Bulletins and News Discussion from January 13th to January 19th, 2025 - From Mar-A-Lago to Nuuk - COTW: Denmark (including Greenland)
Bulletins and News Discussion from January 13th to January 19th, 2025 - From Mar-A-Lago to Nuuk - COTW: Denmark (including Greenland)
The imperial core is continuing the process of self-cannibalization as the interimperial wars between Europe and the US over resource and territorial control continue. Greenland, populated with less than a hundred thousand heavily exploited people, is the newest territory to fall under Trump's gaze. The main draw is the mineral resources present there, of which it boasts nickel, copper, cobalt, and platinum, and much more than remains unexplored under the ice. But the ice is melting, and profit must be made. There is an additional element of wanting Arctic territory to counter Chinese and especially Russian interests and aims; Russia is increasingly eyeing the northern Arctic route as an alternative to more vulnerable routes through the Suez Canal or around Africa, and is investing heavily in icebreakers for that purpose.
However, even if Europe possessed the desire to resist American annexations - and they absolutely do not, at the end of the day - they do not even have the ability. Denmark may, to a lesser or greater extent, make angry sounds and talk about national honour or some such, but their military would be trampled underfoot by even the New York Police Department, let alone a concerted military effort by the US. If Trump wants Greenland, he will have it. This will naturally increase the grumbling in Europe about reconsidering the Transatlantic alliance, and that grumbling may, in the medium-term future, as the American Empire continues its decline, lead to meaningful results. But in the short term, Europe shall have to bear whatever Trump throws at them, for they obviously cannot now ally with Russia, who was the natural counterweight to American interests for decades before 2022.
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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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Trump says he will revive TikTok, but wants 50% U.S. ownership
Trump said he would “extend the period of time before the law’s prohibitions take effect, so that we can make a deal to protect our national security.”
“I would like the United States to have a 50% ownership position in a joint venture. By doing this, we save TikTok, keep it in good hands and allow it to say up,” he wrote on Truth Social.
Trump said the executive order would specify there would be no liability for any company that helped keep TikTok from going dark before his order.
Joint ownership was exactly as I wrote in this comment here - we’ll probably see a joint venture in some kind of AI development between Meta/Google and a Chinese partner in return. The whole TikTok ban was just to open up the path for Meta/Google to enter China again:
I would expect some kind of joint venture in the field of AI development, which is what Meta and Google excel in.
For reference, Apple is currently in talks with Tencent and ByteDance to roll out its AI features in China, you can see why Meta and Google, both banned in China, would want a slice of that share too. How do you force China to lift the ban? By banning TikTok itself and force a hostage exchange situation.
It also fits with the recent US emphasis on banning AI stuff to China. The US then offers an olive branch if China allows American tech companies to enter to participate in their AI development. Now we see how China responds.
I really hope they don't sell, but I can see it happening because TikTok CEO is a capitalist at the end of the day
From a business/capitalist point of view, not selling and keeping it banned generate no revenue plus all the burden of paying for overhead cost and investment already in place. So, having the option of being restructured into a jointly owned enterprise as one of the most popular social media apps is still worth the revenues it generates.
However, I suspect the situation is far from that simple. There are three inter-connected crises facing the Chinese economy right now: low consumption, property market bubble, and local government debt crisis.
How all these crises came about will require an entire effort post (I have written parts of it but it’s way too massive in scope to address everything) but let’s take the local government debt problem as an example.
Currently, many local governments are running deep into deficits and have overburdened debt ratio (all these have to do with property market/land premium speculation and Covid but I will not go into it here) and as soon as the Fed cut interest rate back in September last year, the Chinese government immediately rolled out their debt relief program for the local governments.
Because China does not have debt cancellation mechanism (amazing huh), the proposed solutions involved debt restructuring/refinancing, for example, raising the debt ceiling by 6 trillion yuan so local governments can borrow more money at the now lowered interest rate, to pay back their outstanding debt that demanded higher interest rate. So the debt relief comes from borrowing cheap to pay back expensive outstanding interest.
Just last month, Fed’s Powell released more mixed signals, citing uncertainty in inflation and said that the Fed may only cut once or twice in 2025. Of course, interest rate has very little to do with inflation in the US, but it should be seen as an imperialist tool that controls foreign economies.
So Trump has a lot of leverage here: if he can get the Fed to cut more rates this year, then the PBOC can also cut their rates, this will then allow the local governments to borrow at an even lower interest to pay back their outstanding debt, and thus bringing huge relief to their current budgetary situations. Here, you can see how the Fed’s interest rate directly impacts China’s local government finances.
This is just one weapon the US can use. Tariffs, sanctions, interest rates are all “threats” that can be negotiated down if China gives in to what the US wants. What we will have to wait and see is how Trump and Xi deal with these issues in their ensuing negotiations.
(On the other hand, the Fed bringing down too much interest rates plus Trump’s government deficit cuts with DOGE will also have the opposite impact of plunging US into recession, and that hurts China’s export industries too. So, we are locked into a complex and difficult situation with both the US and Chinese economies being their own ticking time bombs, and this will send shockwaves across the global economies. Things are really in a delicate situation and we can only hope that the US and China sort out a deal that isn’t going to crash the global economy.)
but, they aren't making no money. the app is banned in the US but still has many millions of users elsewhere. is it a significant part of their userbase? sure, that's not up for doubt. so, from a capitalist point of view, they're making revenue right now, and by selling them will make none. so idk if that argument holds as purely logical
They’re being asked to sell the US unit, their operations in Europe (UK-based), Australia/NZ and Asia (Singapore-based) are not affected.
oh I thought they were being asked to like sell EVERYTHING from international tik tok to the US
Yeah I recently learned that many Chinese capitalists (and probably many global multinational corporations as well) set up many subsidiaries to avoid taxes and scrutiny at home. TikTok Ltd itself is just a shell company in the Cayman Islands, and its regional subsidiaries funnel their revenues there.
It is not even clear how much of those revenues actually go back into China, as the capitalists are more interested in storing their assets overseas, and this is one of the reasons that make it hard for China to decouple from the dollar regime because many huge corporations in China have already invested in so much dollar assets, it’s hard for to tell them “we don’t want to use dollar anymore, we’re gonna make them useless”.
It’s also one of the reasons why China has ramping up on cracking down corruption. For example, it’s been rumored that the real reason behind the prosecution case against Evergrande was how much their profits have been funneled overseas into their Cayman Islands and British Virgin Islands shell companies - the 2.3 trillion yuan scandal, much of which came from scamming the Chinese people had likely been laundered into overseas accounts. (It’s also part of the answer to the very important question of “how can China see such amazing development over the past two decades, and yet its people have no money to consume and local governments mired in endless debt?” - far from the only reason, but certainly part of it).