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.
I want to make this its own post since we keep talking about it:
Israel’s Iron Dome system doesn’t work, says missile defense critic
An Explanation of the Evidence of Weaknesses in the Iron Dome Defense System
this from Finkelstein's Gaza: An Inquest Into its Martyrdom, pg 206-207
I find it very frustrating how often people see air defense missiles explode and immediately think they intercepted something.
If you do even a small amount of research, you can find out that such missiles are designed to self destruct in the air to avoid exploding on the ground. Even then, these missiles are so imperfect that they sometimes do explode on the ground!
I never knew this, but according to the second article, the interceptor just hitting the missile doesn't necessarily mean anything either. it needs to hit the missile head-on. if it hits the sides or back of the missile, it's not deflected either.
That really depends on what your definition of interception is. If you are defending a specific object, like a ship or a base or a specific building, then just a "near-miss" with a fragmentation type warhead will damage the airframe of the incoming missile enough to knock if off-course. This is the spec that US air defense systems are built to. You don't need to destroy the incoming missile, just prevent it from reaching its intended target. In the case of Iron Dome, however, they are allegedly trying to prevent the incoming missile from impacting anything at all, and that's a much much harder problem to solve, and one which, likely, is impossible to solve.
Or, even if deflected a bit, it still isn't going to prevent it from hitting and doing damage to something. Remember these are mostly unguided rockets anyway, so they're really just going to hit some random spot. So deflecting them a bit so they hit some other random spot isn't really helping. In order to ensure they are not dangerous (well, that they're far less dangerous than they otherwise would be—which TBH isn't all that dangerous to begin with, them being usually packed with fertilizer and sugar) you need to destroy them so there is no longer an explosive payload activated when they hit. And that doesn't happen without a direct, head-on collision.
You can completely destroy a missile with a near miss, it's just less likely. Anti-air missile warheads are almost exclusively fragmentation warheads, because you don't really need a direct impact. The shock wave alone may be enough to set off the explosives in the incoming missile, and the fragments will probably do the job if you get close enough. Anti-air missiles are basically all equipped with proximity fuses. However, as I said in my other same-level comment, you don't really need to completely destroy the incoming missile unless you're the Iron Dome system.
A sample size of 100 is kinda low considering the amount of attempted interceptions over the years.
I want this to be true. I hope this is true. It’s just really sussy when low sample sizes like that are used to make claims. It’s the bare minimum.
Statistical sample size doesn't really need to correlate to the overall population size (number of things being sampled). What's more important is that you ensure the sampling is done correctly (unbiased toward particular outcomes). It's possible that there's something about those attempted intercepts that lends to them being caught on camera that also means they are likely to be unsuccessful, of course. That would, indeed, be a sampling problem. Or that access to the captured footage is biased based on whether the intercept was successful (though you'd think, if anything, that kind of bias would tend to show it as more effective rather than less).
What I was taught is 100 is the absolute bare minimum, but I never took it past an introduction for CS
yeah it's something you either believe or don't, it's not like we're ever going to see an independent analysis with a sample size in the thousands.
given Postol's credentials, Israeli rocket scientists themselves saying the Iron Dome claims are "exaggerated", how ineffective missile defense systems are in the first place, and the motive everyone has to lie about its efficacy, I'm more inclined to believe it's not very effective
Agreed with not effective, that’s without a doubt.
Any thoughts on the claims of a hacker? Possible limited hangout/cope if the cited numbers are completely accurate.
Here's an interview of the same guy on Democracy Now: Iron Dome or Iron Sieve? Evidence Questions Effectiveness of U.S.-Funded Israeli Missile Shield
I just read from Haaretz an interceptor “fell” near Tel Aviv
Yeah that's the document/data I talked about earlier. Amount of rockets reaching Israel is similar before and after the Iron Dome.
that's not entirely accurate, that stat is 'rockets reaching Israel' before Iron Dome does anything. the point he's refuting is that the Iron Dome saves lives - it doesn't because with or without it, the casualty rate has basically been the same.
he uses rockets "reaching Israel" because Iron Dome only goes into effect over cities. in rural areas or the desert or whatever, Iron Dome doesn't do anything.
Awesome, thanks for posting this, it was something that's always been bugging me!