My weekly preamble is in spoiler tags below.
preamble
The 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.
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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.
I finally got my hands on a copy of Nick turse’s “kill anything that moves” about systematic US war crimes in vietnam, and man right off the bat there’s this passage that seems extremely relevant to Israel and who knows how many other imperialist acts:
Preceding text is a high level description of the My Lai massacre and the one officer who was charged over it.
And then, in a stunning reversal, almost immediately after the exposure of the My Lai massacre, war crime allegations became old hat-- so commonplace as to be barely worth mentioning or looking into. In leaflets, pamphlets, small press books and “underground” newspapers, the growing American antiwar movement repeatedly pointed out that US troops were committing atrocities on a regular basis. But what had been previously brushed aside as propaganda and leftist kookery suddenly started to be disregarded as yawn-worthy common knowledge, with little but the My Lai massacre in between.
BREAKING: Zelensky says he has been betrayed by Trump, that Elon Musk and Trump deliberately blocked Starlink in Ukraine overnight and that people have been killed as a result. “I am sure they knew what they did, absolutely. Because it was 1am at night, Starlink was blocked by SpaceX and the United States,” he tells Piers Morgan.
“This decision will bring a lot of human losses. Of course, people will die.” He said interceptors that rely on Starlink did not work, and that “this is not the right side of history.”
Asked if he is angry with Musk, Zelensky said yes, calling it a big mistake.
“Now Putin is laughing because, I mean this is for him, simple victory,” he says on the Trump-Russia diesel deal.
“no way my amerikkkans allies drop me for a better geopolitical situation”
Ukraine hits Russian refinery as Zelenskiy says ‘we’re done’ with Trump’s energy truce
Asked whether Ukraine would be open to halting energy strikes as a way of repairing relations with the White House, Zelenskiy told the FT he could agree only if in return he were given more US-made Patriot interceptors as a “minimum”.
Trump is tweeting that diesel prices are due to Ukraine, not Iran.
Sure seems like there’s revolts breaking out all over the world right now, huh? They’re definitely not evenly geographically spread, but there’s some pretty important ones going down.
INDIA: The world’s most populous country has been run by shithead fascists for a decade now, and the people have never been quiet, but we sure seem to be in a relative upswing. In the summer we had The Cockroach Rebellion around corruption in the education ministry that was blowing up India’s extremely precarious promise of upward mobility through education. That was successful in its immediate demand: removal of the education minister. As that piece linked put it:
The visible concession and the structural test
Here the sober reading begins. Across all these cases runs a single pattern: the state gives up the visible while the structural becomes the real terrain of contest. The anti-CAA and NRC protests of 2019 and 2020 imposed a real cost. The nationwide National Register of Citizens was shelved and has not been developed, while the government is still telling Parliament that no decision has been taken. Yet the Citizenship Amendment Act itself was passed and its rules notified in March 2024. The movement won a pause, not a repeal.
Pradhan’s exit sits inside this same logic, and the government has moved quickly to be seen taking action. In the days around the resignation, the Union Cabinet cleared a tougher anti-paper-leak bill, doubling prison terms and raising fines to ten crore rupees, with fast-track trials promised within three months, while the National Testing Agency dismissed forty-seven officials and announced an overhaul of its outsourcing model.
So far, the measures taken are focused on punishment and personnel, aimed at those who breach the system rather than the system that produces the breach. Whether the promised overhaul delivers a meaningfully new structure, or refurbishes the same commodified examination process that turns the futures of millions into a market of coaching fees and leaked papers, is precisely what remains to be seen.
While student leaders have now called off the protests at Jantar Mantar after securing government commitments to drop police cases and compensate affected families, the retreat from the streets is best understood not as the final settlement of a grievance, but as a conditional pause – leaving the broader account of structural reform still waiting to be drawn up.
