Home Economists,
My analysis of our current historical epoch is that global industrial civilization is inflecting from 300 years of fossil-fueled growth into a terminal decline in the amount of physical economy. Oil is the fuel that now correlates 90% with real-economy, but it is all woven together and supply chains are now globalized.
Our "owners" (Carlin) and the political and technical elites who serve them need to maintain their primacy over the rest of this during this long and painful descent. They are not yet ready to reveal that this is the case, so other emergencies must be instituted to explain events as they occur. Wars in the Mideast and Ukraine currently serve that purpose. Both can be readily manipulated to create and explain shortages and existential threats, while providing an explanation why "things are not back to normal yet".
There are competing factions of owner-elites. European old-money, the City of London and BlackRock grouping, favor war of attrittion against Russia, to break Russian civil society, return to the asset-stripping of the 1990s, and get ahold of mineral resources, of which Europe is otherwise critically short. These elites have made bad investments in the war already, and at-least need it to continue, so that they do not have to declare those losses.
It is getting expensive. Their credit is degrading, and populations are frustrated and angry. This is a weak position for European old-money.
Western Nationalist power elites, centered in the US want to continue to control flows of oil and resources, and keep the world using the $US financial system, which extracts value for them. The flow of Mideast oil is critical to the petrodollar regime. They have military assets to keep enforcing this, but are at the point of needing to conserve what is left, and to arrange new global power dynamics with Russia and China.
Russia and China are civilizational powers, take a long view of history, and do not want to dissipate their own resources in the current power struggles, at least not more than is forced upon them. Iran is similar in that regard, as is Turkey, at the crossroads of civilization, and always conniving.
The chimeric creation which is "Israel" effectively spies upon the leaders and people of the world, and brings coercion to bear in every possible way, including propaganda, bribery, nuclear threat and ongoing genocide of native Palestinians.
I do not know how this will play out on any given day, but I find that working perspective to hold together pretty well.
Fabio Vighi, A Spectre is Haunting Europe – and the World. A Hauntology of War
What is deployed ... is the spectre of war as something akin to what Jacques Lacan called the “fundamental fantasy” - the imaginary place where I see myself suffering; the ultimate phantasmatic screen providing unconscious attachment, thus protecting the subject from the void. And Europe is once again the epicentre of such spectral mobilisation. “War-readiness,” as the technocratic elites cynically call it, functions as a fantasy frame populated by images of pain and even annihilation. Psychically, it is meant to function as the deepest defensive barrier against the emptiness of the modern subject at a moment when the belief that the capitalist constellation is socially productive is breaking apart... This is what psychoanalysis calls cathexis: the psychic investment that attaches us even to what harms us...
..The hauntology of war, which now provides the EU with its last form of legitimacy, is metastasising across three fronts simultaneously. First, in the data centres, where artificial intelligence is trained. Second, in the bond markets, where governments and corporations borrow vast sums to sustain their exhausted reproductive engine. And third, of course, in the skies over Ukraine and Iran – and in Gaza, where Palestinians are killed daily notwithstanding the ceasefire. If you connect those fronts, you will see not a war between nations in the traditional sense, but the slow disintegration of the global capitalist order itself... In this end-time scenario, the main scoreboard, I argue, is not the battlefield but the bond market...
..The compulsion of profit-making renders us blind to human empathy as well as its destructive consequences and social costs.Now, the United States has spent the last three years building an artificial intelligence industry on the assumption that such intelligence would remain as scarce as the kind populating the brains of those who blindly follow it as a new religion – as well as expensive and proprietary. Hence, the conviction that whoever controlled the best AI models would control the future. But it takes little wisdom to realise that such assumption is now collapsing...
..China has taken a different approach. Instead of building the biggest, most expensive models behind closed doors, Chinese companies have been releasing powerful open-source models: free for anyone to use, modify, and build upon. I mean models such as Kimi K3, Qwen, GLM, and DeepSeek, which now perform at roughly 90–95% of the capability of the best American models, at a fraction of the price...
..By late September 2026, Chinese models were processing 76.12 trillion tokens per week – up from 4.37 trillion in late April. That is a seventeen-fold increase in five months. The top four American providers combined processed just 14.2 trillion. In other words, the usage has flipped. The rest of the world is now using Chinese AI more than five times as much as American AI, and the gap is widening.....The entire American AI boom that drives the markets and effectively supports the debt-drenched Western economy – the data centres, the chips, the power plants, the hundreds of billions in borrowing – depends on being able to charge premium prices for AI. If near-equivalent intelligence is available for almost nothing, that pricing power evaporates... roughly $2.3 trillion in future work, about half of that is owed by OpenAI and Anthropic – two loss-making companies. The hyperscalers are effectively lending money to unprofitable customers while borrowing heavily themselves to fund the buildout. This, in a nutshell, is the AI bubble, and China’s open-source strategy is the pin that could pop it... Forcing companies to pay $26 to $56 per million tokens for intelligence that the rest of the world gets for $0.50 to $1 is ‘economically unsustainable’...
..China’s open-source offensive reveals something the Western AI complex desperately needs to conceal: AI need not be scarce, proprietary, or rented. It can circulate as a general capacity... Abundance can at least undermine the rentier form that capital has imposed upon it.....While the AI war unfolds, something equally important is happening in the bond market. As even the mainstream media now deign to report, bond yields are surging like a tsunami wave across the Western world...
..Here is the crucial insight: the bond market is doing the central banks’ job for them. By pushing yields up, it is autonomously tightening financial conditions, without central banks having to raise rates significantly. Since mid-September the bond market has already tightened by nearly 200 basis points across eight major economies. This is making mortgages, business loans, and government borrowing more expensive, thereby unleashing conditions of austerity.....Youth-led protests over the cost of living, housing, and the collapse of public services are turning the bond market’s abstract violence into a matter of collective anger, frustration, and revolt...
