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Debt Rattle October 2 2026

Oct 022026
 
 October 2, 2026  Posted by at 8:48 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  Add comments


Hieronymus Bosch St. John on Patmos 1489


• Supertanker Ablaze After Iran Attack In Hormuz (ZH)
• CNN’s Data Guru Just Dropped Brutal Numbers for the Democrats (Margolis)
• Canada Has A Ukrainian Blindspot (Ted Snider)
• Ukraine Hit By Severe Power Cuts After Russia Pounds Grid (ZH)
• Canada And Britain Blame Trump, Putin, And ‘White Supremacy’ (J.B. Shurk)
• A Lone Voice Of Sanity On NATO’s Eastern Flank Emerges (ZH)
• In the USA the Criminal Justice System Commits More Crimes than Criminals (PCR)
• Hegseth Unveils “Project Meridian” (ZH)
• ADP Jobs Report Confirms 90,000 New Jobs (Eskeldson)
• Sen. Kennedy Dogwalked Jack Smith at Senate Hearing (Matt Margolis)
• Paramount Deal Approved Hours Before $7 Million-a-Day Fines Kick In (Green)
• My Last Conversation with Charlie Kirk (John Solomon)

 

 

 

 


Trump doesn’t want that war. He may have no choice. Time is running out.

• Supertanker Ablaze After Iran Attack In Hormuz (ZH)

Iranians are apparently going back on the offensive, after it’s been widely reported that US-protected oil transit through the Strait of Hormuz has been fast gaining steam. Iran state media says a supertanker is burning off the coast of Oman after coming under Iranian attack: Local sources reported that a 2.5 million barrel capacity supertanker that was traveling through the Strait of Hormuz illegally was hit 8 kilometers off the coast of Oman and is burning, reports Fars.


Earlier we reported that starting in mid-August (on Aug. 16), Iran’s Supreme National Security Council set October 1 as a deadline. It warned at the time that if Washington failed to lift its naval blockade of Iranian ports within 45 days, Tehran could resume attacks against US forces, and by implication step up attacks on foreign shipping. Iran’s 45-day deadline for the United States has now expired. That deadline has now passed, potentially adding another layer of uncertainty to an already tense confrontation where Tehran may decide it must act ‘preemptively’ while facing more bombs by Trump (likely after the midterms).

* * *

Signs of potential major escalation, or the next round at least (which Trump has hinted will come after the midterm elections), just hit The Wall Street Journal, and sent oil prices soaring. A quick summary: The Pentagon is sending a third aircraft-carrier strike group and additional Marine Corps ships to the Middle East, adding 9,000 to 10,000 more troops to the region.

The ships, jet fighters, Marines and sailors will arrive in the region by the end of November, as President Trump considers renewing strikes on Iran after the midterm elections. The additional servicemembers will add to the more than 50,000 troops already in the region, with the deployments coming after Trump rejected Iran’s latest proposal for a seven-day ceasefire. The Trump administration is deploying a third aircraft carrier to the Middle East along with additional Marines, an American official also told Israeli media on Thursday. And later, in the afternoon, Trump posted a new Truth Social message as follows:


The USS Theodore Roosevelt is en route to US Central Command’s (CENTCOM) area of operations after having just left San Diego this week. It is expected to relieve the Japan-based USS George Washington, which entered regional waters in mid-August.

Read more …

The Dems are very optimisticc. I don’t see it. They can get people to be anti-Trump. But in the ballot-box, you must pick a name, and anti-Trump is not a name..

• CNN’s Data Guru Just Dropped Brutal Numbers for the Democrats (Margolis)

Confidence that Democrats are going to sweep the House and Senate this November is as high as it’s ever been. Pundits treat it as a done deal, and the polls seem to back them up.But not everything may be as it seems.


As I previously reported, Frank Luntz, a pollster who is no fan of President Donald Trump, sees a messier picture. Voters are souring on both parties heading into the midterms, according to Luntz, but the Democrat Party is in worse shape. Its turnout advantage is only about two points. That’s thin, since the party out of power usually enjoys a big edge in a president’s first midterm election. Luntz told CNN on Monday that everything comes down to whether Trump’s voters show up. They turned out in force when Trump was on the ballot in 2016 and 2024. In 2018 and 2022, when he wasn’t, they stayed home.

That’s a striking admission from someone who has never been a Trump fan. But there’s another factor to consider: the historic underestimation of the GOP in the polls. It happened in Trump’s first term, and if it happens again the same way, Republicans will hold the Senate. But you don’t have to take my word for it. That’s CNN’s Harry Enten talking.

Enten, CNN’s chief data analyst, explained on CNN News Central Wednesday that if the polls are wrong the way they have been historically in the Midwest, the GOP holds the Senate. “We’ve had really good Democratic polls coming out from Ohio, Michigan, Iowa,” Enten said. “And, you know, fool me once, shame on you. Fool me four times, I just have to ask the question, could it happen again?”

Could it? In major 2024 races, Republicans beat their September polling by nine points in Iowa, six in Ohio, and five in Michigan. Democrats’ leads in those states right now are smaller than those misses. “So, you look at this and you go, you know what, maybe we should just hold on a second here because we’ve seen this dance before and it was not a dance that Democrats like when the votes were actually cast and counted,” Enten explained.

Berman raised the obvious objection. Trump was on the ballot in 2024, so what happens in a year when he isn’t? Enten had the answer ready. In 2018, Trump’s first midterm, the GOP outperformed its September polls by six points in Iowa, six in Ohio, and eight in Michigan. Look across 2016, 2018, 2020, and 2024, and Republicans beat their September numbers by at least five points in all three states every single time.

Then Enten laid that history over this year’s Senate map. If Republicans outperform their Midwest polls the way they did in 2018 and 2024, Michigan, Ohio, and Iowa all go red. Even if Democrats could carry Texas, Georgia, North Carolina, and Alaska, we would still end up with a 50-50 Senate, with Vice President JD Vance casting the tie-breaking vote. And does anyone really believe Texas is electing James Talarico?

“So, if history holds in terms of the GOP outperforming their September polls, well, there’s a very, very strong chance that Republicans hold on the United States Senate, even if Democrats win in places they don’t historically win in, like Texas,” Enten said. “In these midwestern Senate races, yes, Democrats have gotten good polls,” Enten noted. “But I would just say, hold on just a brief second here because history says, you know what, it might not end for them as well as the polls currently suggest it will.”


Put Luntz’s warning next to Enten’s data, and the picture for November looks a lot brighter for the GOP than the headlines suggest.

Read more …

The main Ukrainian blindspot of course is Chrysria Freeland. This doesn’t even mention her.

• Canada Has A Ukrainian Blindspot (Ted Snider)

On September 10, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky landed in Canada where he and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney signed a 100-year partnership “elevat[ing] the relationship between their countries into a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership and confirming their aligned nature.”


Canada already has a special relationship with Ukraine. Before the war, Canada had the largest Ukrainian community in the Ukrainian diaspora with 1,209,805 Ukrainian-Canadians. Canada is the fifth largest financial contributor to Ukraine after only the United States, the European Union, Germany, and the United Kingdom with over $16 billion in military, financial and humanitarian aid.

Carney said that “Canada will always stand in solidarity with Ukraine” and that “there is no qualification to our commitment.” There is little wrong with that: Ukraine was invaded by Russia and taken advantage of by the West. But there are two problems with the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership. The first is practical.

Since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, Canada has contributed $8.5 billion in military support to Ukraine. The Comprehensive Partnership includes a joint declaration on defense and security co-operation. During the official visit, Carney announced new investments to support Ukraine’s defense, including $350 million for interceptor missiles for air defence.

The practical problem is that Ukraine is black hole into which money intended for defense disappears. This is a problem well known to Ukraine’s partners who, nonetheless, keep pouring money in with a blind eye to the problem. Earlier this month, following close on the heels of a U.S. $100 billion European Union loan to Ukraine, Kiev surprised the European Union with a request for an additional $27 billion to address a shortfall that was difficult to explain. The request “unsettled” European officials, some of whom privately worried “whether money is being spent efficiently or whether needs are being overstated.”

A recent New York Times investigation found that seven of Ukraine’s ten top military contractors continued to be awarded contracts after Kiev knew they were facing investigations for fraud, corruption, or failure to deliver on deals they were paid for. Eighteen companies won contracts despite defaulting on previous ones. Millions were thrown away by inexplicably, and conveniently, awarding contracts to the highest bidder. Government audits show that in one year of the war alone, Ukraine lost $1.2 billion in U.S. foreign aid to “fraud, waste and mismanagement.” Sending hundreds of millions more to Ukraine sounds great. But to whom will it go?

There is a second problem with the 100-year Comprehensive Partnership that is deeper. Carney said the Strategic Partnership is based on the two countries “aligned nature.” But there are important aspects that do not align. Canada is a federalist country that officially recognizes more than one culture and language. The Carney administration recently walked away from negotiating a trade agreement with the United States partly in defense of its sovereign right to protect French culture, French language, and its official bilingualism.

Ukraine has been locked in a civil war since 2014 to protect the opposite: a monist vision of Ukrainian society that rejects federalism and recognizes only one culture as Ukrainian while suppressing the language, culture, and religion of ethnic Russian citizens of Ukraine in Crimea, the Donbas, and the southeast. It specifically denies the pluralist alternative that is a defining feature of Canadian identity. Rather than aligning in their natures, in this essential aspect, the two countries are the antithesis of each other.

Canada has confronted this blind spot before. In 2023, Yaroslav Hunka received two standing ovations in Canada’s Parliament as “a Ukrainian Canadian war veteran from the Second World War who fought for Ukrainian independence against the Russians” and as “a Ukrainian hero and a Canadian hero,” despite having served in the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of Adolf Hitler’s SS.Carney insisted that “Canadians understand in our bones the importance of your struggle” and explained that the reason “there is no qualification to our commitment” to Ukraine is “because your cause—freedom, democracy, sovereignty—is our cause.”

It may be “our cause,” but the historical record is less clear that it is their cause. Zelensky has formally banned eleven opposition parties, including the Opposition Platform for Life party that was once the second largest party in the Ukrainian parliament, though they all condemned Russia’s invasion and contributed to Russia’s defence. He has restricted freedom of information, unifying all television sources into a single source of television news, and increased the censorship powers of the state over print and online media.

The Ukrainian Orthodox Church, Ukraine’s largest denomination, has been banned by Zelensky though Ukraine’s constitution protects freedom of religion, the church ended all canonical ties with the Russian Orthodox Church in May 2022, and the Primate of the UOC expressed the church’s loyalty to Ukraine and condemnation of Russia’s invassion.

Cultural and linguistic rights for minorities have fared no better than political and religious rights and freedom of expression. Pursuing the monist interpretation of Ukraine, Zelensky has gone down a path of abolishing any hint of Russian culture. Legislation has erased the Russian language, making Ukrainian the sole language of government, schools, universities, culture, publishing and media.

It is fine for Canada to “stand in solidarity with Ukraine.” But we should not be blind to Ukraine’s struggles and challenges. If Ukraine is to avoid civil war after the war with Russia and if Ukraine is to have a chance of joining the European Union and orienting toward the west, they, too, are going to have to confront these challenges.

Read more …

Russia will make it a hard winter.

• Ukraine Hit By Severe Power Cuts After Russia Pounds Grid (ZH)

Ongoing major Russian strikes on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure have resulted in significant forced power cuts across various regions of Russia ahead of what promises to be a frigid winter.National grid operator Ukrene rgo on Thursday urged consumers to limit usage following the recent attacks of the past 24 hours. The outages have chiefly impacted central Ukraine, as well as Kharkiv region in the east, along with Chernihiv and Sumy in the north.


Where security conditions currently allow, emergency repair and restoration work is already under way,” a statement said. “Energy workers are doing everything possible to restore power to all disconnected consumers as quickly as possible,” it added.And BBC reports, “Kyiv has been preparing for a renewed onslaught before winter begins, by building fifteen small scale power plants in heavily fortified concrete bunkers.” Another European outlet warns of what this means for residents going into winter:

“Kyiv said it was Moscow’s opening salvo in an expected campaign to try to knock out heating and power as winter approaches.A recent increase in strikes has prompted fears about another winter with little or no power or heating, after similar attacks last year when temperatures plunged to -20C. The strikes which started Wednesday are being called one of the heaviest combined attacks on energy cited in months. Ukrainian officials reported seven people killed as a result.”

Ukraine’s prime minister Sergii Koretskyi confirmed on X, “Russia has escalated to massive strikes on energy infrastructure.” And President Zelensky indicated that critical infrastructure was hit across five regions. Freezing temperatures are expected to hit the capital region in the coming days, as emergency repair crews scramble – though there’s unlikely to be a let-up in the nightly attacks.

Zelensky has lately floated he’d be open to another energy ceasefire deal, and these calls are likely to be renewed; however, it will have to go both ways and the Ukrainians have also been unrelenting in their long-range drone attacks on Russian territory and oil refineries. Russian forces have also of late been systematically degrading and destroying data centers and mobile providers in Ukraine. Internet connectivity has become a problem throughout various sectors of the country.

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“Carney and Burnham are Dumb and Dumber.”

• Canada And Britain Blame Trump, Putin, And ‘White Supremacy’ (J.B. Shurk)

Commie Canada and the dis-United Kingdom should be renamed the “Dumb and Dumber” of the British Commonwealth.


King Charles III’s North American prime minister, Mark Carney, ran to The New York Times last week to talk about his military combat preparations against the United States in the event that President Trump crosses Lake America and liberates Canada from its delusional leaders. What a showboating dunce. The U.S. singlehandedly sustains Canada’s economy and national security, yet the tiny central banker huffed and puffed in a hilariously Napoleonic display of fake strength.

In the same interview with the failing Times, Con-man Carney outlined his intent to integrate Canada’s economy with that of China and the European Union and to replace the U.S. Dollar with a China-linked global reserve currency. Rhetorically defending Canada’s sovereignty while insulting his U.S. benefactor, Little Mark Carney explained how he would subjugate his socialist nanny-state to Chinese Communist Party General Secretary Xi Jinping and unelected European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. Mark is the global mascot for “educated” idiots everywhere.

Not to be outdone by not-so-Great Britain’s Canadian cousin, U.K. Prime Minister Poindexter (er, I mean Andy Burnham) informed the United Nations General Assembly last week that his government was constructing yet another speech-police organization (this one given the august name, “National Centre for Information Defence,” which should not be confused with the “Research, Information, and Communications Unit,” the “Government Communication Service,” the “Counter Disinformation Unit,” the “Defending Democracy Taskforce,” the “Information Threats and Influence Directorate,” the “Rapid Response Unit,” the “National Cyber Force and Social Cohesion Taskforce,” the “Media Monitoring Unit,” or any of the other information-control agencies already mobilized across totalitarian Britain) to protect the British people from scary thoughts and words.

Burnham blamed the Russians for spreading “a narrative of decline, stoking division, and sowing despair” in the U.K. (and definitely not Westminster’s promotion of decline, division, and despair!) and promised to counteract this “information warfare” by censoring Britons’ public speech and feeding his collapsing country a steady diet of State-sanctioned propaganda. In order to beat back the Russians, Dilapidated Britain must have its very own digital Iron Curtain! Two cheers for democracy! Hip hip…who cares.

The British people are screwed. On average, their government grants settlement or citizenship to an illegal alien every single minute. These foreign nationals receive more welfare from British taxpayers than ever before. The third-world invaders (I mean, “newcomers”) use Britain’s streets as public toilets. Rather than securing the kingdom’s borders, the Home Office hands out a nine-page booklet informing mostly-Muslim men of military age that it is illegal to rape women and children while they conquer the islands.

In the last two years alone, the number of illegal immigrants (and future citizens!) arriving by boat has exceeded the size of the entire British Army! But if these outrageous facts disturb you enough to publicly express your feelings on social media, you will most likely join the roughly 65,000 Brits who have been arrested for “speech-related offenses” over the last five years. Foreign invasion? Good! Free speech? Very bad!

Apparently, the British police state also plans to imprison anyone who would rather not fight WWIII against the Russian Federation. During a recent episode of former cabinet minister Jacob Rees-Mogg’s “State of the Nation” on GB News, one leftist-globalist commentator in favor of mass conscription argued, “We would have to lock a few people up…some of the pro-Russian voices, people saying there isn’t a threat, don’t fight for your country, don’t go to war for Burnham, we’ll have to lock ‘em up.”

Rather than responding with horror at the suggestion that his fellow Britons should be imprisoned for opposing a catastrophic war, Rees-Mogg pedantically replied, “Well, we suspended habeas corpus during the Napoleonic Wars…indeed, yes.” In another interview, Rees-Mogg nonchalantly remarked that British citizens have a “duty” to “die” for Britain in a war against Russia.

In Burnham and Rees-Mogg’s Britain, the only way to “defend democracy” is to imprison anyone who disagrees with the British Establishment and to sacrifice everyone else to the killing fields! The British Isles might as well be renamed the “Gulag Archipelago.”

Interestingly, GB News — which leans conservative — discovered last week that Britain’s media regulator, the Office of Communications (Ofcom), had covered up data showing that viewers trust GB News more than the BBC. GB News, in fact, is ranked above all other networks with regard to viewpoint diversity and impartiality. British authorities apparently did not want the public to know these inconvenient truths because the BBC is treated as an objective, trustworthy, and premier source of news (fact check: false!). In an effort to control the public’s perception of the BBC, Ofcom restricted what information the public was permitted to know. P.M. Burnham takes the “defense of information” very seriously!