Emphasizing the last part again: “the retreat from the streets is best understood not as the final settlement of a grievance, but as a conditional pause – leaving the broader account of structural reform still waiting to be drawn up.” Two months later, the people are again back in the streets in force as the BJP government tries to blow up the entire electoral system, arresting CPI (M) leaders and other opposition figures by the thousands and culling 130,000,000 voters from the rolls (aka more people than are eligible to vote in any single country smaller than China, India, and the US). Their demand: the removal of the elections commissioner.
India is a completely unique and singular country in many ways, and for our purposes the question is if the enormous political organization and mobilizing capacity of the Indian people can get over the hump of fighting and winning concessions big and small to advance to revolution. Does Modi’s ‘daylight murder of democracy’ disillusion enough people with the system that they accept the leadership of Communists and their comrades in struggle? India is too big and important for us to let ourselves hope, but I give you permission to daydream for 40 seconds about Revolutionary Communist India.
FRANCE
The frogs are a lot like the Indians in that the people are politically conscious, well organized, and quick to rebellion. They are like the Indians in that they have been ruled by a right wing anti-democratic sicko for a decade. Finally, France and India are alike in that their bourgeois parliaments have accepted the mass protest movement as a process of popular political negotiation. These mobilizations are the actual democratic practice in France and India, and the ruling class in both countries is recognizing that this equilibrium is now out of balance. The streets are growing too strong, the people insufficiently subservient for the declining rate of profit, ecological crisis, and imperial dislocation that defines our age.
French students are leading the way in this current uprising. High schools and universities are being shut down by their students with the support of their teachers, and France’s unions have stepped in to join the movement. French pigs are back to their old tricks (
). Le France Insoumise, the most significant left wing national organization in Europe (imo) is poised to seriously contest the presidency next year, boosted by the presence of badass mayors and Comrade Melenchon showing up in the streets right alongside the rebels. France’s constitutional flexibility means that, in a vacuum, a powerful street and labor movement and sweeping electoral movements could unify next year in a Bolivarian-style electoral-revolutionary fusion dance and do some pretty based socialism by 2030. Of course, Germany is renazifying right next door, and I think we’re missing the forest for the trees when we say that’s about war with Russia; it’s about war with a genuinely left wing France.Could be this peters out after some concessions and exhaustion. Maybe if a country next door were also going into rebellion…
SPAIN
Spain’s current uprising began after the horrifying eviction of 87 year old Mari Carmen from her lifelong family home by landlord scum (
). Spaniards have been setting up blockades, encampments, eviction removal teams, and more in the face of fascist intimidation. The labor movement has joined in, as have communist, socialist, and anarchist organizations.Spain, unlike the above, has a relatively alright leader in Pedro Sanchez, who has at least distinguished himself from his European peers in recent years by avoiding NATO militarization, denying the US military airspace, being marginally but meaningfully less zionist than the rest of the Devil’s Peninsula, and not doing a super-violent crackdown on this uprising. Instead, he’s playing the smart game: push for some moderate emergency measures to block evictions, and when that predictably failed, he called for snap elections about half a year ahead of schedule. These elections are his best bet to stave off a big fascist win next year, and he’s striking while the iron is hot. Very clever political operator, that Sanchez. Maybe his efforts will absorb enough momentum from the movement to get some big reforms and kill the threat of rebellion. As the interviewee linked above put it:
Handsome man untrustworthy
Without pressure in the streets, Pedro Sánchez wouldn’t have done this. He’s a handsome reformist, very socially liberal, and he shines in Europe because Europe is so sad, fascist, ugly, and terrible. He’s the lesser evil. A very handsome lesser evil. But he’s far from what a party that calls itself the Socialist Workers’ Party should be doing about this problem.
What little he has done has been aimed at not upsetting renters—I mean, landlords, the owner class. Every time he made a small improvement in rental conditions, he offered tax breaks and incentives for landlords. He never touched property ownership or the dynamics of enrichment in Spain.
The snap election is happening because Sánchez is smart. He turned the defeat in Congress and the anger in the streets into a campaign. He’s saying, “It’s now or never.” If he waits a few months, the far right—with all these Trump-inspired groups and powers now helping the Spanish right, which is already very strong—could take everything. But if he calls elections now, the debate might be about housing or the far right; about him or barbarism.
