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Leaders Condemn Ansarallah Attack on Saudi Arabia While Ignoring Illegal War Against Yemen

By Kurt Nimmo | Another Day in the Empire | October 11, 2026

Following the attack on the King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, the usual suspects emerged from the social media muck to condemn Ansarallah. “These reprehensible attacks demonstrate a blatant disregard for innocent civilian life. They must stop now,” demanded Trump’s secretary of state, Marco Rubio.

Bibi Netanyahu, “on behalf of the people of Israel,” condemned the attack and declared the Zionist state “looks forward to a strong Middle East—one that stands united against threats, protects its people, and builds a future of security, cooperation, and prosperity for all the peoples of our region,” never mind the 200,000-680,000 people of the region he butchered over the last three years.

Kaja Kallas, the former president of Estonia and current High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, denounced the airport attack. “The Houthi attack on Riyadh’s international airport is an appalling act of terror. There can be no justification for indiscriminate attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure,” she said.

Kallas, like most European leaders, insists Israel has a “right to defend itself” against Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis, and yet “self-defense” is not a legitimate response for the people of Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen, all victims of Israeli and US aggression.

António Guterres, the Secretary-General of the United Nations, is “deeply shocked” by the Yemeni retaliation, and criticized the attack on the Saudi airport as a violation of international law.

If Guterres is concerned about international law and the bombing of civilian infrastructure, why hasn’t the UN invoked Chapter VII of the UN Charter in regard to Gaza? “The UN’s member states collectively have a bad track record when it comes to preventing genocide,” writes Sean Matthews. “In the case of genocides in Rwanda and Bosnia, the UN only declared officially that genocides took place after the fact.”

G7 foreign ministers also weighed in on the attack, declaring the response to Saudi attacks poses an “unacceptable threat to regional stability and security, to global energy security,” as well as to security in the Red Sea and the Bab al-Mandab Strait.

In June, during a globalist conclave in Évian, the G7 issued a dilatory statement calling for an acceleration of “humanitarian and reconstruction efforts and the swift implementation of relevant political and security measures” in Gaza, the West Bank, and Lebanon, while knowing full well Zionist Israel will ignore international law and continue to murder and starve Palestinians while ethnically cleansing the Shi’a in southern Lebanon.

The official censure by the United States, the EU, UN, and G7, as well as the skewed reportage of the corporate media, overlooks the reason why Ansarallah is bombing Saudi airports and oil infrastructure.

Forgotten, or ignored, are the crimes of the Saudi coalition during and after the Yemen War of 2015. The coalition included the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Morocco, and Sudan.

The Sunni coalition attacked after President Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi fled house arrest into exile in Saudi Arabia. Hadi, who died earlier this year, stood accused of secretly working with al-Islah, described as the Muslim Brotherhood’s Yemeni branch. The former president was also accused of being a Saudi puppet. Saudi Arabia views Ansarallah—followers of the Shi’a branch of Zaydism—as a threat to its national security.

A detailed United Nations report estimated approximately 377,000 deaths by the end of 2021 from the Saudi-led campaign. This total includes direct losses from combat and indirect deaths linked to malnutrition, disease, and the decline of health care and essential services.

The United States was involved in the Yemen humanitarian crisis. US personnel provided logistical support, information, training, and advisers after the Saudi-led intervention. US tankers refueled coalition aircraft, increasing their range over Yemen. Saudi forces relied heavily on US-supplied aircraft, munitions, spare parts, maintenance, and technical support.

Jeff Bachman, a professor and genocide scholar at the School of Information Services, said during an interview with the American University in Washington that the Saudi-led coalition has been able to engage violence against Yemenis thanks to the complicit material and political support of the United States.

UN Security Council Resolution 2216 established a UN arms embargo. The restrictions implemented delayed or curtailed commercial imports and humanitarian shipments of food, fuel, medicines, and medical supplies. Because Yemen is dependent on imports, disruptions to port and airport operations rapidly worsened hunger, health-system strain, water and sanitation breakdowns, and prices, according to Human Rights Watch.

“The Saudi-led coalition’s military strategy in Yemen has been increasingly built around preventing desperately needed aid and essential goods from reaching civilians, risking millions of lives,” said James Ross, legal and policy director at Human Rights Watch. “The Security Council should urgently sanction Saudi and other coalition leaders responsible for blocking food, fuel, and medicine, causing hunger, sickness, and death.”

During a full closure in November 2017, UN agencies noted that aircraft and ships delivering aid could not secure clearance, while commercial cargo encountered major hurdles. Human Rights Watch stated that the coalition had maintained a naval and air blockade since March 2015, with restrictions producing a disproportionate impact on civilians in direct violation of international law.

Yemen remains one of the world’s most serious humanitarian emergencies. As of 2026, more than 22 million people need assistance or protection and 18.3 million people are acutely food insecure. Malnutrition levels remain critically high, with over 2.2 million children under five acutely malnourished, including 516,157 suffering from malnutrition, according to the United Nations. “Even before the latest escalation, an estimated 12.2 million children in Yemen needed humanitarian assistance,” UNICEF reported in September.

Article 51 of the UN Charter is a determining provision that addresses the right of self-defense for member states. It represents an exception to the general prohibition on the use of force outlined in Article 2(4) of the UN Charter, which mandates that all member states refrain from using force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, as the Saudis did in 2015 in Yemen.

On October 10, following the Ansarallah attacks, Trump announced the US may rejoin the latest Saudi onslaught on Yemen. “We’re going to look at it,” he told reporters. “We just found out about the recent attack. We will make a decision. We move very quickly.”

Prior to Trump’s announcement, Democrat Ro Khanna, who was detained during a visit to Israel in July, introduced a joint Yemen War Powers Resolution along with Republican Representative Thomas Massie on October 9. The resolution directs “the President pursuant to section 5(c) of the War Powers Resolution to remove United States Armed Forces from hostilities against the Houthis in Yemen that have not been authorized by Congress.”

Congress is unable to decide whether to rejoin the Saudi effort to destroy Ansarallah and maintain the illegal war on the people of Yemen. In addition to debate on the constitutional legality of the Trump administration’s military assistance to the Saudis without a congressional consultation, members of Congress are concerned about the continued slaughter of civilians and the ongoing humanitarian crisis, considered one of the worst in the world, with around 24 million people, or nearly 80% of the population, needing assistance and protection.

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George Soros elege 7 deputadas trans pelo Brasil

Sete trans eleitas no Brasil com financiamento indireto de George Soros via ANTRA, ABGLT e Washington Brazil Office. Política identitária artificial.

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Sete políticos autodenominados “mulheres trans” foram eleitos para cargos legislativos nas eleições gerais ocorridas no último domingo (04) no Brasil.

Erika Hilton (PSOL) e Duda Salabert (PSOL) foram reeleitas, enquanto Thabatta Pimenta (PSOL) estreará na Câmara Federal. Por sua vez, nos estados foram reeleitas Linda Brasil (PSOL) em Sergipe e Dani Balbi (PCdoB) no Rio de Janeiro, enquanto Sofia Favero (PSOL) foi eleita pela primeira vez para a Assembleia Legislativa de São Paulo e Natasha Ferreira (PT) também estreará na Assembleia Legislativa do Rio Grande do Sul.

A principal pauta dessas candidaturas é o transativismo. É a típica política identitária: defender seus próprios interesses, interesses de um setor minúsculo da classe média, contra os interesses da maioria dos explorados e oprimidos. Os transativistas vêm se destacando no Brasil por sua oposição aos direitos básicos das mulheres e pela utilização do aparato repressivo do Estado (Judiciário e polícia) para perseguir os cidadãos comuns, geralmente trabalhadores humildes, tachados de “transfóbicos”.

Tal empreitada não é feita através de um trabalho de conscientização política, nem muito menos é fruto de esforços dos oprimidos que, organizados de forma independente, conseguem criar um movimento social contra os interesses dos poderosos. Não. É um movimento integralmente artificial e financiado pelos mais poderosos entre os poderosos.

As Open Society Foundations, do especulador financeiro multibilionário George Soros, admitem abertamentem há dez anos que “há muito tempo apoiam organizações trans e intersexo em todo o mundo”. Ainda em 2013, as OSF apresentavam seu ponto de vista sobre a transexualidade: “a identidade de gênero é o sentido interno de uma pessoa de ser um homem, uma mulher ou outro gênero.”

As OSF são a ponta de um guarda-chuva, pelo qual repassam fundos para organizações captadoras de forma hierárquica. Assim, a organização mãe originada da iniciativa de George Soros ainda na década de 1980 para derrubar a União Soviética e seus aliados consegue levar financiamento a um número incontável de ONGs.

No Brasil, a Associação Nacional de Travestis e Transexuais (ANTRA) recebe financiamento indireto das OSF. Estas repassaram 25,8 milhões de reais ao Fundo Brasil de Direitos Humanos entre 2016 e 2024. O Fundo Brasil, por sua vez, aportou 400 mil reais à ANTRA em 2024.

Além disso, Bruna Benevides, presidente da ANTRA, é integrante do conselho deliberativo da Conectas Direitos Humanos, ONG que é a maior receptora de fundos das OSF (34 milhões de reais até 2024).

Em relatório com mapeamento e lista de candidaturas para as eleições deste ano, a ANTRA assegura ter um “compromisso inegociável de eleger pessoas trans”. No total, foram 116 candidaturas registradas como “trans” pelo Brasil.

Após o resultado eleitoral, a organização comemorou a eleição das sete “mulheres trans” para cargos legislativos: “estávamos ansiosas por este resultado! Ampliamos nossas presenças com votações extremamente expressivas e demos uma bela resposta à transfobia!”

Quem também celebrou o resultado foi a Associação Brasileira de Lésbicas, Gays, Bissexuais, Travestis, Transexuais e Intersexos (ABGLT): “as pessoas LGBTQIA+ ampliaram sua participação política e demonstraram, nas urnas, a força que construímos”, destacando a eleição de “mulheres trans” para a Câmara Federal. A publicação foi feita nas redes sociais, em parceria com a ANTRA e Bruna Benevides.

A ABGLT é afiliada ao Washington Brazil Office, entidade de lobby sediada na capital dos Estados Unidos e que recebeu 300 mil dólares de financiamento das Open Society Foundations em 2023. Ela também é parceira institucional da Associação Brasileira de Organizações Não Governamentais (Abong), que recebeu R$ 4,3 milhões de financiamento das OSF entre 2016 e 2024.

A Abong também recebeu, no ano passado, R$ 1,5 milhão em recursos de emendas parlamentares de Erika Hilton, que é presidente da Frente Parlamentar Mista por Cidadania e Direitos LGBTI+ do Congresso Nacional. Esse montante era destinado a ações de “empoderamento e capacitação da comunidade LGBTQIA+”, “fortalecimento das paradas LGBTQIA+” e “advocacy e colaboração com a Frente Parlamentar LGBT+” da própria Hilton.

Hilton tem relações mais profundas com o guarda-chuva de George Soros. Um documentário biográfico de Hilton recebeu financiamento do William Greaves Research & Development Fund. Dirigido por Chica Andrade, que é um dos organizadores da Associação de Profissionais Audiovisuais Trans, o filme aparentemente ainda não foi concluído, ou ao menos ainda não foi lançado – embora a previsão de lançamento fosse para o início deste ano. O Fundo William Greaves contemplou o documentário em seu programa de financiamento de 2023-2024 com 25 mil dólares. O Fundo pertence à Firelight Media, uma organização sem fins lucrativos sediada em Nova Iorque que tem entre seus apoiadores as Open Society Foundations.

Hilton também é profundamente relacionada com a ANTRA e com Bruna Benevides. Em 2024, a deputada indicou Benevides para receber a Medalha do Mérito Legislativo da Câmara Federal e deu apoio institucional ao Guia para Migrantes Trans nos EUA, elaborado pela ANTRA. Em 2025, a associação enviou à deputada uma proposta legislativa para alterar o Código Penal e aumentar as penas por crimes cometidos contra “mulheres trans”. Em setembro deste ano, a ANTRA apresentou uma representação à Procuradoria-Geral Eleitoral pedindo apuração de “possíveis episódios de violência política de gênero” contra Hilton – Benevides foi quem apresentou publicamente a posição da entidade.

Duda Salabert também deu apoio institucional ao guia da ANTRA. Thabatta Pimenta participou, ao lado de Benevides, do XX Seminário LGBTQIA+ do Congresso Nacional em 2023, bem como do EleiTrans, encontro de transexuais famosos que se apresentam como lideranças que foi promovido pelo Projeto Pajubá e que contou com a colaboração da ANTRA, ABGLT e Abong.

Linda Brasil, por sua vez, participou de atividades institucionais da ANTRA. Em janeiro de 2025, por exemplo, esteve na cerimônia do acordo entre o Ministério das Mulheres e a ANTRA, ao lado de Benevides. A deputada estadual do PSOL foi uma das principais figuras políticas transexuais a participar da “Marsha Trans Brasil” deste ano, organizada pela ANTRA e pelo Instituto Brasileiro de Transmasculinidades (Ibrat).

Dani Balbi esteve junto com Linda na manifestação. Em 2023, Balbi apresentou na Assembleia Legislativa do Rio de Janeiro um projeto concedendo a Benevides o Prêmio Cidadania, Direito e Respeito à Diversidade

Natasha Ferreira também participou do EleiTrans e da “Marsha Trans Brasil”.

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Iran security chief says powers greater than US tried to conquer Iran but ended in ‘dustbin of history’

Press TV – October 11, 2026

Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, Major General Mohsen Rezaei, says powers greater than the US have tried to conquer Iran but ultimately ended up in the “dustbin of history.”

During an exclusive interview with Press TV on Saturday, Rezaei said the “US suffered repeated defeats in its confrontation with Iran and has consequently turned to economic warfare out of desperation.”

Iran, rather than the US, would determine when the confrontation ends, he said, stressing that Tehran would continue its resistance until its rightful demands are met.

Addressing the presence of US forces in the region, Rezaei told Press TV that the withdrawal of US forces from Iraq reflected Washington’s failure to impose its military agenda on the region, describing it as a vindication of Iran’s resistance to American military presence in West Asia.

Rezaei further said that more than “30 million Iranians have registered in ‘Janfada’ (Sacrifice for Iran) Campaign to take up arms in the event of US aggression.”

On diplomacy, the official said “Tehran would not return to its previous diplomatic norms,” while stressing that “Iran would never abandon diplomacy altogether.”

The senior official warned that, if Washington launched another act of aggression against Iran, American assets could be targeted, including key data systems and artificial intelligence sensors.

Rezaei also identified Washington and its regional allies as the root of the problem surrounding the Strait of Hormuz.

Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz in response to the latest round of US-Israeli aggression, preventing US and allied ships from navigating the strategic waterway.

The move resulted in a significant increase in oil and energy prices across the globe, especially in the US, forcing Washington and the International Energy Agency (IEA) to release their strategic resources several times.

Following the signing of the Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between Iran and the US in June, Tehran opened the Strait of Hormuz, but after the US violated the MoU by blockading Iranian ports, Iran’s Armed Forces closed the maritime corridor once again.

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The Diesel Deal between Trump and Putin: Hope dies last

Trump’s declaration presents a very interesting media narrative and a potential end to ‘Project Ukraine’ that is worth taking a deeper dive into.

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No one expected that Donald Trump, after a congratulatory birthday phone call to his Russian counterpart, would declare that Russian diesel fuel would prove to be the solution to America’s current fuel shortages. If the Trump presidency has yielded anything it is a lot of interesting headlines that seem to come out of nowhere, that can sadly, quite often, fade right back into the mist from whence they came. Sometimes Trump’s words can fill us with hope like this ‘Diesel Deal’, and others like his recent UN speech, where he threatened to potentially kill all Iranians, fill us with dread. This declaration by our enigmatic leader presents a very interesting media narrative and a potential end to ‘Project Ukraine’ that is worth taking a deeper dive into.

Trump has blamed Zelensky for the global energy shortages, especially those concerning diesel fuel. At the time, everyone thought this was just a cheap Twitter-style deflection from the failed war against Iran, which certainly caused a lot of fuel transport disruption. That is to say, the White House was projecting this crisis, that it allowed to happen, or actively caused, to be thrown onto the scapegoat Zelensky. However, this form of deflection or projection is no longer just words in a pre-election narrative, but has become action. Sanctions on Russian diesel have been lifted and the first shipment is already on its way as I write these words. Something tangible has occurred.

