Journalists should not spend much of their time writing about journalism. The world is more interesting than the inky habits of the people who report on it. But this week we are making an exception, because the discovery and dissemination of information matters a lot to politics. Don’t take our word for it: “A popular government,” wrote James Madison in 1822, “without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy; or, perhaps both.” Were Thomas Jefferson offered a choice between a government without newspapers and newspapers without a government, he said that he would choose the press (though that is probably going a bit far).

As the turmoil at America’s elite universities over antisemitism shows, creating a political culture in which people can argue constructively, disagree and compromise is not something that happens spontaneously. In media, business models, technology and culture can work together to create those conditions. They can also pull in the opposite direction. Our analysis of over 600,000 pieces of written and television journalism shows that the language of the mainstream American media has drifted away from the political centre, towards the Democratic Party’s preferred terminology and topics. That could lower the media’s credibility among conservatives.

As the country braces for next year’s election, it is worth thinking about the internal forces that deepened this rift. You can take comfort from the fact that the industry has been buffeted time and again during its long history, yet somehow survived. The worry is that today’s lurch may prove worse than any before.

Read it all (subscription).

The leftward leanings of America’s mainstream media undermine their ability to put the record straight. Can you have a healthy democracy without a common set of facts? https://t.co/saHG3ZVRJc pic.twitter.com/KeQN8ScUbn

— The Economist (@TheEconomist) December 14, 2023

Here’s another way of putting our present situation. We hear a great deal about polarization, and rightly so. The complacent middle ground is eroding. The Baby Boomer consensus is losing authority. As a result, the hard left waxes and woke revolutionaries are on the march. But the hard right grows as well. Politically, the extremes must be moderated; passions must be channeled constructively toward virtuous ends.

But mark this truth: One cannot be too “extreme,” too committed, in one’s love of God. Polarization dramatizes the stakes, not just in political affairs, but in our souls. A growing cohort wants to discern the will of God—and obey it. First Things has no interest in moderating that desire. Our vocation is to encourage, guide, and refine the desire for transcendence.

Like my young priest friend, we’re lucky to be a publication that stands for moral truth and orthodox faith. Yes, many in seats of power and with positions of prestige shun religious faith. To a degree I could not have imagined when I was a young student, today’s university culture is hostile to biblical religion. But our choices have become clearer as the lingering dew of Christendom evaporates. What we publish is now more urgent than ever, more needed—and more appreciated.

Read it all.

Mark this truth: One cannot be too “extreme,” too committed, in one’s love of God. A growing cohort wants to discern the will of God—and obey it. First Things’ vocation is to encourage, guide, and refine the desire for transcendence.
“A Voice of Sanity”https://t.co/QpyUGThaDg

— First Things (@firstthingsmag) December 12, 2023

The Chinese military is ramping up its ability to disrupt key American infrastructure, including power and water utilities as well as communications and transportation systems, according to U.S. officials and industry security officials.

Hackers affiliated with China’s People’s Liberation Army have burrowed into the computer systems of about two dozen critical entities over the past year, these experts said.

The intrusions are part of a broader effort to develop ways to sow panic and chaos or snarl logistics in the event of a U.S.-China conflict in the Pacific, they said.

Among the victims are a water utility in Hawaii, a major West Coast port and at least one oil and gas pipeline, people familiar with the incidents told The Washington Post. The hackers also attempted to break into the operator of Texas’s power grid, which operates independently from electrical systems in the rest of the country.

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The Chinese military is ramping up its ability to disrupt key American infrastructure, including power and water utilities as well as communications and transportation systems, according to U.S. officials and industry security officials.https://t.co/o1z71pOf0F

— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) December 11, 2023

Well deserved! Taylor Swift named Time Person of the Year. She won me over when she paid $100k to each of the employees on her tour including the employees who truck her equipment from city to city. #TaylorSwift #TimePersonOfTheYear pic.twitter.com/HJ6MNfkrjW

— Rebecca Aguilar (@RebeccaAguilar) December 6, 2023

As the younger Kelsey steps up to lead McLean Bible Church, he represents an exceptional case in today’s US evangelical landscape—perhaps the most prominent example of a Black minister rising to the top position at a historically white megachurch. But he’s also lived through a contemporary version of the faith and justice fights chronicled by his forebear.