..The bond market is a war front, not a trading desk. It is the transmission mechanism through which the system’s explosive contradictions crash directly into the daily lives of millions. When the bond market fights, it doesn’t fight with tanks and artillery; it fights with your mortgage rate, your pension fund, and your local school and hospital’s budget. In short, with your livelihood.....The war rhetoric from Brussels and London has been escalating for months. Kaja Kallas keeps repeating that Russia may test Europe’s readiness ‘within three to five years.’ Mark Rutte declares: ‘We are Russia’s next target.’ Ursula von der Leyen proclaims: ‘If Europe wants to avoid war, Europe must get ready for war.’ The EU is constructing a “Military Schengen” to move troops faster, on the premise that peacetime rules will not deter Putin. In Britain, the armed forces are reviving the Cold War-era War Book: the plan for national mobilisation, rationing, evacuation, and emergency government.
This is the language of a continent preparing for war – the marriage of good will and conscription that accompanies every descent into barbarism. It operates precisely as Lacan’s fundamental fantasy: an imaginary screen, filled with images of pain, erected against the void opened by the collapse of capitalist legitimacy.....Yet when pressed, the same officials concede what their rhetoric conceals. Rutte: ‘We see no imminent threat against NATO territory.’ An EU official: European intelligence services have seen no signs that Russia plans to attack NATO members. And Putin repeats what he has said for years: ‘We have no plans for any military action against Europe. There is no reason for it.’...
..War-readiness therefore serves three purposes: it justifies vast defence spending as fiscal space collapses; it disciplines populations into accepting austerity, sacrifice and possible conscription; and it creates the political conditions for the QE that the bond market is already making inevitable.....Is Britain preparing for war? More likely, it is preparing for the appearance of preparing for war. The point is not military capacity but ideological mobilisation: a population trained to accept that young people may have to ‘go out and die’ (Jacob Rees-Mogg dixit) for a country whose ruling class has spent decades dismantling the conditions worth fighting for...
..Needless to say, the deeper stakes are financial. Iran’s reported willingness to accept yuan for oil transiting the Strait of Hormuz – and reportedly to offer Europe a euro-denominated transit deal – threatens the petrodollar arrangement that has underwritten American financial dominance since 1974. If oil ceases to demand dollars, dollar demand falls, US borrowing costs rise, and a debt machine already strained by $40.3 trillion in gross national debt and $1.36 trillion in annual interest payments becomes truly unsustainable.....War drives energy prices and inflation upward; inflation keeps rates high; high rates intensify the AI debt burden; the resulting credit distress forces central banks toward QE. In a world of $100-plus oil and war-driven inflation, however, QE further destroys monetary credibility.
The Iran conflict is thus not merely a geopolitical catastrophe. It is the mechanism through which the AI bubble and the bond-market crisis become a real war; and through which the system acquires its justification for the monetary rescue it cannot survive without.
QE, followed by further mass impoverishment, mass revolt, and control measures, is written into the script, because within the Western capitalist horizon there is no alternative. The three-front war makes this clearer. The West is fighting on all three fronts with the same weapon: debt-financed spending.....Within this confrontation, the bond market is the mechanism that turns the AI war into a financial crisis. When the cost to insure CoreWeave’s debt against default surges past 1,000 basis points, this is not merely one company’s distress. It is the market pricing the collapse of the AI capex model. (For context, CoreWeave is an AI cloud provider that went from obscurity to a giant, and multi-billion-dollar borrower, in barely three years.)...
..War drives energy prices and inflation upward; inflation keeps rates high; high rates worsen the AI debt burden; the resulting credit event forces central banks to monetise. This could be the logic of the next “whatever it takes” moment. It would arrive not as salvation but as the admission that the system can be kept upright only by printing its way past its own contradictions. QE, of course, will not resolve the crisis. It will not restore profitability, repair the AI capex model, or make sovereign debt sustainable. Its function is narrower and more cynical: to prevent immediate default, protect asset values, and buy time for the distribution of losses downwards...
..US and Chinese experts are discussing AI governance in the idiom once reserved for nuclear weapons: red lines, mandatory human control, hotlines for incidents caused by autonomous systems. The feared scenario is instructive. An American system detects suspicious activity in a Chinese military network, classifies it as an attack, and responds. Chinese systems detect the response and respond automatically. Within minutes, two defensive systems have produced the appearance of mutual aggression, and the war begins through automated misrecognition...
..The CLARITY Act’s stablecoin regime, with its KYC (know your customer) requirements and Treasury powers to freeze transactions without court order, is legalised as “consumer protection.” Central banks experiment with programmable money that can be restricted, expired, or made conditional. Under economic duress, tools designed for “illicit finance” become tools of population management: a digital prison whose bars remain invisible until they close.....If war-readiness functions as a fundamental fantasy, then the task, as Lacan would put it, is to traverse the fantasy. This means refusing any sacrificial identification with nation, flag, or the “defense of Europe,” and instead looking directly at the void which the war rhetoric is designed to cover... ..The system needs our consent, our sacrifice, and our psychic investment. To withdraw that investment is the one variable they cannot price in. https://substack.com/home/post/p-221133493
Larry Johnson, Europe's Diesel Winter Is Coming, and Washington Is About to Make It Worse
That matters because Ansar Allah has shown it can reach the Kingdom’s economic core. In the past two weeks the Houthis have struck at Aramco facilities near Riyadh, the Shedgum gas plant in the Ghawar corridor, and the Tanajib oil facility on the Gulf coast. They hit an administrative building at Aramco’s Dhahran headquarters, the company’s historic nerve center. Now they are reportedly targeting Yanbu.
Riyadh says little about the damage, and Aramco’s chief executive insists the company’s system is intact and can be restored to its full 12 million barrels a day within days. I don’t believe it...
