I'm constantly impressed that we are a civilisation that can look down from space and see this kind of barbarism.
Can we verify those images are not edited or generated?
Visible from space, Sudan's bloodied sands expose a massacre of thousands
171–180 of 211 posts
Re: Visible from space, Sudan's bloodied sands expose a massacre of thousands
#172Re: Visible from space, Sudan's bloodied sands expose a massacre of thousands
#173Earlier quoted context omitted.
[flagged]
Wait, the U.S. is looking away from Qatar’s sponsorship of Hamas at the behest of Israel? How does that square with the face that Israel literally attacked Qatar to get to Hamas leaders in there?
Hamas was the de facto government in the Gaza strip, so it was in everyone's best interest to fund them enough to keep their civil branches running (pre-oct 7).
>Qatar does, the official allows, transfer $30 million each month to the Hamas administration in Gaza. But those payments are performed in consultation with Washington and Israel - and with their approval, he says.
>Each month, he says, construction materials worth tens of millions of dollars are also delivered from Egypt to Gaza via the Rafah border crossing. those supplies are then sold by Hamas. He says the organization uses the proceeds to pay its administrative staff. Israel, in turn, he explains, supplies $10 million worth of diesel fuel to the Gaza Strip each month, with Qatar providing another 10 million to needy families. They receive $100 each, "martyr families excluded," the government representative stresses.
https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/nato-partner-and-...
Re: Visible from space, Sudan's bloodied sands expose a massacre of thousands
#174[flagged]
Not sure why you are being downvoted, but you are exactly right. The October 7 massacre passed with barely any notice in much of the Western world. Yet the moment Israel responded to recover the hostages—if not earlier—there were already demonstrations everywhere against so-called Israeli “atrocities.” It appears the world only pays attention when Jews are involved. An estimated 500,000 children have died from malnut…
> The October 7 massacre passed with barely any notice in much of the Western world.
That's a lie. It was front page news for a week in every major western newspaper. Just use the Wayback Machine to look at the headlines for that day.
Re: Visible from space, Sudan's bloodied sands expose a massacre of thousands
#175Earlier quoted context omitted.
The heatmap may as well represent a map of recently decolonized areas with unresolved political issues, and just so happens that many of these places have significant Muslim populations.
If you read the Koran and Hadiths, there are numerous statements about the true Muslims duty being to spread Islam - at the point of the sword being a well supported one, scripture wise. Abu Bakr [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Bakr ] and even Mohammed himself [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_expeditions_of_Muhamma... ]. It has never been a particularly ‘turn the other cheek’ religion.
Isn't that true of Christianity as well? If it is the true Muslim's duty to spread Islam by the sword, then why did it take centuries for populations to convert to Islam in places like Egypt which were conquered by leaders who knew Mohammed personally? Why did places which were never conquered by Muslim caliphates like Indonesia have significant Muslim populations today?
Re: Visible from space, Sudan's bloodied sands expose a massacre of thousands
#176Earlier quoted context omitted.
[flagged]
The IDF has killed many tens of thousands more women and children than Hamas has, so who the bigger terrorists are is debatable.
This is a statement of fact but the context is missing quite a lot. The IDF is a uniformed military force and Hamas is an ununiformed organization intentionally hiding among soft targets. Hamas also has children among it's soldiers.
Hamas intentionally created the situation where the IDF will kill women and children to accomplish their objective.
The IDF incursion is also a response to an attack by Hamas that targeted non-combatantants for murder, rape and abduction.
I don't think any of that is a controversial but correct me if I'm wrong.
Re: Visible from space, Sudan's bloodied sands expose a massacre of thousands
#177As always, conflicts are much easier to understand when viewed through the lens of materialism. Factors such as ethnicity or religion are never the reason for these conflicts. Those are simply the excuse. It’s what’s used to fuel the fire. The heart of this conflict is Sudan’s gold that’s laundered via Dubai then Switzerland. The culpability of Western powers including the US cannot be ignored either. The RSF is supp…
This is almost exactly wrong. Like, if you wanted to invent a plausible-on-its-face position that formed a perfect -1 dot product with the truth, this is what you’d come up with. Polite western society has become so disconnected from what earnest religious belief feels like that they have become unable to comprehend the world around them, which hasn’t. They project their own materialism onto the own world and conclud…
Way to miss the point and claim things I never said at the same time.
