At least 15 officers who benefited from U.S. security assistance have been involved in 12 coups in West Africa and the greater Sahel during the war on terror, according to a series of reports by The Intercept.
The list includes military personnel from Burkina Faso (2014, 2015, and twice in 2022); Chad (2021); Gambia (2014); Guinea (2021); Mali (2012, 2020, 2021); Mauritania (2008); and Niger (2023).
Not all U.S.-trained African coup leaders hail from the Sahel. Before Gen. Abdel Fattah el-Sisi deposed Egypt’s first democratically elected president, Mohamed Morsi, in 2013, he underwent basic training at Fort Benning, now Fort Moore, in Georgia and advanced instruction at the U.S. Army War College in Pennsylvania.
The numbers are pretty meaningless without total numbers.
E.g. if it’s 70 out 1,000,000 it’s a different scenario than 70 out of 100.
And also some context would be nice: historical context - were coup attempts a continuous theme before us or this new? Any other nations getting involved in training in their facilities, and their outcomes?
Of course Pentagon’s silence is deafening but it’s probably to be expected if no good (for them) would come out of it.
The people are possibly more relevant than the amount that got trained. After his training in America Sisi did a coup in 2013 and is now the president of Egypt running a brutal dictatorship.
He receives 1 billion dollars a year from America in weapons to surpress his people. The guy really loves israel too. All very convenient.
This is just one of the more obvious links, but America overthrowing governments in Africa and the Middle East is extremely common if their current president does something that goes against American interests.
Fascinating read - interesting that the origin of the hack is not yet known (or at least, released). I wonder what the stats are on these sorts of exploits in OSS - the concept relies so much on trust and individuals.
Ken Thompson talked about this back in 1984, his talk/article “Reflections on trusting trust” is a short but scary read. cs.cmu.edu/…/Thompson_1984_ReflectionsonTrustingT…
In the end, what can we trust?
A backdoor is very distinct from a vanilla vulnerability. Heartbleed was a vulnerability, meaning the devs made a mistake in the code, introducing a method of attack. XZ was backdoored, meaning a malicious actor intentionally introduced a method by which he could exploit systems.
Both are pretty serious vulnerabilities, but a backdoor, especially introduced so high in the supply chain, would have been devastating had it not been caught so early.
We’ve got to contact our elected representatives and tell them we don’t want them to support ‘The Lobby’ and/or Israel! They often get financing for election runs from that organization, so are beholden to them, not their electorate in most cases.
This is one particular instance where I’d be okay with a politician going back on his word/ folding from a threat. Gaza already has Biden in hot water, and getting our troops involved in a direct conflict with Iran, after FINALLY getting out of Afghanistan, is just gonna make things worse, dammit. Put more money into green energy so we can finally stop getting involved in the middle east, PLEASE.
The Times memo outlines guidance on a range of phrases and terms. “The nature of the conflict has led to inflammatory language and incendiary accusations on all sides. We should be very cautious about using such language, even in quotations. Our goal is to provide clear, accurate information, and heated language can often obscure rather than clarify the fact,” the memo says.
“Words like ‘slaughter,’ ‘massacre’ and ‘carnage’ often convey more emotion than information. Think hard before using them in our own voice,” according to the memo. “Can we articulate why we are applying those words to one particular situation and not another? As always, we should focus on clarity and precision — describe what happened rather than using a label.”
Despite the memo’s framing as an effort to not employ incendiary language to describe killings “on all sides,” in the Times reporting on the Gaza war, such language has been used repeatedly to describe attacks against Israelis by Palestinians and almost never in the case of Israel’s large-scale killing of Palestinians.
In January, The Intercept published an analysis of New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times coverage of the war from October 7 through November 24 — a period mostly before the new Times guidance was issued. The Intercept analysis showed that the major newspapers reserved terms like “slaughter,” “massacre,” and “horrific” almost exclusively for Israeli civilians killed by Palestinians, rather than for Palestinian civilians killed in Israeli attacks.
