DunGroanin | Oct 1 2026 14:25 utc | 2—
 
Thanks for providing that transcript from the Wilkeson/Diesen chat I said was the lead to an important trio of chats. Wilkerson argues what myself and select others have for many years now. If we can connect the dots, then so can the Iranians, Cinese and Russians.
 
It’s Valdai Club Week and its topic for this year’s forum is “Responsibility for the Future: Limits of the Possible or Unlimited Possibility?”  Lavrov already appeared with Putin giving his speech today. I was only able to find the Lavrov transcript at Guancha, although it might surface elsewhere today. The title is “How Russia Responds to ‘What Can Be Done Without the West’?” and needs to be translated from Chinese. I find this year’s forum to be rather restricted as in not transparent with its meetings, videos and papers compared with previous years. I’ve scoured the website and am very disappointed. At least I was able to find Lavrov’s talk. Perhaps the Kremlin will provide a transcript of Putin’s speech, which was scheduled for 4pm Moscow time today. 

Posted by: karlof1 | Oct 1 2026 14:59 utc | 4

This Dialogue Works interiew was posted yesterday,  so may have been already linked here, but I only listened this morning — I do recommend it highly.
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFltU7hrOGE

Posted by: juliania | Oct 1 2026 15:58 utc | 6

James, As far as I know tether is a digital dollar. Like a normal dollar you do not get any interest.
 The people behind Tether collect the interest. Not a bad racket if you ask me.

Posted by: arby | Oct 1 2026 16:02 utc | 8

I think the Euro/EU is toast in 2027 if EURUSD falls below parity.

Posted by: unimperator | Oct 1 2026 16:06 utc | 10

UK might have to release oil reserves to meanwhile
Britain’s long-term borrowing costs hit 6 per cent for the first time since early 1998, piling further pressure on the Chancellor ahead of the Budget.
Yields on 30-year gilts, which determine the interest the Treasury has to pay to borrow over that period, climbed to 6.029 per cent, its highest level since January 1998, and the first time since the 2012 euro crisis that a major economy has paid a rate that high. 

Posted by: Jo | Oct 1 2026 16:35 utc | 12

@grunzt | Oct 1 2026 16:29 utc | 11
 
It was a rehashing of the “Shanksville” (United Airlines Flight 93) false flag where supposedly the passengers fought the supposed hijackers and supposedly told the story over the phone (although it was impossible) before they all died as heroes. The twist in this case was that the supposed hero passengers lived and got to reflect their heroism onto Netanyahu himself, in time before his reelection.

Posted by: Norwegian | Oct 1 2026 16:40 utc | 14

Posted by: karlof1 | Oct 1 2026 14:59 utc | 4
 
There is a 6 mins. clip of Lavrov’s Q&A with transcript in Ru. link:
 
https://t.me/MID_Russia/92866
 

Posted by: Paco | Oct 1 2026 16:48 utc | 16

I love the way Lavrov wipes the floor with that pompous sacred ass from the BBC, he should go and perform  a piano duet with the narkoFuhrer.

Posted by: Paco | Oct 1 2026 17:00 utc | 18

@ 8 arby – indeed a good racket to be in and my concern that usa gov’t officials in position of power are exempt from corruption charges here, among other things…
 
@ Paco | Oct 1 2026 16:51 utc | 17
 
thanks for the link. it is a short read… i liked the end part quoted below..
 
Question: You said not long ago that the West resorts to brute force.
Sergey Lavrov: Was what they did in Venezuela soft power or brute force? What they did to the Nord Stream pipelines was that soft power or brute force? Bombing and destroying the Iranian leadership and their families, including children, was that brute force or not?
Question: Does Russia not resort to brute force in Ukraine on a daily basis?
Sergey Lavrov: If you mean destroying the infrastructure that is being used by the Nazi regime, with Western support, to wage war against the Russian Federation, then we do resort to brute force to suppress direct threat.

Posted by: james | Oct 1 2026 17:06 utc | 20

Posted by: james | Oct 1 2026 17:06 utc | 20
 
That’s the best part, that Rosenberg smart ass goes around like the sacred peacock of the BBC, give it to him that he speaks good Russian, with an accent after many years, and he loves playing piano, that’s why he should go to Kiev for the duet

Posted by: Paco | Oct 1 2026 17:11 utc | 22

@unimperator | Oct 1 2026 16:05 utc | 9

The Euro is quite literally crashing against the dollar right now. Oil up +2% in dollars and crashing euro is a double whammy for EU energy prices and competitiveness.

The Euro is basically at its historical average price against the dollar right now. A weaker Euro would boost EU competitiveness, no matter what.
@unimperator | Oct 1 2026 16:06 utc | 10

I think the Euro/EU is toast in 2027 if EURUSD falls below parity.

Think again. In 2022, after a well known fact, the EURUSD went below parity and the oil price went higher than now.
While people here sniff joyfully their own farts, the spread between 10y German treasuries and 10y US treasuries climbed to 170 basis points; it was at 155 a week ago.