Earnest religious belief means nothing without material support. You can hate someone all you want for whatever religious reasons you want but it doesn't matter unless somebody gives you guns, bombs, tanks and planes. And why would someone do that? Because of material interests.
Why did the Crusades happens (multiple times)? Because of material interests. How did those who materially benefit get ordinary people to fight? By fomenting religious fervor and hatred. Why did they do that? To further their material interests.
You mention Ukraine. Perfect example. Russia took Crimea to get a port on the Black Sea in 2014 and also to control resources in that area. Why did Russia invade in 2021? Because maintaining what is essentially an oblast (like Kaliningrad) became too expensive. Ukraine had cut off the water. So Russia ideally wanted to despose the government and install another Lukachenko puppet government (like they have in Belarus) but, failing that, they wanted to secure a land bridge to Crimea. Just look at a map.
One could say the exact same thing you do about "African agency" about the Russian-speaking people of eastern Ukraine but that's just an excuse. Putin doesn't care about that. He cares about the land they live on. And we've seen this exact playbook many times over. For example, Hitler used to annex Austria and the Sudetenland to ostensibly re-unite German-speaking people but again, that wasn't the point.
Now you might say in any of these places the people are motivated to kill for ethnic and/or religios interests. They may genuinely believe in this (but again, ask yourself why) but there are also a ton of opportunists. An absolute perfect example of this is Maria Corina Machado, the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize winner, who opposed Maduro in Venezuela and her two biggest goals are to privatize Venezuelan industries (previously nationalized) and to further support Israel. She may as well put out a press release saying she's open to the backing her in a coup. Privatizing national industries for Western companies to profit? Sounds a whole lot like material interests to me.
Go back in history and ask yourself why the borders of Sudan are what they are, just like we could for Rwanda and a host of other civil wars. Why exactly are these different ethnic groups in the same country? Well, that's a colonizer special, perfected by the British Empire, to sow division in the locals so the colonizer can profit. Once again, material interests.
Re: Visible from space, Sudan's bloodied sands expose a massacre of thousands
#178As always, conflicts are much easier to understand when viewed through the lens of materialism. Factors such as ethnicity or religion are never the reason for these conflicts. Those are simply the excuse. It’s what’s used to fuel the fire. The heart of this conflict is Sudan’s gold that’s laundered via Dubai then Switzerland. The culpability of Western powers including the US cannot be ignored either. The RSF is supp…
> Factors such as ethnicity or religion are never the reason for these conflicts Economics motivates. But these divisions dominate in determining magnitude. You don’t need genocide to control mines, farms and oil fields. (You need labour.) The dial turns from enslavement to extermination when there is deep-rooted fury. That sort of fury can really only be channeled on divisions of race and religion. (You need a way f…
> You don’t need genocide to control mines, farms and oil fields
True but if your goal is the control of resources, you don't really care if your proxy ends up engaging in these and other war crimes. That's just the cost of doing business.
Take as example when Saddam Hussein used nerve gas on the Kurds in Halabja in 1988. Well that's a war crime. Did the US care? Not until 1990 when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait and threatened Saudi Arabia. Up until then Saddam was a foil against Iran, who was only really an enemy after religious fundamentalists overthrew the US puppet regime of the Shah in 1979. Then in the 1990s, the US retroactively started caring about Halabja.
So did the US need Saddam to use nerve gas on the Kurds? No, of course not. Did they care? Absolutely not. Again, it was the cost of doing business.
> We don’t have that influence.
Yes we absolutely do. You get that power when you supply the weapons and can choose who to supply them to. We have many weapons that we could wield against allies in particular. What if the US declared that gold sourced from Sudan was illegal to trade in? If you say the US can't make laws in other countries, I'll just laugh. The US still has control of the global financial system and can declare that any bank wanting access to the US financial system has to not trade in Sudanese gold.
