Image is from the Wikipedia article on the Sudanese Civil War.
Al-Fashir, the capital of North Darfur (a little east of that deep red zone in the west of the megathread map), is the last major holdout of the Sudanese government in that state, and is currently under siege by the RSF. Losing it would be a significant blow to the SAF, though given how the conflict lines are shaping up, it seems increasingly plausible that there will be a de facto - if not de jure - partition of Sudan, unless the military situation substantially changes. This is because the RSF have been pushed out of central Sudan, while the SAF are being pushed out of Western Sudan - although, the situation is pretty complex and has been known to change rapidly before.
As has been a constant feature of the Sudan Civil War - perhaps the single worst humanitarian crisis on the planet right now when measured by numbers - the civilian situation pales in comparison to the military situation, with hundreds of thousands of children dead from famine, and tens of millions of people experiencing extreme food insecurity.
Al-Fashir has been the destination of many thousands of refugees fleeing genocide, and food and aid supplies into the town are being explicitly blocked by the RSF, resulting in scenes similar to what is happening in Gaza right now. The big difference is that fleeing from major battle zones is at least somewhat of an option, though people are often caught and robbed or enslaved or trafficked while moving to neighbouring towns and cities - and these cities are often experiencing similar conditions to places that refugees are leaving.
Last week’s thread is here.
The Imperialism Reading Group is here.
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The bulletins site is here. Currently not used.
The RSS feed is here. Also currently not used.
Israel's Genocide of Palestine
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against the temporary Zionist entity. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:
UNRWA reports on Israel’s destruction and siege of Gaza and the West Bank.
English-language Palestinian Marxist-Leninist twitter account. Alt here.
English-language twitter account that collates news.
Arab-language twitter account with videos and images of fighting.
English-language (with some Arab retweets) Twitter account based in Lebanon. - Telegram is @IbnRiad.
English-language Palestinian Twitter account which reports on news from the Resistance Axis. - Telegram is @EyesOnSouth.
English-language Twitter account in the same group as the previous two. - Telegram here.
English-language PalestineResist telegram channel.
More telegram channels here for those interested.
Russia-Ukraine Conflict
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Sources:
Defense Politics Asia’s youtube channel and their map. Their youtube channel has substantially diminished in quality but the map is still useful.
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have interesting analysis. Avoid the comment section.
Understanding War and the Saker: reactionary sources that have occasional insights on the war.
Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict. While he is a reactionary and surrounds himself with likeminded people, his daily update videos are relatively brainworm-free and good if you don’t want to follow Russian telegram channels to get news. He also co-hosts The Duran, which is more explicitly conservative, racist, sexist, transphobic, anti-communist, etc when guests are invited on, but is just about tolerable when it’s just the two of them if you want a little more analysis.
Simplicius, who publishes on Substack. Like others, his political analysis should be soundly ignored, but his knowledge of weaponry and military strategy is generally quite good.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent and very good journalist reporting in the warzone on the separatists’ side.
Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.
Pro-Russian Telegram Channels:
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
https://t.me/aleksandr_skif ~ DPR’s former Defense Minister and Colonel in the DPR’s forces. Russian language.
https://t.me/Slavyangrad ~ A few different pro-Russian people gather frequent content for this channel (~100 posts per day), some socialist, but all socially reactionary. If you can only tolerate using one Russian telegram channel, I would recommend this one.
https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts.
https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday ~ Patrick Lancaster’s telegram channel.
https://t.me/gonzowarr ~ A big Russian commentator.
https://t.me/rybar ~ One of, if not the, biggest Russian telegram channels focussing on the war out there. Actually quite balanced, maybe even pessimistic about Russia. Produces interesting and useful maps.
https://t.me/epoddubny ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/boris_rozhin ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/mod_russia_en ~ Russian Ministry of Defense. Does daily, if rather bland updates on the number of Ukrainians killed, etc. The figures appear to be approximately accurate; if you want, reduce all numbers by 25% as a ‘propaganda tax’, if you don’t believe them. Does not cover everything, for obvious reasons, and virtually never details Russian losses.
https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses ~ Pro-Russian, documents abuses that Ukraine commits.
Pro-Ukraine Telegram Channels:
Almost every Western media outlet.
https://discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.
