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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.

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Sunday's briefing is here.

1.2K comments
  • How China is covering the massacre

    “Israel attacks civilians gathered to seek aid, killing 112”

    It is worth noting that 袭击 carries a more sinister connotation, implying surprise and deliberate deception.

    In case y’all wanted to know what actual journalism looks like.

  • One thing I have seen on Arab twitter today is them saying an American Soldier is braver and stood up more for Palestine than their leaders.

  • gonna start concern trolling about mental health on every post about westoid troops dying for their country. "No sane person would commit suicide by fighting the Russians, mentally ill people should not be used for political gains :/"

  • Western leftists are the most domesticated and toothless people you'll ever see. The leader of the Danish conservatives just dropped dead at age 52 from a cerebral hemorrhage. As can be expected from a senior conservative politician he was a vile disgusting little turd of a man, a nationalist, a monarchist and a zionist who never saw a cop, a flag or a troop he didn't want to shag, never saw a refugee, a minority or a poor person he didn't want to harm and never saw an oligarch he didn't want to enrich. He was a pompous self-righteous prick who always kicked downwards.

    And how does the Red-Greens, the self-described revolutionary socialists who are the furthest left you get in this deeply unserious country, react? I swear to God, they released a statement about how good and generous a man he was and about what a great loss for democracy him kicking the bucket is. Not a word about the evil he did or the pain he caused his victims.

    With leftists like these, why do we need succdems?

  • Not sure if this has been posted about yet but after years of effort and fierce resistance the uyghur genocide article on wikipedia has changed its name from uyghur genocide to "Persecution of Uyghurs in China" the article itself is still really bad but the fact that this has finally happened is a pretty telling sign that reality is catching up.

  • when someone publicly martyrs themselves to protest genocide: I can't believe people are acting like there's anything to celebrate or condone here! Killing yourself for a cause is selfish, cowardly, and ineffective. Think of his poor children!

    when someone willfully delivers themselves to be imprisoned by the government that has already tried to poison them: the most noble of sacrifices, my epic sir. This sends a message of bravery and courage no one will forget. I'll ask my wife's boyfriend if we can name their child Navalny o7

    • FIGHT TO THE LAST UKRAINIAN SLAVAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

      dude you protested a genocide, extremist much?

    • Killing yourself for a cause is selfish

      I wonder if redditors are aware of what soldiers do

    • Both cases are mostly bots and

      , anyway

      • we always say this but it just feels like cope a lot of the time. Like yeah im sure there are always a few bot comments at the top and feds and what not, but at the end of the day I think a large chunk of the Amerikkkan population (west in general, really), really are this callous and im sure a lot of them are on

  • RT - Ukraine ready for war with China – top MP [2024-02-24]

    Kiev is ready to assist the US in a war against any enemy, be it Iran, North Korea, or China, a senior Ukrainian MP has said, claiming that his country would prove to be a valuable military ally.

    In an interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on Friday, Aleksey Goncharenko doubled down on calls for the US to send Ukraine more military aid amid gridlock in Congress.

    ”Ukrainians are ready… We are ready to stand with the United States shoulder-to-shoulder, either in trenches near Tehran, or in North Korea, or near Beijing. No difference,” he stated. “Because we appreciate your support.”

    Despite his plea for more Western military aid, Goncharenko argued that Ukraine has “the second strongest army in the free world” after the US, making it “a very valuable ally.”

  • Xi (Foolishly) Plans Communist Answers For China’s Property Crisis. Forbes

    If the leaks and rumors are true, Beijing stands ready to launch a new and radical solution to the economy’s property crisis – a government takeover. What the authorities refer to as “a new model” would replace the old emphasis on ownership with more rentals and use government funds to buy up bankrupt properties so that in time the government’s role in real estate would rise from 5% of the market at present to 30%. Such an act would surely take the nation back to its communist roots if not quite the days of Mao Zedong. If it would veil the property crisis for a time, it would in the long run do tremendous damage to China’s economic prospects.

  • “Many of us like to ask ourselves, ‘What would I do if I was alive during slavery? Or the Jim Crow South? Or apartheid? What would I do if my country was committing genocide?’” … “The answer is, you’re doing it. Right now.”

    -Aaron Bushnell

  • I feel like the whole world is unraveling.

    This is a very depraved and evil society. I used to imagine it was out of willful ignorance, being overburdened, and exhausted. I still believe this is true to a certain extent, but I am coming around to the belief that this is deliberate and willful complicity; complicity of depravity, of indifference.

    And where once there used to be a facade of attempt at denying this, everyone in power is openly embracing genocide. Israel supporters are brazenly celebrating this.

    Geopolitics and its government administrators aside, I'm really disgusted at ordinary people choosing the wrong side - the side of genocide - in this moment.

  • Heavy losses inflict ‘dramatic manpower crisis’ on Israel

    by The Cradle.


    The Israeli military is demanding an addition of at least 7,000 soldiers to its forces due to a serious manpower crisis. The 7,000 are needed on top of the soldiers already enlisting, the Israeli army said on 1 March. “The army requires standards for another 7,500 officers and noncommissioned officers, while the Treasury currently approves only 2,500. These are unprecedented numbers, which indicate the shock that befell the IDF following almost 150 days of fighting, which began with heavy losses on 7 October,” Hebrew news site Ynet reported, citing the army’s General Staff. “The army is compiling the data that will explain how dramatic the manpower problem is,” it added.