Despite the memo’s framing as an effort to not employ incendiary language to describe killings “on all sides,” in the Times reporting on the Gaza war, such language has been used repeatedly to describe attacks against Israelis by Palestinians and almost never in the case of Israel’s large-scale killing of Palestinians.
Thank you for bolding it because it is the only relevant part of the article. If they wanna use scaled back language then fine, I have no real issue with that but if you’re breaking those rules for one side and upholding them for another then you’re just a hot pile of biased bullshit.
The banning of the terms Genocide, Ethnic Cleansing and Occupied Territory are also really important. The big difference is of course that the words slaughter, massacare etc can apply to both Palestinians and israelis. But their selective usasage does signify a massive double standard which proves the New York Times’ bias in favor of israel.
And it confirms earlier suspicions such as NLP reports from Holly Jackson written about a month into the Genocide that this selective usage of loaded terms against Palestinians was not accidental. It is a deliberate propaganda campaign for israel.
Another important fact here is that New York Times was not alone in this significant propaganda effort. Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, The Guardian, Reuters, and more. All of them had this very obviously skewed usage of language biased in favor of israel. Passive vs active tone, Palestinians “died” and israelis were “brutally slaughtered”.
Maybe because Palestine is two separate territories with separate governments, and one is not at war? I don’t know what they say about using some variation of Gaza, but that seems more relevant to me
The West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem have been considered Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) since 1967, the occupation was a deliberate decision by Israel.
Israel is an Apartheid State by every international definition, with systematic discrimination and oppression of Palestinians. Divide and Conquer has been a tactic to separate Gaza from the West Bank, and also divide the West Bank into isolated enclaves.
On 1967:
Israel Claimed Its 1967 Land Conquests Weren’t Planned. Declassified Documents Reveal Otherwise: Haaretz and Forward
Palestine was recognized by the UN as a sovereign non-member state in 1988. It has no declared borders, so it could be considered inaccurate to refer to Palestine as a location rather than referring to the Palestinian people, leading to libel suits.
Basically, Palestine is wherever the Palestinians are. Legally, an attack on the Palestinian people is an attack on Palestine, but an attack on the formally occupied parts of the West Bank are not.
Yes, as well as the West Bank. My point is NYT was probably avoiding libel suits due to the ambiguity of the term “Palestine” because it’s more a definition of a people than a place.
As for the other restrictions, I think we all know what they were trying to avoid saying.
The NY Times has always been on Team Israel. NYC has a lot of Jewish people so I don’t think it’s an odd or bad thing as long as it’s understood by readers. The “voice” of the Times is that of New Yorkers in the same way the BBC is often that of Londoners even if they try to be objective. The BBC is still a reputable news source even if they covered the Queen’s Jubilee like fan girls.
But not using “occupied territories” or “Palestine” is just silly. That’s what everyone calls the West Bank, Gaza, and (usually) East Jerusalem, collectively. It’s not offensive to ask “Did you go to the Palestinian side?” after a Jewish friend comes back from a trip to Israel. No one but maybe the Israeli far right gives a shit if you say “Palestine.” It’s like refusing to say “New York” and requiring everyone to say “Manhattan, the Bronx, Brooklyn, Staten Island, and Queens.”
And for the record, The NY Times is also biased towards yuppies and Ivy League schools. It’s always been the upper crust NYC newspaper. I’m not making some sort of coded “Jews control the media” argument. A Presbyterian asshole from Australia controls like a third of it, including the NY Post. Jeff Bezos owns the Washington Post and he worships Jeff Bezos, as far as I can tell.
It really can’t be described as “oopsie we had a little bias” anymore. After the fake mass rape article it’s pretty clear the New York Times is just writing propaganda for israel
Research into media coverage exposes the way that language can diminish the enormity of the crimes against the people of Gaza. On the BBC, between 7 October and 4 November, words like “mass murder”, “brutal murder” and “merciless murder” were used 52 times by journalists to refer to the deaths of Israelis but never in relation to Palestinian deaths.
