Source: The American Conservative
by James P Pinkerton
“The Anglo leader looked across the globe and saw a Muslim nation, which had already been stirring things up, potentially threatening a vital waterway. At the same time, Israel had its own beef against that country, and was pushing for a joint first-strike. So together, the two governments launched a military attack. But things did not go well. Casualties were low, but the political blowback was shattering. Is this a sketch of the ongoing conflict between the United States and Iran? Some might so assert, and that can’t be helped. Yet these are the outlines of the Suez Crisis of 1956.” (10/20/26)
“France will impose new curfews in areas where they are required, Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu said Tuesday after the first night of partial curfews in major cities including Paris. Lecornu said the targeted curfews had helped keep the peace overnight after a turbulent weekend that saw protesters take aim at state institutions. … Lecornu has told French lawmakers that authorities would mobilize a ‘massive’ security presence next weekend, after organizers announced plans for new protests. … The prime minister also accused what he referred to as small ultra-left and extreme-left groups in certain locations of forging an ‘insurrectionary plan’ that fueled the violent rioting over the weekend for which the government could provide evidence.” (10/20/26)
“On Friday, Alex Gibney’s nearly four-hour documentary, Musk, opened nationwide. The film presents Musk as a deeply flawed man whose wealth and power have become dangerous. There is plenty of evidence for the first part of that judgment. But the documentary raises a larger question. How much offensiveness should society tolerate from people who push the technological frontier forward? My answer is quite a lot.” (10/20/26)
“The Nobel prize in economics for 2026 was awarded to Robert E. Hall and Michael Woodford. According to the Nobel committee, the laureates had developed macroeconomic models that significantly improved our ability to implement effective stabilization policies. The committee is of the view that on the basis of these models, well-timed fiscal and monetary policy measures can reduce the economy’s peaks and troughs. The models developed by the laureates are based on the ideas of English economist John Maynard Keynes. In the Keynesian framework, the output that an economy can generate with a given pool of resources i.e. labour, tools and machinery, and a given technology without causing inflation, is labelled as potential output.” (10/20/26)
“In popular rendering, international politics since 1945 has been shaped by the so-called ‘liberal order.’ Led by the United States, a bundle of international institutions, rules, and norms intended to limit interstate competition and facilitate cooperation were widely embraced, contributing (per this narrative) to a peaceful and prosperous world. Today, that system seems to be breaking down, leaving policymakers, pundits, and scholars grappling with what a future order should entail and how this system should be orchestrated. Rivers of ink have already flowed in service of this foundational question. To the mix we can now add Charles Kupchan’s Bringing Order to Anarchy.” (10/20/26)
“On the first day of his second term, President Donald Trump declared that the United States was experiencing a ‘national energy emergency.’ The ‘harmful and shortsighted policies of the previous administration,’ he wrote in an executive order, had left the nation’s energy resources ‘far too inadequate,’ a situation that ’causes and makes worse the high energy prices that devastate Americans.’ … Almost two years later, as Trump stares down a midterm election, his claim of an emergency has an ironic ring. The United States is experiencing a kind of energy emergency characterized by high fuel prices, but it is not the one he described when he took office. Not only that, but the executive powers he unlocked with his emergency order have proven useless for mitigating the current crisis and for lowering the high prices he decried upon taking office.” (10/20/26)
“The stock market crash may have started the trouble, but Federal Reserve failures and New Deal interventions transformed a downturn into the Great Depression.” (10/20/26)
“The use of force in an officer-involved-shooting that resulted in the death of a 1-year-old in Mississippi has been ruled justified by the state of Mississippi on Monday. … The Mississippi Bureau of Investigation said the driver of the vehicle, Kohen’s aunt, drove toward the police officers and struck one of them. An officer then fired on the vehicle, hitting the driver and fatally shooting Kohen [Wiley]. … An independent autopsy report found that Kohen’s death was a homicide. His family is being represented by civil rights attorney Ben Crump as they seek the release of surveillance footage from the Walmart and the bureau of investigation.” (10/19/26)
