The war in Sudan has so far been marked by a lot of incompetency and mismanagement by government forces (the SAF). After months of bitter fighting, in late 2023, the opposing Rapid Support Forces suddenly expanded their control towards the southeast of Khartoum after not a lot of resistance, most notably taking the city of Wad Madani. This led the SAF supporters and officials to panic and point fingers at each other about what the hell the army is even doing, while RSF soldiers looted the city.
These victories led to a short period in late December and early January where diplomacy and peace talks were considered, but such attempts fell apart. The leader of the RSF visited various African countries, including meeting Paul Kagame in Rwanda, to boost his legitimacy. Then, the RSF attacked into South Kordofan and consolidated their hold on other areas.
The Sudanese capital of Khartoum sits on a river which divides it from the city to its west, Omdurman (see the post image). The SAF and RSF have been fighting over this grand urban area for the whole war, with the RSF holding most of Khartoum (with an entirely cut-off SAF force holding on in the center), with a similarly cut-off SAF force also in eastern Omdurman, up against the river. For 10 months, this force has been under siege - but no longer. In perhaps the first actual W of the war for the SAF, they finally managed to break the siege a week ago, pouring supplies in. This leaves a section of the RSF now cut off, though Omdurman is still not under full SAF control (and, who knows, the whole situation could once again go badly for the SAF).
Meanwhile, the Sudanese socioeconomic situation has completely collapsed, with potentially a 20% fall in GDP and 8 million people displaced, with 2 million from Khartoum alone. 18 million Sudanese, or about a third of the population, is in acute hunger, and 20 million children are out in school. The refugees streaming out of the country are causing knock-on effects in neighorboring countries like Chad. Nobody is even really counting the dead anymore.
Red is the government forces, the SAF. Blue is the RSF opposition. Other colours are various factions.
The Country of the Week is Sudan! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.
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Last week's thread is here.
Israel-Palestine Conflict
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against Israel. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:
UNRWA daily-ish 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 (and has automated posting when the person running it goes to sleep).
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.
Various sources that are covering the Ukraine conflict are also covering the one in Palestine, like Rybar.
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.
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.
looks like it's confirmed that Bushnell was a trans woman:
article by "DJ Muel", who Bushnell was a fan of: https://www.patreon.com/posts/what-can-we-do-99384971
Can't wait for people to continue to have totally normal opinions about this and not use transphobia as a way to deligitimze their sacrifice by saying they were just mentally ill/crazy.
People don't need to know Bushnell was trans to delegitimize her sacrifice as being something done by a mentally ill person. Also, I wouldn't use 'they' here, since as the article says: "he/she pronouns"
Oh I definitely know people will deligitimize it regardless. My thoughts were more on how deranged those deligitimizations are. Like what will I get to hear my reactionary brother or uncle say if they bring it up.
Also yeah, I did read the he/she but my brain freaked out and didn't know what to do for the comment. I just defaulted to gender neutral cause I'm just not sure what the rules or preferences(?) are with pronouns like that. I'm also a coward if that helps.
what you do is you use the pronouns the person uses. in this case, either "his sacrifice" or "her sacrifice" would be acceptable. anything else is misgendering
Okay, so either was good and I was overthinking it. Thanks for the help.
you don't exactly need to alternate between the two, but it's polite to use all sets of pronouns listed
i try and use them roughly equally except when i know the person in question is like "mostly she/her but sometimes they/them" to use a close friend as an example
Hamas and Ansarallah unintentionally said trans rights?
this is when they walk back their statements when they find out 💀
The worst option is if they double down with "two birds one stone !", but nah I don't think they'll do that, they will most likely just ignore that or at best use it as a motivator as in "An American transwoman burned herself for Palestine and your ass is just praying?", I don't know I feel like my thoughts are delusions but her death can counter the imported transphobia in the middle east, all the israeli pride flags over destroyed buildings don't mean shit after what Lilly did.
would be really lovely. just from my experiences anecdotally I doubt that'd ever happen but it would be lovely haha
in any case, I agree with you. they will not comment on this; in fact they may not find out, her gender identity isn't getting major coverage
Frankly, I'm glad her gender identity isn't getting major coverage. I'm sure the reason she chose to burn as "Aaron Bushnell" instead of "Lilly Bushnell" is because she understood how it would become a PR disaster. Still, it's uncomfortable, as a trans woman who authored a popular post speculating about Bushnell's gender identity was bullied off the site by a transmisogynsitic harassment campaign.
wait, this site? or where was it? how did i not hear about this?
on tumblr, my mistake!
ohhh ok. i saw a post speculating on his identity on tumblr like 2 days ago but didn't touch the website yesterday. that's awful, i wish tumblr was better because i do really love being on there with so many other trans people, especially other trans women
edit: jesus, people are accusing trans women of being transvestigators for suggesting the username "lillyanarkitty" might suggest anything about the user's gender. even if you think it's in poor taste, it sure as shit isn't transvestigation!
"looking at a person and saying 'i think they might be trans because i see these aspects of myself in them and i myself am trans' is exactly the same as 'this person seems trans to me because i'm a paranoid bigot who thinks anyone who isn't exactly aligned with me must be an evil removed freak'. i am very smart"
it sucks but i also think there just arent any good websites to be a trans woman on
Except this one!!!!
https://hexbear.net/comment/4652995
I saw it right after posting
I'm sorry that happened and def get mods to handle anybody being hateful/weird about stuff
Mhm ye thank you
yeah. shit's bad
yeah im even kinda sus of here since i got a bunch of pushback for using tme/tma in another comm 😒
uggghhhh im sorry that fuckin sucks
I saw that too and I just want to say that I was really disappointed in Hexbear for that one. We pride ourselves on having lots of trans people, but obviously there's a real lack of understanding and theory when it comes to transmisogyny.
-acebush1
rest in peace lilly, i will remember you
it seems like she didn't want to be remembered like this by the public at large, so i won't say anything more outside here, but i will remember her. i hope everyone else here will as well
Was Bushnell's youtube content on a political topic?
I wish Lilly and her family peace in this impossible situation.
I was always wondering why she used Lilly in her username from Twitch. Rest in Power and I wish well to her family.