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.
I have been on a small vacation with my wife's family so I've missed the COTW this week. It happens to be a relevant one for me somehow.
In the late 70s during the height of the Lebanese Civil War, my great aunt and her family left Lebanon to Abidjan, Ivory Coast. She was married to a Shia laborer from a village in the south. Her husband had relatives that already migrated to West Africa during the peak of Lebanese migration in the 20s and the 30s. So through good old familial connections and village networks that I'll never get being a Beiruti capital city guy, they put him in touch with some people that could help him get settled in Abidjan. In the end they made a decision to leave, and they got some papers (most of them were fake and bought for significant amounts of dollars back then) and made it to the Ivory Coast. They left Lebanon through the Syrian border and then took a flight to Libya, where they had to stay for a few days as flight schedules in the 70s were kinda weird. After Libya, they made another long stop in Morocco, then finally made it to Abidjan.
The Lebanese community in Côte d'Ivoire was already significant from the early migration, then grew a lot during the Civil War. Locals perhaps jokingly or not used to call Lebanese Ivorians "the Jews of Abidjan". The only interpretation is the antisemitic one, as Lebanese people dominated many big money industries in the country and ran many of the biggest wholesale networks and businesses that specialised in exporting stuff like Ivorian crops to France mostly through their networks in Dakar, Senegal. My great aunt's husband ran a small shop in the beginning, then started to import Syrian products and in the end ran a huge wholesale network for Middle Eastern goods in Abidjan. He passed away after a sudden heart attack in the early 90s, so I never met the man actually. My great aunt and two of her adult children returned then to Lebanon shortly after her husband's passing, but one of her sons actually stayed in Abidjan and until today commutes back and forth between Lebanon and Côte d'Ivoire. I don't know why, but I always find it funny every year when I see his children posting videos of Ashura mourning events in Abidjan. The whole concept of Lebanese people being super Shia in West Africa cracks me up for some reason, I'll never stop finding it almost absurd. It's worth noting that the Lebanese community in general, both Muslims and Christians in Africa are extremely insular and racist. They always just marry within the community, and whenever my great aunt comes up in conversation when I'm in Lebanon, everyone basically expresses this "Hajja Khadija might die of a heart attack if one of her grandchildren marries an n word...". This is not just the family in Lebanon overreacting about things, no, the whole community basically hates you if you marry a native Ivorian instead of a Lebanese person. It's very normal for Lebanese people in West Africa to travel back to their parents' or grandparents' village during the summer and go back to Africa with a spouse.
We end with a fun fact. Notorious Lebanese zombie, eternal Speaker of the Parliament Nabih Berri was actually born in Sierra Leone in the 1930s.
Very interesting, If I'm not mistaken isn't there a large community of Lebanese in Haiti as well?
Theres a small Lebanese community in Haiti (12k) and in the DR (80k). But the largest one is in Brazil (7 Million) and Argentina (2 Million).
Another descendant of Lebanese immigrants who is a ghoul is the Brazilian-Lebanese traitor and US puppet, Michel Temer.
We also produced Shakira, Ralph Nader and Gibran Khalil Gibran, so I think we get a pass on the likes of Michel Temer, Carlos Slim and Carlos Ghosn. Syrians produced the ghoul of all ghouls in Carlos Menem and Palestinians gave the world Nayib Bukele. Arabs are the fucking worst lmao
There is also a famous baseball statistics guy who is also a dermatologist (Rany Jazayerli) who is pretty cool.