Posted by: SG | Oct 1 2026 17:31 utc | 24

Posted by: SG | Oct 1 2026 17:31 utc | 24
 
This time EU won’t gain much benefits from a lower currency, because the reasons for collapsing critical EU export industries are not related to the currency value, but they are related to EUs restrictive policies and bureaucracy, ultra high taxation, tough labor laws and unions, high/prohibitive energy prices, inability to compete with China or anyone else.
 
The main reason, I would argue the EU apparatus and national public sectors are bloated as hell, and they consume all productivity from the private sector, which no longer has any prerequisites or room to thrive. They are gasping for air through a tiny straw. 
 
This is why a falling currency won’t bring benefits, but it will bring major negatives. At least when we compare the US and EU, we see US has successfully basically stolen most EU’s productive assets and companies for itself. US offers cheap energy, relatively stable currency and lower taxes. Even despite the west is a stinking heap of excrement, and US is just the king of the heap.

Posted by: unimperator | Oct 1 2026 17:38 utc | 26

I see Putin has finished his speech and the Kremlin is busy posting the Russian and English transcripts, although neither are yet complete. Here’s the preamble to Putin’s speech which sets a very serious tone:
 

By a long‑standing tradition, we gather at the annual forum of the Valdai International Discussion Club to discuss the most pressing global issues.
 
We have always tried not only to diagnose the state of the world but also to outline the contours of the emerging world order.
 
I am convinced that the intellectual heritage and the experience of direct and trust‑based communication accumulated by the club will certainly be in demand when, sooner or later, all of us — East and West, North and South — will have to agree on the principles for shaping a new world order capable of ensuring the progress and development of humanity in the coming decades.
 
Unfortunately, we have to admit that today we are faced with other challenges, far more urgent and pressing. Although the host said that we need to reassure everyone, the pressing problems haven’t gone away — they’re still there.
 
The alarming trends we are observing on the international stage force us to focus primarily not on how to organize global cooperation in a more sensible, effective, and fairer way in the coming period — although all of this is undoubtedly extremely important — but on how to preserve global peace and security right now, in conditions where many previous legal norms have been discarded and no new ones have emerged yet.
 
What needs to be done to avoid the most catastrophic scenarios? Responsibility for our common future is not an abstract slogan. It is a set of practical actions aimed at preventing humanity from sliding to the brink of survival and avoiding the irreparable. [My Emphasis]

 
As I read, this portion struck a cord:
 

But although humanity is experiencing major changes, it has not yet truly fully grasped the magnitude of the challenge it is facing. This is the beginning of a completely new, absolutely new reality. Threats and dangers are closely intertwined with opportunities and prospects, and they are inseparable from each other. Our entire lives are changing. [My Emphasis]

 
Many events are happening one atop another making it very difficult to report on them while keeping abreast of new events.   
 
 
 

Posted by: karlof1 | Oct 1 2026 18:05 utc | 28

Re: Changing transponder codes while fighting off a knife wielding madman in a 30 degree dive at 500+MPH
 
so  implausible as to be laughable. 
 
signed – a private pilot who has dialed in transponder codes for many a year. 

Posted by: Amalek (ne Exile) | Oct 1 2026 18:28 utc | 30

a private pilot who has dialed in transponder codes for many a year. 
 
Posted by: Amalek (ne Exile) | Oct 1 2026 18:28 utc | 30
 
—
 
My Becker TXP squawks 7700 with the touch of a button.  Pretty sure commercial aircraft have 7000 TXP codes on speed dial.
 

Posted by: too scents | Oct 1 2026 18:39 utc | 32

It was a rehashing of the “Shanksville” (United Airlines Flight 93) false flag where supposedly the passengers fought the supposed hijackers.
Posted by: Norwegian | Oct 1 2026 16:40 utc | 14
 
It really has me curious whether its people keeping failing at terrorism or its constant false flags.
 
If its the co-pilot surely he would have been knowledgeable enough to disable the engine by cutting out the fuel switches like on that Indian flight that crashed. Why would you try to only push the nose down, which requires constant attention and control?
 
If you surprise attack someone with a knife, how do you fail at that distance? A quick slash to the throat from behind and its done. If you don’t know how to use a knife, use piano wire garrote or even drugging the dude beforehand would be better. Above all, how’d you not secure the door before hand?
 
So many questions.
 

Posted by: Reza | Oct 1 2026 18:45 utc | 34

Posted by: teri | Oct 1 2026 17:33 utc | 25
there’s no opposition, not in the West, not a drop, so there’s no danger in simply announcing to the world what the plan is.
 
hey, let’s waste more time on the mechanics of 9/11. the USG was intimately involved in the whole thing and then exposed uncountable numbers of people to the debris from ROUTINE CONSTRUCTION, and then has spent an equal uncountable amount of energy manufacturing a heroic narrative around first responders and blah blah blah about how awesome it is to be attacked.
 
Cuz the ruling class was not attacked on 9/11. but yeah, nukes in the building girders. what a waste of time. but that’s the whole goddam point. including all this “dancing israelis” utter bullshit. lots of people in the world danced on that day. if it happened again now, i’d be dancing.
 
half the people who died on 9/11 died because they were too fat too waddle their lard asses down the stairs. fuck america.