He’s smart because he has a chance, although a small one. I’ve been obsessively studying the numbers: how votes might go in each region, territory, and city, and whether we can get a small majority. It’s difficult. The results could be similar to those in Colombia or Peru, and the far right is getting stronger.
If the election goes poorly for Sanchez, that could spur an immediate escalation in the mass movement which will be followed by the violent state crackdown that hasn’t yet come. Is there a real revolutionary path in Spain? I don’t see an obvious one, mainly because of the lack of a political organization well positioned to lead such a movement. Is there anybody better suited than the Communist Party, who don’t seem very well suited? There’s also nothing like France’s systemic flexibility and intense presidential centralization that would let Melenchon shake things up dramatically.
[part 1/X]
CNBC’s Jim Cramer on news that real hourly wages in the US are down (again): “I really don’t want to sound like Marx. It’s just, I’m looking at the data”
photo shows Housemaid declaring her support to Lula da Silva on residential building in downtown São Paulo, near the window you can see propaganda pro-Bolsonaro put their by the owners of the apartament;
I hope that her employment is safe from retaliation.
How the Yandex ‘Russian bots’ lie fell apart (- RT)
Ukrainian forces hit three Yandex (Russia’s equivalent to Google) data centers with long-range drones between October 8 and 11. Yandex confirmed that operations were “completely halted” at the facility struck on October 8, and temporarily halted at the center struck on October 11. This much is true, but the story that followed veers into NAFO fiction.
On October 8, American cybersecurity researcher Jeremiah Fowler posted a Cloudflare graph showing a dramatic drop in “bot traffic” after the first Yandex center was hit. As Yandex is primarily a search company, its bots crawl the internet indexing content for users. All search engines function in this way, but Fowler – either through malice or ignorance – conflated this search bot activity with social media bot activity, claiming that the drop in traffic could “disrupt the midterm elections in the US.”
So many “cybersecurity researchers” are either CIA/NSA/FBI agents or cheerleaders either for ideological reasons or because it sends business their way to adhere to the US government line it’s disgusting. If you see someone with this title and they are from the US you should immediately suspect anything coming out of their mouths about foreign actors is a lie or distortion. If you see one from the imperial core outside the US they might be slightly more likely to be telling the truth but still be deeply suspicious about anything coming out of their mouths and if it’s a European and about Russia it’s probably also a lie or distortion just automatically.
The story spread, hitting the mainstream media on October 11 when Tom’s Hardware published an article claiming that “Russian disinformation bot traffic” had been “nearly eliminated” after the strikes. The word “disinformation” was later pulled from the headline, but the tale had already taken on a life of its own.
That same day, an AI-created graph began circulating, claiming that “Russian bots” were making 56% fewer posts in support of Germany’s right-wing AfD party in the aftermath of the strikes. The graph, which was unsourced and had one axis unlabeled, measured the “decline in activity of Russian bots” up to October 15, four days in the future at the time it appeared online.
The bourgeois western press is of course complicit and guilty to Goebbels levels on so many counts but when you look at how they uncritically parrot without even a little checking, how they act as stenographers for any “cybersecurity researcher” who might as well be a mouthpiece of the US government and anything they say immediately it’s pretty funny and depressing. It’s that meme with the liberal waving off Fox News just showing what Trump says and instead nodding eagerly at John Oliver quoting what the CIA says but adding a joke and a Trump-bad quip at the end but selling the same lie of empire.
Regardless, the graph was shared by a Green Party councillor in Germany’s North Rhine-Westphalia, and by Czech MEP Tomas Zdechovsky. “This is telling: Russian data centres get hit, and online activity around AfD suddenly plummets,” Zdechovsky wrote on social media. “So much talk about German patriotism… then the connection from Russia goes down.” Who spread the lie?
By October 12, the story had been reported by Germany’s Der Standard and Focus. That morning, Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky spread it further, claiming at the Warsaw Security Forum that his strikes on Yandex data centers had made it “a little easier to breathe on many social media platforms.”