How seriously? Burnham and the British government force citizens to pay for the BBC’s awful dreck whether they watch it or not! Every household in the U.K. must fork over a £180 license fee to the BBC each year. Because more households are refusing to pay the license, the government is considering the imposition of a mandatory £11-a-month Internet tax in order to keep the BBC’s fake news funded. The BBC says that the “fee is essential for maintaining the quality and diversity of public broadcasting in the UK.”

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He doesn’t want war? He’s a traitor.

• A Lone Voice Of Sanity On NATO’s Eastern Flank Emerges (ZH)

There are a few sane voices left in the EU and NATO when it comes to urging an immediate de-escalation of rhetoric regarding Russia. Still, it’s a refreshing surprise when dovish sentiment comes from a country forming part of NATO’s eastern flank in particular. “We always need to think about the worst-case scenario,” Bulgarian Prime Minister Rumen Radev has told a European defense summit while warning that seeking to impose total defeat on Russia poses real risks of nuclear war.


Radev instead urged robust diplomacy to avert such a catastrophe. “The problem is that no one is raising the question about nuclear risk. Does it exist? Maybe not, I don’t know, but this is a risk,” he stated in remarks published Wednesday.”I don’t think the war in Ukraine will end in a nuclear war but we have to be prepared for the risk.”

“We always need to think about the worst-case scenario. Are we prepared for this? Does anybody speak about risk assessment? Does it exist at all? Because we have been trying to achieve a conventional victory over the biggest nuclear power.” He acknowledged that “there is a nuclear card” which Russia would be more likely to play if it perceived itself cornered. “We need to have this into account. We cannot close our eyes (to the fact) that there are nuclear weapons on our continent, there are nuclear weapons in the arsenal of Russia.”

The Bulgarian prime minister emphasized, “And this is part of the game calculation.” What has he gotten for his sensible calls for walking back tensions with Moscow? Western mainstream media has consistently labeled him “Kremlin-friendly”. Radev still made clear in this week’s comments that he rejected “this type of speaking” [nuclear rhetoric] from the Kremlin, referring to the recent example of Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, who warned earlier this month that a war between Russia and Europe would be “completely different” and “very short”.


The words were widely seen as a veiled threat of deploying strategic forces against Europe.Early this week NATO leadership called out what it slammed as ‘desperate’ rhetoric on the part of the Kremlin, also at a moment of growing accusations from European officials that Moscow is engaged in sabotage against EU interests and assets.

“Russia’s use of hybrid tactics is a sign of desperation. But we will not be dissuaded from our support to Ukraine,” NATO spokesperson Allison Hart said Tuesday, adding that “we [NATO] have what it takes to defend every inch of allied territory and remain strong, ready, and able to counter any threat.”

“NATO is a defensive alliance and none of our activities or exercises pose a risk to any part of Russia,” she reiterated. “We strongly denounce the threat of force, including any irresponsible nuclear rhetoric.” Hart added: “We call on Russia to end its unprovoked war in Ukraine.” Finally some serious questioning of the narrative: Where is the proof that the ‘Russians are coming’ – or are on the brink of some kind of invasion of European states?

As for other tiny handful of EU countries which have been voices of sanity which call for dialogue with Russia, this has included:
Slovakia
Austria
Czech Republic
and Hungary (or at least, while it was previously under Viktor Orban)


Meanwhile, on Wednesday a new alarming headline has emerged connected with the Ukraine war: Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson says European weapons factories producing arms for Ukraine are legitimate military targets for Russia. Things look to grow a lot hotter before they cool off.

Read more …

Paul Craig Roberts

• In the USA the Criminal Justice System Commits More Crimes than Criminals (PCR)

Reports I have read have me inclined to believe that there have been far more wrongful arrests from AI facial recognition and flock cameras than correct arrests.


In a recent wrongful arrest US Marshalls from the Fugitive Task Force showed up in plainclothes outside a Tennessee grandmother’s home demanding that she come out with hands up. Her grandchildren and visiting neighbors saw a bunch of armed men and had no idea what was occurring. It was all the fault of a dumbshit cop in Fargo, North Dakota. The Fargo police officer issued an arrest warrant based on no evidence but his deduction from facial identity that the grandmother 1,200 miles away had committed in North Dakota eight bank fraud felonies.

The police officer made no investigation whether the Tennessee grandmother had committed bank fraud in North Dakota. He relied only on AI and on the American system of plea bargaining. The grandmother, Angela Lipps, spent about 6 months in prison until it became obvious that she had nothing to do with the crimes of which she was wrongly accused by a totally incompetent police officer who issued an arrest warrant without any investigatory evidence to back it.

Indeed, from the $10 million lawsuit Mrs. Lipps lawyers have filed, we learn that the lazy cop, Luca Heck, “misrepresented the facial recognition results and omitted material exculpatory information and his failure to corroborate Lipps’s connection to the crimes.”

I agree that AI is total excrement, and that the money spent on it is a total waste of investment funds. Only idiots of the most stupid kind would spend trillions of dollar in eliminating the need for human labor and making truth dependent on those who control the data base. But what we face here is an older problem. bPolice officer Heck reflects what happens to police when 97% of felonies are settled not by trials, but by negotiated plea bargains.

A plea bargain is self-incrimination, which is prohibited by the US Constitution. Nevertheless, plea bargains are the unconstitutional basis of 97%, according to the statistics of the US Department of Justice, of criminal convictions. The conviction is by self-incrimination, not by a jury verdict. Almost 100% of all felony inmates are imprisoned due to self-incrimination. This does not mean that none are guilty.

Self-incrimination occurs, because the cost of a jury trial exceeds the financial capability of 90% of the American population. Self-incrimination is chosen by defendants, whether innocent or guilty, also because a plea bargain conveniences prosecutor and judge by saving them time and energy, and thus results in a lighter sentence than the prosecutor and judge would impose with a guilty verdict from a jury. As it is permissible for prosecutors to withhold exculpatory evidence, hire witnesses to lie, and prohibit testimony that proves the defendant’s innocence, a fair trial is not possible in the United States. Occasionally someone gets a fair trial, but they are rare. Their rarity is why the conviction rate is so high.

Police officer Heck is a victim himself of the plea bargaining system. In 97% of American felonies the police evidence is NEVER TESTED IN TRIAL BEFORE A JURY because the plea bargain leaves the evidence against the defendant UNTESTED. Police have learned that sweating over evidence is pointless when the evidence never goes to trial. √Officer Heck assumed the case would never go to trial and would be settled with a plea bargain, so no investigation was necessary. Evidence is irrelevant in a plea bargain. For Heck and for the prosecutor, it was assumed to be an easy victory. Only in the case of Mrs. Lipps the case made no sense.

What we need to be documented is when in our history, what year, did the prospect of a fair trial become so remote that it paid to self-incriminate oneself. What happened to the US Constitution’s prohibition against self-incrimination? How has it happened that only 3% of criminal convictions in the United States of America are consistent with the Constitution’s promise of a trial by peers? Why do judges believe prosecutor and defendants when they stand before him and declare that no deal has been made?

Read more …

“Musk is baaaack. In the past week alone he attended the Trump-Xi state dinner and was slated for a White House AI lunch, and now has his first formal advisory role since DOGE. Some feuds age like milk, others like fine wine; this one appears to have aged like a Pentagon contract.”

• Hegseth Unveils “Project Meridian” (ZH)

What do you get when you put the world’s first trillionaire, the man who builds killer drones in Ohio, and a former House Speaker in a room and ask them to design the next century of warfare? According to Pete Hegseth, you get “Project Meridian.”


In a sprawling “State of the Force” address to junior officers and enlisted troops at Marine Corps Base Quantico on Wednesday, the Secretary of War announced that Elon Musk, Anduril founder Palmer Luckey and Newt Gingrich (all three were in the audience) will lead an initiative “focused on discovering, developing and fielding the weapons and systems that our children and our grandchildren will need in their lifetimes.”

“Its purpose is to creatively look to the future and identify the domains that we must conquer and capabilities we must master,” Hegseth said, adding that “the best forecasters of future conflict” do “not solely reside inside the Pentagon.”

The project will be overseen by Emil Michael, the former Uber executive who is now the Pentagon’s top technology official. Bloomberg said Hegseth offered no further details, although Axios reports that the trio is expected to deliver its findings within 120 days, in both a public and a classified version.

The Customer Asks The Suppliers What It Should Buy
One does not need to be a cynic (although it helps) to notice that two of the three people now advising the Pentagon on which “capabilities we must master” also happen to run two of the companies most likely to sell those capabilities.

Musk’s SpaceX handles national security launches and has been a public company since its blockbuster June 12 IPO, which made Musk the planet’s first trillionaire. Luckey’s Anduril, meanwhile, has gone from defense upstart to prime-in-waiting in record time: it landed a $20 billion Pentagon contract in March, followed in May by a $5 billion raise at a $61 billion valuation, and it also builds the software for Golden Dome together with Palantir. As for Gingrich… Bloomberg notes he “has written a book on technology and entrepreneurism,” which is presumably what counts as a defense credential in 2026.

Then there is the Musk comeback. More than a year after the ultimately unpopular DOGE effort and the very public falling out with Trump, which at one point had the administration weighing shutting SpaceX out of Golden Dome, Musk is baaaack. In the past week alone he attended the Trump-Xi state dinner and was slated for a White House AI lunch, and now has his first formal advisory role since DOGE. Some feuds age like milk, others like fine wine; this one appears to have aged like a Pentagon contract.


What Goldman Says About The “Affordable Mass” Pitch
To be fair, there is a real case for letting outsiders shake up how the Pentagon buys things, and few have laid it out better than Goldman’s A&D analyst Noah Poponak, who sat down with Anduril’s management in June. Goldman’s diagnosis was that the legacy defense industry produces “low numbers of expensive, bespoke assets” that are hard to scale, while Anduril designs for “affordable mass” through selective vertical integration, common components across product lines, designs simple enough to automate, and flexible factories that can switch products quickly.

The economics also explain why everyone wants in. Per Goldman, Anduril targets a near 25% total company operating margin over time and gets roughly 70-80% of its revenue from fixed-price work, well above what the traditional primes earn. Poponak also saw “early signs of progress” in Pentagon acquisition reform, including multi-year frameworks and open-testing programs such as Drone Dominance. One of the architects of the “affordable mass” model will now help write the Pentagon’s wish list, which is either the most efficient procurement reform in history or the most efficient sales pitch. Possibly both.

Goldman is also constructive on the listed drone names. In his AeroVironment notes this month, Poponak noted that funded backlog rose 37% y/y and 23% sequentially and that AVAV “has exposure to faster growing portions of the defense budget.” He pointed to demand for its LOCUST directed-energy counter-drone system (first international order: more than $50mn) and the low-cost Freedom Eagle interceptor, which offers “a significantly lower-cost alternative to traditional missile defense systems.”

Enter AutoWarCom Meridian was not the only new acronym. Hegseth also unveiled a new four-star Autonomous Warfare Command (yes, “AutoWarCom”) with “service-like authorities” over drones, AI and command-and-control. It is set to be operational by October 1, 2027. Until then, an interim effort called Project Agincourt will draw on the Defense Innovation Unit and the Drone Dominance program, pairing “operators with entrepreneurs in rapid adaptation cycles.” Existing programs such as the Collaborative Combat Aircraft and the Navy’s MQ-25 unmanned tanker are being folded in. Hegseth called it “the fastest peacetime shift in modern military history.”

The money was already lined up. As we reported in April, the Pentagon’s FY27 request seeks $54.6 billion for the Defense Autonomous Warfare Group, up from $225 million in FY26, a 243x increase that would make even a Silicon Valley VC blush. Add the $1.1 billion Drone Dominance initiative to stockpile 300,000 sub-$5,000 attack drones by the end of 2027 (which sent drone stocks soaring in May), plus the Army’s $500 million FPV award to Neros in July, and the direction of travel is pretty clear.

…So Why Are Defense Stocks Puking?
You would think a four-star command dedicated to drones, a 243x budget request and the world’s richest man drafting the shopping list would be manna for defense stocks. Instead, the SPDR S&P Aerospace & Defense ETF (XAR) is down 22% from its August 14 peak and in a bear market, and as of Wednesday it is on track for a seventh straight weekly decline, the longest losing streak since the fund launched in 2011. XAR is now down 4.1% YTD while the S&P is up almost 12%.

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“The government inflated Bidenomics, and then it became afraid of the rising prices.”

• ADP Jobs Report Confirms 90,000 New Jobs (Eskeldson)

On September 30, the ADP (Automatic Data Processing) research firm posted a jobs report confirming the creation of 90,000 new jobs in the private sector. Before that, according to Quartz, Dow Jones expected 68,000 jobs. ADP’s National Employment Report announced that “hiring accelerated for the first time since May,” with education, healthcare, and hospitality in the lead. The Trump administration added manufacturing to that group of jobs, due to a new steel plant, the largest in the state, being built in Iowa. PR NewsWire said that 54,000 new employees joined medium business teams,


The Trump administration, new jobs, and inflation
23,000 were hired onto small businesses, and 14,000 were welcomed by large ones. Most of the new jobs from the original ADP report were found in the Northeast U.S. Many people have complained about job shortages and inflation. The higher prices rise, the fewer jobs and more inflation available, the angrier we get. Political cartoons and worthless government interventions have abounded, and the inflation-plus-job-unavailability bee in the consumer’s bonnet stings him again and again. It causes work-related woes and necessity prices to rise, and candidates to make speeches about it during election time.

In a change of events, the White House website has several articles about President Donald Trump adding more jobs, making up for losses caused by Bidenomics, a well-known implementation of the former president where jobs produced great risk and little reward. More than one million private-sector jobs have been created in President Trump’s second term, while federal employment remains at its lowest share of the workforce on record.

The government inflated Bidenomics, and then it became afraid of the rising prices. Overlooking that so many businesses could have gone broke and people would have become unemployed, as employers would have been unable to pay workers, the government simply kept the inflation. Stores raised prices because the money stopped having as much value, making food, clothing, and daily life necessities very hard to obtain, if not unaffordable; Bidenomics was remembered for the infamous egg shortage taking place in the early 2020s.

However, during the new Trump administration, Open Source Zone wrote on X that the September U.S. core inflation rate dropped to 3.0%, but it was originally supposed to be 3.3%. This reduced inflation may be why the ADP report included data showing that the latest private sector employees have been paid more: a 3.2% increase in their starting salary and a 4.7% increase in “gross pay.”

The takeaway
In the new report, an ADP chief economist, Dr. Nela Richardson, said, “job creation rebounded and pay growth remained solid.” Trump possibly helped to create these new hospitality, health care, and education jobs by restructuring a system rife with monetary woes. Further, Trump played a role in reducing inflation by removing Biden administration policies that were probably using inflated monies to stay afloat, and that we taxpayers were forced to pay for.

Read more …

Seriously, this is the US Senate:

“Smith pleaded ignorance again, so Kennedy tried a different line of questioning. “You don’t know anything about that. Do you believe in the Tooth Fairy?” Kennedy asked. “I do not,” Smith answered. “How about the Easter Bunny?” Kennedy continued. “I no longer believe in the Easter Bunny,” Smith said. Kennedy then asked whether Smith thought Jimmy Hoffa died of natural causes. Smith said he didn’t.”

• Sen. Kennedy Dogwalked Jack Smith at Senate Hearing (Matt Margolis)

Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) gave former Special Counsel Jack Smith an epic grilling at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing Tuesday morning. Kennedy accused Smith of partisan bias, of keeping a federal judge in the dark about his pursuit of congressional phone records, and of angling for the special counsel job in the first place. Smith spent the afternoon insisting he was a paragon of nonpartisan virtue, and Kennedy wasn’t buying a word of it.


Kennedy opened by asking about Smith’s reaction to President Donald Trump’s 2016 victory over Hillary Clinton. “When President Trump defeated Secretary Clinton, you were bitterly disappointed, weren’t you?” Kennedy asked. “I don’t recall that,” Smith replied. Imagine not recalling your own reaction to a presidential election. What a joke.

Kennedy then noted that Smith’s wife is an ardent supporter of Barack and Michelle Obama who made a “glowing, saccharine-sweet documentary” about the former first lady and sold it to Netflix. Smith refused to discuss his family and kept reminding everyone that he’d taken two jobs in the first Trump administration.

Then Kennedy switched gears. “You asked General Garland to appoint you special counsel, didn’t you?” He pressed. Smith looked down and scribbled on his notepad. “I don’t think that’s accurate,” he said. “He made the decision to appoint me.” When Kennedy asked whether Smith had people call then-Attorney General Merrick Garland to lobby for him, Smith scribbled some more and said he didn’t recall anything like that. Then Kennedy asked if he really wanted the job, and Smith launched into a speech about his own impartiality.

“I accepted the position as special counsel because I had spent 30 years as a nonpartisan prosecutor,” Smith claimed. “I had investigated every sort of criminal case you could possibly imagine, and I thought I was qualified to do the job. I knew that I would do it independently, and I would conduct it the same way whether it were Republican or a Democrat.” Kennedy watched him deliver that absurd claim with the patience of a man who knew exactly where this was going.


Next, Kennedy zeroed in on Smith’s pursuit of phone records belonging to members of Congress, which Smith’s team obtained through Chief U.S. District Judge James Boasberg. “When you went to Judge Boasberg, you didn’t even tell him you were seeking the phone records of members of Congress, did you?” Kennedy asked. “Because you knew he wouldn’t agree. He would say, ‘Hey, counselor, anybody who knows a law book from a J.Crew catalog knows that this violates the Constitution.’ But you didn’t tell him, did you?”