Zelensky was actually warned some six times to stop attacking Russian oil infrastructure. Blow up children in the Donbass and beyond ‘sure’, but attacking what the West wants from Russia more than anything is ‘totally unacceptable’. Zelensky, who as stated above was warned half-a-dozen times to back of strikes on oil/gas, upon hearing of Trump’s decision to purchase Russian diesel fuel did the following:

1) He quickly attacked Russian oil infrastructure again seemingly to spite the U.S. President

2) He immediately cut off peace talks in Miami with the Trump’s aides, the Kushner-Witkoff duo, which is yet another spitting in the face of Donald Trump.

The wildest thing of all is that the ‘narcissist’ Trump has already publically thanked President Putin twice for this deal. Appearing at a rally, Americans standing behind Trump wildly cheered in favor of the announcement of peace with Russia plus extra fuel for America. Russophobia is a hobby of the globalist bourgeoisie and Epstein Island, not American truckers and farmers.

It’s a great narrative, let’s hope it lasts

Trump has now put 100% of the blame for global energy/fuel problems directly onto Zelensky, and called him out personally for keeping the war going over the last two years. Thus, the narrative is forming into something like: If the war in Ukraine is the cause of the fuel shortages, and Zelensky is the cause of the war continuing, that means the U.S. can make a deal with Russia even if ‘they started it’, with the corollary that Zelensky logically needs to go as he is the source of the problem. But going even deeper into the narrative we can see the most interesting thing of all or as they like to say online ‘the quiet part’: Trump has essentially declared that Russian energy output is of vital strategic interest to the United States.

It is these kind of words that take the black pill out of my mouth and directly inject ‘hopium’ into my bloodstream. The idea of the American President declaring that NOT being at war with Russia is of vital strategic interest to the USA is something I have been dreaming of my entire adult life. This is exactly the logic that we need to finally and ultimately end the Cold War + Project for a New American Century mentality in politics and finally allow the USA to rebuild and invest into itself. This very well could be America’s mulitpolar awakening by using a logic trap similar to the other ones that have been used to do the exact opposite and keep the USA locked in eternal foreign wars of luxury for ‘national security’. This new logic trap could look something like this: “So you want war with Russia? That must mean you want to harm America, you dirty traitor! You’ll take the fuel from farmer Joe and our kids will starve, you monster! Russia being left alone to produce fuel is a national security interest of America, are you against our country’s national security? Do you want to weaken manly America for those gay Europeans?”.

But as we slam that hopium injection into our veins we have to remember that Donald Trump has said a lot of things, changed his mind many times, or was forced to change it, and perhaps isn’t quite the unilateral decider that he makes himself out to be on TV.

It takes two to tango, but one orange man to keep his word.

The transcripts from this now famous birthday phone chat look very different on the American and Russian sides, which is par for the course. Trump’s team tends to write discussed things as proven facts whereas the Russians are more noncommittal in their language. But the diesel sanctions are gone for now and the boats are moving, so this looks to be real… at least until the mid-term votes are cast.

The American side has since threatened to cut Zelensky off from intelligence sharing, which could be an instant deathblow to their military efforts as many experts believe that only U.S. intel has allowed them to survive this long. Without such targeting data they will be sent back to 20th century warfare instantly, and they would no longer be able to strike deep into Russia. RT wrote the following on this issue:

A Ukrainian official told Axios that Witkoff and Kushner threatened to cut off US intelligence sharing with Kiev if it continued to ignore Trump’s requests to halt strikes on Russian oil refineries, but the US official denied that any such threat had been made.

But here is where we have to hold our breath, for despite how nice this new narrative sounds, and how it is the perfect exit for the USA from its participation in Project Ukraine we should not forget the words of President Putin from some time ago when he talked about the true power of any U.S. President:

“So a person is elected — he comes with ideas… Then people with briefcases come visit him, well-dressed, in dark suits — kind of like mine.”

So the real question might be, will the Zionist Lobby, Epstein Elite, Three-Letter Organizations, Influential Billionaires, and all the other spooks on Capitol Hill actually let President Trump actually end this war? Will the POTUS be allowed to do this?

We should recall that after Zelensky acted disgracefully in the White House at the start of Trump’s second term everyone thought this conflict would be over. Trump the famous narcissist seemed visibly angry and offended on camera during their verbal spat. But the war went on. There was the Anchorage Summit, which had tons of hype and everyone thought then that the U.S. would pull support from Kiev. But it did not. Trump’s enemies including the Biden Clan are linked to massive corruption in Ukraine which has all been exposed. This would have been a great off ramp from the conflict, but Trump did not or could not take it. And in general, Trump’s rhetoric towards Zelensky and other European politicians has been overtly harsh and disrespectful. The man accused of being a ‘blowhard’ somehow always speaks quite politely behind the backs and to the faces of Putin and Xi.

Thus, although I want peace and mutually-respectful cooperation between the USA and Russia perhaps this deal will only last till the midterm elections, when all of a sudden Zelensky will go back to being “a bastard, but he’s our bastard”, and the conflict will go marching on. Perhaps this is our October Surprise from the Republican side of the aisle? And in December we can all be ‘surprised again’ when the war resumes full-force and thousands more Slavs die on the battlefield?

Now, Donald Trump with gritted teeth is slinging forth the idea that he thinks “it’s time for Ukraine to get a new President”. But after the votes are counted in America he may just go back to passively hating and tolerating Zelensky till the end of his term or till an Oreshnik finds the mark one day. We also cannot forget that the West has been lobbying for a major ceasefire from the Russians for a long time. Presumably this would be used to regroup, rest, rearm and then just go right back to fighting till the last Ukrainian. Now Trump wants elections in Kiev, which will probably demand a ceasefire to enact. But will he be pushing for a three-day ceasefire, or try to trick the Russians into agreeing to a month-long freeze or more?

One ‘good’ sign on this issue from a Russian standpoint is that there are now already calls for Zelensky to resign over this issue on Twitter/X coming from all sides even pro-Ukrainian ones:

“’Zelensky must resign’ – Ukrainian media. That was quick. Zelensky ignored Trump’s warnings not to attack Russian oil refineries SIX times. This morning, Zelensky has bombed another Russian oil refinery. Ukrainians are calling for Zelensky‘s resignation.

Former Ukrainian MP and Metinvest co-owner Vadym Novynskyi has called on Zelensky to resign and hand over all power to Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada following the Trump-Putin agreements.”

We have to remember that Ukraine in 2026 is already a police state where any dissent means you could get thrown into a bus and taken to the front to die or vanish into a prison as a Russian ‘spy’. Thus, when important people gang up against Zelensky openly it is much more of a potent statement than Hollywood actors safely making Tik-Toks against Trump from their luxurious bedrooms.

The rest of the world won’t sit around and do nothing.

Some moronic ‘Putin sold out the BRICS’ counter-narrative is sure to arise from Kiev’s bot accounts soon. Obviously someone is going to say that the Kremlin threw their Iranian brothers to the Zio-lobby machine! But in actuality, it looks like the Iranians are going to just ship their oil through Russia and sell it as ‘Russian’ and everyone will be happy. The Caspian Sea will be even more busy in the near future. If sanctioned accomplished anything they really increased trade between Russia and Iran.

No one in Moscow is planning on selling out Tehran; they want America to join the Multipolar World while still saving face and reduce the global threat level of nuclear war which is vastly too high at present. Iran and China were surely consulted on this issue before any Diesel Deal was finalized.

The real danger of Trump calling for the removal of Zelensky comes from Europe, where certain factions, politicians and their financiers may take radical action in response. And Trump’s reaction to this response could be even more radical now. Would it be possible that NATO might greenlight the Baltics to just open up another front to ‘see what happens’? Will France finally go through on its threat and just deploy troops openly en masse to save the Napoleon in Green from political or potentially physical death? So far the EU has only threatened even more sanctions. If the previous 20+ packages of sanctions failed, I wonder what is left to actually sanction. Ursula is promising the biggest and most expansive sanctions packet for Monday, October 12th, but I doubt it will change anything. The only thing that would change the situation is if the EU did something really aggressive, drastic and stupid militarily.

What about the rest of the sanctions?

The Russian media has done a disservice to the public by writing that “Trump will lift sanctions” over-and-over again when the only sanctions being lifted are on diesel exports for half a year. All of the rest of the sanctions are still there. You still cannot fly directly from Moscow to New York, and money transfers via SWIFT are still mostly blocked. We have to remember that at least in theory sanctions are a form of punishment for crimes committed against, in this case, international law and the United States. So how can relations between the USA and Russian Federation truly be normalized when one still accuses the other of crimes it believes it did not even commit?

After Project Ukraine ends things could change rapidly, but there can be no true friendship until Washington trusts Aeroflot enough to let them land on U.S. territory. We cannot be both under a sanctions war and normalized at the same time. But this new Trump narrative, if he can stick with it to its logical conclusion, is the perfect off-ramp for America and the way we can finally end this war and go back to some sense of normalcy with the apocalypse pushed far off into the future beyond all of our lifespans.

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Deutsche Bahn and China Rail

The story of infrastructure in capitalist vs. socialist systems

By Hua BIN

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A friend visited Germany recently and told a story how a delayed train caused him to miss the flight home.

I was shocked since you could set your watch by the Deutsche Bahn when I was living in Germany back in 1997.

I was doing an internship at Mercedes Benz in Stuttgart in those days. I could time my walk from the apartment to the bus stop, then connect with a train to the office with less than 5 minutes in total waiting time.

The bus and train schedules were synced so perfectly that you could count on a two-minutes’ walk and exactly 2 minutes wait in between. Both buses and trains were on time to a fault.

I had a particular fondness for DB since I traveled around Germany almost every weekend with its 35 Mark Schones-Wochenende Ticket (happy weekend ticket). Unfortunately that service was discontinued in 2019.

In the winter of 1997, I got lost on a hike with several friends in the Black Forest near Baden-Baden.

We were only able to walk out of the cold night after stumbling upon a rail track that led us to a small rural train stop. I can still remember the warm platform light to this day.

I’ve held German rail in high regard ever since.

So you can imagine how incredulous I was about the delay and bad service my friend complained about.

This prompted me to read about what happened to Deutsche Bahn over the last 30 years. In a nutshell, things certainly have changed for the worse.

Deutsche Bahn today defines an on-time train as one arriving less than 6 minutes behind schedule – a long cry from the clock-setting punctuality of the late 90s.

Even by such a low bar, punctuality hovers around 50 to 60%, well below DB’s own target of 70%.

The official explanation is aging infrastructure, heavy construction, and overloaded tracks.

However, as I dig a bit deeper, the decline of the German rail efficiency seems to stem from a deeply flawed privatization in 1994 which led to decades of extreme infrastructure underinvestment.

The 1994 Bahnreform merged the old East and West state railways with a clear mandate: DB was supposed to operate as a profit-seeking private corporation to prepare for an eventual stock market IPO.

To attract investors, DB prioritized extreme cost-cutting over public service.

They aggressively cut staff, outsourced maintenance, and began divesting into global logistics companies (like DB Schenker) rather than focusing on domestic rail.

Under the guise of maximizing efficiency, DB severely downsized its physical network to save money.

Nearly 8,000 kilometers of secondary rail lines were completely dismantled. Thousands of track crossovers, passing loops, and spare sidetracks were removed.

In 1997, if a train broke down or was delayed, a dispatcher could easily reroute it around the problem using these spare tracks.

Today, the network is stripped of its buffers. If one commuter train stalls near Frankfurt, it acts like a broken-down car on a single-lane highway, causing immediate, cascading delays across the entire country.

The problem is compounded by a mixed-rail system where fast Intercity Express (ICE) trains share the same physical tracks with slow regional commuter trains and heavy freight cargo.

In comparison, Chinese high-speed rail or France’s TGV networks mostly operate on dedicated high-speed tracks.

As the DB physical network was drastically thinned out, annual passenger numbers went up from 1.5 billion passengers in 1994 to 2.4 billion today.

Back in the 90s, it was still very common to live near where you worked in Germany. Over the last 30 years, skyrocketing housing costs in major hubs like Frankfurt, Munich, Berlin, and Hamburg forced a massive portion of the workforce to move further out into surrounding suburban regions and smaller towns.

As a result, Germany experienced a commuter explosion, with millions of people traveling significantly longer distances back and forth every single day.

Now, the Deutsche Bahn system runs at 100% capacity nearly constantly. Any small delays can quickly snowball into network chaos.

To make things even harder, Germany’s strict structural debt limits have restricted state spending.

For years, Germany spends only a fraction of what its neighbors do on rail. For example, Switzerland invests over €400 per citizen annually into rail infrastructure. Germany routinely spends around €100.

DB’s disastrous experience with privatization mirrors what happened with other similar projects such as the Thames Water in the UK.

When Margaret Thatcher’s government privatized the UK water sector in 1989, Thames Water was handed to private investors with a clean slate and zero debt.

However, successive private owners treated the utility—which serves 16 million customers across London and southern England—as a corporate cash cow.

Private investors – Wall Street banks and hedge funds – loaded the utility with a mountain of debt and extracted hundreds of millions in management fees and dividends.

Instead of using revenue to upgrade Victorian-era pipes and treatment centers, money was funneled to shareholders and executive bonuses. By 2026, that debt has ballooned to roughly £20 billion.

While the financial engineering generated short-term returns for private equity, the physical infrastructure rotted.

Thames Water has become a national scandal as it has spilled billions of liters of raw sewage directly into the River Thames and local waterways.

Due to aging infrastructure, 25% of all treated water leaks straight out of the pipes before ever reaching customer homes.

Amid severe dry spells and record temperatures, Thames Water repeatedly implements prolonged hosepipe bans because the system lacks structural resilience to manage the region’s water security.

Most privatization projects of public utilities have witnessed a similar pattern of chronic underinvestment, extreme operational cost cutting, and unsustainable debt leverage while enriching financial investors.

Deutsche Bahn and Thames Water are symbols of public goods degradation for private investor gains in rentier capitalist economies.

In stark contrast, Chinese infrastructure remains firmly in the domain of public ownership.

While Europe and the US follow a policy of reactive, austerity-driven, rent-collecting management of their nations’ infrastructure, China has adopted a strategy of anticipatory, supply-led construction – often years ahead of demand.

Back in the 90s, China still was heavily reliant on decades-old, technically backward rail networks that suffered regular breakdowns.

I still remember sitting in rail cars with no air-conditioning in the height of summer for hours when the train from Beijing to Chongqing broke down due to an engine failure during a trip home from college.

The ride used to take 40 hours by scheduled timetable. Today the same trip takes less than 7 hours on highspeed rail.

When China started building its national highspeed rail network in 2004, there was an avalanche of negative press from the West.

Western “experts” eagerly called out how wasteful the project was and how the rail would never generate a positive return on investment.

Despite the nay-sayers, the country has built over 50,000 kilometers of highspeed rail in the last 20 years, over 70% of the world’s total capacity.

Just today, China announced the completion of 4 new highspeed rail lines in 4 provinces, adding another 1,142 kilometers to the network.

One of the lines is the 318-km Harbin–Yichun Line, which is now China’s northernmost highspeed rail traversing alpine permafrost.

The network now covers 97% of all cities with over 500,000 residents. It operates on dedicated rail lines and achieves 98% departure punctuality and 95% arrival punctuality.

Rather than aiming to achieve profitability and high return for every single line, the Chinese highspeed rail system serves as a public good that generate system-level benefits for the entire economy and the public.

Deutsche Bahn and China Rail represent two systems that operate on completely opposite philosophies, leading to radically different outcomes in rail performance and economic impact.

Building ahead of demand vs. Managing declining assets

China’s infrastructure strategy rests on the philosophy that building massive, high-capacity transport networks creates economic growth and future demand, rather than just responding to it.

By constructing the world’s largest highspeed rail network, largely ahead of full demand saturation, China bypassed the bottleneck phase entirely.

On the other hand, Germany operates on a strict “just-in-time” for-profit corporate framework.

Investments are only approved if existing capacity is mathematically proven to be completely exhausted.

This means that by the time a project is planned, funded, and built, the demand has already vastly outpaced the upgrade, leaving the network perpetually lagging behind.

China recognized early on that mixing slow freight and fast passenger trains limits a network’s ultimate capacity. Beijing built an entirely separate, dedicated network for the high-speed Fuxing and Hexie trains.

On the other side, because Germany tried to save money by avoiding the construction of entirely new corridors, they forced ultra-fast commuter trains to share the exact same physical tracks with heavy cargo trains.

When one slow freight train breaks down, the entire national express system grinds to a halt.

Economic Multiplier vs. Direct Profit

The Chinese state views high-speed rail as a public utility and an economic multiplier.

Even if individual rail lines operate at a financial loss or carry high debt, the investment is justified by the massive economic productivity, regional integration, and urban development it unlocks.

As part of the 1994 privatization, the German government treated Deutsche Bahn like a standard commercial enterprise.

