Image is of General Abdourahamane Tiani, leader of Niger (left) and Ibrahim Traoré, leader of Burkina Faso (right).
The Alliance of Sahel States (ASS) formed on September 16th in the wake of the coup in Niger in late July, in which Niger, Mali, and Burkina Faso created a military and increasingly economic alliance in which attacking one would result in the other two joining. This was initially most relevant militarily, as ECOWAS was threatening an invasion of Niger if they did not restore civilian rule. Nonetheless, due to a mixture of a lack of real strength in ECOWAS due to Nigeria’s internal problems, and the influence of Algeria, a very strong regional military power who negotiated against a war which could further destabilise an already destabilised region, and the vague promises of future civilian rule, the external military threat seems to have mostly dissipated.
However, internal threats remain. Burkina Faso is fighting against ISIS and al-Qaeda, which commit regular massacres of civilians; the government controls only 60% of the country. In Mali, the government is fighting against similar groups as well as the Tuareg, which inhabit the more sparsely populated north of the country - the government is in the process of kicking out the UN mission to Mali, and in the process retaking rebel stronghold cities like Kidal, which is raising some eyebrows as to what exactly the UN was doing all this time; and Niger is fighting against similar Islamic groups too, and is kicking out the French for being exploitative motherfuckers. Combine this with the sanctions against Niger which are crippling the country, disease outbreaks in Burkina Faso, and just the general shitty state of the world economy, and the situation is not looking very good currently.
That all being said, economy and trade ministers from all three countries have met this past weekend in Bamako, the capital of Mali. There, they recommended that the countries: improve the free movement of people inside the ASS (don’t laugh!); construct and strengthen infrastructure like dams and roads; construct a food safety system; establish a stabilization fund and investment bank; and even create a common airline. This is all attracting foreign attention too - Russia has signed a deal to build Africa’s largest gold refinery in Mali, and China is the second largest investor into Niger after France, ploughing money into the gold and uranium industries there. And, of course, the Wagner group is in the region - though I’m unsure if they’re having a major or minor impact on events there.
The weekly update is here on the website.
Your Monday Briefing is here in the comments and here on the website.
Your Tuesday Briefing is here in the comments and here on the website.
Your Wednesday Briefing is here in the comments and here on the website.
Your Thursday Briefing is here in the comments and here on the website.
The Country of the Week is Burkina Faso! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.
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. Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
Pro-Russian Telegram Channels:
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.
Derek Chauvin getting stabbed by a white guy who looks like Santa and is a member of a Mexican gang really feels like a cumtown bit
An iof member that I lurk said one of his buddies stepped on a landmine and his balls were blown up.
Al Qassam 1 - cum extraction squad 0
Peter Gelderloos (anarchist author): Israel is Committing Genocide
Pretty good. Describes the history of the genocide and its consistency and colonialist character since 1948 and before.
Average “not voting because you believe electorialism is a dead end” fan vs average “not voting because Hamas said so” enjoyer: https://nitter.cz/SoulRevision/status/1731432579113599265
Al Jazeera: Latest casualty figures
Venezuelan voters have unsurprisingly approved all 5 questions of the Guyana referendum.
Throughout Sunday, long lines typical of electoral events did not form outside voting centres in Caracas. Reuters witnesses visited voting centres across the country – many had few or no people waiting in line.
Democracy is when you have to spend all day waiting in line to vote. Really though, direct democracy is a fundamental part of Venezuela’s “socialism of the 21st century”, built into the country’s constitution. Is it so crazy to think they might be really efficient at it?
“Reuters witnesses” is a funny term to me, too. Like, does that mean “a random person in Venezuela who told Reuters something”? Why not take pictures/videos?
Over 500GB of data, including hundreds of thousands of IDF medical records were hacked by Iranian hackers during a cyberattack on Ziv Medical Center in Safed: https://nitter.cz/aryjeay/status/1731370236559909067
Intercepted Podcast: Month Two, Phase One of the Gaza War
“Hamas spokesman Abu Obaida is… perhaps the singular most popular figure in the Middle East.”
What do you think of that statement? The interviewee Mouin Rabbani said that. I have no context because I only understand English so that was the first time I remember hearing or seeing Obaida’s name. I only started paying attention to Rabbani a few days ago when I noticed Norm Finkelstein retweeted him a bunch of times.
-–
I’ll leave this stuff here.
Abu Obaida (Arabic: أبو عبيدة, romanized: Abū ʿUbayda), also spelled Abu Obayda, Abu Ubayda and Abu Ubaydah, is the nom de guerre of a Palestinian militant who is the spokeperson for the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of the Islamist Palestinian political and military organization Hamas.
Just in case nobody heard, the president of the Korean Friendship Association, Alejandro Cao de Benós, was arrested in Spain because of American interference bullshit stating that he violated international law by violating American sanctions on the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and is to be extradited to the U.S.A to face trial. Good news is that the comrade appeared before a Spanish judge who released him from police custody without conditions, and he states fearlessly “There will be no extradition. The US accusation, besides being false, does not exist in Spain,”
He’s a really great guy and it bothered me that he had his feathers ruffled over bullshit.
Made by me, feel free to screenshot. 1.9 million Palestinian were ordered to leave their homes by the IDF, thats about the population of Vienna, the capital city of Austria. Also this can be used as a area size comparison between the Gaza strip and the city of Vienna.
We’ve gotten so far ahead in our election cycles that we had a 2028 presidential debate yesterday.
Remember Iraqi incubator babies? Well this time it’s real, except it’s Israel bombing them and forcing workers to evacuate without the babies.
Massive cyberattack against Israel: https://nitter.cz/aryjaey/status/1729292830781116457
The israeli telecommunications company Bezeq underwent a heavy cyber attack forcing the entire network to shutdown.
The entire israeli MDA emergency communication services (police, firefighting & other emergency services) also completely collapsed, it’s been an hour and it’s still down.
I feel kind of bad for innocent civilians who needs an ambulance or a fire truck but this is not even a fraction of a percent of what the zionist entity has unleashed on Palestine. The zionists are able to stop these attacks instantly if they want to to, all they have to do is to end the occupation and sell peace.
Yeah, the under 18s are getting screwed over pretty hard if they need emergency services.
I’ve learned from the world of unilateral sanctions that harming the populace of a country is a valid way to encourage domestic unrest and put pressure on a government, so this is actually fine
The tools of the master dismantling the master
's houseI get a feeling Zoomers are going to live long enough to see at least one country try and put sanctions on the US.
Even more interesting when you consider the fact Israel likes to project the image of a place with a mature, advanced cybersecurity industry.
More generally (admittedly there are a few exceptions) what they actually sell is either shitty solutions or surveillance software for their imperial friends - cops in France, for example, have been illegally deploying and using face-recognition software from Briefcam (article here - in french).
Broke: 2 state solution is the only true solution for peace. Both sides bad.
Woke: Hamas agreed to have 1967, which differs from the 1948 borders
Really hate that Hamas is presented as this extremely violent and radical Islamist group because they have a scary Arabic name when clearly based on all evidence they are more of a pragmatic resistance group than anything else. As much as I dont necessarily like right wing muslim brotherhood politics in general (my nation have parties inspired by muslim brotherhood, that being said they are not ISIS more comparable to conservative christians imo, Hamas is still a rational actor and who are willing to negotiate.
Meanwhile Israel wants to genocide palestinians so much desperate Palestinians cant even convert to judaism to gain better treatment. I guess some asshole Israeli heard about Taqqiya and afraid of “infiltration” by palestinians, even though the concept of Taqqiya is mostly about hiding your actual identity/beliefs to avoid persecution
