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Bulletins and News Discussion from July 31st to August 6th, 2023 - A West African Federation?

Image is of coup supporters in Niamey, waving the flag of Niger and Russia.

While the coup in Niger is an obvious reason for this megathread's subject, the inspiration to focus here rather than somewhere else in the world this week came from @solaranus@hexbear.net's comment here.

Anyway, as a quick introduction to Niger - the country won independence from the French in 1960 and has since been in an alternating cycle of military governments and more democratic arrangements. In 2010, a junta took over the country from the military junta already ruling it, and then successfully transitioned the country to democracy within a year. President Issoufou was elected and then re-elected in 2016. President Bazoum was democratically elected in 2021, and has just been overthrown last week. General Tchiani looks to be the new head of state.

Like many countries that were previously colonies, outright colonialism by its imperial country has been replaced by neocolonialism by that same country. France issues their currency, thus allowing France to do what the US does with its dollar around the world but in miniature. The country is incredibly poor, surviving on subsidence agriculture, with much of its exports being minerals like gold and uranium, which many children under the age of 14 are employed in extracting. Also like other previously French colonies, the new guys in charge appear to be flipping them the bird, with Burkina Faso and Mali relatively recently asking them to fuck off. It is unlikely to be a coincidence that this is happening as internal dissent inside France itself continues to boil. Given the Russian flags being waved and Putin's promises to supply free grain to some African countries (and though Niger isn't mentioned, Burkina Faso and Mali notably are), one imagines that Russia also might have a hand in things.

Burkina Faso's president, Traore, has been talking with Mali and Guinea, and now Niger - all ruled by military governments - and asking if they're interested in federation, with Mali showing some interest. Traore follows in the tradition of Thomas Sankara, and has appointed a Prime Minister who is similarly aligned. Traore has recently met with a Chinese representative and has firmly aligned himself with Russia, saying that Burkina Faso has "one and the same outlook" on building a new world order, saying:

"Russia made great sacrifices to liberate Europe and the world from Nazism during World War II. We have the same history,"

"We are the forgotten peoples of the world. And we are here now to talk about the future of our countries, about how things will be tomorrow in the world that we are seeking to build, and in which there will be no interference in our internal affairs,"

"However, a slave who does not fight [for his freedom] is not worthy of any indulgence. The heads of African states should not behave like puppets in the hands of the imperialists. We must ensure that our countries are self-sufficient, including as regards food supplies, and can meet all of the needs of our peoples. Glory and respect to our peoples; victory to our peoples! Homeland or death!"

Here is the map of the Ukraine conflict, courtesy of Wikipedia.

This week's first update is here in the comments.

No update on Wednesday because I am still busy.

Friday's update is here in the comments.

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  • The news megathread is simply too powerful for liberals. It's like shining a blinding light into the eyes of a monster in a dark cave. Turns out all you need to do to piss them off to the point of instant defederation is to be against fascism, and be on the side of most of the world's population - the "jungle", compared to their "garden" - who aren't sanctioning Russia, nor filled with a frantic hatred of China.

    also, a semi-unrelated thought I had while in the shower: it would be pretty great if the next couple decades had Russia and China doing a kind of good cop bad cop thing, where China is the "good cop" helping develop countries and Russia is the "bad cop" using its military under the guise of mercenary groups to help overthrow their liberal or comprador governments in favor of anti-western and socialist governments

  • 🇳🇪 The head of the "Wagner Group," Yevgeny Prigozhin, expressed his views on the root of the problems in Niger:

    "I will answer what is the basis for the change of power in Niger. The basis is the economy. The population of Niger has been driven into poverty for a long time.

    For example, a French company that extracted uranium sold it on the market for $218, while paying Niger only $11 for it. You can work with investors on a 50-50 or 30-70 (%) basis, but it's impossible to give back to the indigenous people of the country, who were born in this country, who live in this country, and who expect that the natural resources of this country belong to them, and according to the Constitution, they belong to them, only 5% of the wealth you receive.

    To cover up these economic crimes, the country was saturated with a huge number of terrorists. This enormous number of terrorists, theoretically, should have been controlled by a vast number of different troops, financed by the UN, the European Union, Americans, the British, and others. As a result, the population of Niger, which should have been free and happy due to the economic opportunities in their country, was robbed, and to keep them silent, they were kept in fear for decades.

    To show that these thieves and plunderers are needed in the state's territory, I mean Western countries like France, the USA, and so on, crowds of soldiers were sent there who did nothing but received enormous budgets that were also embezzled at various levels. That's why the transformation in Niger was simply necessary.

