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The three countries have also withdrawn from ECOWAS.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 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.
The numbers in the article from February 2024 are outdated. The US and foreign customers (Japan and Australia) ordered 131 Tomahawks in December of 2024, and ordered a further 219 Tomahawk cruise missiles this month.
https://en.defence-ua.com/industries/us_orders_additional_tomahawk_cruise_missiles_even_cheaper_due_to_large_order-16960.html
The US military also relies heavily on air power, if you look at the annual production rates for an air launched weapon in a similar class to the Tomahawk, AGM-158 JASSM/LRASM annual production is around 1100 a year, stealthier than the Tomahawk, but shorter range. The US plans to upscale AGM-158 production to 2200 a year by 2030.
The Block V is partially upgrades of old Block IV missiles, rather than whole new production, although I can't find information on the specific ratio. If a large proportion are modernizations of Block IVs, production won't be able to scale up all that much in the end since there's only so many of those left to modernize.
And even with this new total of 350, this is an order with an expected completion date in January 2029, which averages out (from the original December 2024 order, so counting 2025-2028 as production years) to 88 missiles annually. The Yemen and Iran strikes over this and the last year add up to 165 Tomahawks, a little under double that number.
Sure, but obviously aircraft have to get in closer and make themselves more vulnerable, so the Tomahawk is a valuable capability.
As an example, the Yemen campaign by the Eisenhower Carrier Strike Group (https://www.twz.com/news-features/770-weapons-expended-by-eisenhower-carrier-strike-group-on-historic-red-sea-deployment) involved 135 Tomahawks and 420 of various air-to-surface munitions - that's 24% of the anti-surface munitions being Tomahawks, which isn't as big of a gap between them and the aircraft as I was expecting. I think this phase of the campaign didn't involve any additional US aircraft from other land airbases (there were some British ones), it was all the carrier strike group?
Not sure if there's any information about the 2025 bombings and their ammunition expenditures.
2025's order was 550 JASSMs & 115 LRASMs (https://www.saffm.hq.af.mil/Portals/84/documents/FY25/FY25%20Budget%20Request%20Overview.pdf, pg. 25). I guess with foreign sales it might add up to 1100? But either way, what the US military itself is getting annually isn't a thousand. The US MIC also loves to make declarations about scaling up production, but we'll see how it goes.
edit: forgot that the Navy has its own aircraft and, of course, separate munitions procurement
... their 2025 buy (https://www.secnav.navy.mil/fmc/fmb/Documents/25pres/Highlights_Book.pdf, pg. 41) seems to have no JASSMs and 90 LRASMs (30 base variants and 60 Extended Range ones), so still not bringing us up to over a thousand