Image is of a flag ceremony to commemorate the launch of Operation Barkhane, which has since officially been terminated after its failure.

Chad, a country in north-central Africa, borders a lot of active geopolitical areas - Niger to the West, Libya to the North, Sudan to the East - but is scarcely discussed itself. I’m not really knowledgable enough to give anything like a decent history, but the recent gist is that the country was ruled for three decades by Idriss Déby until he was killed in battle in 2021 while fighting northern rebels. Idriss was part of a few wars - such as the one against Gaddafi in Libya, and also the Second Congo War. While he was initially elected democratically in 1996 and 2001, he then eliminated term limits and just kept on going.

After his death, Chad has been ruled by his son, Mahamat Idriss Déby. In early May 2024, elections began which were meant to result in the transition from a military-ruled goverment to a civilian-ruled one. Needless to say, Mahamat won the election - with 61% of the vote. Both father and son have been on the side of the French and the US, whereas the opposition is against foreign colonizers and has attempted to put pressure on the government in numerous ways to achieve a more substantial independence. France maintains a troop presence in Chad, and it’s something of a stronghold for them - when French troops were forced out of Niger, they retreated to Chad. However, it’s not clear even to the people inside Chad what precisely the French are doing there. I mean, we know what their presence is really for - imperialism and election rigging - but in an official sense, they don’t seem to be doing much to help the country materially. What is clear is that they like to intervene on behalf of the ruling regime and against rebels a whole lot - the most interventions by France in any African country, in fact.

The United States, so keen on human rights and democracy in so many places around the world like Russia, Iran, and China, have - for some strange reason! - decided for the last 30 years that they can live with a couple dictators and wars in the case of Chad. In fact, various American state propaganda firms like the ISW and Washington Post have warned the current government about the Wagner Group interfering with the country and spreading anti-Western sentiments as in the rest of the Sahel.

Things are very tough for Chad. They are among the poorest countries in Africa and host about one million people fleeing from nearby conflicts, which is a pretty large number when Chad has a population of about 17 million.

With the French Empire fading, they are beginning to run out of places to retreat to in Africa. Macron, in January, said that his defense council had decided to reduce troop presence in Gabon, Senegal, and the Côte d’Ivoire, though has maintained troop levels in Chad and Djibouti. Meanwhile, on the other side of the planet from France, anti-empire sentiments are boiling to the surface in New Caledonia/Kanaky, which is unfortunate for the French military as they really need that island, both for the massive nickel reserves, but also as an unsinkable aircraft carrier in the Pacific just in case a conflict with China pops off.

The COTW (Country of the Week) label is designed to spur discussion and debate about a specific country every week in order to help the community gain greater understanding of the domestic situation of often-understudied nations. If you’ve wanted to talk about the country or share your experiences, but have never found a relevant place to do so, now is your chance! However, don’t worry - this is still a general news megathread where you can post about ongoing events from any country.

The Country of the Week is Chad! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.

Please check out the HexAtlas!

The bulletins site is here!
The RSS feed is here.
Last week’s thread is here.

Israel-Palestine Conflict

If you have evidence of Israeli crimes and atrocities that you wish to preserve, there is a thread here in which to do so.

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.

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.

    • AssortedBiscuits [they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
      1·
      3 months ago

      Back when I got my CompTIA certs, there were questions of past exams floating around that I used for practice (people somehow snuck in their phones and took pictures of the non-multiple choice part of the exam), and there was even special software that you had to install (I think they were called trainers?), but once you did, the trainer would keep track of what questions you got wrong so you could continuously drill on your weaker points.

      I guess this is pointless info because you already know this lol

    • plinky [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
      0·
      3 months ago

      america has always been mask off empire, just had a better pr. Nothing to do with fascism, but in fascist pursuit the most dangerous man is confusion.

      republicans might swerve to him still, if they bribe trump btw.

    • AssortedBiscuits [they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
      0·
      3 months ago

      And if this is the case, I don’t think Trump is going to be able to feasibly challenge Biden electorally. At least the system will make it exceedingly difficult to do so. Trump tried to fuck with Project Ukraine, and now he’s paying for it.

      Biden is going to be president, and he’s going to do it through faithless electors. The gameplan is:

      1. Have Trump be found guilty of multiple felonies.

      2. Convince electors in swing states, either by appealing to their civic duty or threatening them by showing footage of the JFK assassination from the grassy knoll, to vote for Biden with the excuse, “I cannot in good conscience vote for a FELON to occupy the highest office of the land, so I have no choice but to vote for Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. for President of the United States of America.”

