Image is sourced from this article.
Those who were around in the early days of the news megathread may remember Pedro Castillo, the left-leaning leader of Peru who was deposed in December 2022. He was replaced by Dina Boluarte, the first woman to be President of Peru, who described herself as a progressive but afterwards routinely sided with Peruvian conservatives and American interests. To say she was unpopular is an understatement of titanic proportions - she descended to such lows that she was, at one point, the single most unpopular leader on the planet. As with most deeply unpopular leaders that side with the West, she kept power for a bafflingly long time.
However, on October 10th, after a period of protests against the government, she was impeached and removed by Peru’s Congress in a unanimous vote. José Jerí was sworn in as the new President, who was previously the President of the Congress and is a member of a centrist Peruvian party. The government is trying the classic strategy: keep doing the same thing as before, and sacrifice an unpopular figure - here, Boluarte - in the hopes that this appeases the crowd.
Is this strategy working? It doesn’t really seem to be - protests are not only continuing, but strengthening, as it is clear that neoliberalism will not reformed and the brutality by police will not stop (there was very recently a high-profile case in which a musician, Mauricio Ruiz, was murdered). Controversies surrounding Jerí, including allegations of SA, are already being reported. If Jerí is deposed, the next person in line to try their hand at ruling will be the former army general Roberto Chiabra, who would be the ninth President in less than a decade.
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The Zionist Entity's Genocide of Palestine
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against the temporary Zionist entity. 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.
This more or less tracks for me. The big question I have is whether there’s really that much risk to the auto sector, or electoral risk to Carney’s government, by dropping the EV tariffs.
In terms of risks to the auto sector, we’re beholden to the US buying our product, but our domestic market isn’t relevant to the conversation. All things being equal, China could take the entire Canadian auto market tomorrow and it wouldn’t change much about our auto manufacturing prospects. It seems to me that there’s very little direct link between allowing China to sell vehicles in Canada and the number of Canadian jobs in the auto sector. (I could be wrong about this one, and I would love to hear a good counter-argument.)
From a realpolitik angle, the US might decide to punish us for allowing Chinese EVs, and I assume that’s the core issue. However, they’re already proactively damaging the industry through tariffs and investing in reshoring without any provocation at all. I guess things could be worse, but it feels like the typical relationship between Canadian bootlicking and US favor is muddy at the moment. Canada gets burned by the US occasionally, but generally there’s been an understanding that we go along to get along, and whether or not you agree with that approach or believe it’s optimal, it was an established understanding. That dynamic is eroding, and it calls into question the utility of toeing the line.
From an electoral standpoint, totally agree that getting the canola tariffs dropped doesn’t help Carney much. It would be helpful as part of a larger plan to get along with the western provinces and move Carney’s agenda more broadly, but it wouldn’t be worth sacrificing swing votes in Ontario for general goodwill among provincial leadership. However, I question whether dropping the EV tariffs actually costs him relevant votes. The vast majority of the public supports lowering the tariffs. Even in Ontario, a strong majority support lowering tariffs, and the rest are split between being opposed and on the fence (here’s a recent Angus poll, which is pretty in-line with previous polling on the issue). The opponents of lowering tariffs are mostly CPC and BQ, and even then there is majority support for dropping them.
Point being, while it’s likely that there’s not much electoral gain for the Liberals from getting the canola tariffs dropped, a similar logic applies to actively maintaining the EV tariffs. The voters who actively want to maintain the tariffs are probably not voting Liberal anyway, and there are way more voters who support dropping those tariffs. My read is that this issue is more about managing the uncertainty of a US response to dropping tariffs than managing the electoral calculus.
I could be off in some of my assumptions here, but I’m having trouble coming to a different conclusion with the assumptions I’m making and the information available.
I fully agree on the facts you’ve laid out. My thought process was more about perceptions among low-info voters, especially that subset of small-c conservative Ontarians who might consider voting Liberal federally but only if they openly act like big-c Conservatives.
That wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest, and those are doubtless important voters in a number of seats. I don’t think my analysis invalidates that possibility at all.
What I really want to know is if the Chinese auto tariffs are an economic issue (as in there would be direct effects on the Canadian auto industry as a result of dropping the tariffs just from market forces), if they’re a geopolitical issue (as in the economic effects are pretty modest but the risk of US retaliation is the problem), or if this is just about domestic electoral calculus (as in the issue has become a bogeyman with no material basis but may influence voters nonetheless).
All are valid reasons for rhe government to be cautious about the tariffs, but they all have very different implications in the broader picture, even if they add up to the same thing on this specific issue. The one that worries me is that the government doesn’t want to take any action that would even slightly piss off the US, because as we all know by now, that’s a hole with no bottom. If it’s just a matter of pleasing low-info swing voters then I get it (even though I think that’s a bad driver of policy).