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.
It's just occurred to me that it was necessary for the west to convince liberals that Russia wanted to do genocide and ethnic cleansing to Ukrainians because otherwise the argument "it doesn't matter which capitalist state is in charge as long as the people survive" holds more weight.
Recognising that the primary anti-war argument is "anything should be done to stop the deaths of millions of people", they created a myth where Ukrainians are fighting for their very survival against an opponent that seeks to exterminate them. This they then backed up by conflating what would be the end of the ukrainian state with the end of the people.
Anyone then attempting to cut through this myth would have to say "Russia aren't doing that" because it's essential for anti-war arguments, and this would then immediately make you a supporter of Russia.
And when the war is finally over they will argue that they were correct about this by using the total number of dead ukrainians caused by the war(which wouldn't exist if they were anti-war but they don't care about that). So liberals will never feel like they were wrong about their support for the war in the future.
The genocide narrative annoys me to no end. There's absolutely no evidence unless you consider literally all warfare to be genocide. But pushing back against it makes you a "genocide denier" which, yeah sure I'm denying claims of genocide, because it's not fuckin' happening.
There's a tendency at the moment in the western press that's annoying at best and chilling at worst where everything bad is described as a genocide, which I can't help but feel massively warps actual genocides.
They do it with a lot of words, its part of the liberal cultural hegemony and how they defuse social combative lingua. Part of me wonders if that the watering down of the word genocide could be intentional, to distract from reparation demands from colonized peoples or if they have something worse in mind…
Yeah, maybe I'm jaded but I wouldn't be surprised if it was intentional, both to distract from present day reparation demands and as pre-emptive cover for the imperial core's future of drone striking climate refugees and the like.
I think they just can’t help themselves. Once a term catches on it’s used in wider and wider contexts until it no longer makes sense.
According to libs the Russia’s SMO is a genocide, CCP is committing a genocide against the Uyghurs, the GOP is implementing a trans genocide…
The word no longer means anything at this point.
The GOP is using actual genocidal rhetoric and legislation against trans people though.
I think that’s probably an overreaction compared to a genocide like the Holocaust. All of my leftist friends say voting for Biden/the Dems for “harm reduction” is a fruitless endeavor, if Trump/DeSantis were actually going to genocide the LGBT community I doubt they’d say that since it wouldn’t be very pragmatic. I think both parties are fairly similar in terms of working for capital first and foremost
I agree with your friends on the harm reduction nonsense to the extent that I even wonder if more harm has come about under Biden than would have under Trump, but no way of knowing for sure.
Without a doubt. But there are different factions of capital/bourgeoisie and only one of the two parties is passing legislation that allows the kidnapping of trans children (or children of trans parents) and discrimination at the level of refusing medical treatment to trans people (and I don't just mean giving them access to care for transitioning, but outright letting them bleed to death on the street after a car accident). Wasn't it
who was saying we have to kill trans people before they kill us or some shit?
I don't really care which political party is spewing the rhetoric vs which is passively allowing it to happen. I was really just commenting on the lumping in of claims of Russian genocide against Ukrainians and CCP genocide against Uyghurs, which are both utterly false, with the very real ramping up of genocidal rhetoric against trans people in the US.
Edit: Here are some comments from a couple months ago about using the term for what's been going on in the US.
I get all of that but that doesn’t square with this:
I asked one of my friends again who is worse on trans rights Trump or DeSantis and they said Meatball Ron truly wants trans people to no longer exist. Biden himself seems fairly pro-trans rights so even if the Dems suck ass as a whole the guy who literally hates the community is probably more of a threat? I don’t get the opposition toward the harm reduction vote for Sleepy Joe angle. They sent me more stuff DeSantis has said and it’s really next level hate damn.
Specifically on trans issues? Sure, republicans are worse than democrats, no question. What I said about Biden having done more harm than perhaps Trump would have was a general statement though. For example, I don't think the situation in Ukraine would be anywhere near the level of escalation that it is, and may well not have happened at all. It has been said around here that Biden was the actual accelerationism candidate in 2020, not Trump, and I think that's accurate. Coming back specifically to trans issues, even if republicans are demonstrably worse, it's worth noting that all of the legislation mentioned above happened under a democrat president. The democrats don't give a shit about trans people, but will happily use them as culture war leverage. They don't want trans people truly protected in any meaningful way because that would make it harder to keep using them to be able to say "see, we aren't trying to stir up a genocide like the republicans are!" More ratchet effect in action.
There's a larger conversation to be had if you don't get the opposition towards "harm reduction" voting, part of it being simply how useless it is in bourgeois democracy regardless. But all I really wanted to get at when I first replied to your comment was that we should definitely call out the claims of Russia and China committing genocide as harmful lies. We should NOT act like what is happening with trans people particularly in Florida is anything like those other two examples, because it is crossing that boundary into actual genocidal behavior.
I agree the quotes sound like Hitler talking about the Jews, it is genocidal rhetoric. Weirdly enough it doesn’t seem like Trump truly hates trans people and he’s even defended them in the past but if the party wanted him to sign a bill ordering the liquidation of all trans people of course he’d do so without hesitation since he doesn’t really have any principles himself. I do think there is a small portion of Democrats who do truly care about trans rights and aren’t just paying lip service but as a whole I get what you’re saying. Thanks for the insights
The other side of this is that it causes us to have a vested interest in undermining "genocide denier" as a thing. This ultimately helps fascists.
So they win whether we succeed or not. Because ultimately our success in undermining this shit will eventually benefit holocaust deniers.
Could the right approach to the bullshit claims of "genocide denial" be to go on the offensive instead, scolding the libs for trivialising genocide by crying genocide at everything the west doesn't like?