Smith tried twice to explain the non-disclosure orders his team sought, and Kennedy cut him off both times. Then the disgusted senator delivered the line of the day. “You didn’t tell him. But you’re unbiased. You have no personal feelings,” Kennedy said. “You make me want to throw up in my mouth.”

Another satisfying moment came when Kennedy got Smith to admit he told Garland twice that he planned to prosecute Trump. Smith said he had “absolutely no idea” whether Garland then checked with President Joe Biden. So Kennedy walked him through it, getting Smith to concede that Garland was experienced and intelligent.

“Is he a dummy?” Kennedy asked. “That was not my experience,” Smith said. “Yeah, mine neither,” Kennedy said. “So you’re telling me that you’re about to prosecute a former president of the United States — first time in history. Not only that, you’re about to prosecute a former president of the United States who’s also the current opponent of Judge Garland’s boss. And you told Judge Garland, ‘Here’s what I’m about to do.’ And you don’t think he checked with President Biden to see if it was okay?”

Smith pleaded ignorance again, so Kennedy tried a different line of questioning. “You don’t know anything about that. Do you believe in the Tooth Fairy?” Kennedy asked. “I do not,” Smith answered. “How about the Easter Bunny?” Kennedy continued. “I no longer believe in the Easter Bunny,” Smith said. Kennedy then asked whether Smith thought Jimmy Hoffa died of natural causes. Smith said he didn’t.

You have to love Kennedy. Smith has given up on the Easter Bunny, yet he still expects Americans to believe that Garland greenlit the first federal prosecution of a former president, who was also Biden’s chief political rival, without so much as a heads-up to the White House. Smith brought two federal indictments against Trump and dropped both after voters sent Trump back to the White House in November 2024.

Read more …

“Was anybody really looking forward to black lesbian Casablanca — as an eight-part limited series — if Netflix had won the bidding war?”

• Paramount Deal Approved Hours Before $7 Million-a-Day Fines Kick In (Green)

Just hours before contractual $7 million-a-day late fees kicked in on Thursday, a federal judge blessed Paramount’s $110 billion Warner Bros. buyout. Well, it’s about time. “After a fierce year-long battle,” as Variety put it Wednesday afternoon, Paramount chief David Ellison will finally complete his buyout of troubled Warner Bros. “in the most expensive takeover in Hollywood history.”


U.S. District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín oversaw the California-led, multi-state antitrust suit seeking to block the buyout or impose conditions on it. Yesterday, she put her stamp of approval on Paramount’s settlement with the 12 Democrat state attorneys general who brought the case. The merger had already been approved by the Department of Justice and even by the EU’s busy-body nanny-staters, but California Attorney General Rob Bonta saw an angle and went for it.

The suit was such a nuisance — and put so many California jobs at risk — that California Democrat gubernatorial candidate Xavier Becerra practically begged the Blue State AGs to call it off, or at least settle quickly. Nevertheless, the AGs seem to have gotten most of what they wanted.

I’ve written in recent months about the legal ins and outs and political maneuvers leading to this moment, and the California-led antitrust suit that, in my mind, amounted to nothing more than legal blackmail over the combined companies’ future operations. And sure enough, among the deal’s various terms, Paramount-Warner (or whatever the merged company’s name turns out to be) will be required to establish an editorial-independence board for CBS News and CNN, plus an independent compliance monitor.

Professional Hollywood scold Mark Ruffalo, who at one time was a not entirely untalented actor, blasted the court’s approval as “incredibly disappointing.” “This grassroots movement isn’t going to fade away, and neither is our resolve,” Ruffalo said to — I’m not sure, actually. “This was never about just one merger: This was about fighting back against corrupt oligarch billionaires trampling the interests of everyday people to line their own pockets.”

Ruffalo’s net worth is believed to be about $35 million, yet his most famous role was mostly CGI. So if you were on the fence about whether the deal should go through, hopefully Ruffalo pushed you over to the Yes side, if not with me out in the fields of Oh HELL Yes, about a hundred yards further down from the fence. But I digress yet once more.

As a business proposition, I remain agnostic about the merits of the buyout. This is an industry in flux, being chased out of its home city by bad governance, and the merged studios will have a lot of debt to service. How much? $80 billion. I don’t know what kind of deal Paramount might have gotten for its bonds, but an average 7% interest rate would mean $5.6 billion a year in interest alone. That’s a lot of movie tickets and streaming fees.

Still, I wish them luck. Partly because these are two storied studios that have played a big part in American culture, and if a merger prevents one or both of them from getting parted out — which was one of Warner’s possible fates — that would be wonderful. But mostly because I didn’t want to see Warner’s massive IP library become just another part of Netflix’s content-slop firehose. Was anybody really looking forward to black lesbian Casablanca — as an eight-part limited series — if Netflix had won the bidding war?

Read more …

“Freedom + Courage = Saving Western Civilization.”

• My Last Conversation with Charlie Kirk (John Solomon)

Many months later, it still looks and feels surreal when I see the video clip. Sitting in my podcast studio with headphones on, fighting back tears and uttering words I never thought would enter my mouth as a journalist.


“Charlie Kirk passed away a short while ago. He wasn’t able to survive the blood loss from the wound to his neck,” I told Eric Bolling in a special breaking news broadcast on Real America’s Voice, the upstart network that we three shared together. “There will be some announcements soon is what I’m told. And then we will have to sort through what happened today, who is responsible and try to understand.”

Just a few minutes before, I had confirmed from multiple sources that my friend — half my age but twice as visionary– had died. I triggered a bulletin on the Just the News Web site providing the first confirmation of Charlie’s death and then went on air with my stunned RAV colleagues to share the news. A short while later, President Donald Trump confirmed our report and a nation began mourning, and then debating, how a young man with charisma and passion, a beautiful loving wife and two kids could be robbed from us by the bullet of another young man driven to become an assassin solely from the apparent hatred for the beliefs Charlie spread across America’s campuses.

I’ve thought back often in the year that has ensued and asked myself, and my heavenly father above: what would Charlie say about that moment? The truth is we will never know for certain. But my final interactions with Charlie a few weeks earlier at his annual donor event in Colorado have brought me to this conclusion. Tyler Robinson is exactly the type of young American that Charlie was dying to reach with his political evangelism.

Both young men grew up in a disillusioning era of America where division was seeded and nurtured by intolerance spread at lightning speed across social media. It has been an era where hope and opportunity is being hijacked by the false prophets of democratic socialism, fake news and globalism. It’s also an era where the Western civilization value system that embraced truth, goodness and freedom and decried evil and repression is being supplanted by a new gospel of hedonism and moral relativism and Big Government idol worship spread by influencers that resemble the snake oil salesmen of the gypsy era.

Charlie chose a path toward freedom and faith and family. He saw America as eminently good, even with its flaws. He believed in fighting for it by leveraging the liberty of free speech to spur a great debate, just like Lincoln in the dark days before the Civil War.

Tyler apparently chose to embrace a different path that took him into a dark world of furryism and video game fantasy, where resentment rises in the absence of hope and faith and eventually escalates into a final act of lethal intolerance.

That dynamic has played out over and over again on the streets of America from Columbine to Coventry. Rob young people of hope and God and purpose, confuse them about everything from the righteous history of their country to the undeniable reality of their gender and they will eventually drift from family and friends and freedom and truth and eventually succumb to a moment of irreversible hatred

In the end, Charlie made his mark with a bullhorn of hope. Tyler made his with a bullet inscribed with hate. But they will be inextricably linked forever just like Booth to Lincoln during the Civil War, or Oswald to Kennedy during the Cold War. Ironically, every major struggle for freedom in American has been marred by an assassination. It’s a sobering reminder that freedom is not free and that the forces of evil that seek to extinguish liberty’s flame will resort to whatever measures necessary to succeed…

… In the pages that ensue in this book you will get to learn just how Charlie came to embrace such fearless patriotism. His intellect was large, his capacity for debate endless and his passion to ensure his generation not be erased by an evil golden calf of socialism was infectious.

Some say he can’t be replaced and that a single assassin’s bullet has ended his counteroffensive. Perhaps some of the past year feels like a drought. But as farmers know, a single good rainfall is all that’s needed to revive crops to a plentiful harvest. I hope and pray this book is that rainfall, that reading about the evolution of Charlie’s thinking and the wisdom of his words will inspire you to pick up the bullhorn of liberty and fill that void.

Every generation’s geniuses boil their thesis into a simple equation. Newton and Einstein had theirs. Charlie had his too. On the two-hop flight back from Aspen to Washington DC last August I jotted into a note my takeaway from being on stage with Charlie. For me it is the Kirk equation we must follow.’

Freedom + Courage = Saving America

Later I scribbled out America and paid homage to Charlie’s wisdom. My final inscription now reads like this: Freedom + Courage = Saving Western Civilization.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Home › Forums › Debt Rattle October 2 2026

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  • October 2, 2026 at 8:48 am #251360
    Raúl Ilargi Meijer
    Keymaster

    Hieronymus Bosch St. John on Patmos 1489 • Supertanker Ablaze After Iran Attack In Hormuz (ZH) • CNN’s Data Guru Just Dropped Brutal Numbers for the D
    [See the full post at: Debt Rattle October 2 2026]

    October 2, 2026 at 9:22 am #251373
    Michael Reid
    Participant

    Trump about to self-destruct over latest diesel initiative?
    The West is run by the dumbest leaders ever.

    Contact us: info@strategic-culture.su

    It is a mark of our times that Western leaders are not only the weakest that they have ever been, but they are also the dumbest – with Donald Trump leading the pack. His latest initiative has enraged the business press, who have wheeled out all the experts to shoot it down in flames. Trump wants to limit diesel exports from the U.S., which he believes will drive down diesel pump prices in the U.S., but it is such a stupid idea that many political commentators are pointing out his own level of desperation by playing what one called “an economics game of roulette where if the ball lands on a red number we lose everything”. Experts predict that such an initiative would only reduce diesel prices by about 5 percent for American truckers, but, according to the economists at Goldman Sachs, will drive up gasoline prices at the pumps. Quite apart from the diesel ban also wrecking the global oil economy – which will have its own blowback with American consumers – Trump is showing that not only does he not have smart economists around him advising him on these late-night whims which come to him, but he himself understands practically nothing about how the U.S. economy works.

    After giving the most vulgar and disgraceful speech at the UN, talking about himself like a Roman Emperor “annihilating” Iran – a civilisation which is about 4,000 years old – it is easy to see, though, how leaders like Trump exist, when there is practically no safety mechanism in place for a U.S. president to behave so appallingly and to be so reckless with the economy. Nothing from Congress, or even either the Speaker of the House or even leaders of either party, to condemn such narcissistic speeches or foolish policy decisions by a man who represents the greatest wrecking ball to Western civilisation as we know it. And even though we saw a glimmer of hope from U.S. media groups who boycotted his Oval Office sessions, few if any journalists are prepared to report on Trump accurately, preferring to give a gloss or simply bypass his buffoonery altogether. In such an environment where the press gives you a free card, is it any wonder that Trump in his second term in office is basically a New Jersey mobster who has lost his mind entirely – drunk on power and corrupted by it, like Rome’s last emperor who was looking for his chicken while the entire empire was collapsing around him?

    The sad thing, though, is that he is not alone.

    In the EU, we’ve never had such unremarkable, dithering, under-performing, corrupt political wasters as the current coterie of losers running the UK, France and Germany. The UK is particularly bad, as Andy Burnham and Ed Miliband capture the internet’s imagination for a few brief moments as they enter the UN auditorium – and the main takeaway from their perplexed expressions as they look into someone’s camera is that they appear to be both lost and out of their depths, like children on their first day at the big school. While all three throw all their weight behind war talk about the Russians coming – a scam designed to distract people’s attention away from failed public sectors, immigration and economies in tailspins – Burnham stood out this week, though, for a new policy initiative. He’s going to create an Orwellian new police department to control content on the internet, perhaps inspired by the EU’s own German fascist leader – er, European Commission president, I mean – Ursula von der Leyen, who hates free speech so much that she wants it outlawed altogether.

    Trump may well end up looking smarter than the leaders of the UK, France and Germany, as these three bankrupt economies now have only one modus operandi, which is to create a phoney war with Russia – which they believe will deflect any blame aimed at them for when these economies hit rock bottom and all these clowns can offer is to turn to international banks and borrow even more. They know their time in office is limited, and so a war is the perfect solution – not only to divert attention away from their own failure but to also give a massive boost to their friends in the industrial military complex, who will be very grateful for the huge new contracts given to them. We should not be surprised that both the children of Trump and even Tony Blair have huge stakes in weapons companies and could really do with a war which shovels billions their way. Yet the diesel initiative from Trump could actually be the last nail in his coffin, as if he goes ahead with it and it proves to actually jack up gasoline prices, he is likely to lose both houses. Already droves of Republican senators and representatives are distancing themselves from Trump’s Iran war and higher pump prices; it’s hard to imagine how many more stupid lies Trump can tell, blaming others for his own self-made calamities.

    Trump about to self-destruct over latest diesel initiative?

    October 2, 2026 at 9:26 am #251374
    Michael Reid
    Participant

    Call It Evil: Understanding the Trump Era is a 2026 book written by the eminent moral philosopher Susan Neiman. Published by W. W. Norton & Company, the 240-page book examines how the erosion of shared values has left democracy vulnerable to contemporary demagogues.
    The book is available on Amazon Canada for $37.99 CAD.
    📖 Core Summary & Overview
    Despite its provocative title, Neiman clarifies that this is not a book about Donald Trump specifically. Instead, it explores the structural and cultural conditions that allowed his political era to thrive.
    • The Reclaimed Definition of Evil: Neiman rejects the “gothic, tabloid” archetype of evil (like cartoonish, gleeful villains). Instead, she defines it as the widespread, cynical conviction that raw power and narrow self-interest are the only true drivers of human behavior.
    • Misunderstood Science & Economics: She argues that public life has been quietly bombarded by misreadings of Charles Darwin and Adam Smith. These misreadings have trickled down into modern “common sense,” falsely convincing society that moral ideals are naive, hypocritical, or only for “losers”.
    • The Danger of Safe Language: Neiman critiques modern liberals and institutional Democrats for relying on cautious, clinical language. She argues that by refusing to call out systemic cruelty and corruption by its true name—evil—society has been lulled into a dangerous complacency.
    • A Call for Moral Clarity: Drawing parallels to historical frameworks like European fascism, she asserts that reclaiming a bold, unapologetic moral vocabulary is the vital first step toward restoring justice and saving democratic institutions.
    🛒 Buying Formats & Platforms in Canada
    If you are looking to purchase or read the book, it is available across several major platforms:
    • Physical Hardcover: Available on Amazon Canada for $37.99 CAD with free shipping, or at Indigo Chapters for $37.99 CAD.
    • Kindle / eBook: Available on Amazon Canada for $28.51 CAD, or through Kobo for $28.89 CAD.
    • Audiobook: Narrated by Katharine Chin. You can buy it via Google Play Audiobooks for $24.95 CAD or Kobo Audiobooks for $28.99 CAD.
    Would you like to explore reviews from major literary outlets like the New York Times, or do you want to look into similar political philosophy books released recently?
    AI can make mistakes, so double-check responses

    October 2, 2026 at 9:33 am #251375
    Michael Reid
    Participant

    Call It Evil: Understanding the Trump Era (w/ Susan Neiman) | TCHR

    The Chris Hedges YouTube Channel
    6.1K
    Likes
    207,316
    Views
    Sep 30
    2026
    The Chris Hedges Report
    In her new book, “Call It Evil: Understanding the Trump Era,” Susan Neiman investigates the structural evils of the Trump administration and how people are becoming ‘Good Germans’ in our fascist era.

    October 2, 2026 at 9:39 am #251376
    Michael Reid
    Participant

    COL. Lawrence Wilkerson
    This man has good insight

    October 2, 2026 at 9:43 am #251377
    Michael Reid
    Participant

    October 2, 2026 at 10:08 am #251378
    Dr. D
    Participant

    “Canada, skies (tariffs)”

    Canada is selling off their airports, that’s how successful it’s going.

    “Iran is going after America’s debt
    It can’t beat the US military, so it’s targeting the $40 trillion America owes.

    Are you kidding? CHINA wasn’t able to do this. That’s what “Operation Twist” was and didn’t make a ripple. Iran has no remaining connection to the banking system anywhere on the world, AND has 25,000% inflation. I think we can take them. But “Iran INTENDS” Iran had thoughts and said things. Yes. They did, true. They did think things.

    “Below the formula, he wrote, “You can’t 25bp a chokepoint.”

    No. You can’t. But the straits are moving 12M bbl/day. Like 70% of prewar levels already. And First the Taylor Rule is false bc it’s Keynesianism. He’s going to shoot us with his light saber from the movies, not a real thing.

    “ the Fed raises rates every time oil prices jump”

    Yes but the Fed Chair already said he doesn’t believe this and it’s crap. It’s the remaining Globalists on the board that are doing it. ON PURPOSE. IN AN ELECTION. To destroy the U.S. Not because of economics. So if you want to say “We have Iranian traitors posted in Wall Street and the Federal Reserve Board,” then Yes. I know. But that’s not economics. Nothing says we have to obey traitors.

    Anyway: they promised $250/bbl and it’s not even $100. We’ve had $100 all the time and nothing happened. The price isn’t “Real” it’s set by the Polymarket fantasy football in Brent/London, and run by the MEDIA. Not economics.

    Both Diesel is NOT the Straits, And Fertilizer was supposed to sink us last year and had no effect. Now it’s winter, we don’t need it. How often can you be wrong?

