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.
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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.
DPRK says the US, South Korea, Japan, are engaging in Nuclear proliferation activities: http://www.kcna.kp/en/article/detail/bb63503e5a21ff5bbe0dd766766204ce
Most interesting part is Japan, the rest is just talking about historic shit or nuclear submarines rather than nuclear weapons. The article is mainly about not recognising the IAEA's authority to condemn them and calling it a biased institution but this nugget about their suspicions that Japan is planning to get nuclear weapons is interesting.
spoiler
Press Statement of Kim Yo Jong, Department Director of C.C., WPKPyongyang, September 19 (KCNA) -- Kim Yo Jong, department director of the Central Committee of the Workers' Party of Korea, issued the following press statement "The prejudiced viewpoint and double standards of the IAEA are the main factor that incurred the collapse of the international nuclear non-proliferation system" on Sept. 19:
With the 70th Session of the IAEA General Conference held in Vienna of Austria as an occasion, the IAEA's chronic prejudice and double-standard behavior was revealed again.
On September 17, the IAEA forcibly adopted an anti-DPRK "resolution" to call into question our state's self-defensive and legitimate nuclear activities, disregarding the grave situation in which the DPRK's security environment is exposed to constant nuclear threat of outside forces.
Such meaningless and inefficient "resolution", which the IAEA is cooking up every year at the instigation of the U.S. and the West, is not something new for us and has no effect on the DPRK's position as a nuclear weapons state.
The nuclear activities of the DPRK, a nuclear weapons state outside the NPT which withdrew from the IAEA through legal routes decades ago, are not object of jurisdiction of the IAEA and, the agency has no authority or qualifications to interfere in them.
Therefore, we never recognize any anti-DPRK "resolution" cooked up in the arena of the IAEA.
On the other hand, the IAEA has consistently kept silence, failing to say a right word about the undisguised nuclear proliferation act of the U.S., a depository of the NPT, and the grave plan for the introduction of nuclear submarine by the ROK, a non-nuclear state.
This is another typical example clearly showing the extreme two-faced nature and prejudice of the agency.
As a result, the IAEA vividly revealed its true nature as a Western power organization, unfortunately and completely being deprived of its representative character and impartiality as a UN specialized organization and representing only the interests of the U.S. and its allies.
The double standard of the IAEA is not confined to the Korean peninsula but is being witnessed in Europe, Oceania, the Middle East and other parts of the world.
The fact that the U.S. deployed nuclear weapons in Europe and shared them with NATO member states, while wantonly violating the non-proliferation obligation of NPT stipulating that nuclear weapons and their management should not be handed over directly and indirectly to anyone, the fact that it actively dragged the ROK and Japan in its plan for nuclear weapons use and its implementation under the pretext of "offer of extended deterrence" and the fact that it is planning to provide nuclear submarine technology for the ROK - all those facts do not become the subject of discussion and concern of the agency in any case.
Moreover, the agency is disregarding Japan's unusual excess accumulation of weapons-grade nuclear materials under the patronage of the U.S. despite the protest of the international community.
The two-faced nature of the agency has led to the creation of a new "nuclear non-proliferation standard" whereby the nuclear activities of a relevant country are regulated as "legitimate" or "illegal" according to whether the nuclear issue is of the West or not. This is the present reality of the nuclear non-proliferation system led by the U.S. and the West.
In fact, the IAEA has certainly been reduced to the U.S. atomic energy organization, and it is no exaggeration to say that the international nuclear non-proliferation system has removedd into the U.S.-led nuclear proliferation system.
The injustice, prejudice and double standards of the IAEA are the main factors eroding the nuclear non-proliferation system on a global scale, and the U.S. open nuclear proliferation behavior being committed in parallel with this is a serious threat disturbing international peace and security and increasing the danger of outbreak of a nuclear war.
The main mission of the IAEA is to provide all member states with the right to peaceful use of nuclear power and to block the military use of nuclear technology, and it is by no means to connive at and foster undisguised nuclear proliferation.
In my personal view, the IAEA might save its disgraced face even a bit if it takes courage to say a single right word about who is the chieftain of undermining the nuclear non-proliferation system.
The further the IAEA interferes in the sovereignty and internal affairs of the DPRK, a non-member state, the worse its reputation and fame will be damaged, and it should judge by itself who will benefit from it.
Conniving at the nuclear threat and proliferation of the U.S. and other hostile forces and asking the DPRK to abandon its nuclear weapons are just like telling us to give up our existence and right to live.
We will not in any case mortgage our sovereignty and security rights to the "tolerance" of the U.S. and the West.
The present grave geopolitical situation, in which the international nuclear order is at the brink of complete collapse due to the radical nuclear arms buildup and undisguised nuclear proliferation of the U.S. and to the double-dealing behavior and lack of principle of the IAEA, requires the DPRK to make a more responsible option.
It is the most important matter for the national security to ensure that the credibility of the nuclear force is not questioned in any case for the DPRK which is constantly exposed to the nuclear threat of the hostile forces. -0-
I struggle to see how Japan thinks this plays out other than China immediately curbstomping them
Yeah, that's the plan. Threatening nuclear proliferation is the most reliable way to force your geopolitical rival into military action. Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, and the Philippines will be cannon fodder to stall China's rise and preserve US hegemony.
Oh, I know, but at least out of a sense of self-preservation you'd think Japan would be trying to defuse tensions. Even for a nation that yearns for the "glory" days of empire this is a bit much.
I would go so far as to say it is the only way to goad China into acting. There is almost no other way to get them to do anything that appears like aggressive military action overseas.
The west understands one thing pretty well, the public is against the aggressor side in almost every single war. You concoct something that makes the other side the aggressor and you get full public support.
I cant access that website from australia, classic #freedom (i didnt try very hard i bet i could eventually)
Yeah you'll need to vpn to it from several countries unfortunately. A lot of places block it as it's the official DPRK state news site. It's the main reason I pasted in the plain text.