Over Kelsey’s 16 years preaching and pastoring at McLean, he watched the nondenominational congregation and its leadership grow more diverse as DC did. Across five locations, McLean counts members from over a hundred countries now. There were answered prayers, lessons learned, and moments of unity along the way, but it didn’t come easy. His wife remembers that even just a handful of years ago, people were saying Kelsey could never lead the church.

From the start, Kelsey experienced the culture shock of the megachurch setting. He felt the sting of congregants who dismissed Barack Obama’s election to the White House, the pressure of preaching boldly amid a string of high-profile Black deaths and the Black Lives Matter movement, and the tension from internal church conflict spurred on by debates over race and politics during the pandemic.

Read it all.

New at @CTmagazine: I profile @mikekelsey, who will be installed this weekend as lead pastor at @mcleanbible in DC.

The church has gone through a lot over the past few years, and Mike's commissioning represents a new chapter in multiethnic ministry.https://t.co/R1RyaSqgcO

— kate shellnutt (@kateshellnutt) November 30, 2023

Blessing and honour, and thanksgiving and praise,
more than we can utter,
more than we can conceive,
be unto thee, O holy and glorious Trinity,
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,
by all angels, all men, all creatures,
for ever and ever.

To the American community in Northern Ireland and to our colleagues, families and friends at home and across the world, Happy Thanksgiving. pic.twitter.com/1sqOk6FOrA

— US Consulate Belfast (@USAinNI) November 23, 2023

[New York, 3 October 1789]

By the President of the United States of America. a Proclamation.

Whereas it is the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits, and humbly to implore his protection and favor — and whereas both Houses of Congress have by their joint Committee requested me “to recommend to the People of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many signal favors of Almighty God especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness.”

Now therefore I do recommend and assign Thursday the 26th day of November next to be devoted by the People of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being, who is the beneficent Author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be — That we may then all unite in rendering unto him our sincere and humble thanks — for his kind care and protection of the People of this Country previous to their becoming a Nation — for the signal and manifold mercies, and the favorable interpositions of his Providence which we experienced in the course and conclusion of the late war — for the great degree of tranquillity, union, and plenty, which we have since enjoyed — for the peaceable and rational manner, in which we have been enabled to establish constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national One now lately instituted — for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed; and the means we have of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge; and in general for all the great and various favors which he hath been pleased to confer upon us.

And also that we may then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations and beseech him to pardon our national and other transgressions — to enable us all, whether in public or private stations, to perform our several and relative duties properly and punctually — to render our national government a blessing to all the people, by constantly being a Government of wise, just, and constitutional laws, discreetly and faithfully executed and obeyed — to protect and guide all Sovereigns and Nations (especially such as have shewn kindness onto us) and to bless them with good government, peace, and concord — To promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue, and the encrease of science among them and us — and generally to grant unto all Mankind such a degree of temporal prosperity as he alone knows to be best.

Given under my hand at the City of New-York the third day of October in the year of our Lord 1789.

Go: Washington

“it is the Duty of all Nations to acknowledge the Providence of Almighty GOD, to obey his Will, to be grateful for his Benefits…” We owe God “our sincere and humble Thanks for…the favourable Interpositions of his Providence.” #GeorgeWashington, #ThanksgivingProclamation, 1789 pic.twitter.com/P0o5ibVI7U

— Daniel Dreisbach (@d3bach) November 23, 2023

Happy Thanksgiving to all Americans celebrating across the 🇺🇸+🇬🇧! 🍁🦃 pic.twitter.com/6kjHoyRTWP

— U.S. Embassy London (@USAinUK) November 23, 2023

Pendjari and two adjacent national parks comprise West Africa’s largest surviving protected wilderness—4.2 million acres spread across remote areas of Benin, Niger and Burkina Faso. The expanse of emerald-green savannah, jagged cliffs and stands of ancient baobab trees has also become the latest battlefield pitting the U.S. and its allies against al Qaeda and Islamic State fighters.

