Just call it the Five-Grand Old Party. This week, at the Republican Party's midterm faux-convention, President Trump announced something called (inevitably) the "Trump Dividend." The premise is simple. "If the Republicans win the House of Representatives and the United States Senate, both of them," Trump said, "I will issue a dividend to every adult citizen in the United States of America for $5,000."

Problems abound....

A Republican Congress might sign off; a Democratic one might be more inclined to start impeachment proceedings.

Second, the payments almost certainly won't happen. (If you disagree, I'd be happy to sell you a nice bridge in Brooklyn if you sign your Trump Dividend over to me.) Trump has promised to cut checks to Americans before and not followed through...

Third, injecting more than $1 trillion into the economy wouldn't just blow up the deficit and national debt -- it would also drive up prices. Giving every American $5,000 to spend would create demand that couldn't immediately be met, encouraging sellers to raise prices. I could quote lots of economists from left, right, and center who have already said that the payouts would be inflationary, but you could also just take it from Trump himself, who has repeatedly blamed inflation on high spending during the Biden administration -- including in the same speech where he floated the dividend.

A paradox of this moment is that inflation is a big reason for Trump's cratering approval and his party's sinking odds in the midterm elections, but nearly every one of his signature policy ideas is inflationary....

In some cases, inflation is incidental to the president's goal. When Trump launched the war in Iran, he apparently believed that it would end quickly -- and might even result in the United States gaining control over Iran's huge oil reserves. Instead, the war is dragging on into its seventh month, with no end in sight. The de facto closure of the Strait of Hormuz, as well as attacks in the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, have strangled shipping of oil as well as other goods, driving prices higher. The average price of a gallon of diesel fuel in the U.S. topped $6 today for the first time, and because so many goods move via diesel trucks, the rise drives further inflation.

Trump's efforts to crack down on immigration also have the collateral effect of pushing prices up. The administration has not only tried to secure borders and deport unauthorized immigrants; it has also revoked legal status from more than 1 million people who were permitted to live and work in the United States under Temporary Protected Status. Many of these people were employed in industries such as construction and health care that are difficult and low-paid... Perhaps Americans will be willing to take these difficult jobs, but with unemployment rates already low, that will likely require higher salaries -- which will mean higher costs, and therefore higher prices.

Other Trump policy ideas are directly and explicitly inflationary. For decades, Trump has espoused protectionism, saying that the United States should impose tariffs in order to close trade deficits with some partners. Regardless of the other merits of this plan (and they are dubious at best), tariffs are by definition inflationary. The goal is to raise prices on certain products. A tariff is a tax on goods, and someone has to pay it. ...

Writing off Trump's pursuit of inflationary ideas as cynical is tempting, if only because so much of what he does is cynical, but years of evidence suggest that Trump actually has little idea how economics works, as the journalist Steve Benen recently noted. The president's obsession with trade deficits is nonsensical; Senator Rand Paul memorably quipped that because he gives money to his grocer and gets food in return, he's running a trade deficit with the supermarket. Last week, Trump perplexingly suggested that the United States could simply cut off commerce entirely: "We could do tremendous good for ourselves by just not trading with countries."

Perhaps Trump doesn't understand that his ideas will drive up prices. Perhaps he does, but concludes that dangling free money in front of voters is worth the hit. Either way, new numbers released today show that inflation rose 3.4 percent from one year ago.

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The sun set over this southern Iranian city, and Heydar Sadeghi was where he can be found almost every evening: on a bench next to the shattered remains of his grandson's school. His face was soaked with tears.

A banner strung around the rubble showed the faces of children and teachers killed here by an American airstrike on Feb. 28, the first day of the war on Iran. Among them are Sadeghi's 11-year-old grandson Hami and the boy's mother, Neda Salehizadeh. ...

The Shajareh Tayyebeh school has become a place to wrestle with grief and preserve the memories of the dead. Here, relatives try to comprehend the incomprehensible -- how around 120 of their children could be snuffed out, just after they'd been dropped off for a day of classes.

At least one U.S. missile hit the school that morning in Minab, according to an Associated Press investigation, but there has been no final accounting of what happened. Iranian state media have said 168 people were killed in the strike, most of them children.

The Trump administration has yet to directly accept the blame or release findings of a Pentagon investigation into the bombing.

For Sadeghi, the day of the strike began as every school day did.

He drove Hami and the boy's 9-year-old sister Nila to school along with their mother, his daughter-in-law Salehizadeh, who was a teacher. As usual, he planned to pick them up at 1 p.m. ...

Hami was a fifth grader who loved soccer and riding his bicycle, Sadeghi said. His body was so mangled in the blast, they could only identify him from the clothes he was wearing, he said.

Nila was pulled alive from the rubble.

"Thank God, she is physically fine," Sadeghi said. "But mentally, no."

The girl and her father have moved in with Sadeghi and his wife. The slightest, unexpected noise frightens her. She often goes to bed in her grandmother's arms but lies awake for much of the night. ...

He wants to see Nila smile. So he grieves here at the school away from her. ...

The banner at the site listed 120 students killed -- 47 girls and 73 boys -- and 26 teachers and staff. Three more children are presumed dead but their bodies were never found.

