Argentina is an interesting microcosm of the more widespread war that every other currency is waging against the dollar - in this case, the yuan is taking on the dollar in gladiatorial combat.
The Argentinian economy, like many, is fully permeated by the American dollar, but it has its own official currency, the Argentinian peso. This may not be for long: one of the major contenders for the Argentinian presidency has proposed replacing the national currency of Argentina with the dollar, which would therefore mean that an even more substantial part of the economy would be decided, with no input from Argentina, thousands of miles away. This is not unprecedented - Ecuador already does this, as does Zimbabwe, Timor-Leste, Micronesia, Palau, and the Marshall Islands. The motivation for doing so may also be convincing to Argentinian voters, as the country has faced hyperinflation, ever-increasing benchmark interest rates, and chronic shortages of dollar reserves.
However, the yuan has entered the scene, particularly over the last couple months. The Economy Minister met with Chinese officials in early June to sign a co-operation plan to promote the Belt and Road Initiative. Commercial banks can now open deposit accounts in yuan, and securities can now be issued in the yuan. The Western media, as one might expect, emphasizes how utterly desperate Argentina must be to go to the yuan - the yuan! - to sort out its economic crisis.
Whirlpool Corp, a major American appliances company, has said that it is considering paying with the yuan to import parts for a new factory in Argentina. Over 500 Argentine companies making a plethora of products have requested to pay for imports in yuan.
The share of yuan transactions in Argentina's foreign currency market hit a daily record of 28% in late June, compared to a high of 5% in May.
And last week, Argentina opted to use the yuan to settle part of its debt with the IMF for the first time, and it will be interesting to see if other countries follow their example.
Here is the map of the Ukraine conflict, courtesy of Wikipedia.
Here is the archive of important pieces of analysis from throughout the war that we've collected.
The first update this week is here in the comments.
The second update this week is here in the comments.
Links and Stuff
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Add to the above list if you can, thank you.
Resources For Understanding The War Beyond The Bulletins
Defense Politics Asia's youtube channel and their map. I recommend their map more than the channel at this point, as an increasing subscriber count has greatly diminished their quality.
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have decent analysis. Avoid the comment section.
Understanding War and the Saker: neo-conservative sources but their reporting of the war (so far) seems to line up with reality better than most liberal sources. Beware of chuddery.
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 journalist reporting in the warzone.
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 still quite reactionary in terms of gender and sexuality and race, so beware). 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 ~ Another 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's army.
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.
Oh hey the Austrian military guy also confirms the offensive has failed. If there is anyone out there that still needs a reality check on this.
Of course the problem was their tactics and not the absolute dogshit NATO equipement that they sent. You can see the writing on the wall, when Ukraine finaly loses this war it will be their fault.
Also what "tactics" were they supposed to use anyway? Also you knew as much as the Ukrainian shit generals about all the Russian fortifications, how on earth is it possible for these people to turn around and unironicaly say "well acshualy NATO tactics don't work against fortified positions", yeah because these Russian defenses magicaly appeared the day before and its not like everyone knew about it for months in advance. Maybe not launch the offensive then? This war is a farce.
The NATO tactics were also dogshit. The training that NATO provided to Ukraine was an absolute crime. There's a reason that the 128th has made the most progress, they never received NATO training.
Reading NATO soldiers talking about how this war is so different because “if you get in trouble, no cavalry is on the way. No helicopter evac even” is just breaking my mind.
My man. If you get rescued while In trouble, that’s not a war. What the fuck do you think war is? The luxury of evac at will is utterly impossible in a peer conflict. You probably won’t even have time to call for support before you’re incinerated by an air strike.
That's probably been my favorite type of article/post, all the foreign volunteers complaining that this war isn't like shooting farmers and bombing weddings. I remember one that was complaining they didn't have the resources (airstrikes) to "shape the battlefield" and that they weren't being given priority missions and were instead being used as line infantry. I'll see if I can dig it up
Edit: This article is close
Edit2: Here's another complaining that war is hard from a guy who was there for 2 weeks
Not the comrades you'd want watching your back!
Last Edit: this article is chock full of brainworms, from "good businessmen make good commanders" to the "Ukraine is le epic harry potter Luke Skywalker vs the Russian Voldemort" paragraph at the end
These dumbasses basically functioned as hyper - militarized police back when they were occupying impoverished, desert countries. They were closer to acting as Paris police are today than they were to soldiers fighting any kind of peer conflict. Their humiliation is cathartic and I hope more of them volunteer.
Also, does this mean that NATO doctrine called for total air superiority in the event of a conflict with the USSR? Was that ever actually feasible? I don't actually know the relative strengths of each military's respective air forces from that time
I’ve heard soldiers talk about their time in Iraq and this is dead on.
They were essentially police with the authority (and in their view, duty) to gun down an entire crowd of civilians from inside their humvee if anyone nearby shot at them.
If you weren’t willing to gun down a crowd of innocent people, you couldn’t be the machine gunner. The vets often made fun of that kind of “coward”.
i mean, NATO didn't really commit any of it's air force to the conflict right? (i think?) i guess it would stand to reason that they didn't war game this out -- they really didn't think their instigations would escalate into a russian invasion, or thought that economic sanctions would be sufficient to force terms. i would think that NATO otherwise is prepared for a "peer" conflict, but one in which it isn't sitting on its hands, and withholding its air force (and it all its trained soldiers, trained in state of the art equipment, ready to go, etc.).
