Image depicts a destroyed Saudi pipeline pumping station.
My weekly preamble is in spoiler tags below.
preamble
If last week has had a geopolitical main character, it was Ansarallah in Yemen. In under 24 hours, they managed to seize a very large amount of territory to their west from Saudi-backed mercenary groups. Tens of thousands of enemy soldiers fled, thousands more were captured, and hundreds of combat vehicles and all sorts of military equipment and ammunition are now in Ansarallah’s hands. The entire Red Sea coast of Yemen is now under their control, as well as some of the islands in and around the Bab el-Mandab, which is the narrow strait connecting the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden, which then goes on to connect to the Arabian Sea.
While Ansarallah had a pretty good grip on the Red Sea beforehand and could blockade it to the extent that traffic through the Red Sea plummeted in 2024 and 2025 and remain subdued to this day, it is now capable of much more direct control. And the strait is considerably narrower than Hormuz, meaning there is little hope for any covert operations like those of which the US regularly tries and fails to do over there. The only alternatives for the enemies of Ansarallah both now and in the future are the route all the way around Africa, which becomes even less attractive than usual as fuel prices rise into daily record highs, or the newly inaugurated Northern Sea Route under the firm control of Russia.
While Ansarallah is likely to continue their territorial acquisitions to an extent - with Marib looking like an obvious target - how things will continue from this point seems likely to be increasingly diplomatic. Yemen was once divided between North Yemen (which is, really, western Yemen) and South Yemen (which is, really, eastern Yemen), and this division reflects several genuine historical differences between the populations. Ansarallah has repeatedly stated that they have no intention to militarily occupy the south, and indeed, they ended this most recent offensive at approximately the historical border. Nonetheless, the government in once-South Yemen’s capital of Aden is considered the sole internationally recognized government of Yemen, which doesn’t sound sustainable for the future, so we’ll just have to see how the situation develops geopolitically from here, even if it’s unlikely to be militarily in the case of the southern and eastern territories.
While all this has been going on, Ansarallah was additionally applying major pressure on Saudi Arabia itself, by bombing their military airfields and, even more critically, their oil transportation and production facilities. These strikes were mostly limited to the port facilities in e.g. Yanbu and Jazan, and the Western air interceptor famine has meant that these strikes were mostly unopposed and caused substantial losses. However, Ansarallah has now destroyed some pumping stations for the East-West pipeline that spans Saudi Arabia, bypassing Hormuz for some (but not all) of Saudi Arabia’s oil production to the tune of around 4 million barrels per day, which is, in a happy numerical coincidence, about 4% of pre-2026 oil production. I’ve seen several wildly varying estimates for how long it might take to repair the stations, with some saying a few days and others stating at least a month; the damage does look pretty gnarly on the images. Of course, it might not really matter, because Ansarallah can easily just fire another missile at a station once it’s repaired, unless and until the Saudis give in to Ansarallah’s demands and end the war.
Last week’s thread is here.
The Imperialism Reading Group is here.
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The Zionist Entity'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 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.
The anti-LGBT laws I have posted about before did not pass despite the government pushing for it multiple times, owing to combined efforts of women’s rights and queer groups. Seemingly AKP gave up on passing it through anything that looks like a democratic mechanism and just decided to arrest queer activists. Some feminists and journalists were also arrested because why not?
General information on this situation.
The legal argument employed is that being LGBT is sexual and a kid could find these orgs’ publications so these orgs are distributing sexual material to kids.
Should be obvious to readers here, but the real reason why the Fed hiked rates is not much to do with consumer inflation or anything related to Treasury yields, it’s that:
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Interest Payments on government debt and reserve balances add income to the private sector and in many cases this income puts further upwards pressure on prices. This is a basic income on wealth in proportion to their private wealth. Since the rich own most financial wealth, it’s a very obvious transfer to the rich.
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It helps the rich have a real risk free return on their financial asset hoards. Real in the sense that as supply shocks and monopoly price powers erode purchasing power of wages, the rich get a return on top of increase in the price level.
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It helps the rich countries bid away goods from poorer countries. High interest rates act as an import subsidy, atleast temporarily. Of course, no rate hike can create more aggregate goods in the international market, not everyone can be net importer of oil and fossil fuels. But you can change the distribution of commodities, it costs the U.S. nothing to pay foreigners in USD and using its privilege it extracts more stuff others would’ve gotten otherwise.
In the aggregate, no country can get more crude or natural gas by hiking rates. It only changes relative winners.
Other things to note:
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There’s nothing natural about hiking interest rates. Interest rates are a policy variable (the Government essentially sets it) in a modern floating exchange rate economy.
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The bond yields on long term bonds move due to expectations of future central bank and short rates and capital loss risks (since rate hikes makes existing bonds less appealing). Note that there is no default risk in this equation, default risk only applies to private debts in non sovereign currencies.
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The bundling of real issues like supply shock induced rise in fuel and commodity prices along with a policy choice one like the Fed rate hike is a deliberate ploy by the neoliberals.
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Israeli channel 12 citing Saudi sources close to the leadership:
"Among high-ranking Saudi officials there is disappointment with the US position and a growing sense of powerlessness.