Militants carried out 71 killings, kidnappings and other attacks in Benin in the first half of this year, compared with five in 2021, according to the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project, a U.S.-based nonprofit monitoring service, and the Pentagon’s Africa Center for Strategic Studies. Most of the violence took place inside the parks or nearby.

Washington is increasingly worried the Islamist insurgency that has engulfed Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger will undermine Benin and other relatively prosperous, pro-Western states along the Gulf of Guinea. U.S. Special Forces are stationed in Benin to gather intelligence and advise the local military on counterinsurgency operations.

U.S. concerns are geopolitical—the prospect of weakened Western influence, growing militant strength and Russian inroads—as well as environmental. If the wilderness areas are lost to militants, “then forget conservation in West Africa,” said Hugues Akpona, an operations manager for Johannesburg-based African Parks, a nonprofit that runs the Pendjari and W national parks for Benin.

Read it all.

West Africa's national parks have elephants, lions and rare cheetahs. Islamist militants have now moved in and are using the parks to launch attacks on neighboring countries https://t.co/XFlGCnsSY5 https://t.co/XFlGCnsSY5

— The Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) November 19, 2023

The academic achievement of millions of American students faltered during the pandemic — and in many cases, has not recovered three years later. The latest data on student attendance offers one explanation: Far more students are missing many days of school compared with before the pandemic.

Nearly 70 percent of the highest poverty schools experienced widespread, chronic absenteeism in the 2021-22 school year, compared with 25 percent before the pandemic, according to a new analysis released on Friday by Attendance Works, a nonprofit that aims to reduce chronic absenteeism, and the Everyone Graduates Center at Johns Hopkins University, which focuses on high school graduation preparedness.

In these schools, about a third or more of the student body was considered chronically absent, defined as missing at least 10 percent of the school year, or about two days of school every month. That includes all absences, including sick days and school-imposed suspensions.

“Prior to the pandemic, going to school every day was still the norm,” even in the poorest schools, said Hedy Chang, the executive director of Attendance Works. That is no longer the case.

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Students Are Missing School at an Alarming Rate https://t.co/c8KUDobbGI

— Charlie McB (@CharlieMcB4) November 17, 2023

Americans are more negative about U.S. progress in dealing with the problem of illegal drugs than at any prior point in Gallup’s trend, which dates back to 1972. For the first time, a majority of U.S. adults, 52%, say the U.S. has lost ground in coping with the illegal drug problem, while a record-low 24% say it has made progress. Another 23% believe it has stood still.

Drug overdose deaths in the U.S. have risen sharply in recent years, with much of the increase due to synthetic opioids like fentanyl. But overdoses linked to other types of drugs, including cocaine and methamphetamines, have also grown since 2019.

Gallup has updated its trend on progress in addressing the illegal drug problem periodically since the mid-1990s, after some initial measurements in the 1970s showed mixed views on the question.

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Americans are the most pessimistic they have been about U.S. progress on the illegal drug problem. https://t.co/VuD58In42u

— GallupNews (@GallupNews) November 10, 2023

Only 14 per cent of American voters believe they are better off financially now than when Joe Biden took office, in the latest sign that the president’s economic record could undermine his re-election prospects.

A poll found that almost 70 per cent of voters thought Biden’s economic policies had either hurt the US economy or had no impact, including 33 per cent who said they believed the president’s policies had “hurt the economy a lot”. Only 26 per cent said his policies had helped.

The new monthly poll conducted for the Financial Times and the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business will seek to track how economic sentiment affects the race for the White House. In 1980, Republican Ronald Reagan famously asked voters whether they were better off than they were four years earlier, setting the stage for his landslide victory over incumbent Democrat Jimmy Carter.

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Only 14% of American voters believe they are better off financially now than when Joe Biden took office, according to a. new monthly poll conducted for the ⁦@FT⁩ and the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business. https://t.co/MTAfuXdUr2

— annmarie hordern (@annmarie) November 13, 2023

Gen Z and millennial adults are having a hard time achieving the same milestones their parents did when they first ventured out into the workforce.

For instance, 55% of young adult respondents find it is “much harder” to purchase a home, 44% said it is harder to find a job and 55% said it is harder to get promoted, according to a Youth & Money in the USA poll by CNBC and Generation Lab.