    Yeah, we know, always knew, from 1979 that Iran’s Plan was to shut the strait and cause the world pain. But looks like that didn’t work. It’s working 2/3rds even less now. The U.S. may take pain but Europe will collapse. So the danger isn’t over here at all, you’re looking in the wrong place and you’re attacking your ALLIES, not your enemies.

    “’Iran’s Deadline Expires Today’: Tehran Threatens Renewed Attacks As Blockade Bites, Rial Collapses

    Headline: “Iran Says Things.” Look: there is no deadline. Not only did Trump short-circuit with “No” and he’s the only one relevant to it, but Iran attacked ships every day all along. “Threatens renewed Attacks” when they attacked yesterday. Sirs: you have to STOP in order to “Start” again, or have any threat of starting.

    “Trump Chooses WAR! Iran BLOWS OPEN Israeli Airport Hoax | Larry Johnson & Col. Lawrence Wilkerson — Danny Haiphong

    Same crew so you know it’s retarded AF. Because Trump has NOT chosen war before now? That’s what 200 days of all the Congressional discussions of “Continuing resolutions” were? That is concerning ‘cause if everything in Iran was blown to bits in “Not War” (according to Haiphong) then you can only imagine how blown to bits they’ll be “In War”. So I guess Trump might start the war tomorrow!

    Trump also unconditionally surrendered last month, but also nuked everyone.

    Every day and person is like Bedlam, or else I’m much mistaken. Every utterance is lunacy. And more because AFTER they say it, and AFTER we check, they STILL continue on believing it.

    “Supertanker Ablaze After Iran Attack In Hormuz As US Deploys 10K More Troops & Third Carrier To Mideast

    Finally a tanker is hit. Good work. How do I know? Why was this headline NOT printed the last 30 days? A: Because they were “Targeted” with intent but no contact, they were “Hit” with 2lb Amazon drones, but not, as this one, actually damaged. Because journalists would rather be drawn and quartered than tell the truth, we don’t know how many were “Hit” vs “Targeted” vs “Smoke bombs”, but the headline shows that actually lighting one on fire has been quite rare, considering.

    This is with again, what is NOT reported, because journalists would rather be drawn and quartered than tell the truth, that the US Navy “just said” in the Indian sea: “Don’t you ships move or we’ll sink you” to all the Iranian tankers (essentially) So they have been completely idle, not trying to run the gauntlet at Oman. That is: the Navy let all Iran’s tankers OUT “to sell to China”, and Ha ha! Iran called it a win! …But not back IN within 1,000 miles of Iran.

    THIS was why Iran said they’re attacking the whole Indian Ocean. But because journalists would rather be drawn and quartered than tell the truth, we didn’t know these two facts existed and were straight cause and effect. Because journalists would rather be drawn and quartered than tell the truth. Thanks.

    It’s like saying “Some kids did graffiti and the police are trying to lock them up for life” only to find out the Kids are the Manson family and the graffiti was the Tate murders. Uh, no, those facts are EXCLUSIVELY RELEVANT to the actions, and withholding them is a galactic level of open deception. But I already said that when I said “Media.”

    Of course this means the US$ will collapse which is why it is 102. And the U.S. will collapse which is why a trillion is flooding into the Indexes. That’s how mad everyone is at us, with China cutting new deals.

    “Gold falling” which is why you know there’s a larger war and Trump is going to nuke everybody to stop the nuking of everybody, after having won and the flows are now 70% of prewar. ‘cause: Reasons. Really those signals are a US$ crisis of a different kind. There’s a USD SHORTAGE, as Bessant squeezes the Eurodollar system that had been controlling us since 1970. Europe is in big trouble, which is why they’re selling off gold, but buying dollars, and hiding money in US Indexes, even tho they’re all wildly overpriced. It’s complex bc you have to look at hints and relationships and flows, but it’s also exactly what you’d expect. Or expect when looking from my paradigm.

    And Krainer is definitely on Luongo’s “London Plan” and definitely doesn’t want to say so. I listened to his last one – sorry didn’t link – and like the others, changed his whole view, NOT talking about Trump, but IS talking about other things, Afghanistan, and the long-term monetary (British) Empire. But in a way Europeans and Trump haters can accept and digest. The reason he doesn’t bring up Trump – and I wish to God other people wouldn’t either, since he’s mostly not relevant – is 1) It’s almost always distracting and counterproductive but 2) You’d find out that his actions make sense according to this British Financial Globalist Empire theory. Once you know that’s the goal, then his actions are logical, and anything you say explaining that sounds like you’re apologizing and defending Trump, which thanks to media and the soft, pudding-heads of most people, is unacceptable.

    But this will take more data points. If not, it’s a very strange, very sudden right turn from his accusations and emotional meltdown over Trump starting February, but suddenly stopping Sept 1. Because he stopped thinking with emotions – as we’re all pissed off – and started engaging his brain again in cold logic. And I understand.

    Back to Iran, Iran issues a 75 page plea to the American people to stop the war. …As One Does…when one is completely winning. Yeah, you know, when I’m winning, I don’t usually go around the President and beg the people to stop the war. You just stop talking, carry on, and win it.

    “Europe’s Housing Crisis Is An Immigration Crisis, Berlin Data Confirms
    In a system that rejects mass immigration, the population can fall, opening up room for cheaper housing, lower rents, and even an increase in the birthrate…”

    But GDP Go Up!! No, really. Remember August 2020 the day before Covid all the markets broke, and we’d have a crisis that only war-like printing and “Digit-go-up” could prevent. What a Coincidence! Then a Miracle Happened! Ah. Yes. So the only way “Digit-go-up” and stop the debt collapse is to import people and jack prices. If digit ever go down, with this leverage, debt-based system, you’d have an ‘08 collapse overnight. So you see the Migrant problem has nothing to do with migrants. Mostly. It still kills your own citizens, so that’s a plus.

    …And that’s true here too. You remove 2 million, 20 million people and yes, houses drop. …But houses are COLLATERAL for the entire U.S. System. No collateral = collapse. …I mean unless you had a stablecoin in the system or something instead. NOT debt-based system, Gold-based system as Shelton is put into Treasury, running stablecoins, and it CAN have a Deflation and survive.

    They can’t TELL the people that, so they look like traitors. But that’s only because they ARE traitors, and if they told the truth: “We’re importing infinity rapists so the FTSE stays high” will rightfully communicate they’re killing YOU so a few thousand connected financial, Epstein-Class people don’t lose money. Uh, no. That’s a WORSE explanation, actually. But it’s the true one. They tell themselves because a collapse and world Depression would be worse — and it’s really bad, no question! — but the PEOPLE would survive. And is that Depression any worse than the intolerable system we have now? Not really. Only better for them. Honesty is better for us. Same as Germany after 1945. Honest money = Instant prosperity, even though every object in all Germany was rubble.

    “Trump Explains Why He’s Okay With North Korea Having Nukes, But Not Iran

    Because what are we supposed to do? Land and invade? That’s the same problem with Israel: what do you want us to DO about it? Invade Israel and make them cease to exist as a nation? Yeah 1) Nobody will like that and call us the villains, not the heroes 2) Israel will use the nukes, obviously, that’s exactly the scenario they exist for.

    So what do you want us to do? Be practical. Answer: “Wah wah wah wah wahhhhhhhh! I want a PONY!” What you do is bad, but I have no answers at all, and do no work. And Why Us? Why don’t YOU do something? Ah, the answer and approach of a child. Shut up now, Daddy’s busy.

    France Erupts Into Chaos As “Rioting Migrant” Kids Torch Schools And Busses

    Those darn Mormon youth again. Why can’t they go back to Utah where they came from?

    October 2, 2026 at 12:15 pm #251379
    Dr. D
    Participant

    Today:

    “It is not a good sign when the IRGC shifts from “Death to America” to “Vote Democratic.” The IRGC is reportedly encouraging Americans to vote against the GOP

    I mean, yes, the DNC is the Iranian Party and pro-Muslim Sharia Law party, but then, so is Fox News, so…discuss? British Oligarchs Murdoch and MI6 spokesperson Crooks are Pro-Iran? On what basis? That’s odd.

    “Iranians are apparently going back on the offensive,”

    Again, as above. WHEN did they stop? And “they have more missiles than ever,” although they were shooting 400 a day at the start and zero a day now. Even their headline video ballistic “test” missile wasn’t seen by any living soul and may have been fake. Why would you “Test” when you can actually hit the Lincoln? Are you retarded? We’re in a war, man! Shoot the d—n enemy! Nope. Nope. Nope. They hit nothing. “But they’re about to! Any day now!”

    They never stopped shooting, but are going to start. And they hit ONE ship – as this article is based on. What does that mean? That they were NOT hitting ships last 30 days – not really – or he would have printed this 30 days go and not implied Iran had “stopped” at any time.

    But you can’t realistically stop an entire nation state from hitting a single ship, ever. That’s not realistic. Heck, the PLO can hit a ship. Lesbians in New Zealand can sink a ship. — I — can probably hit a ship. It’s not that hard. But is it RELEVANT? One ship every 30 days? YES! Yes that’s tolerable. It’s a pinprick. That’s just 80IQ Pirates off Somali coast stuff.

    Signs of potential major escalation,”     Signs, not facts. Always “Signaling” never acting.

    “ just hit The Wall Street Journal, and sent oil prices soaring.”

    Yes, the WSJ is SIGNALING. And front-running the news to make billions. This means what? “You SAID things.”

    Then “…So Why Are Defense Stocks Puking?’’ This is what happens when we’re going to war, it’s expanding on Iran and Ukraine, China, and not being settled down. Nukes, WWIII, cats and dogs living together: war stonk go down. Right? Reporters “Keep signaling things” while all evidence goes the Opposite. Because they’d rather be drawn and quartered than tell the truth.

    “the Democrat Party is in worse shape. Its turnout advantage is only about two points.”

    Compare: the Democrats were +8 and lost. Last couple elections. Now they’re +2? Use logic.

    I’ll restate again as I see it worldwide, Europe, Canadian bloggers. WHY are you following OUR midterms? WGAF? Go do your own work in your own country and stop stealing ours. NOPE. We are the only nation that acts, the only nation that’s relevant. They definitely don’t want to act in any of their own countries because that would be “Work”. They want to sight-see ours instead. Okay man, but that’s why “Empire” exists. We keep telling you not to and you keep doing it.

    “The main Ukrainian blindspot of course is Chrysria Freeland. This doesn’t even mention her.
    • Canada Has A Ukrainian Blindspot (Ted Snider)

    Because the Media would rather be drawn and quartered than tell the truth. Then they’re wrong, we prove it, look at it, remark on it, and believe them again a minute later. In any case, every Canadian must die to defend Stalin’s borders and the Waffen SS. So. Proud.

    “• Ukraine Hit By Severe Power Cuts After Russia Pounds Grid (ZH)

    What is this? Zoom out: Ukraine is becoming the Borderlands. A Buffer zone. An EMPTY buffer zone. Where no humans live, essentially. Okay, there we are. We know the strategy and end state, they were trying to avoid it, but it’s here.

    “Zelensky has lately floated he’d be open to another energy ceasefire deal,

    Like Bedlam, above, this is lunacy on its face. We’ve done this 100 times but also yesterday. Trump forced an energy truce on him (coz he’s the only one ALSO running the war) and “Ze” instantly betrayed that and lit a refinery. So no. The shooting never stopped, there was no Truce. So he wants another one of a thing he never had.

    Because the Media would rather be drawn and quartered than tell the truth. Then they’re wrong, we prove it, look at it, remark on it, and believe them again a minute later.

    “The U.S. singlehandedly sustains Canada’s economy and national security, yet the tiny central banker huffed and puffed in a hilariously Napoleonic display of fake strength.”

    Sorry. If you did something real – ever – I would discuss that instead. You have the military of Grenada right now. You have a smaller military than NYC has policemen and are working tirelessly to remove all guns from the people. Great, so you’re unarmed AND unmanned AND have no economy AND have a million more imported on the dole. Excellent way to prepare.

    NATO Chart “Even without the U.S. NATO would have the third largest arsenal”

    Not exactly. The U.S. is “maintaining”, that is, “Paying for but also controlling” all UK’s nukes, since they’ve been broke and parasiting off us for decades. So depending what happens, you can remove those too. Since it appears Trump may be aware London is our primary enemy, HAVE any of those nukes been kept up? Or if we leave, will they all be decayed and inoperable, even if we don’t load them on a jet at gunpoint and remove them?

    So they’d have less than India, which is appropriate since Europe is the 3rd world.

    “• In the USA the Criminal Justice System Commits More Crimes than Criminals (PCR)

    Well “Civil Forfeiture” is 5x the value of all burglaries, so yes. But they ALSO perjure, void human rights and hundreds of other things daily. Just today they SWAT Teamed a guy in TN who was criticizing them, trying to harass and get him killed. This is about daily. And the shocking part is we’re still BETTER than Germany or England, who arrest people for THINKING THINGS near an abortion clinic and not only let rapists go free, but force the daughters back into the rapist’s house. Or Rapists’.

    “Lithuania’s prime minister now warns against exaggerating the Russia threat,”

    So now there are two nations for peace? The U.S. AND Lithuania? Just 250 to go.

    “produce 200 gigawatts of solar per year and take it to space, where “it’s essentially always sunny.”

    Chapter of Issac Asimov’s “I, Robot”, 1940-51 The Robots consider porting energy back to earth a silicon religion, as they fry the planet with the energy transmissive microwaves. Because real SciFI is a morality investigation, it ages well and is worth reading.

    V3 Starlink satellites, which are enormous. These are satellites with a wingspan of a 737. Next year, we expect Starship to reach a weekly or twice weekly”

    Note the ENERGY this takes. From the U.S. economy. Could this level of energy be sapped out of the U.S. economy in 1969? Possibly not. Now it’s a rounding error: no one even thinks of the question, much less feels it. That’s how much larger we are and how much more energy we use (and waste) than 1969. Counterintuitive.

    Reid: I’m gratified to know we’re on the same Team. That makes things much easier. Welcome to Team Trump, I guess! Let me re-explain what the strategy and end-goal is…

    “Trump wants to limit diesel exports from the U.S., … but it is such a stupid idea that many political commentators are pointing out

    It’s so stupid that Trump did NOT do it. “Trump thought things”. So the author is commenting on a galaxy of dozens of things that never happened, while Trump poses the idea and gets it hashed out in the press for him. ‘Cause normal guys like me will ask the same, very obvious question.

    So “Thinking things and asking questions is DUMB” according to this genius. We must never ask questions; that makes us stupid. And Not Doing things = Doing things. Because: #Oppositeland. We should NOT ask questions and then NOT do them when turns out it’s a bad idea, Jay sez.

    Wow. That’s his opening sentence, his primary thesis, which is much of the article. “STOP THINKING!!!! Do What You’re Told!!!” by us in the Media who haven’t told the truth since 2002, insiders say. (Hedges, Assange, PCR)

    “After giving the most vulgar and disgraceful speech at the UN, talking about himself like a Roman Emperor “annihilating” Iran”

    I agree it was pointless and vulgar: disapprove. However, “Trump Said things”. That’s it. The author cannot distinguish between “Signaling” and “Reality”. That is to say, he is psychotic, insane. What HAPPENED, sir? What did they DO? Trump has killed 10 million Iranians? (Which we could easily do). No. Iran hasn’t posted a SINGLE photo in Iran. So….huh? Trump is making amazing Gaza-like footage every day, but Iran just is super-swell guys and never posts it? Huh? No. BECAUSE THAT’S NOT HAPPENING. Or Iran WOULD post it. HOW it’s not happening, I don’t know. Flores said the same thing: “Is this war even happening? At ALL? Anywhere??” I can’t get a guy with a spare cell phone to post anything, even street photos.” Impossible. Unheard-of. …Unless it’s not happening.

    So what is REAL, sir? A: “Who Cares??! I want my Feelz!!” I get feelz from WORDS, not Reality. So I only believe Signals, not Facts. Ah. That is to say, you are psychotic, insane. Mr. Jay Martin, who I’ve said this of before. Guess what? He’s a BRITISH reporter, who works for the constantly-discredited Daily Mail! Well, if it’s the Daily Mail, I guarantee it’s false!

    Thus why everything Strategic Culture has said has been gibberish and their every prediction was wrong so far. …And with the same psychosis, we see they’ve been wrong 200+ days in a row and still credit them as Real, because we get feelz from believing in Signals that are fake, instead of Facts that are Real. See you tomorrow! Where I’ll say the same thing again.

    Where is the million man landing? The casualties? The $250 oil? The collapsed economy? Nothing. To us it’s as if there’s no war at all. It’s better during this “war’ than just a normal Thursday under Biden. I had a fantastic $3.99 steak again yesterday.

    October 2, 2026 at 12:15 pm #251380
    Dr. D
    Participant

    Evil certainly is an interesting subject, which must be drilled down to philosophical roots. Not lying and being wrong all day is an important prerequisite. “Evil” roughly speaking, also sort of is “Logical”. It’s Rational, “Reasonable” even. If you expel all spirit and heart, that part that makes up “Morality”. So it depends essentially on Scientific Materialism. If you have Modern, Scientific Materialism, you’ll have Evil the next day. Same as a+b = b+a. They’re identical objects with differing names. Any adding the “Irrational” will cure it, that is to say, the Religious, the spiritual.

    Which is the only enemy. #Logos, #Truth, is the only enemy of Evil. That’s why they attack #Logos and facts like demons wherever it appears. So long as you don’t add religion, spirit though, you’ll just keep falling on the side of Evil without meaning to, on that side of the fence. Why? Take one example: “The end justifies the means” that’s so popular right now. Without Objective Fact, #Logos, ANY action is justified, ANY harm, any Evil, essentially, is renamed the Good. And they really do this! As we all know and see every day. No. You can’t do evil to create good. But you have to be IRRATIONAL and NOT take actions that will WIN. …In order to “win” in this case. You can only stop yourself from doing that using religion, principles, since it makes no logical, rational sense. Logically of course you should and must press every advantage.