Success was measured by cutting operational costs and generating a direct financial profit, which directly starved the physical tracks of preventative maintenance.

One would probably think the German model at least achieved higher ROI for investors even though China achieves higher total societal benefits.

Yet, reality has an ironic twist – the German model ultimately failed the investors, too.

Deutsche Bahn ended up in a financial worst-of-both-worlds scenario.

In a standard capitalist system, starving an asset of maintenance to boost short-term balance sheets usually generates high dividends for investors or pushes stock prices up.

But because DB’s privatization was half-baked, it achieved neither. The only investor in Deutsche Bahn is still the German Federal Government as its IPO plan was abandoned 2 decades ago.

Because the network was run into the ground to cut short-term corporate costs, the long-term liabilities eventually caught up.

Rather than paying rich dividends, DB has cost taxpayers billions in bailouts. The company recently reported a €2.3 billion net loss.

To manage its staggering debts, DB was forced to sell off its highly profitable global logistics subsidiary, DB Schenker, just to artificially steady its balance sheet.

By treating a core public monopoly like a private business, Germany didn’t create a highly profitable enterprise; they created an operational bottleneck that costs the broader German economy billions in lost corporate productivity every year.

China’s model operates on the opposite financial wavelength.

In a socialist market economy, critical infrastructure is heavily state directed through State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs).

While China Rail carries a massive debt load from building its expansive high-speed network, the losses are directly absorbed by the state.

From Beijing’s perspective, the direct financial return on investment of the railway itself is secondary. The real payoff is the societal and macroeconomic ROI.

By connecting far-flung cities, the state slashes shipping friction, drives real estate value, unlocks regional labor markets, and creates economic mobility.

The state effectively subsidizes the train ticket to capture a massive tax and economic growth harvest across the rest of society.

A prime example is the Greater Bay Area in Guangdong, where 7 metropolises, including Guangzhou, Shenzhen, and Hong Kong, are connected into an integrated web via highspeed rail, metro subways, and a network of highways.

The region enjoys unprecedented supply chain density and is ranked as the No. 1 most innovative cluster of cities in the world by the UN’s World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), ahead of Silicon Valley.

The same formula is repeated in nearly every natural monopoly domain – telecom, electric and water utilities, national highway network, and banking.

Rather than allowing private capital to derive rentier-income from such assets, as what happens in capitalist societies, Beijing firmly controls these commanding-heights of the economy in the public hands.

The German capitalist model tries to draw a neat box around Deutsche Bahn and demand that the box itself be profitable. China’s state-led model views the railway as just one cog in a larger national engine.

Ultimately, Deutsche Bahn’s 30-year experiment has proved that for critical public monopolies like rail, trying to squeeze out the last penny of corporate micro-profits usually breaks the system entirely.

Original article:  huabinoliver.substack.com

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Nokia’s satellite communications push for governments and militaries: ‘Connecting People’ is now for people in uniform

Europe’s “strategic autonomy” is a project through which Europe is rebuilding its own imperial and militarist capabilities.

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We remember Nokia as the company behind some of the most popular mobile phones of the past, as well as its famous slogan, “Connecting people.”

Founded in Finland in 1865 and now operating as a multinational company in telecommunications and information technology, Nokia continues to work in the field of communications – that is, to “connect people.” But with its latest project, it appears that the company is now preparing to connect people in uniform.

Nokia has teamed up with ICEYE, another Finnish company specializing in the production of microsatellites that provide high-resolution Earth observation data day and night and in all weather conditions.

The two companies have partnered to develop secure and sovereign satellite communications systems for governments and defense customers, with the first communications satellites planned for launch in 2028.

Defense, border security, emergency response…

Announced on October 1, the project envisages satellite systems operating in low Earth orbit (LEO) for use in areas including defense, border security, emergency services and disaster response.

Under the project, governments will be able to own and control not only the satellites themselves, but also the ground infrastructure and user terminals.

Rafal Modrzewski, co-founder and CEO of ICEYE, said countries should not leave control over their communications infrastructure in the hands of foreign commercial satellite operators, emphasizing that the project is ultimately aimed at reducing external dependence.

As part of the partnership, Nokia will contribute its expertise in secure networking technologies and network management, while ICEYE will provide its experience in satellite platforms, satellite constellation operations and ground infrastructure.

The cooperation between Nokia and ICEYE is not entirely new. Nokia was among the companies that participated in an investment round announced by ICEYE in June 2026, through which the company secured more than €1 billion in financing.

First satellites planned for 2028

The first satellites are scheduled to be launched in 2028. If the project is implemented, ICEYE will expand its activities in government-controlled satellite intelligence into the communications sector, while Nokia will strengthen its presence in Europe’s rapidly growing defense and space communications market.

Europe’s “strategic autonomy”: the militarization of civilian technology

The new partnership between Nokia and ICEYE is a striking example of where the concepts of “strategic autonomy” and “technological sovereignty,” which Europe has increasingly embraced in recent years, are actually heading.

The satellite communications systems being developed by the two Finnish companies may initially appear to be nothing more than a technological investment. Yet the companies themselves explicitly list defense, border security and government operations among the project’s intended areas of use. With the first satellites planned for launch in 2028, the system is also designed to remain under government control, including its satellites, ground stations and terminals.

What is significant here is not simply that two companies are entering the defense sector. The boundary between civilian and military technology is increasingly disappearing in Europe.

Companies operating in telecommunications, artificial intelligence, satellite technology, data analysis and digital infrastructure are being turned into direct components of European states’ rearmament and security policies.

This transformation is being marketed under the rhetoric of “European independence.” Yet what is emerging is not a Europe moving away from militarism. On the contrary, Europe is building its own militarized infrastructure.

Reducing dependence on the U.S. does not eliminate militarism

Europe’s basic argument is that it should not remain dependent on U.S.-based companies for its security and communications infrastructure. That is why European states are seeking to develop their own satellite systems, defense technologies and secure communications networks.

But there is a serious contradiction here.

The infrastructure being developed to reduce dependence on U.S. companies is being used to expand the military capabilities of European states. In other words, the question of “militarism or peace?” is being reduced to a choice between “American militarism or European militarism.”

The EU’s IRIS² program is a larger-scale example of this transformation. Although the system was initially presented as a secure communications and digital infrastructure project, the program was expanded in August 2026 to include 66 additional LEO satellites for defense, security and emergency services, bringing the total planned core constellation to 348 satellites. The European Commission has also explicitly identified defense and security applications as among the main drivers behind the changes.

What we are therefore witnessing is not simply a European space program designed to “improve internet access.” Space infrastructure is being transformed into a component of Europe’s security and defense architecture.

Companies are becoming part of the war economy

More importantly, this transformation is not taking place solely through state institutions.

The European model places private companies at the center of this process. As in the case of Nokia and ICEYE, private technology companies are developing infrastructure designed to meet the defense and security needs of governments. Public-private partnerships are also at the heart of the IRIS² model.

The program’s total cost over 12 years has been set at €10.6 billion, with €6 billion expected to be provided by the EU and more than €4 billion by the private sector.

Thus, the expansion of Europe’s “defense capacity” does not simply mean larger state budgets. Private capital is becoming a direct partner in Europe’s emerging security economy.

This transformation is also changing the fields in which technology companies operate. Technologies once associated primarily with consumer communications, the internet, software or civilian infrastructure are now becoming integrated into border surveillance, military communications, intelligence and crisis-management systems.

This is not the neutralization of Europe’s technology sector. It is its militarization.

The technological infrastructure of “Fortress Europe”

All of these developments cannot be considered separately from the increasingly powerful concept of “Fortress Europe.”

Tighter border controls, the treatment of migration as a security issue, increased military spending and the expansion of Europe’s own defense industry are different components of the same political direction.

Satellite technology is no exception. Indeed, border surveillance is explicitly listed among the intended uses of IRIS² in EU documents.

In this way, seemingly positive concepts such as “digital sovereignty,” “technological independence” and “strategic autonomy” are, in practice, becoming technological instruments for building a stronger European security apparatus.

The fundamental issue here is not that Europe is reducing its dependence on the United States. There is nothing inherently wrong with any country developing its own technological capabilities. The question is what those capabilities are being developed for.

If the result of technological independence is more military satellites, more sophisticated border surveillance systems, stronger military communications networks and larger defense budgets, then what is being created is not simply independence. It is the expansion of the militarist capacity of European states and European capital.

From this perspective, the Nokia-ICEYE agreement represents more than a technological partnership.

As Europe seeks to create an alternative to the United States’ military and technological dominance, it is simultaneously building its own military-technological complex.

And perhaps the most important feature of this process is that the war economy is no longer built solely in arms factories.

Telecommunications companies, satellite companies, artificial intelligence firms and other high-tech corporations are becoming increasingly important actors in this economy.

Europe’s “strategic autonomy” therefore cannot be understood merely as a project to become independent from Washington. It is also a project through which Europe is rebuilding its own imperial and militarist capabilities.

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Esclusiva: l’enigma Pakistan-Arabia Saudita-Yemen-Iran

Il titolo definitivo dell’intera vicenda, tuttavia, è che la Casa dei Saud sta attaccando Ansarallah per proteggere il culto della morte in Asia occidentale

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Cominciamo con alcune informazioni esclusive. Giovedì, Yahya Ali al-Ra’i, presidente della Camera dei Rappresentanti con sede a Sana’a sotto il controllo di Ansarallah, ha consegnato una lettera a Sardar Ayaz Sadiq, presidente dell’Assemblea Nazionale del Pakistan, richiedendo la mediazione pakistana tra Ansarallah e Riyadh.

Ra’i, figura ampiamente rispettata, ricopre la carica di presidente a Sana’a dal 2008. Sadiq ha iniziato il suo attuale mandato come presidente a Islamabad nel marzo 2024. Questo canale parlamentare diretto riveste un’enorme importanza come apertura diplomatica – poiché il Pakistan si trova ad affrontare enormi pressioni, sia a livello interno che in tutto il mondo islamico, riguardo ai suoi reali impegni relativi allo scontro tra Arabia Saudita e Yemen, come stabilito dall’Alleanza per la Difesa della Mecca.

Per quanto l’intera situazione sia in realtà oscura, informazioni dirette provenienti sia da Islamabad che da Teheran, ai massimi livelli, come da me specificatamente richiesto, hanno stabilito quattro punti chiave: Sembra che sia così – per ora.

Islamabad è irremovibile nel sostenere che il Pakistan non attaccherà Ansarallah e non impiegherà truppe a tal fine. L’intesa raggiunta a Riyadh la scorsa settimana escludeva l’ingresso nel territorio yemenita. Le forze pakistane dovrebbero rimanere al di fuori di qualsiasi offensiva terrestre contro Ansarallah.

Il Pakistan stava già mediando tra Riyadh e Sana’a attraverso Teheran. Il feldmaresciallo Asim Munir ha personalmente richiesto al ministro degli Esteri iraniano Araghchi di esercitare l’influenza dell’Iran su Ansarallah, avvalendosi dei contatti di Araghchi sia con Islamabad che con Riyadh. Il Ministero degli Esteri pakistano non ha smentito l’esistenza di questo canale diplomatico.

Il Pakistan sarebbe tenuto a difendere il territorio saudita in virtù dei propri impegni nell’ambito dell’Alleanza per la Difesa della Mecca. I dispiegamenti finalizzati alla protezione dei confini e alla difesa contro droni e missili lanciati dalle Forze Armate yemenite rientrano in questo quadro. Il problema è se alcuni consiglieri pakistani siano già dispiegati in territorio yemenita. Se il Pakistan avesse anche solo pochi «consiglieri» ad Aden e truppe da qualche parte nel nord dello Yemen, al confine con l’Arabia Saudita, ciò costituirebbe già una violazione delle sue promesse.

Le forze pakistane dovrebbero essere in grado di difendersi da sole – è una conseguenza naturale del territorio. Si tratta di una contingenza dichiarata; non di una previsione di ritorsione. Almeno un ufficiale pakistano è stato ucciso in Arabia Saudita senza che il Pakistan reagisse con una ritorsione. Ciò denota moderazione – almeno per ora.

Transito attraverso lo Stretto di Hormuz: utilizzare il CIPS e pagare in rial

Sul più ampio fronte USA-Iran, le mosse diplomatiche confermano quanto abbiamo riportato negli ultimi giorni riguardo al Protocollo di Transizione. Il Pakistan, infatti, è determinato a mantenere i rapporti sia con Riyadh che con Teheran, parallelamente a un coordinamento costante con Pechino. Dopotutto, la Cina sostiene pienamente la mediazione pakistana; e Araghchi continua a dialogare con Munir, come ha fatto in seguito ai colloqui con Wang Yi a Pechino.

Nel frattempo, sul fronte di Washington, le speculazioni sono febbrili su tutta la linea riguardo ai preparativi per una ripresa della guerra da parte dell’amministrazione Trump – compresi potenziali attacchi alle infrastrutture energetiche iraniane e persino, cosa piuttosto preoccupante, a obiettivi nucleari. Non vi è ancora alcuna decisione definitiva da parte dello «psicopatico/sociopatico al comando», tanto meno una data di avvio.

I rischi immediati, in ogni caso, sono sbalorditivi.

La diplomazia – anche nella sua forma surrogata – è impantanata in un vicolo cieco. Teheran rimane – e continuerà a rimanere – ancorata alle proprie condizioni attuali, specificate nel memorandum d’intesa ormai privo di significato, ma ora con l’aggiunta della minaccia di bloccare le rotte di transito lungo la costa dell’Oman che considera illegali. Washington, dal canto suo, è ossessionata dall’ottenere vaste concessioni in materia nucleare. All’inizio di questa settimana, abbiamo confermato che il Consiglio Supremo di Sicurezza Nazionale (SNSC) di Teheran ha preso due decisioni di grande rilevanza.

  1. Teheran ha deciso di riscuotere il pedaggio di transito nello Stretto di Hormuz esclusivamente in valuta iraniana. Niente yuan, niente criptovalute. In realtà, tramite un meccanismo collegato al CIPS, il sistema cinese di pagamento e compensazione, aggirando il dollaro statunitense. Si utilizza il CIPS per acquistare elettronicamente yuan, convertirli in rial e pagare il pedaggio. Le entrate derivanti dal transito nello Stretto di Hormuz, dopotutto, rappresentano una delle poche fonti di valuta forte rimaste a Teheran. Il nuovo meccanismo rafforzerà sicuramente il valore del rial.
  2. Attraverso il Pakistan, Teheran ha comunicato a Witkoff, il «Bismarck» del settore immobiliare di Trump, che l’Iran non si smuoverà di un millimetro dalle proprie condizioni per un accordo negoziato – ed è pienamente preparato a qualsiasi possibile offensiva statunitense. E questo dopo che J.D. Vance ha avanzato un’ulteriore condizione sull’arricchimento nucleare: una riduzione «significativa» e «sostanziale». Ciò blocca il dossier nucleare e rende quasi impossibile una formula di risoluzione rapida.

Il punto fondamentale è che la spirale di escalation potrebbe sfuggire al controllo in un batter d’occhio.

La “Tempesta yemenita in arrivo 1.0” è già in atto

Sul fronte saudita-yemenita, le Forze Armate yemenite si stanno dimostrando assolutamente spietate. La “Tempesta yemenita in arrivo 1.0” è già in atto.

I danni alla raffineria di Jeddah, vicino a Yanbu, sono ingenti. Ansarallah sta colpendo contemporaneamente la costa orientale e quella occidentale dell’Arabia Saudita, oltre all’oleodotto est-ovest che le collega.

A tutti gli effetti, Sana’a sta prendendo di mira l’intera infrastruttura chiave di Riyadh. Il «paracadute» difensivo statunitense è una farsa: le batterie PAC-3 e Patriot rimaste sono inutili contro i missili balistici yemeniti.

Le truppe saudite potrebbero ammontare, nella migliore delle ipotesi, a 75.000 unità, più 125.000 della Guardia Nazionale. Le Forze Armate yemenite dispongono di almeno 350.000 uomini, che possono essere facilmente portati a 800.000. Aspettarsi un «aiuto» dai petrol-sceicchi del CCG non è nemmeno degno di essere definito uno scherzo.

Le Forze Armate yemenite hanno inoltre lanciato due missili balistici e droni esplosivi in direzione dell’aeroporto internazionale di Aden. Ansarallah ha dichiarato che l’obiettivo erano i rifornimenti militari sauditi appena giunti al Campo di Badr, il quartier generale dei mercenari adiacente all’aeroporto. È stato ucciso un numero non specificato di ufficiali e funzionari sauditi di alto rango – forse anche alcuni pakistani.

