Bulletins and News Discussion from November 20th to November 26th, 2023 - Let Sleeping Dogs Milei - COTW: Argentina
Bulletins and News Discussion from November 20th to November 26th, 2023 - Let Sleeping Dogs Milei - COTW: Argentina
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.
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In this case though it was queer and trans POCs writing the criticism, so they were punching up and not down, and their main demand was that cops and corporations get kicked out of pride and that the assimilationists lose their place at the head of LGBTQ+ movements. All seems reasonable to me. Saying we can’t criticize a minority is absurd, especially when they are acting as a reactionary force like say the Iraqi Kurds. Israeli Zionists are a minority. The bourgeoise are a minority. Class war is collective punishment. Minority groups often work as compradors or are otherwise complicit in genocide and imperialism and deserve criticism for that
In this case though it was queer and trans POCs writing the criticism, so they were punching up and not down
You aren't really countering the criticism though. PosadistInevitability said that the article was criticizing gays as a whole, not pointing out an issue inside the community. You can always demonstrate that the article did not do that, but claiming that it is correct to tarnish gays as reactionary because lesbians did it is just not good. Furthermore, you are behaving like this is about white cis men but there are black gay men too. There are all sorts of gay men, and not all of them are rich, white or even american.
You talk about compradors as an analogy. But you wouldn't claim that all cubans are gusanos and argue that it's okay to say so as long as haitians do it because they are even less privileged than the cubans.
It's the very basic difference between pointing out the influence of the israeli lobby within the context of how political and international lobbying works in the United States, and complaining about jews. There's no shortage of heroic jews out there opposing israeli apartheid, just as there's no shortage of gay men out there doing great things for lgbt+ people.
That's not the takeaway we took from the article at all.
Reactionary can be relative and it's pretty well discussed that the Lesbian and Gay movements took reactionary positions against the Trans movement early on. Especially illustrated in all the fights the Gay Liberation Front and Leslie Feinberg have had to take against single issue Gay/Lesbian and Queer organizations.
The middle class assimilationist strata of LGBTQ+ community is what's responsible for LGBTQ+ struggle being ripped away from Black Liberation and Anti-Imperialism, and that can't happen unless people overall in that strata have shown a tendency to gravitate toward integration with existing structures of oppression. That doesn't mean the people reading those facts are automatically included in that.
It's like saying white people don't have a gravitational pull towards supporting white supremacy - the material incentives and relations are right there and it shouldn't be controversial to point that out or criticize it. That's also why there shouldn't be a reason for someone to take that discussion so personally or as an individual. One can just recognize that they don't have a stake in that and reject it, someone doesn't have to identify with the strata being criticized or feel the tendencies of others have a bearing on their own.
You take a step back and read that criticism from a macro perspective.
Yeah I see people with my own identity being shitty and racist towards people, I don't feel like I'm caught as collateral damage when people make those critiques, I'm pretty secure in not being one of them or at least take the steps that I can to be a good ally. I don't have to agonize about it because it's basically not not about me.
Same reason why some white allies that I know don't flinch when they see articles like that, they don't identify with the people being criticized at all and see it as an observable macro reactionary tendency that doesn't inherently or necessarily have any bearing on their own character.
The middle class assimilationist strata of LGBTQ+ community is what's responsible for LGBTQ+ struggle being ripped away from Black Liberation and Anti-Imperialism, and that can't happen unless people overall in that strata have shown a tendency to gravitate toward integration with existing structures of oppression. That doesn't mean the people reading those facts are automatically included in that.
Yeah, none of that is controversial. The way racial politics and culture works in the United States and elsewhere, it's not a shocker that a white person who is gay happens to accept all the axioms of hierarchy embedded into their culture. That person doesn't need to take a conscious political stance on racial or gender issues either. They can just be themselves, limiting the struggle for liberation to themselves. I've met gay men with issues to work with, who do not wish to be seen as effeminate in any way shape or form. You can imagine what their opinions on trans issues are.
