Much of the preamble has been sourced from Michael Roberts' recent analysis of Mexico.
Claudia Sheinbaum, part of the left-wing and populist Morena party to which AMLO also belongs, is now the first woman to ascend to the Mexican presidency. She is also a climate/energy scientist and was previously mayor of Mexico City. Results indicate that she has won with approximately 60% of the vote, which would be the highest vote percentage in Mexican history.
AMLO's presidency has been generally successful. He campaigned on reducing violence inside Mexico, and while this has technically occurred if measured from 2018, homicides are still considerably higher than in 2010. This is largely due to warring drug cartels, which are more reflective of the United States and its rise in drug addiction and thus imports from Mexico. He also campaigned on reducing corruption, which he also kinda has, and also on reducing income inequality, which he also kinda has. The overall figures don't show massive budges in income inequality, but the minimum wage has risen by 82% and manufacturing wage have risen 27%, and this plus other social programs has lifted 9 million Mexicans out of extreme poverty - a good achievement - but not much further than that, with poverty rates still above the Latin American average. Unemployment is officially at record lows, but much of this job growth has been in the informal sector.
The Mexican economy suffered greatly during the pandemic, and while growth since then has been pretty decent, the economy is still below where it was in 2018. As Mexican capitalists do not pay much in taxes, AMLO's programs have required large budget deficits and borrowing. These capitalists are, of course, not doing many productive investments and thus there is not much productivity growth; productivity has been more-or-less stagnant for two decades. The reason why Mexican capitalists are not investing is because of the major decline in profitability since the 1990s - there is no reason to invest if your money is at major risk of not making a profit. Therefore, they have followed the trend of other national capitalists of investing in real estate and speculation, particularly in American companies.
Since NAFTA/USMCA, Mexico has become increasingly dependent on the United States for a location for its exports, while the US has exploited cheap labour in Mexico. Additionally, with the anti-Chinese sanctions increasingly put in place by the US, Mexico has become one of several conduits for China to redirect its goods so that they can still reach American markets. This has allowed Mexico to have an essentially balanced trade account and keep the peso relatively strong against the dollar.
Mexico's limited fortunes will likely decline from here as the US economy continues to slow. If Trump is elected, he may decree protectionist policies which will hit a US-reliant Mexico quite hard. Additionally, industrial production has recently declined and retail spending is also down. AMLO's presidency was genuinely beneficial for the poorest 50%, but the policies he created failed to really change the fundamentals of the economy. He relied on the private sector rather than the public sector. This is not entirely his fault - if he had tried to do anything terribly transformative, Mexico would have probably been hit hard with consequences by the US and simultaneously faced a domestic revolt by Mexican capitalists. There were and are already threats of outright invasion in response to the limited things AMLO has already done.
In an increasingly multipolar future in which America becomes weaker and weaker, it's very possible that Mexico's reliance on the US will decrease, allowing parties to be more radical without facing the possibility of facing crippling sanctions like Venezuela. However, Mexico's sheer proximity to the US means that they might be among the last countries to break free of American influence, as the US will continue to bitterly resist any attempt to break down the Monroe Doctrine long after it loses Asia, Europe, and Africa. So, it seems likely that Sheinbaum may soon find herself in a situation where she is forced by capitalists to implement fiscal austerity regardless of her intentions, which is equivalent to a declaration of war on the working class. What happens then is anybody's guess.
The COTW (Country of the Week) label is designed to spur discussion and debate about a specific country every week in order to help the community gain greater understanding of the domestic situation of often-understudied nations. If you've wanted to talk about the country or share your experiences, but have never found a relevant place to do so, now is your chance! However, don't worry - this is still a general news megathread where you can post about ongoing events from any country.
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Israel-Palestine Conflict
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.
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.
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.
This is the hopium i need:
https://x.com/bidetmarxman/status/1799129967651070159
article: https://indi.ca/israel-has-lost-the-north/
About how hezbollah is dismantling the iron dome
For months I've been talking about how Israel is attempting, and failing, to substitute Zionist morale-raising crimes against humanity against Palestinians and Tiktok dances for military victories, and it isn't working. This is one of the better articles I've seen explaining it. For people who only really observe the war on the timespan of the day-to-day, it's difficult to determine to what extent Hezbollah and Hamas are really doing anything. But for those who are capable of seeing the broader trends over months, it's really remarkable how much progress has been made in the dismantling of the Zionist entity.
Personally, while I don't think that Israel prefers having actions that would make Goebbels faint broadcast to the world due to the loss in soft power, the constant stream of atrocities does still benefit them by drowning out more positive news. For every time you see a Hamas soldier blow up a tank or a Hezbollah soldier blow up a small base, you see 20 videos of schools full of children being obliterated by bombing raids. The issue for Israel is that murdering thousands of babies does not, surprisingly, have any military advantage. The people inside Gaza aren't going to give up because you do it, and even if they did give up, what then? Even if they wanted to betray Hamas, do you think they know where the tunnels are any more than the Israelis do?
So Israel's stuck in this rut: they cannot achieve meaningful military victories, so they substitute it with propaganda for the domestic audience of Palestinians being tortured (which subsequently makes it to people who were born with even a shred of empathy and they become dismayed, disheartened, and worst of all: doomers). Meanwhile, the Resistance factions are prying Israel apart, applying both internal and external pressure, but this is a subtler and longer-term process.
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Everybody wanna be an operator, but don't nobody wanna do no boring ass interdiction missions.
Epitome of a heroic people
Prose
Poetry
Eschatological & dialectic
Well, it’s certainly evocative I’ll give him that
Not just missiles but truth bombs heading towards Tel Aviv right now
Iron Domed
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There's about 5 to 10 years before an energy based Iron Dome (who is to say it can successfully target hypersonics) So if they want to do something funny they ought not to drag their feet.
I really doubt the western MIC can actually develop something like that.
with its range of 2 km best case, and turning speed of maybe 30 degrees a second, 5 3 mach rockets with same arrival time (which is fairly non-trivial, to be sure) are enough to overwhelm one system, especially if it has some issues on some angles (90 degrees from top or someshit), 10 to be sure, or during dust storms. Those systems are impressive but unless they make some nuts optical turning its not invincible
The cool thing about laser weapons is they're (theoretically) better at protecting other objects than themselves. A missile flying at the laser weapon has a very small cross-section, warheads tend to be well armored (both to protect from missile defense as well as increase penetration before it explodes), and the air blowing passed the nose helps to cool it faster than any other part (and laser weapons depend almost entirely on transferring heat to the target), whereas a missile flying perpendicular to the beam has more exposed surface area, that surface area is less armored, there are more critical aerodynamic surfaces exposed, and there is less cooling effect from relative air movement.
So, if you know where the emitter is, you can probably take it out easily, especially with hypersonics. I imagine we would also see more polished-mirror surfaces on missiles if laser weapons actually become a thing. On top of that, they require immense amounts of power, giving another angle for sabotage.
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Of course, but they've gotta take one down for maintenance at some point.