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.
CW Violence
Pissreal “settlers” beat French mayor, EU diplomatsThis was in addition to the elderly WAPO journalist getting hospitalized due to Zionazi terrorists.
Irish Author Sally Rooney books get banned in UK over support of Palestine Action
Article snip
Sally Rooney has said she is being forced to withdraw her books from sale in the UK because of her support for the banned organisation Palestine Action.
The Irish novelist, whose books include Normal People and Conversations With Friends, said her public support for the direct action group meant she could no longer receive royalties from UK sales.
After Palestine Action was banned last year, Rooney said she would use proceeds from her sales to support Palestine Action. Supporting organisations banned under the Terrorism Act is an offence and she subsequently cancelled a trip to the UK to pick up an award, for fear of arrest.
In a statement provided to the Guardian, the bestselling author said: “‘In July 2025, the direct-action protest group Palestine Action was proscribed as a terrorist organisation in the UK. The following month, I wrote an opinion piece expressing my intention to go on supporting Palestine Action, which is not a proscribed or otherwise prohibited group here in the Republic of Ireland.
“As a result, the fulfilment of contracts to publish my work in the UK could now constitute a serious criminal offence. After a process of consultation and deliberation, and with my full agreement, my publisher Faber has therefore determined that it can no longer supply my work within the UK. I have made every effort to be honest with the public about my beliefs and intentions, and I am wholly prepared to accept the consequences.”
China Proposes Export Controls on AI Technologies
The proposed changes cover 23 AI-related technologies
https://www.wsj.com/economy/trade/china-proposes-export-controls-on-ai-technologies-75ac2030
The Ministry of Commerce on Friday issued a draft plan to add 40 technologies in the AI, biomedicine and photovoltaics sectors to a list of technologies prohibited or restricted from export. The ministry is seeking public comment on the proposed restrictions until Nov. 15.
The proposed changes cover 23 AI-related technologies such as large language models, AI agents, chip design and computing clusters. Technologies that have entered the public domain through published papers or open-source releases are excluded from controls, according to the draft proposal.
Albania Supreme Court is on fire
(Sorry for the LibSky link it just popped up in my feed)
The map behind Netanyahu in this video seems to show the RSF in Sudan as Israeli allies (true).
Yemeni forces shot down a Saudi AH-6i light attack helicopter along the border:
https://southfront.press/houthis-release-footage-of-saudi-ah-6i-helicopter-downing-near-najran/ (combat footage included)
Iran releases another video of a ship on fire. The official line is “hitting a mine”, again. Assuming this is not one of the previous tankers that is now even more on fire, this would be the fourth ship confirmed to be on fire in the last three days.
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.
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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.
