Author: Thomas L. Knapp

Source: The Bulwark
by Matthew D Taylor

“One is doing a bit of cynical pandering, the other is condemning anyone opposed to the tech future—and neither is willing to look in the mirror.” (10/09/26)

https://www.thebulwark.com/p/jd-vance-peter-thiel-antichrist-new-testament-tech-trump-authoritarianism

Source: Antiwar.com
by Thomas S Karat

“In February 2003, the intelligence that August Hanning’s service had handed to Washington turned up in Colin Powell’s presentation to the United Nations Security Council, in the case for invading Iraq. On the morning of 6 October 2026, masked officers walked Hanning, now eighty, out of his house near Münster in handcuffs, on suspicion of attempted treason and espionage. The secrets that undid him had been sitting on a hard drive in that house, and some of them had been shared with Berlin by its allies. The United States is the first of those allies.” (10/09/26)

https://original.antiwar.com/thomas_karat/2026/10/08/the-spy-chief-who-was-caught-by-accident

Source: Responsible Statecraft
by Mark Thompson

“The U.S. ends its military campaign in Baghdad after 23 years of fighting. The campaign cost 4,418 US troops their lives and will end up costing nearly $3 trillion through 2050.” (10/09/’26)

https://responsiblestatecraft.org/us-iraq-withdrawal/

Source: CounterPunch
by Peter Hart

“As the midterm elections approach, it’s safe to say that things don’t look great for Donald Trump’s Republican Congressional majority. He has responded by the usual threats and bluster, but also by promising to send voters money. Now, it should be said that politicians make promises all the time – to voters in general or to more specific constituents. This is part of the process. But sending out quick payments to voters right before an election, and promising a big payday if voters deliver his party a victory, are highly unusual moves.” (10/09/26)

https://www.counterpunch.org/2026/10/09/a-brief-guide-to-trumps-vote-buying-schemes/

Source: Law & Liberty
by Nadya Williams

[W]hy exactly is it so bad that screens have destroyed so many people’s ability to focus and read since 1980, and even more dramatically since 2007? What do we lose if people no longer read like it’s the 1770s? Quite a bit, [James] Marriott contends. One significant concern for him is the damage to politics that he blames on the decline of reading: ‘Perhaps the most worrying victim of the Great Simplification is our public discourse. It seems that our distracted and trivial culture increasingly struggles to sustain a rational debate on almost any issue.’ In other words, reading trains our brains to engage with ideas in earnest and to use our attention spans to listen to elaborate arguments and process them afterwards. But those who do not have these skills are unable to engage with serious arguments in the public sphere.” (10/09/26)

https://lawliberty.org/book-review/evangelizing-a-post-literate-society/