    The power that was in league with Bazoum (ousted president) and his followers, simply covered up, allowing the coalition of people who plundered the nation to be present in Niger's territory. That's it. Therefore, this is a liberation struggle, a liberation movement for the independence of this country, and God grant them success."

    Can't believe that we're getting such good historical analysis by Prigo

  • I want to talk to my Burkinabé coworker so bad, I haven't seen him since the start of the summer but last time we talked about west african politics for like an hour or two he said he's a big fan of Traoré and an even bigger fan of Sankara. Really wish I could pick his brain right now

  • And remember everyone, the Soviet Union did a bad thing once therefore it is correct to put them alongside Nazi Germany. The United States, on the other hand, might have done some "oopsies" but they did it on bad people who do even worse things.

  • https://archive.is/07kog

    Australian shitlord says the quiet part out loud.

    Russia's defensive lines are 'much more complex and deadly than anything experienced by any military in nearly 80 years,' retired general says.

    Article says

    A retired Australian general described the defensive lines that Russia had built in Ukraine as "much more complex and deadly than anything experienced by any military in nearly 80 years."

    And the former officer, Mick Ryan, told The Economist that breaking through those defenses would require the best of combined-arms operational skills, something that the military analyst Michael Kofman told the outlet Ukraine had not shown at scale.

    Ukraine started its long-awaited counteroffensive in June, aimed at taking back territory in the east and south of the country. But it has made only marginal gains. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said efforts had been hampered by the strong defenses that Russia was able to build as it waited for Ukraine's big attack to begin. Satellite imagery from when Ukraine was preparing to start its counteroffensive showed Russia strengthening its 600-mile front line with minefields, barricades, "dragon's teeth" obstacles, and anti-tank ditches.

    The minefields have, in places, forced Ukrainian soldiers to leave behind some of their advanced Western tanks and progress on foot.

    Officials in Ukraine said they wanted their big push to start earlier but had to wait for more Western weapons to arrive, which allowed Russia additional time to prepare. Ukraine has also explained its progress by saying many of its units have not yet joined the fight, and Zelenskyy said last week that Ukraine's actions were about to gain pace after extensive de-mining efforts.

    Others have compared the fighting in Ukraine to wars going back over a hundred years. The slow, grinding nature of the clashes and trench warfare means that battlefields in Ukraine look like those from World War I, albeit with more-advanced technology in the mix, experts told Insider.

    A former Army Ranger who fought in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Ukraine said the fighting in the Eastern European country was much worse than that in those other countries. David Bramlette told The Daily Beast that he had air support, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance when he was in Iraq and Afghanistan.

    "The worst day in Afghanistan and Iraq is a great day in Ukraine," he said.

  • climate change denial gets more and more funny the more time passes. I feel like you literally have to be living in a bubble to not see it. it's no longer a thing that's at some point in the future that we need to prevent by doing X Y Z, it's literally happening right this very moment. and it's very visible. it's even more funny when they say that the IPCC is fearmongering, like, my brother in christ, the IPCC is being overly conservative in its estimates

    like, it's becoming so obvious that the climate is getting warmer and more chaotic that I am legitimately confused about how people can keep on believing it's not happening. I remember in my childhood that it used to snow all the time in winter here and now you get maybe a few days of half-snow, half-rain per year, and sometimes no snow at all. there is a concerning lack of insects. it's much hotter in summer. droughts are more frequent. crops are dying. fisheries are running out of fish. storms are hitting harder and for longer.

    that's not even mentioning all the shit that's happening abroad. every day I get news along the lines of "record drought hits country" or "longest heatwave on record in this country" or "monsoon flooding highest on record" or "ice caps/glaciers melting even faster than previous estimates"

    I know it's not worth actually caring about convincing these people anymore because at best they're just useful idiots for fossil fuel companies but I do wonder their reaction will be once like, we have a blue ocean event or something. "actually, the woke movement has stolen all the ice to forward their agenda"? "the climate scaremongerers are in league with satellite imagery companies to photoshop the ice out of the arctic"? "see, the ice has come back this winter. so much for that false narrative of warming, if anything the Earth is actually getting colder over time!"?

  • Quick comment from my mountain vacation:

    Arab social media is almost universally supporting the Niger coup. There are some liberals who are mad that democracy is disturbed by the coup, but most are celebrating that a French bootlicker like Bazoum (he's ethnically Arab btw) got owned. Things are changing, the Sleepy Joe administration fumbling foreign policy by being smug libs towards their non-Euro allies and the Russia War has changed the mentalities in Africa and Asia.

