A reminder that as the US continues to threaten countries around the world, fedposting is to be very much avoided (even with qualifiers like "in Minecraft") and comments containing it will be removed.

Students in front of the Mujahidin Grand Mosque in West Kalimantan, Indonesia, with an ominous, thick haze obscuring vision.


My weekly preamble is in spoiler tags below.

preambleThe last week has been quite a busy one for world energy markets. The first big piece was the reveal that the US is removing sanctions on Russian fuel exports until April 2027. This has been yet another fascinating collision of the Ukraine and Iran Wars, and, of course, another example of all the complicated situations that countries that are otherwise geopolitically aligned can get themselves into, as obviously Russia being allowed to export more diesel does bend the curve on shortages to a degree. China "helping" the West by reducing their demand for foreign oil purchases for much of this year as they drew from their enormous domestic oil reserves is another example of this kind of dynamic. Given how much Russia has helped Iran - especially now, with large increases of Caspian Sea vessels helping Iran mitigate some of the blockade's impact - I don't view this as a betrayal, but more of a unfortunately necessary geopolitical tactic, particularly if increased Russian state revenue lets them defeat the NATO-backed forces they're fighting a bit easier. Regardless, it would be very unfortunate if most of Russia's diesel went directly to the US and not to other struggling countries (not least among them, Cuba), as that would give the US a bit more road to kick the can down.

Ukraine has not taken this news well. It can be hard to figure out to what degree Trump is using kayfabe in any particular situation, but Ukraine immediately striking a Russian diesel export station (to which Russia retaliated by knocking out power throughout much of Kiev) seems to have genuinely annoyed him, e.g. saying that Ukraine should get a new leader. He also tried his classic move of willing a ceasefire into existence purely by social media decree. This worked during the Twelve Day War, but not here - at least not yet. I'm currently cautiously disregarding rumors that the US is going to actually take away intelligence or material support from Ukraine. It's not impossible, and would actually be another data point in the trend of the US withdrawing from Europe (with their bombers evacuating their UK base very recently too), but this antagonization of Russia has been a plot in the making for over a decade, and I would be surprised if Trump was allowed by the powers that be to interrupt this plan in any meaningful way. Perhaps there will be some largely symbolic move instead.

Over in West Asia, Ansarallah is tidying up their encirclement of Taiz, with the noose tightening around PLC forces. The Saudi counteroffensive was very Ukrainian; i.e. it existed mostly as a media phenomenon, but somehow even more half-hearted. Their sole territorial acquisition up to me writing this is 10-20 miles of largely empty coastal plains and an airstrip that Ansarallah, without an airforce, has no real use of. In return for Saudi bombing, Ansarallah has continued hitting oil infrastructure, and additionally escalated by striking terminals at King Khalid airport. Ansarallah gave several warnings to immediately evacuate everybody inside, and the Saudis did not even bother to sound the alarm of an incoming missile, which is emblematic of their desperation to maintain the illusion of the pre-war status quo. The strike on Terminal 3 killed about a dozen people and injured a few hundred. While Saudi airlines are trying to maintain operations, several Western airliners are pausing flights for now, which mirrors the air blockade that the Saudis have forced on Yemen for several years. Meanwhile, Iran has escalated strikes on tankers both inside the Strait of Hormuz and far outside it, as it truly starts to slam the hammer down on what limited illegal transits were making it through. This comes in the form of both missile/drone strikes and naval mines and will keep physical oil prices elevated well into the short and medium terms if maintained. Additionally, the US continues its reported buildup of forces for another try at striking Iran, possibly before the midterms, but I sincerely don't know what they could possibly hope to achieve beyond trying to get more votes from chest-thumping jingoistic morons while yet further degrading their position in the region militarily and economically.

Meanwhile, over in Southeast Asia, air pollution has dramatically increased over the past few months due to manmade wildfires in Indonesian forests and peatlands, which were caused by profit-seeking slash-and-burn farmers clearing land with fire, and then further exacerbated by one of the worst El Ninos on record. This bourgeois idiocy has caused untold environmental damage, hundreds of thousands of cases of respiratory illnesses throughout Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Singapore, prolonged closures of major institutions like schools, and required the distribution of oxygen cylinders throughout parts of the populace to try and keep them alive and at least vaguely healthy.


Last week's thread is here.

Please check out the RedAtlas!

The bulletins site is here. Currently not used.
The RSS feed is here. Also currently not used.

The Zionist Entity's Genocide of Palestine

If you have evidence of Zionist crimes and atrocities that you wish to preserve, there is a thread here in which to do so.

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 the Zionists' 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.

Mirrors of Telegram channels that have been erased by Zionist censorship.

Russia-Ukraine Conflict

Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict

Sources:

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.