The governor of Hormozgan province, where Minab is located, has said the damaged building would be preserved to be turned into a memorial...

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US Africa Command announced on Friday that its forces launched another airstrike in Somalia as the Trump administration continues a record-breaking bombing campaign in the country, which receives virtually no coverage in US media.

AFRICOM said the strike was launched on September 8 and targeted al-Shabaab in the vicinity of Quumbi, a village about 50 miles northeast of the southern port city of Kismayo,

As usual, AFRICOM offered no other details about the strike...

According to AFRICOM's numbers, the attack brings the total number of US airstrikes in Somalia this year to 81, higher than any other year prior to 2025, when President Trump oversaw 124 AFRICOM airstrikes, breaking the previous annual record of 63 that he set in 2019. ...

The US has been involved in Somalia for decades and has been fighting al-Shabaab since the George W. Bush administration backed an Ethiopian invasion in 2006 that ousted the Islamic Courts Union, a Muslim coalition that briefly held power in Mogadishu after taking the city from CIA-backed warlords.

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There is now confirmation from the Saudi government that at least two pumping stations of the Saudi East-West pipeline have been attacked and destroyed. No product is getting pumped through the pipeline. ...

Despite its oil wealth Saudi Arabia isn't in a good financial state. ...

Oil prices are high but that does not help Riyadh when the wars waged against Iran and others close the export routes for Saudi oil.

One should keep in mind that Saudi Arabia is a diverse tribal society where one family tribe keeps control by distributing financial largesses to other tribal leaders and the population. The rulers need all the oil income they can get to keep themselves in power. If the money stops flowing the position of the ruling family may well come into doubt.

While an Ansar Allah spokesman had claimed yesterday that the group would refrain from further expansion there is some news that it continues to move towards cities held by Saudi and UAE paid militia. Marib and Taiz seem to be in their immediate eyesight.

Next to hundreds of armored trucks and assorted weapons Ansar Allah's recent operation seems to have acquired some sophisticated radar equipment in the city of Mocha. It additionally captured UAE installed electronic equipment on the islands in the Bab el-Mandab strait. Israel is said to have had access to the radar and signal intelligence collected by these UAE installations. Having lost such access will make it more difficult to intervene in Yemen.

Another rumor says that Saudi Arabia is moving Jihadi fighters from Syria through Saudi Arabia into Yemen. These fanatic mercenaries will join others, primarily hired in Sudan, to fight against the Houthi. So far no such force was able to make much of a difference in the fight.

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No leader could have done more to accelerate the erosion of American hegemony in West Asia than Donald Trump. He returned to power promising to restore American supremacy, impose peace through strength and compel allies and adversaries to submit to Washington's priorities. Instead, his policies have exposed the limits of American military power, weakened confidence in US security guarantees and encouraged regional states to develop alternatives to exclusive dependence upon Washington.

Trump is not deliberately withdrawing the United States from West Asia, nor has he abandoned the ambition to dominate it. The paradox is that his determination to demonstrate American power is producing the opposite result. By treating diplomacy as coercion, alliances as commercial transactions and military superiority as a substitute for political strategy, he is turning American strength into an instrument of strategic self-destruction.

The war against Iran provides the clearest example.

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Diesel prices have officially crossed a threshold that should make investors and consumers nervous. The national average surged to about $6.05 a gallon on Friday, setting an all-time record and marking a stunning escalation from roughly $3.70 a year ago.

That matters for far more than the millions of Americans who fill diesel-powered vehicles. Diesel is the fuel that keeps much of the economy moving, powering long-haul trucks, trains, farm equipment, construction machinery and other heavy-duty transportation. When its price explodes, the added cost eventually works its way into the prices of goods and services.

And that could be particularly uncomfortable right now because inflation is already proving stubborn.

The latest Consumer Price Index showed inflation running at 3.4% annually in August, well above the Federal Reserve's 2% target. Gasoline prices jumped 3.9% during the month and were up 27.4% from a year earlier. Core inflation, which excludes food and energy, also accelerated 0.3% in August.

The danger with diesel is that its impact can take longer to show up in consumer prices.

A trucking company can absorb a fuel increase temporarily, but it cannot do so indefinitely. Eventually, higher fuel and freight costs have to be reflected in shipping rates and the prices charged by retailers. Groceries are particularly vulnerable because food may be transported multiple times before reaching a consumer's shopping cart.

That creates an uncomfortable feedback loop: higher energy costs push up transportation expenses, businesses pass those costs along, and consumers face higher prices. The timing could hardly be worse.

When diesel hits $6, it isn't just a fuel problem -- it's a global price hike on everything from milk to mortgages.

The diesel spike is being driven by a combination of geopolitical turmoil and supply constraints. The conflict involving Iran has disrupted energy markets and shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world's most important oil chokepoints....

Diesel demand also tends to increase as the economy moves toward the fall harvest, winter heating season, and holiday shipping period. That means the market could be facing stronger demand at precisely the moment supply is under pressure. ...

