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.
This channel, which has been posted a few times on this site, has multiple videos talking about how “China is using dollars to create its own alternative financial system” which shows the person doesn’t understand how the international financial system actually works.
Next, the channel promotes gold and crypto heavily. In other words, Austrian school libertarian crap. I’m surprised there are Marxists who bought into their defective theories.
Finally, the USDT/Tether are stablecoins that are nothing more than money that don’t pay interests. What happens is the person who took your money use them to purchase treasuries to earn interests, while you’re left holding the “digital” version of the money that doesn’t yield any long term interest.
Non-stablecoin cryptos, like gold, are just speculative assets that have no bearing on how the modern monetary system works. The world has moved long past that. They are simply stores of value, just like gold, and will come down when the US economy enters a recession. It will not bring about an alternative system to the dollar, nor can BRICS seek independence from the dollar hegemony through that.
What has been interesting though are CBDCs and there are indeed many good uses when carefully thought through.
I've never seen the channel promote gold or crypto? are you thinking of the Singapore guy
Literally 3 weeks ago:
How China and the BRICS are starving the West of gold
De-dollarization: Are China and the BRICS building a gold-standard trading system?
Beware that there has been an entire cottage industry of libertarian “anti-imperialists” who are trying to scam people into thinking that dollar is going to collapse soon and you better invest your life savings into gold and crypto before it’s too late!
I’m not going to stop anyone from doing that, but as always: consider yourself warned.
I've watched a lot of this channel's videos and while he has his flaws he has never tried to hawk gold or crypto
based on your criticism above (where you completely avoided the stated reason of sanctions and made a value argument against an invented position that was never in the video) I don't think you've watched these videos
I found YouTube links in your comment. Here are links to the same videos on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Link 1:
Link 2:
China has been the biggest gold buyer in the past few years and anything China does is obviously good based and correct even though most of this is reportedly(last time I checked, could be wrong) mostly just wealthy middle class(consequence of housing crash) fad not anything significant.
I thought it was the central bank. maybe a porque no los dos situation
yeah both https://www.scmp.com/economy/economic-indicators/article/3249894/chinas-gold-imports-surge-record-high-appetite-increases-middle-class-seek-wealth-security
Fwiw, there are plenty of exchanges that pay interest on stablecoins held, both USDC and USDT.
it's not the risk-free (involuntary default terms) interest like treasuries though. the higher the interest rate the more profit these stablecoin issuers make. i have mixed feelings, since these don't have any guaranteed convertibility to dollars for the holders no matter what they claim, even the more 'trusted' USDC. but on the other hand, it's a useful tool for getting Dollars around eg. to Gaza. but of course, it cannot work well at scale. since, U.S. Gov can always freeze the treasuries/reserves held by these issuers. If I were a Central Bank, I would trust China issued USD assets than USDT/USDC, simply because US can't freeze Chinese reserves without huge consequences.
also very much vulnerable to interest rate risk too, since they hold long term treasuries. even if they claim they only hold treasuries, what duration? if its short duration, sure, these can be liquidated at face value, but not long term treasuries.
anyone remember when USDC depegged when SVB went broke? Only after Treasury, Fed and FDIC backstopped all deposits did it recover. So, these stablecoins very much depend upon the USD Financial structure.
Yeah, agree with everything you said here.
Of course it's not risk free, namely because you have to hold funds on a crypto exchange lol. It's not like you get paid out just for holding funds in a private USDT wallet, although such a thing might exist in the defi space, I don't care enough to check. It potentially makes sense if you can't access US capital markets any other way though.
Also afaik, there's no law requiring stablecoin issuers to hold any kind of treasury. It wouldn't surprise me to see something like that pass eventually, but for all we know they're buying dogecoin or some other harebrained "asset" behind the scenes.