Bulletins and News Discussion from February 26th to March 3rd, 2024 - Breaking The Siege Of Omdurman - COTW: Sudan
Bulletins and News Discussion from February 26th to March 3rd, 2024 - Breaking The Siege Of Omdurman - COTW: Sudan
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.
The bulletins site is here!
The RSS feed is here.
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.
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my god reddit is a cesspool. I went to check out if the massacre is even being allowed on /r/worldnews:
> top post is titled "IDF says it fired on Gazans who endangered troops in stampede; Hamas claims 70 dead" from fuckin timesofisrael
> top comment is a guy agreeing with that IOF position saying something like 'I agree with the IOF, looks like they all died in a stampede or by trucks, looks chaotic!'
> looked through that guy's comment and it's an Israeli. guy also has comments denying the Tantura massacre.
incredible website. I'm gonna delete my account and block the website for good now, absolutely repulsive place.
WorldNews has been coopted by NATO since at least when Jessica Ashooh started working at reddit. News tends to be a bit better, and then WorldNewsVideo and WorldEvents are good but a fraction of the size.
it's just incredible how openly astroturfed the main subs all are now. they probably were before too, but now they're banning anyone expressing a different opinion, banning non-right wing sources, etc.
I've seen more "normies" talk about being banned from WorldNews since 10/7 than probably at any other time. They have definitely stepped up activities to keep the discussion within set parameters. There's also way more hasabara activity, including what I suspect is upvote botting, on the sub versus most other subs.
a couple months back, I got perma-banned for commenting "you idiots will believe anything" under some dumb Israeli propaganda post. that would never have gotten you banned a few years ago, your comment deleted sure. it's really gotten crazy.
I wish there was a decent news aggregator site to use. I unfortunately use twitter a lot and it's even worse. I'd like to stop using it, but there's no better place to get news. no one's on bluesky. lemmy's fine, but just too small.
Honestly I find hexbear's news thread has been way better coverage of world events than reddit ever was for me.
I know it's not technically related to worldnews, but Reddit is such a terrible website in many ways, half of the formula one subreddit has revealed themselves to be men perfectly fine with sexual harassment, or have admitted to having committed sexual harrassment in the past. This was in response to one of the team bosses being accused of sexual harassment and the alleged whatsapp messages being leaked. So many people replied to me saying that there was nothing wrong with the alleged messages or that they have done similar in the past.
I got banned for a week for calling out these gross men, the mods went and found an unrelated comment to ban me for. Reddit, the website where you get banned for calling out sexual harrassment and inappropriate workplace behaviour. It's honestly sickening how these men think. I'm ashamed to share a gender with them.
I’m ashamed to share a gender with them.
I feel this so hard lol, goddamn (western, at least) men suck
I can tell you right now that South African men, of all cultures, are not any better... It's not a western thing
Its been years since I consume anything related to F1 and I only know of this narrative through the news headlines, but you remind me throughout the entire existence of that sub they used to not waste a single opportunity to call Horner a shitstierrer, in fact in the past they would even go further and say how Max(and to some extent Vettel) were "victims" of their shitty toxic environment and everything, calling Marko a psycho would be an average room temperate take there 4 years ago. It sure was convinient to have a ready made excuse as to why your gamer chud idol is a massive piece of shit.
I stopped following F1 since that time the race director guy decided to "go racing" and just so happen to steal the title from the POC man to give it to the white man lol(yes I doubt that was the motivation at the moment but it is no coincidence things happen this way imo lol) and I only caught the Horner news headlines, but reading what you realy does sound about the average you'd expect these days.
I used to predict this eventualy would turn out to be the case, F1 was always a dipshit white man sport, so no rose tinted glasses about it being good back in the old days, but certainly once F1 became a Netflix "show" it was a done deal, Max was just about attracting the white suburban American male audience. It is absolutely no surprise they would turn around years later and defend the boss they used to criticize for being F1's "shit stirrer". or maybe they're pressing both buttons lol its fine to be a sexual predator but not fine to say shit to the media or be mean to our precious little white chud gamer boy.
The woman in the leaked whatsapp messages at one point literally says that she "can't do that anymore", and Horner presses on. Slam dunk sexual harassment. No idea how the Red Bull internal investigation cleared this guy. There's even pictures of his nipple and and a phallic looking object, that I hope is just his finger, in the leaks. The Google drive link is all over social media and the formula dank subreddit.
Even if the messages are fake, people's responses saying that they see nothing wrong are very telling.
Yeah I made the mistake of checking worldnews some days ago and jesus christ it made me want to scream. Calling on president Xi to nuke reddit's servers
he owns their servers
There's a reason there are now like 4 worldnews subs. Everyone knows it's a cesspool. Additionally, with the fact that the Uncomitted people got 100k votes in 3 weeks of organizing I can safely say Michigan is lost.
I can safely say Michigan is lost.
I hope so, Biden needs to lose
Why would you torture yourself like that?
What is the deal with that sub? They can't really believe most of the shit that they're saying, right? There's just no way. Is it like, they have to cheer for their team no matter what or something? The only time I went on there was when South Africa brought their case to the ICJ and everybody on that sub just dismissed them as doing it on behalf of their BRICS friends so automatically the allegation had no validity. Fascinatingly deranged.
Some of it is astroturfing, some is hasbara, some is the mods banning any diverging view point
Yup to the banning. I was perma-banned like 10 minutes after making a comment saying zionists have to lie.
If you're critical of israel, you will inevitably get banned from most political subs
I got permabanned from fucking r/comics of all places for calling hamas freedom fighters. On a comic that was arguing that "terrorist" is just a word used to discredit one's enemies.
from what ive seen /r/worldnews is actually a meme on the rest of the site now, even /r/news dunks on them