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The three countries have also withdrawn from ECOWAS.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.
China, as good as it does regarding its internal politics and following socialism, will simply not act when it comes to helping out their socialist/anti-western allies directly. Whatever reason one argues they won't go beyond strongly worded letters, internationalism died with the USSR and we're going to see horrific atrocities more and more commonly as the empire dies. This is just the beginning. Sorry for doomposting but I can't have any revolutionary optimism when those that have the power to stop or at least fight this choose not to. Feel free to prove me wrong for anybody reading I wish and hope I am.
US-backed fascists wiped out the Communist Party of Indonesia, the third largest communist party at that time after the CPSU and CPC, before ethnically cleansing Chinese Indonesians because "[Chinese slur] are natural commies" while the SU sat back and watched. The SU didn't stop Lumumba from being overthrown, which completely destroyed the DRC with millions dead in subsequent civil wars to this day. More relevant to what's going on now, the SU didn't do much when Allende was overthrown.
As they say, the Cold War was only cold if you lived in the US or the SU. It was hot everywhere else. Cold War 2.0 will be no exception.
Yeah, the Soviet nostalgia's been getting really weird lately. Like, I'm all for some moderate amount of reminiscing about better times, but we're supposed to be materialists at the end of the day, and that requires actually acknowledging that the Soviets weren't somehow omnipotent and magically so much more capable of stopping imperialist schemes. They did well enough in Europe, with shutting down counter-revolution in Hungary and Czechoslovakia - but they also left the Greek communists to the wind right at the onset of the Cold War, they were very reluctant to extensively support North Korea, right on their doorstep (well, one of their doorsteps, it's a massive country) until Mao sent in troops, and they couldn't do much to stop a coup in Iran, also a country very close to them. They also supported Israel initially in the Middle East, only switching to the Arab states later.
And these kinds of military support schemes can turn pretty ugly - support for Iraq against Iran, and Ethiopia's ostensibly-Marxist-but-were-they-really? Derg against Somalia and Eritrea, aren't exactly what I would call the Soviets' most honorable moments (and while people will very often criticize who China supported as a consequence of the Sino-Soviet split, they seem to much more rarely bring up some of what the Soviets got up to).
"Fuck China. If the Soviet Union was still around, there would be missiles in Cuba."
Kinda thing one may write if you're aware of the concept of the Cuban missile crisis but weren't quite aware of how it transpired and concluded.
Do you have any sources on Hungary and Czechoslovakia btw? Been wondering why they got tankied for (as far as i can tell) their reformist bullshit, but poland and romanias blatant mutinous wrecking (e.g. they blockaded warsaw pact weapons shipments to egypt during israels invasion) went unstopped
I actually wasn't aware of that (beyond relations with Romania souring after they refused to participate in the Czechoslovakia intervention), so you might be better read on this than me. But, uh, I guess it helps illustrate my point further - even within their own military alliance, the Soviets weren't able to fully enforce a coherent party line (because, contrary to Western propaganda narratives, the Warsaw Pact countries were, in fact, sovereign states, not puppets - they honestly seemed to have sometimes had more genuine independence in their foreign policy than most of NATO today).
I had also gotten in some earlier discussions about the notion of alliances in general and the difficulties in all the competing interests that have to be juggled to maintain them (and thus how the whole "Russia/China should just ally with Iran/whoever-else" discourse that keeps popping up is kind of naive and idealistic), and this adds to that too.
If I had to guess, I would assume that because such interventions clearly have a political cost, even if they were justified (see the aforementioned souring with Romania), the Soviets weren't willing to push too hard unless it was really serious, like potential-fall-of-the-government serious. After all, trying to enforce a coherent foreign policy line had, even earlier, contributed to the tensions and eventual split with Yugoslavia (another example for the "alliances are actually really fucking hard if the other members aren't just your vassals" pile).
Ive only rly read one book on the topic so i'm not rly well informed tbh
Yeah I wasnt aware until recently either of romania's nonsense. I read a compilation of essays about warsaw pact foreign policy a bit ago and was shocked
Regarding romania, in case anyones wondering or knows more and can explain wtf happened and why eyebrowman called off the tanks (from Watts - Romanian Relations with Developing States)
Bonus fidel being 100% right and the warsaw pact being libs
Regarding czechoslovakia, the book is parta why i was wondering why they got tankied; of all the warsaw pact countries examined in the book i read they were by far the most active in providing support (cloak and daggwr stuff and selling guns on credit, if youre lucky you get a discount) for international revolutions (besides the ussr itself), whereas the polish and romanian states came accross as the most blatently willing to betray socialism (one of the economics advisors they sent to tanzania actively supported liberal economics instead of socialism, for example)
Like apparently they tried sending in the tanks against the polish and romanians but backed down (against romania twice!). And i dont get how czechoslovakia or hungary going more socdem (but still in pact) would be much more threatening than romania actively working against the pact from within
Anyone reading this: plz give answers or books with answers
If nothing else tho the book i read (Muehlenbeck and Telepneva's "Warsaw Pact Intervention in the 3rd World" rly showed how limited the ussrs control over its allies was, for good or ill (almost entirely ill)
Another common Ceausescu L
You're right, I get very short-sighted and nostalgic whenever a really bad day happens for the global south so I can make generalizations. Still wish we'd have the USSR today alongside a more proactive China but I have to remind myself and of my own country's history that it's never that simple.
I read an essay recently about warsaw pact intervention in the congo (Telepneva - Soviet and Czechoslovak Intelligence in the Congo), and one of my takeaways is how outmatched the ussr was
8 kgb dudes to fight western espionage in all of africa. In 1960 while the west was prepping to kill lumumba, the soviets guys were instructed to literally just get the lay of the land bc the ussr had no prior presence in congo, few contacts, etc.
Incidentally the czechs were the second most active in congo of the warsaw pact; they had one guy there
9 guys, against the whole (neo)colonial intelligence apparatuses of the west whod had decades to sink their tentacles into every level of society. 9 guys.
My other takeaway is cornman is a fucking coward bc he refused to provide enough transportation for weapons and stuff during the war bc he was worried about the wests opinion of it.
9 dudes facing off against Dulles era CIA. They didn't stand a fucking chance.