The story didn’t take long to fall apart. Common Consultancy, a Scandinavian NGO that has previously accused Russia of orchestrating social media influence campaigns, concluded that there was “no visible effect” on pro-MAGA or pro-AfD social media posts after the Yandex strikes. Leonid Volkov, an anti-Kremlin activist associated with deceased opposition figure Alexey Navalny, slammed Zdechovsky for spreading “nonsense and falsehood.”
CeMAS, a liberal German think tank, stated that it was “not seeing a drop in the number of posts that could be explained by an attack on data centers.” The Hasso Plattner Institute and Polisphere, two tech nonprofits, concurred, and German newspapers began quietly editing their articles on Monday night.
Presented without comment, straight from Avenida Paulista, São Paulo’s most important avenue:
Edit: okay, I’m pissed off but I’ll try to comment anyway. This is, of course, a picture of a pro-Bolsonaro demonstration in downtown São Paulo. We’re at a point where I feel like we will need a country-wide psychological intervention. The Cultural Revolution we need would make the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution look like a nice stroll in the park.
A few hours ago the Saudi geniuses decided to hit a large oil facility in Yemen near the capital; Ansarallah said in response about an hour ago that the strike “opens the gates of hell” .
Now unconfirmed reports that three ballistic missiles have been launched by them towards eastern Saudi Arabia; with reports of early warnings triggered in the Eastern Province.
Edit: and now this:
Along with unconfirmed reports of similar early warnings and “explosions” in Riyadh.
Four reported dead and ‘active shooter’ killed in attack at Oregon elementary school https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/cw62jgzdpng2t
Forget about the jam we’re back to our regularly scheduled shootings
Getting VERY spicy in Paris tonight
https://tankie.tube/w/medGzTE1NjFvxRZDpVh7QB
Protesters are currently (right now) trying to break through police barricades to reach the presidential palace.
https://tankie.tube/w/3W2qVoNFMTop2V1LQ219nZ
There are also numerous videos of stores being attacked and a large amount of looting.
Melenchon has disavowed:
With 75 votes in favor, the Senate approved the 40-hour work week with two days off after a five-month wait.
Article
The Federal Senate approved the end of the 6 by 1 schedule, in two rounds, this Wednesday (14). A historic banner of the trade union and popular movements and of President Lula, the project was approved five months after having a historic vote in the Chamber of Deputies.
Once enacted by the National Congress, the limit of 40 weekly working hours, with five days a week and two days of rest, will come into effect, while salaries will remain the same. To allow companies to adapt, the measure will have a transition period, reducing to 42 hours within two months and to 40 hours within one year.
In the first vote, the PEC (Proposed Constitutional Amendment) to end the 6x1 work schedule was approved with 75 votes in favor and one against. The only dissenting vote was from Senator Hamilton Mourão (Republicanos-RS). Senators Rogério Marinho (PL-RN), Sergio Moro (PL-PR), Márcio Bittar (PL-AP), and Ciro Nogueira (Republicanos-PI) were absent. Before the vote, the PL and Progressive parties allowed their members to vote as they wished. The other parties instructed their members to vote in favor.
In the second vote, the amendment to end the 6x1 work schedule was approved with the same 75 votes in favor and one against. The only dissenting vote was again from Senator Hamilton Mourão (Republicanos-RS).
After the vote, progressive senators celebrated by chanting “ole, ole, ola, Lula, Lula,” in homage to President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT), a supporter of ending the 6x1 work schedule.
Before the vote, rapporteur Omar Aziz (MDB-AM) rejected an amendment regarding the regularization of work under a special regime that had already been rejected previously by the Chamber to avoid it returning to the deputies.
Visibly moved, Senator Paulo Paim (PT-RS) once again defended the project. “My deepest respect to the social and labor movement for the mobilization you carried out. Ladies and gentlemen. There’s no way you could ask [not to get emotional]. I can’t help it, because it’s impossible when I look back 30, 40, 50 years and feel like I’m here now. The poor black boy who waited 50 years for this moment to happen. We are dealing with humanitarian policies, income distribution, solidarity, social justice, and the development of the country. We are talking about the present and the future of generations.”
