Fukuyama’s Glasses
Source: Liberal Currents
by Katherine Alejandra Cross
“Like the man himself, Francis Fukuyama’s new memoir ‘In the Realm of the Last Man’ combines startling insight and baffling contradiction.” (10/09/26)
Category: Opinion
A Former Right-Winger’s Guide on How to Defeat Her Old Side
Source: The UnPopulist
by Paul Crider
“I think of Sarah Longwell as a kind of political sin-eater. The founder and publisher of The Bulwark sprinkles quotes like the above throughout her new book, a New York Times bestseller, How to Eat an Elephant: One Voter at a Time. They are a small sampling of her regular focus groups of American voters. She listens to the most infuriating inanities from the world’s most irresponsible voters because the rest of us would be driven to madness from the Lovecraftian horror that is American public opinion. Longwell uses her vast trove of qualitative voter data and her long experience in Republican communications to end the electoral dominance of her former side and enact reforms long and deep enough to decisively resolve the authoritarian crisis.” (10/09/26)
https://www.theunpopulist.net/p/a-former-right-wingers-guide-on-how
As Lists of Companies Complicit in Its Crimes Grow, Will Israel Finally Pay a Price?
Source: Common Dreams
by Ramzy Baroud
“Let’s start with the good news. The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights has added 61 companies to its database of businesses involved in activities linked to illegal Israeli settlements, expanding the list from 158 to 214 companies. Why is this good news? Because it further illustrates a degree of seriousness within the international community to move its position on Israel from the realm of language to that of action. Yet more good news: Five previously listed companies were removed after the office determined that their involvement in the relevant activities had ended. For the Israeli mindset to change, the consequences of occupation, annexation, and genocide must become unmistakable. This matters because it suggests that the mechanism can work: Sustained scrutiny can influence corporate behavior, and supporting Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine can carry a price.” (10/10/26)
Deep State of the World
Source: Brownstone Institute
by Meryl Nass
“Councils of Government (COGs) and Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPOs) are a form of non-democratic authority that are taking over functions from duly elected state and local governments, funded by grants from state and federal governments. This project has been expanding in power and funding since the 1960s. It involves creating new organizations with appointed members for which there is no direct citizen oversight.” (10/09/26)
Why Didn’t 2008 Bank Bailouts Produce COVID-Level Inflation?
Source: The Daily Economy
by Paul Mueller
“Washington responded to two crises with extraordinary monetary and fiscal interventions. Why did COVID-era stimulus produce soaring inflation when the response to the 2008 financial crisis did not?” (10/09/26)
https://thedailyeconomy.org/article/why-didnt-bank-bailouts-produce-covid-level-inflation/
Hasta la Vista, Baby
Source: Independent Institute
by Daniel Sánchez-Piñol
“This November, voters will decide on the California Billionaire Tax Act (Prop 40), which would retroactively impose a 5 percent tax on the wealth of residents worth more than $1 billion. Its supporters say it could raise $100 billion, even though several billionaires have already left the state or plan to. Beginning in 2020 and intensifying in 2021, a tidal wave of entrepreneurs and businesses left California, including tech billionaires Elon Musk and Larry Ellison. It’s not hard to see why: the state’s high taxes, heavy regulations, and increasingly contentious political climate have made it clear that success is not welcome.” (10/09/26)
https://www.independent.org/article/2026/10/09/hasta-la-vista-baby/
How Vance and Thiel Get the Antichrist Backwards
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)
The Spy Chief Who Was Caught by Accident
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
“Donroe Doctrine” and conservative victories squeeze cartels in Latin America
Source: Fox News
by Chuck DeVore
“The cartels are losing political cover, and they know it. The Trump administration has treated the Western Hemisphere as a security problem rather than allow diplomatic courtesy to block needed action. Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro is in U.S. custody. Colombia elected Abelardo de la Espriella, who ran opposed to negotiations with armed groups and won. Argentina, Chile, Ecuador, Paraguay and others have aligned with Washington’s enforcement policies. The Shield of the Americas coalition now coordinates intelligence and operations against cartel networks, but with a handful of exceptions: Mexico, Brazil, Cuba and Nicaragua. That is the Donroe Doctrine in practice: American predominance in the hemisphere, applied to migration, Chinese footholds and the drug trade. Critically, this is a major shift in the operating environments for the Sinaloa Cartel, CJNG (Jalisco New Generation Cartel) and the Colombian and Venezuelan networks that fed them.” (10/10/26)
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/donroe-doctrine-conservative-victories-squeeze-cartels-latin-america
When will Mamdani care about victims of crimes the same way he does about illegal [sic] migrants?
Source: New York Post
by Kirsten Fleming
“An alleged gangbanger in this country illegally [sic] was shot and wounded by ICE [gangbangers] in The Bronx on Thursday. And by the way New York politicians immediately reacted (with press conferences and outraged tweets the length of ‘War and Peace’) one would think ICE had made swiss cheese of a sweet grandma as she handed out Werther’s Originals to the neighborhood children. All the usual suspects reflexively grabbed a microphone and called to ‘abolish ICE’ in the name of Oscar Belgal, who reportedly used his car to smash through a vehicle barricade before accelerating toward ICE [gangbangers]. Belgal’s 5-year-old son was in the car and was unharmed, no thanks to his pathetic excuse of a father. Still, an outraged Mayor Mamdani stood alongside AG Tish James and Public Advocate Jumaane Williams declaring war on ICE.” (10/09/26)