Da parte sua, anche la Turchia sta per schierare truppe, velivoli e sistemi di difesa aerea sul territorio saudita. Queste forze turche potrebbero, in teoria, proteggere Riyadh, le città sante e l’oleodotto Est-Ovest. Ankara, proprio come Islamabad, insiste nel sostenere di non avere alcuna intenzione di entrare in guerra nello Yemen.

La rapida liberazione da parte delle Forze Armate yemenite della costa occidentale vicino al Mar Rosso ha inoltre reso chiarissimo come la cosiddetta «coalizione» saudita – in realtà una banda di proxy e mercenari – stesse schierando di fatto dei terroristi fin dall’inizio.

Ansarallah ha recuperato una grande quantità di passaporti stranieri – in particolare provenienti dal Kuwait, dal Qatar, dalla Turchia e dalla Siria – appartenenti a sicari dell’ISIS e di Al-Qaeda. Chiamatela pure la Legione della Terror Inc.

È sempre la solita storia. Il Qatar e la Turchia, di comune accordo, hanno strumentalizzato il trasferimento di miliziani dell’ISIS e dei salafiti-jihadisti dalla Siria e dall’Iraq: questi sono stati accolti nello Yemen dal Partito Islah. La Turchia è stata la principale via di transito; almeno 2.100 di questi membri dell’ISIS sono turchi.

AQAP è tornata! Già nel lontano 2020, Ansarallah aveva sequestrato documenti, mappe e video che mostravano jihadisti dell’ISIS/Daesh e di Al-Qaeda, direttamente sostenuti da Riyadh, mentre vagavano per lo Yemen, con i miliziani catturati che confessavano di essere stati pagati, armati e sostenuti logisticamente dai sauditi.Ora è già in atto una nuova incarnazione dell’ex Al-Qaeda nella Penisola Arabica (AQAP) – attraverso almeno 20.000 mercenari terroristi del Daesh/takfiri “importati” dalla Siria. Essi saranno inviati nel governatorato di Aden – in seguito alla richiesta, anzi alla pretesa dello stesso MbS, pienamente approvata dall’amministrazione Trump e dal suo vassallo tagliagole diventato presidente a Damasco, l’ex membro dell’ISIS al-Jolani.

Il titolo definitivo dell’intera vicenda, tuttavia, è che la Casa dei Saud sta attaccando Ansarallah per proteggere il culto della morte in Asia occidentale. Controllando Bab al-Mandab, Ansarallah isola di fatto il porto israeliano di Eilat. Ciò era già accaduto in precedenza durante il genocidio di Gaza. Riyadh era furiosa perché aveva stretto accordi per il progetto NEOM – ora praticamente accantonato – che avrebbe collegato Eilat una volta che gli Accordi di Abramo trumpiani fossero entrati in vigore. Considerando il quadro d’insieme, una singola scintilla potrebbe ancora scatenare l’inferno. Tra le possibilità figurano: un attacco yemenita contro l’Arabia Saudita che causi ingenti perdite; un caos nella riscossione dei pedaggi nello Stretto di Ormuz; un attacco iraniano contro un obiettivo legato ai «petro-sceicchi» del CCG, a seguito di una provocazione americana; un attacco legato all’Iran contro una base statunitense, ancora una volta a seguito di una provocazione americana; e, soprattutto, una (dis)avventura del CENTCOM «via terra, aria e mare» imposta da un sociopatico.

Allacciate le cinture di sicurezza.

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Europe’s mounting social chaos… chickens coming home to roost for proxy war against Russia

Strategic Culture Foundation | October 9, 2026

The European Union is witnessing a full-blown social revolt. Governing political parties and their economic policies are held in open contempt as public protests and strikes escalate across multiple countries.

Protests, mass marches, and industrial strikes are spreading across the EU in France, Belgium, Spain, Italy, Germany, Ireland, Portugal, and other countries. The grievances are various, from students and teachers over woeful education services, to healthcare professionals and transportation workers denouncing crumby wages and pension cuts.

But at the core is a warmongering, dehumanizing system of capitalist inequality.

Unbearable living costs for basic needs, from food to housing, are driving millions onto the streets in desperation and anger at the lack of adequate political response to their concerns. As one French student said: “Too young to be listened to, old enough to be tear-gassed.”

The entire political system is being brought into disrepute for its dysfunction and indifference towards meeting rudimentary human needs. Then, infuriating all the more, are lies from the elite rulers and their propaganda media about “national defense and threat of war from Russia.”

In Spain this week, an 87-year-old frail woman known as Maricarmen died in hospital after she was evicted from her Madrid home because she could not pay the extortionate rent increase. Her plight has come to galvanize a nationwide protest against Spain’s housing crisis, a crisis that is repeated across every European country. Protesters shouted furiously that the pitiful old woman was “murdered by the state and corporations.”

In France, the brutality of police against student protests has shocked the nation and the world. Nearly 7,000 young people have been arrested, as riot police tear gas and shoot at largely peaceful rallies. Students gathering at the Place de la Bastille in Paris and other cities vow that they will not back down. One student had his hand blown off by a police stun grenade while another teenager lost an eye from a rubber bullet fired at close range.

The Place de la Bastille is where the French Revolution manifested in 1798 against a hated aristocracy amid abject misery. Today, the tensions are boiling towards another momentous rebellion, this time inspiring again similar movements across Europe.

These protests and the inhumane suffering that underlie them are channeling uprisings all over the EU.

There is a palpable sense that populations en masse have had enough of decades of inequality and chronic deprivation inflicted by capitalist policies that enrich a few and are enforced by governments slavishly serving the interests of capital over the needs of the citizen majority.

Western media reports talk about “cash-strapped” governments under pressure from bond markets to reduce record debt levels while workers, students and pensioners demand more public investment and relief from economic hardship.

That is a misleading partial portrayal of the problem. Omitted is the crucial backdrop that European governments are directing vast economic resources towards militarism and the proxy war in Ukraine against Russia. That is what is causing the “cash-strapped governments.” In other words, their declared fiscal straits are a policy choice, not some mysterious dilemma.

The social crisis sweeping across Europe is also seen in the United States and other Western-aligned nations. The background is a failed economic system that no longer provides a modicum of acceptable living conditions. The problem has been decades in the making from growing inequality and diminishing political representation. Today it is even questionable if Western states are democracies, controlled as they are by corporate oligarchies.

Nevertheless, the social crisis that is unfolding across Europe has been intensified and amplified by European political rulers operating in a relentless war mode against Russia.

The European Union has pumped hundreds of billions of euros into Ukraine over the past four years to prop up a NeoNazi regime run by a corrupt dictatorship – all for the objective of defeating Russia. The EU leaders – many of them unelected, like Ursula von der Leyen, Kaja Kallas and António Costa – are driven by an obsessive Russophobia. But that is only part of the explanation.

Other elected leaders and parties like France’s Macron and Germany’s Merz are also despised for their elitism and delusions of grandeur. Merz declares that he wants to make Germany the strongest military in Europe, in total tin-ear deafness to his nation’s economic and social problems and the sinister historical connotations of resurrecting Nazi Germany. Meanwhile, as his government suffers electoral defeat after defeat, European elites deprecate German voters as being blind because they dare to choose parties that are opposed to war with Russia.

There are many grounds for the Europe-wide contempt of ruling parties. Inequality, poverty, unemployment, soaring living costs, declining wages, deteriorating public services. Uncontrolled immigration amid the pressure on inadequate public resources is another cause for grievance. Europe’s complicity in the Israeli genocidal war on Palestinians, and Europe’s complicity in Trump’s aggression towards Iran, Yemen, Cuba, and so on, are other factors.

However, the bogus narrative that governments are “cash-strapped” is a cause for immense public disgust. There are plenty of economic resources to meet public needs. It’s a question of those resources not being permitted to create just and humane societies under the prevailing capitalist system with its priority of enriching a tiny elite class.

The conditions of “tight budgets” and “austerity for the masses” are created by deliberate policies of militarism and fuelling a proxy war in Ukraine.

European “leaders” and their NATO lobbyists like Mark Rutte demand hundreds of billions of euros to boost military industries while at the same time calling for draconian cuts in public spending and social welfare in order to pay for this reckless militarism. The EU is “lending” an additional €90 billion over the next two years alone just to prop up the corrupt regime in Kiev so that it can keep fighting a futile war with Russia. The perverse priority is driven by the military-industrial complex and its corporate investors. It is also driven by an ideological, propagandized mindset that demonizes Russia as an enemy. President Putin and other Russian voices have repeatedly stated that they do not want war with Europe. They say the conflict in Ukraine has root causes that can be resolved through diplomatic engagement. Why are European politicians implacably opposed to peace?

A major factor is covering for internal political and economic failure of the European system. The EU’s economies, as with those in the U.S. and other Western states, are bankrupt dystopias in terms of delivering on social and democratic needs. The failure has been compounded by the costs of war in Ukraine.

That failure is criminal and fatal for the politicians and governments who have overseen the policies. Thus, the political class, including the propaganda news media, cannot admit their criminal policies.

In the face of their own internal contradictions, the European political elites are seeking a solution by externalizing Russia as an enemy. This is the same modus operandi that European rulers have used for the past century and more, unleashing two world wars as a result.

These criminal politicians and their dysfunctional economic system are again pushing war as their escape plan for survival at the expense of millions of lives and at the risk of starting a third world war, one that this time around could involve catastrophic nuclear nemesis.

It is damning of virtually every European government, including primarily the British, that there are no calls for diplomacy and political settlement with Russia. They are committed to waging war on Russia to absolve themselves from the social devastation they are responsible for.

One positive thing, though, is that increasing numbers of people can see through the chicanery and lies. A German student placard summed it up: “We won’t fight your wars… Education not bombs!”

A day of reckoning is imminent. Criminal political leaders and their warmongering system are exposed like never before and in a way that demands total revolt as a proper solution. The consequences are not to be externalized this time. Chickens are coming home to roost, as Malcom X once said.

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US-Russia Diesel Deal Becomes Massive Defeat for Ukraine

Sputnik – 10.10.2026

The recent phone conversation between Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump, and the diesel deal they struck, are the most important events in the US-Russia relations since the summit in Anchorage, Dmitry Suslov, deputy director of the Center for European and International Studies at Russia’s Higher School of Economics, tells Sputnik.

The diesel deal marks an important shift in the US’ stance on the Ukrainian conflict. “Until now, the Trump administration maintained that any sanctions removal and any practical cooperation with Russia, including cooperation on energy, is only possible after the Ukrainian conflict is resolved or after a ceasefire is achieved. And now we see that the Trump administration deviated from this stance.”

“The sanctions are waived for a long time, until April 7, and the US will commence mass importing of Russian diesel unrelated to the resolution of the conflict in Ukraine.”

The diesel deal is not related in any way to the energy and port ceasefire that Volodymyr Zelensky and his EU backers desperately seek, which is highlighted by Zelensky’s hysterical reaction to this agreement.

The deal may be the beginning of a broader pressure campaign by the Trump administration on the Ukrainian regime, to ensure that Ukraine agrees to Russia’s conditions for ceasefire.

Given the anonymous US officials warnings that the US may halt intelligence support to Ukraine if the latter continues hitting Russian oil refineries, it appears that the Trump administration is becoming increasingly upset with Zelensky.

“We are witnessing the confirmation of Western media reports about Trump being angry at Zelensky whom he asked six times to halt strikes against Russian refineries, only for Zelensky to refuse him each time. And now Trump makes this diesel deal with Vladimir Putin.”

The Trump administration apparently realized that Zelensky’s long-range strikes campaign against Russia backfired. “It drastically improved Russia’s situation and damaged Ukraine’s resilience due to the scale of Russia’s retaliation”.

Suslov also suggests that Zelensky seems to be banking on US Democrats winning the midterms, thus turning Trump into a ‘lame duck.’

However, even though Zelensky may feel himself safe hurling insults at Trump, it may have serious consequences as the POTUS will still be in charge of matters such as further arms sales to Ukraine.

“So if Zelensky enters into a serious clinch with him, Trump will be making such decisions not in Zelensky’s favo

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Ukraine shares its fortification know-how with Estonia’s new defense minister, weeks after 70-million-euro shells scandal felled his predecessor

Ukrainian Defense Minister Yevhenii Khmara, during a meeting with Estonian Defense Minister Martin Herem in Kyiv, on 10 October 2026. Source: Ukraine's Defense Ministry.

Ukraine is offering Estonia something no ally can buy off the shelf: how to fortify against Russia, learned under fire. Ukraine’s Defense Ministry announced, following a meeting between Defense Minister Yevhenii Khmara and his Estonian counterpart, Martin Herem, that Kyiv and Tallinn plan to develop joint defense projects, share data, and establish joint ventures.

Both sides agreed to strengthen their defense cooperation in a declaration signed in June, according to the President’s Office. The partnership is gaining momentum as German intelligence warns that Russia may be preparing military action against the Baltic states, Welt reported.

At the talks, the two sides went over the battlefield situation, Ukraine’s priority needs, and practical steps to deepen the partnership, the ministry said.

Ukraine’s war experience, packed for export

Ukraine’s experience of modern war was a central theme of the meeting, and it can already help Estonia strengthen its own defense against new threats, the ministry reports. During the visit, the Ukrainian delegation walked the Estonian representatives through its work on modern fortifications, including underground shelters.

“Ukraine is scaling up fortification solutions based on real war experience. We already know how to build defenses and adapt them to new threats. I am sure this expertise will be useful to Estonia,” Khmara said.

A debt of thanks to a steady backer

Khmara thanked Estonia for its consistent help, singling out its decision to give 0.25% of GDP each year to support Ukraine. He also noted Estonia’s leading role in the IT coalition, a group of states that helps build Ukraine’s military communications and cyber capabilities, as well as its active work with other partners.

The meeting was one of Herem’s first with Kyiv as defense minister. A former commander of Estonia’s armed forces, he took the post on 16 September after Hanno Pevkur resigned over a 70-million-euro procurement scandal involving artillery shells meant for Ukraine, Euronews reported.

The minister confirmed Ukraine is ready to deepen practical defense cooperation with Estonia and to work on joint solutions that strengthen the security of both countries.

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L’Europe en tant que civilisation multipolaire et la diplomatie des » Logoi » !

Du mythe d’Europe à la double identité du Rimland, de la Méditerranée en tant que « mer-cœur » à la tradition occultée de de Gaulle et de Douguine, le continent doit se souvenir qu’il est né d’une traversée.

L’époque que nous vivons

Les Grecs racontaient l’histoire d’une jeune femme nommée Europe, fille d’un roi de Tyr, sur la côte de l’actuel Liban. Un matin, alors qu’elle jouait au bord de la mer, un taureau blanc émergea des flots. Elle monta sur son dos, et le taureau la transporta à travers les eaux jusqu’en Crète. C’est d’elle, disaient les poètes, qu’un continent tout entier a tiré son nom. [1]

Ce mythe est plus riche qu’il n’y paraît. Le nom « Europe » vient d’Asie et a traversé la Méditerranée sur le dos d’un dieu. Notre continent porte le nom d’une étrangère, d’une voyageuse, d’une jeune fille venue de l’autre rive. L’Europe est née d’une rencontre : avant d’être un territoire, elle fut une traversée.

Les Européens ont oublié cette histoire. Depuis quatre-vingts ans, on leur répète que l’Europe est un ensemble d’institutions, un marché commun, un périmètre de sécurité administré depuis l’autre côté de l’océan ; que l’Europe, c’est tout simplement « l’Occident ». Beaucoup ont fini par le croire.

La thèse défendue ici est différente. L’Europe est une civilisation — ou, plus précisément, plusieurs civilisations réunies sous un même toit. Et dans le monde multipolaire qui émerge, cette demeure n’est ni une province ni une périphérie. Elle se trouve au centre de la carte, et le nouvel ordre ne saurait être complet sans elle.

Une ère a pris fin. L’ordre unipolaire apparu après 1991 — celui que Francis Fukuyama s’était empressé de qualifier de « fin de l’histoire » [2] — se délite sous les yeux de tous. L’histoire n’était pas terminée. Elle patientait.

De nouveaux centres de gravité ont émergé en Eurasie, en Asie, en Afrique et en Amérique latine. Des capitales dont d’autres parlaient depuis des siècles s’expriment désormais en leur nom propre. Même à Washington, le ton a changé : la Stratégie de sécurité nationale des États-Unis pour 2025 évoque ouvertement les intérêts, les charges et les transactions, et considère les anciens engagements multilatéraux comme des coûts à renégocier.[3] Le patron présente la facture.

Pour l’Europe, la question n’est donc plus de savoir si le monde multipolaire adviendra. Il est déjà là. La véritable question est de savoir si l’Europe y entrera en tant que sujet ou en tant qu’objet : si elle écrira l’histoire ou si elle sera le lieu où d’autres écriront la leur.

