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The three countries have also withdrawn from ECOWAS.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 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.
From BreakThrough News
The Venezuela VP Rodriguez was on TV just an hour or two ago demanding the return of Maduro, who she is still referring to as President
I think she is filling the role Cabello did in 2002
So the only theory that would seemingly make sense now is that the Venezuelan Military (who had months of preparation) got jumped in a surprise attack and had their president kidnapped in a tight operation coordinated by the US.
If that is what actually happened, then oh BOY do I feel very doubtful of their ability to defend themselves in the event of total US Invasion, the only way I can see them making up for it is if they manage to turn it around in their favor like what Iran did in the twelve-day war.
defending from a "fast and hard" special forces raid supported by air strikes requires very different capabilities than resisting a ground invasion and occupation
if they do invade, it will mostly be the militias that provide real resistance
There are way too many doomers on this site, it's quite infuriating reading these comments sometimes.
When any historical event happens, the immediate response is to wishcast the worst option to ease the psychological blow. The news mega ought to be a place for relatively sober analysis, but it becomes a doomer vent hangout in moments of crisis
It's a struggle for me, I know as I've had to take breaks for weeks at a time from this site and reading the news in general so that I wouldn't fall into complete despair, and I've had my gripes with those who participate in that type of behavior.
I apologize for only contributing to the problem and bringing down the mood, I try to keep my emotions at bay and keep to a baseline of simply waiting and seeing how the situation develops, and I try not to burden others when I do fall into bouts of despair and keep it to myself, but there are some events and some days, where I just to scream into the void, where I just want to crawl into a hole and never come out and wish that I wasn't a communist so that I didn't have to experience the pain of seeing a better world becoming ever more further from reach.
I'll try to be better about it.
100% been there. This news is so depressing I understand taking a break. At this point I come just to see other people with a Marxist and anti-imperialist analysis of these situations so I don't feel crazy when I go out here and hear other Hispanic US Americans, gusano immigrants, and even other POC relatives talk about how it's great Trump got Maduro.
It makes me depressed from both directions, in real life the chuds and libs, and online the doomerism. The only way to avoid it I've found is IRL organizing, where I can have a space to avoid the chuds and libs and the work of protesting, organizing, and education helps avoid the doomerism through focusing on the work and not the despair. Even if it's stupid protests, it does make me feel better to feel like I'm doing something, contributing to some sort of left movement in the belly of the beast.
We need to start naming Hexbear's weaknesses if we are going to have a chance at correcting them:
*this list is incomplete.....
I think we have an opportunity to build a stronger community if we begin to correct these behaviors.
Agreed. I do think these have mostly been improving lately, though, especially the last one.
There's doomerism yes but the flip side is people who stick their heads in the sand and make socialists look like detached from reality deniers by saying nonsense like the US and Trump would make up kidnapping Maduro.
That kind of thing drives people away from us. Being consistently correct will get people interested in how we think and entertaining our propositions but denying easily provable reality because we don't like it when it's actually provable makes our denials of their fabrications less convincing because we come off as sore losers. Sober analysis isn't some exact center between doomerism and cope and denial but it definitely incorporates an understanding of things being bad without tipping over into woe-filled proclamations of how the world is hopeless and doomed and we'll never escape capitalism and we need to nuke it all. That kind of emotional outburst isn't great even if I understand it. We need to have the strength to admit defeats and failures and not retreat into cope and wishful thinking about "here's how Bernie can still win" but applied to an anti-imperialist situation as well as to try and avoid maximizing doom by extending a regional defeat to the complete loss of hope for the world forever and other absolutist antics of despair.
There's also the kind of doomer who just parrots suspicious statements and accusations and probable disinfo that aren't penultimate proclamations of doom but empire narratives that are considerably more in doubt than things like claims of capturing someone which historically are not lies. Such as the one about Maduro agreeing to this and this being an arranged exit which is interesting to report on but shouldn't be seen as anything but odd fiction or disinfo to dispirit the bolivarian revolution until solid proof or reliable sources of some sort arises.
I think the phenomenon you are describing is a behavior that's particularly encouraged by Twitter (which is part of Hexbear's genes), but is rooted in some of us testing our predictive power we get from a materialist worldview. I think this is understandable as an impulse or tendency, but we need to moderate the feeling of trying to drop a "take", so we can get some clout/confidence/credibility later when the take is proven correct. Twitter has the best returns on this due to the way it's designed, but it doesn't transfer well to Lemmy.
