“On September 29, the Energy Department said it would make up to 40 million barrels of crude from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve available through an exchange intended to stabilize oil supply. The move was a reminder of something easy to miss in debates over the Iran war: Its costs do not stay on the battlefield. American households can start paying them well before voters get a chance to judge the decisions behind them. War is usually pictured through missiles, airstrikes, casualties, and ruined cities. Yet some of the burden can surface thousands of miles from the fighting—in gas prices, shipping costs, grocery bills, and whatever is left in a family’s bank account at the end of the month. The war with Iran has made that connection hard to ignore. When oil flows through the Strait of Hormuz are disrupted, the shock moves through global energy markets and reaches the United States.” (10/05/26)
“The forty-fourth annual Banned Books Week (BBW) takes place October 4 through 10 this year, but given the significant, sustained efforts to restrict what young people can read, Banned Books Week should likely be observed every week. We are living in a time of increased attacks on the free press, free speech, academic freedom, and the rights to read and know. This year’s BBW theme, ‘Let Books Be: Protect the Freedom to Read,’ reflects these concerns.” (10/05/26)
“A big reason for the rules of war is to prevent a country that’s losing a conflict from unleashing a last-resort wave of attacks on innocent civilians. After its 4 1/2-year war in Ukraine, Russia appears to fit that description, adding one more justification for the 1949 Geneva Conventions – to which Moscow is legally bound. Civilian casualties in Ukraine were up 37% in the first half of 2026 from the same period last year. And, increasingly, the slaughter is in major cities, away from the most contested territory. ‘I … see the nature of this war changing’, said Alexander De Croo, administrator of the United Nations Development Programme, during a visit to the country last month. ‘Civilian infrastructure is being attacked deliberately and relentlessly, day and night,’ he said. ‘Buses. Trains. Bookshops. Supermarkets. The ordinary places where ordinary people live their lives.’ In addition, Russia’s gloves-off tactics appear to come from orders on high.” (10/02/26)
“Looking across the devastated landscape of the Gaza Strip, where surviving generations now carry the permanent physical and psychological scars of war, the ultimate indictment of our era is damning: The world watched the horror unfold in real-time, possessed all the legal, political and institutional mechanisms to stop it, and did nothing. For months, then years, the catastrophe in Gaza tested the fabric of international law, the integrity of global governance and the moral conscience of humanity. From the halls of the United Nations to the high courts of The Hague, what followed was not information failure, but a shameful surrender of political and moral will.” (10/05/26)
Source: Responsible Statecraft
by Kelley Beaucar Vlahos
“Reports that more oil is getting through the Strait of Hormuz have been heralded as a win for the Trump administration, but experts say this kind of happy talk hides the fact that the war remains in a quagmire. As shipping costs rise and Iran continues to attack vessels, world markets — including fuel — will remain in peril for the foreseeable future. In other words, no matter how much narrative-shaping is attempted to alter American perspectives before the midterms, prices for consumers will not come down to so-called pre-war levels in time for any change.” (10/05/26)
“‘Seven men drugged and gang raped a 20-year-old woman’. That verdict in the alleged Cornell rape case was delivered by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who has joined a chorus of others in pronouncing the guilt of Cornell students accused of raping a fellow student. Mind you, not a single witness has testified under oath publicly and not a single charge has been brought. However, guilt is now being collectively declared from the usual figures and outlets who have never been late to mob justice. Ocasio-Cortez declared, ‘I want to be clear that the culture of rape, sexual assault, and pedophilia is protected in elite institutions across the United States and including Cornell University in this instance. It has got to stop’. We have been here before.” (10/05/26)
“The title of Jim Ostrowski’s brief and latest book The Government Takes 80% reads at first like a libertarian’s exaggerated fever-dream of government rapacity over the economy. The government takes 80% of the average American’s productivity every year? It sounds ridiculous on its face. But he literally means it, that all levels of government take some 80% of the average person’s income between taxes and regulations in America today. And he demonstrates the estimate as generally true, despite all conventional wisdom to the contrary.” (10/05/26)
“War does not seem like a mere necessary evil to Hegseth. I’m not sure he sees even unjust war as evil at all. I think he likes it. Is this conservative? The late conservative sociologist Robert Nisbet didn’t think so.” (10/05/26)
“Political polling has had a black eye since at least the 2016 presidential election. That’s when national polls had Hillary Clinton leading Donald Trump by a significant margin all the way up to Election Day. Democrats started measuring the curtains. Unfortunately, the polls massively underestimated the strength of Trump’s support, and Trump went on to win the Electoral College and the White House. More recently, pollsters have suffered embarrassing failures in high-profile contested primaries. … In truth, polls have always been unreliable. Numbers create the illusion of infallibility, but polls are an imperfect gauge of unpredictable behavior.” (10/04/26)