..Yanbu is the crucial target. With Iran’s navy declaring the Strait of Hormuz closed except to vessels it authorizes, Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea terminal at Yanbu, fed by the East-West Pipeline, is the Kingdom’s escape route to world markets... A pipeline missing more than a third of its pumping stations cannot move anything close to its rated volume, however much crude is waiting in the Eastern Province. Meanwhile Ansar Allah has seized Greater and Lesser Hanish islands and Perim inside the Bab al-Mandab, putting it astride the very sea lanes that tankers leaving Yanbu must use. Damaged production, a crippled pipeline and a contested Red Sea together mean the world loses Saudi barrels three times over: some cannot be produced, some cannot reach the coast, and what reaches the coast cannot be shipped safely.
Diesel is where this hits hardest. Diesel moves the trucks, tractors, trains and ships that carry everything else, and Europe is one of the world’s dominant diesel importers. The International Energy Agency’s October report is blunt. Middle Eastern fuel exports are below half of pre-war levels, and diesel markets “will remain tight well into 2027.”The IEA does not expect lost diesel stocks to be replenished before the second half of 2027.....Don’t expect the Trump-Putin diesel deal to change that. As I have argued before, the Russian barrels are a rounding error... Measured against the world’s lost Middle Eastern distillate exports, it is negligible. It also depends on Russian refineries that Ukrainian drones continue to hit, and on sanctioned tankers to carry it. The deal may make for a good headline. It will not move the supply curve, and so it will not bring down the price of diesel.
Europe is already paying the political price. On Saturday, France saw its worst rioting in years. The CGT union estimated more than 500,000 people in the streets protesting the cost of gasoline, energy and food, and more than 270 were arrested. In Milan, a demonstration against wars and rising living costs ended with barricades on fire and shops looted. Protests over the cost of living have spread to Belgium and Portugal. Albania has had five straight days of violent clashes in Tirana...
..This is the context in which Washington is considering new strikes on Iran. The ceasefire collapsed in July and has not been rebuilt. Every round of escalation since then has raised the price of oil, and each one has given Tehran a reason to tighten its grip on Hormuz and its allies in Yemen a reason to widen their target list. Another U.S. campaign will not reopen the Strait. It will further close it. It will push diesel prices back toward their September records just as Europe heads into winter, when heating oil demand peaks...
..Europe’s economies were already weak before the war. Factories that run on diesel-powered logistics, farmers who need diesel for the harvest, and households that heat with fuel oil cannot absorb another price spike. The riots in Paris and Milan are a warning of what a long diesel shortage does to a society. If Washington widens this war, it will be choosing to make that shortage longer and deeper, and Europe will pay the bill on its streets. https://larrycjohnson.substack.com/p/europes-diesel-winter-is-coming-andUkrainians living in italy do not want to return to their country, while Defense Minister Guido Crosetto urges continued support of Kiev despite widespread public opposition https://rt-english.com/news/647374-hard-convince-italians-back-ukraine/
Oil Tumbles As Qatar, Pakistan Tout 'Compromise Proposal' To End Iran War https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/two-tankers-fire-oman-irgc-boasts-naval-mine-warfare
More reliable logistics? Taiwan delivers 1,520 FPV attack drones for U.S. Drone Dominance Program to reduce reliance on China. https://www.armyrecognition.com/news/army-news/2026/taiwan-delivers-1-520-fpv-attack-drones-for-u-s-drone-dominance-program-to-reduce-reliance-on-china
Gold & Geopolitics, Daily digest: 2026-10-20
The US and Iran are firing at each other again. The US hit Iran's Konarak naval base, the IRGC claims it downed a 54th MQ-9, and Hegseth met Netanyahu at Ovda while the IDF froze leave. Headlines promising a deal "breakthrough this week" kept circulating anyway. Trump told Kyiv to find someone else to negotiate as Witkoff heads to Oslo and then Moscow, the day after 16 ballistic missiles hit Kyiv and none were intercepted; France's 10Y closed at a 22-year high as curfews spread.
The Houthi campaign against Saudi energy and the AI credit unwind continue, with fresh damage: FII pushed to 2027, ORCL CDS at a record, Elice -32% on debut.
US-Iran exchange fire; Israel moves to a war footing - Iran's navy says US forces struck its Konarak base; 2 personnel wounded; CENTCOM has not confirmed (FirstSquawk, MoloWarMonitor) IRGC claims a 54th MQ-9 shot down over Hormuz this morning (MenchOsint, GEROMAN)
Hegseth met Netanyahu at Ovda Air Base; the IDF froze all leave from Thursday and moved to its highest alert (HormuzLetter, GlobeLetter)
Houthis hit Saudi oil and airports; FII postponed to 2027 - Strikes claimed on Aramco Yanbu, the Shaybah field, Riyadh airport, Abha and Khamis Mushait (MenchOsint, zerohedge)
"Davos in the Desert" pushed to 2027 (MenchOsint, ILRedAlert)...
..Outside assessments: former MI6 chief Sawers: "The Houthis are here to stay" (imetatronink)
The Economist says MBS's gambles on beating the Houthis, reshaping the Saudi economy and relying on Trump are all failing at once (shashj)...
Trump is open to a meeting with Xi and Putin next month (Reuters), probably in China and built around denuclearization (zerohedge), with or without Zelensky (FoxNews)
Peskov says a three-way meeting was raised for the APEC summit in China on Nov 18-19, but "no concrete proposals" exist (MilitarySummary)
Today in Oslo, Zelensky meets Stubb and Støre, with Witkoff in the room and Kushner on video (MilitarySummary). Witkoff then heads to Russia hoping to meet Putin (GEROMAN)
Zelensky is lobbying US senators (AlternatNews). He says missile packages Ukraine's partners already paid for are waiting on Hegseth's signature (GEROMAN)... Starlink/Starshield is still throttled and cuts out at 130-161 km/h (MilitarySummary, Kofman via simpatico771).