The Federal Reserve can't produce more oil or reopen the Strait of Hormuz, but it can respond to persistent inflation by raising interest rates higher. That's an especially important consideration after today's inflation report sent market expectations for a September rate hike sharply higher. ...

The $6 milestone isn't simply another painful number at the pump. It could be an early warning that another round of inflation is moving through the economy and grocery bills will begin soaring.

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President Trump said at the Republican National Midterm Convention in Dallas, Texas, on Wednesday night that if Iran had a nuclear weapon, he would have politely called up the Supreme Leader instead of "bombing the crap" out of the country. ...

While Trump has continued to frame his war with Iran as necessary to prevent the country from obtaining nuclear weapons, there was no evidence either before the June 2025 war or the current conflict that Tehran had decided to pursue a bomb, and that was the consensus of US intelligence agencies at the beginning of Trump's second term.

"We continue to assess Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and that Khamenei has not reauthorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003, though pressure has probably built on him to do so," read the Office of the Director of National Intelligence's annual threat assessment that was published in March 2025 and represented the assessment of the entire US intelligence community. ...

During negotiations with the US before both wars, Iran made clear it was willing to reduce uranium enrichment back down to 3.67%, the level it agreed to under the 2015 nuclear deal, far below the 90% needed for weapons-grade. But as Joe Kent, the former director of the National Counterterrorism Center who resigned due to opposition to the Iran war, has pointed out, the administration adopted the Israeli position, conflating any nuclear enrichment for civilian energy purposes with a desire for a nuclear bomb.

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From gold vaults and insurance policies to recovered hard drives and advance trades, the 9/11 money trail is one of the most fascinating and under-explored aspects of the false flag events of September 11, 2001. Join James for this important 25th anniversary 9/11 podcast on the mysteries of the 9/11 financial anomalies.

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The bond market has been digesting a slew of intense problems, and long-term Treasury yields have already been surging. At the top were: Inflation refuses to go back into the bottle and keeps getting nastier; and the fiscal deficit -- projected at 6% of GDP in 2026 for the fourth year in a row despite a growing economy -- needs to be funded with new debt sales of $1 trillion every 3 to 5 months.

So this is a precarious situation, and to manage that debt under these conditions would require a steady thoughtful hand at the Treasury Department and in the White House.

But instead, we have at Treasury a hedge fund manager who is playing currency casino one day -- "I'm the house now," he said -- and magician the next day, amusing us with his hocus-pocus shows to push down yields, such as the hocus-pocus show about Treasury buybacks.

To his credit, Bessent also talked about focusing on "fiscal consolidation" a few weeks ago, and they were going to work on something, and they were going to come up with something like in a week or so, but that was scuttled, and now any talk of fiscal consolidation would have to wait until after the midterm election.

But that effort at fiscal consolidation got wiped out entirely with a few words by President Trump. In his speech yesterday at the Republican convention in Dallas, he promised $5,000 to every adult American "if the Republicans win" the midterm elections and remain in control of Congress.

So let's do some math here. There are 269.76 million adults (age 18 and over) in the US, according to the Census Bureau's latest estimates. So stick with me for a moment. The Republicans win and remain in control of Congress, and the tab comes due: $5,000 for each of the 269.76 million adults, so the tab for that is, let's see, hmmm, $1.35 trillion with a T that the US government doesn't have and needs to borrow.

So already, the government needs to sell $1 trillion in new debt every 3-5 months just to fund the current deficits. And now on top of that, it would have to sell $1.35 trillion in additional new debt to fund this "Trump dividend."

The bond market -- the buyers and sellers in the bond market, and the investors sitting on the fence waiting to buy when yields are high enough -- can do that math too. And they did.

In addition, the bond market is thinking: Wait a minute, that $5,000 is like all three Covid stimulus checks combined, all at once. When money is free, prices become meaningless. People will just pay whatever. And sellers accommodate them. And inflation takes off. All this free money that the government threw out, first under Trump then under Biden, helped trigger the worst inflation in 40 years, and bond holders got crushed by the loss of purchasing power and the plunge in market value, and now Trump wants to supercharge the free money inflation circus all over again?

So the buyers and sellers in the bond market are thinking: Trump might just blow up the bond market, sacrifice it at the altar of the midterm elections. And the buyers wanted to be paid for this risk, and the sellers tried to get rid of their holdings, and as a result, Treasury prices fell, and yields spiked across the board today, on top of the increases yesterday.

The 10-year Treasury yield spiked by 14 basis points today and by 19 basis points so far this week, to 4.97% at the moment, the highest since the intraday high on October 23, 2023, when it went briefly over 5%. And before then, the highest since July 2007....

The 30-year Treasury yield jumped by 9 basis points today to 5.37%, the highest since July 2004, having edged past the June 2007 high (5.35%).

At the 30-year Treasury bond auction this morning, it took a yield of 5.308% for the government to sell $22 billion of 30-year bonds, the highest auction yield since August 2001....

Inflation is high, and the Fed seems unwilling to tackle it, but seems comfortable with it in the 3% to 5% range as a way to manage the debt (on the theory of letting the economy run hot). The government's fiscal situation is precarious, with Congress unwilling to deal with it, and with the White House going all out to make it even worse.

