Bulletins and News Discussion from November 27th to December 3rd, 2023 - Pain in the ASS - COTW: Burkina Faso
Image is of General Abdourahamane Tiani, leader of Niger (left) and Ibrahim Traoré, leader of Burkina Faso (right).
The Alliance of Sahel States (ASS) formed on September 16th in the wake of the coup in Niger in late July, in which Niger, Mali, and Burkina Faso created a military and increasingly economic alliance in which attacking one would result in the other two joining. This was initially most relevant militarily, as ECOWAS was threatening an invasion of Niger if they did not restore civilian rule. Nonetheless, due to a mixture of a lack of real strength in ECOWAS due to Nigeria's internal problems, and the influence of Algeria, a very strong regional military power who negotiated against a war which could further destabilise an already destabilised region, and the vague promises of future civilian rule, the external military threat seems to have mostly dissipated.
However, internal threats remain. Burkina Faso is fighting against ISIS and al-Qaeda, which commit regular massacres of civilians; the government controls only 60% of the country. In Mali, the government is fighting against similar groups as well as the Tuareg, which inhabit the more sparsely populated north of the country - the government is in the process of kicking out the UN mission to Mali, and in the process retaking rebel stronghold cities like Kidal, which is raising some eyebrows as to what exactly the UN was doing all this time; and Niger is fighting against similar Islamic groups too, and is kicking out the French for being exploitative motherfuckers. Combine this with the sanctions against Niger which are crippling the country, disease outbreaks in Burkina Faso, and just the general shitty state of the world economy, and the situation is not looking very good currently.
That all being said, economy and trade ministers from all three countries have met this past weekend in Bamako, the capital of Mali. There, they recommended that the countries: improve the free movement of people inside the ASS (don't laugh!); construct and strengthen infrastructure like dams and roads; construct a food safety system; establish a stabilization fund and investment bank; and even create a common airline. This is all attracting foreign attention too - Russia has signed a deal to build Africa's largest gold refinery in Mali, and China is the second largest investor into Niger after France, ploughing money into the gold and uranium industries there. And, of course, the Wagner group is in the region - though I'm unsure if they're having a major or minor impact on events there.
The Country of the Week is Burkina Faso! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.
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.
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.
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
Pro-Russian Telegram Channels:
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/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/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.
So it seems likely that SCOTUS is going to side with the hedge fund manager suing the SEC saying that they violated his right to trial by jury by using administrative courts instead letting him have a jury trial after he got caught defrauding investors. I have to wonder, how fucking out of touch is this dude and all the other people supporting him if they think a jury of people off the street is going to give them a better verdict and punishment than an administrative court? Yeah man, I'm sure the jury full of pensioners and poor people who can't get out of jury duty for your securities fraud case are going to be very sympathetic to you lol. If I end up on a securities fraud jury, I'm voting guilty and pushing for the death penalty regardless of whether it's applicable or not. It seems like they think it's going to make the SEC's job harder by having to prepare for a jury trial, but it might actually make it easier.
I have to wonder, how fucking out of touch is this dude and all the other people supporting him if they think a jury of people off the street is going to give them a better verdict and punishment than an administrative court?
We should definitely have the lowest minimum expectations here, depending where you go you can definitely find people that would do that, don't underestimate ideology.
The whole bit about the average person hating the rich is lot based on our leftist biases here, it just isn't true sadly. I don't know the exact details of this case but in general I see nothing wrong with that assumption. A lot of Americans are indeed willing to judge based on their personal ideological beliefs and that lands firmly on the pro-capitalist/rich class side.
I just sat at Thanksgiving dinner with a bunch of Trump voters who agreed with me when I said that the single greatest obstacle to America's national security is the wealthy. They don't think of it through a Marxist framework, but theres a lot of animosity to the wealthy in America right now, even among conservatives.
I definitely remember reading articles on small towns here and there, where large corporations invest in public amenities like pools and exercise spaces in general, making donations to schools and such, plastering their brands and priming up the place to generate pliable juries. Judge shopping wouldn't require that, given that judges in the US are ideologically trained to be pro corporate.
You are talking about the Eastern District of Texas in the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in the federal court system. A bunch of patent law cases used to take place there because the judges there actively marketed themselves to corporations. But again, those weren't jury trials, they were bench trials.