..Europe is split: Belgian PM De Wever reportedly wants relations with Russia normalized (AlternatNews)The Economist says MBS's gambles on beating the Houthis, reshaping the Saudi economy and relying on Trump are all failing at once (shashj)...
..Kyiv: 16 ballistic missiles, none intercepted; Patriot transfers stalled - 16 ballistic missiles and 200+ drones; 550,000 families lost power; "no early warning from our partners" (ZelenskyyUa)
Only 3 cruise missiles downed; MilitarySummary says Ukraine has effectively run out of PAC-3s a Europe-funded Patriot batch is stuck at the Pentagon, which the US denies (MilitarySummary)...
..Diplomacy - Trump says it is "time for someone else to negotiate on behalf of Ukraine" (zerohedge, FoxNews) and that Ukraine gives "nothing" back (zerohedge). He also said "Russia has been fine on Ukraine" (TheApeOfGoldStreet) Only 3 cruise missiles downed; MilitarySummary says Ukraine has effectively run out of PAC-3s a Europe-funded Patriot batch is stuck at the Pentagon, which the US denies (MilitarySummary)...
Trump is open to a meeting with Xi and Putin next month (Reuters), probably in China and built around denuclearization (zerohedge), with or without Zelensky (FoxNews)
Peskov says a three-way meeting was raised for the APEC summit in China on Nov 18-19, but "no concrete proposals" exist (MilitarySummary)
Today in Oslo, Zelensky meets Stubb and Støre, with Witkoff in the room and Kushner on video (MilitarySummary). Witkoff then heads to Russia hoping to meet Putin (GEROMAN)
Zelensky is lobbying US senators (AlternatNews). He says missile packages Ukraine's partners already paid for are waiting on Hegseth's signature (GEROMAN)... Starlink/Starshield is still throttled and cuts out at 130-161 km/h (MilitarySummary, Kofman via simpatico771).
Merz says the Russian threat is underestimated (zerohedge)
Zelensky asked the EU for €70bn on top of the €90bn already pledged (SWagenknecht)
Per the NYT, Washington is floating Europe buying Russian gas again as an incentive for Putin (zerohedge)...
..Israel - Hegseth met Netanyahu unannounced at Ovda, with Defence Minister Katz, NSC head Ben Ezra and apparent UAE representatives present. Per Axios and Ynet, the topic was resuming major combat operations against Iran (GlobeLetter, cym27s)
IDF command centres are now staffed at wartime strength (HormuzLetter). The timing: roughly a week before Israel's election and two weeks before the US midterms (Nostra)
Escalation threats - The IRGC says 7 undersea internet cables under Hormuz are on its target list if war resumes (Currentreport1, Nostra, TheApeOfGoldStreet)
Tehran says it has "no choice" but to assert control over Hormuz (zerohedge); the IRGC warns that renewed bombing means a "serious energy crisis" (zerohedge)
Diplomacy - A US-Iran "breakthrough" is again expected this week; nothing is confirmed. The reports cite different outlets: Al-Araby Al-Jadeed (DeItaone) and Al Arabiya (TheApeOfGoldStreet)
Qatar says talks continue but warns of a wider regional war (JustDario); Trump says it is a "good situation with respect to Iran" (TheApeOfGoldStreet)
Lavrov is in Tehran (maxosintintel), calling for free navigation through Hormuz, a return to pre-crisis conditions and resumed Yemen talks (TonyNashNerd)
Two things changed. Putin proposed a Trump-Xi-Putin summit on Ukraine without Zelensky, in the same weekend Trump waived the Graham Act sanctions and said Zelensky doesn't want the war to end.
IDF command centres are now staffed at wartime strength (HormuzLetter). The timing: roughly a week before Israel's election and two weeks before the US midterms (Nostra)
Escalation threats - The IRGC says 7 undersea internet cables under Hormuz are on its target list if war resumes (Currentreport1, Nostra, TheApeOfGoldStreet)
Tehran says it has "no choice" but to assert control over Hormuz (zerohedge); the IRGC warns that renewed bombing means a "serious energy crisis" (zerohedge)
Diplomacy - A US-Iran "breakthrough" is again expected this week; nothing is confirmed. The reports cite different outlets: Al-Araby Al-Jadeed (DeItaone) and Al Arabiya (TheApeOfGoldStreet)
Qatar says talks continue but warns of a wider regional war (JustDario); Trump says it is a "good situation with respect to Iran" (TheApeOfGoldStreet)
Lavrov is in Tehran (maxosintintel), calling for free navigation through Hormuz, a return to pre-crisis conditions and resumed Yemen talks (TonyNashNerd)
Pakistan's Asim Munir is due in Tehran (MenchOsint); China's premier says he is ready to advance cooperation with Iran (DeItaone)
The UAE is talking to both sides: a UAE government-linked 737 visited Tehran again (MenchOsint) on the same day a UAE Air Force jet landed in Tel Aviv (MenchOsint)
Weapons are arriving: Chinese Type 59 130mm guns were filmed in Mazandaran (DefenceGeek). https://no1sdailydigest.substack.com/p/daily-digest-2026-10-20
The UAE is talking to both sides: a UAE government-linked 737 visited Tehran again (MenchOsint) on the same day a UAE Air Force jet landed in Tel Aviv (MenchOsint)
Weapons are arriving: Chinese Type 59 130mm guns were filmed in Mazandaran (DefenceGeek). https://no1sdailydigest.substack.com/p/daily-digest-2026-10-20
Gold & Geopolitics, Daily digest: 2026-10-19
The Yemen war also widened: Riyadh admitted its first aircraft loss and Egypt approved troops for Saudi Arabia.
