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The three countries have also withdrawn from ECOWAS.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 bulletins site is here. Currently not used.
The RSS feed is here. Also currently not used.
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.
You’d think they would learn by now how heavily skewed that website’s demographic is to the weird techbros of the world
Exactly, I don't know if it's FOMO or what, but reddit is a graveyard of bots and 45 year old incel cranks, anyone who had anything interesting to say was banned five years ago
I consider it at the same level as someone who admits they still browse 4Chan regularly, real delusional Japanese soldier on an island hours
Other than Reddit, where can one lurk to try to see more or less how random people feel about stuff?
Tumblr might be comparable to Reddit in how it skews toward a kind of demographic but maybe not as much. I don't know if there's geopolitics watchers on Tumblr, but it's probably a thing.
Twitter is significantly worse than Reddit and it's basically 4chan now.
Lemmy outside of Hexbear has Reddit demographics and usually skews even nerdier.
Northernlion chat is so-so, maybe one of the last bastions of civilized discussion in the capitalist internet.
IDK, maybe the internet is cooked. Hexbear on its worst day is so much better than everywhere else where you can read what people think about things.
The Internet is cooked already in the West (and western governments are clamping down, coverage of the genocide in Gaza was the last straw for them), maybe try Rednote, but that's like the middle class netizen part of China.
There's no such thing as a random sample of the internet . The best you can do on your own is probably figure out where different constituencies of interest hang out and check them each one at a time. But it's always going to be limited to what you are able to discover and who you think to care about. A lot of people still don't issuing publicly findable press releases or position statements every time an Event happens.
Maybe start a collection of local call in radio streams. Or walk around and ask people.
Edit: Good news is that you are doing better than the american state.
TikTok; that's where everyone is for better or worse
But I like to read, not watch, and autoplay that I can't disable makes me want to
TilTok comment sections are strange mix of Twitter/reddit/Youtube, likely because TikTok enjoyed a mass exodus of users from all those sites
The major difference is that leftists are 5000% more likely to receive upvotes upwards of 75k, unparalleled in internet history
I can second TikTok has more real users than reddit. Zionists get dunked on all the time there.
There are blogs dedicated to global south resistance aesthetics. But average users also do share their thoughts on global events - Tumblr being the bastion of moral OCD r/fauxmoi liberalism does have some bad takes on venezuela rn.
It's not just skewed techbro. It's skewed financebro and cryptobro too.
The demographic of reddit is the crowd of people that think everything in Wolf of Wallstreet is cool and something to aspire to whereas everyone else recognises it is a horrifying culture.