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 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.
That's generally how any near peer or peer conflict goes. I'd agree. If you go to war, expect to take a lot of hits.
But I'd say that the primary means of defeat, if that's the primary objective, of ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, drones, etc, for any army, US, China, Russia, should never be interceptions though, that's setting up for failure. Any defence system can be overwhelmed. The primary means of intercept has to be left of launch defeat/before launch destruction and suppression, as well as interdiction for drones and cruise missiles, for a chance of success. Otherwise the adversary can just fire endless weapons at you. There are lots of interesting developments there, from TV guided glide bombs and missiles that can hit moving targets from extended ranges (Israel has lots of these), to the most interesting one under development, the Stand in Attack Weapon (SiAW): which is an AGM-88G AARGM-ER modified to hit targets that are not air defences, including ballistic missile launchers. The AGM-88G has a range of 300+km, is capable of hypersonic speeds, is low observable/stealth, and can fit in the internal weapons bay of an F-35. China's anti access/area denial bubble in a way also reduces the size of a potential US salvo, as the US has to carry out missions from further and further away. I also hope that China is working on air interdiction for JASSM type missiles, as that's the USA's Trump card there. The JASSM stockpile and production rates are very large for the type of weapon it is.
Ballistic missile defence is not just THAAD/ niche endo-exo-atmospheric systems. Patriot is getting a lot of upgrades in the next few years that are set to turn it into a mini THAAD of sorts, including a new radar that will allow the PAC-3 MSE interceptor to have a higher effective altitude ceiling and 360° engagement capabilities, and a new interceptor to further improve on the PAC 3 MSE. I think that would be more relevant to a China-US conflict, considering the plans to load PAC 3 MSE onboard AEGIS equipped destroyers and cruisers with the SPY radar. Don't know of any plans to load THAAD on warships, it's likely not possible. China is also likely to unveil their PAC 3 analogue this year. Though PAC-3 MSE numbers are significantly higher than THAAD, it's still pretty low, but that's the story of air defence, everyone always wants more, and it's impossible. I think even Russia wants more right now given Ukrainian drone attacks. China has a ton of HQ-9s, but I'm unsure how suited they are to ballistic or supersonic cruise missile defence. They didn't do well in Pakistan against ballistic, supersonic and low observable missiles from India and the system they're based on, the S-300PMU2/SA-20, didn't do well in Iran last year. Serms to be more suited to aircraft and less sophisticated cruise missiles, the last of which is what the S-300P was originally designed to do, to intercept AGM-86 and BGM-109 Tomahawk/Gryphon cruise missiles headed towards Moscow. Higher performance ballistic missiles and supersonic missiles were the threat S-300V was designed to take care of.