The rest is continuation: Hormuz ship attacks at their fastest pace since March, more AI credit stress (Microsoft walked from Nscale), and Macron addressed the nation on the riots, blaming fuel prices from the Iran war. https://no1sdailydigest.substack.com/p/daily-digest-2026-10-19
Trump Regime Wilding Amid Scandals and Backstabbing, by Nat Wilson Turner
As disaster looms in the November mid-term elections, the Trump regime is riven with internal dissent and ugly scandal. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Chief of Staff Susie Wiles and Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller are taking leading roles.Last week the centrist Substack Zeteo, had a piece charmingly titled “‘Secretary of Cuck’: How Marco Rubio Learned to Love Waging Trump’s War on the World.”
Zeteo takes the consensus DC insider position that Rubio was some paragon of decency and norms before being corrupted by his involvement with the wicked Trump regime, so keep that in mind as we read some highlights of the piece:
Rubio has led a swarming assault on free speech, overseen the destruction of U.S. foreign aid, and helped power Trump’s mass-deportation machine, disregarding human rights and basic decency in the process.
With Trump naming Rubio his acting National Security Adviser, a role made permanent last month, sources say Rubio has spent a great deal of his time at the White House, ensconced away from the State Department rank-and-file as he works alongside Trump’s inner circle.
As with the rest of Trump’s top cabinet officials, Rubio has been entirely subsumed by Stephen Miller, Trump’s nativist deputy chief of staff and top policy official, sources say.
Miller and Rubio have an amiable working relationship – in fact, relations between the former intra-GOP enemies are so chummy, and the duo are in such lockstep nowadays, that other Trump advisers tell Zeteo that they wonder how much of it is real and how much fake, put on for a “marriage of political convenience, more than anything else,” a former senior Trump administration official says. But, this ex-official adds, “those sorts of marriages sometimes work.” Largely, two sources familiar with the matter tell Zeteo, the “marriage” involves Rubio doing precisely what Miller tells him to do. Miller and Rubio talk frequently, their connection so tight it eclipses Miller’s relationships with nearly every other senior official.
The irony of this is not lost on senior staffers, least of all Miller, who has joked to confidants about how much he has subjugated a former nemesis, the two sources say. “Stephen does find it amusing that Marco now sees things the way Stephen does…”
The piece then goes on to detail how in 2016, Miller, then a staffer for Alabama Senator (and future US Attorney General) Jeff Sessions, set out to “destroy” Rubio over the Gang of Eight bill and in the 2016 primary planted Breitbart stories casting Rubio as someone who “legalized alien sex offenders.”As disaster looms in the November mid-term elections, the Trump regime is riven with internal dissent and ugly scandal. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Chief of Staff Susie Wiles and Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller are taking leading roles.Last week the centrist Substack Zeteo, had a piece charmingly titled “‘Secretary of Cuck’: How Marco Rubio Learned to Love Waging Trump’s War on the World.”
Zeteo takes the consensus DC insider position that Rubio was some paragon of decency and norms before being corrupted by his involvement with the wicked Trump regime, so keep that in mind as we read some highlights of the piece:
Rubio has led a swarming assault on free speech, overseen the destruction of U.S. foreign aid, and helped power Trump’s mass-deportation machine, disregarding human rights and basic decency in the process.
With Trump naming Rubio his acting National Security Adviser, a role made permanent last month, sources say Rubio has spent a great deal of his time at the White House, ensconced away from the State Department rank-and-file as he works alongside Trump’s inner circle.
As with the rest of Trump’s top cabinet officials, Rubio has been entirely subsumed by Stephen Miller, Trump’s nativist deputy chief of staff and top policy official, sources say.
Miller and Rubio have an amiable working relationship – in fact, relations between the former intra-GOP enemies are so chummy, and the duo are in such lockstep nowadays, that other Trump advisers tell Zeteo that they wonder how much of it is real and how much fake, put on for a “marriage of political convenience, more than anything else,” a former senior Trump administration official says. But, this ex-official adds, “those sorts of marriages sometimes work.” Largely, two sources familiar with the matter tell Zeteo, the “marriage” involves Rubio doing precisely what Miller tells him to do. Miller and Rubio talk frequently, their connection so tight it eclipses Miller’s relationships with nearly every other senior official.
The irony of this is not lost on senior staffers, least of all Miller, who has joked to confidants about how much he has subjugated a former nemesis, the two sources say. “Stephen does find it amusing that Marco now sees things the way Stephen does…”
But now Rubio is fully on side:
Rubio is officially overseeing or complicit in some of Trump’s most egregious and consequential acts: the gutting of U.S. foreign and humanitarian aid; the kidnapping and attempted deportation of college students, often for speech related to Israel; the shipping of Venezuelan immigrants to El Salvador’s infamous torture prison, CECOT, without due process; the deputization of department security agents to assist ICE with its shadowy detention campaign; the expansion of third-party deportations, immigrants renditioned to dangerous countries to which they have no ties; the near-total shutdown of refugee admissions, other than for white South Africans; a visa ban targeting 75 countries; crippling sanctions against Cuba; the defense of the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran, and maintenance of support for Israel as it continues its genocide in Gaza, its strafing of Lebanon, and its unrelenting violence against Palestinians in the West Bank; the Pentagon-led murder of sailors in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific under the flag of stopping drug trafficking – all while he helps prop up Latin American leaders linked to drug trafficking.
A separate Zeteo piece on Miller says:
This is the creep dubbed (rightly so) America’s “prime minister,” by fellow Trumpland denizens. Other people might have higher-ranking titles, but there is no traditional secretary of defense (or, “secretary of war,” as this administration likes to call it) in Trump’s second administration. There’s no independent Justice Department or U.S. attorney general. There is no secretary of state, and there certainly isn’t a Homeland Security secretary, as we’ve previously known it to be. There is just one gleefully authoritarian West Wing of the White House, which uses its cabinet members and agency chiefs as mere cutouts for Trump’s political whims and wants. But the man barking those marching orders – to Marco Rubio, Pete Hegseth, Todd Blanche, and Markwayne Mullin – is usually Miller. So vast is his reach that Trump administration officials call the 41-year-old aide America’s “shadow president,” among other nicknames. https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2026/10/trump-regime-scandals-backstabbing-bessent-wiles-guilfoyle-grenell-habba-miller-rubio-zacharia.html
Former U.S. President Barack Obama recently received a honorary doctorate from the Queen’s University in Belfast. He gave a speech at the event with was reportedly attended by some 7,000 people.
