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.

Please check out the RedAtlas!

The bulletins site is here. Currently not used.
The RSS feed is here. Also currently not used.

Israel's Genocide of Palestine

If you have evidence of Zionist crimes and atrocities that you wish to preserve, there is a thread here in which to do so.

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.


  • revolut1917 [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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    7 days ago

    keep hearing that marketing is being completely wiped out as a career due to the rise of AI, and tbh, i don’t give a shit. useless career that doesn’t need to exist anyway.

    • xiaohongshu [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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      7 days ago

      The problem is not so much that they’re doing bullshit jobs. The problem is that when people don’t have an income, they cut back on spending which makes everyone else having less to earn from, and eventually that’s going to affect your income (from a selfish perspective), and the economy goes into recession and even more people lose their jobs. Remember, in order for you to earn money, somebody else has got to be willing to spend. If everyone wants to save, then you don’t earn anything.

      This is why you need a Federal job guarantee program that acts as an automatic stabilizer. When people are laid off, the government automatically enrolls them into new jobs with guaranteed income to offset the reduced spending in the economy when people lose their jobs. In this case, the government acts as a spender to keep the economy going.

      • -6-6-6-@lemmygrad.ml
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        4 days ago

        If everyone wants to save, then you don’t earn anything.

        Unless you’re a payday loan or repo corp.

      • redchert@lemmygrad.ml
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        7 days ago

        It already is. People are marketing constantly online, and it is becoming ever more subtle. leading to the erosion of trust. The destruction of language is their end goal, as it a factor that could lead one to organize or potentially slip out of cultural hegemony. Every thought and word must serve to reinforce the constant upward trend of numbers without substance.

      • KuroXppi [they/them]@hexbear.net
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        7 days ago

        Marketing includes advertising which will get more invasive for sure, it also includes things like product design, customer research and segmentation, and logistics which all fall under the ‘marketing’ (making and servicing markets) umbrella. I imagine ‘AI’ is chewing up a lot of those back-of-house marketing positions too

    • mkultrawide [any]@hexbear.net
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      7 days ago

      Its’s being used to eliminate or consolidate content creation/generation jobs like copywriting, it’s used on some advertising platforms like with Google Ads Performance Max (if you want to put machine learning under “AI”), and it’s being used to some extent in analytics/data analysis to generate insights.

      • Le_Wokisme [they/them, undecided]@hexbear.net
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        7 days ago

        (if you want to put machine learning under “AI”

        we shouldn’t. “ai” (latest fad) is a fairly specific few things and its exponents have deliberately degraded the communicative utility of language to steal valor from people doing useful work.

    • CleverOleg [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      7 days ago

      I would distinguish between advertising and marketing. Don Draper shit is advertising. It’s coming up with ways to sell people on what you currently have. I think the corporations who live and die with advertising (like Coca-Cola) won’t give this up to AI but there is a lot more of your basic advertising (like a local realtor designing a highway billboard) that will, sure.

      I don’t see marketing being given up to AI though. It can be bullshit but a lot of the time it’s fairly strategic. I would argue even a centrally planned economy needs marketing. It can be useful. Marketing involves thinking along the lines of “cell phones would last twice as long if we let people replace the batteries. The big phone companies do not allow this because of planned obsolescence. We could make a phone with replaceable batteries and position ourselves as the “buy it for life” phone company. That’s the sort of work I don’t see how AI could replace.