    Just one day ago, Israel’s Defense Minister, Yoav Gallant, called to end draft exemptions for members of the ultra-Orthodox community. Gallant said he would only support legislation allowing for continued exemptions if all members of the ruling coalition backed it. The minister asserted that “all parts of society” must “bear the burden” of service. Gallant’s position could result in tension with ultra-Orthodox parties in the coalition, viewed as integral to the current government's survival, according to Hebrew media. However, the army’s demand for a boost in manpower “has nothing to do with politics or the demand for equal burden: The situation is simply not good and does not match the threat map,” Ynet wrote.

    Israel is taking severe losses in its genocidal war in Gaza and its attempt to eradicate the Palestinian resistance. While Israel claims that Gaza’s southernmost city of Rafah is the final Hamas stronghold, the group’s military wing, along with several other factions, continue to fiercely confront Israeli troops across the strip. A source from within the resistance told Al-Mayadeen on Thursday that the Israeli army has been forced out of Gaza City’s Al-Zaytoun neighborhood, where it had been operating over the past eleven days in an attempt to clear out Hamas fighters. The source added that the neighborhood is a “graveyard” for Merkava tanks, and the “bloodied and torn” uniforms of Israeli soldiers are spread out across the battlefield. Clashes between the resistance and the army continued to rage on 1 March in several areas of Gaza, including the southern city of Khan Yunis and the Jabalia area in the northern strip.

    In all, the military situation still appears to be in Palestine's favour, which is quite remarkable given that we've been in this conflict for 5 months now. The bloody mathematics of attrition is playing out in both Ukraine and Israel.

  • 🇨🇺 Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez: — Cuba joins the global mobilization in support of Palestine on March 2nd. In all provinces and in Havana, we will take to the streets in solidarity with our brotherly people and to condemn the Holocaust that "israel" aims to cause in Rafah. Everyone for Gaza!

    Free Palestine.

  • It's really depressing how much worse shit has gotten globally. 1950s style sexism seems to have made a grand comeback, men in positions of power don't even face the minimal consequences they used to when caught abusing a woman, attitudes towards LGBT rights seems to be going backwards, racism has never left but people aren't even pretending to be "politically correct" anymore. That's not to mention ongoing wars and genocide because of Western military domination. The Ukraine war will probably end up being more devastating than Iraq when all is said and done, and Israel is killing Palestinians and committing genocide at an unprecedented rate. Not even during the height of the war on terror of the 2000s was Israel doing anything near as devastating as they are doing now.

    Genuinely have no idea what my place in this world is. Should shit go south in South Africa (lol), and I was looking to try to move to one of the "pro LGBT humanist" western countries, they would probably hate on me if my partner was the wrong race. Yet if I were to go to another country on the African continent, there would be a ton of hate for being LGBT. Like is there any place on this planet for us? Trying to maintain hope with everything that's happening globally but it's getting really hard. Where do we go from here, honestly. Everything seems set in motion already, and there seems to be nothing anyone can do about it except for playing their expected part. Maybe the grass is greener where you water it, but community outreach is really difficult.

  • The Intercept has posted an article saying that the push for the "Hamas weaponized SA" NYT story was largely pushed forward by senior leadership, and that journalists are concerned that the author of the piece will be used as a scapegoat.

    “The New York Times said, ‘Let’s do an investigation into sexual violence’ — it was more a case of them having to convince me,” she said. Her host cut her off: “It was a proposal of The New York Times, the entire thing?”
    “Unequivocally. Unequivocally. Obviously. Of course,” she said. “The paper stood behind us 200 percent and gave us the time, the investment, the resources to go in-depth with this investigation as much as needed.”

    A lot of the article is just Schwartz admitting that she couldn't find any evidence at all until she started asking the IOF/Israeli police, who said a bunch of shit that has since been debunked, and who pressured her to run the story as soon as possible. She also said that she had not spoken to a single woman who claimed to have been assaulted.
    To be clear, Schwartz is former IOF and a terrible human being, but she is also totally unqualified as a journalist, and her being picked to lead the article makes it abundantly clear that NYT editors wanted an article from nothing.

  • George Galloway: "I'm no Jeremy Corbyn you see. I won't turn the other cheek. If you slap me I'll slap you back"

    I know he has his bad sides but this is the energy the left needs. Generations of polite boyscouts has done nothing but to make the western left irrelevant and weak.

  • Max Blumenthal brings up an important point: Aaron Bushnell - possibly among other Air Force members - were enlisted against their will to participate in the Palestinian Genocide:

    US Airman Aaron Bushnell did not kill himself to protest some other country's war

    The US Department of Defense has compelled the participation of Air Force members like Bushnell in Israel's Gaza genocide

    Their orders to deploy to Israel read "mandatory"

    https://twitter.com/MaxBlumenthal/status/1762196403969728851

  • 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

    A person, who by all accounts of what information I can find online, was a closeted trans person (he used he/she pronouns in other discords I shared with her, and overwhelmingly went by the name of "Lilly" on her youtube and twitch and discord accounts) who was in the US Air Force, an organisation that has indeed in the past simply disappeared individuals who express any sentiments that their operations are unjust or evil, who knew in fact that one day soon, she may be sent to murder innocent Gazans in one of the most despicable genocides in recent history.

  • Apparently the nasty comments and edgy remarks made on Aaron Bushnell’s reddit account largely came from Destiny fans after he sent them there.

    There’s few people I would like to see die and Destiny is one of them.

1172 comments