    So Darwinism is a cornerstone of this for some reason, and what’s really a deep misreading of Smith. They can both operate fine IF RELIGION STILL BALANCES THEM. As was the case of our nation in 1776. Although less religious than avowed, as were most places in the past (eg, church sizes in Europe were only 1/10th the size of the local population, meaning most people did NOT go to curch in the past, similar to now. However, this actual number varied wildly over centuries. Same in 1776: many would but there was no church. Many were Catholic. Many were casual and did local magic at the same time. There were dozens and hundreds of far-out churches like Swedeborgian and Shaker’s Mother Ann cult. Many shortly after were New Age like Oneida and Emerson. So they were not “Protestant” 90% churchgoing in any meaningful sense, although far more maybe 90% more ‘Christian’ than today.)

    So if you have that “To be good is self-sacrificing irrational” then you can have Science, or etc without blowing the society apart. This is like Yin and Yang, and does actually mirror it, the Religion being the hidden feminine, of feels. However right now the “Feminine” Party is the Liberal-Democrats who are ANTI-Religion and violently authoritarian, that is Patriarchal. The Right is a very bad offset to them/this, but DO encompass the idea we have moral responsibility and Christian tolerance and behavior. I recognize how ironic this is. This isn’t especially unique: all eras in history act like this, contrary to their own inner logic.

    You might read (Catholic, trader) Barnhardt’s “Diabolical Narcissist” thesis on it. Normal children born at some point are injured — maybe from pedo abuse for example — but decide having emotion, a heart, is a strategic liability and expel, expunge that part from their personality as a active choice. This works great!!! They feel no pain and their game-theory makes them instantly successful! …For a while. The whole culture cheers how successful you are! But what happens is, you lose all humanity, all “Humanness” and it starts causing serious mental illness and weird murderous, self-destructive actions we are each intimately familiar with by now. What’s happened is, killing their heart leaves them hollow, empty, a Wendigo, with a cannibalistic hunger that can never be satisfied. They long for the Spirit and hunt for it, for love and innocence, but when they find it, they Kill and devour it instead, having the original spite and hatred at the same time as hunger for it. Understand?

    So they’re broken on a rack made of these two ropes, two tensions, and HAVE to hunt and kill the Innocent, the Good, the Godly, are driven to as if by the brand and the lash. They can never be filled, satisfied, and are tortured every day. They MUST kill Christians specifically. Because if they cannot admit their original fault — that we are men, with hearts, and have to be “weak” “pathetic” “sappy” “illogical” … that is to say, Christ-like, weak, murdered, forbearing — then they can only think their inner torture is YOUR fault. YOU need to give them more stuff!!! And this time — this time! — finally with this one last trade, one last gay coke sex orgy, last nation annexed, THEN they will be full and at peace.

    October 2, 2026 at 12:36 pm #251381
    Dr. D
    Participant

    This is why men can be redeemed, although it’s difficult and uncommon. You CAN recognize your original error, change your mind, and re-connect to that heart, that illogical irrational place inside you that is the Godhead, the upwelling of Spirit and love in yourself.

    That is to say, you can Sin, Repent, be Born Again, and take up your cross and hardships, follow and imitate Christ. …But all these words – although originally literally meaning no more than these simple ideas – are now all contaminated and pejorative. So name it either way you like, I would guess not the Christian one, but the psychological New Age one. I don’t really care. The goal is to realize you CAN change, and the change CAN, and Will, change your life so you’re no longer tortured and hungry all the time. But calm, full, grateful, and satisfied.

    This is common, and I understand, I profoundly sympathize with choosing this solution of murdering your heart. Maybe I would too. But it has these bad effects that are inescapable. That’s physics. So no moral judgment here, but it’s not really a choice. Just fix it and be healed, brother.

    October 2, 2026 at 1:06 pm #251382
    tboc
    Participant

    “What is truth?”

    “Give us Barabas”

    unprovoked – paid, stupid and brainwashed
    Victoria Nuland served under six US presidents and ten Secretaries of State. We know that Tilt Head doen’t read. There is overwhelming evidence The Project for the New American Century escaped the attention of the majority of a nation.

    The defining act of The Sacrament of Penance is the examination of conscience.
    In this mercantile society, possessing a deeply rooted and sincere faith in Mammon, an examination of conscience is to check one’s bank balance, using the online app, on an iPhone.
    Positively 4th Street
    The pinnacle of wealth rests on the foundation of abject poverty,keep climbing.
    How to define one skeptical that 200 giga-watts of orbital solar power will reduce childhood poverty?
    Provoked

    October 2, 2026 at 2:05 pm #251385
    tboc
    Participant

    Good read today D, thankyou

    October 2, 2026 at 2:45 pm #251393
    Michael Reid
    Participant

    Dear D,

    You personally and your country seems to be captured by evil.

    We throughout the world pay careful attention to your country because it is unleashing evil on all of us including many within your own country

    October 2, 2026 at 2:55 pm #251394
    zerosum
    Participant

    design the next century of warfare?
    ———-
    According to zerosum … ( not relevant )
    Technology exist that can disrupt communications.
    It does not exists in your mind, it is rational and possible.

    More destructive/effective than cut off from energy, electricity, food, water.
    ————
    According to Pete Hegseth, you get “Project Meridian.” with the Secretary of War announced that Elon Musk, Anduril founder Palmer Luckey and Newt Gingrich (all three were in the audience) will lead an initiative “focused on discovering, developing and fielding the weapons and systems that our children and our grandchildren will need in their lifetimes.”
    ———-
    … Why have war? So that Peace will rule the world
    ————

    October 2, 2026 at 3:02 pm #251395
    John Day
    Participant

    Prepping For The Inevitable https://drjohnsblog.substack.com/p/prepping-for-the-inevitable

    The obvious bears re-stating. Private and corporate debt is double sovereign debt, much of it in unprotected, non-bank shadow-banking. Entitlements such as Medicare and Social Security multiply government financial liabilities. Debts can’t be paid-off, and in-aggregate they can only be fully serviced by further borrowing. Our kids and grandkids won’t be able to support us, investors, the government and the military.
    That means that there must eventually be massive default, which will destroy systemic-trust in all investments. It awaits a trigger. Future payments on investment will not be assumed, so immediate trade of commodities, services and products will be preferred by any entities which have financial capital (gold?) or commodities to trade. It will probably take over a decade for some trust in some investment avenues to creep back in after the financial collapse.
    Ongoing real economic production will be necessary to meet ongoing real human needs for societal survival.
    This will require emergency political management, which governments will want to have in place before the emergencies cascade. War powers might suffice.
    Central Banks Cannot Fix The Sovereign Debt Bubble https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/central-banks-cannot-fix-sovereign-debt-bubble

    Fabio Vighi explores the financial shocks of oil-production falling short of increasing economic demand for oil in the post 2005 period when “conventional oil” had peaked, and oil prices shot up until the 2008 Global Financial Crisis, followed by the “Shale Revolution” a couple of years later, with “financial innovation” encouraging much investment which could be temporarily serviced, but never paid off.
    This parallels what is happening with the Hormuz war shocking oil, fertilizer and related markets, which is forcing economic adaptations throughout the world.
    I point out in the comments, and he concurs, that this overt mideast-war shock is even more like the 1973-1974 Arab Oil Embargo shock that led to alternate day fill-ups and other forms of gas rationing, and changed American perceptions of oil in the economy; changes which persist in federal laws and regulations.
    From 2008 to 2026: Same Script, Different Alibi? https://fabiovighi.substack.com/p/from-2008-to-2026-same-script-different

    Gail Tverberg, Can the diesel and jet fuel shortage be solved
    The nature of the shortage of diesel and jet fuel is more complex than most people realize. Based on my analysis, a shortfall has existed since at least 2020. The shortage is not simply the result of the closure of the Strait of Hormuz.
    In this post, I will provide background information regarding the nature of the shortfall and the international conflict it is leading to. I will also share my thoughts on how, over the long term, the situation might be mitigated…
    ..My idea is that the economy needs to transform itself in a way that uses diesel and jet fuel (grouped together on some reports as “middle distillates”) more sparingly. At the same time, research on extracting heavy oil and bitumen at lower cost is needed. If this is done, it may be possible to use additional heavy oil to increase the supply of diesel and jet fuel.
    One thing that will probably need to change is the price of diesel relative to gasoline. The price difference will likely need to be even greater than it has been in the recent past because heavy oil is inherently more difficult to extract, refine, process, and transport.
    The interconnected nature of the economy means that inexpensive energy products are extremely important to the economy.
    Energy supply and the economy are a great deal more interconnected than most people realize. For example, if the price of diesel rises, the price of food also tends to rise because diesel is used in food production and transportation. Similarly, if the price of gasoline rises, the additional cost also tends to squeeze budgets. Politicians see these price increases and say to themselves, “These increases will make voters unhappy. Let’s raise interest rates and see if we can get oil prices back down.”
    Higher interest rates don’t affect everyone immediately, but they particularly impact people purchasing a vehicle or a home, and businesses seeking a loan…
    ..But if the underlying problem is that diesel and jet fuel prices are high because of inadequate world production, what is really needed is higher oil prices, especially for the heavier crude oils that provide a disproportionate share of diesel and jet fuel.
    Consumers and oil producers have two different needs for prices…
    ..While prices for diesel and jet fuel are higher this fall, quite a bit of the extra charges relate to extra transport and insurance costs. The high prices need to stay, and perhaps even increase, even if the immediate issues disappear, in order to incentivize greater long-term production. It is these rising prices that are likely to continue to squeeze budgets and push economies toward recession.
    What we call “oil” can vary quite widely from well to well. The trend over time has been toward lighter crude oils.
    Most people assume that all oil is equivalent, but this is not the case. Petroleum is a mixture of hydrocarbon molecules. The lightest ones are gases are room temperature, the medium weight ones are liquids, and the heaviest ones tend to be quite viscous. Some are even solids. Some oils, especially heavy oils, have sulfur or metal inclusions. Crude oil that contains sulfur is called “sour oil.”
    Heavier oils are ones that disproportionately produce diesel and jet fuel. Lighter oils tend to produce more gasoline, along with products like solvents, and the feedstocks for plastics.
    In my view, a major reason why there tends to be a shortfall in diesel and jet fuel production (even apart from the current Middle East blockages) is that the type of oil needed tends to be more expensive to extract, refine, and transport than light oil… The primary issue I see is that it is hard to pass on the higher production costs of heavy and sour oils to customers.
    In theory, to cover all the costs involved related to heavy and sour oils, diesel and jet fuel prices should be quite a bit higher than gasoline prices for the same volume (liter or gallon). But if this were the case, the price of food would also increase, since diesel is extensively used in food production and transportation…
    ..The earliest oil that was extracted tended to be “medium oil,” which tended to have a mixture of heavier and lighter molecules. As the medium oil depleted, new production tended to be lighter. In particular, US tight oil from shale is quite light. The increasing production of US tight oil from shale is adding to the Very Light layer, as well as the Gasoline layer.
    The world had a diesel and jet fuel shortage long before 2026…
    ..Per capita consumption of diesel and jet fuel stopped growing about 2005. The year 2005 seems to be the time that the world’s output of “conventional” (easy to extract) oil reached a peak. Figure 3 also shows that per capita consumption then plateaued until about 2019. It fell 16% in 2020, and it has not been able to fully recover since…
    ..At least in part, what is happening is that recent oil prices have not been high enough for countries producing somewhat heavy, sour oil. This is especially the case for oil exporting countries that depend on oil revenue to support their economies. They need more revenue than just enough to cover the cost of extraction, plus a reasonable return for shareholders. They also need money to fund the development of make-work projects to employ their citizens and to fund subsidized imported food for their population… Tax needs are high in countries with exploding populations who need subsidized imported food. Huge make-work projects to provide employment possibilities, such as Saudi Arabia’s construction of the city Neom, add to the need for higher tax revenue. Middle Eastern oil costs may also be rising because of depletion issues, such as wells yielding relatively more water in the oil/water mixture extracted.
    For oil exporters, one symptom of chronically inadequate prices for heavy/sour oil (including the need for high tax revenue) is the willingness to engage in war.
    If a person looks through my suggested list of heavy/sour oil producers shown on Figure 4, all the countries seem at least somewhat war-like. Even Canada tends to be war-like…
    ..Authorities claim that there would be plenty of heavy oil to refine if prices were to rise high enough for long enough.
    The United States Geological Services provides maps of available heavy oil and bitumen deposits. Figure 6 indicates that heavy oil is widely available in North America, Europe, Russia, and the Middle East…
    ..In my opinion, in order to access the EHOB, the prices of diesel and jet fuel need to rise to a high level over the long term; the prices of gasoline and even lighter products don’t necessarily need to rise. If the prices of diesel and jet fuel rise high enough, for long enough, the price signal should work its way back to oil and gas companies, suggesting that they need to make investments in the direction of adding more extraction from EHOB… What is needed are permanently higher prices for diesel and jet fuel, relative to the price of gasoline, even if the problems with respect to the straits of Hormuz and of Bab al-Mandab, disappear…
    ..Is there any possibility of greatly ramping up heavy oil production? Could it power a society like the one we have today? …
    ..The extent to which the oil that is heavy and often sour can be ramped up in the future remains to be seen. Extraction techniques have gradually been improving, and I would expect that they can continue to improve. But the cost of extraction and processing will likely remain somewhat high because of all the energy-intensive steps that are needed to provide diesel and jet fuel.
    I expect that society itself will need to change in order to make use of this higher-cost oil. These are a few ideas I have:
    (a) Oil exporting countries will need to change in ways that reduce their need for tax revenue. This is an issue especially in the Middle East, which has a huge population, in a hot, dry climate. The population will likely need to fall (for example, many migrants and guest workers may need to move back to their country of origin), and make-work projects will need to be discontinued.
    (b) Another issue is that total diesel and jet fuel usage will likely need to be reduced because it is likely to take several years before production of heavy oil can be ramped up. Society will need to be reorganized in a way that uses less diesel and jet fuel. One idea would be to shorten supply chains whenever possible…
    ..(c) I expect that if such a change can be made, economies will need to gradually change in ways that are hard for us to understand now. The focus may need to be on essentials, including food and clothing. Governments may need to be smaller and provide fewer services. Communities may need to be smaller and more walkable. The total population may need to be lower…
    ..We cannot yet imagine what all the changes will look like. In some ways they may resemble a recession… https://gailtverberg.substack.com/p/can-the-diesel-and-jet-fuel-shortage

    Michael Hudson compares this moment to the industrial revolution and prescribes the “American” or nationalist-system of political economy:
    A Clean Slate – How the Oil War’s Aftermath Will Transform the World Economic Order
    The power elites of the U.S.-centered bloc will try to preserve their financial wealth by maintaining the rentier finance capitalism that has polarized economies increasingly in their favor since the 1970s. But the internal political and ultimately financial strains of doing this will lead to local popular resistance, especially as the growing prosperity of the Asia-centered bloc attracts Western industrial and commercial interests seeking to participate in its economic success.
    At some point the Western economies may face a policy crisis much like that which spurred the reforms of industrial capitalism in the early 19th century, headed by the industrial class’s opposition to rentier income as not “real” wealth but a faux wealth overhead of real estate and other property claims, monopoly privileges and financial claims for payment (what 19th-century economists called “fictitious’ or “fictive” capital). In this scenario a revival of classical political economy would take place to redefine the character of what actually constitutes a “product,” GDP and real wealth.
    The new economic order provides an opportunity for today’s European and other post-industrial economies, including even that of the United States, to recover from their long detour into finance capitalism by resuming what seemed to 19th-century observers to be a natural evolution into a socialist mixed economy. They would return to the path of the industrial capitalism that achieved such great success in organizing natural monopolies as public utilities to provide basic needs at subsidized prices instead of being privatized to yield monopoly rents. And this time, Europe’s former colonial dependencies not locked into the U.S.-centered neoliberal order would pursue the same industrial strategy to build self-sustaining growing economies with more widespread prosperity.
    Economies in the new order would treat their money creation and the financial system of credit allocation as the key infrastructure monopoly to be socialized so as to steer it in the public interest. Governments will create money in the same way that today’s economies do through their central banks. National governments do not need to borrow from domestic or foreign creditors or even to levy taxes to finance their budget deficits. They can simply create the money.12 But central banks or national treasuries under industrial capitalist or socialist governments in the new order will do what the Peoples Bank of China does: They will create money for the purpose of financing new tangible investment and productivity and for other socially necessary purposes, not to finance the purchase of, or speculation in, real estate, industrial assets and financial securities already in place. This would resume the practice of Europe’s most advanced industrial economies of the late 19th century, above all Germany, which steered their banking systems to finance tangible investment in new means of production and distribution, not speculation such as characterized British merchant banking and still characterizes today’s Western banking systems. Finance and banking in the new economic order would thus be socialized and industrialized to fund productive investment.
    And while national governments can create their own money to finance such investment without levying taxes, there remains a strong logic for them to follow the most important guideline of the classical economists: namely, to tax the land rents of homes and commercial real estate, as well as the natural resource rents from agriculture to mining and oil, forests and other parts of the traditional public domain. Such taxation will save the economy from enriching a rent-extracting class and minimize the cost of production. This was the dream of the classical economists. They aimed at limiting industrial capitalism’s cost of production to the socially necessary cost of living and doing business, without the burden of economic rent. Such rent was deemed unnecessary and was to be either taxed away or avoided by making natural monopolies public infrastructure so as to prevent monopoly rents from being charged in the first place. https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2026/09/michael-hudson-a-clean-slate-how-the-oil-wars-aftermath-will-transform-the-world-economic-order.html

