Image is a map of the approximate state of play of the military situation in Yemen, with the main focus being to cut off PLC access to Taizz (in the north of the salient). This map is from @bonzerbarry on Twitter (I would link to him directly but xcancel is down), who I recommend for coverage of the situation in the Middle East in general, and Yemen in particular.
My weekly preamble is in spoiler tags below.
preamble
As I said in last week’s preamble, it remains comically unclear what’s truly happening in the strait. The main data point supporting oil tanker movements in the Strait being sufficient for oil flows to be completely restored are a few “independent trackers” including the big kahuna, Kpler, reporting on mostly recovered oil flows. The main data points that contradict this are: 1) satellite evidence of increasing strikes on tankers by Iran, as well as Ansarallah strikes on Saudi oil infrastructure; 2) a 1000% increase in the cost to hire a supertanker out of Hormuz compared to pre-war; 3) elevated and/or rising crack spreads; 4) elevated and/or rising diesel and gas costs in various countries around the world; 5) the new 40M SPR release by the US and the EU emergency diesel release as they bend the knee to the threat by the US to ban diesel exports; 6) PetroChina banning October export cargos to try and prevent domestic supplies from falling further; 7) Russia maintaining their diesel export ban; 8) refineries in India and the US literally exploding from the overwork (and some are now being forced into ~month-long maintenance periods); and 9) bond yields continuing to skyrocket across the Western world to heights unseen since the 2008 Great Recession or even before. So who can truly say?
Anyway. Trump has threatened a return to striking Iran after the midterms, with the aircraft carrier out in the Pacific heading for West Asia (perhaps replacing the USS George Washington? I’ve gotten mixed news), as well as a new amphibious landing ship which is likely going to relieve the one already present in-theater. The H.W. Bush has been found all the way off in Thailand, meaning that either there will be two or even just one aircraft carrier in the region surrounding Iran soon. As stated by many people many times before, the capacity for large strikes equal to the one in early March no longer exists, with the Navy forced hundreds of miles further away than during the first half of the year in response to Iran’s anti-ship missiles, and most bases in the region no longer safely operable with the ongoing interceptor famine. Trump has had trouble articulating exactly why a return to missile strikes would be necessary if Iran has indeed lost control of the Strait of Hormuz and if the blockade on Iran is working, with the only constant being the talismanic phrase “Iran must not acquire a nuclear weapon.” Araghchi recently remarked that Iran is prepared for a “doomsday war”, which demonstrates that if Trump is bluffing to intimidate Iran, then it’s just as unlikely to work as all the myriad other times. Iran is also dramatically expanding its number of battalions, and says they are advancing their missile technology to be able to hit targets further away, as well as moving targets at sea (a genuinely massive challenge for all militaries, not just Iran). The number of US troops soon to be in theater is an order of magnitude less than would be required to occupy a portion of Iranian territory for an extended period, and the threat to destroy the region’s fossil fuel infrastructure if Iran’s is hit is only more impactful now that global inventories have dwindled.
Ansarallah continues to make gains in their offensive, and are, as of me writing this, cutting off PLC access to the major city of Taiz, attacking the salient there from numerous directions, including both sides of the neck. The Saudi response to the rout of their mercenary groups in Yemen has been a lot of floundering. It’s hard for me to personally say to what extent their airstrikes are effective, but it certainly hasn’t stopped the advances, and Ansarallah’s capacity to respond to them by destroying their critical infrastructure has put them in a major bind. They’ve recently unveiled a plan to the media to conduct an offensive to retake the Red Sea coast or even all of Ansarallah’s territory, though everybody who’s been watching the Ukraine War knows that preannouncing your offensives is a bad omen for their actual effectiveness. Not because your enemy will know you’re coming, per se - they’d know regardless due to their intel of your mobilizations - but because it indicates that you care more about the optics of being seen to be “doing something soon” than actually conducting a well-planned and well-provisioned offensive. There’s also reports that the Zionists are becoming increasingly involved in trying to help the Saudis repel Ansarallah, which is a telling indicator of the value of the recent Mecca Agreement.
As I mentioned in last week’s preamble, Brazil’s first round has come and gone, and my sense of foreboding was largely vindicated. Polls before the election described a tight race with Lula out in front by 1 or 2 percentage points; this was, incidentally, the same lead by which Lula defeated Bolsonaro 1.0 years ago. Exit polls described a similar state of play. The actual results were the reverse situation, with Bolsonaro 2.0 out in front by 1 or 2 percentage points (47% to 45%). This avoids the catastrophe of a first round victory for Bolsonaro, and the disaster of something unsalvageable like a 49-42 lead, but is still decidedly in the L column for Lula’s chances without some major last-minute cavalry coming for the second round on October 25th. The impression I’ve gotten is that Lula’s poor performance is due to the combination of the very recent corruption scandal as a short term influence, the general economic malaise caused by the economic shockwaves of the Iran War as a medium term influence, and the lukewarm social and economic development made during Lula’s term as a long term influence. Regardless of the ultimate outcome, escaping the cycle of socdem-comprador-socdem-comprador is the challenge of the current era, particularly in Latin America, and especially when the US is retrenching into Latin America as they gradually withdraw or are kicked out of Afro-Eurasia.
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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.
drone video of the protest in avenida paulista today
sometimes i got the feeling it was more like an anti-flávio protest than a pro-lula one. it’s hard to defend this government, and every time i say flávio’s policies will increase poverty, the other side can point to some aspect of poverty that increased in the last 4 years under lula, like the number of homeless people. the PT libs get more and more similar to the democrats in their domestic policies, and they’ll never learn that you’ll always reap fascism when you sow liberalism. however, a lot of those in the streets were liberals too, not that unlike the no kings protest
but with all that said, the energy was fucking great, and absolutely necessary at this point. we’ll need to maintain this in the years to come, even if lula wins, because we’ll need to push his old liberal ass to the left. we’ll also need to defend his term, because with how congress is leaning heavily to the far-right, they’ll definitely be trying to impeach lula on a weekly basis. both will have to be done together, because i’m not planning to go out in 2027 defending an austerity government, fuck that. we need to save this election and then use that political capital to force the PT’s hand, even if they’re stubborn libs
I honestly hope this is the one time we don’t do a poor cousin version of US politics, and somehow, by some kind of miracle, we actually do manage to push the president to the left, in case he’s reelected
that’s my hope too. it’s way more likely for the PT to complain about the protests, saying they’ll make the president more “fragile”, as they’ve done countless times. but that’s our only option
it’s gonna be especially hard starting in december. lula’s been holding fuel prices back, and we all know that 1) that’s unsustainable and 2) the gulf crisis will get worse in/after november. if his popularity is already down, imagine when this inflation finally hits us
I was just thinking, “push the president to the left? This is a bad joke even for a liberal in this age.”
New country who dis. I hope you all figure out what the US can’t.
to be fair, while current PT are pretty much brazilian democrats, lula at least has a history of being much more left than, say, biden. we’ve also shown we can do some effective pressure, for instance, the movement around reducing work days/hours (from 6 days a week to 5, 44h to 40h) didn’t come from the government. in fact, they took a long time to even acknowledge it, it was only after popular support grew organically that they decided to talk about the cause and advance it, and it was already going through congress until this disastrous first round. so there is a tug of war type of effect going on here, even if the PT insists on giving more concessions to the other side