France's Student-Led Cost-of-Living Protest Movement The French Enlightenment was one of the most influential intellectual movements in European history. Emerging mainly in the 17th and 18th centuries, it challenged absolute monarchy, religious intolerance and inherited privilege, and rejected the idea that ordinary people should simply obey those in power. Its message was revolutionary: human beings possess reason and dignity, political authority must be justified, and liberty should never depend on the goodwill of a king. It helped shape the Revolution of 1789 and our modern understanding of civil liberties, constitutional government and human rights. Yet France also showed a profound contradiction: a nation that proclaimed liberty and equality did not always extend those principles to everyone. Today, the French student-led and cost-of-living protest movement carries that tradition forward. Across Europe and the world, ordinary people face creeping economic hardship, while a handful of tech billionaires build technology that takes away jobs and leaves the future of our youth in doubt. French students and workers have chosen to respond, and we commend them for it. This movement will not stop in France. It will reach cities across Europe, because the question it asks belongs to everyone: who is progress for, if not the people? Video credit: @MrPropagande @EmmanuelMacron @EU_Commission @franceinfo @Charlie_Hebdo_ #FranceX #SaloneX @FranceNews24

“About three corpses along Lightfoot Boston Street, near Connaught Hospital, in Freetown Sierra Leone, yesterday. Really sad.” A friend’s account of the new Sierra Leone! Yet, there is hardly any public outrage over the loss of human lives, while plastic patriots are busy venting their anger over The Guardian’s opinion and its description of Sierra Leone as a narco-state. How do you claim to love a country while remaining indifferent to the suffering and deaths of its people, yet become fiercely defensive when its international reputation is questioned? The real shame is not merely what the world says about Sierra Leone, but what is happening to Sierra Leoneans while self-proclaimed patriots choose outrage over accountability. This is selective patriotism at its worst. #CollectiveHypocrisy @JudiciaryofSL @USEmbFreetown @UKinSierraLeone @guardian @JosefSkrdlik @APCofficial001 @MoiceComm @AYVnews @PoliceLeone @sierraeyesalone #SaloneX #GambiaX

Allyship from Hell How Sierra Leone's oldest political quarrel became its longest national tragedy! Sierra Leone's political rivalry did not start between two parties. It started inside one. Milton Margai's SLPP led the country to independence in 1961, but Siaka Stevens, "Sheki", fell out with it over the terms of independence and the defence arrangements with Britain, and in 1960 he founded the All People's Congress (APC). The Margai v Sheki quarrel is now more than sixty years old, and the country is still paying for it. A quarrel over principle might have ended in a settlement. This one became a business model. Over the decades, SLPP and APC leaders taught their supporters to read politics through region and tribe, so that a neighbour from the "other side" became an enemy. The fear works. People who are afraid of each other don't ask where the money went. Stevens's APC went on to rule through a one-party state, and the economy and public institutions decayed under it, feeding the conditions for the civil war of the 1990s. Power has passed back and forth between the two houses since, and the habits of the elite have barely changed. Meanwhile the country sits on diamonds, iron ore, bauxite, rutile and gold, yet it ranks among the lowest nations in the world on the UN Human Development Index. Ernest Bai Koroma governed for a decade. Julius Maada Bio has now governed for eight years. Each promised change, and each left citizens struggling with food prices, jobs, health care and basic services. Presidents and parties have changed. The poverty has not. For too many politicians, public office is a livelihood rather than a duty, a way to enrich themselves and their circle, often in step with outside interests that profit from the country's weakness, while ordinary people carry the cost. This is what makes the current moment so bitter. The tensions around the disputed 2023 election and the November 2023 attacks on military installations were serious. The government accused Koroma of involvement, which he denies. ECOWAS intervened, and he went to Nigeria. He is now back and has spoken of a town hall meeting. Meanwhile the government is convening a National Unity and Social Cohesion Conference at Bintumani on 26–27 October, with President Bio delivering the keynote under the theme "From Agreement to Action". These are men who called each other threats to the state, now mending fences in public. Dialogue between rivals is better than violence, and anyone who wants peace should say so. But a peace negotiated between elites and announced at a conference is not yet a peace the people can feel. Sierra Leoneans have sat through many of these gatherings. They convene, the communiqués are issued, the taxpayer pays, and life goes on exactly as before. A meeting becomes self-importance when it is held for the leaders rather than the led. Unity is not a theme or a poster. It is clean water, working schools, jobs, fair courts and leaders who can be held to account. The citizens of Sierra Leone should understand that SLPP and APC are two wings of the same house, and that the fight between them was never really theirs. The rivalry is real, but the elites' interests converge where it matters, at the table where the country's wealth is shared. A people divided by tribe and region will never hold that table to account. The sooner Sierra Leoneans stop outsourcing their hopes to either house, the better for all of us. @GleanerSierraLe @sierraeyesalone @TruthmediaSL @LeoneIssues @ebklegacy @julius_maadabio @APCofficial001 @DUnifier @USEmbFreetown #SaloneX @UKinSierraLeone #NigeriaX

