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.

The bulletins site is... up!

RSS feed here.

Last week's thread is here.

Israel-Palestine Conflict

If you have evidence of Israeli crimes and atrocities that you wish to preserve, there is a thread here in which to do so.

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.

  • SeventyTwoTrillion [he/him]M
    ·
    7 months ago

    We've received the general feedback about the megathreads, and have decided that it would be unwise to make the posting inside the news megathreads overly strict - this is a community website, not a wikipedia discussion page. However, in the interest in keeping the news megathreads just a little more focussed on their purpose, we shall now be:

    • Removing off-topic jokes and shitposting - on-topic jokes are fine, such as about the IDF Cum Brigades. Remember, the general megathread (and the rest of the website) exists!
    • Removing comments that are obviously stray general megathread comments, like personal comments, informal comments about hobbies, etc - unless they are meant to be stories in relation to a relevant topic (e.g. talking about a friend who's in Palestine).
    • Encouraging more linking of sources in top-level comments, even if I have to hunt down the links myself.
    • Encouraging people to not do much commenting for the sole purpose of inflating comment counts to reach arbitary records, though we'll likely only actually remove comments if it gets overly obnoxious (hundreds of comments at the tail end of megathreads, for example). Yes, I (and even some admins) are hypocrites and are guilty of doing this in the past. This is literally 1984.

    To be honest, I don't expect this to be a big problem, and I don't expect to have to remove substantially more comments than before - I hope that a mere reminder every now and again will be sufficient to keep things on-track. As @Kaplya@hexbear.net said in that thread so eloquently, the true merit of the news megathread isn't a mere discussion of the news per se - many websites have that function - but that it allows much easier discussion of relatively obscure issues (to western audiences) on a site that is mostly populated by westerners. The worst thing we could do as moderators is stifle that kind of discussion and jokes.

    The weekly update is here!

    The Country of the Week is Burkina Faso!

    As mentioned in the preamble, feel free to post or recommend any material related to Burkina Faso, whether from a thousand years ago or yesterday. You can post it anywhere in the thread, but you can also reply to this comment if you wish.

    If you're feeling particularly ambitious and want homework, you could take on any or all of these questions (no reward, but I'll be very proud of you):

    • Who are the main political actors? Are they compradors, nationalists, international socialists, something else?
    • What are the most salient domestic political issues; those issues that repeatedly shape elections over the last 10, 20 years. Every country has its quirks that complicate analysis - for example, Brexit in the UK.
    • What is the country's history? You don't have to go back a thousand years if that's not relevant, and I'm counting "history" as basically anything that has happened over a year ago.
    • What factions exist, historically and currently? If there is an electoral system, what are the major parties and their demographic bases? Are there any minor parties with large amounts of influence? Independence movements? Religious groups?
    • How socially progressive or conservative are they? Is there equality for different ethnic groups, or are some persecuted? Do they have LGBTQIA+ rights? Have they improved over time, or gotten worse?
    • What role do foreign powers play in the country’s politics and economy? Is there a particular country nearby or far away that is nearly inseparable from them, for good or bad reasons? Is their trade dominated by exports/imports to one place? Are they exploited, exploiters, or something in between?
    • If applicable, what is the influence of former colonial relationships on the modern economy and politics?
    • Is the country generally stable? Do you think there will be a coup at some point in the future, and if so, what faction might replace them?

    The previous country was Argentina.

    This is our Geopolitics Reading List so far! Please chime in with suggestions!

    General Theory:

    Canada:

    Chile:

    • 1000 Days of Revolution: Chilean Communists on the Lessons of Popular Unity (I cannot personally find an online version).
    • Santiago Boys Podcast, analyzing Allende's government and Cybersyn.

    Lebanon:

    United States:

    Venezuela:

    • SeventyTwoTrillion [he/him]M
      ·
      7 months ago

      Additionally, if you did not notice in the writing in the post - the bulletins website has risen, like a pheonix from the ashes!

      When the website initially went down months ago, all of the posts on it were lost too. For a substantial number of posts, this was no big problem, as I have local backup of the updates I make. However, these backups only went back to the beginning of 2023.

      Over the last few months, therefore, I have been going back through all the previous megathreads and backing up what updates I could.

      • From November 21st 2022 onwards, the updates are fully intact, with links and all.
      • Between November 21st and June 10th 2022, the only surviving remnant of the updates are the summaries I posted in the threads without any links. It seems virtually impossible to me to go through the absolute tsunami of articles I've gone over in the last year to recover the articles I was talking about, so I'm not even going to try. I have still created backups of these posts though, as it's better than nothing.
      • Between April 30st and June 10th 2022, there is nothing surviving except little excerpts which people quoted from in the megathreads, as this was before the Summary Phase began but after the bulletins site first went up.
      • April, though, is relatively intact, with links to the articles, as I didn't have the external site to put them anyway else at the time. These are, however, quite disorganized.

      Therefore, we now have the Hexbear Lost Files, constituting the lost updates from May 2022 and a little bit of June.

      I intend to fully repost these updates to the bulletins site, with the URLs intact so that whatever you have bookmarked or otherwise saved in your browser history can once again be used. Not only that, but I intend to bring them all up to the current standard of work. This will take me... some time, though.