this post was submitted on 24 Nov 2025
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Image is from this article, of protestors in Mexico tearing down a steel fence.
While military, economic, and covert pressure on Venezuela and nearby countries in South America proper continues to mount, a similar process is occurring against Mexico, currently under the leadership of the very popular Sheinbaum, who has generally followed the footsteps of AMLO in terms of policies.
While figures in the Trump administration have made statements to the effect of wishing to bomb Mexican territory, internal pressure within Mexico is rather hard to generate when the government is doing generally positive things for people. As such, protests - comically denoted "Gen Z protests" despite young people being a vanishingly small proportion - have arisen in Mexico, very obviously astroturfed by pro-US and anti-Sheinbaum interests. The first protest, on November 15th, gathered less than 20,000 people, while the second, on November 20th, gathered perhaps 200. Article headlines suggesting that Mexico was "on the verge of collapse" have proven rather sensational and wishcast-y.
While it's easy to poke fun at these farces (I certainly am), it's important to keep in mind that soft coups have long been part of the American strategy in Latin America, and with unlimited money and many resources to throw at a project, even incompetent forces can eventually create enough chaos that it can make the ruling president or party feel forced to resign. Such eventualities are certainly not inevitable, and even weak states can provide enough resistance to force the US to try a hard coup instead, with outright bombing campaigns and covert military operations. Cuba has provided perhaps the best example in the western hemisphere of how such plots can be subverted with enough national support (e.g. the hundreds of times the CIA tried to kill/maim Castro, plus the Bay of Pigs debacle), but you do have to be willing to take extraordinary measures to do this - the sorts of measures figures like Chile's Allende did not take in the 1970s, and the measures Venezuela's Maduro appears to be taking right now. We shall see what path Sheinbaum takes.
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The Zionist Entity's Genocide of Palestine
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against the temporary Zionist entity. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:
UNRWA 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.
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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.
Mirrors of Telegram channels that have been erased by Zionist censorship.
Russia-Ukraine Conflict
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Sources:
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.
Simplicius, who publishes on Substack. Like others, his political analysis should be soundly ignored, but his knowledge of weaponry and military strategy is generally quite good.
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.
Pro-Russian Telegram Channels:
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
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 Telegram Channels:
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.
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The F-35 doesn't have the super high sustainment costs it had a decade ago, because of economies of scale. By the end of next year, the US alone would've ordered over 1000 of them. You can see the cost in comparison to other US fighters, and how it has come down.
The F-35 also does networking, much better than other aircraft with it's custom datalink (MADL). It can also do third party tracking for datalinked missiles. (See AIM-174/air launched SM-6 launched from an F-18). The F-35 also gives you access to all kinds of stealthy standoff weapons, stealthy external ones like JASSM, and internal carriage like JSOW. Stealth is just one part of it. There's a reason even Switzerland, the stereotypical neutral country, is buying F-35s, and it's not because they hate Europe or whatever.
The big advantage of fighters like the F-15EX/J-16 over F-35/J-35 is payload capacity, and the reduced need of specialised maintenance/sustainment. The Gripen doesn't have that payload capacity advantage, it's a light fighter. But F-15EX and J-16 will most likely be the last new non stealth aircraft from the US and China for domestic use.
Gripen E could (and should) be cheaper for sustainment if production scales up, but at the moment Sweden got its first fully operational Gripen E a few weeks ago. Brazil have a handful. Not many exist. Almost all Gripens currently in service are Gripen C. But the Gripen C has received extensive upgrades to keep it relevant on the modern battlefield. SAAB would probably sell a lot more of them if they were honest about it's capabilities, instead of pitching it as an F-35 competitor.
MADL and networking of F-35 is not so special. Can be installed on other plane or use similar system. A lot is marketing. Bandwidth is higher compare with link 16 but principle is the same only more data. Rafale use link 16 for sensor fusion capability. SM-6 data link is also link 16.
Link 16 time resolution is not sufficient for hypersonic weapon. Is not directional signal. There is other downside but Saab can find a good data link before plane arrive in 20 years
That's true, the US is even planning to put MADL on the Sniper targeting pods used by 4th gen fighters and bombers, so they can share targeting information gathered (the Sniper targeting pod can also act as an IRST). It's not something that's going to be isolated to just the F-35.MADL has been integrated with AEGIS since 2016, which allowed the F-35 to supply targeting information for an SM-6 launched via a ship, for over the horizon targeting. It's also useful for tracking ballistic missiles, the DAS sensors on the F-35 can track ballistic missiles from very far away, hundreds of miles. It tracked a SpaceX rocket from over 800 miles away. So the US also want to integrate MADL into ICBS for their ground based air defence, along with AEGIS.
Time resolution and data throughput are very important for this kind of thing, Link 16 has a couple of transfer rates, the highest around 115kbps. MADL apparently uses an atomic clock for synchronisation and operates in the Ku band. So on both of those things, it should be far better. Gripen does have a proprietary datalink called TIDLS, but that's much closer to Link 16 than MADL conceptually. Uses UHF/L band, omnidirectional, etc.