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.
Apparently the Armenians have fully cucked and accepted the Zangezur corridor, which will be named "Trump corridor 🤮". This is a sextuple whammy against BRICS in which:
Bad news all around, on that front.
Strictly speaking, all these things already came to pass and this merely formalizes what was already the de facto situation on the ground. IIRC, some air assets transited through Armenian airspace into Azerbaijan during the attack on Iran in June.
As for the BRI, China was already presented with the fait accompli of having the West Asian BRI route locked out when Syria fell in December. The aim had been to establish a corridor from Iran to Iraq to Syria to the Mediterranean, bypassing NATO Turkey and its karma houdini Sultan-wannabe leadership. This has been squashed and now the only option is the Azerbaijan/Turkey route; the so-called "Middle Corridor" that all the Western geopolitics commentators have been drooling over (media like Foreign Affairs, The Economist, The Diplomat, etc. all have been openly talking about this).
As already seen with Azerbaijan, Turkey gets to parasitize the BRI by co-opting the trade infrastructure China builds to extend its influence (and Turanist fantasies) towards its "Turkic brethren" across the Caspian, which it incidentally had never been able to penetrate historically even under the Ottomans, due to Tsarist Russian and British counter-influence, so this is genuinely quite the coup for Erdogan. The West gets to tag along and so the real goal here for all co-conspirators is Central Asia, which the West had been locked out of since the US withdrawal from Afghanistan. Having been shut out, the West and Turkey are priming to re-enter through the very road that China will be "trapped" into building for them via the "Middle Corridor."
All this had been previously irrelevant because China plainly had been more interested in rebuilding war-torn Iraq and Syria as its West Asian BRI route rather than going through a direction that Western think tanks were publicly gloating about, but now the choice has been taken out of their hands because that direction has now been intentionally set up to be the only "viable" option. Some responses I encountered back in December were to scoff at the notion that the West's (and Turkey's) flipping of "insignificant Assadist Syria" could in any way detrimentally affect the "great anti-imperialist keikaku" but I think it's becoming evident that the fall of Syria really is an immensely consequential paradigm shift in the region.
Yeah people here for some reason consistently and severely underestimate the US and overestimate China and the wisdom and long-term intelligence, empathy, and self-interest (in a civilizational sense) of many of these "partners" China has been counting on.
Now with this in place the US needs only slap down the island chain of steel deep sea embargo and blockade on China and choke them out. That and they need to get India on their side or at least to sit on the side-lines which shouldn't be hard. US has many island chains, massive naval dominance, hundreds of NATO bases including those with air assets and can very effectively shut down China's naval BRI efforts and the only option for China will be a direct and painful war on the high seas far from the SCS (think Diego Garcia, the shores of Japan) against an entrenched, established hegemon. Even if they eventually smash the western navies and the west can't replace them quickly enough and smash their air forces and island chains and deal with the drone swarms unleashed on them they'll still be in an incredibly not great position.
They've already locked down Europe whose fealty and submission to the US has been proven to be absolute by Ukraine. They're pivoting to Africa and as we have seen have made fairly quick moves to secure and divide and conquer central Asia which puts them in a position to maximally pressure Russia and China via land insurgencies and/or wars. Flows of weapons to separatist groups, etc. Ukraine was just the start. Moldova is already being weaponized, I realized when the Armenian/Azerbaijan war popped off and Russia was criticized for not doing something (busy as it was in Ukraine) that it was orchestrated by the west to further their goals. If Iran falls and that is one of the goals or at least totally isolating and encircling and separating it to crack separately from Russia/China which will also be set up for cracking that's another big dent.
Things look bleak. We could very easily end up in a repeat of the first cold war where the USSR was isolated with the same happening to China. I'm not confident Russia will stick it out with them long-term if they have other options and India is a real problem. Climate change is going to hit India hard which will tempt them to do things to better or solidify their position and they may war with China over their border disputes which would be a drain and a welcome sight to the west.
The bigger issue is not isolation, its capitulation. I fear more likely we're speed running the cold war but without even the military struggle or even posturing, its just jumping straight to the capitulation phase. I just think China will continue to compromise with the US, to try and continue to play both sides with Wall St, to continue to try and become the new imperialist center for capitalism, almost as if this is what will save them... and the worst part is it might, at first. Nationalists are already rejoicing, China always wins or so it seems.
The next bubble may well be the final conclusion of Dengs reforms and the complete opening up, inviting western capital for the looting, even if it should take a few decades, so long as China becomes relatively richer than westerners(quite likely too) it may be a better deal than war, or so they'll rationalize.
The entire Dengist commitment to opening up and even more pro-capitalist reforms, even under the current scenario, spells nothing less than a catastrophic disaster... one we can see coming from a mile away too.