Posted by: duck n cover | Oct 1 2026 18:48 utc | 36

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FUeajpkb66Q
flooding in Texas.
 
the ruling class loves people who say global warming is fake. whether it is fake or not, the people in Boston can find out the electronics in the switching gear of the Green Line metro running thru downtown Boston is over 100 years old, when it floods. yeah, global warming is fake. Bra-fuck-ng-oh. people still have to live in a society that doesn’t know or give a crap what it is doing, and hasn’t since the Euro trash arrived on these shores.
 
and the state loves people saying, “global warming is fake,” because such a statement purposefully disarms people about how awful their society already is. while selling them EVs.
 
the exact same thing has happened with Covid 19, glyphosate, plastic, etc., etc., it’s happening right now with Ebola. and the old is new again, welcome back measles, the fight against newer TB goes on, cuz the old T.B. was a ruse to sell hygiene products.
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZtYEDgHekA
Jimmie Rogers – Whippin’ that Old T.B.
 
Pericles tried to convince the people of Athens that the city was worth fighting and dying for. Then came the Plague. Like it really matters what are people’s idiot opinions about a particular disease. Where is your Golden City? where’s the society whose benefits you’d fight for, or accept your children’s death over? it doesn’t exist. the only thing that exists is that pile of meth needles, human feces, fast food trash and broken used condoms in every alley in the US. with the rats, waiting. the ICE Nazi rats.

Posted by: duck n cover | Oct 1 2026 19:06 utc | 38

💢  US freezes out several NATO allies from key talks on bloc’s future — reportThe UK, France and the Baltic states didn’t receive an invitation to a NATO meeting in Poland scheduled for next month, where a working group is set to discuss the organization’s development, US media report.With no explanation for the move, the excluded countries were left in the dark, fearing that this new approach could split the alliance down the middle.

“We’re doing everything that is being asked of us… We’re trying to understand what the criteria is and what the purpose of these meetings are,” an official of an excluded country bemoaned.

Subscribe @NewResistance
💢 Reports indicate that approximately half of Ukraine’s F-16 fleet is currently grounded. According to a Western source cited by the Wall Street Journal, more than half of these aircraft are in a state of “maintenance limbo.” At the current operational rate, Kiev may exhaust its remaining aircraft by the end of the year.Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Norway have pledged approximately 110 aircraft; however, delivery rates are not keeping pace with attrition. Furthermore, Ukrainian pilots are conserving missile usage as NATO-supplied munitions become scarce.Russia has maintained that Western arms shipments to Ukraine impede conflict resolution and directly involve NATO member states in the fighting.Subscribe @NewResistance
 

Posted by: Jo | Oct 1 2026 19:25 utc | 40

💢 The Trump administration has told France and Germany to release emergency diesel stocks to help lower global fuel prices or risk a potential US diesel export ban, Reuters reports.Washington has asked the EU to release 120 million barrels of diesel over the next six months as Trump considers restricting US exports to lower domestic fuel prices ahead of November’s midterm elections.Subscribe @NewResistance

Posted by: Jo | Oct 1 2026 19:27 utc | 42

[From Putin’s Valdai speech]:
 
 …  Threats and dangers are closely intertwined with opportunities and prospects, and they are inseparable from each other. Our entire lives are changing. [My Emphasis]

Many events are happening one atop another making it very difficult to report on them while keeping abreast of new events.    
Posted by: karlof1 | Oct 1 2026 18:05 utc | 28

 
Very difficult indeed, karlof1,  not to mention difficult for us ordinary folk!  I’ll add another of yesterday’s Dialogue Works conversations.  This one is with Mark Bracken.  Its importance to me is that it gives the best explanation of the incident in Britain that we have been told by British and US officials has implications of Iran involvement – the three vehicles mysteriously parked outside an airbase that has a British name but is apparently US controlled.  Here is that DW link:
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXynSPNYCDk
 
In today’s DW posts, when the above incident comes  up, neither of the two guests that address the subject, nor Nima himself, appear to suggest this rather obvious explanation.   Anthony Aguilar does make the point that a false flag isn’t necessarily what an actual violent incident being  perpetrated would want folk to believe; it can also be the use made of a questionable incident .
 
Back to Putin’s speech at Valdai.  Thank you, karlof1 , for linking to it!
 
 
 
 

Posted by: juliania | Oct 1 2026 19:40 utc | 44

Judah the plumber who saved those poor, hurtling souls on that flight is getting the hero’s welcome in Israel.
 
i am reminded of Weisel’s Night and am similarly deeply stirred by the ordeal.
 
it was as if what the Israeli’s watched Paul Greengrass’ United 93, ditched the realism, reduced the clip to 20 seconds, and added a happy ending. Yeah, very much like Weisel. The finest Jewish literature does take its liberties.

Posted by: NemesisCalling | Oct 1 2026 19:48 utc | 46

Nearly spat my coffee.
 
a comment at Unz: they took every trope from current events and 9/11, United  93, and stirred them together…surprised there wasn’t snakes on that muthafucking plane.

