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.

  • SeventyTwoTrillion [he/him]
    ·
    1 year ago

    Has the pounding that the West has gotten in Ukraine given them some lessons in humility, and perhaps more importantly, in the value of being able to manufacture a lot of decent, reliable, non-complicated equipment very quickly? No. No it has not.

    WSJ: The Old-School Artillery Shell Is Becoming High Tech

    At a factory in rural Norway, engineers are perfecting an artillery shell they say will be able to travel many times farther than the traditional ammunition currently pounding the battlefield in Ukraine.

    The work is part of a broader trend among arms companies to increase the range, precision and lethality of artillery shells that have remained largely unchanged for decades.

    The technological advances, giving some shells capabilities similar to missiles but with a lower cost and quicker production time, promise a dramatic change for artillery as it plays its biggest role since the Vietnam War.

    Some modern shells—including those guided to targets using satellite navigation and others propelled by mini-rocket engines—have already been deployed in Ukraine and Israel. The next frontier for arms manufacturers, including BAE Systems BAESY and General Dynamics, is making shells that travel farther while also speeding up production to replace diminishing inventories.

    Norway-based Nammo, in partnership with Boeing, is testing shells in Raufoss that use so-called ramjet engines that it says will eventually be able to travel up to about 90 miles—more than the distance from Philadelphia to New York. Standard-barreled howitzers have a range of around 15 miles with a conventional round, with longer-range cannons reaching just over 30 miles.

    “This is a game changer,” said Øyvind Lien, program director for advanced tactical propulsion at Nammo. “You are putting a missile into a gun,” he said, amid the noise of grinding metal on the factory floor.

    • trompete [he/him]
      ·
      1 year ago

      Some modern shells—including those guided to targets using satellite navigation and others propelled by mini-rocket engines—have already been deployed in Ukraine and Israel.

      They're making special long-range rocket shells with satellite guidance to lob <5 miles onto random apartment buildings in Gaza.

      It's an admission that they're testing weapons on civilians in Gaza.

      • 420stalin69
        ·
        1 year ago

        What we made artillery shells but jammable?

      • ziggurter [he/him, comrade/them]
        ·
        1 year ago

        They're making special long-range rocket shells with satellite guidance to lob <5 miles onto random apartment buildings in Gaza.

        TBH I'm sure they're using it on targets in Lebanon as well, or will. That doesn't diminish the observation that they're happy to have Israel test their ordinance on civilian targets, but it might mean they are happy to test the product's actual, advertised capabilities to some degree. 😫

    • PosadistInevitablity [he/him]
      ·
      1 year ago

      “This is a game changer”

      Do westerners ever get tired of saying this phrase and being wrong as fuck? Holy shit, the key to industrial warfare was solved a long time ago.

      Mass production of good enough equipment. Wunderwaffe never work, ever.

      agony

      • aaaaaaadjsf [he/him, comrade/them]
        ·
        1 year ago

        It's not even a game changer, Denel in South Africa has been supplying rocket assisted 155mm artillery shells to a NATO country since 2019 as far as I know? The technology has existed for a while now.

    • aaaaaaadjsf [he/him, comrade/them]
      ·
      1 year ago

      Norway-based Nammo, in partnership with Boeing, is testing shells in Raufoss that use so-called ramjet engines that it says will eventually be able to travel up to about 90 miles—more than the distance from Philadelphia to New York. Standard-barreled howitzers have a range of around 15 miles with a conventional round, with longer-range cannons reaching just over 30 miles.

      Wtf? South African G5 and G6 155mm howitzers have a range of 50km (31 miles) with HE base bleed rounds, and a range of 76km (47 miles) with specialised long range rocket assisted ammunition. In fact, that 76km distance still holds the record for the longest recorded shot from a 155mm howitzer in 2019. These howitzers have existed for 40 years.

      Also 90 miles (145km) for a ramjet powered base bleed 155mm shell is not groundbreaking. Denel in South Africa is also working on this, but with a proposed range of 155km.

      Also Denel has been supplying rocket assisted 155mm shells with a range of 41 miles to a NATO country for a while now.

      https://www.defenceweb.co.za/featured/rheinmetall-denel-munition-wins-big-new-155-mm-ammunition-orders/

      https://www.edrmagazine.eu/rheinmetall-sets-three-new-distance-records-for-indirect-fire-in-south-africa