Thomas Sankara, political leader of Burkina Faso in the 1980s, was born on December 21, 1949 in Yako, a northern town in the Upper Volta (today Burkina Faso) of French West Africa. He was the son of a Mossi mother and a Peul father, and personified the diversity of the Burkinabè people of the area. In his adolescence, Sankara witnessed the country’s independence from France in 1960 and the repressive and volatile nature of the regimes that ruled throughout the 1960s and 1970s.

From 1970 to 1973, Sankara attended the military academy of Antsirabe in Madagascar where he trained to be an army officer. In 1974, as a young lieutenant in the Upper Volta army, he fought in a border war with Mali and returned home a hero. Sankara then studied in France and later in Morocco, where he met Blaise Compaoré and other civilian students from Upper Volta who later organized leftist organizations in the country. While commanding the Commando Training Center in the city of Pô in 1976, Thomas Sankara grew in popularity by urging his soldiers to help civilians with their work tasks. He additionally played guitar at community gatherings with a local band, Pô Missiles.

Throughout the 1970s, Sankara increasingly adopted leftist politics. He organized the Communist Officers Group in the army and attended meetings of various leftist parties, unions, and student groups, usually in civilian clothes.

In 1981, Sankara briefly served as the Secretary of State for Information under the newly formed Military Committee for Reform and Military Progress (CMRPN). This was a group of officers who had recently seized power. In April 1982, he resigned his post and denounced the CMRPM. When another military coup placed the Council for the People’s Safety in power, Sankara was subsequently appointed prime minister in 1983 but was quickly dismissed and placed under house arrest, causing a popular uprising.

On August 4, 1983, Blaise Compaoré orchestrated the “August Revolution,” or a coup d’état against the Council for the People’s Safety. The new regime which called itself the National Council for the Revolution (CNR) made 34-year-old Thomas Sankara president. As president, Sankara sought to end corruption, promote reforestation, avert famine, support women’s rights, develop rural areas, and prioritize education and healthcare. He renamed the country ‘Burkina Faso,’ meaning, “the republic of honorable people.”

On October 15, 1987, Thomas Sankara was killed with twelve other officials in a coup d’état instigated by Blaise Compaoré, his former political ally. He was 37 at the time of his death.

THOMAS SANKARA.net sankara-bass

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  • PaX [comrade/them, they/them]
    ·
    11 months ago

    It looks like the stacked if statements are implicitly connected with an AND to form one big if right?

    Yess, hehehe. You don't necessarily need curly braces, you can also just specify a single statement to execute after the 'if' statement if it's true. I think they may have used this trick a little too much here lol. I'm not sure what this is called.

    • GaveUp [she/her]
      ·
      11 months ago

      nvm I'm an idiot, the 250 reply just prints and the authenticate = 1 is for the outer for loop not shown in the image

      tfw python/java dev lmao

      • PaX [comrade/them, they/them]
        ·
        11 months ago

        You're fine, Plan 9 C is something else lmao

        And I love it

        Also would you believe me if I said there was no outer for loop and authenticate is actually a global hehehe

        • GaveUp [she/her]
          ·
          11 months ago

          oh god I totally forgot globals are just casually used everywhere in C stalin-stressed

          so glad to just be a simple lowly (highly?) java dev

    • GaveUp [she/her]
      ·
      11 months ago

      I still don't get why both options for the if statement are client errors lol, do you know what's up with that?

      • PaX [comrade/them, they/them]
        ·
        11 months ago

        if(heloclaims() || (!eflag && (ck = ckhello())))

        The function heloclaims will only return 0 if the client doesn't say it has the same name as the server (bad) or doesn't have an otherwise invalid name.

        And the function ckhello does some additional checks and will only return 0 if the name looks okay.

        So the program will only proceed down this path if the client is untrusted and they present a bad domain name of some kind. The last if statement just distinguishes between different kinds of bad and takes the appropriate action.

        Hope that makes sense.

        Here's the source code if you want to examine further. It could use some serious renovating lol. I don't think anyone has touched it in years.

        [Edit: started writing this before your other reply lol]