I do take exception to the idea of dissociation however. I don't think it's an argument that is good in itself. It's cool to say that your takeaway from the article isn't that it essentialized gay men as inherently reactionary. I'm willing to take you at your word, just as I'm willing to consider the opposite case. And given that you've taken the effort to write out an interesting post, I'm sure you can see how counterproductive it would be if you had simply accused me of being Reddit and stupid, or how bad it would have been if, instead of engaging with the issues at hand in the LGBTQ+ community you had instead simply talked about punching up and how class war is collective punishment.
I do take exception to the idea of dissociation however. I don't think it's an argument that is good in itself. It's cool to say that your takeaway from the article isn't that it essentialized gay men as inherently reactionary. I'm willing to take you at your word, just as I'm willing to consider the opposite case. And given that you've taken the effort to write out an interesting post, I'm sure you can see how counterproductive it would be if you had simply accused me of being Reddit and stupid, or how bad it would have been if, instead of engaging with the issues at hand in the LGBTQ+ community you had instead simply talked about punching up and how class war is collective punishment.
"i'm glad you were one of the articulate ones and policed your tone appropriately for my approval. I'm willing to accept your view as equally valid as the stupidpol reactionary view."
Yeah, none of that is controversial. The way racial politics and culture works in the United States and elsewhere, it's not a shocker that a white person who is gay happens to accept all the axioms of hierarchy embedded into their culture. That person doesn't need to take a conscious political stance on racial or gender issues either. They can just be themselves, limiting the struggle for liberation to themselves.
What is reactionary about this? Every single one of your posts has been an excuse to call me stupid, a reactionary, and to ignore everything I write. You are, in essence, completely at uninterested in the welfare of both this community and the LGBTQ+ community. You're not our ally, and the only thing you care about is name calling online.
let me clarify terms for you since it seems like your are not following.
The "stupidpol reactionary view" I am describing is the one you expressed earlier, specifically that identity essentialism is always incorrect, and in fact 'reactionary'. This is why, to them, whites can be victims of racism and cis people are equally as oppressed and vulnerable as trans people. Because they live in a idealist world without context, that doesn't account for historical injustice or imbalances.
You are saying that grazing7264 presented an argument in a way that was more acceptable and palatable to you, that they stayed polite while doing so and didn't call you names like redditor or stupid. They made such a good argument that you are so magnanimously willing to consider their argument as equally valid as the stupidpol view of identity essentialism always being incorrect.
I love having to be lectured by your pedants and go through this tedious thing every single time, I'm glad there's people like grazing still patient enough to hold your hand through it so it doesn't prickle your sensibilities. Even then, you still aren't convinced though and chose to a fence-sitting position without having even read the article
You are saying that grazing7264 presented an argument
And that's that. We had a conversation. You are not interested in that.
I wrote quite directly that the gay male community has a problem with liberals who are content with the state of affairs, and who will limit liberation to themselves by at best inaction and at worst taking reactionary stances. I recognized that the nature of racial politics being what it is, those same gay liberals will tend to be white. You called my views reactionary.
Of course you ignored everything I wrote. Because that's the sort of poster you are. Again, you are not interested in liberation or the welfare of this community or of that LGBTQ+ community. You're not our ally. You're only interested in namecalling online.
you never read the article and feel entitled to post this much and stir this much shit without even knowing the context. that's how full of shit you are. you admit as much, you talk about the article as if it's a mythical and hypothetical beast that can't be sussed out without deep expert analysis. Go read it and stop posting.
By all means, continue to lecture me about how Reddit, stupid, and reactionary I am. I'll just repeat myself until you stop ignoring what I'm actually writing.
I wrote quite directly that the gay male community has a problem with liberals who are content with the state of affairs, and who will limit liberation to themselves by at best inaction and at worst taking reactionary stances. I recognized that the nature of racial politics being what it is, those same gay liberals will tend to be white. You called my views reactionary.
