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
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.
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.
Jup. People were celebrating the fact that instead of assad we now got al-qaida in control of syria, maybe because they somehow hoped the SDF would “somehow” get control of syria (they arent an US asset pinky promise!).
The fall of syria cut off Iran, Russia and even China from supporting the axis of resistance in the levant.
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.
China’s gonna be fine and its economy is strong enough that the US cannot really do anything against it. In fact, it might turn China inward and start prioritizing its domestic market.
But it’s true that the rest of the Global South is screwed, because China isn’t willing to step up. The US will probably harvest Europe first then the other weaker links in the Global South countries as Trump’s tariffs force a mercantilistic warfare with China dumping its surplus goods on to the other countries. The failed economies then get harvested by the US finance capital, as the global supply chain gets reshaped.
How this is going to play out though, I think it’s anyone’s guesses. I can’t stop thinking about Plaza Accord, on how both the Japanese and the Americans thought they’d won, but reality shocked everyone beyond belief: neither side got what they wanted in the end. I really don’t think we can calculate what the future is going to look like, because there are way too many moving parts in this complex system.
Yeah China enduring is not much comfort if the hegemony does not fall. The third world needs liberated, not continued oppression with some mitigation here and there.
Yeah it’s not that China is going to be destroyed just that our hopes for the fall of US/NATO hegemony in our time are not looking to bear fruit. Best case scenario even 5 years ago was multi-polarity is established, the US stumbles its way through it happening and basically is locked into losing power but their level of planning, coordination and frankly setting the chess board has been unnerving to watch.
It’s not that I thought the US wouldn’t resist, it’s that I hoped China and many other actors would move more strongly to counter these chessboard setting moves and that they’d be less successful than the first cold war but the fact is it seems the same old tactics with minor updates yield fruit. I mean Ukraine over the course of 18 years and with an 8 year intensification phase being turned into a bloodied battering ram against Russia and a factory for churning out west loving Nazis and mercenaries was not really in my sights or on my bingo cards in say 2016 though the signs were obvious, it just wasn’t something I as a westerner was aware of. Just as most of us aren’t aware of the details of US influence operations in central Asia that are bearing fruit, there were definitely likely signs.
It’s hard not to doom a little (pessimism of that intellect hits hard) given climate change is coming and when that hits many of the over-exploited areas are not going to have the same options for throwing off their chains and developing independently.
That and the whole nuclear war thing. I can’t help but think part of what informs China’s decisions is the likelihood of a US in free-fall nuking them regardless of the danger of being nuked back and that they feel until they can neutralize that threat (not likely in the next few decades with any tech on the horizon) they and the rest of the world are held hostage by a “mad-man” with a loaded nuclear gun who doesn’t care about dying and may be willing to do a suicide run on the earth merely if they lose their hegemony. And in light of that there’s a desire to placate or at least not rock the boat too much in hopes there can be a reasonably slow loss of power that won’t cause the US to lash out. But that slow-down means the US can fight at full speed and full force while their adversaries hold an arm behind their back and hesitate.
Nuclear weapons I think are the worst thing to ever be invented. Without them the world would have turned against, and destroyed the US and other European powers last century in protracted conventional wars or at least dethroned them and forced them to draw inwards and lick their wounds from the blood-letting the USSR and friends would have inflicted. We’d be well on the way to world socialism. But because of nukes China didn’t take the south of Korea, because of nukes the USSR hesitated at many turns when it came to confronting the US, because of nukes the voices of weakness and compromise within the party seemed reasonable and were elevated. It all comes down to that. If I had a time machine I’d murder every member of the Manhattan project and convince Einstein not to write his letter. Yes they would have been invented eventually but without the war-time impetus for an all-in project it might have taken another decade and a half and there might have been more organized scientific opposition to the creation of such a weapon. Without them Japan would have perhaps been subject to some soviet input in capitulation terms and perhaps their fascists would have been executed instead of put in government all at once. It does seem like the invention and use of nuclear weapons was a negative hinge point in history from the viewpoint of the struggle for liberation.
This is unbelieavably impossible sorry. As is everything else just that this just made me stop and comment despite having given up arguing or effort posting in this community. Maybe you should consider cross posting these to some reddit american military circlejerk subs because this fanfiction eclipses even the most unhinges posters here. Like, sorry if this is comming of as agressive or dismissive but i just didnt expect the doomerism in this sub to reach such comical degrees.
China has many cards to play with regards to avoiding encirclement. People always forget that the BRI is itself Plan B from Plan A, which is to break the island chains. And this doesn’t just mean reunification with Taiwan. It also means building a strong enough navy and making a blockade entirely unfeasible.
And this is all ignoring the very simple observation that the US is woefully unprepared for climate change compared to China. Just compare how China is able to mobilize their society when they got hit with climate change-induced floods with the US letting their populace rot when their cities got hit with climate change-induced fires a la LA. Climate change is a soft Chinese ally in this regard, and the US can’t just nuke or sanction this “Chinese ally” away.
I really wonder what the news mega would’ve been like during the HK riots. Probably the usual suspects malding about how XI not immediately sending in the PLA meant Xi is a virgin cuck or something equally stupid. Never mind that the riots had no chance of negatively impacting the Mainland outside of making Mainlanders unite over mutual hatred of Hong Kongers.
i’ve always appreciated your posts D: always felt like you had very balanced takes, do you post them elsewhere on the site/somewhere else on the internet?
as for darkcalling, they were always a little pessimistic but i think she’s gotten drastically worse about dooming in the last year or so, you’ve said this yourself before i believe, but i really think many people are understandably overwhelmed by the genocide in Palestine and their sense of helplessness in stopping it, then syria fell, then Iran did no avert military actions after True Promise 2 until they were literally forced to at gunpoint by isr*el and amerikkka, oh and hezbollah was totally unable to establish deterrence too, so on top of the rest of the horrible shit happening in the world, it would be more surprising for people not to inadvertently let their emotions cloud their analysis and have a view that is maybe too pessimistic. i think dark calling is especially bad about dooming because she is also trying to push back against the goofy “china can do no wrong crowd” that themselves i think forget they are on one of the most pro china spaces on the entire internet and they dont need to act like they are on reddit or some other anticommunist site.
the navy that ran away from Yemen?
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.
I mean it’s somewhat diffused by the BRI not hinging on these states, right? oh we can’t go thru syria, how ruinous when we have other partners and the russians to rely on.
were Chinese firms actually banking on a rail link thru a country in an active civil war?
The whole shia crescent thing would have made the BRI much less susceptible to us and NATO sabotage and pressure. Its disastrous for the BRI, sorry.
Shia crescent isn’t real. China isn’t and hasn’t (since Mao) been out to actually change shit.
China uses rail lines though, I feel I need to make this clear
deleted by creator