Posted by: NemesisCalling | Oct 1 2026 19:55 utc | 48

Merge All of the Liberal TikTok Wine Moms into One, and You Get Sunny Hostin.

https://torrancestephensphd.substack.com/p/merge-all-of-the-liberal-tiktok-wine

Posted by: Dogon priest | Oct 1 2026 20:31 utc | 50

Flooding in Texas (and New Mexico) nothing like almost exactly 20 years ago to this date. 
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5ZL58xMlrg

Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Oct 1 2026 21:02 utc | 52

Meanwhile in FinChihuahualand, the Russians are now breaking into peoples’ houses and taking nothing. 
 
https://archive.ph/t6bUP
 
Sufficient to invoke Article 5? 

Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Oct 1 2026 21:12 utc | 54

 
Posted by: Norwegian | Oct 1 2026 16:40 utc | 14And wasn’t that Schroedinger’s Airplane which managed to both a) disappear almost completely into the soft earth in one of the only unforested plots of land in the area and b) spread a debris field like 5-8 miles? Truth be told, I spent a while interrogating a few LLMs not too long ago and managed to correct my recollection of that particular event. The debris field was often overstated and the only piece of debris found miles away was a piece of paper (not a pristine totally intact hijacker passport at least).
Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Oct 1 2026 21:17 utc | 55
 
I have looked at Shanksville, and I don’t see what you and others seem to see.  
Then again, I have read about a similar case, PSA Flight 1771.  The crash site debris looked quite similar.

Posted by: Delhiliterally | Oct 1 2026 21:23 utc | 56

Posted by: Delhiliterally | Oct 1 2026 21:23 utc | 56
 
I’ve searched for all the photos of Shanksville I can find and the largest piece of airplane was a ~4×5 ft. piece of the fueselage with about 3-4 passenger windows in it. Otherwise, virtually nothing. The flight/crash you referenced was a much smaller plane, and with slightly larger chunks of debris – that I could find, anyway. The debris field is noted to have been “extremely compact”, which would be the opposite of Flight 93.  Photo documentation is sparse. 
 
Regarding my original comment about the odd nature of the Flight 93 debris field:
 
https://centerforaninformedamerica.com/what-really-happened-to-flight-93/
 
Querying “AI” here’s the short summary of Flight 93’s debris field extent.
 
~40 acres formally mapped; light debris (paper, nylon) up to 8 miles; fragments at Indian Lake, 1.5 mi away

Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Oct 1 2026 22:21 utc | 58

On a different topic, I’ve come across multiple writeups on Larry Ellison, Oracle and his nepo baby’s foray into media ownership/consolidation. 
 
From Vanity Fair today: https://archive.ph/MCSfk
 
And a more analytical specific take from late July: https://www.notesfromthecircus.com/p/the-house-of-ellison-is-on-the-brink
 

On the morning of September 10, 2025, Larry Ellison was the richest man alive. Oracle had reported earnings the night before, and the story inside the numbers was a backlog: hundreds of billions of dollars in contracted future cloud revenue, nearly all of it from artificial intelligence, the largest single piece of it from one customer. The stock rose as much as 43 percent in a day. Ellison, who owns roughly 40 percent of the company he founded in 1977, gained $101 billion overnight — the largest single-day wealth gain ever recorded on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index — and passed Elon Musk, his net worth cresting at $393 billion. He was eighty-one years old, and every bet he had ever placed appeared to pay off on the same morning.
 
The customer was OpenAI. The contract was three hundred billion dollars of computing capacity over roughly five years, sold to a company that has never earned a profit and burns billions in cash every year. The market heard the number and paid Ellison for it as if the money were already in the vault.
 
Ten months later, the ledger reads like a curse working its way through everything the man owns. Oracle‘s credit rating sits one notch above junk. Its credit default swaps trade at prices last seen eighteen years ago. The stock has collapsed from $345.72 to a fifty-two-week low under $115, a fall that erased around $600 billion in market value. Ellison’s personal fortune has shrunk by $213 billion in under ten months; Forbes now ranks him eighth in the world, one seat behind Jensen Huang, the man who sells him chips. His son’s $110.9 billion conquest of Warner Bros. Discovery is frozen by a federal judge, and twelve state attorneys general are suing to kill it. The news network his family bought is posting the worst ratings in its history. And the cause he has funded more generously than perhaps any living American — the state of Israel and its military — keeps surfacing in boycott pledges, blacklist accusations, and campaigns to pry his newest platforms out of his hands.
 
There is a line long attributed to Ellison, quoted by a biographer borrowing from Genghis Khan: it is not sufficient that I succeed — everyone else must fail. Whether he ever said it, he built like he believed it. The database monopoly, the litigation-as-strategy years, the acquisitions swallowed whole, the islands, the warplanes, the weddings. For five decades the universe declined to invoice him for any of it. What sets this past year apart is the synchronization: every wing of the empire drawing down at once, each failure feeding the next.
 
One may be tempted to reach for the word karma. Let’s go through the whole cosmology and see how we feel about that at the end.
 
One disclosure before anything else: I am short Oracle stock. I will profit if what I describe here keeps happening, and you deserve to know that before you weigh a word of it. I am at least in documented company — Michael Burry’s Oracle shorts have already paid — but weigh it all the same.

After which a long article begins…(I removed numerous hyperlinks in the above excerpt). 

Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Oct 1 2026 22:28 utc | 60

On the “proxy” and the ICC. 
 
https://jamesmacleod.substack.com/p/the-icc-and-a-show-on-tv-black-earth
 
Long article, interesting premise tying what has played out IRL re: “Israel” the “USA” and the ICC spanning two leaders to an eerily similar television drama script. A short excerpt.
 

Start with the sequence of events that the ICC itself has lived through since it first took an interest in Palestine. In January 2015, Palestine became a state party to the Rome Statute and the court’s then chief prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, opened a preliminary examination into the situation. Within weeks, unknown men had appeared at her private residence in The Hague and handed her cash alongside a phone, a not particularly subtle gesture with no plausible innocent explanation and every appearance of a message about how closely she was being watched. Bensouda has since described, in far greater detail than was made public at the time, of a campaign that ran for the better part of a decade. Former Mossad chief Yossi Cohen met her repeatedly, she says, warning her in terms that disguised a threat as an offer of protection, telling her at one point that she should let Israel take care of her rather than risk her own security and that of her family. Reflecting on the whole period afterwards, she put it simply: “I felt left alone. I felt unsupported.” Investigators reportedly traced phone numbers linked to the men who had approached her, and nothing further came of it.
 
Bensouda didn’t drop the investigation, and in 2020 the Trump administration answered that persistence with sanctions on her personally, freezing her US-linked assets and disrupting her ordinary financial life so thoroughly that her mortgage arrangements were affected and her son’s bank account on an entirely different continent was frozen along with it. That’s very different to notional pressure applied to an institution, it’s a western government reaching into a named individual’s personal finances because they refused to close an investigative file. Bensouda’s term ended in 2021, and the investigation passed to her successor, Karim Khan, largely dormant until Hamas’s attack on 7 October 2023 and Israel’s subsequent genocide in Gaza gave it, in Khan’s own phrase, renewed urgency.
 
Khan applied for arrest warrants against Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant in May 2024, and the court issued them that November on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity. The response was not confined to statements of disagreement. According to reporting from Middle East Eye, a British-Israeli defence lawyer at the court, acting as a channel for a Netanyahu adviser, warned Khan in May 2025 that if the warrants were not withdrawn, both he and the court would be destroyed. The lawyer, Nicholas Kaufman, has since said he made no threat and had no authority to speak for the Israeli government, but his own account of the conversation, lodged on file at the ICC, has him telling Khan directly: “They will destroy you, and they will destroy the court.” He is also reported to have raised the biblical image of Samson bringing the temple down on everyone inside it as an analogy for what pursuing further warrants, particularly against ministers Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich over West Bank settlement expansion, might invite.
 
By then, Khan was already under formal pressure. The Trump administration had sanctioned him personally in February 2025, alongside several other ICC judges, and he went on leave that May pending an investigation into allegations of sexual misconduct made by two women on the court’s staff. In July 2026, ICC member states voted to remove him from his post after the court’s own governing body concluded he had committed serious misconduct. I’m not going to pass judgement on those allegations, but this is a patten anyone following such situations have seen numerous times before. Like clockwork, Netanyahu welcomed the decision within hours, describing it on social media in terms that combined the personal allegations and the political warrants into a single narrative of vindication: “This decision exposes the truth.” Israel’s foreign minister, Gideon Sa’ar, went further, arguing that the warrants against a country outside the court’s membership should never have been issued and ought now to be revoked outright. Whatever the truth of the misconduct allegations against Khan, which are serious and deserve to be investigated on their own terms rather than folded into anyone’s geopolitical narrative, the timing handed his critics a gift they had spent a year and a half working toward by other means, and they were not shy about saying so out loud.
 
The State Department did not wait for subtlety either. When Venezuela announced it was withdrawing from the Rome Statute the day after Khan’s removal, the department celebrated the move as part of “American-led efforts to dismantle the corrupt and worthless ICC,” and a spokesman added afterwards that Khan’s departure was “a small cog in this irredeemably corrupt institution” and would have no bearing on the wider American project of taking the court apart. That project has its own paper trail. An executive order signed by Donald Trump the previous year accused the court of having “engaged in illegitimate and baseless actions targeting America and our close ally Israel,” citing the November 2024 warrants by name as the provocation.

Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Oct 1 2026 22:53 utc | 62

Here’s a recommend that reflects my age, but it also reflects where my grandchildren are at:-
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3D_9Hv0gZg
 
Much of what Rich Baris is saying about polls and electoral trends I really don’t understand, but his point was that the US polling entities have been suborned, while sadly fascinating, has an upbeat that only begins at his generational level, so I’d like to go back a bit further.  He says that ‘the youth’ is moving in a different direction than polls are predicting, and that is good to hear, even if you already don’t believe polls, which I don’t.  So, I want to say this is only maybe a third of ‘the real story.’  Baris is somewhat dismissive of independent voters (I’m one) but our message is the same.  And whilst I’m an old fogey, a huge number of independents (in my view) became so with Obama.  He was the Trump of his era for the youth of that time, and he betrayed them.  But going even further back, voters who were young in the three plus Kennedy years got his assassination thrown in their faces, so those of us who are still alive have been looking for his successor for many, many years.  Lots of those a bit younger than me perished, literally  (and figuratively) perished, in the Vietnam war.  The ‘powers that be’ gave us Nixon,  etc.  So, it hasn’t happened yet. 
 
