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The three countries have also withdrawn from ECOWAS.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.
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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.
If China wasn't useless there'd be missiles in Cuba. The murder of the Soviet Union was the biggest crime against humanity ever committed. Death To Amerikkka.
When Xi leaves power I hope whoever gets it is more internationalist minded, no shade on Xi but my god. Not holding my breath tho and fuck the lib sections of the CPC. Soviet foreign policy remains supreme.
China is amoral they just want to sell shit so they can develop
Thinking about Mao sending revolutionary vets to defend DPRK in sneakers carrying bags of oats for sustenance. Times have changed.
One could still be forgiven for imagining China taking the chance to advance their own direct interests and launching an attack on Taiwan or some similar retaliatory action within their own sphere. They're in a Cold War but don't lift a finger.
No, they are traumatised by the fall of the socialist bloc and are primarily focused on the well-being of their own citizens. Internationalism got sawed off quickly, and thanks to the realignment with the us, they have to endure a growing liberal faction, which culturally compromises China. Remember, it was the demands for bananas, jeans, and coffee that brought the Berlin Wall - so the need for Chinese citizens to have an ever-improving standard of living takes priority over combating the Western Empire.
And can you really blame the Chinese leadership? It's not Palestinians, Cubans, or Venezuelans that have the power to end them. Even Mao had to basically do behind the leadership to send troops to protect North Korea.
There is one more factor you have to consider, which is that China - both the government and private sector - owns trillions and trillions of USD assets.
Any real confrontation against the US means losing all those assets in an instant, and any real threat to the US economy resulting in US dollar depreciation also means the Chinese investors losing value with their accumulated assets. All that frantic buying of gold isn’t nearly enough to offset this, as the gold purchase still made up a tiny fraction of the total amount of Chinese holding of dollar assets.
Believe it or not, the biggest loser of a US dollar system collapse is actually China, because for the US as the monopoly currency issuer, 1 USD is always 1 USD, but for Chinese investors, they’re losing all their asset value they have worked hard to accumulate over the years. Don’t take this from me, take this from Wang Jian, the chief architect of China’s external circulation strategy back in 1987.
China’s left hand is fighting with its right hand. It is a contradiction to want to own dollar assets while wanting to get away from that. To be fair, China realized this after the first trade war with Trump in 2018, which was why Xi started to promote the Dual Circulation strategy in April 2020 to balance export with domestic consumption. Unfortunately, that initiative has failed and what we end up with is a record trade surplus of $1 billion annually for the past two years while the domestic consumption remains very weak - the exact opposite of what should happen. As a result, China is becoming even more dependent on the export sector, and the country with the largest consumer market and is weaponizing it right now is the US.
The Soviet Union, on the other hand, was an economy that does not rely on running trade surplus aka export-led growth strategy. So it never had to worry about “Soviet investments losing money overseas when fighting Western imperialism” lol.
The fall of the USSR was legit the worst thing to have happened to humanity.
It really was, we're so beyond fucked.
Stalin told everyone what would happen.
apologies if you already mentioned this before but do you have any reading recommendations on soviet economics?
your last paragraph is interesting n ive been meaning to get more into the ways the soviet economy worked
so far i skimmed through Socialism in power but it didnt seem all that insightful, though that may be due to the aforementioned skimming instead of reading
At this point I don't care. Good. Fuck em. Fuck the Chinese porkies and all their capital.
usa does not have a real enemy since gorby took power
Well, Cuba didn't have missiles even when the Soviets were still around. At best, they had missiles for like several months before the Soviets took them back.
Fucking cornman. And fucking romania backing his pacifistic bullshit.
Fuck i wish fidel got his way. Damn cornman to hell for disregarding him as an adventurist
The CIA bascially said that Mao was right because cornman was enforcing global socialism to be more docile-
Lenin spinning in his glass prison at their bourgeois pacificism
Even worse, since it calls for socialists to join the peace movement without attempting to recruit new people and basically do the labor for bourgeois radical liberals for free.