The only thing worse for NATO than Ukraine losing the war with their old hand-me-downs is Ukraine losing the war with their shiniest, most profitable NATO wunderwaffen
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If I were a Ukrainian officer I would send the western mercs in as meat shields not give them “priority missions”
Not only is it easier to send foreigners to die instead of your countrymen, but Westerners are an absolute liability for as long as they're alive and anywhere near you. They can't fucking stop posting their geolocation on social media even when they know it could get them killed.
Pretty sure the actual on-the-ground officers also think that way, at least judging from the reports that a lot of the mercs have given after leaving in either an ambulance or in a body bag.
Russian intel has been tracking foreign mercenaries and targeting them with missile strikes, etc.
They warned them to stay out
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And these people demand respect for the “wars” they served in
Westerners have really let their war adventures in undeveloped backwoods go to their heads
🚁
there are 3 Buk launchers and 5 tunguskas in range of the lz
There was a RNW episode (or maybe the episode they did with Chapo) back when Soleimani was assassinated, where they discussed how anti-access/area denial will be the face of any US-Iran conflict, and how the US is wholely unprepared for such a conflict. It's funny, in a way, to see that play out a few years later somewhere else in the world.
what's this?
sick, ty
The problem: the enemy army wants to take your city
The solution: fight them with weapons
Is it just me or is this not exactly a profound insight?
It's about shaping a battlefield. In that photo, they could have put the mines in a straight line across the field, which would have made it much easier to demine, and it would have given the rocket/missile launcher a larger area to cover. Instead, the mines are clustered around the flat field next to the hill with only a small area between the hill and the field unmined, which makes the field harder to clear/pass. This forces the invading troops to towards the hill area, where the rocket/missile launcher can concentrate it's fire. The troops are placed at the tighest point of the funnel between the minefield and the hill to allow them to concentrate fire. Anti-aircraft batteries would also be part of the strategy in the field. This is also used at sea with sea mines and anti-ship missiles (it's the Iranian Navy's primary defensive strategy.)
A really fancy way of saying landmines and artillery.
Just load a save point bro
It requires total air superiority and civilians to bomb. Atleast Ukraine has experience with the latter
Most people in the military are not very empathetic. Thus, they have difficulty imagining the situation from the other sides perspective. Russia is well fortified, but we think of them as pathetic, so they should run if engaged. Never mind that only a fool would run from such an advantageous position.
This leads to gambits that seem insane from a normal persons perspective - ww1 was full of this. Frontal assaults on trenches, etc.
They are just arrogant and blind to the extreme, and under pressure to produce results.
They didn’t even use NATO tactics lmao, NATO doctrine is to never do an offensive without air and artillery support, often air supremacy. NATO literally has no idea what to do when an enemy has better air dominance than them and superior AA
Lmao they really are completely US-brained in their tactics
You can still win without air superiority (North Vietnam did it) but you have to adapt your tactics and be prepared for large attrition and losses. Switch to much more guerrilla and insurgent tactics, go for much slower warfare and be prepared to give massive amounts of territory. Ukraine doesn’t want to do that, they want to stand and fight toe-to-toe, tank-to-tank and never back up an inch
Gotta protect the farmland now owned by BlackRock.
Just to get this right... The military system that was created explicitly to fight Russia has developed tactics that doesn't work against an extremely likely Russian defence strategy?
They have played us for absolute fools.
The only war they’ve seen in decades is asymmetrical war against poor nations.
Page 1 of the top secret NATO strategy manual named "Generalplan Ost 2, Rules-Based Boogaloo":
"Assume that Russia is a third world country armed with sticks and a few rusty Kalashnikovs"
NATO sent them the wrong tactics smdh
The tactics were correct and perfect the problem was the Russians didn’t follow the plan.
WE'RE NOT OWNED WE'RE NOT OWNED
Our offensive is so successful all of our successes happened right along the line of contact and no deeper into no man’s land
it seems like, from the tenor of the mega threads, that ukraine has declined to really commit though yet, ya?
Uh kinda it's hard to tell really, the material they've used for the offensive so far has been a fraction of what they should've received. Of course there's the question of how much of the stuff being sent actually arrives at the front and isn't 'lost' and then found in another war on the other side of the globe so maybe they've actually dedicated a significant amount that they can account for, or maybe they are holding back for a bigger push, maybe they don't want to use as much because they know that the endless faucet of weapons might actually come to an end.
Yes, Western media is happy to tell us that for weeks now. But really, it's a stupid argument. What do you mean, "yet to commit"? Ukraine threw a lot, A LOT of men and vehicles against russian lines this past month. A lot of them got smoked, both human and materiel. So when you lose 20% of the forces alloted for that offensive - which is entirely plausible! - that's pretty much it. You can certainly try again and lose another 20%, but what do you have then? You don't have 60% left, really, you have your reserves left, and you absolutely need to retain those from a military professional POV.
You need to have some forces to plug gaps in the frontline in case of a Russian counter-attack, you'd need at least 50% to occupy land you want to conquer, rear-are security, combat rotations and the like. This is not a video game where you can commit 100% of your tanks and then just shift-click "train more units", tactical thinking is all about having reserves and committing them according to the situation.
So yeah, in reality, that was it. The glorious Ukrainian counter-offensive is over. Technically, they might have another shot, but judging from the past month it's not possible to achieve any breakthrough, where and why would they try that? Like I said, lose another 20% of your force capabilities, and you're pretty much naked. I'd wager a solid guess that Ukraine won't attack again in the next at least 6 months. They don't have the capabilities.
Then again, what do I know, it's a crazy war and there's a lot of crazy Nazis on one side, so who knows what they might do. But from a more rational, professional POV that was it. Hope this elaboration was useful to you.