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[–] 76 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (22 children)

cia-now soft peddles anti ansarallah stuff, great sign of things to come (it's actually quite sophisticated piece of propaganda, because it lies almost exclusively by omission, if you read it as average ngo-lib, your impression would be that: ansarallah are religious extremists fighting a civil war which makes situation worse for the simple people of yemen, some of whom are hoping for saudis strikes, who are double dealing with amerikkka (who are smolbeans passing-by), and the fault lies with government not building strong institutions, presumably by saleh)

https://www.democracynow.org/2026/10/13/houthis_strike_saudi

spoiler

very briefly, to get into who the Houthis are, they are a group that was initially created in the 1990s to oppose the rise of Salafi Muslims in the far north of Yemen

And I think that comparison does have some validity. And for people who don’t know Yemen well, it will give them an idea of what kind of group they are. They are extremely repressive. They are also very ideologically motivated. They’ve now, for 15 years or longer, been educating and forcing their ideology onto children throughout their school and education system, as well as adults

salafi muslims are smolbeans now without any support (why north of yemen? who knows, the climat. education is back as tool of brainwashing as well, just stellar stuff by implication

you know, the airstrikes at the moment by most Yemenis are considered airstrikes that are supporting them against the Houthis.

most yemenis are cheering air strikes by saudis wouldn’t you know it

And the Saudis are currently supporting the government, and they were — they are really in a very bad dilemma, because they know from previous experience — they did, you know, aerial bombing for seven years, and it got nowhere

aside from murdering a schoolbus full of children as a poignant moment, got nowhere

And you also remember that the humanitarian situation for Yemenis, in general, is absolutely disastrous.

is there some word on what saudis are enforcing? arcade? parade? ah, blockade. is there any connection to humanitarian situation? who knows.

..

would you upon reading this piece know that usa supplied targeting info for a decade to saudis? or that obama/trump/genocide joe have also killed yemeni civilians explicitly? would you know they have nearly bankrupted eilat port as the only country enforcing genocide convention?

I rate this regime change prop 8/10, needs some human touch, possibly egg monopolist losing their business, and that they are all drug users (like nazis)

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  • [–] 23 points 22 hours ago*

    y'know, not sure if it quite counts as full-scale civil war (man, CIA mouthpieces really love their full scales, no more half-wars waltuh waltuh) when the non-Ansarallah factions kind of just pathetically fold on impact

    (and also the "rebels" already control most of the actually populated parts of the country)

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  • [–] 57 points 1 day ago (2 children)

    For more, we’re joined by Helen Lackner, author of several books on Yemen, including Yemen in Crisis: The Road to War and Yemen: Poverty and Conflict. She’s been involved with Yemen for over 50 years and lived there for a total of more than 15 years between the '70s and the 2010s. Her next book on Yemen will be out next year. She's joining us from Oxford, England.

    Wow, I'm so glad I could hear the opinion of some westoid "expert"zenz

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  • [–] 47 points 1 day ago (1 child)

    That author is a total hack. Her entire career depends on the endless suffering of Yemeni civilians at the hands of the bloodthirsty Saudi regime. I hope she weeps on the day Ansarallah liberate Aden and put an end to the white liberal NGO industry leeching the entierty of West Asia.

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  • [–] 41 points 1 day ago (2 children)

    Sometimes your humanitarian situation just does that if you didn't adopt enough liberal western institutions

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  • [–] 23 points 1 day ago (7 children)

    The CIA is actually pro-Ansarallah according to my own theory, lol. Same reason the US is not providing material support to Saudi Arabia: they are weaponizing China's short term dependency on Middle Eastern oil to force them to help secure US hegemony there. Classic geopolitical jiu jitsu from the foreign policy blob.

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  • [–] 36 points 1 day ago* (6 children)

    nah, they just don’t want to look stupid, again. saudis are crawling with pentagon advisers, and refueling planes

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  • [–] 24 points 1 day ago (5 children)

    The whole situation benefits the US though as long as it continues indefinitely. The US has Saudi to sell shit to and Saudi rely on US support, but it is in US interests not to support them to victory because if Saudi secured the region then they'd be in a stronger position for their relationship with the US etc etc etc.

    The whole US machine benefits from total destabilisation of everywhere else.

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  • [–] 20 points 1 day ago (4 children)

    it benefits hard material power of having oil, but fumbles financial power of dollars speed-of-circulation part (see treasury yields), which fucks financialized to shits material economy of usa social reproduction (eg. housing or data centers for stonk market).

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  • [–] 26 points 1 day ago (3 children)

    If Saudi can't sell oil, they have to dump US bonds.

    If they dump US bonds, the US goes broke.

    If the US doesn't or cannot support Saudi Arabia, it will split into tribal society and government will dissolve.

    If Saudi Arabia is not successfully supported, it cannot sell oil.

    If it cannot sell oil, it cannot purchase expensive arms. Maybe the US can buy up the oil fields and mineral rights, but they won't actually be able to collect without contributing militarily - and somehow winning.

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