The government leader in the Senate, Teresa Leitão (PT-PE), concluded her vote by recalling the symbolism of the approval during Lula’s government. “And I vote, ladies and gentlemen, I vote for the working-class president, because he will be able, as he has been able throughout his life, to respect the workers of this country and he will not reverse the logic of this PEC, because, for him, this PEC is not an electoral calculation. This PEC is a conception of life, a conception of work, a conception of society. It is for you, President Lula, working-class president, an inspiration to us all, that I will say yes to the end of the six-for-one scale.”
Senator Humberto Costa (PT-PE) criticized his colleague and presidential candidate Flávio Bolsonaro (PL-RJ), who announced that he would vote in favor of the new law. “The far-right candidate, Senator Flávio Bolsonaro, is making a double-faced speech. On the one hand, he says he will vote today to end the six-to-one pay scale. On the other hand, he keeps telling businessmen that, if they win the election, or even if they don’t, they will put this seven-to-zero pay scale proposal up for discussion and voting.”
At the end of his speech, Senator Fabiano Contarato (PT-ES) apologized for the delay in the change. “I wanted to ask for forgiveness. Forgiveness, on behalf of the Brazilian Parliament, for having remained eternally complacent for 38 years, without setting the agenda, without ending this hunger generated by the six-to-one scale. Long live the Brazilian people.”
In the midst of the second-round campaign, the approval signifies a victory for President Lula, but also for the mobilization in the streets, as pointed out by Congressman Reginaldo Lopes (PT-MG), author of PEC 221, from 2019.
“The pressure from the streets and social media even led to a change of position, albeit in a disingenuous, temporary, and demagogic way, by candidate Flávio Bolsonaro. This shows the strength of the issue. So, I think it was a combination of the mobilization in the streets, on social media, and the leadership of President Lula,” Lopes said in an interview with Conexão BdF 1ª Edição, on Rádio Brasil de Fato , this Wednesday.
In anticipation of the vote, the Unified Workers’ Central (CUT), the National Confederation of Workers in Commerce and Services (Contracs), the Federation of Workers in Commerce and Services of the Federal District (Fetracom-DF), and affiliated unions held a vigil in Annex II of the Federal Senate, starting at 2 pm . Some representatives watched the vote from the gallery.
For Reginaldo Lopes, given the entire scenario, the approval of the end of the 6x1 work schedule is a fundamental achievement for the Brazilian people. In the congressman’s assessment, the issue has the capacity to break through the polarization that has marked Brazilian society, since 80% of the population approves of the reduction in working hours.
The 2019 proposal gained momentum in recent years with the mobilization of popular movements and the expansion of the discussion in Congress. In 2023, Rio de Janeiro city councilman Rick Azevedo (Psol) and other leaders founded the Vida Além do Trabalho (VAT) movement to discuss the issue. In 2025, more than 2 million signatures were collected in support of ending the work schedule and sent to the president of the Senate, Davi Alcolumbre.
Federal congresswoman Erika Hilton (Psol-SP) was one of the main parliamentarians to lead the movement for approval, presenting a new proposal.
In the streets, the protests for the right to rest intensified starting in 2025. And it was with this popular pressure that, on May 27, 2026, after a series of demonstrations and the coordination of the Lula government, the Chamber of Deputies approved, with a historic majority, in two rounds . In the first round, there were 472 votes in favor and 22 against. In the second, 461 votes in favor and 19 against. The approved text is a substitute presented by Deputy Leo Prates (Republicanos-BA), incorporating the previous proposals.
Despite its overwhelming approval, the bill has been stalled in the Senate ever since, due to Alcolumbre, who clashed with the government after President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva nominated the Attorney General of the Union (AGU), Jorge Messias, for a seat on the Supreme Federal Court. The Senate president managed to orchestrate and secure Messias’s rejection in April 2026 .