We should be patient and trust that the story will tell itself, our community should value accuracy and limit spreading rumors among ourselves. I think the meme culture on the site has at least a handful of "untruths" built in to the canon.
I think it would be good to name it and add it to the list. In some ways it could fit in to "left-signalling" because I think we do it because "lefter == corrected" (not true!). Probably would be better to have a standalone term for it, though.
Edit: this also has a scoop of "contrarianism" mixed in, but yeah it definitely is its own thing, of we could get a name on it.
Edit2: maybe call it "rumormongering/premature takes and predictions"?
No one is saying they are the same thing. It's that it's been speculated for months that this was one of the main options the US would choose from: target aerial strikes to kill Venezuelan leadership, a Bin Laden style raid, or some mix of the two.
During the Bin Laden raid, the US at least lost a helicopter
~~I believe there were helicopters shot down this time as well. @MarmiteLover123@hexbear.net has posted at least (IIRC) 2 cases in this thread.~~
Edit: I was mistaken, I think my tired mind mixed up a separate comment about a helicopter hit but not destroyed with Marmite's comments about Venezuelan air defenses getting hit.
are you thinking of another user? ML123 has not posted anything of the sort
they have however posted about the destruction of Venezuelan air defenses
the closest to a downing of a yankee helicopter was the report that one was hit but managed to stay flying
Damn, sorry. I was mistaken, I think I was mixing in my head the incident you mention with some of Marmite's comments.
no worries, it's a very chaotic situation
Gone are the days where you need to occupy anything. What's stopping the US from repeating this type of operation with special forces and air strikes until Venezuela simply complies? Repeat forever until they collapse/submit.
Failing to defend against a surprise raid doesn't imply also failing to defend against a conventional invasion. If you're walking down the street, and as someone's passing you they just randomly punch you in the gut, that doesn't make them a great warrior and you a shitty one. You might still be the better fighter, and if they, instead of running away, stay and try to fight you openly, they might well get the shit beaten out of them.
A proper invasion would, inevitably, involve a concentration of forces - one that would be obviously visible, and thus able to be targeted. The Venezuelans' preparations were likely focused on such a scenario, because a quick special forces raid obviously wouldn't actually achieve much - you can't hold any ground or capture any objectives this way. Even if you're kidnapping or assassinating government officials, they got one - admittedly the most important one, but governments actually have lines of succession of redundancies for these scenarios.
This is like blaming the Allies for not anticipating the German Ardennes Offensive - it is, in fact, reasonable to assume that an opponent who's been pushed back and taken massive casualties wouldn't just throw a bunch of their few remaining capable troops into a stupid offensive with basically no chance of succeeding, because, you know, it'd be stupid. The Germans did that, and while the Allies were initially surprised, they managed to reorganize, quickly stem the time, and leave the Germans in a much worse situation than before the offensive.
It is not even comparable to take such a conclusion. this operation was stupid. there were likely many american soldiers dead and they likely stormed the room to takr maduro by sheer numbers. The failure of killing the chain was a sheer failure
This. The fact that there were casualties and damage to one of the helicopters by Trump's own admission shows that there was resistance to this act. Its unfortunate the imperialist scum were still able to kidnap Maduro and his wife, but an extraction operation is markedly different from occupation. And I think if there is any attempt to actually occupy Venezuela with troops the ground there will be much heavier losses for the US.
I think the Trump administration understands that and talking about the VP working eith them on a transition of power is just taking advantage of the fog of war and attempting to sway both the Venezuelan public (to lose hope) and American public (to support the action).
Yea there seems to be a complete failure to actually do anything concrete to Venezuela here, unless the US state department has the VP and military in their pocket, which if they did this could have been done by simply turning Maduro over and taking over that way.
I think kidnapping Maduro here is just liberal big man theory brain rot infecting the administration. And that this will embolden the population into fighting and supporting the Venezuela admin
I would love to be wrong about this, trust me. I want to believe that this was just a fluke, a poorly calculated decision that will only hurt the US in the long term, and nothing more.
But for the time being, I'm just being a doomer, so that I won't be so emotionally devastated in the potential event of Venezuela losing and having its oil fields ending up under the full control of the US.