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
    ·
    10 months ago

    PW: The Palestinian struggle within Israel: Interview with the Communist Party of Israel

    In the wake of the Hamas attacks of October 7th, the Communists and Hadash—as well as the broader Palestinian minority in Israel—have suffered a wave of repression and intimidation.

    The CPI’s lone Jewish Member of the Knesset, Ofer Cassif, was suspended for 45 days in mid-October for criticizing the war on Gaza. In early November, leading CPI member and former lawmaker Mohammad Barakah was detained in Nazareth for announcing an anti-war demonstration, on the grounds that it could lead to “incitement.” Most recently, another CPI parliamentarian, Aida Touma-Suleiman, was sanctioned for two months for daring to decry the slaughter of innocents by the Israeli military.

    As the first protests demanding a ceasefire and the return of hostages have started taking shape in Israel, People’s World met with the Communist Party’s International Secretary, Reem Hazzan, to ask her about the outlook for the coming period. Through it all, Hazzan maintains that she is still optimistic about a future of peace and equality.

    ...

    "As a party, we say that this did not start on October 7th. If you take everything out of context, then nothing has any meaning. We cannot say that things suddenly erupted on one peaceful morning as if violence and oppression had not been the constant reality of Palestinians for decades.

    Even if we don’t start with the Nakba of 1948, and begin with the occupation of the West Bank that’s been the reality since 1967, the problem is clear. We don’t have a Palestinian state. Gaza has been under siege for the last 16 years. The West Bank is being ethnically cleansed in a very methodical way. Nowadays, nobody’s paying attention to the increased violence against Palestinians in the West Bank because people’s eyes are fixed on Gaza. Settler violence has intensified, backed by the Israeli military forces.

    If you ask me how Israel should have reacted, let me say that any peace-seeking country would not be engaged in an occupation to begin with. It wouldn’t take decades to solve, or we can say in this case to not solve. A normal government would not be in this situation in the first place. I think that Israel should have understood at that point that a political solution is desperately needed. But with such a far-right government, this means that the perceptions that should have changed on October 7th, did not. If you believe that military force is your only resort to begin with, then the only solution will always be military—more force, more violence."

    ...

    "Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has been dreaming for the past two years about how to have armed mobs do his dirty work. They would call themselves a “civilian support force” for the police. This war gave him the perfect opportunity to actually make this happen. Now, you have over 600 groups of armed people, some of them civilians, some of them ex-military or ex-police. They go on patrol in our cities and towns. I live in Haifa, which is a mixed city of Arabs and Jews. These people go around carrying M-16s, saying that they are keeping the order or supporting the police force, but their main aim is to intimidate Arabs."

    Brownshirts shit.