Image is of a large protest in the Ivory Coast, sourced from this article in People's Dispatch.
This week's megathread is based largely on a detailed article from People's Dispatch, featuring statements and analysis from Achy Ekessi, the General Secretary of the Revolutionary Communist Party of Ivory Coast (PCRCI), brought to my attention by @jack@hexbear.net's comment in the last megathread.
The president of Ivory Coast, the 83 year old Alassane Ouattara, is aiming for a fourth term in power while barring out much of the opposition. I can't really do the all the history of how the situation wound up this way justice in a preamble as it's fairly complicated (read the article if you are interested), but to summarize, Ouattara is currently the only coherent candidate for the French to support. Back in 2011, the French helped Ouattara overthrow the previous (pan-Africanist) president, Laurent Gbagbo, and then arrested him and sent him to the ICC, and he was then acquitted and released in 2021.
Gbagbo is now running against Ouattara, but his base, the working class, has large swathes that are not present on the voting rolls and so it would be unlikely for him to win. On the opposite side of the spectrum is Tidjane Thiam, a former CEO of the Swiss Bank Credit Suisse, whose base is in the richer strata of the Ivory Coast, which overlaps with Ouattara's base. He would be more likely to win, but would certainly maintain many Western imperialist relationships. Ouattara, however, has simplified the electoral situation by simply barring both of them from running in the election at all.
Ouattara has, on paper, delivered some amount of economic development to the Ivory Coast. But as expected, most of it is funnelled to the bourgeois, as well as to foreign corporations and governments, while the working class are swallowed by the cost of living crisis. There has been significant infrastructure projects, but these have not only generated massive debt, they also have only really addressed the damage caused by the 2011 civil war and intervention by the French.
The rest of Western Africa has either entirely exited the orbit of France (Niger, Mali, Burkina Faso), are wavering/unstable (Senegal, Benin, Guinea), are beginning to show doubts (Nigeria, Ghana), or are economically weak enough to not be a major blow for the French to lose (Togo, Guinea-Bissau). The loss of the Ivory Coast would be a major setback for French neocolonialism, and be a potent example to nearby countries.
Last week's thread is here.
The Imperialism Reading Group is here.
Please check out the RedAtlas!
The bulletins site is here. Currently not used.
The RSS feed is here. Also currently not used.
Israel'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.
English-language PalestineResist telegram channel.
More telegram channels here for those interested.
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.
Here's a 2024 interview with Bolsonaro where he mentions talking with Trump about Venezuela. He was allegedly discussing with Bolsonaro how they could make Venezuela "return to democracy".
I guess that part of the plan was/is to get Bolsonaro back to support an American invasion of South America. I'm also reminded of a heavily anti-venezuela bias in Brazilian hegemonic media for the past 10 years or so.
Not American invasion, the previous controversy in Brazil was Brazil's own plan for an invasion "backed" by the US, politicaly with an international green light.
Now whether Brazil would suceed is unlikely, there is no popular support, even among the right. Brazilians don't view their military particularly highly as a consequence of the military dictatorship.
Nevertheless, it bears reminding the only reason Bolsonaro's coup failed at all was the Biden admin didn't support it. If the US once again forces another coup it will succeed and if it is then followed by such an invasion as early as 18 months from now(Brazilian elections next year) then it will happen almost assuredly.
The only question behind all these silly speculations is nobody around Trump is particularly competent and imo Trump is more about easy cheap and quick wins he can pander to his base, South America is not a victory he can pander because none of these countries are relevant and besides when it comes to the "latino" problem he is already doing the ICE camps anyway.
I thought the US plan (well, at least one of their plans since the 2019 Venezuelan coup failed) was to stage an invasion of Venezuela by Venezuelan Right-Wing paramilitaries backed by Brazil, Colombia and the USA. And they would have used Colombia and Brazil's border as a staging ground for said invasion.
And I also would add that Bolsonaro and the Brazilian Military/Right-Wing were really fucking lazy and stupid, probably because they thought the US would have supported them.