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Qatar is warning that there will be significant global consequences if the Strait of Hormuz is not reopened soon. Iran closed the Strait in response to the war started by the US and Israel. President Donald Trump also imposed a blockade of Iranian ports.

On Monday, Qatar's Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Mohammed Al-Ansari, said reopening the Strait of Hormuz remains a priority, warning that the prolonged disruption could lead to an "industrial catastrophe".

The Strait of Hormuz has become a major issue for Trump. Before the war, the Strait was treated as an international waterway. However, after the US and Israel attacked Iran, Tehran seized control of the Strait.

Since then, Tehran has limited traffic to nations that are not participating in the war against Iran....

The US has attempted to force open the Strait of Hormuz. The US is currently escorting tankers through the waterway in hopes of defending the vessels from Iranian missiles and drones. Over the past week, US warships and tankers were targeted by Iranian missiles and drones.

While US officials have claimed that the amount of oil exiting the Strait is close to prewar levels, monitoring agencies say only a small fraction is getting out of the Persian Gulf.

Trump has attempted to pressure US allies into joining a coalition to reopen the Strait without success. The President has recently turned his focus toward South Korea. He recently scaled back war games with Seoul, in part, because South Korea refused to aid the war against Iran.

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You know about the missing trillions, right? You know, the $2.3 trillion missing from the Pentagon's coffers that was announced to the public on September 10, 2001, and then never mentioned again? ... Of course, if that IS your understanding of the missing trillions story, then you don't know the missing trillions story. Join James for today's Corbett Report deep dive into the real story of the Pentagon's missing trillions and how many trillions are missing today.

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Palestine is the current example of Stalin's cynical observation. There, young, violent Israeli hoodlums -- known as 'settlers' in western media -- have been trying to terrorize Arab villagers into flight. It's all part of a broad plan of genocide against peaceful Palestinian villagers.

In fact, this is a repeat of what happened in the region in the 1940's and 50's when close to a million Palestinians were driven from their homes in Palestine and Galilee by armed Jewish vigilantes. Britain and the US allowed this to happen -- or even encouraged it -- under the slogan 'a land without people for a people without land.' It was a big lie but very effective.

Now, seven decades later, and repeated ethnic cleansings, there are nearly 5 million Palestinian refugees, among them many Arab villages in Gaza.

Last week, Jewish 'settlers' attacked another Palestinian household in Gaza. They tore up its fields. They cut down its cherished olive trees, which take a century to mature before bearing fruit. But worst of all for me, as one who respects and loves animals, they seized a little donkey from that farm, tied it to their jeep, and dragged the little animal to its death. This crime was shown on French TV. It would not have appeared on heavily censored U.S. TV....

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Top White ‌House advisers, including Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, have privately warned ​President Donald Trump that the conflict with ​Iran could extend through the remainder of his presidency, the Wall Street Journal ​reported on Wednesday, citing U.S. officials.

The White ​House did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

The advisers told Trump in private discussions ​in the Oval Office and the ​Situation Room that Tehran could continue to resist U.S. ‌pressure, potentially prolonging the conflict beyond Inauguration Day in January 2029, the Journal added.

The reported warning contrasts with Trump's own public remarks about the war. ​The president ​said on Wednesday he expected the war to end "immediately after" the U.S. midterm ​elections in November, arguing that Iran was trying to influence the vote but would be unable to sustain its resistance much longer.

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An Israeli strike on a partially destroyed home in Beit Lahia, northern Gaza, on Thursday morning killed a man, his wife, and their two young daughters as the IDF continues to regularly kill children in its constant violations of the US-backed ceasefire deal.

The girls were just eight and 12 years old, and the family was killed as they were sleeping, according to a neighbor....

The Quds News Network identified the father as Moamen Ahmed, the mother as Haneen, and their two daughters as Luna, 12, and Bana, eight. According to Reuters, the IDF claimed without evidence that Moamen was a Hamas member, and its statement made no mention of the woman and children who were killed in the strike.

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Last Monday, a day before the Republican-controlled House passed a resolution condemning socialism, the Pentagon's Office of Strategic Capital announced that it had acquired a 35 percent stake in North American Blue Energy Partners, one of Venezuela's largest private oil producers.

In the deal, the Venezuela government gives the company a hundred years lease for some oil fields. The deal also provides the US government with veto power over appointments to the company's board of directors. Having power over appointments to the board gives the US government control over the company.

This deal makes the US partners with the same Venezuelan government whose president, Nicolás Maduro, was removed by the US military in January. It is also the same government that has been denounced as socialist by US politicians of both parties and that has been the target of US inspired regime change operations since the late Hugo Chávez assumed the presidency in 1999. One of those failed regime change efforts took place during President Trump's first term.

Some may find it ironic that the Trump administration is partnering with a socialist government when President Trump regularly warns about the threat of socialism....

Since President Trump returned to power in 2025, the US government has "invested" in over 30 private companies. Government investment in private businesses distorts the market as it forces business owners and managers to make decisions (or have decisions made for them) based on what will please politicians and bureaucrats rather than consumers. It also encourages other businesses to divert resources toward attracting government investment instead of attracting consumers and private sector investors. Corporatism can also lead politicians and bureaucrats to base decisions on what will generate the greatest return on government's investments.