If Sierra Leoneans are offended by @guardian calling #SierraLeone the world's first true narco-state, the answer is not outrage on social media and beyond. It is now incumbent on the government's to challenge that claim with evidence: arrests, prosecutions, transparency. The harrowing images of young Sierra Leoneans collapsing in the streets from kush have already shocked our comrades across Africa. How much worse when the state stands accused of shielding a cocaine baron and letting him use the nation as a hub for his trade? Real pan-Africanism does not defend drug trafficking or the destruction of African youth. Officials who dismiss this as neo-colonialism should stop abusing a term that carried real weight in Africa's liberation struggle. Doing nothing on the other hand will only make the label stick. @TruthmediaSL @LibertyOnlineTV @sierraeyesalone @beyondB_DAG @USEmbFreetown #SaloneX @DutchPolice @visegrad24 @JosefSkrdlik #GhanaX #NigerianX theguardian.com/global-devel…

Congratulations to our comrade, in the broader progressive and socialist political family. Raphaël Glucksmann @rglucks1, on winning the French centre-left presidential primary. His victory positions him as a formidable force to challenge the far right, particularly Marine Le Pen @MLP_officiel, in 2027. 🇫🇷✊🏾 #SocialistSurge #SaloneX #Socialism

The SLPP–APC duopoly is rooted in deep ideological and ethnocentric chauvinism, and it remains a major obstacle to nation-building in Sierra Leone. Until we find the courage to dismantle this destructive system, a better Sierra Leone will remain an illusion. Until then, we will know only pain, confusion, and socio-economic and political regression, tainted by human rights violations and extrajudicial killings, and the emergence of a pariah state increasingly described as a narco-state. We have so much evil to confront if we are to liberate Sierra Leone. Hope seems lost. Home is lost. @LibertyOnlineTV @GleanerSierraLe @sierraeyesalone @USEmbFreetown @UKinSierraLeone @TruthmediaSL #SaloneX

I'm loving the new @JDMahama! This is the way to go. #GhanaX #SaloneX

Dismissing the kush-chemicals claim without a full investigation won't satisfy Sierra Leoneans burying their young. If the #UK has nothing to hide, open the supply chain to scrutiny. The UK must now conduct an investigation and identify persons of dual citizenship or UK residency who are involved in the trade.. @UKinSierraLeone @FCDOGovUK #SierraLeone #Kush @MoiceComm @UKinSierraLeone @metpoliceuk @UKCrimeWatcher @OCCRP @ukcrimescene #SaloneX @LibertyOnlineTV

Utter evil! This is the kind of travesty we should be discussing! Do Africans need to be taught to respect their fellow countrymen? This is completely unacceptable wherever in Africa this occurs; those evil men should be prosecuted.

A Nation in Peril: Repeated Governance Failures and the Decay of Institutional Safeguards! An inferno has gutted Kolonten Junior Primary School in Kambia District Sierra Leone. With no fire engine on the scene, onlookers resorted to throwing stones at the fire, a practice all too common. I honestly don't understand the rationale. Fires are all too common in Sierra Leone, but what caught my attention this time was a post by an outspoken young opposition Member of Parliament, Hon. Abdul Karim Koroma, @HonourableAkk, popularly known as Honourable AKK. In it, he questioned the President on the urgent need for fire engines to properly equip the National Fire Force. He was absolutely right, but he failed to acknowledge that his own party, in its previous ten years in power, also failed to deliver them. However, that should not stop the current government from developing state institutions. Sadly, I doubt they will, as they appear more focused on enriching themselves and their party cronies at the expense of the state, leaving the country vulnerable to disasters of this kind. @julius_maadabio @SLMIC3 @abdemata @sierraeyesalone #SaloneX @GleanerSierraLe @TruthmediaSL

The Dutch government's handling of this matter has been marked more by hysteria and buck-passing than by sober, principled diplomacy. It is worth asking: what if Sierra Leone, acting within its own laws, decided to grant him asylum? Would the Netherlands respect that sovereign decision, or would it escalate the pressure further? Sierra Leone is not a junior partner in this relationship, and its legal processes deserve the same respect the Dutch would demand for their own. I therefore call on the Sierra Leonean authorities to be open and transparent about their position, to resist external pressure, and to allow due process to prevail. #SloneX