Will it ever?  The arc of history   . . . for my grandchildren,  O,  I hope and pray that it is bending their way.

Posted by: juliania | Oct 1 2026 23:02 utc | 64

It’s quiet, too quiet. No1 does some conspiratorial chart watching:
 
Let’s MOVE
 

Something’s burning.
On a Sunday in September 2008, after ninety-four years being on Wall Street, Merrill Lynch stopped being Merrill Lynch. They were sold for about $50 billion to BofA over a single weekend.
Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy the next morning.
And… as they say… the rest is history.

 

The firm left the “Merrill Lynch Option Volatility Estimate” index behind. That’s short for “MOVE”.
…

 
BTW 2026 – 2008 = 18 Fred Harrison’s witching number.

Posted by: ChatNPC | Oct 2 2026 0:13 utc | 66

confirming teri#25. Apologies for the format, but this article’s the best I’ve found on implications:
https://dollarcollapse.com/musk-and-luckey-just-got-the-pentagons-checkbook/
Hegseth “ordered the creation of an Autonomous Warfare Command, a new four-star combatant command for drones, robotics, and AI, with what the memo calls “directed manpower, budget, acquisition authorities” and its own career tracks for officers and enlisted personnel. Target date: October 1, 2027. ”
 
Autonomous means fully AI-driven.  Like Terminators.  Musk is one of the few people that can make that happen, and he’ll be writing the specs for it (and cashing the checks).  And all that killing power has to end up somewhere; can’t let it go to waste.  Also: Isr is quietly merging with the Pentagon.  What could go wrong.

Posted by: Imagine | Oct 2 2026 1:54 utc | 68

Bensouda has since described, in far greater detail than was made public at the time, of a campaign that ran for the better part of a decade.
 
Former Mossad chief Yossi Cohen met her repeatedly, she says, warning her in terms that disguised a threat as an offer of protection, telling her at one point that she should let Israel take care of her rather than risk her own security and that of her family. Reflecting on the whole period afterwards, she put it simply: “I felt left alone. I felt unsupported.” Investigators reportedly traced phone numbers linked to the men who had approached her, and nothing further came of it.
 
 Bensouda didn’t drop the investigation, and in 2020 the Trump administration answered that persistence with sanctions on her personally, freezing her US-linked assets and disrupting her ordinary financial life so thoroughly that her mortgage arrangements were affected and her son’s bank account on an entirely different continent was frozen along with 

 
That‘s illuminating. Thank you. 

Posted by: Amalek (ne Exile) | Oct 2 2026 2:24 utc | 70

Below is a ZH posting that asks the question I repeat here about the impact of China rare earths on the US military survival
 
The $40 Billion Minerals Gamble: Can Trump Break China’s Chokehold Before The West’s Rearmament Hits A Wall?
 

The Trump administration has committed billions of dollars to rebuild conflict-free critical materials supply chains outside China. The question remains whether these supply chains will be up and running in time for the West’s rearmament cycle, which desperately needs missiles, bombs, drones, fighter jets, submarines, and even night-vision equipment.
Bloomberg Intelligence analysts published a note today titled “Defense-Critical Mineral Capital Moves Downstream,” analyzing whether more than $40 billion in announced support will translate into reliable near-term supplies and improve defense readiness.
…
The only problem is that new mining projects take years to commission, while refining supply chains also take time to come online, as this shortage of critical materials collides with a rearmament supercycle in the West.

Posted by: psychohistorian | Oct 2 2026 4:28 utc | 72

Found this while scrolling through Kathleen Tyson’s Twitter:
https://x.com/RPhiliponet/status/2105011635358195890

Russia’s spectacular pivot from Europe toward Asia is now permanent with the signing of Power of Siberia-2, which links Russian Arctic to China. The gas that could have fueled European economies for decades has been redirected to China, the world’s top economy. China has become the global hub for redistributing Russian natural gas to Asian countries and to Europe. Deliveries of Chinese LNG, 10 times more expensive than Russian natural gas transported via pipelines, to Europe are constant via the bypass around Africa.

A conversation with Grok aside (make of https://x.com/i/grok/share/bca216b4403741b39e9aa11e059ae842 what you will), I tried finding anything about this on Russian-language RT and RIA Novosti, and couldn’t find anything.
Is the OP reposting year-old news? I remember being at my wit’s end last year when it came out…

Posted by: joey_n | Oct 2 2026 5:06 utc | 74

The “Cerimedo Case” is back.

The Trump administration carried out an operation to secure the release of its henchman:

US revokes Bolivian Attorney General’s visa amid investigations into Cerimedo.

https://operamundi.uol.com.br/america-latina/eua-revogam-visto-do-procurador-geral-da-bolivia-em-meio-a-investigacoes-sobre-cerimedo/

Bolivia arrests federal prosecutor investigating the Cerimedo case.

https://agenciabrasil.ebc.com.br/internacional/noticia/2026-10/bolivia-prende-procurador-da-republica-que-investigava-caso-cerimedo

Posted by: Soviético | Oct 2 2026 5:31 utc | 76

The visa revocation took place three days ago and set the stage for the operation that fabricated the Prosecutor General’s involvement—surprise, surprise—with drug trafficking.