Dans *La Théorie du monde multipolaire*, Alexandre Douguine fait remarquer que la plupart de ceux qui évoquent la multipolarité n’en ont aucune théorie.[4] Ils imaginent un « noyau » du monde — les États-Unis, l’Europe et le bloc occidental — entouré de concurrents en pleine ascension. Dans ce schéma, l’Europe siège à la table de l’ancien centre en déclin.

Il faut rejeter cette position. L’Europe n’a jamais été véritablement maîtresse du monde unipolaire ; elle en fut le premier protectorat. Dans son manuel de géopolitique, Douguine écrit qu’après 1945, l’Europe occidentale était placée sous contrôle américain tout autant que l’Europe orientale l’était sous contrôle soviétique.[5] Les méthodes de gouvernance différaient, mais non le degré de dépendance. De nombreux Européens, de part et d’autre du rideau de fer, ont vécu cette division comme une tragédie, et certains ont tenté d’y mettre fin. Lorsque la France du général de Gaulle a quitté le commandement militaire intégré de l’OTAN en 1966, elle n’a commis aucun acte hostile à l’encontre de quiconque. Elle a accompli un acte de mémoire : l’Europe se souvenait qu’elle possédait une volonté propre.

Qu’est-ce que l’Europe ?

Si vous posez la question à Bruxelles, la réponse évoquera des compétences, des directives et des procédures. Si vous interrogez un géographe, vous obtiendrez des coordonnées : une péninsule bordée par l’Atlantique, la Méditerranée et les monts Oural. La première réponse relève de la bureaucratie ; la seconde, d’une carte sans légende. Aucune des deux n’explique pourquoi un berger sicilien, un charpentier bavarois et un moine du mont Athos appartiennent, au sens profond, à une même histoire.

Les eurasistes russes — et Piotr Savitski plus que quiconque — aimaient à dire que l’Europe n’est rien d’autre que le « promontoire occidental » de l’Eurasie. [6] De nombreux analystes occidentaux tiennent le même discours, mais avec moins d’affection : un petit cap rattaché à l’Asie.

L’image est recevable. Mais sur les caps, les hommes ont de tout temps érigé des phares. Au cap Sounion, les Athéniens bâtirent le temple de Poséidon, silhouette blanche se détachant sur la mer, pour que les marins sachent où commençait la Grèce. À la pointe de la Galice, les Romains nommèrent un cap *Finis Terrae* : la fin de la terre. Le promontoire est le point où un continent se tourne vers l’extérieur, où la terre dialogue avec la mer et le monde au-delà. La taille modeste de l’Europe sur la carte a toujours été la condition même de sa portée.

Au sein de ce promontoire, il n’existe pas une civilisation unique. On y trouve au moins quatre axes majeurs, dans une tension constante et féconde.

Il y a l’axe méditerranéen : Athènes et Rome, le droit et la philosophie, Byzance et la chrétienté latine, l’humanisme de la Renaissance né de la rencontre entre la théologie chrétienne et la science préservée et développée dans le monde islamique.

Il y a l’axe continental : le monde franc et germanique, le Saint-Empire romain germanique, l’université médiévale, la longue lignée de pensée allant de Kant et Hegel jusqu’à Heidegger, le vieux rêve d’une *Mitteleuropa* s’étendant de l’Atlantique à la steppe.

Il y a l’axe oriental : les peuples slaves, le christianisme orthodoxe, l’héritage de Byzance transmis par Kiev et Moscou — une Europe pleinement européenne, et pourtant distincte de la modernité occidentale. Il y a aussi l’axe du Nord : les mondes scandinave et balte, avec leurs assemblées, leur sens du droit communautaire et leur proximité avec la beauté rude de la nature.

Douguine, dans le sillage de Heidegger, évoque le *Dasein* des peuples — la manière singulière dont chaque peuple existe au monde — et le *Logos* de chaque peuple, ce qui lui insuffle la vie « non seulement sur le plan biologique, mais aussi sur les plans ethnosociologique et métaphysique »[7]. L’Europe ne possède pas un *Logos* unique : elle en compte plusieurs. Elle a toujours été, en elle-même, un monde multipolaire en miniature.

Telle est la première thèse de cet essai. La pluralité qu’appelle aujourd’hui la planète entière, l’Europe la porte déjà en elle. Elle n’a pas besoin d’importer la multipolarité. Elle doit s’en souvenir.

Terre et mer

Pour comprendre pourquoi l’Europe occupe une place centrale, il faut remonter à l’opposition la plus ancienne de la géopolitique. Halford Mackinder l’a perçue, Carl Schmitt y a réfléchi et Douguine l’a systématisée : l’opposition entre la civilisation de la Mer et la civilisation de la Terre, entre thalassocratie et tellurocratie.[8]

La civilisation de la Mer est mobile, mercantile et individualiste ; elle appréhende le monde en termes de routes, de ports et de prix. La civilisation de la Terre est enracinée, communautaire et hiérarchique ; elle le mesure en termes de devoirs, de générations et de sacré. Il ne s’agit pas là de simples catégories militaires. Elles façonnent le droit, la religion, la philosophie et même la manière dont une famille s’attable pour le dîner du dimanche.

Mackinder situait l’origine de cette opposition en Méditerranée, dans les guerres opposant Rome à Carthage.[9] Douguine rappelle qu’à ce moment-là, la civilisation occidentale se trouvait à la croisée des chemins : fallait-il fonder une civilisation suivant la voie maritime — celle de Carthage — ou la voie terrestre — celle de Rome ? Chesterton faisait remarquer que Carthage signifiait littéralement « la Nouvelle Cité ». C’était une colonie fondée par des marchands venus de Tyr et de Sidon ; l’écrivain anglais la comparait — non sans arrière-pensée — à New York et à la Nouvelle-Zélande. Carthage a chuté, écrivait-il, parce qu’elle est restée fidèle à sa propre philosophie jusqu’au bout, et que son dieu a fini par dévorer ses enfants.[10]

Selon l’interprétation de Mackinder, les guerres puniques ne prennent jamais véritablement fin : elles resurgissent à chaque époque sous de nouveaux noms.[11]

Quelle est la position de l’Europe dans cette guerre perpétuelle ? Douguine apporte ici un éclairage que je considère comme décisif. L’Europe appartient à ce que les géopolitologues appellent le *Rimland*, la vaste ceinture côtière de l’Eurasie [12] ; or, le *Rimland* possède une double identité : il peut servir la Mer ou servir la Terre. C’est pourquoi, écrit Douguine, l’histoire européenne ne se résume pas au libre jeu d’États souverains s’entrechoquant comme des atomes, mais constitue « un champ unique traversé par des ondes générées par deux centres géopolitiques opposés ; un champ parcouru par les fils d’or du destin géopolitique ». [13]

Venise et Gênes ont parcouru toutes les mers ; les plaines de Pologne et de Bohême ainsi que les forêts d’Allemagne ont enraciné nos peuples dans le sol. L’Europe a le navire et la charrue dans le sang. C’est précisément pour cette raison que quiconque a cherché à dominer le monde a d’abord dû prendre le contrôle de l’Europe.

Dans un essai sur la Méditerranée, j’ai écrit que Rome est, en un certain sens, occupée par les émissaires de Carthage.[14] Carthage s’est déplacée. Elle ne siège plus sur la rive africaine : elle se trouve de l’autre côté de l’Atlantique et gouverne notre mer intérieure depuis l’extérieur. Je ne dis pas cela par haine envers quiconque. Je le dis parce qu’un peuple qui ignore qui gouverne sa mer ne peut gouverner son propre avenir.

Pourquoi l’Europe est au centre

Il reste à démontrer pourquoi l’Europe n’est pas simplement un pôle parmi d’autres — dont un monde multipolaire pourrait aisément se passer — mais un acteur indispensable. Il y a à cela quatre raisons.

La première est géographique, et les géopoliticiens de la mer l’ont compris avant tout le monde. La célèbre formule de Mackinder énonce : « Qui domine l’Europe orientale commande le Heartland ; qui contrôle le Heartland contrôle l’Île-Monde ; qui contrôle l’Île-Monde contrôle le monde. » Toute la pyramide de la puissance mondiale repose sur un socle européen. Nicholas Spykman, le stratège qui a jeté les bases intellectuelles de l’OTAN, a insisté — comme le note Douguine — sur l’importance du facteur intellectuel pour lier l’Europe occidentale à l’Amérique du Nord. [15] Ils avaient compris que l’Europe se conquiert d’abord dans les esprits avant de l’être sur le terrain ; c’est pourquoi ils ne l’ont jamais lâchée. Un monde multipolaire dans lequel l’Europe resterait captive préserverait l’ancien ordre unipolaire en son cœur même, au point de pivot entre l’Atlantique et l’Eurasie.

La seconde raison est historique. L’Europe a donné au monde la grammaire de l’ordre international moderne. Le système westphalien, né en 1648 à l’issue de la guerre de Trente Ans, ne concernait à l’origine que les puissances européennes ; les colonies, comme le souligne Douguine, étaient traitées comme de simples appendices. C’est de l’Europe qu’ont émergé l’État souverain, l’équilibre des puissances et même la prétention d’une civilisation à l’universalité. Schmitt l’a appelé le *Jus Publicum Europaeum*, ce droit public européen qui, durant trois siècles, a donné au monde entier son *Nomos*, son ordre fondamental.[16]

Ceux qui ont élaboré ce cadre peuvent le réécrire. La critique de l’universalisme occidental ne peut s’arrêter aux frontières de l’Europe, car c’est en Europe que cet universalisme est né. Si l’Europe n’est pas la première à dépasser l’idée que ses propres valeurs constituent l’étalon de toute l’humanité, cette vieille prétention survivra en son lieu d’origine, et toutes les autres civilisations devront continuer à s’en défendre. Seule une Europe ayant redécouvert sa propre pluralité peut dire au monde, avec autorité : nous avons eu tort de croire qu’il n’existait qu’une seule voie, et nous sommes les premiers à renoncer à cette erreur.

Schmitt lui-même a tiré cette conclusion et a signalé aux peuples d’Europe et d’Eurasie ce qu’il appelait l’impératif des grands espaces : le droit des peuples à organiser leurs propres grands espaces face à l’universalisme et à l’impérialisme, quelle que soit leur origine. [17] Douguine observe que l’Union européenne elle-même est, par essence, un « grand espace » dont le statut demeure incertain. L’Union est une ébauche. La question est de savoir qui tient la plume.

La troisième raison est celle par laquelle nous avons commencé : l’Europe est déjà un monde multipolaire en miniature. Durant des siècles, catholiques et orthodoxes, Latins et Slaves, peuples germaniques et méditerranéens ont appris — souvent dans la douleur — à vivre côte à côte sans se confondre les uns avec les autres. L’Europe connaît de l’intérieur le prix et les bienfaits de la coexistence avec la différence. Aucune autre civilisation n’a dû apprendre cette leçon aussi souvent, à travers tant de guerres et tant de réconciliations. C’est précisément l’expérience dont un monde multipolaire a besoin.

La quatrième raison réside dans sa position entre les pôles. L’Europe borde l’Atlantique et le cœur continental eurasien ; par la Méditerranée, elle jouxte l’Afrique et le Moyen-Orient ; et par l’Arctique — qui s’ouvre sous un ciel plus chaud — elle se reliera aux routes septentrionales vers l’Asie. Dans la vision développée par Douguine, l’Europe et la Russie-Eurasie demeurent deux pôles distincts, deux entités liées par un destin commun au sein du vaste espace continental — contiguës sur le plan géographique et culturel, mais indépendantes. Le géopolitologue autrichien Jordis von Lohausen, que Douguine a longuement étudié, allait encore plus loin : il jugeait inconcevable un avenir pour l’Europe sans la Russie, et une Russie sans l’Europe géopolitiquement incomplète.[18]

Je sais tout le poids de ces mots en ces temps de guerre et de méfiance, et je ne prétends pas que les blessures de notre continent soient anodines. Mais précisément parce que les gouvernements ont cessé de s’écouter, les peuples ne doivent pas cesser de se parler.

La tradition occultée

Rien de tout cela n’est une invention. Il s’agit de retrouver un courant de pensée que l’Europe officielle a préféré oublier.

Après la Seconde Guerre mondiale, rappelle Douguine, la pensée géopolitique européenne s’est scindée en différents courants. D’un côté, l’euro-atlantisme pur, qui acceptait la primauté américaine comme l’ordre naturel des choses. De l’autre, ce qu’il appelle l’euro-continentalisme : la conviction que l’Europe doit s’affirmer par elle-même, forte de sa propre culture, de ses intérêts économiques et énergétiques, et de son propre système de sécurité. Charles de Gaulle évoquait une Europe s’étendant de l’Atlantique à l’Oural. Alain de Benoist a résumé le sentiment de toute une génération dans la formule « ni Ouest ni Est, mais l’Europe », ajoutant par la suite qu’il valait mieux s’aligner sur l’Est que sur l’Ouest[19].

On peut être d’accord ou non avec chacun de ces auteurs sur bien des points ; une tradition vivante se nourrit du débat. Pris dans leur ensemble, toutefois, ils expriment clairement une chose : l’Europe de Bruxelles et de l’OTAN n’est pas la seule Europe jamais imaginée. Il en a toujours existé une autre — une Europe continentale et souveraine, ancrée dans sa propre histoire et ouverte à ses voisins. Elle n’a jamais disparu. Elle a été réduite au silence.

La mer-cœur

Revenons à la mer qui a donné son nom à l’Europe.

Dans les documents de l’OTAN, la Méditerranée constitue le « flanc sud ». Un flanc est un élément que l’on protège — la périphérie du corps, et non son cœur. Pourtant, durant trois millénaires, la Méditerranée a été le cœur de l’Ancien Monde, l’espace où Égyptiens et Phéniciens, Grecs et Romains, Arabes, Normands, Vénitiens et Ottomans se sont rencontrés, ont commercé, se sont affrontés et se sont enrichis mutuellement.

Je l’ai qualifiée de « mer-cœur » et j’ai avancé l’idée d’une Méditerranée élargie, s’étendant de l’Europe continentale au Moyen-Orient, à l’Afrique du Nord et subsaharienne, et au-delà, vers l’Extrême-Orient. [20] Sur cette mer, je crois qu’une *Pax Mediterranea* est possible : une harmonie entre les civilisations qui ont toujours peuplé ses rivages, une paix entre l’Afrique du Nord et le Croissant du Moyen-Orient, entre l’Europe du Sud et les peuples des Balkans. Une paix ouverte sur l’océan Atlantique, mais qui ne se laisse pas régir par sa puissance.

Dans l’édition italienne de *La Théorie du monde multipolaire*, Giuseppe Marro écrit que l’Italie, en raison de sa projection naturelle en Méditerranée, fait office de pont entre l’Europe occidentale, l’Asie et l’Afrique. [21] C’est effectivement le cas. L’Italie joue — ou devrait jouer — un rôle stratégique naturel dans le bassin méditerranéen. Non pas pour dominer — une leçon que notre histoire nous a déjà enseignée — mais pour servir de médiateur. Une péninsule qui s’avance dans la mer est une main tendue en signe d’amitié.

La diplomatie des *Logoi*

Qu’est-ce que la diplomatie des peuples ? C’est ce qui se produit lorsque les peuples se rencontrent sans attendre la permission de leurs bureaucraties. Une diplomatie qui vient d’en bas, mais aussi des profondeurs : de la langue, de la mémoire, de la foi, de la manière dont un peuple conçoit la vie et la mort.

Dans la pensée de Douguine, comme l’ont souligné ses interprètes italiens, le dialogue entre les civilisations constitue le grand défi de notre époque. Pour le relever, il faut une nouvelle forme d’élite : des hommes et des femmes formés à l’anthropologie culturelle et à l’étude des sociétés archaïques et traditionnelles, capables de comprendre les codes de civilisations autres que la leur et d’évoluer au sein d’une cartographie commune des significations. Dans cette optique, la diplomatie devrait privilégier la circulation des idées bien plus que la politique ou le commerce. Marro résume cette idée par une formule juste : la diplomatie devrait devenir « une profession sacrée ».

Comme nous nous en sommes éloignés ! Aujourd’hui, la diplomatie se résume trop souvent à la gestion des sanctions, à la rédaction d’ultimatums et à l’arithmétique des armements. Pourtant, l’ambassadeur était autrefois celui qui portait la parole d’un peuple à un autre, et sa personne était inviolable parce que la parole était sacrée.