Currently, the UAE gets away with this by essentially laundering Sudanese gold. The system allows them to do this. Well the UAE produces no gold so what if any gold exports from Dubai had to come with certificates showing from where it was imported?
If you don't think that can be done, look no further than the Kimberly Process Certification Scheme ("KPCS") for conflict-free diamonds [1].
> ... we’d put serious economic and military interests at stake. Interests American voters care about ...
I'm curious what African (or even Middle Eastern) interests you think voters care about? I say this because American voters pretty famously don't really care about foreign policy at all. Also, foreign policy is notably uniparty. The war in AFghanistan went through 4 administrations, 2 Republican, 2 Democrat. Vietnam went through 5 administrations (2 Democrat, 3 Republican) as well (ie Eisenhower, JFK, LBJ, Nixon, Ford).
Re: Visible from space, Sudan's bloodied sands expose a massacre of thousands
#179Earlier quoted context omitted.
China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Russia, Turkey, (EDIT: the UK, indirectly) and Egypt have each also supplied weapons into this conflict [1]. Presumably due to Sudan’s position on the Red Sea. (China and the UAE seem to be alone in supplying the RSF, though.) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudanese_civil_war_(2023%E2%80...
It's also likely that the US is kept at bay by trading UAE acceptance of Israel in return for diplomatic cover and military passivity. The US destruction of Libya has been quite important for the UAE:s ability to supply the RSF as well, a lot of the weapon transports pass through there.
> likely that the US is kept at bay by trading UAE acceptance of Israel in return for diplomatic cover and military passivity
Sudanese tensions predate the current mess in Gaza, as well as the Abraham Accords.
At this point I’m surprised we aren’t seeing people conclude that we invaded Afghanistan and Iraq because of Israel.
Re: Visible from space, Sudan's bloodied sands expose a massacre of thousands
#180Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Factors such as ethnicity or religion are never the reason for these conflicts Economics motivates. But these divisions dominate in determining magnitude. You don’t need genocide to control mines, farms and oil fields. (You need labour.) The dial turns from enslavement to extermination when there is deep-rooted fury. That sort of fury can really only be channeled on divisions of race and religion. (You need a way f…
> You don’t need genocide to control mines, farms and oil fields True but if your goal is the control of resources, you don't really care if your proxy ends up engaging in these and other war crimes. That's just the cost of doing business. Take as example when Saddam Hussein used nerve gas on the Kurds in Halabja in 1988. Well that's a war crime. Did the US care? Not until 1990 when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait and…
> if your goal is the control of resources, you don't really care if your proxy ends up engaging in these and other war crimes
Granted. The UAE is not involved due to animus. But this analysis renders everyone in Sudan as NPCs. The reason the conflict is an opportunity for meddling, the reason it has turned into a genocide, these causes are found more in culture and politics than pure economics.
> You get that power when you supply the weapons and can choose who to supply them to
America withholding arms from Sudan wouldn’t change much.
If we started dictating Emirati foreign policy based on withholding arms, they should drop us as a security guarantor. (And can. And eventually would.)
We’d lose a reliable ally and investor and oil producer in exchange for foreign policy control in a region Americans are sick of being involved in.
> What if the US declared that gold sourced from Sudan was illegal to trade in?
Nothing. Like actually nothing. Maybe domestic gold prices would bump up a bit, but less than they have with tariffs and the deficit explosion.
If we tried to get the UAE to stop trading Sudanese gold, on the other hand, that would mean applying diplomatic and possibly economic pressure. That could result in costs to American voters we don’t care to pay.
> the Kimberly Process Certification Scheme ("KPCS") for conflict-free diamonds
Yet blood diamonds still sell.
Gold is tracked and traded based on provenance—high-end mints will produce more expensive bars. The difference is there is a larger buyer pool for conflict gold than there is for diamonds. (And much more for oil.)
> American voters pretty famously don't really care about foreign policy at all
This is what I meant. American leaders are constrained in acting on foreign policy lines that result in domestic pain. Alienating the Gulf would result in domestic pain.