that the US is baiting them into.
I know what their official policy is and I hold it in as much esteem as their official Israel policy (cowardly, delusional and pathetic)
Their policy is “ignore the problem, procrastinate, be in denial and hopefully it will solve itself for some reason”. Same as Israel-Palestine foreign policy, where they say they support 2 state solution but they do nothing. They don’t apply economic pressure on Israel, they don’t exert diplomatic leverage. They sit there doing fucking nothing except trading with them.
A Patriot battalion is 4-6 batteries, so 24-48 launchers depending on specification, along with 4-6 sets of radar vehicles, command posts, antenna stations, support vehicles for reloading, and electrical generation platforms. This allows for the firing of between 96-768 interceptor missiles before reloading depending on specification (PAC-2: 4 missiles per launcher, PAC-3: 16 missiles per launcher). Israel also has an additional 7 Patriot PAC-2 batteries in storage after giving one to Ukraine. That’s 168-224 PAC 2 interceptor ammunition at minimum, even if the batteries can’t be restored to operational condition. And the Patriot battalion wasn’t all that was moved, an additional single THAAD battery was also moved to the ME region, with rumours of two.
Reportedly 73 of those C-17 Globemaster III transport aircraft were used to transfer the Patriot battalion.
If the US strikes Iran then China should seize Taiwan immediately
It’s win-win for them and Iran. Iran gets a distraction allowing reprieve, and China takes back the imperialist foothold into their own de facto control
China just did an extensive military drill practicing the takeover of Taiwan a few days ago. But I don’t think they’ll do it even if the US bombs Iran.
I don’t think they will because all signs point to them being overly cautious and craven, but they should if they fully realized the reality that WW3 with America is coming either way. Instead, they’ll make the same mistake as Iran and let their allies get picked off one-by-one and sit on their hands afraid to act as they are surrounded and isolated.
Russia and DPRK truly seems to be the only countries that get it. Who have the political will and foresight to act preemptively and not reactively.
China does not want Taiwan. They say so because it’s a remenant face issue from 60+ years ago. The US promotes it because it boosts the MiC and is overall good for China-bad propaganda.
you are understating the strategic value of an unsinkable aircraft carrier within range of 90% of China’s population centers, of America’s concerted decades longs effort to surround and contain China via rings of military bases. America will place a military base on Taiwan eventually, it doesn’t matter what the people there think.
If China allows it without pushback then they will be at extreme disadvantage at the start of WW3 that will follow.
chinese opinion-havers are floating the idea that the phillipines will be the one to be made an example of, reason being that taiwan is comically overmatched and that offing another vassal will send the same message of american impotence to sk/jp/tw while not actually destroying territory you intend to take. also because the pinoys are the least economically relevant entity in the region.
I definitely hear this floating around. Real Chinaheads know that Taiwan is just a distraction from the Philippines.