The survey polled 1,039 people between ages 18 and 34 across the U.S. from Oct. 25 to Oct. 30.

“This is purely a snapshot of what young people perceive their lives to be like compared to their parents,” said Cyrus Beschloss, founder of Generation Lab, an organization that built the largest respondent database of young people in America.

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Gen Z, millennials have a much harder time ‘adulting’ than their parents did, CNBC/Generation Lab survey finds https://t.co/h1T3NEXdZq

— CNBC (@CNBC) November 13, 2023

When girls at Westfield High School in New Jersey found out boys were sharing nude photos of them in group chats, they were shocked, and not only because it was an invasion of privacy. The images weren’t real.

Students said one or more classmates used an online tool powered by artificial intelligence to make the images, then shared them with others. The discovery has sparked uproar in Westfield, an affluent town outside New York City.

Digitally altered or faked images and videos have exploded along with the availability of free or cheap AI tools. While celebrity likenesses from Oprah Winfrey to Pope Francis have drawn media attention, the overwhelming majority of faked images are pornographic, experts say.

The lack of clarity on such images’ legality—and how or whether to punish their makers—has parents, schools and law enforcement running to catch up as AI speeds ahead.

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At a New Jersey high school, boys shared fake pornographic images of female classmates. Parents are in an uproar, and the police are investigating. https://t.co/CgPBRWN8y5 https://t.co/CgPBRWN8y5

— The Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) November 3, 2023

The US Defense Department believes the Chinese People’s Liberation Army is developing a new Intercontinental Ballistic Missile. That is, a heavy, multi-stage missile that leaves the Earth’s atmosphere and travels around the world at huge velocities before re-entering and descending toward its target at 20 times the speed of sound. Such missiles normally have a nuclear warhead: but this one, uniquely, would be armed with conventional explosives.

It’s an incredibly dangerous idea. A bad idea the Pentagon is intimately familiar with. After all, it tried to develop the same kind of “conventional” ICBM years ago – and ultimately gave up as it began to appreciate everything that could go wrong.

Namely, there seemed to be a good chance that, if US forces ever fired a conventional ICBM in anger, nuclear-armed countries would detect the launch, recognize the energy and trajectory of an ICBM – and be faced with an impossible dilemma.

Were the Americans launching a nuclear first strike? Would they lie, if asked? And how long could America’s nuclear rivals wait for clarification before launching their own nukes?

Read it all (registration or subscription).

"China is working on a weapon too dangerous to exist.

A heavy, multi-stage missile that leaves the Earth’s atmosphere & travels around the world at huge velocities before re-entering & descending toward its target at 20 times the speed of sound."

Ugh!https://t.co/2NeYYeHK02

— Chris Fenton (@TheDragonFeeder) November 2, 2023

Home schooling has become — by a wide margin — America’s fastest-growing form of education, as families from Upper Manhattan to Eastern Kentucky embrace a largely unregulated practice once confined to the ideological fringe, a Washington Post analysis shows.

The analysis — based on data The Post collected for thousands of school districts across the country — reveals that a dramatic rise in home schooling at the onset of the pandemic has largely sustained itself through the 2022-23 academic year, defying predictions that most families would return to schools that have dispensed with mask mandates and other covid-19 restrictions.

The growth demonstrates home schooling’s arrival as a mainstay of the American educational system, with its impact — on society, on public schools and, above all, on hundreds of thousands of children now learning outside a conventional academic setting — only beginning to be felt.

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Washington Post: “Home schooling’s rise from fringe to fastest-growing form of education:
A district-by-district look at home schooling’s explosive growth, which a Post analysis finds has far outpaced the rate at private and public schools” https://t.co/wtZrYsgrJM pic.twitter.com/lGF7xTYKtw

