Internet disrupted in Burkina Faso amid military uprising | Hacker News Reader

Internet disrupted in Burkina Faso amid military uprising

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I was going to skip this one, because there's no comments yet.

And I thought that Burkina Faso doesn't deserve my attention.

But then I realized how myopic and sad I was.

So, here it is.

Burkina Faso is a land-locked country in West Africa, above Ghana, a bit West of Nigeria. [0]

As big as Nevada or Colorado (105,900 sq. miles), with 20M people. Or, for us using the metric system, 275,000 sq. km.

Poor as hell. Recent history full of coup d'é·tat, killings, etc.

Internet disruption can mean a lot of nasty things. It includes mobile as well:

> Analysis of Google Transparency metrics corroborates user reports of a mobile internet blackout

We take the internet, and our freedoms, mostly for granted. It's a good thing to remind ourselves that they are not.

I hope that people in Burkina Faso will be ok.

I know nothing about geopolitics in Africa, but I'd also wish that a few large companies (e.g. Tesla) would source their minerals from countries that can demonstrate political stability and avoid violence.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burkina_Faso

>"We take the internet, and our freedoms, mostly for granted. It's a good thing to remind ourselves that they are not."

The office of the US President has unchecked authority to shut down the US internet [0]. That that's never happened yet reflects on the discretion of individuals in office (and general historical luck), not on any legal or institutional safeguards.

[0] https://techcrunch.com/2020/10/22/representatives-propose-bi... ("Representatives propose bill limiting presidential internet ‘kill switch’")

> That that's never happened yet reflects on the discretion of individuals in office (and general historical luck), not on any legal or institutional safeguards.

I'd say it's a stronger reflection on US culture than on individual presidents. Our legal system exists to manage the details of dispute resolution; it doesn't (and shouldn't!) determine our values.

>Our legal system exists to manage the details of dispute resolution; it doesn't (and shouldn't!) determine our values.

Then what's the deal with morality based laws and policing

Laws are tools we can use to express our values, but the influence should be one-way.

If its one way, then wouldn't that make the law pointless? Which way should it be going?

Law is meant for enforcing a behavior or change in behavior, by its nature its two ways. Law is not artistic expression

Doesn't the US president also have unchecked authority to nuke any place on earth?

No. There are other countries with nukes to keep him in check (and vice versa, of course).

In theory he can nuke whoever he wants by issuing an order. If the president decides to say nuke Toronto on a whim, then he can.

There are of course consequences in that the US may then get nuked in retaliation, but that doesn't stop the actual nuking.

Whether in reality, the orders will be followed (initially the secretary of defense, whose job is to authenticate the order came from the president, and then the joint chiefs they orders are relayed to), or if they would be delayed enough to invoke the 25th amendment and remove the president from power, is a matter of speculation.

That would cause retaliation. Murdering civilians with drones on the other hand is quite popular and widely tolerated (so far).

Thank you.

It’s also at the center of Jihadi activity in Africa and the situation is only getting worse every year.

> I know nothing about geopolitics in Africa, but I'd also wish that a few large companies (e.g. Tesla) would source their minerals from countries that can demonstrate political stability and avoid violence

For some minerals, e.g. cobalt, there's simply no such option. Unless they decide to go with it United Fruit Company/banana republic style, but benevolently. What's worse, a corporation or a military dictatorship?

that's an easy one, military dictatorship is much worse. The last time when companies committed war crimes by themselves, independently of governments, was long ago.

Okay about war crimes, but there are also crimes against (humanity|nature) in the form of oil spills, forced displacements, up to now.

Yes, sure, but this is still not comparable with using weapons of mass destruction. We need to keep in mind though that the reason why corporations are not, say, nuking away their concurrence, is that they are prevented by the states. so its not as easy as "state bad, corporate good", it's rather, "as an unimportant civilian person on this planet right now, i need to be cautious of governments more than corporations"

I agree with the general idea, but I fear the counter-argument that says that this kind of blockage or boycott make the region even poorer which empowers dictators.