There is however nothing mentioned about it in mainstream U.S. media. Nor am I able to I find a video or transcript of it. The search engines come up empty. The University itself has only a short writeup with two meaningless quotes.
The reasons for hiding or ostensibly ignoring the speech is found in its content.
From the local Belfast Telegraph, which seem to have the only decent writeup of the event:
Asked about the conflict between Israel and Palestine, Mr Obama said the hardening of attitudes in Israel after the October 7 atrocity meant a “genuine cessation” was required before longer-lasting solutions could be discussed.
“It should pain everybody. It’s a distillation of us being trapped in history and a tribal, elemental, unforgiving divide. It’s a sort of madness,” he said.
“The fact is that the Jewish people, for millennia, were oppressed, discriminated against, killed. Europe was responsible for much of it. They understandably sought a refuge.
“That is undeniable. What is also undeniable is that they took land off people and they were expelled. And those people understandably said, ‘This is injustice and I want my land back.’ …
Some Israeli news outlets picked up on this. The Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahoo rejected Obama’s claims.
He asserted: .. that Jews were “in the land of our forefathers” and were not the obstacle to peace.
One wonders why Benjamin Mileikowski (aka Netanyahoo) is rejecting his Polish heritage. https://www.moonofalabama.org/2026/10/obama-on-zionist-settlers-they-took-land-off-people.htmlAsked about the conflict between Israel and Palestine, Mr Obama said the hardening of attitudes in Israel after the October 7 atrocity meant a “genuine cessation” was required before longer-lasting solutions could be discussed.
“It should pain everybody. It’s a distillation of us being trapped in history and a tribal, elemental, unforgiving divide. It’s a sort of madness,” he said.
“The fact is that the Jewish people, for millennia, were oppressed, discriminated against, killed. Europe was responsible for much of it. They understandably sought a refuge.
“That is undeniable. What is also undeniable is that they took land off people and they were expelled. And those people understandably said, ‘This is injustice and I want my land back.’ …
Some Israeli news outlets picked up on this. The Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahoo rejected Obama’s claims.
He asserted: .. that Jews were “in the land of our forefathers” and were not the obstacle to peace.
No Regional Settlement without Lebanon: Iran Sets Out Conditions for Agreement
Iran insisted that any regional agreement must end Israel’s war on Lebanon, accusing Washington and Israel of violating commitments while pursuing diplomacy.
Key Takeaways: Saeed Khatibzadeh said ending hostilities across all fronts, including Lebanon, remains a fundamental Iranian condition for a regional agreement.
He accused Washington and Israel of violating the Islamabad memorandum and said Iran remains willing to negotiate on the basis of mutual respect.
Khatibzadeh discussed a seven-day Hormuz reopening proposal and called for an immediate ceasefire and an end to the Saudi blockade on Yemen. https://www.palestinechronicle.com/no-regional-settlement-without-lebanon-iran-sets-out-conditions-for-agreement/
Key Takeaways: Saeed Khatibzadeh said ending hostilities across all fronts, including Lebanon, remains a fundamental Iranian condition for a regional agreement.
He accused Washington and Israel of violating the Islamabad memorandum and said Iran remains willing to negotiate on the basis of mutual respect.
Khatibzadeh discussed a seven-day Hormuz reopening proposal and called for an immediate ceasefire and an end to the Saudi blockade on Yemen. https://www.palestinechronicle.com/no-regional-settlement-without-lebanon-iran-sets-out-conditions-for-agreement/
Clashes between Yemeni forces and Houthis cause casualties on both sides as aid agencies warn of a deepening human crisis. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/10/18/fighting-intensifies-across-yemen-as-humanitarian-crisis-deepens
The Saudi bombing campaign is strongly supported by the US, which provides targeting intelligence and is refueling Saudi warplanes
The ministry said that another 23 people were wounded, including 12 children and 10 women. Yemen’s Al Masirah TV said the home belonged to a man named Ali al-Qahma and aired footage that shows Yemenis digging through the rubble of the home for survivors and shows some of the casualties, including children who were killed.
Health Ministry spokesman Anees al-Asbahi reported several other attacks on Sunday involving civilian casualties, including the killing of a woman and the injury of three other civilians in a Saudi airstrike in Yemen’s Ibb province. https://news.antiwar.com/2026/10/18/saudi-airstrike-on-civilian-home-in-yemen-kills-10-including-seven-children-health-ministry/
Health Ministry spokesman Anees al-Asbahi reported several other attacks on Sunday involving civilian casualties, including the killing of a woman and the injury of three other civilians in a Saudi airstrike in Yemen’s Ibb province. https://news.antiwar.com/2026/10/18/saudi-airstrike-on-civilian-home-in-yemen-kills-10-including-seven-children-health-ministry/
Dozens of Drivers of petroleum product tankers announced on Sunday that they would halt shipments bound for Shabwa province in an escalation over the continued detention of their tankers by Saudi-backed authorities at the Atiq Improvement checkpoint. https://en.ypagency.net/408935
The UN World Food Programme has warned that funding shortages will leave about 500,000 people in the Gaza Strip without critical food aid in a territory where two thirds of the population remains acutely food insecure. The WFP said it is reducing its monthly assistance from 1.6 million to 1.1 million people. https://www.france24.com/en/middle-east/20261019-world-food-programme-to-end-aid-for-half-a-million-in-gaza-due-to-funding-shortfall
Attacks also target Palestinian homes near Ramallah, Nablus and Hebron, with electricity cut to 2 houses, official media reports https://www.aa.com.tr/en/world/israeli-occupiers-injure-2-palestinians-attack-ambulance-in-west-bank/4092949
Masked Israeli settlers on Saturday attacked a convoy of European diplomats and officials attempting to reach Al-Taybeh village near Ramallah in the occupied West Bank in an escalation of recent violence during the Palestinian olive harvest.
