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The three countries have also withdrawn from ECOWAS.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.
Source
Blablabla muh interests.
How about fucking defending other sovereign countries who are being attacked by the amerikkkan empire and need all the help they can get to resist? Or are you going to wait until you end up completely surrounded by imperialist vassal states in 10 years with all of your trade routes cut off. What's the fucking point of striving for a fairer multipolar world when you're not going to help the Global South resist an enemy who's stated mission is to destroy you and everything you stand for.
Some Chinese commentators already suspected that the Trump-Xi meeting a while ago was China ceding the Middle East and Latin America to the US (see my post here) in exchange for Taiwan and Japan.
Just like with Iran, the goal of the US strike is to create political instability in the region. Chinese investors need to see profitable return, so when Trump struck Iran with his B-2 stunt, what it really succeeded in was scaring away Chinese investment, and further deteriorates the economic situation in the country. Hence the Iranian protests as we speak. I suspect the same strategy is being extended to Latin America as well through Venezuela.
I always appreciate your posts. I remember your post from last month, and if it's true there's some kind of deal, it would be incredibly disappointing. I hope it will be worth it for them then. I can't even imagine trusting the US empire to not break any of its promises. How many times do they have to learn this lesson.
When you say in exchange for Japan, do you mean that the US wouldn't assist Japan in the event that they're at war with China over Taiwan? Or does the CPC have any specific plans regarding Japan?
I have a hard time believing that the US would stop interfering. Even now they're still supporting the DPP (who's been increasing ties with Israel) and sending billions in weapons to Taiwan. I'm not sure I understand what China would get out of such a deal if "peaceful reunification" is still what they're going for, even if the US were to pull back.
The US empire is certainly traitorous, but what you can trust are material things, like geography. The world separating into regional spheres of influence is a pretty natural conclusion - the Cold War period and the massive military investment it involved has kind of made people forget that it is, traditionally, quite difficult and expensive for empires to flex their muscles outside of their immediate vicinity. The US may have been successful, but the other empires - the UK and France - ended up having to pull back from most of their colonies. The French at least managed to hold onto parts of Africa through subtler neo-colonial means, precisely because this territory was close enough to the metropole that they could indeed manage military deployments there. But they still lost Algeria, they were of course pushed out of Indochina, and in the last couple of years even their West African deployments have been ending. The Spanish empire had already been ended earlier - by the US, with the Spanish military struggling precisely with actually being able to support their forces in the Caribbean and Philippines.
Modern technology has certainly improved that capacity massively from the olden days when it would take you months to actually send a fleet over to one of the colonies to suppress a rebellion, but technological advances go both ways - the people you're suppressing or invading now also stand a much better chance of being able to actually fight back than during the heydays of colonialism.
The US invested substantial resources during the Cold War to develop this capacity so it could act as the global hegemon, and all those assets didn't just disappear with the end of the Cold War - in fact, with the Soviet Union gone, the US was even more let off the leash to do international banditry. However, the industrial capacity to build those assets has in fact massive decayed in the years since, and that stuff is just not getting replaced anywhere near fast enough (USAF plan to fly C-5, C-17s even longer elicits concern, US Air Force may keep Minuteman III nukes operating until 2050, Pentagon cuts back F-35 upgrades to slow schedule slips, Why Is the U.S. Navy Running Out of Tomahawk Cruise Missiles?, No THAADs ’til 2027: Missile defense experts warn of interceptor ‘gap’, New Report Warns U.S. Shipbuilding Collapse Threatens National Security, Air Force squadrons are closing — reversing it demands investment).
The empire's means to project power far away will decrease further and further. The fleet will shrink, the airforce will shrink, the munition stockpiles will shrink, and US assets and bases overseas will become more and more vulnerable to actually being struck (Should America’s military plan for a retreat from the Pacific?, Lack Of Hardened Aircraft Shelters Leaves U.S. Airbases Vulnerable To China) and harder and harder to be continuously supplied (Logistics is the Achilles’ heel of China deterrence). Now, a more hardcore fascist movement that had a reasonable chance of actually implementing re-industrialization might be able to reverse this trend - but this is clearly not the current Trump administration, and it's unlikely to be anyone else soon, as fascists, being tools of the capitalist class, are not going to cut into profits and force the MIC to actually invest into productive capacity. We should remember that even the Nazis only implemented a proper war economy two years into the invasion of the USSR.
Sure, there would be blood-baying
s itching to invade China, Russia, Iran and whoever else - but the capacity for doing things outside of empire's "backyard" in the Americas won't necessarily be there. This is certainly bad news for the proletarians of Latin America, but with this rate of decay, the empire will eventually struggle to project power even there. I mean, let's look at this exact Venezuela situation - it's very easy to fall into dooming and glooming about how impressive of an operation the Americans were able to pull off, but... what did they actually accomplish, strategically? Maduro is not, in fact, the Sauron of Venezuela, the state isn't just going to collapse with him gone. The Americans are certainly hoping that it would, but we'll have to see - maybe there is an impending civil war, maybe not, it depends on how strong the opposition movement is. Just yesterday I posted about all the dead Colombian mercs in Ukraine, and theorized that these guys likely would have been playing a role in destabilizing Venezuela - except they're now dying in Ukraine. Again, this is imperial decay - the Cold War era empire would have been able to support right-wing paramilitary death squads in a bunch of places all at once, but the current one is having to use up their death squads meant for one conflict in a completely different one.