I've tried this with some success calling them "soft-holocaust deniers" by trivialising the word genocide but it invariably means you have to educate them on the origin of the word genocide. Most of them have no idea it was invented in the 1940s specifically as a term to prevent another holocaust. I don't know how effective it is because the effort you have to go to in calling them this is significant and there are very few online articles or videos about the topic to point them to, ultimately meaning you have to write walls of texts and link to similar walls of texts such as the UN's take on the topic.
Note part e in the UN definition. This is why the libs have made such a huge deal about the children that Russia moved (because it's a warzone, not for the purpose of genocide). There is deliberate reason and strategy between every narrative that is maintained surrounding the war and it all functions to prevent an anti-war movement.
This is a big one for me. Saying Russia is doing genocide in Ukraine downplays the horror of real Genocide. Its insulting to the memories of the 6 million Jews killed in the holocaust. Its like equating a hangnail with having your arm ripped off at the shoulder. Its even more insulting because of the civilian death toll of western wars is usually 2-4x as high per capita. So now they are exclaiming the horror of their hangnail while downplaying missing hands.
The holocaust was a tool used to protect the interests of a handful of rich people. Now the memory of the holocaust (evoked by calling everything a genocide) is being used to protect the interests of a handful of rich people. Calling the war in Ukraine absolutely trivializes the holocaust, and perhaps even worse, is part of the continued effort to obscure why the holocaust happened.
That's why we have to emphasize evidence and rhetoric. There's plenty of evidence for the Holocaust, and even before that was found, Germany was putting out genocidal rhetoric. But there's no evidence for a genocide of Ukrainians, and there's been no rhetoric from Russia about Ukrainians as a whole being some lesser people who pose a fundamental threat to society and need to be removed.
Unfortunately libs don't want to hear that, so it's frustrating to do when you know the reaction will just be shit.
Americans have only one conception of war, which is obliterating your opponent through superior terrorism. Americans cannot conceive of war without terrorism because obliterating your opponent with superior terrorism (which naturally involves mass murder of civilians and mass destruction of infrastructure) is all Americans have ever done. The American conception of war is inherently terroristic, so they project their own terrorism onto others.
The Russian state isn’t genociding or ethnic cleansing Ukrainians, but the Ukrainian state was, and is continuing, genociding and ethnically cleansing Ukrainian ethnic Russians.
So really I don’t even buy the “both states are capitalist it doesn’t matter who is in control”. It matters to Eastern Ukrainians and ethnic Russians
Yes but the point here is that stopping the war right now requires accepting Russia's taken territory (or part of it at least).
Getting liberals to accept that requires the argument that it doesn't matter who is in charge of the people as long as they are alive. What the ukrainian state was doing is irrelevant to this argument in the context of what it means under current conditions.
Their opposition to this hinges on the myth that Russia is genocidal. It is the one thing that allows them to continue pretending that they are moral human beings for supporting the continuation of the war and deaths of millions - they believe (or pretend to believe) that they would die anyway.
A prerequisite to turning liberals into a proper anti-war position is dismantling this myth. It's the main reason we've had so much trouble getting an anti-war movement off the ground.
This argument isn’t going to be won by words so save your breath tbh.
if we have to wait for Americans to be less gullible before anything gets better, it won't get better. We have to do something.
I think the information war is ultimately won by economic forces. Multipolarity re-emerges as an economic and geopolitical fact before we convince libs that it’s inevitable, or even good.
Which isn’t defeatism. But it means we need to work on shaping the political left for the emerging reality more than we need to try and convince libs. They will follow when reality is undeniable and not before.
I don’t think there’s any hope in convincing western libs to stop sending Ukrainians to die in the name of US hegemony. I think that only stops when Russia has clearly won in the battlefield.
But Die Linke hovering at 5% while AfD surges? This is where we need to be paying attention. Why is AfD the anti-NATO voice as the multipolar order emerges?
Easy question because Die Linke went sucdem and kowtowed to pro-warhawk lib crowd, because they were besmirched as „Russia-understanders“. And the exiled leadership is more obsessed with the „gender question“ and culture war BS.
They‘ve also barely been a party for the last years after they imploded themselves. I‘ve heard nothing at all since the start of the war and the following standard of living crisis.
I know it's not. But it's worthwhile for us to analyse what tactics were used here and how we failed. Getting ahead of these tactics next time may change everything. Doing it right now is, for me at least, practice.
We're only going to see a lot more war in coming years.
Sharpening our Rhetoric is second only to understanding Theory. Once we know the right ideas we need to be able to make them stick in peoples minds. Radicalization will happen due to material conditions. Our battle is to get radicals down the leftist pipeline before the fascists push them right.
Diluting the definition of genocide is also beneficial to the most genocidal hegemony on the planet, since it minimizes past crimes. It also helps with the western Xinjiang Uyghur genocide narrative.
The first genocide that only Adrian Zenz and he alone has seen evidence of lmao also it trivializes the term because no one seriously suggests invading China over that “genocide”, Americans buy so many goods manufactured in China they’d never in a million years stop the flow of Funkos and clothing from companies like Shein even if they truly believed it was a genocide (and I think most truly don’t, even the most propagandized libs)
If Ukraine is killing 95% of the Russian military with ease, I don’t know why they keep insisting I give a shit
The same people crying about Ukrainian genocide were and still are the same people that claim to "hate the CCP and not the people." I remember years ago I used to argue on reddit with this exact argument, "hey dipshit you can't be against just the CPC and not the Chinese people if they have 80% approval and some 100 million members."
So here we are now and they are basically saying "you can't be against Ukraine otherwise you're against the Ukrainians too". Absolutely hilarious, they're shameless.