It’s time people start realizing that Western media isn’t as unbiased as they once believed. Most of the time it’s actually fine. But when its time to manufacture consent for war crimes they all link their hands together and spread propaganda in unison. Just like they did for the Iraq invasion.
Personally I think it's more about the NYT being a semi official mouthpiece of the US empire and its elites.
The NYT reflects the views of US elites most of whom support Israel because it's a vital client state in a region of incredible security and economic importance to the global structure that empowers those elites.
Yeah, maybe I’m being too generous, especially in the internet era where it’s the de facto national newspaper. I’m an elder millennial and even I remember a time when having a computer/internet wasn’t universal and it was hard to find a copy of The NY Times outside of cities because it was still a regional paper for the most part. Even in cities, you had to find a specialty newspaper store (which also usually was primarily a cigarette store). So, it didn’t have the same reach.
Remember how NYT reporter Judith Miller teamed up the the neo-cons in Dick Cheney’s circle to “stovepipe” their phony intelligence about Iraq’s WMD to the mainstream media, which they could then cite as part of their justification for the invasion?
Remember also how, after Miller was disgraced and forced to resign, the Times had a public reckoning about its role as a mouthpiece for the establishment in selling a war on false pretenses?
I’d be surprised, because that last bit never happened. They just sort of moved on like it never happened.
Well, yeah, and The NY Times seems to be increasingly horrified and there’s been leaks that their internal debates have been very intense. There’s nuance to be found in this instance.
Personally, I consider war vile morally but also basically obsolete as a way to achieve the ostensible goals. Israel should have treated it as a limited police action that solely focused on freeing hostages while turning Hamas into a shell of its former self. Sadly, they have morons in charge who went with collective punishment and a resurgent Hamas (or an equivalent new group) is basically inevitable.
I’ve lived in the UK for over a decade as an immigrant.
Any exposure to foreign news media alongside the BBC shows that the BBC is certainly not “a reputable news source” when it comes to international news as it’s always pushing a very specific slant aligned with the thinking of the UK and US governments.
As for local coverage, a studdy that the BBC itself had the Nottingham University do some years ago showed that the BBC always leans in favour of whichever party is in Government at the time. The UK’s Government has for some years now been Tories, of late the Brexiter Tories, which are almost as far right as Orban in Hungary, just with a posh education.
If you want a great example, just look up their coverage of Corbyn back when was elected the leader of the Labour Party: one one occasion that news source you call “reputable” literally photoshoped a soviet cap into a picture of him and used it as background in a news segment during the slander campaign to kick Corbyn out as leader of the Labour party because he was an actual leftie rather than a neolib.
Things like Brexit weren’t born in a total vacuum: there is a huge English nationalist pro-neoliberal slant in the coverage from what is still the TV sender with the largest audience in Britain.
100% true, but it is more accurate to call it Team US State Department. It’s essentially the mouthpiece for US foreign interference to manufacture consent of the populace.
Edit: sorry I didn’t read the responses, people have already said this.
Biden won’t put US military members in the way to deter an actual fucking genocide…
But he’s scrambling jets to protect uninhabited areas in Israel?
This isn’t just him supporting a genocide anymore, he’s not making logical decisions. He’s said for literal decades that nothing will ever make him lower his complete support of Israel, and he keeps showing us that’s true
Someone with that kind of loyalty to any foreign government for any reason should disqualify them from holding at least the presidential office.
It was bad when Trump was like this with Russia, and the whole Dem party agreed.
Then Biden does the same shit and suddenly it’s ok?
Iran hurting almost nobody is in everyone’s best interests.
We don’t need Israel vs Iran lobbing missiles at each other or marching to attack each other. Shooting down every single Iranian rocket was the fastest and simplest way to peace.
Shooting down every single Iranian rocket was the fastest and simplest way to peace.