  • So I'm going to drop a fresh seethe and cope section from South Africa. Julius Malema, leader of a political party called the EFF, sang a reworked version of an old struggle song from the struggle against apartheid, which included the phrase "Kill the Boer". This has made white people in South Africa, especially white conservatives, fascists, and scratched liberals, really mad. The leader of the mostly white liberal party in the DA, John Steenhuisen, has even threatened to go to the UN Human Rights Commission over this.

    For the real scratched liberal moments, lots of white people on social media (especially Reddit

    ) have decided to go full fash in response. I'm talking about using AWB talking points about what it means to be an Afrikaner straight from Eugene Terre'Blanche, false equivalences ("imagine a song called kill the Zulu") and outright racism, saying that apartheid was actually good and needs to come back.

    So yeah. Everything is going great.

  • Here's a list of good things about France:

    One time they had a Revolution that was quite promising but backed out because the popular masses were going all or nothing.

    Paris briefly entered the Cool Zone during late XIX Century.

    They fought the Nazis for a little bit.

    One day it will cease to exist.

  • French military intelligence does not expect Ukraine to win this year, nor does it expect them to win in 2025. In fact, it does not expect Ukraine to win at all.

    Original french article

    General Jacques Langlade de Mongro, the Director of French Military Intelligence, stated to the parliament (as reported in the article ) that the Ukrainian conflict will continue in 2024 and even in 2025.

    The Ukrainian forces are hindered by Russia's partial mobilisation. France believes that this strategy has yielded results, achieving quantitative parity on the LBS (Line of Contact).

    Russia has advantages that Ukraine does not have.

    One aspect worth noting is the "physical and, above all, mental trauma, especially in Ukraine, where the proportion of combatants in the total population is greater than in Russia, which will become a structural problem for Ukrainian society in the future."

    The future outlook for Ukraine is one of a country facing challenges with a significant number of wounded and psychologically affected individuals. Many women and minors have fled the country, and it seems unlikely they will return.

    part 2 ::: spoiler spoiler

    Russia has its own "strategic depth," and if necessary, Iran, China, and DPRK will support Russia. Additionally, Russia enjoys an advantage in equipment, particularly in artillery. The adaptation of the military-industrial complex is proceeding smoothly.

    In contrast, Ukraine's strategic depth is virtual and entirely dependent on NATO. However, even the supplied equipment does not function as expected due to limited training time. Furthermore, the mix of various systems complicates maintenance and repair.

    While the Ukrainian Armed Forces (AFU) are focusing their efforts on the Sea of Azov, the Russian Armed Forces are gradually advancing through Kupyansk.

    For the first time in the French Parliament, it was mentioned that a Ukrainian counterattack would likely result in a massive loss of the Ukrainian population. However, the real question is whether anyone will consider their perspective. :::

    In light of the current federation meta-drama, what can I say General Jacques, I welcome the entire French military intelligence complex to the resistance you are all now officially Putler bots.

  • Xi's words to Putin on things happening that haven't been seen in a century are really becoming real... Western defeat in Ukraine, Western defeat in Africa, BRICS+ currency, rapid development of China and Viet Nam, popular dem-soc to socialist movements in South America... This decade is pivotal.

  • When Wagner handed over Bakhmut to the regular Russian army in early June, a journalist asked Prigozhin about when we can expect a Wagner return to the front. Prigozhin did his usual unhinged response, but he said August 5th. Today is August 5th and Wagner is headlining news again on a new front. But somehow this new front seems to be in Niger, not Ukraine. We live in interesting times for sure.

  • The newest Chinese threat to the UK: they're going to sell us low-cost electric cars. But, being evil China, that's a security concern because they might turn the batteries off to create traffic jams or something.

    • genuinely at this point, if there's a kinda weird talking point on TV or on the radio then assume that something is happening in a relevant corporation that few people are talking about

      like, here, there's a lot of debate about "should we ban the sale of petrol cars after 2030" and "are electric vehicles even better/less resource intensive?" and the debate is about like carbon emissions and freedom and shit, but that's just a smokescreen for fossil fuel companies and car companies fearing for their profits. we very regularly get laws that reduce our freedoms (laws against protesting and so on) and that rarely if ever gets the same level of debate along those lines in the MSM, particularly in the right-wing media because they threaten no profits and often increase them

      "should people have a human right to own homes?" = no construction service wants to make homes that are affordable as they aren't profitable enough

      "should we solve crime by increasing police resources?" = decreasing crime by providing a good standard of living to everybody isn't profitable enough so we must try other methods

