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The three countries have also withdrawn from ECOWAS.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.
How does Venezuela maintain a modicum of national security after this? Was this some kind of one off opsec failure, or are they simply unable to defend themselves at all in the face of such a massive technological and resource disadvantage?
What's to stop the US from continuing to kidnap and murder their leadership one by one until someone willing to give them the oil ends up in power?
This.
However, resistance doesn't stop, even in the face of an overwhelming death machine.
See the Palestinians, and take inspiration from them.
As inspiring as the Palestinian resistance is, I'm not sure it's an apt comparison. The resistance in Palestine is fighting back against what everyone plainly understands to be a war of extermination. No matter how many decapitation strikes the US and Israel carry out, they'll never result in a comprador faction taking charge of the resistance and going "yeah ok just kill/displace us all and take our lands"
But if Venezuela is suddenly being bombed as a matter of routine and their entire leadership is being picked off one by one, I can see them eventually deciding they have no other option but to give up the oil fields, hold elections rigged in favor of the existing comprador opposition, and pass liberal reforms.
Yemen, they successfully chased away the us fleet.
Yemen is probably as far from a western bourgeois liberal democratic republic as you can get, other than maybe the DPRK or the Gulf States.
I don't think there's all that much difference between the gulf states and say the UK
With a bit more slavery.
a bit https://www.walkfree.org/global-slavery-index/country-studies/united-kingdom/
Yemen was supplied with high tech missiles and technology (including drones) to make more by nearby Iran. Venezuela has no such benefactors in their region (or anywhere globally really). Iran or China also provided them with intelligence to help in targeting US ships and doing interception of merchant vessels in the first place. Again Venezuela has no such powerful benefactor in the region, no supplier of arms, etc.
There's also the fact that the Yemeni people had a lot less to lose after all they'd been through than Venezuelan people and arguably had/have less compradors within their ranks to sell them out. Yemen also wasn't sitting on oil and the US already had strategic ports and airbases and so from the US point of view fighting them was a draining distraction without any possible reward while Venezuela together with Iran means control of world oil markets by the US empire.
a terrorist cell can kidnap any world leader in the world, except maybe Putin and POTUS, let alone a sci-fi level of shitass military
Step one: get nukes. Like right now. President Putin, come the fuck on man
I doubt interim president Rodríguez is going to be sleeping in an unprotected location any time in the near future.
I'd have thought Maduro would have already realized the need to do exactly that when the US parked its fleet in the Caribbean
I'm fond of the guy but I won't flatter his intelligence.
if Chevron invades the millions of armed Bolivarian militia members might have something to say
They don't have to. They just have to send in kill squads or bomb everything with their overwhelming air superiority over and over again.
Hamas is still the legitimate governors of Gaza, and the same level of devastation can never be done to Venezuela
It easily can be. The US took out their anti-air very fast with these attacks, and without that, you're absolutely defenseless.
I'm saying this because it's such a large country. Gaza had ~40k troops? There are millions of armed Venezuelans who could fight a guerilla war if necessary. The level of bombing that would be required for another Gaza would be orders if magnitude larger. And unlike Gaza the US will never control Venezuela's borders. Imo it would be closer to a Vietnam situation
this operation took months of planning to pull off, i dont think they could so easily do what you are describing. they would need to switch to just trying to bomb them at some point