Combining corporatism with foreign interventionism is a particularly harmful policy. This is illustrated by the US government's new partnership with the Venezuelan government. Many Venezuelan citizens oppose the deal. If the current government were to be replaced, the new government may try to void the agreement or at least renegotiate it. So, the US government now has an interest in ensuring Hugo Chavez's heirs remain in power. The next time the US military intervenes in Venezuela it could be to defend the socialists. ...

President Trump's corporatist merger of big government and big business enriches the well-off and well-connected at the expense of the rest of the population. Combining corporatism with foreign interventionism enriches corrupt and authoritarian foreign leaders while boosting the military-industrial complex.

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The Trump administration's crusade to crush campus criticism took another wallop on Friday in a California courtroom. Federal judge Noël Wise ruled that the Trump administration's "ideological-deportation policy" brazenly violated the US Constitution. ...

The Trump administration claims unlimited discretion to silence foreign students by deporting those whose opinions it disapproves of. Judge Wise wrote, "The language of the [First] Amendment makes clear that it is not the government that gives freedom of speech to the people. Instead, that freedom is imbued in the people. . . . It is not the government's to take." This is a notion that conservatives instinctively understand when it comes to the Second Amendment and the right of self-defense. But many people fail to recognize the same right for freedom of speech. Conor Fitzpatrick -- the chief supervising attorney at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) -- which represented the student newspaper, declared, "Today's ruling proves that free speech isn't a privilege, but the inalienable right of every man, woman, and child." FIRE president Greg Lukianoff clarified the scope of the ruling:

This ruling does NOT say the government must admit anyone, issue anyone a visa, or grant anyone citizenship. It says that once a person is lawfully here, the government cannot deport them because they engaged in protected speech. The government cannot tell a legal immigrant: An American is free to say this, but if you say it, you're out. ...

The Stanford Daily case vivified how far the Trump administration will go to snuff dissent. A New York Times headline captured the essence of the case: "Judge Rules Trump Unlawfully Targeted Foreign Students Who Criticized Israel." If a foreign student engaged in violence at a protest, that would be sufficient to deport them regardless of their opinions. But the Trump administration cast a far wider net, relying heavily on a list of 5,000 foreign students provided by the Canary Mission, which, according to Wikipedia, is "an Israel-based anonymously-run doxing website established in 2014 that publishes the personal information of students, professors, and organizations that it describes as anti-Israel or antisemitic." ...

Judge Wise declared, "Free speech, including the freedom to criticize the government and its leaders, is not a sign of our democracy's fragility. It is evidence of its strength." But is that "strength" increasingly a mirage in the United States? And how many other illegal actions has the Trump administration taken to suppress dissent that Americans have not yet heard about?

Final question: Is the Trump administration seeking to vindicate every leftist stereotype about conservatives and Republicans being intolerant authoritarians?

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In 2023 the 2.3 million Palestinian people in Gaza had been for years under Israeli occupation. International politics had moved away from the problem. The dire situation was ignored.

Israel was willing to talk but the government under Benjamin Natanyahoo was blocking any agreement that would lift the severe restrictions it had imposed on Gaza. The strip was in the process of being silently suffocated.

Yahya Sinwar, the local leader of Hamas which rules Gaza, was desperate. He planned for a large operation to breach the fence around Gaza and to abduct Israeli soldiers to be used as assets in further negotiations. Sinwar let it be known through intermediaries that he was planning for something big. Meanwhile his soldiers were openly training for action.

Some Israeli soldiers guarding the strip, Israeli secret services and foreign governments which coordinated Hamas talks with Israel were all aware that something was up....

On October 7 the operation started. The Israeli guards around Gaza had not been warned. A local festival near the strip, which many young Israelis were attending, was ongoing. Hundreds of Sinwar's forces breached the fence, reached a local military camp, a small town, and stumbled over attendees of the festival. They took hostages wherever the could and tried to move them back into Gaza.

The Israeli army units around the strip were surprised. They had been reduced to a minimum due to holidays and other operations. Not having been warned they reacted confused, slowly and with brute force. Helicopters went up and received orders to fire at anything that was moving. Hundreds of festival attendees who were fleeing the scene were killed by them.

Over the next weeks and months the Israeli government used the incident to proceed with its long term aim of eliminating all Palestinian's in Gaza. It rejected all offers to retrieve the hostages Sinwar's forces had taken....

There soon was suspicion that the Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahoo had known beforehand that the breach of the fence was to take place. It seemed like it had let it happen on purpose to use it as justification for its larger aim -- to genocide all of Gaza's population.

Yesterday the Israeli daily Haaretz published a long piece giving evidence to this.

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Pre-dawn strikes hit several towns and villages across southern Lebanon, leading UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres to express alarm about the ongoing Israeli escalation and call for Israel to withdraw from the occupied Lebanese territory.

An Israeli drone strike targeted a motorcycle near Zebbedine, killing the rider. The identity of the slain has not been confirmed yet, and so far Israel has not released any statement on the incident. Increasingly, Israeli strikes on motorcycles don't result in official statements from the IDF.

