By tweeting about Niger/Chinese relations I’ve accidentally discovered an African focused propaganda bot farm. All pretend in to be Ghanaian but all sending identical tweets painting Chinese businesses as exploiters of Africa, especially Ghana & not interacting. They all have a handful of identical topics, use a handful of identical pidgin words, all pretend to be Ghanaian, all focus on anti-China accusations. Except some suddenly lurch into poorly copied French to support Azawad vs Mali & post anti-Russian/Wagner stuff

“[A]t the end of April 2024, the IMF granted an emergency disbursement of $120 million to Mali, a prelude to negotiations on a food security finance program, but considered too restrictive by the Malian authorities who wish to have the last word on the use of the funds”

https://twitter.com/beninwebtv/status/1881058094400319803

There has been rumors to this effect for some time, but I’ve seen zero public confirmation. In July a further IMF disbursement was opened. It was at that time there was reporting on disagreements. Bear in mind publications both opposed to & supportive of the Malian military gov…

The photo purporting to show recent Ukrainian troops published by Kyiv Post is in fact from the visit of a UK based Libyan Tuareg activist & NGO head to northern rebel groups at the beginning of June.

https://twitter.com/tommymiles/status/1818049559378944436

Original post is here, in English

https://twitter.com/akli_sh/status/1799991768655483136

It might be equally useful to ask what it is about ECOWAS—its history, formation, models, internal logics it replicates from other parts of the world—which might make some people want to create a regional body which is not ECOWAS. The serious expert retort will be “ECOWAS mandates a transition away from coup governments, and consolidating power is the sole reason to oppose it” but the current situations in Guinea, Togo, (and over past decades many other governments) make that hard to defend.

Pinning this for the flood of “Iran wants Niger’s uranium” stories over the coming months. This whole conspiracy theory was concocted by the US gov in a hamfisted attempt to intimidate the Nigerien coup leaders between Dec 2023 & 17 March 2024. While it first saw light in…

https://twitter.com/tommymiles/status/1786537858645242330

…an anonymously sourced WSJ the day US-Nigerien talks over US bases & aid crashed, its a theory that was first floated mere days after the coup, on 1 Aug 2023, by an Israeli-American journalist and think tanker for the infamous “Foundation for the Defense of Democracies”.

The idea that France or the US is staging coups in West Africa is predicated on the belief that governments in these states are threats to their imperial interests. This is more believable if you don’t know the polices or backgrounds of these governments, which sadly these days are lockstep aligned with Bretton Woods institutions, GWOT “partnerships”, resource extraction, neocolonial monetary systems and the like.

While I was looking for some of J. Peter Pham’s greatest “a Muslim behind every tree” writings from the mid 2000s, I’ve discovered many have disappeared from the internet. Many were in “FamilySecurityMatters” a wildly Islamophobic blog, from what @SPLC classes a “hate group”. Here’s SPLC’s take. splcenter.org/fighting-hate/…