The Pentagon reportedly plans to pull out some of its troops from the African country
The US has begun “repositioning” the troops it has in Niger and plans to cut their number “nearly in half” over the next several weeks, Politico reported on Friday citing two Defense Department officials.
US to cut military presence in Niger
Related:
Couldn’t resist! I literally LOL’d when they mentioned Moderna; a company that will profit from the new vaccines! 🤦🏼♀️
Previously:
Gabon’s opposition leader is accusing the family of the recently ousted president of engineering his removal from power as a way of retaining their control in the oil-rich Central African nation
Gabon Opposition Leader Alleges the Ousted President’s Family Arranged the Coup to Retain Power
Video via The New Tourist
Related:
Disputed election sparks beginning of the end of 56 years of Bongo family rule
Ali Bongo’s presidency has also been marked by a distancing from France. When he first came to power in 2009, Bongo recalled Gabon’s ambassador to Paris after France’s prime minister appeared to question the legitimacy of his election.
“Ali Bongo has never stopped distancing himself from Paris,” said Glaser. “His favourite capital is London and he has very good relations with the Americans, with China and also with Muslim countries, including Morocco. In the post-colonial period, if there’s one [African] country that has truly gone global, it’s Gabon.”
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On the 10th of April 2022, the former president of Niger, Mohamed Bazoum posted on Twitter, that “about 30 senior state officials are guilty of embezzlement or misappropriation of public funds. One of them is Niger’s communications minister who had been detained in a high-profile embezzlement case dating from when he ran a state corporation that manages Niger’s mining sector. The 2 social activists that raised the corruption alarm, Abdoulaye Seydou and Adamou Idrissa, were later arrested and transferred to the high security prison according to their coalition.
Meanwhile, French Energy giant Orano announced that it was shutting down its second largest mine in Niger after 50 years of exploitation. Their reason was the uranium deposits at the sites have been depleted.
So in Niger, you have a country with its natural resources being depleted while senior officials in government are notorious and robbing the country. But there is more. According to a publication by Reuters, An audit by the Nigerien Budgetary Transparency Agency, reported a lack of documents to back several government spending and justify the cost of infrastructure projects. The report also noted fake public tenders, and the “granting of undue advantages to certain companies. However the former president Mohamed Bazoum maintained a clean posture that endeared him to the US and ECOWAS leaders.
The former president may not be the problem, but clearly his government was riddled with corruption.
In the morning July 26 2023, the Niger presidential palace and adjacent ministries were blocked off by military vehicles and palace staff were prevented from accessing their offices. The President Mohammed Bazoum had just been removed from office. Some civilian supporters of Bazoum tried to approach the palace, but were dispersed by the Presidential Guard with gunfire, leaving one injured. Elsewhere in Niamey, the situation was described as calm.
Later In the evening, Air Force Colonel-Major Amadou Abdramane went on state television to confirm that Bazoum had been removed from power and announced the formation of a National Council for the Safeguard of the Homeland.
He also announced the suspension of all activities by political parties in the country until further notice.
Alarmed by the recurrence of military coup in the region, ECOWAS leaders swiftly responded and gave Niger’s coup leaders a one-week deadline to hand power back to Bazoum or face international sanctions and the region’s military intervention. However the defence minister of Neighbouring Nigeria, maintained the need for diplomacy. Present at the meeting to echo the fears of ECOWAS leaders that are grappling with similar corruption in their governments was Ghana defence minister.
Niger Military Coup | What They Are Not Telling You via Africa Views
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Read More »CHIUL, Guatemala − Life in Bartolo Báten’s village has been defined by corruption: A teacher who can’t get a job at the school until she pays a bribe. A water project that runs out of money before the pipes reached town. Sick residents who can’t afford the medicine that’s available elsewhere.
Insurgent candidate tells Guatemalans: Stay, don’t go to the U.S. This time, they’re listening. (archived)
Related:
Seven Decades After Guatemala Coup, Bernardo Arévalo Sees a Dramatic Rise (Will Freeman, CFR)
Arévalo and Semilla are centrists—but in a country where politics habitually skews right, they are often described as center-left. “Semilla has a social democratic element, but its program is centrist, and it also has some center-right followers,” said Lucas Perelló, a political scientist who has spent time studying the party’s formation. Arévalo says he wants to gradually universalize existing social assistance programs to include a greater share of poor Guatemalans, reduce the cost of medicines and healthcare, and link isolated parts of the country through new infrastructure—doable tasks, given Guatemala’s exceptionally low share of debt as GDP, and necessary ones, given the country’s soaring poverty and malnutrition rates.
On security issues, another major concern for Guatemalans, Arévalo promises to increase state presence in crime hotspots, reclaim jails from gangs, and use intelligence-gathering to dismantle mafias. He says Bukele’s anti-gang strategy is not applicable to Guatemala. He is also critical of human rights abuses in Venezuela and Nicaragua and Putin’s war on Ukraine and has no stated plans to recognize China over Taiwan. Asked for a leader he admires, he named the ex-president, José Pepe Mujica, of Uruguay, where he was born during his father’s exile.
The regulation will continue until internet freedom improves, apparently. Last year we wrote about Senator Michael Bennet pushing a terrible “Digital Platform Commission” to be the new internet speech police, and now we have the bipartisan free speech hating duo of Senators Elizabeth Warren and Lindsey Graham with their proposal for a Digital Consumer Protection Commission.
Senators Warren & Graham Want To Create New Online Speech Police Commission
It’s where people who receive sexual gratification from dropping military explosives on civilians go to wait for the sweet embrace of death. The whole place smells like night terrors and urine.
Capitol Hill Is An Assisted Living Facility For Psychopaths: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix
Outcry over former UKIP leader’s account being closed in sharp contrast with lack of interest in cases involving Muslim and pro-Palestine organisations
Palestine campaigners criticise double standards over Nigel Farage bank fiasco
A new investigation reveals the extent of the CIA’s involvement in the war in Ukraine, where the agency operates clandestinely in what, under a formal declaration of war, would be the domain of the military. We’re joined on the show by the author of the investigation, William Arkin, a national security reporter and senior editor at Newsweek, who says that the CIA has “got its hand in a little bit of everything” in Ukraine. According to various sources, the CIA is shuttling weapons into Ukraine using a “gray fleet” of commercial aircraft that crisscrosses Central and Eastern Europe, sending personnel into Ukraine on secret missions and assisting Ukrainians with new weapons and systems, all while using Poland as its clandestine hub to coordinate its operations inside the country. At the same time, the U.S.’s
William Arkin: CIA Is Playing “Outsize Role” in Ukraine Despite Biden Pledge Not to Send U.S. Forcesnonalignedstatus appears to place a limit on its intelligence, keeping it in the dark on both Zelensky and Putin’s next moves.
Related:
The CIA’s Blind Spot about the Ukraine War
My takeaways:
Ms. Cat’s Chronicles 
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