Source: Caitlin Johnstone, Rogue Journalist
by Caitlin Johnstone
“I don’t really fit in with any group. Too woo-woo spiritual for the Marxists. Too angry for the Buddhists. Too political for the nondualists. Too much of a liberal-hating commie for the witches. Too radical for the socdems or demsocs. Too grown up for the anarchists. If hippies were real I guess I’d be one of those. Like, if it had been more than psychedelic-fueled idealism that collapsed into vapid yuppiedom as soon as the drugs wore off. I’d be a hippie if there were something more substantial to it than navel-gazing escapism, because at least in theory they try to synthesize the political and the spiritual.” [editor’s note: Most anarchists are more “grown up,” emotionally at least, than Johnstone’s 40s going on 14 – TLK] (10/20/26)
https://caitlinjohnstone.com.au/2026/10/20/i-love-you-guys/
Source: Deutsche Welle [German state media]
“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)
https://www.dw.com/en/french-authorities-impose-partial-curfews-in-paris-nice/live-79707186
Source: The American Conservative
“GOP Headed for Midterm Wipeout? w/ Gabe Fleisher.” (10/20/26)
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/tac-right-now-gop-headed-for-midterm-wipeout-w-gabe-fleisher/
Source: The Dispatch
by Marian L Tupy
“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)
https://thedispatch.com/article/elon-musk-innovation-tesla-spacex-politics-doge/
Source: Cobden Centre
by Dr. Frank Shostak
“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)
https://www.cobdencentre.org/2026/10/nobel-prize-for-keynesian-economics/
Source: Reason
by Joshua Shifrinson
“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)
https://reason.com/2026/10/20/after-the-international-liberal-order/
Source: Associated Press
“Iran-backed Houthi rebels [sic] struck a residential area in Yemen’s third-largest city on Tuesday, killing two teenage girls and renewing attention on the dangers faced by civilians in Taiz, which has been under attack and siege during the country’s escalating conflict. The Houthis have largely encircled Taiz, cutting it off from most supply routes and putting civilians at ‘grave risk’, U.N. human rights chief Volker Türk said Tuesday. The U.N. says the siege has left many residents without food and other necessities as prices soar. The attack on Taiz came a day after a Houthi strike on a government military camp killed 73 recruits, the deadliest strike since the resurgence of the conflict over the summer, according to a senior Yemeni government official.” (10/20/26)
https://apnews.com/article/yemen-houthis-saudi-fighting-8a036054a8f0cd38ff8ee0101947f708
Source: Parallax Views w/ JG Michael
“This I Don’t Believe: A Fulfilling Life Without Meaning w/ Robert Jensen.” (10/19/26)
https://parallaxviews.podbean.com/e/rjensen10-19-26/
Source: Grist
by Jake Bittle
“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)
https://grist.org/energy/trump-energy-emergency-declaration-prices-oil-coal-gasoline-diesel/
Source: The Daily Economy
by Thomas L Hogan
“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)
https://thedailyeconomy.org/article/what-turned-a-stock-market-crash-into-the-great-depression/
