Bulletins and News Discussion from November 27th to December 3rd, 2023 - Pain in the ASS - COTW: Burkina Faso
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 weekly update is here on the website.
Your Monday Briefing is here in the comments and here on the website.
Your Tuesday Briefing is here in the comments and here on the website.
Your Wednesday Briefing is here in the comments and here on the website.
Your Thursday Briefing is here in the comments and here on the website.
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.
Israel-Palestine Conflict
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against Israel. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:
UNRWA daily-ish 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 (and has automated posting when the person running it goes to sleep).
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.
English-language PalestineResist telegram channel.
More telegram channels here for those interested.
Various sources that are covering the Ukraine conflict are also covering the one in Palestine, like Rybar.
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.
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/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.
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Two times out of possibly thousands of launches isn't that bad and doesn't make it a grift. It's a grift because they're using it against rockets that cost a fraction of the price and materials and can be made in much larger numbers. The premise itself doesn't work. This is why the Iron Laser was being developed, but based on what little I can remember about the basic physics of lasers from my education, it would be an understatement to say that it's an incredibly challenging task to make one that doesn't suck up a shitload of energy just to shoot down a mere handful of inexpensive rockets.
If I were Israel, I would simply not create the conditions for a resistance group to rise up due to my hourly massacres against them, thus making an Iron Dome unnecessary (or, at least, it would only be used in near-peer warfare where my enemy's missiles would cost about the same as my own).
It's also a grift because apparently the percentage of Hamas rockets that hot their targets before the Iron Dome and after it was instated is apparently the same. Another user linked the document stating that earlier.
So do the Hamas rockets generally not hit a great deal because they're low quality or are they hitting targets and it's being covered up?
I'm just generally confused because I don't belive the iron dome is some magical piece of equipment but then I also don't hear a lot about damage or casualties from the rocket attacks on say Tel Aviv.
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The most effective thing Israelis have used to protect themselves against Palestinians has also been the bunkers they have in every home. With tens of seconds of forewarning, they can and do just head for their bunkers. On top of the fact that the rockets do very little damage, this is probably tens of thousands of times more effective than their ridiculously over-hyped Iron Sieve.
I should do an effort post eventually on lasers and laser weapons, but suffice it to say that there are some significant issues with them just on the conceptual level. I will try to list them in order of severity (most significant problem first):
- The critical technologies to run a laser weapon system don't really exist yet. You need something like a 50MW laser (I don't remember where I'm getting that figure from) to reliably blow up a supersonic missile (not even going to get into hypersonic lol). High power industrial lasers are still in the low hundreds of kilowatts, the best the military industrial complex seems to be capable of (according to
pop science articles) is promising to get to 500 kW soon. - Lasers fucking suck to work with and work on, and the parts burn out really quickly, even on 5W lasers. Laser optics have to be kept in semiconductor manufacturing cleanroom conditions, like <1 particle per cubic foot, to prevent burnout, and that's just lasers over 1W. You drop a skin-flake on a mirror while the laser is on and that mirror is smoked out and totally fucked. Ask anyone who does calibration work on lasers about "collimation" and listen to the gripes. It's difficult, precise, tedious work and there's no way an 18 year old soldier is going to be able to fix one in the field under fire.
- Lasers use a lot of power. Like, you see the "50MW" figure? That's just what's coming out of the final lens. It's going to suck down several orders of magnitude more power to get to that figure. "Oh, just turn it on when you need it" I hear you say. Good luck shooting down a missile when it takes the laser like 10 minutes to warm up to operating power. Laser weapons capable of shooting down missiles will be restricted to ships and fixed land-based installations for the first several decades at least.
- Lasers emit light, and that light doesn't fall back to Earth. The weapons will have an "effective range" listed, but they will still cause significant damage along their vector for several times that distance. Any aircraft or satellite in the line of fire will be hit, and, at the very least, the optics on it will be permanently fucked.
- The missiles you're trying to shoot down are moving through the atmosphere. Air does a very good job of wicking away heat, and the primary effect laser weapons have on their targets is creating heat. In fact, it would be easier to shoot down a missile moving laterally (with regards to the laser's point of view) than approaching head-on, as the heat-sync effect is most pronounced at the front of a projectile.
- Lastly, I'll list weather, because it's honestly not as big of an issue as a lot of people make it out to be. Laser weapons will almost certainly operate in either the infrared spectrum or the green spectrum, and in two very specific wavelengths (one green, one IR), as those have the lowest Earth-atmospheric attenuation of any EM radiation, and they would only run into operational problems in severe weather conditions when aircraft and missiles can't fly.
- The critical technologies to run a laser weapon system don't really exist yet. You need something like a 50MW laser (I don't remember where I'm getting that figure from) to reliably blow up a supersonic missile (not even going to get into hypersonic lol). High power industrial lasers are still in the low hundreds of kilowatts, the best the military industrial complex seems to be capable of (according to
As weapons, the best use of lasers might be to shine it in your enemies' eyes to blind them for a moment.
I go back and forth between "Saying you're developing laser technology is a way of luring dipshit investors who are impressed by scifi bullshit," and "The generals are actually stupid enough to believe that lasers will be the next big thing and the scientists/engineers either haven't been able to convince them (like with Reagan's SDI), don't give a shit as long as they're getting paid, and/or are also Musk-tier bazinga-brains."
Gonna start a company called "LAISER" and hire some undergrads to shit out a sleek-looking powerpoint about disrupting the Iron Dome industry, hire a c-list actor to bloviate about it on stage, and sit back as the millions roll in
L'chAiSER - Smart Tech Solutions for Young Urban Professionals/Mercenaries We're having the Initial Public Offering this Q3 at Cousin Schlump's Hot Yoga Self Defense Course and Mini-Golf-Café in Tel Aviv, you should get in on the ground floor.
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I thought the laser was for super fast missiles
It's also a grift because it works like 1% of the time.
The problem with lasers—yes, on top of the monumental amount of power required—is that if you polish a metal surface up enough, they tend to just reflect/bounce, not do damage. And to do enough damage to actually destroy something, it's going to take training the laser on a particular spot for a bit...while it's busy traveling rather quickly, in the case of a rocket or missile.
The U.S. military has been saying it'll use lasers for decades. IIRC they did actually have some prototype system at one point that they used (or were going to use) to blind people. I suspect it still ultimately wasn't worth the weight, cost, complication, etc. just to go after individual people as targets. Why do that when you can just blow them up?
The US Navy deployed a laser weapons system on the USS Ponce within the last ten years, and they've fielded other demonstrators, but they were really only good for blinding drones.
The US Navy also fields a portable, shoulder-fired laser dazzler (I can't remember the A/N designation), but it's just a big laser pointer stuck to a plastic rifle-stock and it's used for signalling/blinding approaching vessels.
USS Ponce
lol yeah