Of course you ignored everything I wrote. Because that's the sort of poster you are.
you talk about the article as if it's a mythical
I talked about an article that had been removed at the time and claimed that you made the worst possible arguments in its defence. Your reaction was to call me stupid and reactionary. That's because, again, you're not interested in liberation or the welfare of this community or of that LGBTQ+ community. You're not our ally. You're only interested in namecalling online.
https://hexbear.net/post/1167005
Article is re-instated. Go read the article. Stop typing your white redditor words at me and go read the article. I'm not going to respond to anything you say until you read the article first. I am ignoring your words and will continue to ignore your words until you do the reading. No investigation, no right to speak.
edit: read the article
You're just a wrecker, aren't you?
PosadistInevitability said that the article was criticizing gays as a whole, not pointing out an issue inside the community.
Then they clearly didn't read the article. Why should I argue the content of the article against a stupidpol reactionary who refuses to discuss the actual content they are whinging about? Read the article. It doesn't attack all gay men. It literally opens with an account of a conflict at a Pride March where more radical components of the LGBTQ+ movement were protesting and trying to get cops and corporations kicked out, and the overwhelmingly white cis gay men at the pride protest who jeered and attacked those protesters. How is this not about the LGBTQ+ movement internally? READ. I'M ASKING YOU ALL TO READ.
Why should I argue the content of the article
Because that's what you should have been doing from the first. Not imply that the article is correct because of who wrote it. That sort of essentialism is what 'stupid identity politics' supposedly means, even as you use that term as an insult against other people.
You should talk about the contents of the article
Apparently it's "reactionary" according to mods and I'll get banned if I quote it, so the most I can do is paraphrase. Are you familiar with the subreddit community of stupidpol and their reactionary stances? I'm accusing the person I'm replying to of being one of them. You are trying to twist this into me being reactionary, but in fact I'm the one arguing on behalf of the POC and trans writers of the article who have a leftwing critique of a privileged group. It's PosadistInevitabiltiy and you being Reddit "not all white cis men" pedants.
I'm accusing the person
you being Reddit
You are trying to twist this into me being reactionary
You're asking for a lot of charity for someone who shows none whatsoever. It's not convincing to claim that there's a class war to be waged against gay men while, at the same time, claiming that intersectionality is important. Are there no black and worker gays to account for?
The person i'm discussing with is editing their comments after the fact to mean completely different things than the originally stated, after I respond. They are lying about their position constantly, and saying they didn't say things they clearly did a couple comments back. This is reddit-tier bad faith behavior. The fact you're mad at me instead of them is very, very stupid. I get if you're coming into this convo late and didn't see that pattern and are just falling for their pedant rhetoric but wake the fuck up
The person i'm discussing with is editing their comments
Did you also edit your comments? Because this conversation started when I criticized an argument you made and you called me Reddit for doing so. My second post also talked about another argument you made, but you decided to ignore that as well and talk about someone else's posts.
My edits are only typo corrections or adding a supplementary sentence. They are changing the entire content of the comment, removing what was there and putting in another comment with an entirely different meaning
My edits are only typo corrections or adding a supplementary sentence.
You're not reading what I'm writing at all, are you?
It's not an issue to edit comments if it's for clarification or typo corrections, or if it's immediately before anyone responds. You leveled the accusation at me that I'm acting the same as them, but I'm not. I'm not arguing in bad faith and changing the content of my comments.
Your entire argument is reddit stupidpol "identity essentialism is bad" so I don't really care. I sidestepped it because it's stupid
i think you're misinterpreting that gay people in general were criticized and i don't think thats fair when looking at the post. it was talking about the intersection of whiteness in gay and queer spaces that can, has, and continues to marginalize Black gay and trans people within those spaces.
misinterpreting
That is the whole point I wanted to make. An article was removed from view. One interpretation of the article, which justifies its removal, claims that it tarnished an entire group. Another interpretation is that is an uncharitable reading. If one wants to support the latter case, one does not simply stop at stating the interpretation as a fact unto itself. Nor should they argue that the identity of those who wrote the article justifies its perspective in itself. The comprador analogy makes it rather clear. It wouldn't be ok to be racist against, say, brazilians - many of which are compradors - because the racist person is argentinean - which is a country exploited by the sub imperial power of Brazil.