Not really. This wasn’t America acting with a strategic strike. They simply shot down a few missiles to “support” Israel … because to do otherwise could have opened the door to other Arab nations lobbing bombs at Israel where over 1 million Palestinians are still living.
I don’t like that Biden is supporting Israel, but I’m not going to put him and Trump on the same level. Trump moved our embassy to Jerusalem. Biden has allowed a lot of shit I hate and don’t want us to be a part of, but acting like they’re one and the same is not helpful. Especially when we would have had boots on the ground helping Israel if Trump was in office.
If someone kicked you in the balls, would it be ok for everyone you meet after that to punch you in the face?
But that isn’t the situation. The situation is that you can choose to let someone kick you in the balls, or you can choose to let a whole gang mug you. There isn’t a third choice, no matter how much you want there to be. Third party candidates are a great ideal, but until we have a different voting system, it will continue being an ideal instead of reality.
The primary still isn’t over, but people have been saying that for years…
We get two poor decisions every four years, and shit ain’t going to change as long as two private organizations are the only two options.
It’s easy for the DNC to match what it’s voters want, but they’ve become out right antagonistic towards their voting base, and voters can’t really do anything because at the end of the day our political parties are private groups with no responsibility to voters.
So you can keep blindly supporting them, but in case you haven’t noticed, it loses the party voters every election. If you really just care about beating republicans, then you should be putting you’re energy to pulling the party left.
Not telling people to give up an accept this as best possible.
You’re trying to summarize a situation into something small and easy for people, but it’s complex and shitty.
I understand the plight of the people in Gaza and the absolutely abhorrent behavior my country has had towards them. I understand how the futuristic and advanced weapons made by my country have negatively impacted the world.
I also now live in a world that deals with the results of Donald Trump in office. My mom, sister, niece and wife don’t have access to the same healthcare they once did that was a right to them. I have a court system now that’s so skewed compared to American politics that it dictates policy to us rather than democratically enables the people. I live under a system of moved goal posts because Trump made the wall into a whole thing, and now everyone looks to shut the border down constantly rather than dealing with the reasons people flood across it. Every day people in my country die from gun violence and expanded police powers both of which rapidly increased under Trump and who changed the laws making it easier to purchase weapons and who made police more resistant to citizen committees.
And before you switch to the “why don’t you then change it” we’re working on. The journey of a thousand miles begins with the first steps. Fascists don’t just go away when they lose. They fester. Trying to throw it all away means potentially creating one of the bloodiest conflicts the world has ever seen because we’re upset temporarily. I get that people are needlessly dying, but more will die no matter what we do. Staying the course, correcting the effects of Donald Trump, changing the tides of American politics and shifting the left actually left is the best course of action right now. We’re getting there. Not as fast as I or others like, but I see it every day.
You’re trying to summarize a situation into something small and easy for people, but it’s complex and shitty
It’s definitely shitty, but the choice to support a genocide or not is surprisingly easy…
Like, you act like what good Biden has done inexplicably comes with the evil Biden does.
We could have someone that helps.more and does less evil.
To take it back to my “small and easy” analogy, someone that shakes your hand, or at least just gives one of those barely noticable head nods without a change in facial expression even.
You’ve let the guy who kicked you in the nuts lower the bar too much, youve forgotten what acceptable behavior looks like.
If it’s too late to change candidates, why hasn’t the DNC convention taken place?
Why did they schedule it so late in the summer that they missed multiple state deadlines to be on general election ballots?
And if your answer is going to have anything to do with the DNC being completely incompetent: why are you insisting we keep letting them be the only thing that stands between America and trump?
If it's too late to change candidates, why hasn't the DNC convention taken place?
Who, exactly, would be an ideal candidate at this point to replace Biden that has a hope in hell of winning? Who, exactly, has the national recognition to pull that off in the Democrat party, or really any other party, in November of this year?
We could have someone that helps more and does less evil.
Really? Who?