Hilarious fearmongering from the economist: “Iran is flooding the Gulf with foodstuffs. Nine out of ten aubergines, tomatoes and watermelons imported by the UAE are of Persian origin. Oman and Qatar are also being targeted. This is the most spectacular invasion you have never heard of”
my god, someone PLEASE step up to save the Qataris from Persian tomatoes!!
I ate a bunch of Iranian fruits and vegetables when I was in Iraq a few months ago and everything was fucking amazing. Their yogurts and even random stuff like chocolates were amazing. So if anything, the world should have more Iranian products. People in the Gulf also love Iranian stuff, there are whole Iranian-themed supermarkets that are super popular and most of the old historic restaurants especially in the UAE, Bahrain and Qatar were founded by Persians and serve mostly delicious Iranian food. Not a single unemployed Twitter Arab has complained about Iranian watermelons, but the devils in Western media think that it’s a problem lmao
Unironically yes. The world is hardcore sleeping on how fucking good Iranian food is
The Anglo brainpan can’t process having a plate of herbs served to them as part of the meal.
They sell them in Persian nationalist flavors, too.
sorry I’m posting something silly from reddit, but I always get a chuckle out of mentions of Iranian Yogurt
The Iranian Yogurt is not the issue here
AITA for Throwing Away my Boyfriend’s Potentially Illegal Yogurt Collection?
I’m a 29F, my boyfriend is a 30M. We’ve been living together for two years in a little studio in a very expensive, big US city.
My boyfriend grew up rurally, with lots of space, enough to collect all kinds of things. He collected action figures and video games and all the normal kids’ stuff when he was young, but as he grew older, he became interested in more unusual things. As a teen, he had eight guinea pigs, of different types from different breeders. Since Tide Pods were released seven years ago, he’s saved one of every kind of Tide Pod. He’s got a big box of an international variety of electric insulators, those little ceramic hats that power lines wrap around on power poles.
He’s not a hoarder. He’s usually neat, just used to having lots of space for his bizarro collections. At his parents’ ranch, he has two big rooms full of containers of weird (and impressive!) things.
He recently became interested in Yogurt. He’s always hated dairy products, until about a year ago. He not just started drinking milk and sharing ice cream with me, but he’s found a love for yogurts. So he now collects them, of course. The problem is that they’re perishable.
So, until earlier today, our little 550 sq foot studio contained about 2100 cups of yogurt. It comes in tons of varieties. Different types, flavors, textures, containers, made by different companies in different countries. This is like crack to my boyfriend. So he tried to pretty much save a sample of everything he could find.
He filled our fridge, bought a new fridge, and then another tiny bedside fridge (he said he didn’t want to walk to the fridge at night, but it was obviously a ruse to get more yogurt space). These fridges all filled up with his yogurts, and if you keep them for long, they smell bad. Sometimes the packaging breaks. So our apartment was smelling like rotten milk for the last two weeks – and my boyfriend’s attitude was “oh it’s fine” and “just deal with it for a little longer” until I pulled the plug and threw it all out this morning. I was looking at my groceries, which I had to put beside the fridge because there was no space, and everything smelled like death, and then I kinda snapped and threw it all away.
My boyfriend is understandably upset. We’ve been arguing about whether I crossed a line by throwing away his stuff. And he’s especially upset because he (of course) had rare yogurts that were hard to find – in particular, he had some Cuban and Iranian yogurts that you can’t get in the US. But I know that we have trade sanctions against Iran and Cuba, so I don’t know if it was even legal for him to have them? I asked where he got his Iranian yogurt, but he kept insisting “the Iranian Yogurt is not the issue here” and that the real issue was me throwing out his precious yogurts without his permission.
Am I The Asshole Here? Do I need /r/legaladvice? Thanks in advance. I’m so exasperated.
Iranian food is wonderful
I know we think of this is a ridiculous self-own, but it’s powerful advertising to exactly their target audience. Capitalism’s biggest boogey man hated our newspaper!
Marx actually also mentioned the Economist.
The reason why they probably don’t similarly post a cutesy little Twitter post about him “@ing them” is because he was denouncing their stance in lobbying for the Second Opium War, naval bombarding the city of Canton (modern Guangzhou) and supporting the Confederacy, so it would expose their “geopolitics understander” rag as having always been consistently on the wrong side of history.
i cant read the article, where would they prefer the UAE, Oman, and Qatar get their fruits and vegetables from?
They would rather they starve than trade with the Villain of the Week.