A simple "not saying shit" or "strongly worded resolution at the UN condemning violence and reaffirming national sovereignty" would be what's expected, that's what China does when the empire doles out violence or murders thousands of people.
This though? Short of outright condoning it, it's the next best thing. It's China acknowledging South America is the US's back yard and that they're not going to do anything except sell shit and extract resources, while giving them a thumbs up for doing whatever they want with the region.
This is the culmination of a series of disappointing and angering diplomatic choices by the PRC.
I don't know how to read this other than as China showing that it's willing to throw the global south and its working class under the bus, as long as their immediate sphere of influence is left alone and trade keeps flowing.
Communist superpowers stop being chauvinist challenge: impossible.
China's socialism stops at the border.
It's foolish as well, because it's pretty clear what the amerikkkan ruling class' goals are. They consider China to be their ultimate enemy, but since they currently can't compete with them and can't do much to stop them, they seek to dominate the entire Western Hemisphere and destabilize the Middle East until China is completely surrounded and has all of its trade routes cut off. The empire is playing the long game here.
China is, too. They're betting that the US will collapse even more before the final confrontation. They're not stupid, they're just callous.
It's not easy to project power at a distance like the US does. China does not have the global infrastructure to do so. They could not win this for Venezuela, they would need to adopt a similar strategy to what the US has done with its global footprint.
China can leverage export restrictions such as rare earth materials to at least force the empire to reconsider.
Please don’t tell me that one of the world’s largest economy, the most industrialized nation in the world with 31% of global manufacturing share, is so weak that it has no cards to play in the face of global conflict. It’s not like the US has the capacity to invade China if they don’t like China’s response either.
I have nothing of substance to contribute, but I just wanna thank you for pushing back against the "China is a smol bean they cant do nothing" nonsense here
Hasn't that already happened though? Choked By China, U.S. Relies On Abandoned French Factory Stockpile To Keep F-35s, Tomahawks Flying
Also it's literally been like a day, we don't know what China is or isn't going to do.
The PLAN has to more or less sail across the world to help Venezuela because unlike the US, it can't use the Panama Canal but has to sail through the Indian Ocean to arrive at Venezuela via the southern Atlantic. From a purely logistics POV, Venezuela is very much part of the US's backyard. The only countries more US-backyardy than Venezuela are Canada, Mexico, central America, and the Caribbean.
I never was under the illusion that China would put boots on the ground to defend another country's sovereignty. The only time that happened was over 70 years ago.
Im saying that China will allow and even give a thumbs up to the death of millions in the global south if that means they can further consolidate their position in the coming multipolar world.
They're betting the US will collapse in the next 5 years? Because in 5 years the US can do a hell of a lot to reshape the map. The map is largely already in their favor with a few tiny hold-outs, one of which just got taken out and the other is slated for being taken out (Iran). Others like African countries they can just bully by pointing to this, using moderate rebels, bribes, blackmail, etc. They'll take China's belt and road infrastructure and put it under US ownership, put the people in debt, take the wealth and minerals and perpetuate themselves and obviate China's moves for the next 30 years during which time they can turn up the pressure to crack China by blunting economic growth, sewing separatism, and creating dissatisfaction with the government for living conditions not improving.
I hate to say it but I really think China is playing the wrong game. They think just being good, charitable and a good trading partner will win over the people of the world and bring about change. And absent a violent, experienced hegemon like the US prone to coups, use of hybrid warfare, sanctions, intrigue, manipulation, sewing terrorists and rebellions and a master of propaganda and controller of the world culture and media that might be true but it is not absent that, it has that problem. Last century in the last cold war a lot of newly freed colonies soft-sided with the USSR but didn't hard-side with them and we saw how that ended for the USSR despite their efforts to export development help.
If China had had another 10 years to win over the people of the world, clearly show them they were better and not the US maybe the US would find it impossible to undo with coups and dictators and forced trade deals and debt bondage but they don't. US is an old hand at propaganda and will spin the victimization of people under the new US regime as being China's fault or that of their neighbors or other religious groups or whatever.
That's what I was saying, China is playing the long game, letting the US collapse under its own contradictions and take out half of the world with it.
Or they think that doing that will secure the material base for socialism in China. I'm highly suspicious of any solidarity China shows outside of its borders.
Waiting for a bloodthirsty enemy to collapse while you watch them gobble up all of your allies seems like a dangerous strategy to me.
Can you still trade? Do you still have access to the largest consumer markets in the world (China, India and US)? That seems to be good enough for China.
Besides, the more the US thrashes in its death throes taking out small fish, the easier they will be to take down when the inevitable armed conflict comes.
That's the long term strategy I believe they're pursuing.
That does seem to be their long term strategy. Will it work? Only time will tell. Personally, I'm not convinced it's a good strategy to let an era of the blackest reaction spread unhindered until it reaches your own doorsteps and you're forced to face the entire planet.
Whether it is effective or not, as you said, time will tell. China has shown it's capable of dealing with global reaction, keeping them out of their business as long as they're happy, while wielding the PLA as the stick to that carrot.
It is callous and inhumane for literally everyone else on the planet, that's for sure.
China isn't going to do anything that matters. Condemn the invasion and keep trading with the empire. "Oh we don't have capacity to project power so far away", well at least knock of some of americas pieces while they are distracted in western hemispere. Take out taiwan, japan or occupied korea. But no. Do nothing and let america take out your allies one by one. China will be alone one day.
The fall of USSR was greatest disaster humanity has ever faced.