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.
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.
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.
https://t.me/VodkaEcho/4241
Some signs/rumors that a particularly large Russian strategic air attack on Ukraine is brewing.
I think ~16 Tu-22M's participating in one attack would be completely unprecedented for this war. That would imply a huge wave of supersonic/hypersonic missiles, which would be near impossible for Ukraine to defend against.
I think it's still too early for it to be the direct prelude to a major ground offensive (still muddy), but it could probably take out the remnants of Ukraine's energy grid. Possibly a threat to angle for better terms in this rushed peace deal, or torpedo it altogether.
It depends. One Tu-22M3 Backfire bomber can carry up to 3 Kh-22/32 supersonic liquid fueled rockets/high altitude cruise missiles. So that's a salvo of up to 48 missiles potentially (though very unlikely, I'll explain further). However, these missiles are all carried externally, not in the internal weapons bay. This effects the range of the bombers and fuel consumption, so they usually don't carry a maximum loadout, each bomber usually carries 1 missile. Rarely 2, almost never 3. So a more realistic salvo number is 16-32, heavily leaning towards the lower end. Most likely between 16-24.
On the Kh-22/32, it's a massive liquid fueled rocket essentially, engineered by the USSR to take out aircraft carriers, an anti ship missile. There are nuclear armed versions too, but that's not relevant to the Ukraine war. After launch, it climbs to a high altitude of up to 40 km/130,000ft, cruises and levels out, and finally performs a steep terminal dive, reaching speeds of up to Mach 4.6 during the dive. This makes it difficult to intercept. Because it's an anti ship missile, the systems designed to intercept it are on US AEGIS equipped destroyers and cruisers, whom would protect the aircraft carrier and themselves. It's not a threat that land based air defence systems like PATRIOT were designed to intercept. It's possible for PATRIOT to intercept them, but there would need to be updated to the software to do so. PATRIOT has struggled with supersonic anti ship missiles in the Ukraine war. However, because it's an anti ship missile, it's guidance system is also not designed to be used for strikes on land based targets. Terminal guidance is performed by an active radar seeker, and there is no satellite navigation for mid course guidance, just the inertial navigation system. That means that potential targets must have high contrast compared to the background, so the seeker, designed to make out aircraft carriers against the backdrop of the ocean, can make out the target. This is tricky for targets on land, especially when large structures like multi storey buildings also have high contrast on radar.
The maximum range of the Kh-32/22 is assessed to be 600-1000km depending on trajectory, and the Tu-22M3 Backfire bombers have to launch hundreds of kilometres from the frontlines, to stay out of range of Ukrainian PATRIOT PAC-2 and S-200 air defence systems. Russian bombers/AWACS have been shot down over 200km from the frontlines before. This limits how far into Ukraine the missiles can hit.
Video of Kh-32 launch
The M3 variant does have in-flight refueling capabilities. I know it's still rare for them to fully load their planes though.
I wouldn't rule out modifications at this point. Russia has had a long time to adapt.
Looking at Russia's mid air refueling capacity, they would have to dedicate pretty much their entire fleet of IL-78 mid air refueling aircraft to this mission if they want to launch 48 missiles. Russia has 18-19 IL-78s, which carry 100 000kg of fuel. A Tu-22M3 has 54 000kg of internal fuel capacity. The Tu-22M3 is also estimated to have a combat radius of 2 500km with a 10 000kg internal weapons load. An 18 000kg external weapons load of 3x Kh-32 is going to significantly reduce that. Murmansk (where the bombers are now) is over 2 000km from any potential launch position. Also, the IL-78s are probe and drogue refuelers only, they don't use boom refueling, this means the rate of refueling is slow for large aircraft like bombers. The IL-78s and Tu-22M3s are going to be refueling almost constantly on the way there. (Like when the UK had Vulcan bombers do during missions in the Falklands war).
As for guidance, something like a large electrical substation should have a large enough radar return. But it's risky when there are other objects on land which also have large radar returns, that could confuse the seeker, vs striking large ships isolated in the ocean.