Image is of a large protest in the Ivory Coast, sourced from this article in People's Dispatch.
This week's megathread is based largely on a detailed article from People's Dispatch, featuring statements and analysis from Achy Ekessi, the General Secretary of the Revolutionary Communist Party of Ivory Coast (PCRCI), brought to my attention by @jack@hexbear.net's comment in the last megathread.
The president of Ivory Coast, the 83 year old Alassane Ouattara, is aiming for a fourth term in power while barring out much of the opposition. I can't really do the all the history of how the situation wound up this way justice in a preamble as it's fairly complicated (read the article if you are interested), but to summarize, Ouattara is currently the only coherent candidate for the French to support. Back in 2011, the French helped Ouattara overthrow the previous (pan-Africanist) president, Laurent Gbagbo, and then arrested him and sent him to the ICC, and he was then acquitted and released in 2021.
Gbagbo is now running against Ouattara, but his base, the working class, has large swathes that are not present on the voting rolls and so it would be unlikely for him to win. On the opposite side of the spectrum is Tidjane Thiam, a former CEO of the Swiss Bank Credit Suisse, whose base is in the richer strata of the Ivory Coast, which overlaps with Ouattara's base. He would be more likely to win, but would certainly maintain many Western imperialist relationships. Ouattara, however, has simplified the electoral situation by simply barring both of them from running in the election at all.
Ouattara has, on paper, delivered some amount of economic development to the Ivory Coast. But as expected, most of it is funnelled to the bourgeois, as well as to foreign corporations and governments, while the working class are swallowed by the cost of living crisis. There has been significant infrastructure projects, but these have not only generated massive debt, they also have only really addressed the damage caused by the 2011 civil war and intervention by the French.
The rest of Western Africa has either entirely exited the orbit of France (Niger, Mali, Burkina Faso), are wavering/unstable (Senegal, Benin, Guinea), are beginning to show doubts (Nigeria, Ghana), or are economically weak enough to not be a major blow for the French to lose (Togo, Guinea-Bissau). The loss of the Ivory Coast would be a major setback for French neocolonialism, and be a potent example to nearby countries.
Last week's thread is here.
The Imperialism Reading Group is here.
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The bulletins site is here. Currently not used.
The RSS feed is here. Also currently not used.
Israel'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.
English-language PalestineResist telegram channel.
More telegram channels here for those interested.
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.
https://xcancel.com/Zlatti_71/status/1957680901170532580
footage of a Russian tank surviving numerous drone hits (and I think mines?)
Drones are, in fact, not instant death-rays, and sufficiently-armored vehicles are quite capable of surviving them. Ironically, the Soviet style of tanks, which have historically been considered to be inferior in terms of armor by Western commentators, are probably going to end up much more survivable, since their starting light weight gives more wiggle room for extra armor to be added on, while NATO tanks which are already inching towards 70 tonnes have a lot less room for upgrades.
Tanks-are-obsolete-in-modern-warfare-cels seething
I remember a iraq war veteran armored unit officer describe situation as this
"we don't know what to do with tanks. we just know that we can not do withot tanks"
Tbf, I think it's fair to say that Western tanks - being overly expensive and heavy - are indeed not particularly well-suited to adapting to the modern battlefield. It's just that it turns out there's more than one way to design an armored vehicles, and the Soviet methodology - long dismissed by Westerners as incapable of producing anything other than death-traps - seems to actually be pretty good. Almost as if the guys who fought the brunt of the largest war ever, might, just maybe, know what they're doing.
Saw a nice video once of various people calling the tank obsolete going back almost a hundred years. Truly, the "seeing one tank get knocked out and dooming about it" is eternal
i think there's something in watching a thing ''go to waste'' that fucks with these guys, they don't usually apply this to people because wars are by definition people-grinders so they're already heavily demotivated or de-sensitized to understanding human-losses the same way. But a tank is a little different; you can see it get made from the ground up, first it was raw materials, which were then labored into something usable, then it was assembled and finally shipped all the way to the front just for it to go belly up after a week or so, and this whole process happens in the span of about a few months or so, right before your own eyes; you saw it be born into reality only for it to blow up without achieving much during its entire life, all the time and effort and labor and materials that everybody involved put into it just vanished into a pillar of dark smoke, sort of a microcosm of a soldier really, i guess its just easier to understand it as a ''loss'' and ergo useless and a waste when its concrete numbers and facts rather than something abstract like a whole human life. Also cost, yeah, the fucking cost, even the soviet ones are like millions per unit, that's uhh a whole lotta cash.
Is this an outlier or are defense methods for tanks becoming more effective?
That's what I want to know, whatever modifications they performed on that tank should be standardized and offered to every tank crew on the front
But on the otherhand 24 drone strikes??? Was there no anti-aircraft/anti-drone capacity in the area at all? And if Russian tanks could "tank" drones and mines this whole time, does that mean ATGMs and enemy tanks were the only real threat to Russian armor this entire time? That video raises so many questions, it's incredible
That must have been a wild ass ride.