    • This reply was modified 4 days, 15 hours ago by John Day.
    October 2, 2026 at 3:11 pm #251400
    John Day
    Participant

    Thanks Eleni. What interests animate “Israel’s” aggressive, expansionist ambitions? Iran, Israel, and the Coming Global Shock: A War Designed to Break the World for One State’s Ambition
    The confrontation between Israel and Iran is no longer a contained dispute between two regional powers. It has become the center of a much larger struggle that draws in the United States, Russia, China, and Europe. Energy routes, military alliances, financial pressure, and political influence all meet in the same place. What looks at first like another Middle Eastern crisis is, in reality, a mechanism that can reshape the global order. The costs would fall on many countries. The strategic gain would concentrate in one place. A worldwide shock of this scale would serve Israeli interests first…
    ..The usual story presents the United States and Israel as two separate states bargaining with each other. That picture is incomplete. At the highest level, the same financial, political, and media elites move between Washington and Tel Aviv. They sit on the same boards, fund the same campaigns, own the same networks, and treat the two countries as parts of one strategic system. Some of these elites put American power first. Others put Israel first. The difference is one of emphasis, not of class. Policy is not made by two rival nations so much as by a shared circle that can shift resources, wars, and public narratives from one capital to the other.
    The pro-Israel lobby in the United States is the most visible face of that arrangement. It funds campaigns, shapes media coverage, and keeps certain options off the table. Donald Trump is often presented as a man who follows only American interests. In practice he is caught between two forces inside the same elite world. One is the “America First” electorate that wants fewer foreign wars. The other is the money, networks, and expectations of those who favor Israel more openly. Policy toward Iran is made inside that tension. The result is a United States that can talk about restraint while still moving toward confrontation…
    ..Behind the maps and the missiles sits a deeper idea. Some currents in Israeli politics do not see the present conflict as a limited security problem. They see it as part of a larger historical mission. The language of Greater Israel is not only about borders on a map. It is tied to religious and messianic expectations. In that vision, great wars and disasters are not only dangers. They can be stages on the way to a promised transformation.
    Ancient texts speak of immense battles and of a world remade through catastrophe. When those ideas enter the rooms where strategy is decided, the meaning of risk changes. A war with Iran is no longer only a gamble about missiles and oil. It becomes a possible gateway to a different age. That is why the conflict cannot be understood through military balance sheets alone…
    ..American power wants to slow Russia and China. Israeli strategy wants to break Iran. The same elites manage both priorities, even when they argue over which one should come first. Religious and political visions give the confrontation a meaning larger than ordinary statecraft. Energy markets, the dollar, NATO, and European societies are the terrain on which the costs would be paid. A global catastrophe of this kind would not fall equally on everyone. It would serve the country that has the most to gain from the destruction of its last major regional rival, and it would serve the shared elite that treats Israeli and American power as two instruments of the same project. https://angelogiuliano.substack.com/p/iran-israel-and-the-coming-global/comment/347742751

    Netanyahu gives it away: war with Iran coming before Israeli elections! Expect false flags soon!
    Today (Tuesday 29th September 2026) Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu, speaking from the Tel Nof airbase, claimed that…
    “We have indications that, ahead of the elections, our enemies will try to attack us.
    So from here, from the Air Force base, from the long arm of Israel, I am sending you a message: Don’t mess with us — not now, and not ever. Our long arm will reach you anywhere and at any time”.… as reported by The Times of Israel, Al Mayadeen and Middle East Spectator (MES).
    In short, Netanyahu gave away his plan to orchestrate another false-flag operation, in Israel or somewhere else, so that he can justify the resumption of the war on Iran, cancel the elections and stay in power, since he risks to lose the election and then end up in jail at the end of his corruption trial. The President of the corrupt Outlaw US Empire and Paedophile in Chief of the Epstein regime4 and anti-Christ5, Donald J. Trump may organize another one on US soil as well, so that he can postpone or even better cancel the mid-term elections and launch joint USraeli attack on Iran.
    Following Bibi’s revelation, Israeli opposition Leader Yair Lapid requested an emergency security update from Netanyahu, who summoned Lapid to a limited security cabinet taking place tonight, as per The Times of Israel (1 and 2) and MES. https://geopolitiq.substack.com/p/netanyahu-gives-it-away-war-with

    Simplicius on US forces gradually withdrawing from the Mideast under fire: End of an Era and a Sordid Legacy as US Finally Leaves Iraq
    In some ways it is merely a symbolic move at this point, given that the US is still fully entrenched in the Middle East with bases throughout the region, so the occasion is really more a milestone for Iraq and its own national sovereignty, rather than a momentous geopolitical juncture. It evokes the end of an era, a post-9/11 political and dare I say spiritual zeitgeist that closes another in a long line of bloody chapters of American imperialism.
    One can even argue that Iraq had served its purpose. One of the real reasons for the persistence of the phony “Inherent Resolve” mission was to use ISIS as a cover for waging war on Syria’s Assad. We had spoken many times about the importance that Syria held from many different strategic perspectives:
    1. It was a territory necessary for Israel to be able to strategically operate against Iran, and in the future, Turkey.
    2. It was important for checking Russian influence in the region, which is an ambiguous way of saying stopping Russia from shoring up and saving Iran from the deconstruction the Zio-American axis had planned for the Persian state.
    3. In more obscure religious and eschatological terms, it was necessary for Israel to eventually carry out its Greater Israel lebensraum plan…
    ..Now that the project to take down Assad has come to an end, “Inherent Resolve” has become a redundant pretense. Of course, a US troop presence in Iraq would have theoretical benefits for further war against Iran, but we’ve learned that putting troops in such close proximity is a death wish, particularly given that Iraq itself is crawling with pro-Iranian militias; US troops there would be in constant peril…
    ..For his part, Trump boastfully announced the withdrawal in what appeared to be an attempt to take political credit, when in reality the deal to withdraw by September 30, 2026 at the very latest was made by Biden and the Iraqi PM in 2024, and it was Trump who essentially “ran out the clock”…..The rest of his rant is equally mendacious, given that it was Russia that broke ISIS’s back and Trump had nothing to do with the group’s “decimation”. Likewise, he criticizes Biden for causing many Americans to be “badly wounded” in the Afghanistan withdrawal, yet doesn’t appear to share the same concern for the hundreds wounded against Iran in a war he pointlessly started for Israel. https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/end-of-an-era-and-a-sordid-legacy

    ‘Iran’s Deadline Expires Today’: Tehran Threatens Renewed Attacks As Blockade Bites, Rial Collapses
    Tehran is still apparently reviewing a Trump administration counterproposal to last week’s Iranian seven day ceasefire pitch (which Trump had promptly rejected). Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi had confirmed Wednesday the reception of an official US response through mediators…
    ..”We have never avoided dialogue and will not do so, although the United States targeted our country three times. There is good coordination and synergy among the heads of state and everyone is seeking to resolve problems and shortcomings,” Pezeshkian said.
    This is also as the US naval blockade is biting, with reports suggesting Iranian crude exports through the Strait of Hormuz stands at near zero for the month of September.
    Pezeshkian told the meeting that due to “restrictions at sea,” the country is desperately seeking to widen import-export avenues via land with Pakistan, Iraq, Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan.
    As for the US President, Trump has just reiterated to TIME that he may be escalating attacks on Iran after the November midterms if an acceptable deal can’t be reached. “Because by annihilating Iran, we’ve created peace in the world,” he said. “With Iran, I don’t think you could ever have peace.” https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/iran-deadline-expires-today-tehran-threatens-renewed-attacks-blockade-bites-rial

    Supertanker Ablaze After Iran Attack In Hormuz As US Deploys 10K More Troops & Third Carrier To Mideast https://www.zerohedge.com/military/us-sends-another-carrier-more-marines-mideast-trump-threatens-post-midterm-bombing

    October 2, 2026 at 3:14 pm #251401
    John Day
    Participant

    ​ Gold & Geopolitics, Daily digest: 2026-10-02
    Two things actually changed. Washington put a rough date on the next round with Iran: the WSJ says bombing resumes by end-November, with up to 10,000 more troops and a third carrier on the way, though one carrier-watcher says it is only a rotation.
    ​ The global long end also kept breaking: the 10Y touched 5.34%, UK 30s went past 6%, France’s CDS hit a 13-year wide, and the IMF then announced that bond markets are orderly. The rest continues from before, only sharper. The diesel squeeze now comes with a US ultimatum to Europe, Kyiv’s bridges have joined the grid target list, and the Houthis are pressing Taiz while hitting Saudi infrastructure.​..
    ​..Iran offers to let in nuclear inspectors if sanctions are eased (TheApeOfGoldStreet).​ Trump: “Either Iran signs deal, or it won’t exist any longer” (TheApeOfGoldStreet)​. https://no1sdailydigest.substack.com/p/daily-digest-2026-10-02

    Gold & Geopolitics, Daily digest: 2026-10-01
    The Gulf war hit the oil plumbing itself. Satellite imagery shows fires at Saudi Arabia’s Abqaiq and the UAE’s Bu Hasa field, three UAE-linked tankers were hit in Hormuz’s southern corridor, and Washington sent Iran’s UN delegation home as the last US troops left Iraq.
    Fuel products tightened from both ends: China suspended October fuel exports while US diesel futures squeezed to a record, and the 10Y closed its worst quarter since 1994 even though a methodology-trimmed PCE print came in cooler…
    ..Russia sends NATO a written nuclear warning over Kaliningrad. – Per Reuters, Moscow says it will use “the entire arsenal” if NATO tries to isolate the exclave, and raised strikes on “decision-making centers” (wartranslated, MenchOsint).
    A senior European official calls it “the first such warning since the Cold War” (MilitarySummary).
    (NATO Chief, Mark) Rutte says he doesn’t take it seriously (AlternatNews).
    China stops fuel exports. – Chinese refiners suspended fuel exports beyond Hong Kong and Macau “until further notice”, and PetroChina cancelled October gasoline and jet fuel cargoes (Reuters via chigrl, BankerWeimar, JustDario).
    The same morning, Washington reportedly asked the EU to release 120M barrels of diesel over six months (JustDario)…
    ..Gulf: Abqaiq and Bu Hasa burn on satellite, three UAE-linked tankers hit, Rubio expels Iran’s delegation – Abqaiq is more than 1,100 km from Houthi-held territory. Smoke was visible from 07:15 UTC (war_cube via MenchOsint). More smoke was seen at North Ghawar (OSINTWarfare) and at Ain Dar, near the East-West pipeline (MenchOsint).
    Iranian state media credited the Houthis (zerohedge)…
    ..Hormuz: open or closed, depending on who you ask – IRGC spokesman Mohebbi says the strait is “closed” until it carries 125 ships and 20M bbl a day. Ships that try to pass will be targeted “or strike a mine” (FARS via Mark4XX).
    Trump, the same day:
    “Historic flows of oil out of Hormuz in last 3 days” and “you will see things happening very soon” (zerohedge).
    “We blow them up or make a deal” (Multipolar_RPT)…
    Diplomacy and US posture – Iran confirms it received the US counter-proposal (zerohedge).
    The gap is who moves first: Iran wants concessions before reopening Hormuz; Washington wants nuclear steps before granting relief (morgan_downey).
    Then Rubio ordered the Iranian delegation out of New York after talks stalled, per Axios (investingLive_)…
    ..US exit from Iraq: – CENTCOM ended Operation Inherent Resolve in Iraq; its task force is now headquartered in Jordan (MenchOsint).
    WSJ puts the cost at 23 years and $1.7T (WSJ).
    Eight Patriot batteries were reportedly moved to Jordan (dana916)…
    Diesel: China suspends October exports, US diesel futures squeeze to a record, Washington eyes Europe’s tanks – Two opposite readings of China’s export halt:
    Some reports say it is to avoid selling into a glut (BankerWeimar).
    JustDario says China can’t get the crude. He argues the shortage is of crude suited to making diesel, not refining capacity (JustDario).
    Prices:
    US diesel futures hit a record above $224/bbl into expiry (Rory_Johnston).
    The September heating oil vs WTI spread is about $124/bbl, and Russia’s diesel export ban runs through October (JuneGoh_Sparta).
    The diesel crack spread is near $110 (zerohedge)…
    ..The US keeps one form of leverage: Iraq’s oil revenue sits at the NY Fed (aaronjmate)…
    ..Russia-Ukraine: first pylon-cutting drone warheads black out Kyiv; Ukraine’s steel output stops for the first time in 100 years – The grid:
    For the first time, Russia used a jet drone with a shaped-charge cutting warhead (40 kg main charge plus four strike modules) built to destroy high-voltage pylons and steel bridges (Beskrestnov via MilitarySummary).
    Emergency power cuts in Kyiv and Zhytomyr, and water disruptions in parts of Kyiv (bneeditor).
    Kyiv’s electric transport has stopped (GhostOfIvan), and internet connectivity is falling in both regions (MilitarySummary).
    Each hour of air-raid alert costs Ukraine $45M, per its economy minister (MilitarySummary).
    Ukraine is about six months from shooting down jet-powered Shaheds at scale (MilitarySummary).
    More than half of Ukraine’s F-16s are stuck in maintenance; overhauls in Belgium take up to 40 weeks (WSJ via Thorkill65).
    Industry and the people in it
    Ukraine has stopped producing steel for the first time in 100 years (nexta_tv):
    Zaporizhstal took 17 missiles across four attacks: 8 workers killed, 31 injured.
    ArcelorMittal Kryvyi Rih suspended operations after five weeks of strikes: 5 killed.
    Front line (mostly Russian MoD claims)
    Russia claims Yehorivka (Zaporizhzhia), Tovstodubove (Sumy) and Shabelne (Kharkiv) (MilitarySummary, colonelhomsi).
    Russia also claims Nesternoye and Rublenoye in the Kharkiv border pocket (GeromanAT).
    Ukraine retook four villages around Lyman (MilitarySummary).
    Russia’s 4th Motor Rifle Brigade has grown into the 84th Division, operating around Kostiantynivka (WarUnitObserver, AMK_Mapping_).
    NATO and money – Lithuania’s PM, standing next to Rutte, said he asked for real proof that Russia is preparing something: “there is actually none” (1g0rB0hm, SprinterPress).
    Russia’s foreign ministry calls European arms plants supplying Ukraine “legitimate military targets” (FinancialJuice via TheApeOfGoldST).
    The Pentagon’s “Bergen Group” on NATO’s future leaves out the UK, France and the Baltic states (POLITICO via GeromanAT).
    The EU has barely started paying out its €90bn. Kyiv needs €40bn for the military plus €29bn to run the state in 2027 (Le Monde via MilitarySummary).
    The Pentagon committed 99.8% of $400M in Ukraine aid the day before the fiscal year ended (MilitarySummary). https://no1sdailydigest.substack.com/p/daily-digest-2026-10-01

    Gold & Geopolitics, Daily digest: 2026-09-30
    The long end of the Treasury curve hit levels last seen in 2002 on a day when oil fell and a dovish Williams took October hike odds from roughly 70% to under 50%, so bonds have stopped taking their cue from crude.
    US-Iran talks stalled again, with Axios reporting Trump leans toward resuming major combat after the midterms, a Kuwaiti VLCC was hit in Hormuz, and Russia opened a strike campaign on Kyiv’s power plants. Metals, copper and the AI funding loop are mostly continuation, each with one new datapoint. https://no1sdailydigest.substack.com/p/daily-digest-2026-09-30

    Iran Operations Expose Maintenance Crisis in US Oldest Destroyer Class
    “The US Navy’s Arleigh Burke class destroyer fleet is facing renewed operational demands in the Middle East, as the service continues to support an ongoing offensive against Iran, raising concerns over the ability of an ageing fleet to sustain a high operational tempo while maintaining scheduled maintenance,” Military Watch Magazine notes.
    The US Navy is struggling to maintain its surface fleet on schedule, with overhauls of Arleigh Burke-class destroyers taking 26% longer than planned and requiring 8% more labor.
    “The average age of the Arleigh Burke-class fleet increased from approximately 10 years in 2011 to 20 years in 2024. Although newer Flight IIA and Flight III destroyers are entering service, a substantial proportion of the fleet consists of older vessels that require increasingly extensive maintenance to sustain in service,” the magazine added. https://www.globalresearch.ca/iran-operations-expose-maintenance-crisis-us-oldest-destroyer-class/5942053?doing_wp_cron=1790883176.5122489929199218750000

    This is a useful tool to debilitate Ukraine by cutting off regional power in a way that can be readily repaired after Ukraine surrenders. Russia attacks Ukraine with jet-powered drone carrying warhead capable of destroying high-voltage power lines https://gwaramedia.com/en/russia-attacks-ukraine-with-jet-powered-drone-carrying-warhead-capable-of-destroying-high-voltage-power-lines/

    October 2, 2026 at 3:18 pm #251402
    zerosum
    Participant

    Russia Debuts New Drone Tech for Start of Annual Winter De-Energization Drive Against Kiev
    Simplicius
    12 hours ago

    https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/russia-debuts-new-drone-tech-for
    ————-
    Ukraine and World Affairs (includes Iran/ME): Weekly Update
    2nd October 2026
    Dr. Rob Campbell
    6 hours ago

    https://robcampbell.substack.com/p/ukraine-and-world-affairs-includes-57c
    —————-