— Heather Hunter (@heatherhunterdc) October 31, 2023

Now, with antisemitism in America, historically, we’ve had several peaks. There was one in the 1890s and another in the 1930s and 1940s, but these were some of the worst times in American history. During the Great Depression, unemployment reached 25 percent. People lost faith in the American way and as they did, they lost faith in this idea that people of different ethnic and religious backgrounds could work constructively together to make it better for everyone. When we lose that, two things happen. America doesn’t work as well, and antisemitism rises. You can look at those tiki torch boys in Charlottesville back in 2017, or the people marching on campuses today and talking about death to the Jews. They share three beliefs in common: one, they make an idol of ethnic identity. For the white nationalists, if you’re not in the white pure group, you’re only a destructive influence in America, and as for the far left, if you’re white, you’re not right. Two, neither the far left or the far right believe in the promise of the American Dream—that if we follow the American Dream, it gets better for everybody. Thirdly, the far right and the far left both hate Jews. For the white nationalists, the Jews are part of the Great Replacement. For the far left, the Jews are white. They’re uber-white, even. These two groups share these three things in common, and they’re all destructive to what has historically made America work. Our enemies overseas are glad to see the far right and/or the far left rise up. It warms their cold hearts to see us ripping and tearing at each other and denying the truths that over the centuries have made us the most successful large human society in history.

BW: So what you’re saying is that when you see the swastika daubed on a school or when you hear about death threats to Jewish students at Cornell, don’t think about those things as a Jewish issue? Think about those attacks as an American issue, because societies where antisemitism is unleashed are societies that are dead?

WRM: That’s right. Antisemitism is both a sort of mental impairment and a barrier to learning. If you think that “the Jews” control the banks, you don’t understand finance, and will never understand it because you have this happy conspiracy theory and you think you already know everything. If you think “the Jews” control the weather with their space lasers, you’re not going to bother to study meteorological science. A society in which this kind of antisemitism is prevalent is not going to be a sign of a society on the cutting edge of science or business or economics or anything else. In our society, these beliefs are toxic. They’re terrible for Jews, but they are actually poison to what makes America, America.

Read it all.

Are we tipping into a new world war? @wrmead reads the geopolitical tea leaves on @thehonestlypod.

Plus: @opinion_joe on Sam Bankman-Fried’s trial and @EliLake on the legacy of Frantz Fanon.

Read today’s digest by @ollywiseman: https://t.co/OOryvUvMjC

— The Free Press (@TheFP) November 1, 2023

Story number three. It is February 2023. The setting for this final act of witness is my first-ever trip to Israel under the auspices of The Philos Project.

In the Book of Matthew, Jesus asks, rhetorically, “What did you go out into the desert to see?” It’s a question that travelers to the Holy Land of any faith can only answer for themselves. But one sight that did not exist until the second half of the twentieth century should not be missed by anyone. That is Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial museum.

Obviously, Israel is about much more than the Holocaust. To focus on Yad Vashem is not to detract from any of the country’s enormous historical, social, spiritual, cultural, or other riches. But for anyone who has been to Israel, and even more, for those who have not, to scant Yad Vashem in discussing anti-Semitism would be inexplicable. Let me cite the observation of the late British novelist Martin Amis. Amis, who was not Jewish, was once asked why his mind and work returned so often to the Holocaust. He replied by citing a German novelist, who said, because “no serious person ever thinks about anything else.”

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"To love life as Catholics do is to love the Jews from whose roots we grew."

— @EberstadtMary, one of our speakers at @FranciscanU last week, writes on the importance of Catholic-Jewish relations in light of rising antisemitism.

Read in @firstthingsmag:https://t.co/C22ueD4Jez

— The Philos Project (@philosproject) October 28, 2023

“KIDNAPPED,” the posters say, in big block letters above pictures of people taken hostage by Hamas terrorists during the Oct. 7 attack in Israel, urgent reminders of the men, women and children still being held hostage in Gaza.

But on college campuses and in cities around the world in recent weeks, people have been caught tearing them down.

“You should be ashamed of yourselves,” a man says in a video posted on social media as he watches two young people at the University of Southern California shove wadded-up posters into the trash.

“They’re making the conflict worse,” one of the young people replies, adding, “I’m not a fan of Hamas.”

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"Those who object to the posters have derided them as wartime propaganda. Critics of those tearing them down have characterized the act as antisemitic and lacking basic humanity." by @katierosman https://t.co/ygoLwNCjXd

— Sapna Maheshwari (@sapna) October 31, 2023

Barron’s: It is fairly widely acknowledged that the mental health of young Americans has deteriorated. What is significant about your newest research in this area?

