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.
This whole Hamas hostages situation reminds me of when Juan Manuel Fangio, Argentinian F1 Legend, was kidnapped in Cuba in 1958 before the Grand Prix that he was to participate in. He was taken hostage by two members of the 26th of July Movement while he was in an Habana hotel, Batista saw this as massive embarrassment and sent the police after the three men, while at the same time ordered the race to begin without Fangio. The race lasted for a few laps as a big accident claimed the lives of 6 people and wounded about 40. In captivity, Fangio was allowed to listen to the race through radio and was also told by his captors in one of the hideouts that the purpose of his kidnapping was "to let the world know about our struggle" and that they never meant to cause any harm to him. After 28 hours or so in captivity, he was released unharmed. He then declared on the press that "I was treated very well" and also "felt among friends", saying "if their actions are for a good cause, then I support them". He returned to Cuba in 1981 after he accepted an invitation by Fidel and even got to speak with his former captors in a friendly manner, claiming that he holds no hostility towards them.
I guess when you seek freedom and decolonization, you don't go around murdering hostages...
Extremely chill dude given that they took him hostage lol. I feel like I'd be kinda miffed even if it was for a good cause
There is the angle that they possibly saved his life.
“But for the grace of kidnapping freedom fighters, that could have been me in that pileup”
F1 crashes used to be built different.
F1 was never the same once they stopped building the cars out of razor blades and napthalene.
For the worse.
If the rich lads with dads money to train from childhood as a driver and get bought a spot on a team want to go zoom, SOME of them need to go crash/splat/burn for the amusement of the asphalt god (tires be upon him)
Interesting question; How much of the driver has to cross the finish line to count as a win, and does it all have to happen at the same time?
The car doesn’t have rules regarding that, they just inspect it after for rules violations that may have contributed to the crash. Apply the structural integrity rules to the driver as part of the car?
I can only assume the car crossing with a dead driver would be awarded the win seeing as the driver is not yet legally dead. Need a doctor for that. Also because it would be terrible optics for the brand and worse sportspersonship for the living second place getting bumped up.
Oct 7th is turning out to be a huge political victory for hamas so far
It occurs to me to wonder if Israel will drag "Stockholm Syndrome" back out of the trash heap of ideology.
Zionists already are.
Meanwhile Putin making swaps with Azov prisoners while also claiming to denazify Ukraine.
Soldiers fight better if they know they can expect to be rescued or exchanged.
Didn't he exchange a couple dozen Azov fighters for 3 pilots?
Pilots are extremely valuable to militaries. They're highly trained soldiers and take a ton of time to skill up
It's probably a net gain