La diplomatie des peuples, telle que je la conçois, est une diplomatie des *Logoi*. Elle ne demande pas à l’autre de devenir comme nous ; elle lui demande d’être pleinement lui-même, afin qu’un dialogue authentique puisse s’instaurer. Dans *Noomachia*, Douguine décrit l’avenir qu’il envisage en des termes qui pourraient servir de programme : « de nombreuses civilisations, de nombreux pôles, de nombreux centres, de nombreux systèmes de valeurs sur une même planète et au sein d’une même humanité. De nombreux mondes. » [22]

De nombreux mondes. Non pas un monde unique régi par une capitale unique, parlant une langue autorisée unique et croyant en une vérité autorisée unique, mais de nombreux mondes — et parmi eux, un monde européen qui a retrouvé sa propre voix.

Penser, se souvenir, rencontrer

Avant de bâtir de nouvelles institutions et de conclure de nouvelles alliances, une conscience nouvelle doit voir le jour. Ce qu’un peuple ne peut imaginer, il ne peut le réaliser. La première tâche est donc d’ordre intellectuel : rendre une Europe multipolaire concevable — et donc possible.

Cette tâche comporte trois dimensions. La première consiste à penser — c’est-à-dire à élaborer une théorie européenne de la multipolarité qui puise dans toute la profondeur de la pensée géopolitique du continent, de Ratzel et l’école continentale jusqu’à la géopolitique des civilisations de Schmitt et Douguine, tout en restant critique, ouverte à toutes les traditions et consciente des limites de chaque école.

La seconde consiste à se souvenir. Nous devons retrouver les traditions que le consensus atlantique a reléguées en marge : les penseurs continentaux et méditerranéens, les philosophes ayant résisté à l’universalisme libéral, ainsi que les voix d’Europe de l’Est réduites au silence à deux reprises — d’abord par la domination soviétique, puis par l’hégémonie libérale qui lui a succédé.

La troisième consiste à se rencontrer. Il nous faut des espaces où institutions, universitaires, artistes et représentants de différentes civilisations puissent dialoguer d’égal à égal : Européens avec Russes et Chinois, avec Africains et Latino-Américains, avec les peuples du monde islamique, avec l’Inde et avec le Sud global. Non pas ce « dialogue » multiculturel de courtoisie où chacun convient par avance de ne rien dire, mais une véritable rencontre entre différents *Logoi*, dont chacun ressort transformé.

Dans cette entreprise, la Méditerranée occupe une place privilégiée. Notre mer intérieure doit à nouveau être perçue comme un carrefour de civilisations et non comme une zone de gestion extérieure ; la *Pax Mediterranea* constitue un horizon d’action concret : le laboratoire régional du monde multipolaire.

Un tel projet ne prend la forme ni d’un parti politique ni d’un groupe de pression. Il revêt la forme d’un mythe, celui d’une traversée : le voyage d’Europe à travers la mer, réitéré à notre époque, où l’Europe part à la rencontre de l’autre rive et où l’autre rive vient à sa rencontre.

C’est une tâche qui se mesure en décennies, et non en années, et qui s’accomplira pour une génération qui ne la verra pas advenir. Ce n’est pas une raison pour se décourager. Les cathédrales d’Europe ont été bâties par des hommes qui savaient qu’ils ne les verraient jamais achevées. Ils les ont construites tout de même, car ils savaient pour quoi ils bâtissaient.

La traversée

Lorsque le taureau blanc l’emporta à travers la mer, Europe ne savait pas où elle allait. Elle ignorait que son nom serait un jour donné à un continent — à ses empires et à ses cathédrales, à ses crimes et à ses saints, à ses philosophes et à ses poètes.

Aujourd’hui, l’Europe se tient de nouveau au bord de l’eau. Derrière elle s’étend le vieux monde qu’elle a bâti puis perdu — celui où une civilisation unique croyait pouvoir parler au nom de l’humanité tout entière. Ce monde a vécu, et il n’y a aucune raison de le regretter. Devant elle s’ouvre une mer riche d’autres rivages, d’autres peuples, d’autres manières d’être humain.

L’Europe peut rester sur le rivage, le regard tourné vers l’Atlantique, en attendant des instructions. Ou bien elle peut entreprendre à nouveau la traversée. Non pas en conquérante cette fois, ni en missionnaire d’un modèle universel, mais telle qu’elle fut à l’origine : une voyageuse, une « hôte » — au double sens que notre langue prête à ce mot —, une civilisation née d’une rencontre.

Si elle accomplit cette traversée, le monde multipolaire trouvera le centre qui lui manque : cette civilisation qui sait mieux que toute autre ce que signifie vivre avec la différence, car elle le pratique — dans le sang comme dans le génie — depuis trois mille ans.

L’Europe n’est pas le passé du monde. Elle en est l’un des avenirs, et il appartient aux peuples de décider lequel.

Tiré de la tribune de Lorenzo Maria Pacini pour Strategic Culture

[1] Ovide, Les Métamorphoses, II, 833–875 ; voir également Moscos, Europe.
[2] F. Fukuyama, « La fin de l’histoire ? », The National Interest, 16 (1989), p. 3–18 ; puis Id., La Fin de l’histoire et le Dernier Homme, Rizzoli, Milan, 1992.
[3] La Maison-Blanche, Stratégie de sécurité nationale des États-Unis d’Amérique, Washington, D.C., décembre 2025.
[4] A. Douguine, Théorie du monde multipolaire, Evrazijskoe dviženie, Moscou, 2012 ; édition anglaise : The Theory of a Multipolar World, Arktos, Londres, 2020 ; édition italienne : Teoria del mondo multipolare, sous la direction de G. Marro, AGA, Milan, 2019. Pour les titres russes, la translittération scientifique est utilisée ; les noms des auteurs suivent la forme italienne standard.
[5] A. Douguine, Fondements de la géopolitique. L’avenir géopolitique de la Russie, Arktogeja, Moscou, 1997.
[6] Cette image revient dans les écrits réunis dans P. N. Savitski, Le Continent Eurasie, Agraf, Moscou, 1997.
[7] Ibid.
[8] C. Schmitt, Terre et mer. Une considération sur l’histoire du monde, Reclam, Leipzig, 1942 ; traduction italienne : Terra e mare, Adelphi, Milan, 2002. Pour la systématisation de Douguine : Douguine, Fondements de la géopolitique, op. cit.
[9] H. J. Mackinder, Idéaux démocratiques et réalité. Une étude sur la politique de la reconstruction, Constable, Londres, 1919.
[10] G. K. Chesterton, L’Homme éternel, Hodder & Stoughton, Londres, 1925, Partie I, chapitre VII (« La guerre des dieux et des démons ») ; traduction italienne : L’uomo eterno.
[11] Cette interprétation est citée dans Douguine, Fondements de la géopolitique, op. cit. ; le passage correspondant de Mackinder demeure inchangé.
[12] N. J. Spykman, La Géographie de la paix, Harcourt, Brace and Company, New York, 1944.
[13] Douguine, Fondements de la géopolitique, op. cit.
[14] Voir L. M. Pacini, Méditerranée multipolaire.
[15] Mackinder, Idéaux démocratiques et réalité, op. cit. Sur Spykman : N. J. Spykman, La stratégie de l’Amérique dans la politique mondiale. Les États-Unis et l’équilibre des puissances, Harcourt, Brace and Company, New York, 1942 ; et Douguine, Fondements de la géopolitique, op. cit.
[16] C. Schmitt, Le Nomos de la Terre dans le droit international du Jus Publicum Europaeum, Greven, Cologne, 1950 ; traduction italienne : Il nomos della terra nel diritto internazionale dello « jus publicum europaeum », Adelphi, Milan, 1991.
[17] C. Schmitt, Ordre des grands espaces en droit international avec interdiction d’intervention pour les puissances étrangères à l’espace, Deutscher Rechtsverlag, Berlin, 1939. L’expression « impératif des grands espaces » ainsi que l’appel aux peuples d’Europe et d’Eurasie sont cités selon l’interprétation de Douguine.
[18] J. von Lohausen, Le courage du pouvoir. Penser en continents, Vowinckel, Berg am See, 1979.
[19] Concernant la seconde affirmation : A. de Benoist, Europe, Tiers monde, même combat, Robert Laffont, Paris, 1986. Première occurrence de la formule « ni Occident ni Orient, mais l’Europe ».
[20] Pacini, Méditerranée multipolaire, op. cit.
[21] G. Marro, dans Douguine, Théorie du monde multipolaire, édition italienne, op. cit.
[22] A. Douguine, Noomachie. Les guerres de l’esprit, Akademičeskij proekt, Moscou, 2014.

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Ucrania esta perdiendo, y Europa se niega a verlo

El exanalista de la CIA especializado en Rusia, George Beebe, ha lanzado una advertencia que las cancillerías europeas pretenden ignorar: Kiev está perdiendo la guerra, y los líderes occidentales, incapaces de admitir el fracaso de su estrategia, podrían convertir la derrota en una catástrofe nuclear.

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George Beebe no es un adversario declarado de Occidente. Exanalista de la CIA especializado en Rusia y actual director de estrategia global del Instituto Quincy, conoce la situación rusa desde dentro. Su análisis, publicado por Greater Eurasia, merece aún más atención porque proviene de una fuente incuestionablemente sesgada a favor de Moscú.

Su diagnóstico es inequívoco: la narrativa oficial de una Rusia «estratégicamente derrotada» se está desmoronando sobre el terreno. El ejército ucraniano se encuentra bajo una presión creciente, especialmente por la campaña aérea rusa. Esta realidad militar crea un doble problema para los gobiernos europeos: no solo su estrategia se está volviendo insostenible, sino que además está generando consecuencias políticas internas cada vez más graves.

George Beebe es categórico: una guerra convencional directa entre Europa y Rusia pondría al descubierto profundas debilidades estructurales. Los países europeos carecen de fuerzas terrestres suficientes y presentan importantes deficiencias en logística, transporte, defensa aérea e inteligencia en el campo de batalla. La mayor parte de la infraestructura militar europea depende de Estados Unidos, especialmente en materia de inteligencia y selección de objetivos.

«Si Estados Unidos se mantuviera al margen de una guerra convencional europea con Rusia, Europa se enfrentaría a importantes desventajas militares. Sin embargo, si Estados Unidos interviniera directamente, el peligro sería fundamentalmente diferente, ya que un conflicto directo entre la OTAN y Rusia podría convertirse rápidamente en nuclear. Un conflicto de este tipo sería extraordinariamente destructivo y no tendría vencedor».

Esta ecuación es ineludible: Europa no puede defenderse sola ni soportar las consecuencias de una intervención estadounidense. Está atrapada por su propia dependencia.

El núcleo del análisis de George Beebe reside en lo que él denomina la «trampa rusa»: un sesgo cognitivo occidental que transforma una espiral de seguridad en una profecía autocumplida.

Occidente considera a Rusia una potencia expansionista que debe ser contenida mediante una creciente presión militar. Pero si el conflicto es en realidad una espiral de escalada donde cada bando interpreta las acciones del otro como una amenaza, entonces una mayor presión produce mecánicamente una mayor escalada. Más armas, más despliegues, una retórica más agresiva conducen a respuestas rusas, que a su vez exigen más medidas occidentales.

«El peligro reside en que una política occidental destinada a disuadir a Rusia en realidad exacerbe el problema de seguridad subyacente».

geopoliticarugiente.com

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Hormuz and the Looming Economic Catastrophe

The Trump administration is missing the bigger picture

By Philip Pilkington | The American Conservative | October 9, 2026

In the classic martial arts film Enter the Dragon, Bruce Lee’s character is instructing a young, aspiring fighter. Irritated at the lack of progress his student is making, he points to the sky. “It’s like a finger pointing away to the moon,” he says as the student tries to focus on what his teacher is saying. “Don’t concentrate on the finger,” Lee says, slapping him on the head, “or you will miss all that heavenly glory.” The quote is derived from an old Buddhist text called the Śūraṅgama Sūtra, and the point is clear: Sometimes if you focus on what is immediately in front of you, you can miss the point entirely.

Something like this is happening in Washington, DC, right now. For almost two weeks, the debate around the progress or lack thereof in the Iran War has been focused on activity in the Strait of Hormuz. A whole host of maritime experts have emerged suddenly to inform us that the Trump administration has succeeded in reopening the crucial waterway to shipping. Maximalists are claiming that this means the United States has effectively won the war in the Middle East. Others are making the more modest claim that this reopening of the Strait will solve the looming energy crisis.

These were the two perspectives that most people who were not deeply involved in the debate heard. There was, however, a small but vocal minority who questioned whether the Strait had been opened at all. If Iran had effective fire control over the Strait in spring and summer, they asked, then why would they suddenly lose it now? Almost immediately after this question was raised, Iran settled the debate by striking an enormous number of ships: 12 and counting in less than a week.

To those of us who were paying attention, the whole exercise felt like looking at Lee’s finger as he points to the moon. As these debates unfolded, the market for U.S. Treasury debt continued an epic sell-off. Bloomberg quoted an investment banker who stated that Treasuries were “trading like a meme stock.” U.S. Treasury bonds have now experienced their worst long-run returns in history.

Treasury bonds are not just any old asset. For one, they are the debt of the U.S. government. If they become uninvestable, the capacity for Washington to live beyond its means through debt issuance is open to question. Treasuries are also the benchmark asset for the entire global dollar system that has allowed the U.S. to run enormous deficits for decades. If this asset starts “trading like a meme stock” and generating awful returns, foreigners will opt for something else. This week, the president of the German central bank stated that “the case for further diversification into gold remains significant.” People are talking.

In mid-September, the speaker of the Iranian parliament, Mohammed Bagher Ghalibaf, posted an equation on X. Unusually for an obscure piece of algebra, the post garnered nearly 7 million views. The equation was a modified version of what economists call the “Taylor Rule,” a method that economists and central bankers use when setting central bank interest rates. In normal times, the equation factors in expected future inflation and how much slack is in the economy. But Ghalibaf’s equation—which he called the “Straits Taylor Rule” —included two new variables: the Strait of Hormuz and the Bab el-Mandeb, the two waterways currently under fire from Iran and the Houthis in Yemen, respectively.

The equation is a stripped-down representation of Iran’s strategy. By controlling these waterways, Iran and its allied groups have gained control over the global energy market. By squeezing these chokepoints, Iran can assert de facto control over America’s financial markets by pushing up expected inflation. Central banks like the Federal Reserve realize that this is no mere bluff and have already started raising interest rates. Ghalibaf’s equation explains, to a very large extent, why American government debt is currently trading like a meme stock.

Meanwhile, at the same time as these pressures are felt in American financial markets, the real economy is undergoing a squeeze too. Recent reports from the Energy Information Agency suggest that American heating-oil bills are expected to rise by 21 percent this winter. Diesel markets are entering into a genuine crisis, with President Donald Trump floating the prospect of banning diesel exports to ensure that there are no shortages. Diesel is the lifeblood of the American logistics chain. If there are shortages, trains and trucks will not run and goods will not be delivered to shelves. Trump has walked back the diesel export ban for now, after strong-arming the Europeans to dump their oil and diesel reserves, but there is every chance that this option appears back on the table as the crisis worsens. Food prices are rising too, with sugar prices looking particularly worrisome.

Once again, Ghalibaf outlined how this is part of Iran’s overall strategy. In an X post this week, the speaker published a rudimentary graph—coupled with a haunting image of a ghost—showing rising commodity prices and interest rates on one side, and falling consumer confidence, foreign interest in U.S. Treasuries, hyperscaler investment, and housing affordability on the other. The Iranians are not just trying to squeeze the American financial system—they are aiming to put extreme stress on the entire economy—and it looks increasingly like they intend on making this pressure felt before American voters go to the polls on November 3.

The Trump administration has become fixated on the Strait of Hormuz, seeing it as a decisive battlefield on which the U.S. can win the war. But the Strait is merely a means to an end. For Iran, that end is to slowly demolish the American economy and financial system until the pressure becomes too much and the U.S. backs off. The idea that you can “win” such a battle is delusional.

The Strait is merely the finger in Lee’s analogy. It is Iran’s overall economic strategy—the moon—that we should focus on. And when we do, we come to the worrying conclusion that by the time the Trump administration cries uncle, the damage done to the American economy and financial system will be so severe that it could take many, many years to recover.

Original article:  www.thea

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Hormuz and the looming economic catastrophe

By Philip PILKINGTON

Join us on Telegram, X, and VK.

Contact us: info@strategic-culture.su

The Trump administration is missing the bigger picture.

In the classic martial arts film Enter the Dragon, Bruce Lee’s character is instructing a young, aspiring fighter. Irritated at the lack of progress his student is making, he points to the sky. “It’s like a finger pointing away to the moon,” he says as the student tries to focus on what his teacher is saying. “Don’t concentrate on the finger,” Lee says, slapping him on the head, “or you will miss all that heavenly glory.” The quote is derived from an old Buddhist text called the Śūraṅgama Sūtra, and the point is clear: Sometimes if you focus on what is immediately in front of you, you can miss the point entirely.