      "what do we do about the immigrant crisis? there's too many people coming over!" = we need to pay the absolute lowest wages possible to keep our businesses as profitable as possible so we need immigrants but their poor conditions increases the chances that they need to resort to crime to survive so we're creating our own problems

      "should we give less foreign aid and keep more for ourselves?" the current amount of foreign aid is literally designed to make us think that we're being good people when in reality we extract orders of magnitude more money and resources from the very same countries we give aid to via exploitation, but even this tiny amount designed for propaganda is now too much for capitalists in a profitability crisis

      "should we boost military spending to fight Russia/China/Iran/whoever?" just military grifting, none of our weapons work as they should because, surprise surprise, if your only motive is profit then actual effectiveness is diminished to make it seem better to investors and other people who know nothing about the weapons those companies are building. "yeah this tank has a uh, turbomotor that can reach 6.3 gigajoules of speed per second and uh, a quantum field generator attached that can stop any projectile in its tracks, it only costs $500 million to build each one" "awesome I'll take a thousand, sure hope this doesn't become scrap metal leaching heavy elements into the soil of a developing country for the next century"

      and so on

    • Ok so don’t buy a British EV because they must already have this back door

    • Smartest guy in the UK

  • https://archive.is/jFAMO

    Leader of American Communist movement says a vote for Biden is a vote to defeat fascism

    Summarizing it's points, Joe Sims says:

    • Trump is a fascist in charge of a mass-coalition of big business and fascists. (even though big buisness is objectively on the side of the DNC warmongers in their profiteering off of Ukrainian and Russian blood in preparation for a showdown against China)
    • This coalition is in danger of fracturing due to Trump's crimes and indictments leading to a possible alternative candidate taking the lead for the RNC. (would be pretty funny to see trump run from prison, or see the absolute shitshow to see who can seize the reigns in the power vacuum)
    • Joe Biden is going to be the DNC nominee regardless of any challenger entering the field. (sorry, crystal orb fans. Also I'm fairly certain RFK's more of a threat to the republicans than to the democrats at this point)
    • Christian socialist Cornel West of the People's Party and Green Party is running a spoiler campaign against Biden and is objectively helping Trump and the fascists win the election if he does not bow out. (fuck Biden, he should bow out and endorse Cornel)
    • We must end Russia's invasion of Ukraine and remove their troops to protect Ukraine's right to independence also we should stop NATO expansion (he seriously said that).
    • End the Cold War with China, cooperate combatting climate change, and fight against Roko's Basilisk's inevitable birth (Last one's sorta joking, it's about combatting "AI". Also vote for bluemaga to end the cold war)

    The article finishes of saying "It was clear from the kickoff of CPUSA National Committee deliberations Saturday morning that the party expects that the people can and must win the fight against fascism in the U.S. and that it will do everything in its power to make sure of that outcome." Which clearly translates to say that CPUSA will do everything in its power to help President Biden win reelection without openly endorsing President Biden.

    It is a continual disappoint to see how they use the clout from AES states maintaining polite relations to them to appear more radical than they actual are. These radical left-wing sheepdogs for the democrat party have no other name but right-opportunists.

  • Its heating up "Burkina Faso and Mali say they will consider a regional military intervention in Niger as a declaration of war against them" and France can most probably not just accept loosing its energy independence , i consider high chances of them trying to go in .

  • https://archive.is/mIv0a

    Business Insider saying the quiet part loud again.

    Russia is jamming 'sophisticated' US weapons being used in Ukraine, making them useless, report says

    Something they've been able to do for a while now. Bet if a war with China happens and they send f-35s and f-22s into China airspace in stealth mode, they'll get shot down because China's been researching tech that nullify American stealth tech for the past few decades to counter our wunderweapons programs.

  • love this post from @MerryChristmas@hexbear.net, I kinda want it on a shirt

    What if we simply voted to eat the rich? Then the rich would voluntarily lay themselves out on a giant platter with an apple in their mouth because they lost a free and fair election and those are the rules.

  • That british intelligence report on Ukraine is nuts. Literally vegetation is proving to be an obstacle for the ukrainian offensive?

    WHO WOULD WIN? NATO tactics, the absolute best in the world

    or

    some grass and bushes

    When the grass starts speaking russian. Maybe complete worldwide deforestation and destruction of all plant matter is now a top priority for NATO strategists?

  • Labour politician this morning, when asked about the cost of living and uptick in shoplifters, taking the line of attacking the Tories for not building more prisons in order to lock people up for being poor and hungry. So that bodes well.

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