In line with the far-right opposition, Alcolumbre avoided discussing and voting on the issue before the start of the presidential campaign and did everything to ensure it took place between the two rounds of the election. During discussions last week, the PL tried to postpone the vote once again, this time without success.
With the campaign heating up and people out on the streets, Senator and presidential candidate Flávio Bolsonaro was one of those who had a discourse against the right to rest, but he changed his tune before the second round of voting in the elections .
The Lula government is already preparing a regulatory decree to be published soon after the enactment. Among the points, it should establish a calculation for the hourly wage of workers subject to the intermittent work regime, created by the labor reform.
The Lula government’s concern is to prevent this category of employee from receiving proportionally less per hour worked than other employees when the weekly working hours are reduced.
The text of the decree will also make it clear that special schedules for some activities may continue to be negotiated by the unions of the respective categories, as is the case today. This is the case for workers on oil platforms, airport workers, security guards, and healthcare professionals.
The regulations should also include the possibility for existing collective agreements to receive addendums and be extended until the base date, already under the new rules. After promulgation, agreements that do not comply will lose their validity within 60 days. This would avoid the need for renegotiation in a short time.
TLDR; The Bolsonaros and the Far-Right Fucked up big time, the Left and Workers Won Bigly, and this reform was started by a trans congresswoman.
CFTC Staff Were Told to Retract Analysis of Suspicious Oil Trades. Chairman’s adviser intervened to take over examination of lucrative bets that were made around Trump reversal on Iran power plant attack.
Copacabana Beach (Rio de Janeiro) is packed with thousands of supporters of President Lula this Monday (October 12), with the national holiday turning into a day of political activism in defense of democracy and national sovereignty, as well as support for Lula’s campaign.
Holy shit
Pro-Lula protests in São Paulo yesterday;
has there been a genuine mood shift or is this the same body politic that voted lula in round one?
Lula woke the fuck up and decided to actually have a campaign, the Right got really aggressive too and they burned down some universities in an attempt to scare the Left, TV channels are supporting Flávio and trying to say these protests are not that big or say that these protests cause trouble because people leave garbage behind (as if the far-right didn’t attempt a violent coup 3 years ago), that doesn’t matter much because Lula have been getting really popular in Social Media.
The Far-Right Controlled Electoral Justice have been censoring newspapers because they were posting Pro-Lula stuff, the first time a newspaper got censored since the end of the military dictatorship in 1985, and there have been a lot of fights inside of the Electoral Justice between the Justices since 2 are pro-Bolsonaro and the other 3 are not and usually vote against Bolsonaro (to stop Flávio from losing those votes, these two justices keep doing motions for continuance).
Lula accused these two justices (who besides being pro-Bolsonaro, have ties with the corrupt banker Vocaro, and had videos of them in orgies) of having removed ballot boxes from cities where Lula is popular, so he would have less votes since the lines were bigger.
Reading all this in english while being BR really makes you have an outside look of how insane is elections here lol
videos of them in orgies
Is voting ‘voluntary’ or ‘mandatory’ in Brazil? I guess Ill just look that up
if it’s anything like all of history, it’s the rural areas that are the conservative hives, but these photos are amazing
Mandatory but you can just pay less than 1 usd and not vote, older people tend to vote since that proves they are still alive instead of having to go to the goverment building and do the same.
if it’s anything like all of history, it’s the rural areas that are the conservative hives
Not quite, most capitals in almost all regions of Brazil voted against Lula on October 4th – the exception, as always, being the northeastern states. Northeastern states are the ones that have benefited the most from Lula’s wealth redistribution policies.
A bit of a random rant
It’s funny, Lula is portrayed as a “leftist leader in South America”, when in reality he’s the epitome of “democratic” center. Not a single major reform was made during any of his three terms. His party has also squandered the previous organizational capablity they had, they’ve been the major “left” party in Brazil for the past decades, always shifting the discourse to the left when near elections, but breaking promises when actually elected.
Still, he’s better than the alternative.