    • thelastaxolotl [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
      0·
      3 months ago

      Trump was never the guy who would bring fascism to the USA, and i dont think Biden will be either, like take the old european empires for example, they did huge massacres outside (India’s famines, Algerian War, etc) and had a long history of putting down worker strikes and protests violently, and it wasnt until the dissolution of the german empire and Austria-Hungary that fascism took over, or collapse of the kingdom of spain that eventually fascism also rise there.

      like the USA doing the terrible things its doing right now its just normal imperialism, it would do fascism when the empire finally collapses

        • thelastaxolotl [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
          0·
          3 months ago

          The bourgeois establishment has placed all their hopes in Biden now

          I dont think they could care less who wins, so long as they keep the sistem going they are fine with either and both have should its business as usual during their presidency.

          Both made sure to continue US interest in the global south, escalate the conflict with China, keep the EU down, ensure influence in the middle east, both send weapons to ukraine.

          If they really wanted to keep Biden in, Trump wouldnt be the republican nominee or he would be dead.

          Also there is not really a big worker/communist movement at the moment in the west that could threathen capital so why would they fall to fascism

  • Torenico [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
    1·
    3 months ago

    Just when I thought my day couldn’t get any shittier, an HISTORIC fighter leaves us:

    Mother of Plaza de Mayo Norita Cortiñas dies at 94

    The beloved human rights activist was recovering from a hernia operation and a pulmonary infection

    Nora Cortiñas, a historic human rights activist who co-founded the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo (founding branch), died on Thursday. She was in intensive care after undergoing a hernia operation two weeks ago. She was 94 years old.

    Nora Morales de Cortiñas, better known as “Norita,” co-founded Mothers of Plaza de Mayo in 1977. At the time, she was desperately searching for her eldest son, Carlos Gustavo, who was forcefully disappeared by the military dictatorship that ruled the country between 1976 and 1983. Gustavo was a political activist, a member of the Peronist party Partido Justicialista and armed organization Montoneros. He was kidnapped on April 15, 1977, and never seen again.

    Cortiñas carried on the fight to bring justice to him and the 30,000 people disappeared by the dictatorship. She expanded her activism to other areas regarding human rights, such as the right to safe and free legal abortion and the fight against police and gender-based violence.

    Born on March 22, 1930, Cortiñas was a social psychologist and taught at the University of Buenos Aires’ Economic Sciences faculty as head of the “Economic Power and Human Rights” course.

    “I was a traditional woman, a stay-at-home mom. I got married to Carlos Cortiñas when I was very young, and we had two sons: Carlos Gustavo and Marcelo Horacio. My husband was a patriarchal man, he wanted me to devote myself to family life,” she said in an interview. “At that time I was a teacher of haute couture and I worked without leaving my home, teaching many young women to sew.”

    After Gustavo was disappeared, she said, she started a whole new life. “We are no longer mothers of one child, we are mothers of all the disappeared. Our biological child became 30,000 children,” she said. “And for them, we gave birth to a completely political life in the streets.”

    Cortiñas was last seen in public on March 24 at the National Day of Memory, Truth, and Justice march. Despite her age and mobility issues, she was present at Plaza de Mayo in her wheelchair, appearing with her usual white handkerchief over her head and a picture of Gustavo hanging from her neck.

    “Deeply concerned in these times about the serious situation our country is going through and always ready to be present wherever there was an injustice, Norita fought until the last moment for the construction of a more just society,” said the communiqué published by her family. The Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo, the grandmothers of the dictatorship’s desaparecidos, said goodbye to their “sister” in a communiqué, calling her an “undisputed leader of the human rights movement in Argentina.”

    “In solidarity with all the struggles of the country and the world, she knew how to connect with the younger generations, who recognize her as an example of coherence and activism,” they wrote. On Thursday, in the weekly march the Mothers do in the Plaza de Mayo since 1977, the demonstrators sent strength and love to her, before shouting: ¡Venceremos!, “We will triumph.”

    She was an absolute champion, during the worst days of the dictatorship she went into a clandestine detention and torture center (Mansión Seré) BY HERSELF to look for her missing son. Extremely courageous woman who fought with all her being during our darkest days and continued to do for Memory, Truth and Justice until the very end. Please, do read about Mothers of Plaza de Mayo and Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo, extremely important non violent social movements that to this very day are still finding children and grandchildren of Desaparecidos during the last military junta.

    Rest in Power, Norita. red-fist

  • SexUnderSocialism [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
    0·
    3 months ago

    The IDF shooting at Egyptian troops at the Rafah border crossing earlier today, and killing that Egyptian soldier, has apparently been all over Egyptian news.