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.

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.

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.


  • AltMaarri [they/them]@hexbear.net
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    1 hour ago

    New SPR numbers have been released:

    Retrieval appears to have slowed to a crawl, with only 0.6M barrels taken out. It might be because they’re getting very close to some theoretical operational limits where caverns start to crumble down due to the water.

    Then again it might be something else; I’ve read some analysis suggesting that it might be because of the lack of demand given the conditions they offer; apparently the way the SPR works is the government offers the oil almost for free but you’re obligated to put back what you get +N% after months/years. So the lack of oil retrieval might mean US companies do not believe oil will be cheaper in the future anymore, and prefer to buy on the market. No idea how true that is though this is a pdf of the last SPR auction and it certainly appears to support that (with a single company “buying” 500K barrels from the SPR out of 40M barrels being offered). I have no idea how reliable all of this is, more informed comments are welcome.

    I still don’t understand how the energy shock hasn’t hit, or hit harder.

      • subversive_dev@lemmy.ml
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        34 minutes ago

        So like… When does it finally end?

        When does all the paper collapse under its own weight?

        How can the treasury keep getting away with shorting oil futures without there being some sort of short squeeze?

        How the fuck are they even able to keep it afloat still?

        Are you saying there just literally isn’t even any oil changing hands at all?

  • Redcuban1959 [any]@hexbear.netM
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    2 hours ago

    Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman will meet Egyptian President Abdelfattah El-Sisi tomorrow in Cairo Saudi Arabia will reportedly ask Egypt for help in confronting the Houthis.

    • Middle East Spectator
  • Redcuban1959 [any]@hexbear.netM
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    2 hours ago

    trump-drenched "I hope everyone realizes that price increases throughout America were caused by Sleepy Joe Biden and the Biden Administration, not by “TRUMP. Even Oil was higher under Biden than it is right now, and we prevented Iran from having a Nuclear Weapon! With the temporary exception of Oil, prices are coming down sharply, and Oil will drop like a rock as soon as the Military Conflict with Iran is over, and that will not be long. Thank you for your attention to this matter! President DONALD J. TRUMP”

  • Lovely_sombrero [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    3 hours ago

    Are 100% refinery utilization and skipped spring maintainance a good idea? Time will tell!

    ExxonMobil’s 275,000 barrel per day Joliet oil refinery in Illinois has suffered a “total power outage,” with heavy black smoke from emergency flaring visible for miles,

  • Athena5898 [any]@hexbear.net
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    3 hours ago

    (The Cradle) “This year, given the current situation, there is no one left from our Christian brothers in the village. We are ringing the bell ourselves, and this bell will keep ringing in the village.”

    On the occasion of the Feast of the Cross, a Muslim resident of the southern Lebanese town of Blat stepped in to ring the local church bell because ongoing Israeli aggression forcibly displaced the village’s Christian population:

    “This country will remain a symbol of coexistence; Muslims and our Christian brothers. Every year on a day like this, there used to be celebrations, and the church bell would ring all night long. This year, given the current situation, there is no one left from our Christian brothers in the village. We are ringing the bell ourselves, and this bell will keep ringing in the village.” (https://t.me/thecradlemedia/67918)

  • Athena5898 [any]@hexbear.net
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    3 hours ago

    (MPN) Saudi Proxy Forces In Yemen Proudly Announced The Downing Of A Drone…

    It was soon after revealed to be a CH-4 UAV operated by Saudi Arabia. In other words, they shot down their own sides drone & made a video celebrating it, thinking it belonged to Ansarallah. (https://t.me/mintpress_news/15573)

  • miz [any, any]@hexbear.net
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    3 hours ago

    Ed Sheeran tour drops Macklemore after his onstage support for Palestine | The Needle Drop

    article

    Rapper Macklemore is a vocal supporter of Palestine and Gaza residents. During a recent concert at MetLife Stadium, he yelled “Free Palestine!” onstage, projected images of devastation in the area, and performed protest song “Hind’s Hall.”

    Now, it seems that American venues are not willing to play ball with the Seattle artist, and he has been dropped from Ed Sheeran’s Loop Tour.

    “After discussions with stakeholders, Macklemore will not be performing on the remaining support dates,” according to Messina Touring Group, the promoter of Loop Tour. This news follows backlash from organizations like StopAntisemitism and others, such as pop star Pink.

    Macklemore took time to rebuke critics who may dub him antisemitic, declaring to Jewish audience members at the concert after his initial “Free Palestine!” exclamation that “Criticism of Israel [sic] [and] being against genocide in no way is a criticism of you.” Now, he will not appear at his slated eight of ten shows on the U.S. leg of Sheeran’s run.

    The North American dates on Sheeran’s tour will head through the fall until early November, and will be supported by Lukas Graham and Aaron Rowe.

    • Yllych [any]@hexbear.net
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      1 hour ago
      statement from Macklemore, apparently from his Facebook. Supposedly some NFL stadium owners rallied to get Macklemore out. Sheeran and him have fundamental differences, i wonder what they are exactly ...

      "I’m going to speak from the heart and share the truth. Ed Sheeran and his team have made the decision to remove me from The Loop tour. But before I get into it, I want to say something that should be obvious. In this moment I think it matters. I am not a victim. Ed Sheeran is not a victim. Pink is not a victim. We have careers, money, opportunities, safety and audiences around the world. Whatever consequences any of us face for what we say, we get to go home to our families.

