Bulletins and News Discussion from April 7th to April 13th, 2025 - Juche With Trumpian Characteristics

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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Apparently there are some reports that Isreal used a tactical nuke on syria last december
- There were rumours that it was a nuke at the time, but I don't recall any strong evidence. I'm not exactly a weapons expert by any stretch of the imagination, but the US makes some really big conventional bombs, it was probably something like that.
- It was not a nuclear explosion, it was a hit on a large ammunition depot in Syria with many secondary explosions, along with a hit on the air defence systems there, from video evidence and geolocation.
  https://hexbear.net/comment/5740613
  https://hexbear.net/comment/5776424
  Here's some video of people even visiting the site of the explosion afterwards, it certainly does not look like a ground zero of a nuclear blast:
  Twitter source
  Xcancel mirror
  Satellite imagery of the ammunition depot
  Good YouTube video on the subject
- Why are all these guys so weird. This particular guy Braun got fired from UCD for harassment and is now an "independent researcher" who thinks Nordstream was blown up with nukes.
  https://www.irishtimes.com/news/social-affairs/aoibhinn-ni-shuilleabhain-contacted-by-ucd-president-with-personal-apology-1.4348022
  Dr Ní Shúilleabháin related how Braun had regularly shown up in her office at UCD, asked her out on dates, made persistent phone calls and in one incident followed her to a hotel in Cork where she was staying.
  Braun (58), who worked in UCD until 2019, was issued with a court order in late 2019 barring him from contacting her for five years after she had reported the matter to gardaí.
  His website where he talks about the Nordstream stuff: https://www.geophysical-forensics.ch/nordstream.html
  Academia is rife with the most unhinged of conspiracy theorists, there is something about the in-depth knowledge in one specific field combined with the culture that creates the same irrational self-confidence you see like flat earthers (of which there are many in STEM, I've even met a NASA Engineer who is a flat earther) I know top level academics who believe the pyramids are an ancient geomantic power source.
  This can also be seen in the works of Christopher Busby, whose work was linked here a few months ago regarding the use of depleted uranium by Israeli forces in Lebanon. He also has several nuke conspiracy theories that devolve into him claiming that several of his fellow researchers where assassinated because of their research into cold fusion and that Kennedy was shot because of the Kennedy Kruschev test ban. This is a man who was appointed to government advisory councils and top scientific boards, then went on to try and grift people with anti-radiation pills after Fukishima.
  These particular theories are just believable enough that if you see a guy in a labcoat with a doctorate and some nice graphs you might just believe it if you never google them or meet them in person. Because the other thing about these guys is they are not shy about their theories either. They will gladly get up and talk about these things at conferences if you let them because of that air of self-confidence that arises inside the bubble of academia.
  
  The crank circle with regards to nuclear weapons is something to behold. And then these nuclear weapons cranks get amplified by "alt media" and disinformation in "pro resistance" circles on social media (see Jackson Hinkle, Syrian Girl, Pepe Escobar, etc), and it just becomes one massive circlejerk with no facts present. See the other disinformation crank story about how Russia actually blew up a nuclear armed Israeli F-35 that was going to create an EMP in Iran, over Jordan during April last year. Just the craziest stories with zero evidence.
  
  I've even met a NASA Engineer who is a flat earther
  Damn, are they going to murder-suicide their NASA coworkers for being in on the conspiracy lol
- Can't you test the soil for radiation?
- Is there any further reading/keywords to find further reading on this? It's the first I'm hearing of it
  
  I commented on it as it happened, it wasn't a nuclear explosion, but a hit on a large ammunitions depot in Syria. See my comment in this thread for further details.
  
  Cheers comrade

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