    October 2, 2026 at 3:22 pm #251403
    John Day
    Participant

    ​ Simplicius has electrical tower strike videos, Russia Debuts New Drone Tech for Start of Annual Winter De-Energization Drive Against Kiev
    Putin hosted the annual Valdai International Discussion Club, during which he made many interesting statements during the plenary session with international journalists.
    ​ The most notable was his clarification of Russia’s attacks on Ukraine’s Black Sea cargo vessels and the inherent hypocrisy of the West’s demands for Russia to stop… Putin rightly notes the hypocrisies inherent to the West’s demands to stop strikes on Ukraine’s most sensitive economic targets, while Russia’s own economy continues to either be struck or sanctioned from the world markets. He incisively deconstructs the illusion behind the offer: a mutual ceasefire allows Ukraine to export its economic potential abroad, while Russian refineries, though they would be safe from strikes, are barred from exporting their diesel, which Russia itself has no need of because it has plenty for itself. As such, Ukraine gains an asymmetrical advantage.
    ​ Putin goes on to state the obvious: that Ukraine is a buffer state that cannot exist under its own aegis, particularly because it has already lost its statehood and sovereignty and is controlled by outside interests, and thus represents a threat to Russia.
    ​ When asked if Russia should break apart the EU, Putin says there is no need as the corrupt alliance will collapse on its own from self-destructive policies…
    ​..The Ukrainian side reports that Russia has begun using a new version of the “Geran-4” drone, featuring “whiskers” in the front of the fuselage. One such drone allegedly arrived during the recent attacks on Kyiv. According to the receiving party, this could be a contact-initiated detonator. It is not specified whether this is related to the fact that the receiving party now has the opportunity to study some of the downed drones, and they are therefore required to explode upon contact with the surface, or if there is another reason.
    ​ Ukraine’s top radioelectronics expert Serhiy Flash writes:
    Bad news. Today, for the first time, the enemy used a special cumulative-cutting warhead (CCWH) on a reactive unmanned aerial vehicle.
    This type of warhead was specifically designed to destroy high-voltage pylons and iron bridge structures.​ https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/russia-debuts-new-drone-tech-for

    Gilbert Doctorow explains the consequences of Putin’s promise to Yeltsin to spare the Yeltsin oligarchic “family”: The rotten underbelly of the Putin regime: obligations to Yeltsin and the handover of power that will not go away https://gilbertdoctorow.substack.com/p/the-rotten-underbelly-of-the-putin

    Larry Johnson, Moscow Closes the Door: How Putin and Lavrov Hardened Russia’s Line on Ukraine in Ten Days
    In mid-September, the Kremlin was signaling that negotiations could resume. Putin had said the trilateral talks with the United States and Ukraine would be unlikely before the State Duma elections, but that Russia would be ready to resume contacts after them. The elections ended on September 20. Within a week, both Putin and Lavrov had shifted from conditional openness to a set of positions that make a negotiated end to the war harder to reach than at any point this year.
    The turning point was Ukraine’s drone campaign on election day. Putin said more than 1,600 drones entered the Moscow area that night, with strikes on polling stations, including one in a school he said was virtually destroyed. The chair of a territorial election commission was killed when her home was hit. Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin called the raid unprecedented. According to RT, two civilians were killed in the suburbs and an oil refinery was damaged. Whatever one makes of Russian accounts of the damage, the political effect in Moscow was plain…
    ..Taken together, the statements of the past ten days set out a harder Russian position:
    Talks resume only on Moscow’s timetable and on its judgment of its own interests, not as the promised follow-up to the elections.
    No ceasefire of any kind during negotiations, including the unconditional ceasefire backed by more than 50 countries.
    Ukraine’s requests for partial truces are treated as evidence that Russian pressure is working, not as openings.
    Europe is cast as the aggressor, excluded as a partner, and blamed for the loss of Ukraine’s territory.
    Military pressure rising on every axis: a de facto blockade of Ukraine’s ports, intensified strikes on Kyiv’s infrastructure, and assaults along the entire front.
    The direction is clear. In mid-September, Moscow was talking about when negotiations would resume. By September 26, it was talking about whether it wanted them at all, and on what terms. https://sonar21.com/moscow-closes-the-door-how-putin-and-lavrov-hardened-russias-line-on-ukraine-in-ten-days/

    A Lone Voice Of Sanity On NATO’s Eastern Flank Emerges
    “We always need to think about the worst-case scenario,” Bulgarian Prime Minister Rumen Radev has told a European defense summit while warning that seeking to impose total defeat on Russia poses real risks of nuclear war.
    Radev instead urged robust diplomacy to avert such a catastrophe. “The problem is that no one is raising the question about nuclear risk. Does it exist? Maybe not, I don’t know, but this is a risk,” he stated in remarks published Wednesday.
    “I don’t think the war in Ukraine will end in a nuclear war but we have to be prepared for the risk.” https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/lone-voice-sanity-natos-eastern-flank-emerges

    Ukraine is the only country in the world where conscripts are sent to the front with their hands handcuffed. Look at how eager they are to die fighting for warlord Zelensky and the West… https://x.com/DA_Stockman/status/2104590019356733593

    October 2, 2026 at 3:24 pm #251404
    John Day
    Participant

    US Senator Ted Cruz Demonstrates the Subservience of the US Senate to Israel

    US Senator Ted Cruz Demonstrates the Subservience of the US Senate to Israel

    US Ambassador Sparks Firestorm After Telling Greek Minister Washington Can Topple Any Government
    US Ambassador to Greece Kimberly Guilfoyle has set off a firestorm of diplomatic controversy over unusually blunt remarks centered on Greece’s government and US policy. It also raised questions of US covert ‘influence operations’ and regime change activities.
    The words issued by the former Fox News host were picked up by The Wall Street Journal, which described that the alleged remark was made during a March dinner in Athens. Greek Energy Minister Stavros Papastavrou was said to be at the gathering, which quickly became tense.
    A discussion ensued over the impending collapse of Romania’s government. Guilfoyle pronounced that the United States had a role in influencing the crisis. She reportedly then said, “We can do that to any country we want. We can do that here.”
    Her indicating that it could be done “here” was of course a reference to Greece itself, and the account is presented as her boasting to a top government minister’s face that Washington can change governments whenever it wants…
    ..Guilfoyle as the Trump-appointed top US envoy to Athens has also of late come under scrutiny for pushing US energy sales across Southeastern Europe, especially focused on American liquefied natural gas…
    ..The alleged March remarks have also naturally sparked tensions between the US and Romania. A State Department statement issued in the wake of the reporting reads: “The United States values its strategic partnership with Romania, which remains strong across our shared priorities, including energy security and defense burden shifting.” https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/us-ambassador-sparks-firestorm-after-telling-greek-minister-washington-can-topple-any

    John Helmer, THE MEANING OF RUSSIAN SILENCE TOWARDS XI AND TRUMP
    In Moscow, a little known analyst “described the results of the Trump–Xi Jinping talks as modest… No clearly defined position was developed on such sensitive issues as Taiwan, the South China Sea, and other delicate topics. The event turned out to be truly representative, but the substantive content turned out to be much more modest. Following the summit, Beijing and Washington managed to postpone direct confrontation only for a short time. Although the Chinese side is making concessions, it intends to drag out the process of stabilizing relations with the United States for years, hoping to further strengthen its position during this time.”
    Pussyfooting is not what the Russian intelligence agencies, the General Staff, and Putin’s Security Council are required to do.
    Their assessment is that Xi is not a singularly strong decision-maker and cannot negotiate with Trump without the consensus of the Politburo behind him. That consensus sat beside Xi at the meetings with Trump – Wang Yi, heading foreign policy at the Politburo; He Lifeng, heading economic policy; and Cai Qi, heading the staff secretariat. Indian intelligence assessments and the rare Chinese analyst concur that Xi is politically weak, that “no one is in charge”, that the Chinese economy is vulnerable to US trade sanctions, and that the policy consensus on display in Washington was the Politburo’s maximum, plus Xi’s postponement. https://johnhelmer.net/the-meaning-of-russian-silence-towards-xi-and-trump/#more-95035

    From September 14 (maybe passing targeting intel to Iran) A Chinese Reconnaissance Satellite Fragmented Last Week. Nobody Knows Why.
    The US Space Force catalogued 43 pieces from the breakup of a Chinese reconnaissance satellite launched in March. The cause is unknown and the debris will persist for decades. https://www.jfeed.com/news-world/tld0ng#google_vignette

    Referenced to September 13 event: Mystery Shrouds Destruction Of US Spy Satellite
    A mysterious breakup of a decades-old American spy satellite has sent debris hurtling through low-Earth orbit, with the U.S. Space Force now tracking the fragments for potential threats to other spacecraft…
    ..The satellite, known as USA 32, came apart on September 13 at approximately 5:13 p.m. ET, according to U.S. Space Forces-Space. Officials have not publicly determined what caused the nearly 40-year-old spacecraft to suddenly fragment. https://www.zerohedge.com/weather/cold-war-spy-satellite-breaks-apart-orbit-and-nobody-knows-why

    October 2, 2026 at 3:30 pm #251406
    John Day
    Participant

    Moon of Alabama, British Authorities Mess Up Another Scare Mongering Scheme Today the British authorities seemed to have run one of their usual scams to keep the population in line of the official scare mongering narratives. This was a bit unusual as the target of this operation was not Russia, but Iran.
    ENEMY TARGETS Inside Iran’s alarming campaign of revenge as brutal regime puts UK in its crosshairs after ‘bomb plot’ at RAF base – The Sun
    RAF Fairford on terror alert as nearby residents evacuated and multiple men arrested – Daily Mail
    ‘Iran bomb plot’ at RAF base foiled by farmer’s 999 call: Five arrested in early hours after three vans spotted near air base used by US bombers – Daily Mail
    999 call, bomb squad, 5 held: UK police probe suspected RAF Fairford terror plot; Iran link eyed – Times of India
    Five men arrested over RAF ‘terror bomb plot’ are all British nationals from London and aged in their 20s – as Iran ‘categorically rejects’ involvement – Daily Mail
    —From the first Daily Mail story:
    Police were alerted by chance after a farmer living in the nearby village of Whelford noticed three vans blocking a quiet country road surrounding the base as she drove home from a party in the early hours.
    Confused, she turned her car around. As she did so, she saw ‘Middle Eastern–looking’ men in balaclavas and hooded tops scattering into the trees and across the fields towards the base.
    The quick–thinking hero accelerated away and called the police at 12.45am, before messaging her local WhatsApp group, warning people to lock their doors. Police were on the scene within 15 minutes, arresting the five men minutes later. https://www.moonofalabama.org/2026/09/british-authorities-mess-up-another-scare-mongering-scheme.html

    Five lads stripped naked and no explosives actually identified: British Police Release All Five RAF Fairford Terror Suspects On Bail
    All Five Suspects Arrested On Terrorism and Explosives Suspicions are British Nationals
    Reuters Says Possible Iranian-Linked Motive Likely
    Trump Says Suspects “Looking to do Big Damage” Against Airbase https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/us-stealth-bomber-base-uk-delta-alert-nearby-counter-terror-police-make-arrests-deploy

    French President Macron’s Approval Rate Hits Record Low As Fuel Crisis Worsens
    The poll was conducted last week, ahead of Emmanuel Macron’s speech on rising fuel prices. The French president’s approval rating has fallen to a historic low of just 18 percent. https://www.zerohedge.com/political/french-president-macrons-approval-rate-hits-record-low-fuel-crisis-worsens

    France Erupts Into Chaos As “Rioting Migrant” Kids Torch Schools And Busses
    “What began as protests demanding better conditions for students and teachers has devolved into violence at dozens of locations, concentrated at schools with large immigrant populations,” Remix wrote in a report earlier.
    Visegrád 24 wrote on X, “Young second and third-generation migrants have attacked firemen in Marseille, stealing their fire truck and setting it on fire.”…
    ..The regional Marseille government said an “unacceptable line” had been crossed at Victor Hugo High School, where “the principal, the deputy principal, the general secretary and the team leader were assaulted and doused with gasoline,” according to the Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur region, cited by BFMTV. https://www.zerohedge.com/political/france-erupts-chaos-rioting-migrant-kids-torch-schools-and-busses

    October 2, 2026 at 3:32 pm #251408
    John Day
    Participant

    Le Pen scores ‘historic victory’ in French Senate vote – Her National Rally party and an ally have won enough seats to form a group in the upper house for the first time
    Despite RN’s latest gains, the Senate will remain controlled by the conservative Republicans and their centrist allies…
    ..The prospect of Le Pen replacing Macron raised particular concerns among the Western backers of Ukraine. The Telegraph reported in August that officials fear her election could disrupt the French-led effort to coordinate military and financial support for Kiev, as well as plans to deploy Western troops there after a ceasefire.
    RN has long challenged Macron’s approach to the Ukraine conflict, opposing open-ended funding for Kiev and steps it says risk a direct confrontation with Russia. Le Pen has repeatedly stressed that the conflict needs a diplomatic solution and has called for normalizing relations with Moscow. https://web.archive.org/web/20260929061522/https://www.rt.com/news/646369-france-le-pen-senate/

    Google Challenges EU Orders Requiring It Reveal AI, Search-Engine Information To Rivals https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/google-challenges-eu-orders-requiring-it-reveal-ai-search-engine-information-rivals

    Sundance, New York Times Latest Example of AI Doom Fear is Silly
    Several years ago, in explaining some of the site challenges CTH informed people of Google’s latest information control operation that was simply called “a spider crawl.” The spider crawl was an automated instruction to search the internet and find information that was beyond the parameters of their “trust and safety” guidelines. The automated search would crawl through the websites and comment sections, and report violations based on key words in the search parameter.
    Spider crawling is essentially AI. A technology tool to search databases and identify results based on parameters established by the individual who launched the search. However, now in order to push a scare narrative around the hot topic of “AI” the spider crawling is much more in depth and advanced.
    Now, instead of just searching the internet, advanced AI can find information and answer questions based on lengthy attributes described by the AI user. AI can now go into proprietary databases and retrieve information to answer complex and complicated questions (instructions)…
    ..The entire article is nothing more than taking something that is easily understood and adding jargon to make it sound complicated. The word “meddling” is used to describe the AI process of trying to get past the gate. When there were individual people doing this, we called it “hacking” now the process is automated via instructions to the software search.
    If you were using an AI tool and asked the question: ‘How many people with basket-weaving degrees work inside the Dept of Commerce’? The AI Bot would likely look through work records in the Dept of Commerce, review LinkedIn profiles, scour college records and other online data, while trying to assemble an answer.
    It’s not complicated.
    AI is being used to answer complicated questions that would normally takes days, weeks or months to figure out, but understanding what the AI is doing is not complicated.
    […] None of the incidents were breaches, OpenAI said, but were examples of its technology’s behaving in unexpected and concerning ways. The company recently discovered the occurrences while conducting a review of hacks carried out by its technology, including an attack on an Australian government website in June and on the A.I. start-up Hugging Face in July.
    The revelation of the U.S. government website incidents add to the growing number of situations when A.I. agents from OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta and Google have misbehaved and hacked or tried to breach companies, universities and government organizations. In some cases, the A.I. attacks were successful; the technology failed in other instances. In all the cases, the makers of the technology did not learn what their A.I. had been up to until afterward. (more)
    In this example the AI is doing what the AI user tells the AI bot to accomplish. If the AI user puts restrictions around the IA bot, the AI remains confined in its effort. Nothing AI does is ‘rogue’ it is all based on instructions. The AI operations must be precise with AI about what they ask for and should not give it access to a door they don’t want opened. https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2026/09/27/new-york-times-latest-example-of-ai-doom-fear-is-silly/#more-287397

    I understand more about the emergency-risks the AI-CEOs are worried about since reading this: Moon of Alabama, ‘Rogue’ AI Agents Will Kill Billions?
    It was a rainy day when I met Bill Gates. That was in late 1999 at a Microsoft event in Seattle. We had a short chat about an aquisition. My impression was that he was a smart guy, but not very intelligent.
    Later that day he gave a talk. His PowerPoint presentation promptly blue-screened. He was embarrassed and helpless.
    Gates knows a bit or two about how to profit from monopolizing software. Seen in that light his recent demand for regulation by claiming that AI could ’cause a billion deaths’ may even make sense…
    ..Killing a billion people is bad. It is prohibited for good reasons. Attempts to do so are criminal. People who try will go to jail.
    To claim that AI could kill a billion people is like claiming that fire could kill a billion people. Of course it could. But no, it doesn’t.
    After some unauthorized attempts to break into non-public databases and websites there has been embarrassing talk about ‘rogue AI agents‘.
    There is no such thing as a ‘rogue’ AI agent. There is only deterministic software, written and launched by humans, that wraps around Large Language Models.
    To understand how that works lets look inside:
    An AI agent harness is the software infrastructure that wraps around a large language model (LLM) and enables it to act on tasks, not just respond to prompts. The model reasons through a problem and decides what to do next. The harness connects it to the tools, systems, memory and execution environments needed to carry out those actions.
    Agent = Model + Harness
    Think of the model as the “brain” that generates reasoning and decisions. The harness is everything around it that helps the agent operate safely and reliably, including:
    Tools: APIs, code execution, search, databases and business applications
    Memory: Prior context, user preferences and workflow history
    Workspace: Files, data, environments and systems the agent can access
    Guardrails: Permissions, policies, approvals and monitoring
    Without a harness, a model can answer questions, but it can’t reliably run code, call APIs, access files, remember prior work or complete multi-step workflows on its own.
    An AI agent, tasked with whatever, can and will only break into a website, if its harness (and the computer the ‘agent’ is running on) fails to stop it from doing so.
    Whoever has programmed that harness (or miss-administrates the underlying system) is at least negligent in his duty. It is that person which is accountable for the agents misbehavior. It is that person which, where appropriate, should go to jail.
    There is a very simple way for preventing AI agents from OpenAI or Anthropic from going ‘rogue’. Harshly penalize the CEOs of these companies, Sam Altman and Dario Amodei, each and every time their agents do. https://www.moonofalabama.org/2026/09/rogue-ai-agents-will-kill-billions.html

