this post was submitted on 29 Dec 2025
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Bulletins and International News Discussion from December 29th 2025 to January 4th 2026 - A Bold Step Forward For The AES
(hexbear.net)
At the start of last week concluded the Summit of the Alliance of Sahel States (AES in French), in which, among other significant news, was the announcement of the creation of a unified military force for the alliance - called, rather straightforwardly, the Unified Force - which currently consists of about 5000 soldiers. Strictly speaking, joint military operations between the three countries had already been taking place for over a year before this point, but I imagine this organization streamlines the internal processes and makes it truly official.
Mali's Goïta delivered a speech during the summit in which he stated there were three main threats to the alliance: military, economic, and media. While this new military force is a major effort to combat military threats, the three countries have also mutually launched television, radio, and print media organizations to combat disinformation and psychological warfare. The economic aspect is the most tricky aspect of all, as (albeit decaying) American hegemony is not friendly to states which seek an independent economic path, most especially if that path does not directly benefit Western international corporations. Nonetheless, the three countries are doing what they can; they mutually launched an AES passport earlier in 2025, and this month, Mali has taken a bold move, recovering $1.2 billion after renegotiating mining deals with mining corporations after a comprehensive audit. Gold mining in Mali is a major sector of the economy, comprising about 20% of annual government revenue.
The three countries have also withdrawn from ECOWAS. The remaining countries consist of a small collection of West African countries, most significantly among them Nigeria and Côte d’Ivoire. ECOWAS is increasingly seen by the AES leadership - quite rightfully - as an organization which seeks to contain the radical shift in West Africa and return the region to the neocolonial French-governed status quo. As I talked about in a semi-recent news megathread, Nigeria is experiencing its own suite of internal problems, so perhaps in the coming years, ECOWAS will crumble from within and the AES can push back the terrorist organizations threatening them.
Last week's thread is here. The Imperialism Reading Group is here.
Please check out the RedAtlas!
The bulletins site is here. Currently not used.
The RSS feed is here. Also currently not used.
The Zionist Entity's Genocide of Palestine
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against the temporary Zionist entity. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:
UNRWA 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.
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.
Mirrors of Telegram channels that have been erased by Zionist censorship.
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.
Simplicius, who publishes on Substack. Like others, his political analysis should be soundly ignored, but his knowledge of weaponry and military strategy is generally quite good.
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.
Pro-Russian Telegram Channels:
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
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.
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China conducting live fire exercises around Taiwan with rocket artillery.
Not news here in Taiwan. The earthquake was a bigger deal. Taiwan has shit for defense and offense everyone knows that. China should have gone after the US, not Taiwan. It's literally common knowledge here that buying old/useless weapons from the US is a form of paying the mafia extortion money.
I wouldn't say Taiwan is buying old or useless weapons. They're buying a lot of rocket artillery and ballistic missiles, a lot of air defence (including domestic developments in anti missile defence with technology sharing from Israel), the F-16V fighter jets, which are the lastest version of the F-16 and a very capable 4.5 generation fighter (equivalent to China's latest J-10Cs), etc. Sure it's not F-35s and the like, but it's a hell of a lot more modern than what Ukraine is getting, for instance.
https://imgur.com/HT0mfWE
They struck open water to the north and south of Taiwan, and filmed the impacts too, to prove their accuracy (see end of the video above).
Safe to say the focus on MLRS is because of the contents of the US arms deal (HIMARS, ATACMS).
HIMARS and ATACMS are already 100% jammed by Russia.
ATACMS is not jammed, some of the older ATACMS missiles don't even have a satellite navigation system to jam. They use highly accurate inertial measurement units (ring laser gyroscopes) as a primary means of navigation/guidance. The later versions of ATACMS use GPS to provide updates for the inertial measurement unit, to correct for drift for further improved accuracy. They don't use satellite navigation/guidance as a primary means of navigation/guidance. The inertial measurement unit is what made the ATACMS project as a conventional ballistic missile viable during the cold war, the late 70s and 80s, when it was designed and GPS did not exist yet.
HIMARS has been affected by jamming as it has a less accurate inertial measurement unit, but despite that it's still been a useful weapon for Ukraine.
If anything between the US and China kicks off, the mess of electronic countermeasures/jamming will make Ukraine - Russia look like child's play. Both China and the USA are far ahead of anyone else in that respect. This is why a lot of the munitions the US and China develop have "muli-mode" guidance, with active radar seekers, imaging infrared/electro optical, laser guidance, high grade inertial measurement units, in addition to satellite navigation. Look at SDB II for instance.
That looks pretty accurate holy shit
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I saw something online saying that North Korea was also taking part in these fire exercises or doing some of their own, idk if this is true though.
Almost definitely fake
Wouldn't that be unusual? I didn't think the PRC and DPRK did direct military collaboration like that.