The settlers hurled stones at the vehicles and smashed a window of a car belonging to the Belgian Consulate, the Palestinian news agency WAFA reported.
Video footage also showed a member of the delegation, identified by Israeli media as Bernard Baudoux, mayor of the French town of Aulnoye-Aymeries, lying on the ground...
..IDF condemned the incident, blamed convoy for uncoordinated visit https://www.arabnews.com/middle-east/israeli-settlers-attack-european-diplomats-in-west-bank-amid-surge-in-olive-harvest-violence-3006865 The settlers hurled stones at the vehicles and smashed a window of a car belonging to the Belgian Consulate, the Palestinian news agency WAFA reported.
Video footage also showed a member of the delegation, identified by Israeli media as Bernard Baudoux, mayor of the French town of Aulnoye-Aymeries, lying on the ground...
Messages warning of threats to the delegation reached the IDF hours before the attack, but soldiers at a military operations room failed to recognize the sender's number and ignored the report https://archive.is/qVaaz#selection-731.0-735.192
French, Belgian consuls in delegation targeted near Ramallah; Israeli army radio says forces failed to respond for 3 hours https://www.aa.com.tr/en/middle-east/palestine-urges-action-after-israeli-occupiers-attack-european-diplomats-in-west-bank/4092324
Israel is detaining international observers for one simple reason: to prevent us from reporting on its ethnic cleansing project in Palestine. https://mondoweiss.net/2026/10/im-a-journalist-israel-detained-me-for-documenting-the-olive-harvest-in-the-west-bank/
Bushra al-Taweel, 33, reported repeated cell raids, beatings and gas attacks during approximately 50 days in isolation.
The Palestinian Prisoners Club said she faces inadequate food, clothing and hygiene, alongside health problems and constant camera surveillance.
Israeli authorities extended her administrative detention by four months, prompting calls for her release and urgent international intervention. https://www.palestinechronicle.com/beatings-yellow-water-surveillance-palestinian-journalist-describes-isolation/
The Palestinian Prisoners Club said she faces inadequate food, clothing and hygiene, alongside health problems and constant camera surveillance.
Israeli authorities extended her administrative detention by four months, prompting calls for her release and urgent international intervention. https://www.palestinechronicle.com/beatings-yellow-water-surveillance-palestinian-journalist-describes-isolation/
The Israeli PM said the facts surrounding the incident, recorded in a viral clip, “remain unclear”
“Our photographer was clearly marked as Press. She was clearly beaten,” says newspaper’s executive editor
Footage of the Friday incident involving veteran war reporter Heidi Levine, shared by the newspaper, shows masked Israeli settlers beating and kicking the journalist as she lies on the ground. On the day, about 80 masked Israelis stormed the Palestinian olive harvest in Abu Falah, burning olive trees and throwing rocks at locals, witnesses told Reuters. https://www.arabnews.com/media/washington-post-denies-netanyahus-claims-on-west-bank-journalist-attack-3006853
Rubio: Trump is not ‘a supporter of what he’s seeing now on television,’ says US has asked Israel to ‘crack down’ on extremist settler violence; relatives say Levine, who has lived in Israel since the 1980s, has covered war zones for decades and never faced such an attack https://www.timesofisrael.com/no-arrests-yet-2-days-after-settlers-assault-on-washington-post-photojournalist-levine/
The body that sets the EU's political direction says companies could face 'legal, economic and reputational consequences' https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/european-council-warns-companies-not-finance-israels-e1-west-bank-settlement-construction
A heartbreaking farewell to slain Palestinian girl Misk Hazem al-Dalu, who was killed this morning after Israeli forces opened fire on tents sheltering displaced Palestinians in al-Maghazi refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip. https://www.palestinechronicle.com/child-misk-al-dalu-killed-as-israeli-gunfire-hits-gaza-displacement-tents/
Anti-Israel author says her books can no longer be sold in UK because she helps finance the banned terror group Palestine Action https://www.globalresearch.ca/rooney-uk-bookstores-scrambling-breaking-terrorism-law-selling-her-books/5944034
Vanessa Beeley, Lebanese sovereignty is trampled on by Washington and Tel Aviv with the apparent agreement of the state.
President Aoun is directed by Marco Rubio to deprive the Resistance of the means to defend the south from Zionist occupation and ethnic cleansing https://beeley.substack.com/p/lebanese-sovereignty-is-trampled Simplicius describes NATO-originated attack: Bombshell: Lithuanian Defense Minister Reveals Ukrainian Drones Used in St. Petersburg Attack Came From Polish Airspace https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/bombshell-lithuanian-defense-minister
I stood outside in line for 45 minutes yesterday to vote early, mostly Libertarian, avoiding candidates who had supported vaccine mandates, and those that support Israeli genocide, which narrowed it down a lot. Texas Early Voting Breaks County Records in Warning Sign to Republicans https://www.newsweek.com/texas-early-voting-breaks-county-records-warning-paxton-talarico-abbott-hinojosa-12592173
Caitlin Johnstone runs the numbers: Anthropic Would Kill 50 Humans To Roll Out The Next AI Model https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/anthropic-would-kill-50-humans-to
Paul Marik MD gives perspective: Exercise Before or After Eating? A simple, practical guide https://paulmarik.substack.com/p/exercise-before-or-after-eating
After he worked to bury the evidence... Fauci Diary Entry Complains Trump Pushed Lab-Leak Theory 'With No Evidence' https://www.westernjournal.com/fauci-diary-entry-complains-trump-pushed-lab-leak-theory-no-evidence/
Thousands of people reported mental health challenges — including at least two suicides and three attempted suicides — to V-safe after receiving COVID-19 vaccines during the pandemic. Multiple studies support a link between the vaccines and mental health issues, including psychosis, depression, anxiety and insomnia. https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/covid-vaccines-triggered-psychiatric-disorders-including-suicides-mental-health-issues/
Vaccine scientist Lucija Tomljenović, Ph.D., told Children’s Health Defense CEO Mary Holland that Gardasil doesn’t offer meaningful protection beyond regular cervical cancer screening and that its risks “clearly outweigh” its benefits. She also questioned evidence suggesting that the vaccine prevents cervical cancer and raised concerns about links to POTS, chronic fatigue syndrome and other conditions. https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/hpv-vaccine-merck-gardasil-does-not-prevent-cancer-scientist-propaganda/
Russian Climate Physicist, Anastassia Makarieva, Why Does It Rain? Asking Timeless Questions in Turbulent Times Has Meaning
Yet my favorite line of thinking is that when a system is at a critical point, even the smallest action can, with luck, have the greatest impact on its future. Therefore, investing most of our resources now in changing the worldview by even a tiny bit can be the most worthwhile investment for society as a whole, even if it means forgoing an unquantified improvement in my individual chances of survival in the not-so-distant future. That’s why, for now, I’m largely preparing myself psychologically for upcoming disruptions, while my knitting will have to wait a little longer.