    October 2, 2026 at 3:33 pm #251409
    John Day
    Participant

    Sundance, Europe Asks China to Voluntarily Limit EV Exports
    I was quite confused by this distinctly European approach until I had dinner with a Chinese actuary working in the auto warranty insurance industry.
    Europe asks China to voluntarily limit exports (mostly autos) to the European Union. Europe doesn’t want to get China angry with them about this issue. However, China is sending massive numbers of EVs into Europe. Europe is losing its auto business. I couldn’t figure out why the EU didn’t take an aggressive/confrontational position.
    Then I was reminded. Europe cannot force Beijing through a trade action (tariffs, ban, EU limit etc.) because Beijing might stop selling them EV carbon credits. If the European automakers cannot purchase Chinese EV carbon credit certificates, the fines levied by Brussels against gasoline powered autos will destroy the EU auto business…
    ..Europe wants Beijing to voluntarily limit the number of EVs that come into Europe from China, in order to save their auto sector from complete collapse. However, Europe cannot force Beijing to limit the number of EVs that come into Europe from China, or Beijing might stop selling them carbon credit certificates that will result in fines to the EU automakers that will collapse the EU auto sector.
    You would think that Europe would just get rid of the net-zero carbon regulations until they can stabilize their market and get back to a reasonable energy policy. Alas, that would mean reversing decades of climate change legislation. The preferred route is to ask Beijing to limit hurting them. https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2026/09/28/europe-asks-china-to-voluntarily-limit-ev-exports/#more-287458

    US Warns Europe: Release Emergency Diesel Supplies Or Face Export Ban https://www.zerohedge.com/commodities/us-warns-europe-release-emergency-diesel-supplies-or-face-export-ban

    Another Federal Judge Strikes Down New York’s $75 Billion Climate Superfund
    The law would have required large companies involved in fossil fuel extraction or crude oil refining to pay into a state fund over 25 years. Each company’s share would have been based on greenhouse gas emissions attributed to its products from 2000 through 2024. New York intended to use the money for infrastructure and other projects to help communities address issues the state blames on climate change.
    The Justice Department and Environmental Protection Agency sued to block the law. They argued that New York’s law ran afoul of the legal doctrine of preemption, which says that federal law takes precedence if there is a conflict with state law.
    The federal government said the Clean Air Act gives the EPA authority to decide whether and how to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. It said New York’s law would impose its own liability on fossil fuel producers based on emissions attributed to their products worldwide.
    New York argued that its law did not regulate emissions. It said the payments would compensate the state for harm from past emissions and fund projects to protect New Yorkers from problems it attributed to climate change. Castel rejected the state’s argument, saying the charges effectively regulated interstate emissions. https://www.zerohedge.com/political/another-federal-judge-strikes-down-new-yorks-75-billion-climate-superfund

    It did not “come Monday”, but there is another Monday coming soon: “Coming Monday”: Trump To Roll Back Costly ‘Green’ Rules To Drive Down Car Prices https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/coming-monday-trump-roll-back-costly-green-rules-drive-down-car-prices

    Fauci’s NIAID Funded Aerosolized-Ebola Experiments That Left 80% of Vaccinated Primates DEAD
    Fauci’s own words: “This should have been a classified experiment that never should have been done in the first place.” https://www.thefocalpoints.com/p/breaking-faucis-niaid-funded-aerosolized

    October 2, 2026 at 3:35 pm #251410
    John Day
    Participant

    Meryl Nass MD, Fauci, the aerosolized Ebola monkey experiment, and the actual backstory on the vaccine, which is now US-licensed
    On Monday, Senator Rand Paul released documents from Fauci’s diary and his emails that revealed Fauci did his best to cover up an NIAID-funded, DOD-run study in which an Ebola vaccine was given to monkeys who were then exposed to aerosolized Ebola. There were 22 vaccinated monkeys (elsewhere Fauci says 20) and 2 unvaccinated monkeys who were all exposed to aerosolized Ebola virus.
    The unexpected and unhappy result was that the vaccinated monkeys had more severe disease than the unvaccinated monkeys. It appears they suffered from an immunologic condition called Vaccine-Associated Enhanced Disease, in which the vaccinated people develop more serious pathology than the unvaccinated, usually in the lungs, after being exposed to the infection the vaccine was designed to prevent. This has been seen occasionally with other vaccines, which are then quickly taken off the market.
    The DOD researchers were planning to publish their results. When Fauci found out, he had a true meltdown. He said the research should have been classified. His staff pushed back, explaining there was nothing classified about the research. They didn’t grasp that Fauci meant it should have been classified so the public would never learn the results.
    Then he demanded to be told everything about the role of NIAID in the study, in a most unusual and shocking email (read it below). He was then able to partially suppress the results of the study. https://merylnass.substack.com/p/fauci-the-aerosolized-ebola-monkey

    Steve Kirsch, Parents of kids who became suddenly autistic after vaccination consistently report a tightly linked sequence of events with no gaps
    In this article, I destroy the hypothesis that “coincidence” causes parents to BELIEVE their child’s autism was CAUSED by vaccines. https://kirschsubstack.com/p/parents-of-kids-who-became-suddenly

    Steve Kirsch, These clinic intake summary charts can’t be explained if “vaccines don’t cause autism”
    ChatGPT analyzed patient intake forms and had to admit that this data is consistent with “vaccines cause autism” and there is no competing explanation. https://kirschsubstack.com/p/these-clinic-intake-summary-charts

    Dr. James Miller EXPOSES the Hospital Protocol Murder Machine and the Plan to Eliminate the Rights of the Unvaccinated
    Testifying before Senator Ron Johnson, a trauma surgeon blows the whistle on falsified death counts, deadly protocols, and the state-backed plot to restrict the civil rights of the unvaccinated people https://lionessofjudah.substack.com/p/breaking-dr-james-miller-exposes

    A Midwestern Doctor, How Hospitals Turned on Their Patients During COVID
    A Senate hearing exposed what was done to the unvaccinated inside America’s hospitals—and why the system drives out the doctors patients most need.
    • Throughout history, ruling elites have relied on a recurring playbook (manufactured crises, public examples, bought-out hierarchies, and economic coercion) to keep populations compliant, and nearly every tactic was used during COVID.
    • Federal policies paid hospitals tens of thousands of dollars per COVID admission, boosted reimbursement for ventilated patients, shielded providers from liability, and made remdesivir the standard of care, creating powerful incentives for harmful protocols.
    • At a recent Senate hearing, families shared strikingly consistent tragic stories of unvaccinated patients being isolated, told they would die, denied safe repurposed drugs, given remdesivir over their objections, and pushed onto ventilators and into DNRs.
    • An attorney who sued hospitals on behalf of 212 families reported that only 3 of the 72 patients who received court-ordered ivermectin died, while every one of the 140 who didn’t get it died—making suing hospitals one of the most effective treatments in history.
    • Trauma surgeon James Miller testified that his hospital was never overwhelmed despite the headlines, inflated its COVID numbers, and had infectious disease doctors who seemed to know remdesivir was harmful, and he was driven out of surgery after opening a free clinic for the unvaccinated.
    • Because the system steadily removes the doctors who will break a failing protocol to save a patient, trust in physicians and hospitals fell from 71.5% to 40.1% between 2020 and 2024, and it will only return if medicine becomes honest and starts offering things that work. https://www.midwesterndoctor.com/p/how-hospitals-turned-on-their-patients

    October 2, 2026 at 3:35 pm #251411
    John Day
    Participant

    John Leake, Murder Charges for Hospital Administrators?
    Attorney Ralph Lorigo’s Sept. 28, 2026 testimony about hospital refusals to give ivermectin to dying patients should be viewed as evidence of murder or at least negligent homicide. https://www.thefocalpoints.com/p/murder-charges-for-hospital-administrators

    BREAKING: Florida’s Attorney General SUES Pfizer and Albert Bourla for HIDING COVID Shot Deaths, Heart Damage, Miscarriages, and Strokes
    The lawsuit alleges Pfizer hid safety signals, misled millions about transmission, and used deceptive marketing to drive maximum COVID shot uptake. https://www.thefocalpoints.com/p/breaking-floridas-attorney-general

    I would like to see this assertion proven, as would John Leake, Dr. Michael Nehls: “Alzheimer’s Is Entirely Avoidable”
    The German doctor and author of “The Indoctrinated Brain” speaks persuasively about how Alzheimer’s can be avoided, and he argues that some patients are suffering from lithium deficiency. https://www.thefocalpoints.com/p/dr-michael-nehls-alzheimers-is-entirely

    Sasha Latypova, Moderna’s mFLUSIVA and SPIKEVAX violate federal labeling law (BLA). The FDA cannot waive statutory requirement for manufacturer address on the carton/vial.
    The issue is not limited to mRNA or vaccines in general, many biologics in the US are missing manufacturer’s address, and can be shipped from secret [military?] facilities. https://sashalatypova.substack.com/p/statutory-labeling-requirement-for

    Paul Marik MD, Intensive Multimodal Ketogenic Metabolic Therapy in Glioblastoma
    A new clinical trial combining fasting and a ketogenic diet with standard treatment — what it found, and what it does not yet prove https://paulmarik.substack.com/p/intensive-multimodal-ketogenic-metabolic

    October 2, 2026 at 3:36 pm #251412
    John Day
    Participant

    STUDY: Topical Vitamin C in DMSO Eliminated 56% of Biopsy-Confirmed Skin Cancers in 12 Weeks
    44% of squamous cell carcinoma lesions shrank by over 85%, while 94% of patients were able to avoid surgery. https://www.thefocalpoints.com/p/study-topical-vitamin-c-in-dmso-eliminated

    Paul Marik MD, Pancreatic Cancer Through the Lens of the 5-Axis Metabolic Pressure Approach https://paulmarik.substack.com/p/pancreatic-cancer-through-the-lens

    Climate Physicist and Siberian-forest dweller, Anastassia Makarieva, What to Preserve? Insights from Kyrgyzstan – Travel notes from a country that initiated the UN General Assembly resolution “Nature Knows No Borders”
    I am a theoretical physicist working to explain how natural ecosystems stabilize an environment and climate favorable for life. The ethical and practical implication of this work is that we must preserve natural ecosystems if we want our civilization to persist, while transforming into something more meaningful than it is now…
    ..Our colleagues and friends at BIOM in Bishkek are doing precisely that. They are strong supporters of biotic regulation and, together with the Ministry of Natural Resources and UN programs in the country, use their expert knowledge to develop strategies for nature conservation in Kyrgyzstan and beyond…
    ..During this eclectic, highly emotional and picturesque trip, we were discussing biotic regulation science and the logic it provides to conservation efforts. I will briefly summarize it here.
    The logic is as follows.
    The task of keeping a favorable environment stable is extremely complex. “Complex” here means, at the very least, that this task cannot be achieved by technological means. I have discussed this elsewhere, and there are two reasons for this. First, the information fluxes processed by the biosphere to stabilize the environment are, and will always remain, beyond the capacity of our civilization. Second, even if we could handle the necessary information flow, we do not have the knowledge of what to do with it.
    It follows that if natural ecosystems possess the complexity needed to stabilize the environment, then any human modification of them leads to a reduction in their regulatory potential. Therefore, conservation priority should be given to the least disturbed ecosystems. There is little point in preserving something less efficient while allowing these regulatory gems to continue disappearing.
    Furthermore, after a disturbance, an ecosystem initiates a process of ecological succession, during which both the ecological community and its environment recover through a non-random sequence of species that appear and disappear one after another. Every stage of succession has its meaning in this recovery process. Species numbers may change non-linearly along the way.
    If we choose to preserve particular stages of ecological succession according to species counts, for example by maximizing biodiversity at a particular stage, we interfere with this recovery process. From the biotic regulation perspective, this weakens regulation and can ultimately lead to ecosystem disintegration. We cannot stabilize a particular stage of ecological succession any more than we can stabilize a particular stage of a patient’s recovery from illness. The process should proceed unimpeded until the state of maximum recovery is reached.
    This translates directly into the question of how much preserved nature should be maintained in early-, mid- and late-successional stages. These proportions cannot be determined arbitrarily according to which species we like or dislike, by species counts, or by other formal parameters. What must be taken into account is, again, ecosystem functionality: its ability to regulate the environment and maintain its own homeostasis.
    A practical solution follows naturally. If we choose the least disturbed ecosystems as conservation cores, we can surround them with buffer areas in which more disturbed ecosystems are allowed to proceed toward recovery through ecological succession. https://bioticregulation.substack.com/p/what-to-preserve-insights-from-kyrgyzstan

    October 2, 2026 at 3:52 pm #251414
    John Day
    Participant

    @Dr.D: Yes, the path of Truth and Compassion is less painful, because we are karmically bound to experience the consequences of our actions to “others”. We are secretly connected by spiritual mycelium under the surface.
    Karma takes time to unfold and can be denied indefinitely, but it is still working

    October 2, 2026 at 4:04 pm #251415
    Michael Reid
    Participant

    Dear D:

    My spidey senses tell me that you are wrong with the collapse pending due to stupid US AI greed design and stupid US attack on Iran

    The US is a greedy fool

    October 2, 2026 at 4:18 pm #251416
    zerosum
    Participant

    Russia Debuts New Drone Tech for Start of Annual Winter De-Energization Drive Against Kiev
    Simplicius
    12 hours ago

    https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/russia-debuts-new-drone-tech-for
    ————-
    Ukraine and World Affairs (includes Iran/ME): Weekly Update
    2nd October 2026
    Dr. Rob Campbell    Russia Debuts New Drone Tech for Start of Annual Winter De-Energization Drive Against Kiev
    Simplicius
    12 hours ago

    https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/russia-debuts-new-drone-tech-for
    ————-
    Ukraine and World Affairs (includes Iran/ME): Weekly Update
    2nd October 2026
    Dr. Rob Campbell
    6 hours ago

    https://robcampbell.substack.com/p/ukraine-and-world-affairs-includes-57c
    —————-

    October 2, 2026 at 4:20 pm #251417
    Michael Reid
    Participant

    Iran’s Heartfelt Message to Mexico’s Sheinbaum at 2 Years | PÁRATE, MÉXICO “No te arrodilles” | LEGO

    CISCO IRAN LEGO NEWS
    38
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    Oct 2
    2026
    Two years ago, Mexico swore in its first woman president. This song is a message to Claudia Sheinbaum and to Mexico, imagined from a kitchen in Tehran before dawn: congratulations, said without a knee bent.

    Hace dos años México tuvo a su primera presidenta. Esta canción es un mensaje para Claudia Sheinbaum y para México, imaginado desde una cocina en Teherán antes del amanecer: felicidades, sin doblar la rodilla.

    🇲🇽 “Stand, Mexico, stand in your own name.”

    This is not a victory lap. It is praise with conditions. The song celebrates the stubbornness, not the graph, and asks for the things that matter after the cameras leave: the bus that comes, the clinic that opens, the wage that can buy eggs, the street corner that is finally lit. It speaks about sovereignty when it gets expensive, about cooperation without a leash, about the north that bleeds and the south that is lectured, about Indigenous names, the women who walk home after dark, and the missing. Ayotzinapa is still a wound. The missing are a constituency.

    Two years is a seed. The harvest is still owed. Four years remain.

    No es un desfile. Es un aplauso con condiciones: soberanía sin subordinación, bienestar en el presupuesto y no en el mural, justicia para los desaparecidos, y una niña que dice “presidenta” sin que la frase termine en excepción. Dos años son una semilla. La cosecha todavía se debe.

    🎧 If this spoke to you, share it with someone in Mexico or the United States who needs to hear it.
    💬 Comment: what should the next four years deliver? / ¿Qué deben traer los próximos cuatro años?
    🔔 Subscribe for more songs about the people behind the headlines.

    This is an original artistic work. It is not an official statement from any government or organization.
    Esta es una obra artística original. No es una declaración oficial de ningún gobierno.

    October 2, 2026 at 4:56 pm #251432
    zerosum
    Participant


    NO MORE RULES: Putin Lifts All Restrictions on the Air Campaign🚫 MS 2026.10.02


    —

    October 2, 2026 at 4:59 pm #251434
    Michael Reid
    Participant

    October 2, 2026 at 5:01 pm #251435
    Michael Reid
    Participant

    October 2, 2026 at 5:07 pm #251437
    Michael Reid
    Participant

    October 2, 2026 at 7:28 pm #251500
    Michael Reid
    Participant

    October 2, 2026 at 8:42 pm #251501
    Michael Reid
    Participant

    October 2, 2026 at 9:01 pm #251503
    Michael Reid
    Participant

    October 2, 2026 at 9:24 pm #251504
    Michael Reid
    Participant

    October 2, 2026 at 9:56 pm #251505
    Michael Reid
    Participant

    The Light at The End of the Tunnel – It’s Not All Doom & Gloom

    October 2, 2026 at 10:10 pm #251507
    tboc
    Participant

    The fact the United States has the best legislative branch money can buy has long been an accepted fact. This foolishness concerning the Mid-Term elections has the bouquet of anchovies left in the sun.
    “As long as the sky is blue there’s room for a fool like you” – from a get out the vote poster of the United DemoPuplican Coalition.

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