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The three countries have also withdrawn from ECOWAS.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 possibility was always open, Putin is far too much of a law-abiding lib to do it.
This is the truly the funniest thing about Libs' perceptions of Putin. They all hallucinate that he's an evil anti-american illiberal authoritarian dictator with plans for world domination, but in reality he's an international law obsessed Liberal and moderate within Russian politics. His economic positions pre-2022 could be described as Liberal in the same way that Angela Merkel's could. He was seen as being too conciliatory and western-friendly before 2022 by most of the Russian population. He's repeatedly demonstrated naivety in dealing with the west, being too trusting and going too soft.
Suddenly once Russia becomes an official state enemy, the economic institutions and policies that the west installed suddenly become "oligarchy". What was just recently "free market" policies that America supports suddenly became "corrupt" and "oligarchies".
Fr, I wish he was as anti-west and the west claims he is.
Eh one correction. They've been sewing the "Russia corrupt, oligarchy" thing for years now before the Ukraine SMO thing happened. Easily since the mid 2010s. News programs, exposes, I remember one that claimed that Putin had stolen so much wealth he was likely secretly the richest man in the world.
The problem was always that by that time the Russians were stealing from the people but keeping the theft profits within Russia with Russian capitalists instead of handing it all over to western capitalists as was desired after 1992 and the open looting of the 90s which they wanted to continue or resume.
Yes but Russia became an official state enemy in 2014, not 2022. That is the year in which all the feigned concern about corruption and oligarchy arose. Keep in mind that all of the "oligarchs" in Russia/Ukraine are those who were western-aligned compradors that helped the west loot the corpse of the USSR. The west created the oligarchs starting in 1991, they were the west's men in Russia. Now they cry about how corrupt and evil they are, when they installed the very system that made them and used them as their agents.
Before 2014, Reddit thought Putin was the crazy cool Russian guy that would ride on a grizzly bear shirtless.
True, true, good point. I thought you meant 2022. Though there had always been this old guard neo-con anti-soviet undercurrent of boomers who just hated Russia and didn't trust it through the mid 2000s and spread a kind of vague malaise of accusations against Russia. But they definitely went more mainstream and entered the foreground of thought on Russia at that time as a result of 2014 and Crimea and Russia refusing to be silently encircled, partitioned and destroyed and thrown out of the Black Sea and relegated to being a polar power.
There were media pundits literally saying that Putin was worse than Hitler, the media narrative around Russia/Russians in the West make me feel like I'm huffing paint or some shit, especially since '22.