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.
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.
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.
Someone explain to me how the prosecution of voices critical of Israel’s regime is not censorship in favour of the government position? How the prosecution of people seen “protesting for Palestine” isn’t a suppression of the right to peaceful protest and a clear example of government suppression?
How is this any different than China?
Argentina’s Javier Milei backs away from dollarisation as central bank pick rejects role
the man named to lead Argentina’s central bank by libertarian president-elect Javier Milei has turned down the job over policy differences, amid signs that the South American nation’s maverick next leader is backing away from his flagship policy of dollarising the sickly economy.
Emilio Ocampo, an economic history professor and former investment banker, was the leading advocate within Milei’s team of dumping the Argentine peso in favour of the US dollar. The author of a recent paper advocating dollarisation, he had been working on a blueprint to implement the plan after the new government takes office on December 10.
But a person close to Ocampo confirmed on Thursday night local news reports that he would no longer accept the post.
“The only reason for Ocampo to be at the [central bank] was to dollarise,” the person said. “He was never going to the central bank to implement someone else’s plan, which he doesn’t agree with.
looks like the national capitalists (probably led by macri) forced him to drop his idea for dollarization, they will probably also block his anti-brics+ policies too
The central bank is struggling to find buyers for short-term peso-denominated debt that it issues to suck local currency out of the system, signalling that its efforts to contain inflation are flagging in the face of market uncertainty.
looks like this is the main reason, makes no sense to buy debt in a currency that isnt going to exist for long, even with how weak the argentine peso is its lets the national capitalists control the economy, dollarization would have let to the international capitalist to take over the argentine economy and eliminating most national capitalists like it happen on Mexico with the TLCAN.
Cant for for anarcho-capitalism to be blamed for every neoliberal policy failure that Milei will be forced to keep by his coalition
I just want to say that this community is one of the best I’ve encountered online. The degree of wholesome effortposting to questions raised by others warms my heart.
https://twitter.com/Dima_Khatib/status/1728542969911750970
https://nitter.net/Dima_Khatib/status/1728542969911750970
Families of Palestinian women/ children set to be liberated tonight, received calls from Israeli intelligence warning them against any celebration. One male member of each family in Jerusalem was asked this morning to go to the police for interrogation and is still detained there
So Israel is just going to kidnap a relative of every hostage they release?
Alt
A Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles picture, with the logo edited so that it says “TEENAGE MUJAHIDEEN NATLIB TURTLES.”
In the top picture, a real picture of war torn Gaza, the 1989 arcade video game version of the turtles do battle against some foot soldiers, Rocksteady, Bee-bop, and the Brooklyn Israeli settler guy, who have aligned themselves with Israel
In the bottom two pictures, first on the left, and in reference to a tweet by one “Gun Waifu,” Benjamin Netanyahu in a Shredder mask tells the turtles (on the second picture to the bottom right), “Name the first President of Palestine and I’ll leave your country lol.” One of the turtles, holding pita bread instead of a pizza, says back “Did you say your country, dude?”
The turtles are wearing four different eye-mask-bandanas, all associated with different Palestinian groups —a mask from the al-Aqua Martyrs’ Brigade, one from the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, one from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and one from Hamas
i have bluesky codes for any nerd that wants them
Why is the number commonly cited for the US military budget $800 billion (the budget request from Congress) and not $1.5 trillion (total funding available)?
Military costs are not all discretionary. On top of that, there’s the $300 billion for veterans affairs.
Has anyone read or heard anything about how much of a wrench Tuberville’s promotion block is throwing into the war machine?
Clarification: that isn’t liberal handwringing. Those ones never actually go into detail.
So the DPP is going all-in with their US alignment, huh? That sweet, sweet NED support must be hard to turn down.
Not to go full
but I am genuinely pretty worried about project 2025.If the GOP does take power again in 2024, how “safe” would I be if I were to move to a blue state? I know that blue states are already expensive hell but if it means I can enjoy life at least a little bit, then it would be worth every penny.
Israel broke the ceasefire first on October 7th. The first shots fired were from automatic sniper rifles mounted by the IDF on the border walls of Gaza.
Commander of the Yemeni Navy to the crew of Israeli-owned cargo ship Galaxy Leader:
“We consider all of the crew as Yemeni people. Anything you want, we will bring it. You can consider Yemen as your own country.”
https://twitter.com/Aldanmarki/status/1727327179028025744?t=i9jCKheKU9gCFRyDLWiCJQ&s=19
The last sight of many a commie
“Im crashing this country with no survivors”
Some funny and probably positive news from Greece with the political landscape there being both the same and the opposite from other countries in Europe rn.
Its same in the sense that New Democracy (not Maoist but like 80% Macron - 20% Le Pen) governs after getting ~40% in the elections this year all while the socdem to center-left has either been eating shit and imploding (SYRIZA), being PASOK doing nothing after being Pasokified and or being Varoufakis enjoying his internationalist larp party at ~2% outside of parliament. With Syriza’s implosion being the funny one since they ate shit in the elections, Tsipras resigned and then they literaly imported some better looking Pete Buttigieg - Beto O’Rourke dude from the US but with worse politics (reaganite, campaigned for Biden in 2008) and made him the leader so now they are about to be polling at signle digits. Like look at this
But there are also opposing trends compared to other countries.
The Greek Communist Party (Hardline MLs who also dont suck too much on LGBT issues anymore despite what the convo was some years ago) has more than doubled their support, consistently hitting 10%+ in recent polls and now has a real chance of actually reaching 2nd place. Looking at the state of communist parties and movements in most of the west , at eurocommunism and in general the post war trajectory of most , you dont have that kind of party that doesnt suck in 90% of issues with that kind of parliamentary numbers + organizational strength at a youth or union level almost anywhere else.
Also contrary to other countries the far right is very split and incoherent . After the collapse of Golden Dawn the overtly anti-migrant fascists, neonazis , ethnonationalists, alt-right nutjobs, religious nutjobs etc are split over 4-6 parties with basicaly no organizational strength or organic reach. They wont and cant reach any really threatening unified movement as of now and they mostly overtly clownish and lame
Do you think Zelensky speaks with the Ghost of Kiev the same way Milei speaks with his dead dog?