> Poor as hell.

understated. people can't afford electricity or clothes and their main staple is banana. few go to school. a bicycle is considered a major asset. their options in life are either making enough money to survive, or stealing in order to survive.

Most Burkinabes live on subsistence agriculture, not making or stealing money.

It doesn’t make sense anyhow, like the old myth that Africa is full of beggars. Who are they begging from?

It’s not particularly likely there’s a society consisting of a few rich people who spend their days walking around dispensing money to the beggars who make up the rest. And neither is a society where everyone is doing nothing but stealing money.

I was interested in why there's a coup.

Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-60102087

The mutineers made several demands, including:

    * the dismissal of the army chief of staff and the head of the intelligence service

    * the deployment of more troops to the front line to fight the insurgents

    * better care for wounded solders, and the families of those killed in battle.

This apparently centers around:

> The killing of 53 people by suspected jihadists in November heightened public outrage against the government, and raised fears that the military would take power - just as it had in neighbouring Mali in May.

> On Saturday, dozens of people were arrested in Ouagadougou for holding a banned rally to protest against what they described as the government's inability to deal with the militants.

It's official now

https://m.facebook.com/faso226226/videos/451555413125409/?ex...

Burkina Faso had a great man once, Thomas Sankara. He actually gave the country the name it has today. If you are interested, check out this collection of clips of him speaking and marvel at the contrast between him and what we have today: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LVKgvakY_Io

Sankara took power in a military coup himself. While he led positive reforms such as literacy and vaccination campaigns, he also banned trade unions and the free press. His Committees for the Defense of the Revolution and Popular Revolutionary Tribunals engaged in torture, execution and arbitrary detention. It’s hard to find unbiased accounts of his rule, as anti-communists tend to ignore his achievements while communists have practically declared him a saint, but I’d take hagiographic accounts of the man with a grain of salt.

Modern liberal democracy could not have existed without Napoleon. Yet you don't see liberals venerating him as a saint or anything. It's puzzling why communists insist on canonizing every dictator that happens to use a red flag.

We don't. Stalin and Mao both made mistakes, the common assessment is ~70/30. Sankara and Castro made fewer mistakes. All led movements that drastically improved the lives of millions of workers and that is why they are held in high regard.

The problem is that most of us live under the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, otherwise called liberal democracy. It's hard to have an objective assessment in the face of constant and pervasive anti-communist propaganda. Even you used the term "dictator", which is simply not supported by historical fact. On the other hand, there's not much point to propaganda for or against Napoleon.

"Three parts bad, seven parts good" is the official Chinese Communist Party line on Mao's legacy. A neutral assessment would not be so positive.

Considering liberalism (and thus capitalism) is currently dominant, who would make such a neutral assessment?

[edit] Also, it's Communist Party of China.

In theory tenured academic historians are supposed to be able to make neutral assessments regardless of which political theory is currently dominant. Whether that's true in practice is a matter of opinion.

You're welcome to examine pretty much any economic or health metric for China during and after the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution and draw your own conclusions.

My own unscientific view was that while Mao did an OK job unifying the country and (to some extent) fighting off the Japanese, pretty much everything he did after the founding of the PRC was varying levels of disastrous.

Subjecting your population to multiple genocidal events seems worse than 70/30 to me. Many leaders who we hold in middling esteem have managed not to murder tens of millions of their own people.

That's the dominant liberal propaganda, yes. It doesn't necessarily match the historical record, especially in different countries.

The same propaganda holds Churchill in high esteem despite the Bengal Famine and his general enthusiasm for imperialism and sympathy for fascism. There's a reason there are people with the first name "Stalin" in India, but Churchill is overwhelmingly hated.

I think it's pretty insane how communists refer to any contradictory fact as propaganda.

We don't, we just use the term accurately: information spread with the purpose of convincing. It doesn't have to be incorrect, lots of propaganda is entirely accurate. We label our own efforts as propaganda, too.

The dominance of capitalism in most countries is not disputed. Is it far-fetched that capitalists would like to maintain their rule through ideology as well? The effects are readily apparent when comparing newspapers, school curriculum, public announcements, etc. from countries that disagree even slightly.

