Image is of protestors in Nigeria in 2024.
As I'm sure everybody is aware by now, Trump's accusation that Nigerian armed groups are unfairly persecuting Christians in the country is a rather bizarre lie, seeking a justification to go in, to quote Trump, "guns-a-blazing". Whether this is likely to actually occur or is merely a threat, who can really say nowadays? But Boko Haram and Islamic State West Africa Province are targeting people in Nigeria fairly indiscriminately; insomuch that there is a target, it is farmers whose land is being raided and taken in resource conflicts, and their religious affiliation is not usually questioned by those groups before they are pillaged and/or murdered from what I can tell.
The President of Nigeria, Tinubu, has no small responsibility for this state of affairs - enacting IMF "reforms" which have exacerbated hunger, poverty, and unemployment in the service of Western financial institutions. Those who have protested against this state of affairs have faced repression by state security forces. Meanwhile, Tinubu allegedly has strong connections to the DEA, paying large amounts of money to avoid a trial for his actions; the DEA released this statement: “We oppose the full… release of the DEA’s Bola Tinubu heroin trafficking investigation records,” which is certainly not concerning at all - followed by “While Nigerians have a right to be informed about what their government is up to, they do not have a right to know what their president is up to.”
It must be a shame for him that such a loyal subject of empire is facing such scrutiny, and it likely has everything to do with Nigeria's inexorably growing connections to China (just like pretty much every country on the planet), especially in relation to Nigeria's massive mineral deposits. It could also perhaps be retribution for Nigeria's failure to adequately oppose the growing independence of the Sahel.
Last week's thread is here.
The Imperialism Reading Group is here.
Please check out the RedAtlas!
The bulletins site is here. Currently not used.
The RSS feed is here. Also currently not used.
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.
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.
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.
The Saudis have seem to set their price for joining the Abraham Accords (normalisation with Israel). The THAAD anti ballistic missile system is not enough; Saudi Arabia wants F-35A 5th generation stealth fighter aircraft too.
Trump Likely to Sell F-35 Fighters to Saudis, US Official Says - Bloomberg News, 14 November 2025
This is a big deal, as Israel is the only current operator of 5th generation stealth fighters in the region. One way to maintain the "qualitative edge" policy towards Israel would be to only grant Israel access to the planned Technology Refresh 3 (TR3) and Block IV upgrades to the F-35, and locking the Saudis out of that. (The F-35 is still highly capable sans TR3 and Block IV upgrades, but the upgrades are a big deal too). Or Israel could be a future customer of the planned F-47 6th generation stealth fighter. It's also big news because the Saudis were looking at the Chinese J-35, an appropriately named F-35 competitor/analogue. If this goes through, that deal would be dead.
all this for a weapon that the USA can remotely disable
lol. lmao
True, in terms of the supporting infrastructure and services. (I don't think a literal kill switch exists). The J-35 will probably have similar issues with exports too, China is not just going to let other nations use their most advanced technology for whatever they want. Either way, the operator is locked into an ecosystem. The Saudis already have PATRIOT and THAAD, and the F-35 can link up with that, guide missiles from both systems, etc. The J-35 will not be allowed to, by China or the USA. So that probably helped make up their minds.
In a way, for a non military comparison it's like Apple vs Android. In this case, the Saudis already have a MacBook and are looking for a new smartphone. Despite Android phones potentially being cheaper, more advanced, etc, it's easier to buy an iPhone and integrate it with their MacBook. Shoddy analogy I know, but I think it's the easiest way to explain it.
I thought the F35 had cryptographic controls that required a daily key from the USA to even power on? I'm probably misremembering something.
Edit: this was in the news recently for South Korea's F35 fighters. I'm not sure if it ended up being incorrect, or if it doesn't apply to all F35s.
Cryptography is about encryption and data security.
The main thing is, you cannot do mission planning for your aircraft in high threat environments without US support, this is true for all US fighters, 4th gen, 5th gen, etc. You need US capabilities to program the EW (electronic warfare) suite on the aircraft, to tell it what emitters (adversary radars) to expect, what frequencies they're using, etc and how to respond to them. The F-35 in particular uses some rather complex mission data files. Without this, your EW capabilities go to zero pretty quickly as the adversary adapts on the real life battlefield, which is a dynamic thing, not a static simulation. Then you can't fly in a high threat environment anymore. See the grounding of Ukraine's F-16s on frontline strike missions when the US pulled intelligence sharing. I think I had a post on that early this year. There's no need for a literal kill switch.
Unless you have an aircraft that can figure out its own responses to emitters it detects autonomously, or you have a platform like the EA-18G where the backseater (the electronic warfare officer, EWO) is conducting electronic attacks in real time to emerging threats, this will be an issue. Or you can make your own EW suite/pods for the aircraft, Israel has done this for some of their 4th gen US made aircraft. But that requires sophisticated intelligence gathering capabilities most nations will not have.
Yes, I'm saying this kind of daily password is likely an OTP cryptographic setup, similar to TOTP and HOTP for web logins. The US keeps the keys needed to generate the password based on the date, or based on an incrementing counter so it changes every time.
That makes sense. Do you know anything more about the rumors from South Korea that F35s required a daily password sent by the Americans? I can't find any sources that look reliable now, so it seems like it might not be true or might have been exaggerated. As you say, it wouldn't be necessary since the Americans have a functional kill switch already with the proprietary programming/interfacing software.
I'm curious, who would? Is there actually anyone who could operate these systems without US help besides China or Russia getting their hands on it?
I simply do not believe the Saudis are capable of flying the planes in an effective manner regardless. You can give them all the Wunderwaffe they want, as far as I've heard they're totally unprepared and wouldn't last 5 minutes against a peer or near-peer enemy who knew what they were doing. Please correct me if I have the wrong impression here.
This is true for most Gulf states, as shown by the bombing campaign in Yemen. The UAE is probably the most competent, they got the first THAAD intercept from what I remember. Trump initially wanted to sell the UAE F-35s in his first term, but Biden ended up blocking that.