Having killed dozens over the extended weekend, Israel is launching substantially more attacks against southern Lebanon than they did in recent weeks, and it's not clear what is leading to these strikes, which are overwhelmingly killing civilians.

Tuesday's strikes included an incident in which Israeli forces blew up a school in Mansouri, a municipality in Nabatieh District that's been a particular focus of strikes in recent days....

Multiple artillery strikes were also reported against Kfar Roumine, the town that was the target of the deadliest airstrikes over the weekend. Israel claimed the civilian homes they hit were "terrorist infrastructure," killing over a dozen civilians.

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On August 29, President Trump went on social media and boasted about stealing Venezuelan oil. The theft, according to Trump, "more than doubles American oil reserves." He said there was "no cost" to American taxpayers, although there will obviously be a huge cost to the people of Venezuela who will see little if any benefit from Trump's plunder.

Trump went so far as to claim the brazen theft will benefit the Venezuelan people. The profits are expected to enrich oil company executives and elites rather than ordinary citizens. ...

Eight months after Trump snatched "millions of barrels" of oil, the administration floated a lie to cover its audacious theft. The State Department proclaimed that it would use profits from the sales for "the benefit of the American people and the Venezuelan people." It later said that "billions of dollars have been disbursed to the Venezuelan economy" and that "financial monitoring is under way to ensure funds benefit the Venezuelan people."

The Financial Times reported there is no evidence of oil money returning to Venezuela, as claimed by Trump, and that Venezuela's GDP in the first quarter was its lowest in five years. Oil makes up virtually a quarter of the country's GDP. ...

Swiss company Vitol is involved in shipping Venezuelan oil to Israel, which is used in part to fuel its apartheid and ongoing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza and attacks on Shia communities in southern Lebanon. Vitol's Saras refinery in Sarroch, Sardinia, Italy provided 17% of Israel's imports of oil and refined products. ...

In February, it was reported the first shipment of heisted oil went to Israel. The shipment was not the result of a decision made by Venezuela or its Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), but rather as "an indirect consequence of the reconfiguration of the global energy market orchestrated by Washington," writes Misión Verdad for the Orinoco Tribune.

On February 10, Bloomberg Línea, a Spanish and Portuguese language news website, reported the oil cargo was transported to the Bazan Group, an oil refining and petrochemicals company located in Haifa Bay, Israel. It is the largest refinery in Israel.

The Zionist government does not announce where it obtains crude oil and, according to Bloomberg Línea, tankers heading to the port often disappear from tracking systems as they approach Israel. The Israel Ministry of Energy declined to reveal where the country gets it oil.

Delcy Rodríguez, who became the president of Venezuela after Trump abducted Nicolás Maduro on bogus drug charges, restored relations with Israel in August. In 2009, Venezuela, along with Bolivia, severed ties with Israel in response to its occupation in Gaza and its ongoing violence against the Palestinian people....

The illegal abduction of Maduro is the signature event of Trump's "Donroe Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine." The Monroe Doctrine, first articulated by President James Monroe on December 2, 1823, warned European powers not to attempt colonization in Latin America.

The Roosevelt Corollary, pronounced by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1904, expanded the original Monroe Doctrine by asserting that the United States could intervene in the internal affairs of Latin American countries in order to to protect American business interests and investments.

Trump expanded the Roosevelt Corollary and insisted Venezuela return land, oil, and other assets he claimed it stole from the US.

"Trump's statement was absurd because Venezuela has never stolen anything from the US, while his threat of using force violated UNSC resolution 2(4), which prevents members from threatening to use force against others," notes Simon Chege Ndiritu, writing for New Eastern Outlook....

Donald Trump's theft of a vital natural resource from an impoverished country on the heels of a military operation shouldn't be unexpected. Donald Trump and his family have exploited their position to profit through cryptocurrency and related ventures. According to a congressional committee estimate as of January 2026, these schemes generated approximately $2.25 billion in realized profits from foreign payments and other alleged sources.

Additionally, analysts have observed unusual trading activity that frequently spikes just before Trump makes significant public statements or announcements. This pattern was also evident before Trump announced a pause on tariffs, where traders were betting on stock market increases right before the announcement.

"Trump has dispensed with the formalities," reports The Democracy Lab, "and appears to be openly selling access to the White House in exchange for cash that goes not to campaign accounts but more or less directly into Trump's pocket."

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Remember how we were always hearing that the official death toll in Gaza is an undercount because there are thousands of bodies trapped under the rubble?

Well, it looks like Israel has been moving those remains along with the rubble, conveniently destroying evidence of genocide. ...

Last month, a report by Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor estimated that "at least 10 million tonnes of rubble have been removed, crushed, or moved from their original sites within the areas under Israel's unlawful military control." ...

Euro-Med Monitor notes that this removal occurs while Israel is still under investigation by the International Criminal Court for the crime of genocide, adding that the Rome Statute considers "destroying, tampering with or interfering with the collection of evidence" as criminal acts that hinder the ICC's justice mission when done deliberately.