Something like this is happening in Washington, DC, right now. For almost two weeks, the debate around the progress or lack thereof in the Iran War has been focused on activity in the Strait of Hormuz. A whole host of maritime experts have emerged suddenly to inform us that the Trump administration has succeeded in reopening the crucial waterway to shipping. Maximalists are claiming that this means the United States has effectively won the war in the Middle East. Others are making the more modest claim that this reopening of the Strait will solve the looming energy crisis.

These were the two perspectives that most people who were not deeply involved in the debate heard. There was, however, a small but vocal minority who questioned whether the Strait had been opened at all. If Iran had effective fire control over the Strait in spring and summer, they asked, then why would they suddenly lose it now? Almost immediately after this question was raised, Iran settled the debate by striking an enormous number of ships: 12 and counting in less than a week.

To those of us who were paying attention, the whole exercise felt like looking at Lee’s finger as he points to the moon. As these debates unfolded, the market for U.S. Treasury debt continued an epic sell-off. Bloomberg quoted an investment banker who stated that Treasuries were “trading like a meme stock.” U.S. Treasury bonds have now experienced their worst long-run returns in history.

Treasury bonds are not just any old asset. For one, they are the debt of the U.S. government. If they become uninvestable, the capacity for Washington to live beyond its means through debt issuance is open to question. Treasuries are also the benchmark asset for the entire global dollar system that has allowed the U.S. to run enormous deficits for decades. If this asset starts “trading like a meme stock” and generating awful returns, foreigners will opt for something else. This week, the president of the German central bank stated that “the case for further diversification into gold remains significant.” People are talking.

In mid-September, the speaker of the Iranian parliament, Mohammed Bagher Ghalibaf, posted an equation on X. Unusually for an obscure piece of algebra, the post garnered nearly 7 million views. The equation was a modified version of what economists call the “Taylor Rule,” a method that economists and central bankers use when setting central bank interest rates. In normal times, the equation factors in expected future inflation and how much slack is in the economy. But Ghalibaf’s equation—which he called the “Straits Taylor Rule” —included two new variables: the Strait of Hormuz and the Bab el-Mandeb, the two waterways currently under fire from Iran and the Houthis in Yemen, respectively.

The equation is a stripped-down representation of Iran’s strategy. By controlling these waterways, Iran and its allied groups have gained control over the global energy market. By squeezing these chokepoints, Iran can assert de facto control over America’s financial markets by pushing up expected inflation. Central banks like the Federal Reserve realize that this is no mere bluff and have already started raising interest rates. Ghalibaf’s equation explains, to a very large extent, why American government debt is currently trading like a meme stock.

Meanwhile, at the same time as these pressures are felt in American financial markets, the real economy is undergoing a squeeze too. Recent reports from the Energy Information Agency suggest that American heating-oil bills are expected to rise by 21 percent this winter. Diesel markets are entering into a genuine crisis, with President Donald Trump floating the prospect of banning diesel exports to ensure that there are no shortages. Diesel is the lifeblood of the American logistics chain. If there are shortages, trains and trucks will not run and goods will not be delivered to shelves. Trump has walked back the diesel export ban for now, after strong-arming the Europeans to dump their oil and diesel reserves, but there is every chance that this option appears back on the table as the crisis worsens. Food prices are rising too, with sugar prices looking particularly worrisome.

Once again, Ghalibaf outlined how this is part of Iran’s overall strategy. In an X post this week, the speaker published a rudimentary graph—coupled with a haunting image of a ghost—showing rising commodity prices and interest rates on one side, and falling consumer confidence, foreign interest in U.S. Treasuries, hyperscaler investment, and housing affordability on the other. The Iranians are not just trying to squeeze the American financial system—they are aiming to put extreme stress on the entire economy—and it looks increasingly like they intend on making this pressure felt before American voters go to the polls on November 3.

The Trump administration has become fixated on the Strait of Hormuz, seeing it as a decisive battlefield on which the U.S. can win the war. But the Strait is merely a means to an end. For Iran, that end is to slowly demolish the American economy and financial system until the pressure becomes too much and the U.S. backs off. The idea that you can “win” such a battle is delusional.

The Strait is merely the finger in Lee’s analogy. It is Iran’s overall economic strategy—the moon—that we should focus on. And when we do, we come to the worrying conclusion that by the time the Trump administration cries uncle, the damage done to the American economy and financial system will be so severe that it could take many, many years to recover.

Original article:  www.theamericanconservative.com

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Putin Conveys to Trump Iran’s Vision on Possible Conflict Resolution – Kremlin

Sputnik – 10.10.2026

MOSCOW – Russian President Vladimir Putin conveyed to US President Donald Trump, in coordination with Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, Iran’s vision on a possible resolution of the conflict, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Saturday.

Putin, during communication on the sidelines of the summit in Turkmenistan, held two meetings with Pezeshkian, at one of which he informed the Iranian president about the upcoming telephone conversation with the US president, the Kremlin spokesman noted.

“And then, in coordination with the Iranian president, Putin conveyed to Trump Iran’s vision on a possible resolution of the conflict,” Peskov said.

During a conversation with Trump, Putin showed understanding regarding some proposals of the US leader aimed at de-escalating the conflict in Ukraine, Peskov said.

At the initiative of Trump, most of the time in the telephone conversation between the leaders, which took place the previous evening, was devoted specifically to the Ukrainian settlement, Peskov added.

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When will this White House madness end?

By Philip GIRALDI

Join us on Telegram, X, and VK.

Contact us: info@strategic-culture.su

The United States competes with Israel for the “Most Hated” Distinction

It was another horrific week in Washington with President Donald Trump actually succeeding in coming out with an apparently improvised comment that equaled or maybe even exceeded his ghastly performance at the United Nations where he speculated over whether he should “annihilate” Iran and drive it back into the Stone Age. It would seem that ninety plus million dead Persians would satisfy Donald’s blood lust when it comes to killing innocent civilians, but the latest musing by our beloved leader had him addressing a campaign rally in Nebraska, where he appeared to be declaring that he might well consider wanting to continue the war against Iran even if the price to pay from the Iranians were to be retaliation consisting of eliminating some of our cities. He said “It’s a small price to pay for keeping the world safe, for keeping our country safe, and it’s going to be over with very soon. Let ’em take out Los Angeles, let ’em take out San Diego.”

Trump clearly saw the whole thing as some kind of quid pro quo expecting that even Californians would consider the price to pay worth it if it kept Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon but he failed to make any reasonable connection between the nonexistent weapon and the good to come out of annihilation of millions of Americans. The irony is, of course, that since Iran has no nukes and nor is it even developing that resource, a point generally made by US intelligence, it could not in any event destroy either or both of the West Coast cities. But then again, Trump is not given much to deep thinking and what he tends to say is what is roiling around among the three brain cells that might actually be functioning in his oversize head at any moment.

Interestingly, the video recording the gathering shows the Nebraska crowd of MAGA supporters cheering the exchange, seemingly unaware that the war never needed to be fought, that Iran was not and is not any military threat to the United States, and that the whole bloody thing could be ended by Trump repeating his frequent declaration of “victory” before ordering all the troops home and putting an end to it. That way no one “loses” and no more innocents have to die but somehow that does not appear to be an option circulating in the White House.

In the wake of the comment, both California’s Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom and San Diego Republican Mayor Todd Gloria called out President Trump for his willing to see Americans die in large numbers due to bad policies coming out of Washington. Newsom wrote on social media how “After sending the National Guard to occupy California, Donald Trump is now saying our foreign enemies should ‘take out’ Los Angeles and San Diego. He is deranged and dangerous.” Gloria added “San Diego is not collateral damage. We are not expendable. And we are never a ‘small price to pay.’ Keep our city out of your reckless war talk.”

The White House inevitably pushed back in support of Trump’s comments, with communications director Steven Cheung writing on social media how “The media freakout over President Trump’s comments is not rooted in reality. He was clearly stating US cities would have been threatened if a nuclear Iran hadn’t been stopped. America is safer because of the President. Iran has no nuclear, no navy, no air force, and no money.” Interestingly, Trump’s communications director, who interpreted the comment backwards by claiming falsely that the president had “stopped” an Iranian nuke, was incapable of understanding what Trump actually said and instead invented what he might have been wanting to say. All of which explains why the White House is as dysfunctional as it is.

Beyond that, something at least veering towards a bit of constructive policy did take place on September 30th when the United States completed its troop withdrawal from Iraq, which it has been de facto occupying for the past 23 years. The withdrawal, which took place after multiple requests by the Iraqi government, appears to be due to the desire to move US troops out of the effective range of some of the Iranian short range-missiles and drones which could easily reach Iraq. The soldiers and airmen will be moving to next door Jordan which means they will still be near enough to intervene if the Iraqis become naughty and do anything that is not perceived as being in American “interests.”

Some will recall that back in January 2020, then President Donald Trump ordered the assassination of the Iranian head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Qasim Soleimani who had just landed in Baghdad Airport to join in peace talks between his country and the Iraqis. Peace talks are not the sort of thing that Trumpists are good at, particularly if they involve actual or potential enemies of Israel, so Soleimani had to be stopped. The Iraqis are certainly aware that the departure of US soldiers does not mean an end to American intervention, which can indeed be at the point of a gun but which might also be through sanctions and other less kinetic means.

All of which is to suggest that the game is not over yet and Trump is quite capable of doing something very stupid in an attempt to salvage whatever remains from his reputation. What is behind a lot of this nonsense is the evil circle involving Trump himself and his good friends in Israel. Make no mistake that Israel is dedicated to becoming “Greater Israel” while also eliminating its potential enemies in Asia and Africa. And, unlike Iran, it is actually nuclear armed thanks to the material and technology that it stole from the United States before killing President John F Kennedy who tried to stop them. And the witless Donald will do everything in his power to help Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu be reelected, be it because he is being blackmailed or because he loves the man so much. Be that as it may, Trump will cooperate fully with Netanyahu or whoever succeeds him, no matter what. So too will there be the usual consensus on doing everything to please the Jewish state coming from the usual crowd of Israel firsters in Congress, in the mainstream media and among the Foundations that have come to rely on the money and “respect” that comes from inhabiting the same space as those who are beloved by Zion.

For those who have not yet aware of just how deeply the Zionist activists have inserted themselves in the body politic, I would greatly recommend an article put out by the highly respectable Quincy Institute that just appeared this past week written by Kelley Vlahos, the Editor in Chief of Responsible Statecraft. It provides the sordid details of how the Israel Lobby backed up by Jewish billionaires has been able to create and then subvert a conservative movement that originally appeared to support American interests to make them instead do Israel’s bidding. She describes how “The annual confab, [NatCon 2026] ostensibly launched for American conservatives in 2019, is in Jerusalem this week, largely focused on shoring up US support for the Jewish state.” If Israel is successful, it will bring about a proposed US-Israeli integration at the Pentagon and take its place as a “partner” of the United States in defense matters as well as in foreign policy. Make no mistake, Israel will bleed us dry and then discard our carcass without even a backward glance. It will be the end of our country. President Donald J Trump and his predecessor Joe Biden have done much to move this process along and it is to them and the cowards in Congress and the media that we the owe the deep hole that we as a once-upon-a-time proud and independent people will soon find ourselves in.

Original article:  www.unz.com

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Washington and Moscow Target the ICC: Different Motives, a Common Beneficiary

Russia’s demands for the extradition of International Criminal Court judges and Washington’s sweeping sanctions against the institution have converged within days. The two governments have different grievances, but the consequences of their actions increasingly overlap, raising questions about the political relationship between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin and the future of international criminal justice.

Russia and the United States have intensified their campaigns against the International Criminal Court (ICC) almost simultaneously, exposing an increasingly consequential convergence between the policies of Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump.

On 8 October, Moscow demanded the extradition of ICC President Tomoko Akane and eight other current and former officials. The following day, Washington announced sanctions against the court as an institution, extending earlier measures against individual judges and prosecutors.

The timing raises an obvious question: are these independent campaigns arising from different disputes with international justice, or do they reflect a broader political understanding between Washington and Moscow?

There is no publicly established evidence of a coordinated operation or an agreement between Trump and Putin to undermine the ICC. Nevertheless, the strategic consequences of their respective actions are remarkably similar. Both weaken an institution pursuing criminal proceedings against political leaders whom the two governments seek to protect.

Different grievances, overlapping interests

Russia’s hostility towards the ICC is directly connected to the arrest warrant issued against Putin in March 2023 over the alleged unlawful deportation and transfer of Ukrainian children from occupied territories.

The court subsequently issued warrants against senior Russian military commanders, including Sergei Shoigu and Valery Gerasimov, over alleged crimes involving attacks on Ukrainian civilian infrastructure.

Moscow’s response has been to pursue ICC personnel through its own criminal justice system. The latest extradition demands follow convictions handed down in absentia by a Russian court in December 2025.

Washington’s confrontation with the ICC has a different immediate origin. The Trump administration objects to the court’s jurisdiction over American nationals and Israeli officials, particularly following the arrest warrants issued against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defence minister Yoav Gallant.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has presented the American campaign as a defence of US sovereignty. Yet the sanctions announced on 9 October are not confined to the Israeli proceedings or any investigation involving American personnel.

They target the institution itself, potentially disrupting financial transactions and commercial relationships essential to its operation. This distinction matters because a court-wide restriction necessarily affects investigations beyond those cited by Washington. That includes Ukraine.

The Anchorage question

The political context cannot be separated from the relationship between Trump and Putin, including their meeting in Anchorage, Alaska, in August 2025.

The summit formed part of Trump’s efforts to negotiate directly with Moscow over the war in Ukraine. The American president has repeatedly treated relations with Putin as a question of diplomatic bargaining, seeking arrangements that might produce an agreement where conventional Western pressure has failed.

Against this background, suggestions that pressure on the ICC might form part of a wider accommodation with Moscow warrant scrutiny. However, the proposition that Trump specifically offered Putin assistance in neutralising the court during their Anchorage discussions remains unsubstantiated. There is no verified public account establishing such a commitment.

A more defensible conclusion is that Washington’s independently declared campaign against the ICC also advances an important Russian interest. For Putin, the benefit is clear. Measures designed to restrict the court’s financial and administrative capacity could complicate investigations into Russian conduct, irrespective of the American administration’s stated intentions.

The relationship therefore need not involve explicit coordination to produce politically significant results.

Why sanctions against the institution matter

The escalation from targeting individual prosecutors to sanctioning the entire ICC represents a substantial change. Previous American measures imposed personal and financial restrictions on selected officials. The latest approach threatens the broader infrastructure upon which international criminal proceedings depend.

The court requires banking facilities, secure communications, technology services and commercial suppliers. American sanctions can reach beyond US territory because of the international financial system’s dependence on dollar transactions and American service providers.

The ICC had already anticipated this vulnerability. According to details disclosed in September, the institution has pursued alternatives to American software and financial services to reduce its exposure.

Nevertheless, operational continuity and investigative effectiveness are not necessarily the same thing. The court may remain formally functional while facing additional costs, delays and restrictions affecting prosecutors, investigators and international cooperation.

For Ukraine, this is particularly significant. The ICC holds and evaluates evidence connected to alleged Russian war crimes, including the deportation of children and attacks on civilian infrastructure. Its proceedings preserve a judicial process independent of whatever diplomatic settlement Washington and Moscow might eventually negotiate.

Weakening that capacity would not invalidate existing warrants or automatically destroy evidence, but it could make the pursuit of accountability more difficult.

Europe’s response and its limitations

The European Union now faces a dispute with Washington over an institution that European governments have spent decades supporting.

On 9 October, eight governments issued a joint statement, reaffirming their support for the ICC and rejecting the American sanctions. The signatories included Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Britain, Japan and Canada.

The European Commission also indicated that the EU was prepared to take measures necessary to preserve the court’s operations. Such assurances are politically important, but they do not automatically resolve the practical consequences of American restrictions.

European financial institutions and technology suppliers must consider their own exposure to US sanctions. Sustaining the court may require alternative payment arrangements, commercial protections and potentially further European regulatory intervention.

The EU has discussed extending its blocking statute to shield European operators from the effects of American sanctions. Whether that mechanism can provide sufficient protection remains uncertain.

The dispute also extends beyond the ICC’s current investigations. Ukraine and the Council of Europe are developing a separate Special Tribunal for the Crime of Aggression, designed to address jurisdictional limitations preventing the ICC from prosecuting Russia’s leadership for the decision to launch the invasion.