David Blanchflower: I have written a lot about despair, distress, and well-being. My work has showed that happiness trends are basically hump-shaped over a lifetime. Distress or despair peaks in midlife. Young people are happy, middle-aged people are less happy, and then older people recover [happiness] in retirement. But what has happened, suddenly, is that the well-being of the young has collapsed, while other generations are the same.

In the latest research, I asked this question: Over the past 30 days, what number of those days [were] bad mental health days? If you said “every day of my life is a bad mental health day,” that’s what I call distress. In 2011, about 5% of women under age 25 reported mental distress. But by 2023, more than 10% said every day of their lives was a bad mental health day.

The same thing is happening with young men. It isn’t just a young woman’s problem. Both young women and young men have seen this uptick, although for women it is worse. So far, we have seen that levels of mental distress vary especially by education—it is worse for the less-educated.

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Young Americans are plagued by an epidemic of #unhappiness, according to anecdotal evidence & social science research.

The origins aren’t clear, although the #Covid pandemic didn’t helphttps://t.co/x0QXX8OfX5 #mentalhealth

— Pacific Journal of Health (@PacificJHealth) October 28, 2023

Read it all.

More than 44.2 million Americans lived in households that struggled with hunger in 2022, according to a U.S. Department of Agriculture report released Wednesday — an increase of 10.3 million over the previous year. https://t.co/wkZNRuOkSM

— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) October 26, 2023

US borrowers who took on new debt in the middle of the pandemic are falling behind on repayments at unusually high rates, after lenders extended more credit to households helped by government stimulus. 

Federal programmes sent cash and froze certain loan repayment requirements for US consumers strapped by the economic shock of Covid-19. 

One effect was to drive up the median consumer credit score by 20 per cent to a peak of 676 in the first quarter of 2021, according to a report by TransUnion, a credit reporting agency. Credit scores above 670 are considered “good”. 

Lenders became more willing to provide consumer credit. Credit card and unsecured loan originations rose by more than half between 2020 and 2022, TransUnion said.

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Shocking news: the borrowers whose credit scores were inflated due to pandemic handouts are defaulting on after effects of binge borrowing.@FT: Late payments rise on US loans tied to inflated pandemic credit scoreshttps://t.co/hhppqjLfih

— Axel Merk (@AxelMerk) October 19, 2023

The 32% of Americans who say they trust the mass media “a great deal” or “a fair amount” to report the news in a full, fair and accurate way ties Gallup’s lowest historical reading, previously recorded in 2016. Although trust in media currently matches the historical low, it was statistically similar in 2021 (36%) and 2022 (34%).

Another 29% of U.S. adults have “not very much” trust, while a record-high 39% register “none at all.” This nearly four in 10 Americans who completely lack confidence in the media is the highest on record by one percentage point. It is 12 points higher than the 2016 reading, which came amid sharp criticism of the media from then-presidential candidate Donald Trump — making the current assessment of the media the grimmest in Gallup’s history. In 2016, U.S. adults were most likely to say they had “not very much” trust (41%).

The latest poll, conducted Sept. 1-23, marks just the second time, along with last year, that the share of Americans who have no confidence at all in the media has surpassed the percentage with a great deal or fair amount of trust.

Gallup first asked this question in 1972 and has tracked it nearly every year since 1997. Trust ranged from 68% to 72% in three readings in the 1970s, and though it had declined by the late 1990s, it remained at the majority level until 2004, when it fell to 44%. After rebounding slightly to 50% in 2005, it has not risen above 47% since.

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The 32% of Americans who say they trust the mass media “a great deal” or “a fair amount” to report the news in a full, fair and accurate way ties Gallup’s lowest historical reading, previously recorded in 2016. https://t.co/2QYhLCqFJN

— GallupNews (@GallupNews) October 19, 2023

The grand bargain between the US, Israel and Saudi Arabia is already a dead letter. This has large implications for oil at a time when the crude market is already in deficit and prices are at the upper band of their historical range – pushed higher by Saudi and OPEC production cuts of two million barrels a day (b/d), otherwise known as cartel price manipulation.