"Made mistakes" is some very careful language on your part. To then follow that up with "the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, otherwise called liberal democracy" is fairly deceptive.

Personally speaking, I don't think capitalism, socialism, or communism are inherently good. The only way any of them work is by mixing traits of others and regulation. Given that, they're all pretty arbitrary.

> Modern liberal democracy could not have existed without Napoleon.

Maybe I've got a few blind spots there, but didn't Napoleon took power by a military coup against a nominal democracy? And I don't really see what he did that would lead to the creation of modern democracy: after his defeat France went back to a monarchy and I don't think any of the countries he invaded became democracies either during or after the French occupation.

See Code Napoleon: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napoleonic_Code He ruled like a monarch, but he reformed and liberalized the society itself and spread those ideas throughout Europe during his conquests. His rule was ended, but the reforms could not be undone by any monarch.

> Maybe I've got a few blind spots there, but didn't Napoleon took power by a military coup against a nominal democracy

Coup yes, military kind of ( based on his military successes, but it wasn't executed by troops), against a nominal democracy - not at all.

However the Napoleonic Code Civil and the many reforms he enacted in France ( administrative, educative) which were also spread, alongside the revolutionary ideals, abroad wherever he conquered, significantly impacted Europe. It's generally accepted that the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars ushered the new era of nationalism, liberalism and political thinking ( including Marxism, because Karl Marx was inspired by the French Revolution and this type of event figured prominently in his thinking).

Pinning it all on Napoleon would be falling for the Great Man fallacy, but he certainly contributed a lot.

> Coup yes, military kind of ( based on his military successes, but it wasn't executed by troops), against a nominal democracy - not at all.

The Directory was a multimember executive of a nominal democracy, so, no, the upthread description was entirely accurate.

(The Directory wasn't itself directly elected, but then neither are a number of executives, individual or group, in democratic republics.)

As you said, the Directory wasn't elected and they had the executive power. The Directory itself was installed by a coup. They were in no shape or form a democracy.

That's not really comparable to a prime minister elected in a two-stage election like the UK.

> As you said, the Directory wasn't elected

I did not say that.

I said they weren't directly elected.

They were elected by the Council of Ancients (upper house of the national legislature, which was itself elected) from a list sent by the Council of 500 (lower house of the national legislature, also elected.)

> The Directory itself was installed by a coup.

No, it wasn't. After the Constitution of Year III was adopted, the two councils were elected under it and then the Directory elected by the councils.

Yeah, the Man dragged the country out from poverty. In his own, not very pleasant or innocent ways, but still! And he scared the sheet out of bankers!

Looks like a repeat of the Guinea coup from few months ago: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/10/world/africa/guinea-coup-...

Also, an interestring video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6O2T_-4Wls

This might not shock you but it is a funny story. When I was in high school we used to learn Geography and capital of Burkina Faso "Wagadugu" stuck in my head. So every time someone was trying to be all jumpy and show off how smart she/he is I would ask "what is the capital of Burkina Faso".

This is how little I know about Burkina Faso. "Not great not terrible", maybe terrible.

*Ouagadougou (but indeed pronounced "Wagadugu" in English, since the spelling is French)

https://ooni.org reported on this previously:

https://twitter.com/OpenObservatory/status/14842287497553960...

First Mali, now this. It’s the sign of a robust cultural hegemony when they copy even your worst ideas, I guess. Like McDonald’s, 70+-year copyright terms, or the violent descent from democracy into chaos.

There's historically been a whole list of neo colonial "adventurers" out to forment coups just to make some cash and damn the population to poverty, violence and chaos. And you better believe it's all done with an approving nod by the Western powers.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Thatcher

"And you better believe it's all done with an approving nod by the Western powers."

Maybe often, but surely not always. The recent coup d'etat in Mali for example was certainly not approved by the west (or went out of hands) as the new government rather shifts to china and russia.

Seems like the west is busy at the moment... thats why they let China get their hooks in instead of playing thr same move themselves.