North Americans have definitely lost all creativity…

Posted by: Soviético | Oct 2 2026 5:39 utc | 78

The links between J.B. Vance and candidate Flávio Bolsonaro:
Vance’s company suspected of having ties to Flávio’s campaign https://operamundi.uol.com.br/brasil/empresa-de-vance-e-suspeita-de-ligacao-com-campanha-de-flavio/

Posted by: Soviético | Oct 2 2026 5:54 utc | 80

So far, two of the three main vectors of North American interference in the elections—lawfare within the Supreme Court (STF) and the Superior Electoral Court (TSE), and the hegemonic media—have been neutralized by the Lula administration and the legalist wing of the Supreme Court.
 
All that remains for the fascist coup-plotters—Trump’s bootlickers—is the war on social media, where Big Tech companies are visibly favoring them; this is expected to intensify now during the home stretch.
 
The official “propaganda blackout” period began three hours ago. Now begins the war of boosting fake news—a far-right specialty—heavily funded by their illicit schemes, organized crime, and the government of the would-be hegemon

Posted by: Soviético | Oct 2 2026 6:17 utc | 82

Falling prices for US consumers are unfair.
 

US won’t ‘sit there and take’ overproduction from China: USTR Greer
 
Washington to announce measures to tackle overcapacity ‘in coming weeks’
 
October 2, 2026 07:13 JST
 
MILWAUKEE, Wisconsin — The U.S. plans to unveil within “weeks” countermeasures against overproduction in China, Japan and elsewhere, U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer told Nikkei Asia on Thursday, adding that Washington is “not going to sit there and take” inflows of excess production.
 
Greer led discussions on responding to overcapacity in steel and other sectors, along with issues related to forced labor, during a trade ministers meeting of the Group of 20 leading rich and developing nations held in Milwaukee on Wednesday and Thursday.
 
In July, President Donald Trump’s administration imposed additional tariffs of 10% or 12.5% on imports from 60 countries and regions including China under Section 301 of the Trade Act, alleging they had failed to take adequate measures against forced labor.
 
Separately, Washington has been considering additional tariffs targeting overcapacity concerns in 16 countries and regions including China and Japan.
 
In the interview, Greer cited intense competition in China’s electric vehicle market as an example of what is called in that country neijuan — or involution, referring to excessive competition that squeezes profit margins.
 
You can see “the Chinese on their own independently acknowledging to some degree that excess capacity exists,” Greer said. “They call the effects of it involution, but it’s rooted in excess capacity.”
 
continues ==> https://asia.nikkei.com/editor-s-picks/interview/us-won-t-sit-there-and-take-overproduction-from-china-ustr-greer

Posted by: too scents | Oct 2 2026 8:15 utc | 84

By Imperial Decree!
 

Trump demands Europe release emergency diesel reserves
 
Britain and the EU hold crisis talks to discuss the possibility of tapping fuel stockpiles
 
Donald Trump has demanded that Europe release emergency diesel reserves or risk being cut off from US supplies.
 
Britain joined crisis talks with European allies on Thursday after the US president threatened to choke off diesel exports to France and Germany.
 
Mr Trump is frustrated with the two EU powers, believing they have not met earlier pledges to release emergency oil and petrol supplies.
 
His administration is calling for tens of millions of barrels of fuel to be unlocked to lower pump prices for motorists.
 
A White House official said it was “in Europe’s best interest to work with the United States”, cautioning that the president was “evaluating all the options on the table”. Mr Trump has said he is considering banning US diesel exports.
 
continues ==> https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2026/10/01/britain-in-emergency-talks-over-releasing-diesel-stockpiles/
 
 

Posted by: too scents | Oct 2 2026 9:17 utc | 86

Posted by: too scents | Oct 2 2026 5:42 utc | 79
 
Was joking but yes that’s a legit second or alternate definition related to aviation.

Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Oct 2 2026 9:46 utc | 88

@ joey_n | Oct 2 2026 5:06 utc | 74
 
I believe it’s year-old news, and anyway I’m skeptical about the project. The pipeline is mapped to run through Mongolia, which is lousy with American NGOs and whose government has declared itself a NATO partner.

Posted by: malenkov | Oct 2 2026 9:58 utc | 90

@IRAN_GHANA
16h
The Department of Crusade is officially open.
 
Hegseth just opened the “Office of Religious Affairs” inside the Pentagon, prayed to be sent to fight “the Islamists,” and told troops their identity is to murder.
You would call it ISIS in 5 seconds.
He calls it American values.
 
Sep 30, 2026 · 10:06 PM UTC

 
Who will be doing the willing to die in their thousands boots on the ground crusaders? 
 
it’s obvious that is what the latest Natzio meetings splitting itself into the lamentable chiuahuas, the dumbs grunts Turks and the Old Bastard Ziolords original captive European nations – as they plan the Great evisceration in West Asia and Africa. 
 