Criticizing an oppressed minority is absurd and evil. It’s the difference between criticizing Zionists vs criticizing Jews as a race.
Criticizing an oppressed minority is absurd and evil
An oppressed minority in one sense can be an oppressor in another (see: Kurds, White Women, Albanians, Croats, Poles, Sunni Muslims, Jews). You come off like white cis gay men can't be criticized by the less privileged components of LGBTQ+ movement for their overwhelming complicity in assimilationism. So can white feminists not be criticized by POC feminists anymore? This is where your logic leads to
You can criticize me for being white all day long. If you criticize me for being gay get ready for a fight because you might as well be a conservative from my viewpoint.
They don't have an issue with the gayness, they have an issue with the reactionary privileged stances of cis and white men in the movement. Step back and log off, you are taking this too personally and it's creating a festering wound of reaction. You need a couple days to breath and get rid of that personal aggrievement feeling you have that fuels reaction and start to see the big systemic picture and power dynamics involved.
I’m glad we can agree Cis white men are fine to criticize.
There’s not much else to say.
You are acting like a stupidpol child and dare to call me the insulter? Go do you bullshit reddit "not all cis white men" shit somewhere else for fucks sake. Not one place one the western internet where we can escape you people.
All your confusion can be amended by first: you chilling out for a couple days to regain your senses and let your reactionary gut instincts die down a bit and second: re-reading the content of the article charitably. You will realize how childish and stupidpol you're being right now, like a reddit cracker
Your dogged determination to argue against something I’m not even saying tells me all I need to know.
Your heart is good, I can tell that much.
you're the one personally aggrieved about some argument you were having in another thread bringing that in here and side-stepping the actual content of the article. You are the one tilting at windmills. The author of the article never once attacked gayness as a whole, they attacked whiteness and cis-ness (is that a word?). You are hiding behind gayness as a shield, but nobody is attacking that so you are just totally off base.
Nothing was wrong with the article and I strongly agree with its content. I’ve never stated otherwise.
You aren’t arguing with me, you’re arguing against something you think I represent.
Nothing was wrong with the article and I strongly agree with its content. I’ve never stated otherwise.
??? It was removed for being reactionary and you agreed and that's what this entire discussion is about. I feel like I'm being gas lit. You absolutely do not agree with the content of the article that's what this entire thread has been you rejecting
No I'm arguing with your original comments before you alter them
you edited and changed the content of this comment completely btw. It used to say that I was making minorities feel unsafe by pointing out your stupidpol logic and then you change it after I respond? You're arguing in bad faith. I wouldn't be surprised if you go back and re-edit all your comments in this thread in these deceptive ways
I simply realized we were arguing past one another.
You can criticize me for being white all day long.
Except that's not even true, you took one ding to your whiteness today and CAME INTO MY FUCKING INBOX ON SOME HURT FEELINGS SHIT ABOUT IT. The undying audacity...
I perceived you as being homophobic.
You're trying to cast me in a light that simply doesn't exist, and it's tiring.
So this ain't you, right? You're gonna sit there and bullshit? Ion't gotta wheel my response to this out, right? What's really tiring is you peckerwoods playing every fuckboy game in the playbook to avoid doing ANY kind of introspection. I want you to think about how this looks to a Black queer, and stop talking until you've done any kind of meaningful self-crit already. "You can criticize me for being white all day long", tuh.
Yes, I think that clearly supports what I just said? I pointed out immediately I felt like you attacked me on the basis of being gay.
I accept I was mistaken for feeling that way.