You “genocide joe” folks keep saying there’s a better choice, but nobody will give me a name, a website, a campaign address I can send money to, anything. Show the candidate that can literally win in 7 months. Otherwise, you’re asking me to put my family at additional risk for the payoff of helping exactly 0 people in Gaza… unless you define helping as Israel “finishing the job.”
Hell, the major reason for voting Biden is literally that he’s not trump, a qualification everyone eligible to run for president shares, except trump.
Do you honestly think 7 months isn’t enough time to run a general campaign? Why is the primary not scheduled to end for two more months if that’s true?
Seriously, how can you rationalize the primary not being scheduled to end for two more months if that’s not enough time for a general campaign?
I actually voted for Warren in the primaries last cycle. As far as I know, she isn’t running this cycle and isn’t on the ballot in any states that have already passed the8r registration deadlines.
I know for a fact that 7 months isn’t long enough to run a presidential campaign because, again, you have to have filed to run usually a year in advance. Unless you’re suggesting that Warren is running the best write-in campaign in American history. I’m happy to help her, but I’m a little worried I haven’t heard a word about it from her or any PACs.
If the bar for running a campaign is “knowing it’s hard to win the electoral college if you aren’t on the ballot” then yeah, I guess I’m qualified…but being so smart, I know there’s quite a bit more to it than that.
I think that campaigns start during or before the primary…you know, when the media starts talking about who’s gonna run and what their positions are…then all the commercials start running…that all feels pretty campaigny to me. So I can’t really comment on why you think the DNC doesn’t let folks campaign before the convention. Feels like that’d make voting in all those primaries a lot harder.
I’m not the other person, but that’s obviously not helpful and simply makes you look immature. Either explain where you think someone’s gone wrong or leave out the “hope that helps.” Or don’t, and everyone reading is reminded of that scene from the big Lebowski
Whoever wrote that article about my comments being pro genocide is really acting like their reading comprehension has been severally damaged by eating too much lead based paint.
This is a dumb take - I definitely want us to cut off military aide to Isreal that’s used for offensive purposes… but there’s no reason to let Iran bomb Isreal just because we’re pissed off about Palestine. Isreal being forced into a defensive war is only likely to accelerate deaths in Gaza.
Which exists inside of what was already an Israeli air base, is under control of Israel, and was only put there in name by trump so the US would have an excuse to attack anyone that attacks Israel.
Like, this shit isn’t ancient history, but I’m constantly surprised on here that I’m the only one who remembers stuff from the last decade.
The u.s. could easily enforce a no-fly zone over gaza and implement an iron dome to intercept missiles going either way instead of just protecting israel.
If the u.s wanted this to stop they could, it’s not a matter of ability, it’s a matter of will.
That is what I was thinking, but also wonder if it was part of their show of power. They telegraphed their intentions fairly clearly. If they intentionally disabled half of the drones after take off, then it might simply be an additional warning. If this attack was shot down, could double the drones also be shot down? Just speculation, but I do have a feeling that there is more to it than just half malfunctioned.
Take an estimate of how many you think they can stop, let’s say 100.
Set up 500 in incrementally increasing waves, give them a weeks notice it’s coming, then a short warning before you launch.
When some start to make it thru, flip a switch to drop some out of the next wave
You now have an accurate number for how many drones/missiles can be shot out of the sky by Israel and the US over a range of time.
This wasn’t an “attack” it was pushing up and finding out exactly how much Israel can handle.
The implied threat being if Iran wanted to, they could overwhelm Israel’s defense, and they now know exactly how much that would take. Along with what out of a huge range of options gets thru best.
Say they launch an actual attack, they could include a bunch of dummy ordnances delivered by the payloads most likely to be shot down, and prioritize the heaviest payloads in what’s less likely to be shot down.
This was also a great leaning experience for the US and the other participants. With Ukraine’s experience against the Russian invasion, we’re seeing how drones are completely changing military strategy. Strategists all over the world are probably reviewing this “battle” to learn as much as they can to later apply it to both offensive and defensive weapons.
theintercept.com
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