Here's the archive link comrade: https://archive.is/vtKtq
Article text
BRASÍLIA—Jair Bolsonaro, former president of Brazil, wants to return to power and said he believes U.S. President-elect Donald Trump will help make that happen, possibly by using economic sanctions against the current president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Banned from running for office until 2030 and facing criminal charges for allegedly plotting a coup, Bolsonaro said he sees Trump’s election as a game-changer for his future and politicians on the right in Latin America. Leftists have recently won presidential elections in Mexico and Uruguay and govern most large countries in the region. “Trump is back, and it’s a sign we’ll be back too,” Bolsonaro said in an interview this week with The Wall Street Journal from his party headquarters in the capital, Brasília. Flanked by two congressmen allies in a tightly secured office plastered with photos of recent rallies, Bolsonaro said he and his lawmaker son, Eduardo Bolsonaro, had been in close contact with the incoming U.S. administration since the Nov. 5 election. “I was up the whole night rooting for the big orange guy,” he said, using the affectionate Portuguese term for Trump, “Laranjão.” Da Silva’s leftist government, which considers Bolsonaro an authoritarian figure, declined to comment on the former president’s assertions. A spokesperson for Trump’s incoming administration didn’t respond to a request for comment. Bolsonaro, who was president of the world’s fourth-most populous democracy from 2019 through 2022, has been one of Trump’s closest foreign allies. Sharing similar views on the culture wars and scorn for the political left and the media, the two men deepened ties when their presidencies overlapped in 2019 and 2020. The two presented a united front against Venezuela’s authoritarian leader, Nicolás Maduro. As Brazil’s president in 2019, Jair Bolsonaro visited President Donald Trump at the White House. Bolsonaro has also sought to firm up regional and global ties on the right with leaders such as Argentine President Javier Milei and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, he said, even awarding them with his infamous weighty “Bolsonaro Club” medal. It sports a slogan in Portuguese that roughly translates as “immortal, virile, and not to be screwed with.” After police seized Bolsonaro’s passport earlier this year, his son Eduardo, a friend of former Trump aide Steve Bannon, acted as a go-between, Bolsonaro said, joining Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort for the U.S. presidential election. “It’s time for MAAGA—Make All Americas Great Again,” said Bolsonaro, proudly displaying a book published last year that Trump gave him with the inscription “Jair—You are GREAT.” Bolsonaro, dubbed the Trump of the Tropics by Brazil’s press, has never needed his U.S. counterpart more, though it’s unclear how much assistance he could receive and in what form, if any. Brazilian police last week accused Bolsonaro and 36 of his allies of plotting a coup to stop da Silva from taking office after Bolsonaro narrowly lost the 2022 election. The allegations include plans to assassinate the leftist leader. The charges stem from a Jan. 8, 2023, uprising in which several thousand Bolsonaro supporters stormed the presidential palace, Congress and the Supreme Court in Brasília before police fended them off. Brazil’s electoral court also has effectively banned him from running in the next presidential election in 2026. The court ruled last year that he had undermined confidence in the country’s electoral system by accusing da Silva of stealing the 2022 election, without presenting sufficient evidence. Bolsonaro denies any wrongdoing, saying he is the victim of a witch hunt by da Silva and left-leaning judges. “They don’t just want me in jail, they want me dead,” said Bolsonaro, who is 69 years old. He lifted his shirt to show a giant scar across his disfigured belly, the result of a near-fatal stabbing on the campaign trail in 2018. A judge later ruled the attacker was mentally ill. Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva narrowly defeated Jair Bolsonaro, the incumbent, two years ago. Since his first presidential campaign in 2018, Bolsonaro has cast himself as a political underdog. In the interview, he broke down in tears as he spoke about his mother’s struggle to care for him and his five siblings while working as a maid on a farm. Like Trump, he has sought to brand himself via a stream of merchandise, recently launching his own aftershave. Bolsonaro beer is next, he said. Bolsonaro plans to register his candidacy ahead of the 2026 vote despite the ban, he said, banking on pressure from Trump on Brazil’s judges to delay enforcement of the 2023 ruling just long enough for him to run. The former Brazilian army officer suggested that Trump could level economic sanctions against da Silva’s government to help him. “As long as the electoral court doesn’t turn down my registration, it’s valid,” Bolsonaro said. “They can just put it off as long as possible…until the election is over.” By coincidence, a Bolsonaro-nominated Supreme Court judge, Kassio Nunes Marques, is scheduled to preside over Brazil’s electoral court in 2026. Marques voted against the decision last year to ban Bolsonaro from office. “I’m not obsessed with power, it’s actually rather tiring at my age,” Bolsonaro said. “There are also people more intelligent than me…but no one has thicker skin, nor the experience I have.” Questioned about the nature of possible U.S. sanctions under Trump, Bolsonaro spoke of Washington’s oil sanctions on Venezuela. In his first term, Trump employed a “maximum pressure” campaign of economic sanctions and direct support for Venezuela’s opposition in a failed effort to unseat Maduro. “Trump has also been very concerned about Venezuela and discussed with me ways in which we can return it to democracy,” said Bolsonaro. Brazil’s right has also lobbied Trump to withdraw the U.S. visa of Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, who has led sweeping criminal investigations into Bolsonaro and his allies—a request that is viewed favorably by parts of the incoming U.S. administration, according to people close to the situation. Bolsonaro supporters stormed government buildings in Brasília following his election loss. Elon Musk, a close Trump ally, is already one of de Moraes’s biggest critics after the judge shut down Musk’s X social-media platform in Brazil for more than a month this year after it refused to block right-wing accounts accused of spreading hate speech. Musk, like Bolsonaro, has called de Moraes a “dictator.” A spokesperson for de Moraes declined to comment. U.S. Rep. María Elvira Salazar (R., Fla.) called the Brazilian judge “the vanguard of an international assault on freedom of speech,” holding up a photo of de Moraes when she introduced a bill with Rep. Darrell Issa (R., Calif.) in September that would deny U.S. entry to any foreign authority found to have threatened freedom of speech. Empowered by a lengthy constitution that gives Brazilian Supreme Court justices the option to act as prosecutor, judge and jury, de Moraes has cracked down on Bolsonaro supporters after the Jan. 8, 2023, attacks in the capital. He has ordered the arrest of more than a thousand people since then, citing the safeguarding of democracy. De Moraes and his supporters say a tough approach is necessary in a country that returned to democracy from military rule four decades ago. Others, including some legal scholars, have accused him of judicial overreach.In a recent report spanning nearly 900 pages detailing their investigation into the Jan. 8 attacks, police accused Bolsonaro of overseeing a criminal conspiracy to stop da Silva from taking office in January 2023. Bolsonaro denies that he acted outside the limits of the constitution. He said that he did no more than question the result of an election that he believed was unfair, arguing he sought to rein in hotheaded supporters. “They laid into me,” he said of his most-defiant supporters, “calling me a coward.”
Thanks!!
Here's the relevant quote:
He also said he wanted to build a US military base with help from Argentina and Paraguay, and recently Paraguay just approved the construction of a US base inside of Paraguay.