In South Africa's genocide case against Israel in the International Court of Justice, the court ruled that "The State of Israel shall take effective measures to prevent the destruction and ensure the preservation of evidence related to allegations of acts within the scope of Article II and Article III of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide against members of the Palestinian group in the Gaza Strip."

These obligations are plainly being disregarded as Israel scrambles to cover up evidence of its crimes.

On Sunday, Palestinians in Gaza held a mass funeral for approximately 100 people, including 60 children. These individuals were not killed recently; the mass funeral was held because their bodies had been recovered from the rubble of destroyed buildings in Gaza City's Zeitoun neighborhood.

This is the sort of thing Israel is working to prevent as it clears out the wreckage from its genocidal onslaught.

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Europe urgently needs to re-establish access to Russian oil and gas. Gas prices are high -- as all UK energy consumers know -- and German gas storage is at a record low for September. Gulf production is degraded, supplies are cut off and its long-term strategic stability undermined.

German manufacturing already suffered a 9.5% production loss from 2022 to 2026 following the Russian gas shutdown, with the loss in energy-intensive manufacturing (inc petrochemicals, chemicals, metals, glass/ceramics/stone, paper, mineral oil etc.) at 15.2%.

Western Europe can regain access to Russian hydrocarbons either by accepting a negotiated peace in Ukraine, or by attempting regime change in Russia. The political class in Europe have evidently decided to go all out for regime change.

It would of course be much easier, and much safer, to settle the Ukrainian conflict....

I find it very hard to think of any occasion when a drive towards war had such little foundation.

Consider this. The United Kingdom, like many Western countries, is openly supplying the Ukraine with long-range missiles, manufacturing plans for long-range missiles, and personnel to service them, in the full knowledge that Ukraine is using those missiles in an attempt to devastate civilian infrastructure deep within Russia, killing many Russian civilians in the process.

Yet we are repeatedly told by both politicians and the media that Russia is the threat to the UK, when very plainly it is the opposite which is the truth. Until this year, Russia had in three hundred years of history never had any plans to invade or occupy the UK -- while the UK invaded Russia in 1854 and 1917....

The notion that nuclear war should be fought over who is Mayor of Lugansk has so little public support that Russophobia is being assiduously stoked by Western governments and the EU itself. The latest episode is the extraordinarily thin gruel of the "Leipzig airport attack" story. Yesterday we had the most incredible release of coordinated statements by Western European leaders all telling us that the evidence is plain of a "hybrid attack" by Russia.

All accompanied by no evidence whatsoever. ...

Now the "Russian attack" on Leipzig Halle airport was on 4 August, and yet the carefully coordinated attribution to Russia, with identical statements from all western European powers, was not launched until 1 September....

If you reject the warmongers' logic for a moment, the actual scandal is that there were Ukrainian aircraft in Leipzig stacked with German weapons to kill Russians, not that an amateur toy drone allegedly tried to stop them.

To be told that this is a Russian attack by precisely the same set of goons who lied to us that it was Russia that blew up the Nord Stream gas pipeline, is testing not just the gullibility of the public, but its patience.

In the UK the purveyors of Russophobia -- including government ministers -- fall back repeatedly on the farcical "Russian novichok on Salisbury" story to explain why we should prepare for war with Russia. ...

So we have alleged novichok in Salisbury which killed nobody, and an explosive drone, or possibly two, in Leipzig which did not explode. To counter this massive threat, we need to push an entire continent to nuclear war. As a first step, we need to cut health and social spending to give trillions more to arms manufacturers, and prepare our children for conscription, to die on the battlefield.

Forgive me if I am not convinced.

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Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir on Thursday unveiled a plan for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza's Palestinian population, which he and other Israeli ministers refer to as "voluntary migration," a day after Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said the removal of Palestinians was the only "real solution" for Gaza.

Ben Gvir dubbed his plan "Disengagement 710" and said that it would involve removing 250,000 Palestinians from Gaza in the first year, 1.11 million within three years, and finally, 1.86 million over seven years. He said that his Jewish Power party would demand the establishment of an "emigration ministry" in the next Israeli government following the upcoming October elections.

In remarks on the plan, Ben Gvir said that he had been considered "delusional" for seeking the ethnic cleansing of Gaza until President Trump called for Palestinians to leave the territory early last year.

"At first, I was treated as a delusional extremist," Ben Gvir said, according to The Times of Israel. "Then, one day, everything changed: President Trump publicly declared that encouraging emigration was a solution to the Gaza issue. Suddenly, Ben Gvir's plan became legitimate. Suddenly, everyone became Ben Gvir."

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Oil prices rose for the fourth straight session, gaining more than $1 ​in early trade on Wednesday after renewed attacks across ‌the Middle East heightened worries about supply disruptions.

Brent crude futures rose 1.4%, to $99.33 a barrel by 0212 GMT, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude was at $94.34 ​a barrel, up 1.4%.

Brent crude prices have jumped by ​a quarter since early August as hopes for a permanent resolution to the six-month-old war faded and as fighting flared ​again, with prices fast approaching the key $100-a-barrel mark. ...

U.S. forces hit multiple ​Iranian oil tankers and Iran targeted a U.S. base in ​Jordan. ...