The unspoken terms of the deal were that Saudi Aramco would feed back one million b/d as a unilateral gesture. But this depended on Israel beefing up the Palestinian Authority on the West Bank, one reason why Hamas was so determined to thwart it. The accord is now almost unthinkable.

One can only assume that Hamas intended to provoke total conflagration by decapitating women and children in the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. Events must now follow their Sophoclean script with a haunting inevitability.

There must be a high risk that the unstoppable chain of events will trigger an assault by the Lebanese Hezbollah, backed by Iran and armed with 150,000 missiles on the northern Blue Line, in turn spreading to Syria. Israel bombed Damascus and Aleppo airports in a preemptive strike on Thursday. “The longer the war, the greater the probability that Hezbollah joins in,” said Dr Walid Abdel Hay, a Jordanian political analyst.

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We are one miscalculation short of a Middle East firestorm and the next world #oil crisis, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard writes: The strange calm on world oil markets is unlikely to survive blockade of Gaza. The only way to knock out Hamas is house-to-house, block-to-block, urban… pic.twitter.com/ZhFXBl0zo4

— Holger Zschaepitz (@Schuldensuehner) October 14, 2023

When it comes to the size of the federal government’s annual deficit, appearances can be deceiving.

The gap between spending and revenue for fiscal year 2023, which ended on Sept. 30, was $1.7 trillion, the Congressional Budget Office projected ahead of the official Treasury Department figures. That would be a roughly $300 billion widening in the shortfall from fiscal year 2022.

But the gap was actually much larger. That is because of the odd way President Biden’s attempt to broadly cancel student debt shows up in budget figures.

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The Federal Deficit Is Even Bigger Than It Looks: Student-debt cancellation complicates the numbers as higher interest rates make borrowing costlier https://t.co/UnnEwiCbb6 pic.twitter.com/WqwpDVfUfn

— Jesse Felder (@jessefelder) October 13, 2023

As oil markets react to the return of a Middle East risk premium, Tehran may be tempted to resume its attacks and harassment of shipping vessels in the Persian Gulf. U.S. General C. Q. Brown, the newly confirmed chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was right to warn Tehran to stay on the sidelines and “not to get involved.” But his choice of words unfortunately suggests a failure to appreciate that the Iranians are already deeply, inextricably involved.

For the Biden administration, it is long past time to shed the mindset that shaped prior diplomacy toward Iran: a conviction that the Islamic Republic could be persuaded to accept pragmatic compromises that served its country’s interests. Once upon a time, that may have been credible. But the Iranian regime has reverted to its foundational premise: a determination to upend the regional order by any means necessary. Washington should dispense with the illusions of a truce with Iran’s theocratic oligarchs.

On every other geopolitical challenge, Biden’s position has evolved considerably from the Obama-era approach. Only U.S. policy toward Iran remains mired in the outdated assumptions of a decade ago. In the current environment, American diplomatic engagement with Iranian officials in Gulf capitals will not produce durable restraint on Tehran’s part. Washington needs to deploy the same tough-minded realism toward Iran that has informed recent U.S. policy on Russia and China: building coalitions of the willing to ratchet up pressure and cripple Iran’s transnational terror network; reinstating meaningful enforcement of U.S. sanctions on the Iranian economy; and conveying clearly—through diplomacy, force posture, and actions to preempt or respond to Iranian provocations—that the United States is prepared to deter Iran’s regional aggression and nuclear advances. The Middle East has a way of forcing itself to the top of every president’s agenda; in the aftermath of this devastating attack, the White House must rise to the challenge.

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“The Iranian regime has reverted to its foundational premise: a determination to upend the regional order by any means necessary.” Read @MaloneySuzanne on Iran’s role in Hamas’s attack on Israel:https://t.co/N9Y8snkJW9

— Foreign Affairs (@ForeignAffairs) October 11, 2023

Why did Hamas launch this war now, without any immediate provocation? One has to wonder if it was not on behalf of the Palestinian people but rather at the behest of Iran, an important supplier of money and arms to Hamas, to help prevent the budding normalization of relations between Saudi Arabia, Iran’s rival, and Israel. Such a deal, as it was being drawn up, would also benefit the more moderate West Bank Palestinian Authority — by delivering to it a huge infusion of cash from Saudi Arabia, as well as curbs on Israeli settlements in the West Bank and other advances to preserve a two-state solution. As a result, West Bank leaders might have earned a desperately needed boost of legitimacy from the Palestinian masses, threatening the legitimacy of Hamas.

