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The three countries have also withdrawn from ECOWAS.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.
It's hard to believe that this is actually the death throes of a dying empire, rather than an empire taking the gloves off and reasserting its authority through brute force.
Is the U.S. empire really dying? Is it? Like I want to hear concrete reasons why, and why it's not the opposite where it's secured its future, because it's not like anyone's actually going to oppose it on its supposed "death throes"
Because in actual material terms - as in, the equipment necessary to exert power, and the industrial capacity to make more such equipment - the US is, undeniably, decaying. I'll link my other comment since I already linked to a bunch of other articles I've posted about this topic there. The US was unable to defeat the Houthis. They bombed Iran, but how much actual meaningful damage they did remains questionable. They defended Israel, and yet expended a ludicrous amount of munitions in the process, munitions which will take a very long time to replace. They, and the whole collective West, have given most of what they reasonably could to Ukraine (with some countries genuinely compromising their own military capabilities to a severe enough degree that they barely have artillery anymore), and yet a large portion of that stuff has been destroyed anyway, and Ukraine is still being badly attritted.
The empire is asserting its authority in its backyard - but further away, its capacity to do so is lessened. Think of Rome - even after the collapse of the Western empire, the Eastern one was still able to pull off impressive military victories, and held on for nearly a millennium after Rome itself fell - but its ability to exert influence outside of its borders lessened more and more over time. First their attempt to reconquer Italy ended up with them devastating it and then having to pull out. Then they lost a bunch of the Middle Eastern provinces to the Sasanians, and later most everything outside of Anatolia to the Arabs. Then the Bulgars popped up and created a rival empire in the Balkans, dangerously close to Constantinople. The Eastern Romans still had rebounds and successes - they conquered the Bulgarian Empire for a period - but their military power and territorial extent was, overall, on a downward trajectory, until their eventual final fall.
The US declining doesn't mean they'll just pop out of existence one day - this will still be a gradual (and painful) process. And obviously this isn't exactly comforting news if you happen to be in this imperial backyard. But just because the US is able to do a special forces raid on a country relatively close to it doesn't mean they're going to do Gulf War 3 and take over Iran, or somehow invade China.
What would be very helpful is if there was, say, an actually functioning and remotely capable leftist movement inside the empire, which could counteract its worst impulses - unfortunately, what they have is demsoc hopeful Mamdani calling Maduro a dictator, so...
I'll keep this one in mind, but all of my hope and will to live has already been savagely beaten out of me.
yes i'm really thankful lula is the president in brazil. we have a saying here that goes like "giving away your rings to keep your fingers", and while this is usually lula's biggest flaw it might become our biggest advantage. because, in reality, even if it would be more "honorable" to try and resist america's invasion, we'd have zero chance of success. and i mean zero. not only are brazilians not the most anti-imperialist people, who would never be willing to meaningfully mobilize, we wouldn't even have proper material support for such an effort. right now it's far better to negotiate a slow takeover while we wait for america's own contradictions to weaken it (as it's been happening), than to try and outright refuse their demands, ultimately losing everything in a single late night operation
hopefully he lives until he's 100 years old and keeps winning elections. at that point we'd be adding stripes to our flag as a sign of cooperation with the empire, we'd have renamed the real to brazilian dollar (featuring george washington's face in every bill), and i don't give a shit, as long as it's a controlled pillage. america doesn't have that long anyway...
One thing that struck me was the actual numbers of WWII.
People glaze the German war machine for being peak efficiency, but if you look at the numbers, they were never ahead of their enemies. They were producing tanks (per year) on the order of ~1k. England and France had similar numbers. America had similar numbers, until it joined and the numbers went to ~10k. (Can't recall where the USSR was, I think 1-2k early up to 5k around the end?)
Germany was dead in the water as soon as they lashed out against materially more powerful states. They could not sustain an existential war, which they needed to because at the point they were, no one was going to accept a conditional surrender.
My point being: During the time the Nazis looked more lively, they were a material zombie. Their entire existence could be described as death throes. A nation-state lashing out hoping it somehow undies enough to exist beyond a decade.
Since unification in the late 1800s, Germany knew this was happening too. They had "lost" the colonial game by being late. Austria and the Ottomans were decaying corpses of empires. Russia was looked at as a slow old fashioned monster likely to collapse itself (ironically they didn't expect them to fight as well as they did during WWI, reminding me of now). If they didn't try to defeat France at minimum, they (Germany) were at risk of becoming another colony, or maybe "just" a second rate nation. They had to break out of the material deficit they were in if they wanted to be a world player.
America has done the unthinkable in the past 40ish years and given up their incredible lead and now is panicking that others are catching up (and that its costing them at home). If America doesn't fix the problem of everything being made in China/Taiwan/India/etc/etc/etc, then yes, we're a dying. The difference is that Germany WAS a second rate nation. It didn't have the most advanced airforce or nukes or an effective navy. So its lashing out was dangerous, but was contained to Europe. America could do a lot more damage on its way down.
Material domination is slipping away from the US as it loses it's technological, extractive, and manufacturing lead. Instead of confidently asserting global power projection, the empire is falling back to assert local control over its immediate neighbours. The empire's tendrils are retracting inwards and it's grasping at anything that can arrest it's demise.