Image: the last sight of many a commie.

Please pronounce his name wrong to make the title pun work better.

Anyway - Javier Milei, a caricature of a libertarian invented deep in the Hexbear Bit Factory, has won the Argentinian general election; and with a 12 point lead over Massa, it wasn't even particularly close. There are several analogies for this situation - Trump beating Hillary, Bolsonaro winning in 2018, or the alternate universe where Le Pen beat Macron. Massa is not a great guy. The last couple years have been difficult for Argentina, facing massive inflation and the same general economic downturns that are happening everywhere.

Milei is an... interesting person. To name just a couple things going on in his deeply bizarre life, he has a very special relationship with his sister, and an even more special relationship with his mastiff, Conan. When Conan died in 2017, he was so utterly distraught that he had him cloned into four new dogs, named Murray, Milton, Robert, and Lucas, for his economist idols. And he uses mediums to speak to his dead dog. This is probably the closest we're ever going to get to having a dog be president of a country.

Milei wants to essentially collapse the economy even harder. Playing off the general public sentiment of "dollar = good, peso = bad", he has vowed to make the national currency of Argentina the US dollar, thus eagerly giving a massive amount of control over the Argentinian economy directly to America. He wants to take a chainsaw to the status quo, cut off trade with communist countries like China, and demolish the Central Bank. Will Argentinian capitalists and the Senate let him do this? Probably not. What happens with their membership in BRICS+? Who knows. Where does Peronism go from here? Who can say.

But he still won, and will now be president. I suppose that every dog has its day.

Friendly reminder: when commenting about a news event, especially something that just happened, please provide a source of some kind. While ideally this would be on nitter or archived, any source is preferable to none at all given.

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 daily-ish 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 (and has automated posting when the person running it goes to sleep).
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.

Various sources that are covering the Ukraine conflict are also covering the one in Palestine, like Rybar.

The Country of the Week is Argentina! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.

This week's update is here!

Your Thursday Briefing.

Your Friday Briefing.

Your Saturday Briefing.

Here is the map of the Ukraine conflict, courtesy of Wikipedia.

Links and Stuff

The bulletins site is down.

Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists

Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict

Add to the above list if you can.

Resources For Understanding The War

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.

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.

Telegram Channels

Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.

Pro-Russian

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

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.

Last week's discussion post.

  • InevitableSwing [none/use name]
    ·
    10 months ago

    All conflict is about the same thing no matter where it is. It's about difference, whether difference is your religion, or your race, or your nationality. And the message that we have to get across and that we have learned in our part of the world is that difference is an accident of birth.

    None of us chose to be born. And we certainly didn't choose to be born into any particular community. There's not two people in this hall who are the same. There's not two people in the whole world who are the same. Difference is at the essence of humanity, and therefore respect for difference should be very, very normal and very common. But it is the first and deepest principle of real peace and real ending of conflict.

    John Hume, "The Philosophy of Conflict Resolution" - Ford/MIT Nobel Laureate Lecture Series - 10/15/2001

    The site has the transcript.

    YouTube

    John Hume

    John Hume KCSG (18 January 1937 – 3 August 2020) was an Irish nationalist politician from Northern Ireland, widely regarded as one of the most important figures in the recent political history of Ireland, as one of the architects of the Northern Ireland peace process.

    A native of Derry, he was a founding member of the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP), and served as its second leader from 1979 to 2001. He also served as a Member of the European Parliament (MEP), and a Member of the UK Parliament (MP), as well as a member of the Northern Ireland Assembly (MLA).

    Hume was co-recipient of the 1998 Nobel Peace Prize with David Trimble, and also received both the Gandhi Peace Prize and the Martin Luther King Award. He is the only person to receive the three major peace awards. In 2012, Pope Benedict XVI made Hume a Knight Commander of the Papal Order of St. Gregory the Great. He was named "Ireland's Greatest" in a 2010 public poll by Irish national broadcaster RTÉ to find the greatest person in Ireland's history.

    • zed_proclaimer [he/him]
      ·
      10 months ago

      All conflict is about the same thing no matter where it is. It's about difference, whether difference is your religion, or your race, or your nationality. And the message that we have to get across and that we have learned in our part of the world is that difference is an accident of birth.

      None of us chose to be born. And we certainly didn't choose to be born into any particular community. There's not two people in this hall who are the same. There's not two people in the whole world who are the same. Difference is at the essence of humanity, and therefore respect for difference should be very, very normal and very common. But it is the first and deepest principle of real peace and real ending of conflict.

      What Sesame Street Idealism does to a motherfucker. Not a single mention of class. Not a single mention of colonialism. Not a single mention of imperialism or any of the other systems of exploitation. All war is because we're big meanies and we just need to be nice! Both sides just need to be nice to each other and we could have peace!!!

      • MemesAreTheory [he/him, any]
        ·
        10 months ago

        I was born a POP(Person of Privilege), and you're a POW (Person of Work). Now if you could just get it through your thick skull that's just how life is and learn to respect and celebrate our differences, we could get along!

      • SeventyTwoTrillion [he/him]M
        ·
        10 months ago

        we can't let the cycle of violence continue any longer, these two sides that hate each other for some unknowable reason (PLEASE DO NOT LOOK INTO IT, IT'S WAY TOO COMPLICATED FOR YOUR PUNY PROLE BRAIN!) must come to an agreement, with the side we oppose totally and completely capitulating of course