That U.S.-Saudi-Israel deal also would have been a diplomatic earthquake that would have most likely required Netanyahu to jettison the most extreme members of his cabinet in return for forging an alliance between the Jewish state and the Sunni-led states of the Persian Gulf against Iran. Altogether, it would have been one of the biggest shifts in the tectonic plates of the region in 75 years. In the wake of this Hamas attack, that deal is now in the deep freeze, as the Saudis have had to link themselves more closely than ever with Palestinian interests, not just their own.

Indeed, within hours of the Hamas invasion, Saudi Arabia issued a statement saying, according to Al Arabiya network: “The kingdom is closely following up on the unprecedented developments between a number of Palestinian factions and the Israeli occupying forces,” adding that it has “repeatedly warned of the consequences of [the deterioration] of the situation as a result of the occupation as well as of depriving the Palestinian people of their legitimate rights and of [not halting] systematic provocations against their holy [sites].”

I am watching how the Hamas-Israel earthquake will shake up another earthquake..:Ukraine…

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“Hamas has been a deadly curse for the Palestinian people….The billion-plus dollars in aid that it received from Qatar…could have gone into building Gaza into a productive society….Instead, Hamas has devoted most of its…resources to” attacking Israel. https://t.co/JQ4v9Sp0nx

— Kenneth Roth (@KenRoth) October 8, 2023

It is sobering to think that the US federal government was running a large budget surplus in 2000 and the gross debt ratio was 54pc of GDP.

A quarter of a century later the ratio is 120pc and vaulting past the 1945 peak. This is partly due to two big recessions and Covid, to be sure, but mostly due to three sets of unfunded tax cuts, two unfunded 21st-century wars and no serious effort to control ballooning middle-class entitlements.

David Kelly from JP Morgan says the US is looking at annual fiscal deficits of $2 trillion this year, next year, and as far as the eye can see. This is at a time of effectively full employment and what should be bumper tax revenues. The deficit could hit $3.5 trillion in the next downturn.

The US Treasury must roll over $8 trillion of existing debt and raise $2 trillion of fresh debt this fiscal year, even as the Fed tosses another $1 trillion onto the heap under its QT programme.

Investors have belatedly, and suddenly, woken up to the shocking implications of a structural budget deficit heading for 8pc of GDP even before any trouble starts. It is this that has driven up yields on US Treasuries by 100 basis points since July.

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If rates continue to rise the way that they’ve been rising, eventually there’s going to be a financial accident, eventually something will break, said JP Morgan’s David Lebovitz on Bloomberg Surveillance. https://t.co/ZsQ8NfcD3n must-read. we thank AEP & David Lebovitz @jpmorgan

— tom keene (@tomkeene) October 7, 2023

It was a bloody reminder that the dark days of extremist violence appeared to have returned to Pakistan: a suicide attack on a religious festival in the country’s southwest this past week that left around 60 people dead.

For nearly a decade, Pakistan had seemingly broken the cycle of such deadly attacks. In 2014, the country’s security forces carried out a large-scale military operation in the tribal areas near Afghanistan, forcing militants across the border and returning a relative peace to the restive frontier region.

But since the Taliban seized power in neighboring Afghanistan in August 2021, offering some groups safe haven on Afghan soil and starting a crackdown on others that pushed their fighters into neighboring Pakistan, the violence has roared back. The number of terrorist attacks in Pakistan rose by around 50 percent during the Taliban’s first year in power, compared with the year before, according to the Pak Institute for Peace Studies, which monitors extremist violence and is based in Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan.

This year, the pace of attacks have continued to rise.

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“The number of terrorist attacks in Pakistan rose by around 50 percent during the Taliban’s first year in power, compared with the year before, according to the Pak Institute for Peace Studies, which monitors extremist violence and is based in Islamabad” https://t.co/rFjtOa7ShS

— Shashank Joshi (@shashj) October 3, 2023