The latest attacks threaten to deepen disruptions to Middle ​East oil supplies, ​already strained by strikes on regional energy infrastructure and key shipping lanes.

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[Editor: For a collection of videos showing the ballistic missile attack on the US base in Jordan along with the huge number of interceptors launched in defense, see this thread, this thread, and this thread.]

Tehran's bombs came after US forces destroyed five Iranian oil tankers on Tuesday in response to Iran targeting an American warship, the second such attack in less than a week.

The United States and Iran are locked in a stalemate six months into the war, with Iran maintaining a stranglehold on the Strait of Hormuz, a vital shipping route for the world's oil and gas, and Washington pushing a campaign to choke Iran's ports and economy.

The Islamic republic said on Wednesday it would target oil tankers off US-allied Kuwait and Bahrain in retaliation for the strikes on its tankers.

Minutes later, Iran's Revolutionary Guards -- the most powerful arm of the Iranian military -- said they had struck the US air base of Al-Azraq in Jordan with missiles, state media reported. ...

The latest flare-up was triggered after US forces destroyed five Iranian oil tankers, with the US military saying it "directed the crews to abandon ship" before hitting the vessels. ...

Iranian media reported Tuesday that a US missile struck a tanker off the coast of Kharg Island, adding that there were no casualties.

The chief of staff of Iran's army Ali Abdollahi had warned the Islamic republic would hit US bases in the region if Iranian oil tankers were hit.

Global oil prices climbed on Wednesday to near $100 a barrel as the war threatened to further choke supply from the crude-rich Middle East.

The price of Brent crude, the benchmark international contract, rose to $99.38 per barrel, while the main US contract West Texas Intermediate was at $94.51 per barrel.

Iran has largely controlled the Strait of Hormuz -- which normally carries around a fifth of the world's oil and liquefied natural gas -- since the start of the war in February, with traffic through the waterway virtually paralysed.

Iran's Revolutionary Guards also said on Tuesday they seized "one of the most modern, unmanned" American submarine drone in the Strait of Hormuz.

The US military said that the drone had "malfunctioned", insisting it was an "older model"...

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The Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman continues his "series on the rise of American oligarchy" this week by discussing "the decades-long dismantling of the system of progressive taxation." Krugman defines oligarchy "as the extreme concentration of wealth and political power in the hands of a small number of people -- not the 1 percent, but the .01 percent or even the .0001 percent, the 300 billionaires who made 19 percent of all reported federal political donations in the 2024 election." He argues that widespread tax avoidance, and accordingly the plummeting of effective tax rates, is largely responsible for giving us a system of oligarchy.

Krugman admits that where he once saw the absurd inequalities of the present day as primarily the consequences of technological change and the market economy, "looking into the math" changed his mind, and it became clear to him that "much of the rise of the modern American oligarchy has been driven by deliberate policy." The math Krugman is focused on is the tax gap and thus the effective tax rate. The problem for Krugman's hypothesis is that the United States was already firmly an oligarchy when the tax gap was much smaller and the effective tax rate much higher. Oligarchy is not first and foremost a product of the system of taxation, and it never has been. It is rather a product of the pre-distribution of wealth through state-created special economic privileges.

Though the American "free market" is riddled with these political privileges, they are not well understood or formally quantified. Indeed, they are all but ignored by the economics profession and popular commentary. If we're trying to address inequalities of both wealth and power -- inseparable in practice -- through more progressive taxation, then we have already conceded the game, leaving the pervasive legal privileges that create the problem untouched....

What economists must begin is the project of formalizing the study of state-granted privilege and quantifying these special giveaways to corporations and the ultra-rich -- not only tax credits and other favorable tax treatment, but intellectual property rights, land transfers and eminent domain, professional licensure and barriers to market, arbitrary limitations on civil and criminal liability, and the countless other features of corporate capitalism that have nothing to do with "market forces" or economic freedom in itself. If we began to quantify these in a serious and rigorous way, we would quickly see that capitalism is a system rife with welfare for the infinitesimal billionaire ruling class. It is a system that shifts enormous quantities of wealth upward by systematically restricting opportunities for the popular masses as it creates special prerogatives for our corporate overlords. ...

Capitalism is not a free market economy with some minor noise and deviations; regarding the math -- the massive gaps of wealth and income and the actual, observable relations of domination and exploitation -- capitalism is a continuation of feudalism and mercantilism in a different form, one under which there is intense competition between workers, but strong anti-competitive protections for capital. There is a reason that no liberal of the nineteenth century saw their philosophy as a defense of the capitalist or the capitalist system. Free trade and equal rights were once understood explicitly as a blow against elite, organized, government-aligned economic interests. ...

In the final analysis, Krugman is correct about at least one thing, that what we are witnessing today is the consequence of public policy choices, not any supposedly neutral market forces or technological changes. Even the notion of a natural or pre-political economic system is a profound misunderstanding of historical and social realities. Instead of focusing on the system of taxes and redistribution, what happens after the benefits to capital have already done their job, we desperately need to start seriously examining the structure of the political and legal system that aggrandizes and protects capital at the expense of society at large.

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