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.
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.