The Houthis are exploiting Washington’s inability to take concrete action to expand their influence and freedom of movement in the region.
As long as Washington does not make a practical decision, we are paying for it on the ground.
The security situation facing Saudi Arabia has become more complex compared to the past, given the many regional fronts [meaning Iran, Hezbollah, armed groups in Iraq, and the Houthis in Yemen]."
- Slava Intel
For the 200th consecutive night since the beginning of the American-Zionist war, Iranians gathered on the streets in support of the Islamic Republic
- Middle East Spectator
Young man who was executed by the brutal Islamic regime in Iran as reported by Iran international - turns up alive and in perfect health.
NATOpedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Execution_of_Amirhossein_Hatami
Amirhossein Hatami Born 2007 Died April 2, 2026 (aged 18) Cause of death Execution by hanging
On 31 March 2026, Hatami and four other prisoners were transferred to the solitary confinement ward of Qezelhesar Prison. Amirhossein Hatami was executed on 2 April 2026.[6][7]
As of April 17, 2026, Iranian security forces continue to withhold Hatami’s body four days after his execution, reportedly to pressure his grieving family.[8]
Amnesty International expressed outrage at what it described as “the arbitrary execution of a teenage protester” calling his trial “grossly unfair”. The organization added that “while the population faces mass casualties from bombardment, the authorities continue to weaponize the death penalty to silence dissent.”[9]
Iran International:
Iran refuses to return body of executed teen protester to family
The young man shown alive:
How being music’s Mr Nice Guy contributed to biggest crisis of Ed Sheeran’s career https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cm17jz89rxevo
By now, you probably know the story. Macklemore was picked as opening act on Sheeran’s US tour, and on the first night made a speech saying “Free Palestine” and showing images of the destruction in Gaza.
The following night, he referred to the death toll as a genocide, a claim that Israel rejects.
I know its been said a billion times but how can western outlets with their vaunted neutrality say ‘a claim that Israel rejects’
without the next sentence being ‘but that The UN, Amnesty International, HRW, Jewish Voice for Peace, the Palestinian Authority and numerous other local and international organisations claim meets the definition’,
how can they not mention the statements of Genocidal intent by Knesset ministers and Likud members…“I am appalled by the conflict between Israel and Palestine,” he wrote. “The suffering and pain caused on both sides is a human tragedy. There are too many wars across the world causing immeasurable pain, none of which should be tolerated.”
He continued: “There is a reason I do not use my professional platform for politics - my audience includes young people, often children, of all backgrounds.”
How can they not mention the disparity in deaths and destruction in the ‘conflict’ or him meeting with an Israeli ex-hostage but him ignoring every Palestinian victim
It wouldn’t be so maddening if you knew their weren’t significant number of people taking the obvious spin and bias as gospel
Yesterday, two “rebel” House Democrats, probably acting on orders from the Dem leader Jeffries, provided the two votes the GOP needed to advance the Lindsey Graham “Russia sanctions” bill to a floor vote. The bill (HR 5334) is actually much less about Russia sanctions and more of a “giving Trump unilateral power to do whatever he wants with tariffs and sanctions” bill. It passed today, 262-159 with 58 Democrats supporting it. We might see Trump going crazy with tariffs again, since his wars are not going great. Might as well be a tough guy tariffing everyone because they didn’t compliment your shoes or something.
After enabling this, Jeffries issues a statement about how he opposes the bill 👌
The Saudis are saying that they might try a partial restart of the E-W (Yanbu) pipeline this week, at very reduced pressure. Others disagree. Washington Post:
High-resolution Vantor and Planet satellite imagery reveals extensive structural destruction across at least two pumping stations along Saudi Arabia’s 745-mile East-West pipeline—generating a 20-mile smoke plume—alongside six impacted storage tanks at Aramco’s Abha bulk plant and NASA FIRMS thermal flares at the Yanbu terminal. Technical experts estimate that replacing specialized piping, valves, and electrical control systems will require 1 to 2 months, neutralizing Riyadh’s primary crude bypass around the Strait of Hormuz and contradicting U.S. government claims of a rapid restoration. Exacerbated by depleted global strategic petroleum reserves, rebounding Chinese crude demand, and regional refining bottlenecks—including a power outage at ExxonMobil’s 11-million-gallon-per-day Joliet refinery—U.S. national diesel averages have surged to $6.31/gallon ($8.27 in California), prompting U.S. lawmakers to consider a domestic diesel export ban.
4 months ago: “The problems are over because we made a deal with Iran. A win for the US!”
Now: “Actually Iran wants a deal but I don’t and that is good”
Trump: They wanna make a deal so badly, they call-“we wanna make a deal, we wanna make”-they’re not ready yet I don’t think. But…we could have a deal anytime we want.
Footage of Yemeni air defenses shooting down a Saudi F-15 over Marib province:
https://s1.cdnstatic.space/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/wdqw.mp4
In other news,
Iranian diasporoid media has been trying non-stop to frame recent events as a disaster for Iran.
Warnings of impressing Israeli airstrikes, statements about houthis selling Iran out for Trump, etc.
Please join me in laughing and pointing.