In this positive context, let me share with you something very interesting about rain, something I bet most readers have never thought about...
..This scheme illustrates possible paths: as our global civilization becomes less centralized, it could retain very different amounts of its accumulated knowledge. The Seneca Cliff promises a bad scenario: losing it much more quickly than it has been acquired. Yet even going below the historical curve (the solid one) we may not disintegrate fully down to hunter-gatherer tribes, nor should we necessarily lose all knowledge. Even if the Y-axis is logarithmic, some knowledge that we have recently accumulated can remain.
There are two questions: What knowledge can be preserved? And what knowledge will actually be needed by a civilization that has managed to stick to the rock and avoid falling all the way down the Seneca Cliff?...
..Knowledge written down is not necessarily knowledge preserved: somebody must still understand it, use it and pass it on. Since the carrying capacity of a population is limited, decisions must continually be made, from generation to generation, about what information to retain and what to discard. There are two questions: What knowledge can be preserved? And what knowledge will actually be needed by a civilization that has managed to stick to the rock and avoid falling all the way down the Seneca Cliff?...
In a physiologically stressed population, the information that will be retained is related to easing living conditions. The following quotations are from What Can We Learn from Natural Ecosystems to Avoid a Civilization Breakdown? (2016), which I was privileged to co-author with Professors Victor Gorshkov and Peter Wilderer.
In animal populations in the course of competitive interaction the least competitive individuals are forced outside the species range where they cannot live normally (they either die or survive but do not leave progeny). Individuals of Homo sapiens forced out of the natural environment where our species came to existence did not perish but were able to spread all over the world owing to the accumulated cultural knowledge.
However, human existence outside the natural species-specific environment is associated with excessive physical exercise and emotional stress. When humans colonized high latitudes with their low biological productivity and unfavorable temperature regime they had to exert more physical efforts to obtain food and maintain optimal temperature in their homes. Ecosystem productivity in the tropical zone is about three-four times higher than the productivity in the temperate and boreal zones where the modern technological progress was born. This gives an idea of the very significant amount of overworking that Homo sapiens individuals had to experience outside their natural ecosystem. This genetically encoded dissatisfaction with the unfavorable environment determined the direction of the technological progress, of which there was no need in human populations remaining in their optimal environments in the tropics.
In other words, science is generating verifiable knowledge about the world, while society selects from what it generates what it considers useful. So far, largely, the achievements of science were judged by their ability to enhance human transformation of the biosphere because, as noted above, the untouched biosphere is an unsuitable place for most humans to live.
In an imaginable new global civilization concerned, like most of life, more with persistence than with growth, the necessary knowledge will be about how to organize ourselves and fit into the biosphere without disturbing its functioning. These priorities are diametrically opposed to those by which knowledge has been judged so far.
In animal populations in the course of competitive interaction the least competitive individuals are forced outside the species range where they cannot live normally (they either die or survive but do not leave progeny). Individuals of Homo sapiens forced out of the natural environment where our species came to existence did not perish but were able to spread all over the world owing to the accumulated cultural knowledge.
However, human existence outside the natural species-specific environment is associated with excessive physical exercise and emotional stress. When humans colonized high latitudes with their low biological productivity and unfavorable temperature regime they had to exert more physical efforts to obtain food and maintain optimal temperature in their homes. Ecosystem productivity in the tropical zone is about three-four times higher than the productivity in the temperate and boreal zones where the modern technological progress was born. This gives an idea of the very significant amount of overworking that Homo sapiens individuals had to experience outside their natural ecosystem. This genetically encoded dissatisfaction with the unfavorable environment determined the direction of the technological progress, of which there was no need in human populations remaining in their optimal environments in the tropics.
In other words, science is generating verifiable knowledge about the world, while society selects from what it generates what it considers useful. So far, largely, the achievements of science were judged by their ability to enhance human transformation of the biosphere because, as noted above, the untouched biosphere is an unsuitable place for most humans to live.
In an imaginable new global civilization concerned, like most of life, more with persistence than with growth, the necessary knowledge will be about how to organize ourselves and fit into the biosphere without disturbing its functioning. These priorities are diametrically opposed to those by which knowledge has been judged so far.
Knowledge about our environment will have to be preserved during the transition as part of the essential knowledge kit we take along to the next stage. By talking about rain, trees and soil, sharing what we know and filling the information space with these concepts, we help change these priorities and give ourselves a better chance of a less chaotic future. https://bioticregulation.substack.com/p/why-does-it-rain
Technological Relativist (took this picture of Jenny with figs)