      The victims are the Palestinian people. The men, women and children who have been killed, starved, displaced and forced to live through unimaginable violence. More than 20,000 children have been killed in Gaza alone. People are being killed today, and people will be killed tomorrow. I want to make sure that as I tell this story, we don’t lose sight of that.

      Last Monday, in the middle of all the media attention surrounding Pink and what I said at MetLife, Ed told me that Robert Kraft called him. We were scheduled to play Gillette Stadium later this month, which is owned by the Kraft Group. Ed told me that Kraft said I would not be allowed to perform in his stadium. Ed also told me that Kraft had rallied some of the other stadium owners and collectively they gave him an ultimatum: if Macklemore stays on the tour, you will not be allowed to play in our venues.

      Ed was in a fucked up position. He knew it. His typical apolitical stance was being challenged in a way it never had been before. He told me that the words “Free Palestine” and the image of the Palestinian flag were hurtful to a lot of people he spoke with. I told him that if those words were more offensive than tens of thousands of Palestinian children being killed by Israel, then there was a fundamental disconnect between where those people stood and where I stood. But he couldn’t get past his public facing, “I don’t take sides.

      And I get why people don’t. Taking a side can cost you. Money, brand deals, sponsorships, festivals, private shows, relationships and access. I’ve lost all of those things. But there is no neutral position between the oppressor and the oppressed. When one side has the bombs and bottomless financial and military support from America, refusing to take a side doesn’t leave you in the middle.

      What I said at MetLife I have been saying on stages around the world for almost three years. So why is it an issue now? Because now I’m sharing a stage with one of the biggest artists in the world, in some of the biggest stadiums in America. At a certain level of exposure, “Free Palestine” becomes too much of a risk. If I kept doing the shows, saying Free Palestine, with Ed implicitly supporting it, the crowd getting loud and showing undeniable support for Palestinian liberation, what artist might speak out next? The stage becomes resistance. Maybe that’s why this time it became so important to silence me.

      And one of the most effective ways to enforce that silence has been to weaponize the accusation of antisemitism. Antisemitism is real. And that is exactly why the word matters too much to be used as a shield against criticism of the Israeli state. When criticizing Israel, opposing Zionism or saying “Free Palestine” gets conflated with hatred of Jewish people, it doesn’t protect Jewish people. It protects Israel from accountability.

      Who is winning the internet, who is getting canceled, who gets to play the stadium and who doesn’t, all of it becomes so small when held against what we are actually witnessing in Gaza and the West Bank. An entire people being displaced, starved and killed while the world debates which words we are allowed to use to describe it, how those words make us feel, and whether our discomfort matters more than the people living through a genocide.

      I didn’t need 10 shows from Ed. I needed 2. Two chances to stand in front of 90,000 people and say the words that somehow became too dangerous to say. Free Palestine. But if those words cost me the stage, while turning the conversation back to Palestine, then it was the most successful tour I’ve ever been on

      • FALGSConaut [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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        Yet another example that staying “neutral” is siding with the oppressor. Ed Sheeran is a fucking coward that is choosing money over human lives.

        Haven’t really listened to his music (and low key blame his song “thrift shop” for thrifting getting shittier over the past decade-ish) but he has a better moral compass than 99% of the soulless ghouls that make a living in entertainment

    • The North American dates on Sheeran’s tour will head through the fall until early November, and will be supported by Lukas Graham and Aaron Rowe.

      There’s a word for people who gleefully fill in the roles left when the capitalists lay off anyone who causes problems. Scabs.

    • InexplicableLunchFiend [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      3 hours ago

      This is so pathetic. Why would he even agree to tour with him if he wasn’t down with Palestine? It’s all Macklemore has talked about for years at this point, it wasn’t exactly a secret. Just shows that Ed Sheeran is a coward who folds to pressure.

      • FALGSConaut [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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        2 hours ago

        Seriously, he’s cancelled shows/had them cancelled for him over his support for Palestine before, why bother booking his as part of your show when he has a track record of (rightly) putting Palestine over performing

  • miz [any, any]@hexbear.net
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    4 hours ago

    Iraqi resistance rejects Saudi pipeline accusations, demands government present evidence | The Cradle [Sep 12]

    The resistance called the Saudi accusations a distraction from Riyadh’s losses in Yemen, and challenged its own government to produce evidence for the claims it had adopted

    Ansarallah has not taken credit afaik. so who struck the east-west pipeline, then? zionist false flag? I’m having trouble imagining the motivation

    • TheLastHero [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      2 hours ago

      My gut says it was Ansarallah but I do not think AA minds the Saudis blaming the PMF in Iraq at all. If they keep silent and if the Saudis keep pushing the PMF, it could escalate and then another front opens against the Zionists and collaborators. Even if the Saudis know damn well it was AA and they’re just trying to save face and have no intentions of striking back, it still puts Baghdad government in a terrible position internally vs the PMF

    • companero [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      4 hours ago

      US covert operation to block oil flow to China is a possibility. The whole Yemen situation really does not sit right with me.

      Wouldn’t be the first time they blew up an ally’s pipeline for geopolitical purposes…

      Also it was “US officials” who first claimed that the drones came from Iraq.