The problem is mostly broadband and abondening dial up connections. When the arab spring happenend telecomixx went and booted up old dial up hardware to give them internet access back or at least a form of outside communication. Now we are stuck with satellite if the broadband and cell infrastructre gets hit in countries like Burkino Faso. We need to support legacy systems for longer not for us but for other places without modern infrastructure.

I very much hope it's not a France sponsored coup

Western countries sponsoring coups in their former colonial posessions in 2022 will be a great insult to the whole idea of West trying to fix the world, and not the other way around.

Well, all these coups and civil wars are the price for other people's good lifes.

We only have one planet so someone has to pay the price. I know this is not a popular opinion, especially on US sites, but it's the truth. It's incredibly racist to think otherwise. Because what's the alternative? Half the world is made of idiots born in utter poverty because they are idiots and can't get their countries straight?

Coups don't help. They make things worse and that's about it. I don't know a proper solution. All I can suggest: donate money to education. Invite foreign children temporarily to US, educate them and send educated ones back in their home country. Do it on scale. Don't allow them to stay in US (because most of them will want to stay, that's harsh thing to say, for sure). Educated smart people will eventually get the power and hopefully they'll build better home country.

Russia has the highest tertiary education rate in the world, aaaand?

In reality, both are needed, but, immediately, tanks, military training, and other powerful weapons are of way more use for democracy.

I assume that when the parent comment said “educated”, they didn’t mean just things like literacy and math, but also educated culturally in terms of western ideals and civic values. As someone who actually grew up in Russia and was fortunate enough to immigrate to the US with my family around high school and has spent over a decade here so far, I can assure you that the civic values and the whole relationship of citizens with the law and the government are wildly different between those two countries. So I am definitely somewhat seeing the point of what the parent comment is proposing.

P.S. I ask people replying ahead of time, please do not derail the thread with assessment of western ideals themselves or bringing up a bunch of unsavory moments from western history. That’s obviously not what we are talking about here.

> western ideals

What is the "west"? And what are such ideals?

Russia is fine.

> Invite foreign children temporarily to US, educate them and send educated ones back in their home country

Let me introduce you to https://exchanges.state.gov/non-us/program/future-leaders-ex...

All it does is create incentives for people to go back and create meaningless NGOs whose only purpose is to siphon grants and hold press conferences.

How do I know? I come from a basically a third-world country where such programs do jack shit: (A very small subset can be seen here: https://ngoexplorer.org/country/mda/show-charities)

False dichotomy. The alternative is that the economy is not a zero-sum game, half the world is unlucky to be born in worse-off countries that are the way they are because of their history and geography, and "getting your country straight" is a difficult and complex task that requires cooperation on massive scale.

They really aren't.

The popular narrative is that the commoners own the responsibility for imperialism "because it helped them" and this assertion tends to be taken without question.

The reality is far more complicated. What is true is that imperialism is driven by and for the very rich and powerful ruling class. And what is also true is that the common people have been forced to bear the brunt of these wars and interventions and expansion. The common people of imperialist countries have also been victims of imperialism.

That's a weird idea. While steady exploitation could be a price for other people's good lives, coups and civil wars are almost pure loss. This or that weapon merchant can make some money but it's peanuts compared to ordered economic activity.

> I very much hope it's not a France sponsored coup

Is there any indication that could be the case? I don't see what France would get from such a case, and all the reporting so far seems to be that junior military men are complaining about top military brass and insufficient resources to combat jihadists. France is already embroiled in Mali in that same fight, so it could be a continuation of the same policy.

> Is there any indication that could be the case?

It's just an automatic assumption when you hear "coup in Africa." France has a very, very long record of staging coups in African countries, in particular upstanding ones.

> I don't see what France would get from such a case,

I don't see either, but America never got anything out of its coups in South Americas either, only more headaches.

Many of them, just because they didn't like the Africans, and just wanted to hurt them out of their sociopatic tendencies, with some geopolitical bullshit as a pretext.

While I don't think France is sponsoring anything (this time around), I'm finding the idea 'of West trying to fix the world' rather naive; and it's not something that should be just be done by the West.

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