The two institutions have distinct legal mandates, although cooperation between them is envisaged. Undermining the ICC would not automatically prevent the special tribunal from operating, but it would weaken an important part of the wider international accountability framework.

A convergence with consequences for Ukraine

Washington and Moscow have not adopted identical positions towards the ICC. Russia seeks to discredit and punish the officials responsible for pursuing Putin. The Trump administration is attempting to restrict the court’s authority and operational capacity, principally in response to proceedings involving Americans and Israelis.

Yet their actions converge at precisely the point where the ICC’s independence becomes politically inconvenient. The distinction between motive and consequence is essential. It would be premature to describe the American sanctions as evidence of a secret bargain struck in Anchorage. It would be equally mistaken to overlook the assistance these measures could provide to Moscow.

The broader concern is that the United States, traditionally central to Western efforts to hold Russia accountable for its invasion of Ukraine, is now applying pressure to one of the principal institutions carrying out that work.

For European governments, the immediate question is no longer simply whether they support the International Criminal Court. It is whether they are prepared to protect its practical independence when the political and financial pressure comes not only from Russia, but also from Washington.

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La “regola aurea” dell’Iran

Il controllo iraniano sui passaggi strategici di Hormuz e Bab el-Mandeb si trasforma in un’arma economica capace di influenzare i prezzi dell’energia, alimentare l’inflazione e condizionare le decisioni della Federal Reserve. Teheran dimostra così che la pressione militare e il controllo delle rotte petrolifere possono mettere in difficoltà Washington ben oltre il campo di battaglia.

Segue nostro Telegram.

Nei giorni scorsi, Kpler ha quantificato in almeno 16,5 milioni di barili al giorno l’ammontare medio raggiunto nel mese di settembre dalle esportazioni di petrolio dalla regione del Golfo, nell’ambito di graduale ritorno dei flussi sui livelli prebellici. Una quota significativa dell’output è transitata attraverso lo Stretto di Hormuz, che la scorsa settimana ha registrato volumi medi di greggio in uscita superiori ai 14 milioni di barili al giorno segando un incremento di oltre il 210% rispetto al minimo di circa 4,5 milioni di barili giornalieri di media toccato nel mese di marzo.

Un risultato strabiliante, ascritto generalmente al danneggiamento e/o distruzione dei radar e dei sistemi di comunicazione iraniani situati nelle zone costiere ad opera delle forze statunitensi. Le operazioni di “bonifica” hanno posto le basi per l’instaurazione di un corridoio di navigazione a doppio senso a ridosso delle coste dell’Oman, di cui i mercantili si sono serviti per entrare nel Golfo Persico, imbarcare petrolio, riattraversare lo Stretto e trasferire il carico su navi in attesa al di fuori del passaggio marittimo, sotto la supervisione della Us Navy.

Di questa “rotta sicura” si è avvalsa anche l’Arabia Saudita, specialmente in seguito al danneggiamento in più punti dell’oleodotto East-West ad opera delle milizie irachene. La conduttura aveva assicurato a Riyadh la possibilità di convogliare parte rilevante (4-5 milioni di barili al giorno) della produzione petrolifera verso il porto di Yanbu, sul Mar Rosso, così da aggirare lo Stretto di Hormuz.

L’Iran, di contro, è stato tagliato fuori dal mercato petrolifero globale dal blocco navale statunitense, che accentua le pressioni economiche sulla Repubblica Islamica esercitate dalle sanzioni annunciate lo scorso agosto dal segretario al Tesoro Bessent.

La Repubblica Islamica, hanno concluso gran parte degli analisti, stava rapidamente perdendo il controllo sullo Stretto di Hormuz.

Lo scenario è cambiato radicalmente a partire dal 28 settembre, quando gli iraniani hanno ripreso le operazioni offensive contro le petroliere che si accingevano ad attraversare lo Stretto di Hormuz senza autorizzazione di Teheran. Kpler ha documentato almeno sette attacchi contro navi mercantili, di cui quattro avevano effettuato due o più viaggi di andata e ritorno attraverso lo Stretto di Hormuz a partire da giugno. Nel novero degli obiettivi figurano due Very Large Crude Carrier (Vlcc) gestite dalla Kuwait Oil Tanker Company, in grado di trasportare fino a due milioni di barili di petrolio.

Il 3 ottobre, la divisione navale dei Pasdaran ha lanciato un chiaro avvertimento alle navi intenzionate a percorrere il corridoio allestito dagli Stati Uniti, minacciando di prenderle di mira e distruggerle. «Non fidatevi della Marina statunitense, non utilizzate assolutamente il corridoio meridionale e non mettete a rischio la vostra vita», recitava il messaggio radio trasmesso dalle Guardie Rivoluzionarie su un canale pubblico comunemente impiegato per la navigazione commerciale. Secondo gli specialisti, gli attacchi iraniani starebbero già producendo un impatto negativo, con i primi segnali di un rallentamento dei flussi petroliferi.

La passività con cui Teheran ha assistito alla ripresa dei flussi petroliferi in uscita dal Golfo Persico era quindi frutto di una preciso calcolo politico. Una strozzatura prolungata dell’offerta petrolifera danneggia non soltanto i nemici della Repubblica Islamica, ma anche un grande importatore di idrocarburi alleato come la Cina e la vasta platea di Paesi neutrali che gli iraniani non hanno alcun interesse a inimicarsi.

La riattivazione del traffico attraverso quel cruciale braccio di mare non è per di più coinciso con un crollo delle quotazioni internazionali di petrolio, gas e derivati, i cui prezzi sono rimasti mediamente del 50% più alti rispetto ai livelli pre-bellici. Costi di trasporto elevati (i broker navali stimano che i produttori di petrolio del Golfo Persico sborsino tra i 30 e i 40 milioni di dollari per un viaggio di andata e ritorno attraverso lo Stretto di Hormuz), rincaro delle polizze assicurative, prolungamento dei tempi di riparazione e/o ricostruzione degli impianti energetici del Golfo Persico danneggiati e/o distrutti nell’ambito del conflitto e insufficiente capacità di raffinazione all’interno del sistema globale hanno mantenuto i valori dell’energia sufficientemente alta da imporre conseguenze molto pesanti all’economia globale nel suo complesso e in particolare agli Stati Uniti. Paese in cui i riscaldamenti domestici, i mezzi agricoli, i treni e i camion che percorrono oltre 400 miliardi di miglia ogni anno per trasportare il 73% circa di tutte le merci sono alimentati a diesel. Nella settimana compresa tra il 21 e il 28 settembre, il prezzo del diesel è salito a 6,53 dollari, a fronte dei 3,76 registrati nei giorni antecedenti all’attacco israelo-statunitense contro l’Iran.

Si tratta di un aumento di circa il 74%, che pesa soprattutto sugli agricoltori, chiamati proprio in questo periodo di raccolto a fare maggiore impiego di trattori e mietitrebbie. Devono anche prepararsi alla stagione della semina, accumulando fertilizzanti che provengono in larga parte proprio dalla regione del Golfo Persico. A partire dall’urea, derivato petrolifero il cui prezzo è aumentato dell’80% soltanto tra marzo e aprile.

Anche le compagnie aeree risentono pesantemente dell’instabilità nel quadrante del Golfo, perché le loro flotte consumano carburante speciale derivato dal petrolio. Dopo lo scoppio della guerra, i prezzi del carburante per aerei sono pressoché raddoppiati.

L’inflazione è conseguentemente aumentata, anche a causa del concomitante, frenetico attivismo di Ansarallah. Nell’arco di pochi giorni, la compagine yemenita alleata di Teheran ha strappato al governo internazionalmente riconosciuto di Sana’a il controllo delle aree costiere che si affacciano sullo Stretto di Bab el-Mandeb, imposto il blocco dei porti sauditi, preso di mira petroliere riconducibili al regno e colpito, di concerto con le milizie sciite irachene, il cruciale oleodotto East-West in più punti rendendolo inutilizzabile per quasi due settimane.

L’azzeramento provvisorio dell’export petrolifero saudita si è istantaneamente riverberato sui prezzi internazionali del greggio.

Segno che, controllando i due cruciali punti di strozzatura di Hormuz e Bab el-Mandeb, l’Iran e i suoi alleati regionali esercitano una notevole capacità di influenza sulla quotazione del petrolio e, a ricasco, sulle politiche monetarie di gran parte dei Paesi del mondo. A partire proprio dagli Stati Uniti.

Lo ha sottolineato di recente il presidente del Parlamento iraniano Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, attraverso un sottilissimo post sul suo profilo X in cui presentava versione opportunamente ritoccata dell’equazione elaborata nel 1993 dall’economista di Stanford John Taylor e affermatasi rapidamente come una delle formule di riferimento per le Banche Centrali in materia di determinazione dei tassi di interesse.

Nello specifico, l’equazione mette in relazione il tasso di interesse sui titoli di Stato a dieci anni con l’andamento dell’inflazione e l’output gap, raccomandando di innalzare i tassi di interesse quando l’inflazione supera l’obiettivo del 2% e/o la produzione economica eccede il suo potenziale.

La logica è elementare: tassi di interesse più alti rendono più costoso indebitarsi. Quando il costo del credito aumenta, privati ​​e aziende riducono la propria propensione all’indebitamento e riducono la spesa, raffreddando così la dinamica dei prezzi. Ghalibaf ha integrato a questi dati già ricompresi nell’equazione di Taylor due nuove variabili, rappresentate dallo Stretto di Hormuz (denominato “SOH”) e da quello di Bab el-Mandeb (denominato “BM”) .

Nella “Stratis Taylor Rule” – i = r* + π* + 1.5(π−π*) + 0.5(y−y*) + α(SOH−SOH*) + β(BEM−BEM*), α,β > 0 – coniata da Ghalibaf, i tassi di interesse statunitensi crescono proporzionalmente alla gravità dell’interruzione dei traffici di idrocarburi in questi due nevralgici punti di strozzatura. Alla formula, il presidente del Parlamento iraniano ha accluso un commento: «vediamo se un rialzo dei tassi contribuirà a riaprire lo Stretto di Hormuz o a produrre una singolo barile di petrolio in più. Non si possono risolvere i problemi di un punto di strozzatura con 25 punti base aggiuntivi».

Tradotto: un innalzamento dei tassi di interesse ad opera della Federal Reserve non garantisce la riapertura dei due stretti, né l’aumento dell’offerta di petrolio. In compenso, chi controlla Hormuz e Bab el-Mandeb influisce indirettamente sulla determinazione dei tassi di interesse negli Stati Uniti in quanto titolare della prerogativa di dettare tempi e modi del traffico marittimo. E, quindi, di aumentare discrezionalmente i prezzi petroliferi. Ovvero di far lievitare l’inflazione.

Le dinamiche belliche che di recente hanno interessato la regione del Golfo Persico avvalorano la tesi di Ghalibaf. Nei dieci giorni antecedenti al 16 settembre, data in cui il direttivo della Federal Reserve si sarebbe pronunciato in materia di tassi, gli iraniani hanno preso di mira alcune petroliere nei pressi dello Stretto di Hormuz, mentre Ansarallah ha bersagliato la raffineria saudita di Jizan e assunto il controllo della costa prospiciente lo stretto di Bab el-Mandeb. Parallelamente, uno sciame di droni lanciato dalle milizie sciite irachene ha colpito l’oleodotto East-West, sospingendo il prezzo del petrolio al di sopra della soglia critica dei 100 dollari per barile. Un copione sostanzialmente analogo era andato in scena poche ore prima della riunione del board della Federal Reserve di fine luglio, quando alcuni missili lanciati da Ansarallah avevano centrato due petroliere saudite facendo anche in quel caso salire il prezzo petrolio sopra i 100 dollari.

Il prossimo vertice del direttivo della Federal Reserve è previsto per il 28 ottobre. Si tratta di una data da tenere d’occhio, visti i precedenti.

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New Yorkers demand ‘ICE Out’ after Bronx father shot in front of his five-year-old

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents shot seven rounds into the vehicle of a New York father while his five-year-old son was in the car on the afternoon of Thursday, October 8. Oscar Belgal, a Dominican man, who had just picked up his son from school, was hit in the neck but survived the shooting.

He is currently being detained by ICE in the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn after being discharged from the hospital Thursday night. His lawyers have reported that he still has a bullet lodged in his body more than 24 hours after being shot. 

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said that they were conducting a “targeted enforcement operation,” calling Belgal a “criminal illegal alien.”

Local officials describe the incident differently. In a press conference, held by immigrant rights groups and officials a couple hours after the shooting, speakers described that disguised agents approached Belgal’s vehicle with their guns drawn. When Belgal started to move his vehicle forward at least one agent opened fire. Video emerged online of one of the agents carrying a large gun that reports say was a modified AR-15.

“They wore construction vests and masks that concealed their faces,” said New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani to press later that night.

“There was no reasonable way to identify them as ICE agents.”

The mayor claimed that he attempted to negotiate with President Trump directly for the release of Belgal, but “those negotiations were unsuccessful.” He then described ICE as “vicious” and “cruel,” saying that ICE undermines public safety.

“This is an agency that must be abolished.”

New York politicians face calls to act against ICE

New York City Public Advocate Jumaane D. Williams said that federal officials would certainly try to justify the shooting by painting a narrative that makes Bengal seem like “the worst human being you ever heard of.” But he emphasized that what actually happened is that a father picking up his child was shot by a federal agency after school dismissal in a residential area.

Later that night, in a separate press conference with the mayor, New York City Police Department (NYPD) Commissioner Jessica Tisch announced that Oscar Belgal had been arrested in 2023. Hecklers and protesters then began disrupting the mayor and the police commissioner, accusing them of demonizing the victim and justifying ICE violence.

“Tisch and the NYPD are effectively running cover for the Trump administration” over the federal shooting of a Dominican father, said Andre Easton, candidate for New York’s 15th Congressional District, in a statement on Friday, October 9.

Easton called on the mayor to back up his call to abolish ICE with action. “He must fully enforce his own Executive Order 13 and kick every ICE agent out of our city.”

He also slammed Ritchie Torres, the current representative of NY-15, for only demanding an investigation into the shooting. Torres’ demands represent a “betrayal of the Bronx.”

The same politicians that built the deportation machine won’t dismantle it, he argued.

“We need a mass movement powerful enough to dismantle it and win full, equal, and permanent rights for all immigrants.”

Sparks of that very movement may already be breaking out in New York.

Movement for ICE out of NY re-emerges

Hours after the shooting, hundreds of New Yorkers took to the streets and marched to the hospital where Belgal was being treated. They carried banners and placards reading “Abolish ICE” and “Full Rights for All Immigrants” and “Justice for Lorenzo, Joan, and All Victims of ICE Terror.”

The protests were met with force by the New York City Police Department, who attacked protesters with barricades, pushing and shoving several, including congressional candidate Darializa Avila Chevalier, and making a handful of arrests.

However, New Yorkers have continued pushing for ICE to leave the city, organizing protests on Friday and Saturday.

ICE strikes again

The shooting in New York is yet another in a series of ICE shootings across the United States, including the killings of Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Houston, and Joan Sebastián Durán Guerrero in Maine. Each of these cases has left families and communities traumatized and provoked eruptions in the movement against ICE violence.

Now in New York, demonstrators are elevating the pressure on their elected officials and making a distinction between mere demands for investigation and concrete action that ends ICE operations and takes steps toward abolition.

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The Search for Truth: Charlie Kirk’s Assassination One Year Later

International Center for 9/11 Justice – October 9, 2026

One year after Charlie Kirk’s assassination, independent journalist James Lee takes the stage to ask a difficult question: Are there still unanswered questions about what happened—and who gets to investigate them?

Speaking at the 9/11: 25 Years Later conference, Lee examines what he considers inconsistencies and unresolved issues in the case, including the handling of potential evidence, the rapid clearing of the crime scene, questions about the investigation, and the media’s portrayal of the events.

Lee also explores Charlie Kirk’s relationship with Turning Point USA, the organization’s reported shift in funding and political messaging, and Kirk’s publicly expressed frustrations over Israel and its influence on American politics. He raises allegations of possible foreign involvement, which remain unproven in this presentation, and calls for further scrutiny rather than unquestioning acceptance of any single narrative.

The speech expands into a broader argument about free speech, the First Amendment, citizen journalism, and the responsibility of independent researchers to scrutinize institutions and challenge powerful interests. Drawing parallels with the JFK assassination and 9/11, Lee urges audiences to keep asking questions and examining evidence.

Watch the full presentation and decide for yourself which questions deserve further investigation. The allegations and interpretations discussed are those of the speaker and should not be taken as independently verified findings.

Subscribe for more talks, investigative journalism, and presentations from the 9/11: 25 Years Later conference.

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