LAMENTATION OF A FRUSTRATED YOUTH A former accessory to political violence, now feeling abandoned by the very ruling party he says he served. The attached video is a viral clip of a ruling-party member who, by his own admission, was once used to intimidate and perpetrate violence against opposition supporters and other citizens who did not support the government. Today, he sounds like a deeply frustrated man. A man who feels used, betrayed and abandoned by the very people in whose name he says he intimidated and attacked fellow citizens. But now the political cycle is approaching another election, and fear appears to be creeping into his voice. He knows what he participated in. He knows the enemies he may have made. And he is now worried about possible reprisals. In the video, he particularly calls out the current SLPP Chairman, accusing the party leadership of neglecting and abandoning him after allegedly using him when he was useful. I cannot say I am surprised. In Sierra Leone, as in many parts of Africa, political violence has too often been followed by silence, impunity and abandonment. Allegations surrounding attacks and killings of opposition supporters have repeatedly demanded credible investigation and accountability, yet many victims and their families continue to wait for answers. This is the tragic cycle we must break. To the African youth: do not allow any politician to turn your anger, poverty or frustration into a weapon against your fellow citizens. The politician will sit safely behind the walls of power. You may be the one standing in the street, carrying the consequences. Today, you may be called a “loyal youth.” Tomorrow, you may become disposable. Never allow yourself to become somebody else’s political weapon. @TruthmediaSL @sierraeyesalone @LeoneIssues @LibertyOnlineTV @AYVnews #SaloneX @MoiceComm

I hate wars, but if Ethiopia allows itself to be used for the destruction of another African state, then the government deserves to be replaced.

Gambia's central bank just ordered Access Bank, GTBank, FirstBank, Ecobank, and Zenith to sack their non-Gambian staff and replace them with locals by Dec 31, 2026. If the #EU or the #US did this tomorrow, Pan-Africanist would call it xenophobia, imperialism. But when it's Gambia doing it to its own own African neighbours, some Gambians are cheering "sovereignty." But yet expect to be treated better elsewhere. You can't demand the West treat African migrants with total openness while applauding your own government for chauvinism against fellow Africans. Pick a principle and apply it consistently, or admit it was never about the principle. @myaccessbank @gtbank @BIDC_EBID @Presidency_GMB @TheAlkambaTimes #GambiaX #NigeriaX #GhanaX @ecobank_nigeria @ZenithBank #SaloneX

These sorts of engagement are the most fascinating aspects of African politicians job. Here is the Mayor of Freetown who has done nothing for #Freetown beyond enjoying the pomp and pageantry that come with the office. When it's time for foreign trips and the more glamorous sides of the job, there's no hesitation, no complaint. But when it's time to actually deliver for the people who put her there, suddenly there's a long list of excuses and inadequacies. #SaloneX @sierraeyesalone @MoiceComm @GleanerSierraLe @TruthmediaSL @LibertyOnlineTV

56 hours. That is how long #SierraLeone has lived with The Economist’s 1843 investigation into how a European cocaine network, allegedly led by Jos Leijdekkers, turned the country into a transit state for billions of dollars in #Colombian cocaine—with political protection, security-force complicity, and a public silence that is itself part of the story. Major local news outlets have barely touched it. The governing elite has not offered a credible public accounting. The official opposition has not issued a serious institutional response. In a functioning republic, an allegation of this scale—narco-capital penetrating the state, the police, the military, and the political class—would force hearings, investigations, and resignations. Here, the vacuum is the evidence. If even a fraction of the reporting is accurate, Sierra Leone is not merely suffering a #drug problem. It is facing state capture: a country whose beaches, ports, banks, and ministries are being used as infrastructure for a criminal economy large enough to rival a quarter of #GDP. Media avoidance does not disprove the story. It raises a harder question: who benefits from the quiet? A cartel that can intimidate local journalists, co-opt officials, and operate in plain sight does not need to refute an investigation if it can simply wait for the news cycle to look away. A government that cannot explain how a wanted European trafficker could live, move, spend, and allegedly bind himself to the political family of the state has already answered the charge of weakness. An opposition that treats an existential allegation as someone else’s scandal has already confessed its own. Fifty-six hours of silence is complicity by default. We must defend our country before the country is no longer ours to defend. @DEAHQ @StateINL @USAfricaCommand @USEmbFreetown @LibertyOnlineTV @TruthmediaSL @sierraeyesalone @MoiceComm @APCofficial001 @JosefSkrdlik @sophievleeuwen @LeoneIssues @TheEconomist #SsloneX