Image is of the Power of Siberia natural gas pipeline, which transports gas from Russia to China. This isn’t an oil pipeline (such as the ESPO) but I thought it looked cool. Source here.

Trump has recently proposed a 500% tariff on goods from countries that trade with Russia, including India and China (who buy ~70% of Russia’s oil output), as well as a 10% additional tariff on goods from countries that “align themselves with BRICS.” Considering that China is the largest trading partner of most of the countries on the planet at this point, and India and Brazil are reasonably strong regional players, I’m not sure what exactly “alignment” means, but it could be pretty bad.

Sanctions and tariffs on Russian products have been difficult to achieve in practice. It’s easy to write an order to sanction Russia, but much harder to actually enforce these sorts of things because of, for example, the Russian shadow oil fleet, or countries like Kazakhstan acting as covert middlemen (well, as covert as a very sudden oil export boom can be).

Considering that China was pretty soundly victorious last time around, I’m cautiously optimistic, especially because China and India just outright cutting off their supply of energy and fuel would be catastrophic to them (and if Iran and Israel go to war again any time in the near future, it’ll only be more disastrous). Barring China and India kowtowing to Trump and copying Europe vis-a-vis Nordstream 2 (which isn’t impossible, I suppose), the question is whether China and India will appear to accede to these commands while secretly continuing trade with Russia through middlemen, or if they will be more defiant in the face of American pressure.

Last week’s thread is here.
The Imperialism Reading Group is here.

Please check out the RedAtlas!

The bulletins site is here. Currently not used.
The RSS feed is here. Also currently not used.

Israel-Palestine Conflict

If you have evidence of Israeli crimes and atrocities that you wish to preserve, there is a thread here in which to do so.

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.

  • xiaohongshu [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
    60·
    2 days ago

    China’s BYD to start assembling electric cars in Brazil Reuters

    • Chinese electric vehicle maker ready to open Bahia factory
    • BYD eyes Brazilian assembly of some 50,000 cars in 2025
    • Executive says labor lawsuit will not derail factory timeline

    SAO PAULO, July 7 (Reuters) - China’s BYD (002594.SZ), opens new tab is poised to start assembling electric vehicles at a new factory in Brazil as early as this month, a top executive said, reducing imports as tariffs start to rise in its largest foreign market.

    Alexandre Baldy, senior vice president for BYD in Brazil, said the goal is to assemble 50,000 cars this year at the plant in Bahia state from imported kits, adding that he is negotiating a lower tax rate on those vehicles.

    “We should inaugurate in the coming days,” Baldy said in an interview late on Friday, without specifying a date, as final regulatory approvals are still pending. “We’ve already completed this year’s imports, taking advantage of the period before the import tax increase that took effect on July 1.”

    BYD had sent a surge of finished cars into Brazil this year to take advantage of temporarily lower tariffs, shipping some 22,000 from China in the first five months, according to Reuters calculations.

    That stirred complaints in Brazil’s auto industry that BYD was privileging Chinese manufacturing over production from Bahia, where a labor probe and heavy rains have disrupted plans. A state labor secretary said in May that the plant would only be “fully functional” at the end of 2026.

    However, Baldy said it would begin full production in July 2026, after assembling vehicles from “complete knock down” (CKD) kits for the next 12 months.

    Once fully operational, he said, the complex in Camacari is likely to generate up to 20,000 direct and indirect jobs. Expectations for the operation, on the site of a former Ford plant taken over in 2023, suffered in December when labor inspectors leveled accusations of labor abuses involving Chinese contractors hired to build the complex. Brazilian prosecutors filed a lawsuit in May holding BYD responsible for human trafficking and submitting workers to “slavery-like conditions,” after talks on a settlement fell through.

    “BYD has always sought to respect Brazilian law and human dignity in all operations,” Baldy said, adding that the company wanted to reach a resolution. He did not say why efforts to negotiate a settlement had fallen through.

    All it took was for China to halt Brazilian beef import for Brazil to cave. Amazing. Brazil has less leverage than it thinks it has.

    • MarmiteLover123 [comrade/them, any]@hexbear.netEnglish
      35·
      2 days ago

      Alexandre Baldy, senior vice president for BYD in Brazil, said the goal is to assemble 50,000 cars this year at the plant in Bahia state from imported kits, adding that he is negotiating a lower tax rate on those vehicles.

      So the cars aren’t even being manufactured in Brazil itself, just the final assembly of already made parts…

      • xiaohongshu [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
        31·
        2 days ago

        This is quite common. In the 1980s, a few Southeast Asian countries like Malaysia had hoped to receive some technology transfer by giving massive tax breaks to multinational semiconductor companies (Intel, AMD, Hitachi etc.), but mostly they ended up doing the finishing packaging, assembly and testing work for foreign corporations to sell to their export markets. The core technologies are usually kept protected.

        China can of course choose to democratize the technology by sharing them with the developing countries, but that would end up killing their own private companies that needs to survive on the market economy.

        • RedSailsFan [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
          17·
          2 days ago

          China can of course choose to democratize the technology by sharing them with the developing countries, but that would end up killing their own private companies that needs to survive on the market economy.

          on my hands and knees begging the CPC to hit the communism button

      • aanes_appreciator [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
        17·
        2 days ago

        Same as in Burkina Faso. Im sure BYD benefits from cheaper transport of materiel (easier to ship a car thats flat-packed) and you also train up a bunch of local expertise in maintaining the finished cars by virtue of assembling them.

        Now you’ve got a cheaper way to ship your vehicles internationally AND rapidly develop mechnical knowledge for your brand as it breaks out into a new market.

      • xiaohongshu [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
        29·
        2 days ago

        As they say, if you borrow a bit from a bank, the bank owns you. If you borrow a lot from a bank, you own the bank.

        Similarly, if you import a bit from an exporting country, the country owns you. If you import a lot from that country, you own their economy.

    • BynarsAreOk [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
      8·
      1 day ago

      This was never about stopping the factory though. It was about forcing BYD to comply with the local labour law on the construction site, I don`t know how you reached that conclusion. We don’t even know what will happen to the lawsuit though I wouldn’t hope for anything either.

      The only difference in this article is some politician said fully functional by “end of 2026” while the BYD guy says “July '26”.

      All it took was for China to halt Brazilian beef import for Brazil to cave.

      So what you’re saying is the trade can stop whenever they want to actualy and the reason they don’t stop trading with Israel is they’re actualy assholes? Yeah I kind of figured that already lol.

      God I hope you’re not looking at this from a China W angle because that is just funny.