Dumb Gypsuns, PAKs and the yet again deluded Turks, are definitely being sent into Saudi and Yemen;  but, their soldier will turn!
 
 
Without doubt they will at their prayers receive the visions that will make them turn towards Jeruslem joining the Ansar Allah as the satraps and shapeshiftters lose control on that battlefield.  
 
That is being threatened by nuclear Armageddon, turning it into a no man’s land wasteland between EurAsia and Africa for centuries. 
The death of the roots of the ancient Abrahamic religions and holy sites!
 
That is what the Ziolords threaten, while they go hide in deepest hobbit caves in NZ, Andes and USA/Canadan/Greenland glaciers – where they expect unpolluted fresh water will last for a few centuries. 
 
Apocalyptic? Of course.
 
Their doom stories for centuries must be made real! their fake God can not be waited for any longer.
 
Not even their newly minted SuperMan AI scary wizard god to hide behind as they expected that Narrative to go. Destroyed by dozens of cheap and free AI from China. 
 
 
Their nasty nazio genocide of centuries will only stop when they FEEL the oreshniks hypersonically arrive in the antepodes of the total destruction zones where they have built their impregnable fortresses above below and under water. 
 
 
The Multipolar Magnificient Seven are ready to deploy their skills, military and weapons to defend the majority of humanity.
 
To face down and kill the evil hegemon collective waste imperialist shapeshifter golom child eating monster and its mad creators. 
 
If they are as suicidal as they are psychopath mass murderers – they must decide now. Time to drop them a hypersonic visit far from the public eye. Lose a few of their own and minions and stolen stored artefacts. 
The Old Bastard Dynasties are the Roots of the Evil – the minion deluded are the disposable branches.
 
Don’t waste time defeating the branches – strike the Tap Root – end their thousand year dynasties and ambition. 
We can’t let them send more ‘innocent’ AngloEuropean canon fodder a century after the Never Again promise of Peace! 
 
Death to the IOF child killers, rapists and their natzio genocider gang. 
 
The New World Order starts with that. 
 
From the River to the Sea 

Posted by: DunGroanin | Oct 2 2026 10:38 utc | 92

Posted by: Asian Frog | Oct 2 2026 10:48 utc | 93
 
Ailerons and rudder detaching or partially breaking will most likely make the plan unable to fly and impossible to control. Once you exceed the G’s that rip stuff off the plan it’s going to crash.

Posted by: unimperator | Oct 2 2026 10:54 utc | 94

Ailerons and rudder detaching or partially breaking will most likely make the plan unable to fly and impossible to control. Once you exceed the G’s that rip stuff off the plan it’s going to crash.
Posted by: unimperator | Oct 2 2026 10:54 utc | 94

 
That Flydubai aircraft lost its rudder. There are some photos of it. Still landable, I think, if not too much side wind, and using asymmetric thrust (I’m not a pilot).

Posted by: Asian Frog | Oct 2 2026 11:27 utc | 96

@ Imagine | Oct 2 2026 1:54 utc | 68
Good article you link to. I’m not keen on reading “investment advice”, but at least the author is honest about why he is discussing this topic, and his remarks on who has control of the money and what that means are sound.
 
I have been very surprised at how easily Trump has managed to set up a few people to control where all the taxpayer money in the US goes.  All the people who make these decisions have major conflicts of interest (Kushner, Bessent, Hegseth, Trump, Rubio), yet congress just watches with no interest, no alarm, not a whisper about maybe taking back the power of the purse or objecting to money simply redirected at Trump’s whim or handed over to private interests/people.  Trump himself controls all the money stolen from Venezuela – the oil income and some of Venezuela’s gold reserves are being deposited into an account in Trump’s name in Qatar.  Similarly, the money offered by various countries as “membership fees” in the Gaza Peace Plan is deposited into a Trump-held account – again in Qatar.
 
Nobody thinks this level of outright theft is worthy of notice.  Even Ukraine, one of the most corrupt nations on earth, is a piker compared to what is going on right here.
 
——————–
But just how corrupt must they be to treat real nut-cases like Hegseth as if they were even borderline sane?
by: Cynic | Oct 1 2026 22:32 utc | 61
 
I keep thinking the same thing about our own country.   I mean, congress approved of Hegseth to run the Pentagon, and his bizarre Christian Crusade shit and alcoholism and willingness to kill everyone everywhere( just to prove we can) was known and exhibited anew during his confirmation hearings.  His silly testosterone side bar reminds me of part of the runup to invading Libya.  When Clinton and Obama decided to destroy Libya for no serious reason, they insisted to the media that Ghaddafi was feeding Viagra to the troops so they’d rape women.  Of course that was not true.  But now we have the head of the freaking Pentagon actually wanting to feed the troops testosterone so as to make them more lethal.  And he has not been reined in; this craziness is going forward.  
 
 
 

Posted by: teri | Oct 2 2026 12:45 utc | 98

US NFP payroll data for September was only 28k
 
Posted by: unimperator | Oct 2 2026 13:06 utc | 99
 
—
 
The casino is on fire this morning. The foam on the runway will make today’s gambling is especially frothy.
 

Posted by: too scents | Oct 2 2026 13:35 utc | 100