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The three countries have also withdrawn from ECOWAS.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.
That’s just cope on your part. The US has no history of lying about these things. They can afford to “make a mistake” in claiming someone was in a building they blew up because they’re not on the ground in a position to verify. They know for a fact whether their guys do or do not have the president and his wife. It’s not something you can make a mistake out of and there is no tactical advantage sufficient for the humiliation of it turning out to be a lie.
It has too many disadvantages (including making Trump look like a loser who had to fake doing something a “real president” would actually do). For one the bourgeois press would be obliged to scrutinize future claims more deeply which is the last thing empire wants. They don’t want them or their subjects doubting this kind of stuff so burning credibility on it is silly.
Fact is the US is really, really, really good at this stuff. They and their zionist colony. They killed Nasrallah, they killed that Iranian general. They bombed the command bunker where the Iranian president and leadership were hiding and forced them to flee.
On the balance of facts and reason and experience and history everything says this is true until disproven which will be very easy and should have happened by now as US special forces are not going to spend hours chasing around a hostile city trying to find what safehouse Maduro is livestreaming from and taunting them from. It would be deeply humiliating for such video to exist to the US and its leaders and the US relies on fear, intimidation and a certain invincible aura to maintain hegemony and control and dominance so again they’d have no reason to.
If Maduro is alive, unkidnapped then he has a responsibility to the revolution and maintaining stability and preventing even further the possibility of a coup, succession crisis or insurrection to immediately make this known. That it has not happened means he’s either kidnapped, dead, or trapped under a ton of rubble. (Or else in on some weird scheme with the Americans to leave under the impression of being kidnapped which I find deeply implausible but still more plausible than your assertion about this)
The fact we are supposing out of mere conjectures there would be some form of succession crisis or insurrection without anything to back it up aside from pessimism is not something i am much excited in discussing. But i will pretend to agree on the rest, because the way the american empire is taken for granted to have infinite and magical power (or the northern block alone) without any consideration for the constraints and for the strength of the other countries is astonishing.
Lets remember the chain of command decapitation strikes failed miserably, like the israeli one on pezeshkian failed. I doubt Reisi wasn’t killed though. The real power brokers are living and well and the bolivarian state is still moving.
For now.
XHS brings up an interesting point about this being to dissuade Chinese investment which brings about severe economic pain and suffering which will cause the people to lose faith in the bolivarian revolution which will lead to election of a neo-liberal which will lead to a temporary brief boost in prosperity compared to the worst of the sanctions at the bottom of this pit the US has engineered which will mean the end of Venezuela as anything but a US puppet for the next 20 years during which time the decisive economic and political conflict for US retaining control of the world against China will take place meaning one less friend for China.