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.
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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.
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.
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.
They blamed it on Hamas…
Clown shit. I wish they’d get rid of Sisi and his fucking comprador ass already.
I can tell you that nothing will change, even if there is a new left wing government, because of this:
Egyptians hit by soaring food prices as crisis bites
Biden raising the interest rates in 2022 have primed dozens of countries, not just in the Global South, but in Europe as well, toward liquidity crisis. Without dollars, they cannot survive. There is nowhere else to go, since there isn’t a BRICS alternative. Nobody dares to step up and challenge the dollar.
This is why everyone was waiting for the $100 billion foreign aid to Israel and Ukraine, and if that means sacrificing Gazan Palestinian and Ukrainian lives, then so be it. They needed the dollars for their own survival, and the wars in Gaza and Ukraine allowed these dollars to be funneled to the regions. This is how financial imperialism works.
Nothing will fundamentally change and nothing can stop US imperialism from advancing globally until de-dollarization has taken place.
This is wild considering Egypt’s history as the breadbasket of the Mediterranean in antiquity
There’s also that Egypt’s already struggling economy has been taking additional hits because of Israel’s genocide in Gaza. They’ve been having a big decline in tourism because of how close the action is to the Sinai peninsula, and a huge drop in revenue from the Suez Canal. Then there’s the potential influx of refugees from Rafah that would be a huge problem for Egypt right now.
Pisses me the fuck off. I just want a button to instakill the United States
Is literally everything in the world, even the laws of physics beholden to the dollar? Does the dollar make the U.S. the world’s first and only forever empire or something? Can the dollar stop a literal meteor impact from hitting the United States? Will the dollar outlast the heat death of the universe? I’m not even being half-serious right now I’m just mad and expressing my anger.
I do think an issue with the “dollar is everything, dollar is life, dollar is god” narrative is that it can lead you down an ideological path in which quite literally everything that occurs, ever, is a sign of the US’s growing strength.
country gains independence? great, now they’re gonna get shafted by the IMF and keep dollar hegemony going.
country loses independence? great, now they’re gonna get exploited by western corporations directly and keep dollar hegemony going
nothing happens to a country? great, now the debt crisis they’re probably in is going to continue and keep dollar hegemony going.
50 earthquakes strike a country simultaneously? great, now foreign construction companies are going to come in and exploit them and keep dollar hegemony going.
massive development in a country in a short period of time? great, now the fruits of their labour will generate dollars and keep dollar hegemony going.
sell treasury bonds? actually this keeps dollar hegemony going
buy treasury bonds? you better believe this keeps dollar hegemony going
see a child walking down the street? that kid is going off to buy candy with - you guessed it - dollars. bet you feel real stupid now.
stubbed my toe on the desk? that desk cost dollars, and if I hurt myself badly enough, I’ll need to spend dollars to get better! I am keeping dollar hegemony going! fuck!
so you’re basically stuck. it’s feels very non-dynamic, very capitalist-realist in a sense. this doesn’t make it wrong or bad necessarily, but I do think analyzing everything through that lens can be unhelpful because it means you’re less likely to see genuine anti-imperialist developments as anti-imperialist. it’s like being told that a rocket is under construction to go to space, so you watch all the parts being gradually constructed, but you notice that all of these parts are being made on the surface of the earth, so by simply assuming a trend, you assume that the sum total of the parts will also stay on the earth and never escape it.
if currency hegemons were inescapable then we’d still be living under the gold standard or the British Pound. there’s nothing really that unique about American hegemony tbh. in fact, I’d argue (and so does Desai, Hudson’s cohost at GPE) that American hegemony is a mostly failed imitation of the OG British hegemony which was much stronger, and American power has basically been a series of fragile illusions mixed with propped-up dictators who were told to keep the illusion going for as long as possible
It’s not inescapable though. I have pointed out many times that by studying how the dollar works (again, the main text here is Super imperialism by Michael Hudson), the dollar does have weaknesses and can be dismantled, ending US imperialism altogether, provided the challengers to the dollar know what to do.
In fact, I was highly optimistic about the end of dollar hegemony back in 2022. Russia canceling $23 billion of African debt was a serious de-dollarization move. China waiving 23 interest-free loans for 17 African countries was also a move towards de-dollarization. These are concrete steps to dismantle the dollar hegemony.
But then, we stopped hearing news like this. It turns out that nobody dares to take leap of faith, and this is exactly what the US is betting on to win out in the end. It’s a huge risk for the empire, but it is also paying off because it dares to call out everyone’s bluff.
Every time I pointed out how the dollar is winning, I also provide the analysis and the possible solutions to stop the dollar from winning. In the end, it’s a question of political will and whether the world truly wishes to take this leap of faith or not.
It’s the same logic as your landlord (assuming you’re renting) who live in the same country/city/society as you will always enjoy the fruits of your collective labor without having to work a single day in their life, simply by extracting from your hard earned wages.
Until there is a serious land reform, nothing will fundamentally change this relations of exploitation.
The US is a landlord empire.