Stop the Idiocracy

Friday, October 10, 2025

A farce too crude for any stage: the ‘America First’ Trump regime invites the Qatari air force to nest at Mountain Home AFB, Idaho

image generated via Google Gemini

{CNBC 10 October} ‘Qatar Air Force facility to be built at USAF base in Idaho, Defense Secretary Hegseth says’

The ‘America First’ charade—what a tawdry spectacle of hypocrisy it remains. Draped in the flag like pious patriots, they sell off the very soil beneath it to whichever foreign bidder flatters Trump’s vanity or funds the GOP’s campaign coffers. The Trump regime, in its latest grotesque parody of nationalism, hath invited the Qatari Air Force to establish itself at Mountain Home Air Force Base in Idaho—a scene so absurd one might think it lifted from a discarded political satire.

This, then, is the empire in its dotage: swaggering under the banner of sovereignty while leasing out its soul to the highest bidder. The rhetoric of ‘Make America Great Again’ rings hollow against the clatter of foreign boots on American tarmac. Once, even hypocrisy required a touch of subtlety; now, thanks to Donald J Trump and all who have enabled him, it parades itself in daylight, indifferent to ridicule.

An empire’s decline rarely announces itself with dignity—it seeps through the cracks of its own bombast, until farce becomes its only surviving export. —Arthur Newhook, 10 October 2025.

{alternate text for the above image} A digitally rendered allegorical scene steeped in both grandeur and menace. At its centre stands a young woman in a vivid scarlet dress, her platinum hair rippling in the wind. Behind her looms an enormous American flag, its stripes swelling like storm waves against a golden, smoke-hazed sky. The phrase “America First” blazes on a banner nearby, echoing through the industrial backdrop of chimneys and military aircraft. Uniformed men stride about in regimented order, their presence mechanical and impersonal, while the woman—barefoot on the cracked tarmac—remains poised and solitary, embodying at once defiance and despair. The sunlight gilds her figure but cannot dispel the pall of authoritarianism gathering in the distance. The image juxtaposes patriotic spectacle with moral unease: a nation dressed for ceremony yet haunted by its own power, its ideals fluttering as perilously as its flag.

Thursday, October 9, 2025

Make America Mean Again: the vulgarian's coarseness is a contagion—Therapists warn that Trump’s bad behaviour is rubbing off on the general public

image generated via Google Gemni

{Huffington Post 9 October} ‘Therapists Warn This Normalized Trump Behavior Is Causing Real-World Harm: People often look up to the president — and in this case, that’s clearly a problem.’

“At the end of the day, at the core of it all, we are normalizing bullying,” Believe it or not, there are those of us in this rotting #Murica who saw through the orange charlatan from the moment he waddled into the political spotlight during the 2016 presidential election: all bluster and hollow pomp, a grotesque fusion of snake-oil salesman and a game-show host gone feral. Even then—and it was as plain as the noonday sun—many of us warned that his dark little genius was to offer his followers the most seductive narcotic of all: permission. Permission to be vile. To wallow in their worst instincts. To spit, to sneer, and to call it honesty, faith, and love of country. He told them, in essence, “Be monstrous—it’s patriotic.” And they bloody well believed him.

And so the poison spread. The result? A nation turned septic. It was plain to behold amid the pandemic: tantrums over mask mandates, anti-vax derangement, the whole ghastly carnival of ignorance dressed up as rebellion. Hundreds of thousands needlessly dead—martyrs not to liberty, but to pride: gross, swollen, and witless. They mistook selfishness for freedom, and obstinacy for courage.

And did anyone learn a damned thing from that grotesque morality play? Not a whit. We have stumbled straight into a moral sinkhole—truth now counteth for nought, cruelty is held a grace, and irony lies entombed beside empathy. The temper of the multitude hath soured to gall. Everyone is furious, yet few hearken, and the whole place feels like a sorry rehearsal for the end of civilisation.

One cannot build a functioning society upon spite and delusion. One cannot write a decent song—much less govern a free polity—when every voice screams in its own discordant key. All is but clamour now: harsh, unmelodious, and void of delight. The spirit of this age? A nation of amplifiers, each howling into the void, drunk upon the echo of its own folly. Verily, few tyrants in the annals of the world have so perfectly mirrored the collective nature of their countries in their appointed ages as hath Donald Trump. —Arthur Newhook, 9 October 2025.

“Psychiatrists have joined other public health groups in calling for the removal of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as health secretary.” {NPR 7 October}

The eighty-seven-year-old former publisher of the Soviet-era Pravda found dead after a so-called ‘nervous breakdown'. - One does begin to wonder—what is it with Russians and their perennial tendency to fall from windows? Granted, it is among the more miserable places on earth to dwell, yet the pattern remains curiously consistent, yeah? {The Times 6 October}

“Peter Thiel does not want to build a better world like he claims. He wants to build a world where he decides what ‘better’ means. No one else gets a vote.” {Jacobin 6 October}

{alternate text for the above image} A digitally rendered dystopian tableau depicting a young woman with silver-blonde hair standing solemnly in a deserted urban canyon. She wears a bright yellow dress that glows defiantly against the cold, blue-grey gloom of the city. In her hands she clutches an American flag—not as a banner of triumph, but as an emblem of anguish and endurance. Towering screens on all sides project the shouting face of Donald Trump, his mouth frozen mid-harangue, echoing the omnipresent propaganda of an authoritarian state. Around her swarm identical men in suits, their faces contorted in mockery, fingers jabbing accusingly toward her as they chant slogans of populist fervour. The cracked pavement beneath her feet and the discarded placards reading Make America Great Again evoke the moral ruin of a nation intoxicated by cruelty. Her stillness, luminous amid the jeering mob, becomes the lone act of grace in a society drowning in its own hostility.

Tuesday, October 7, 2025

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO THE ALGORITHM

image generated via Google Gemini

Even those among thee who command the greatest engagement across social media are, in truth, seen and valued by scarcely five per cent of thy followers. If that! So know this: the whole enterprise—social media, the Internet, the infernal little devices to which we have shackled our lives—was a monumental mistake. Even if a few scattered blessings have arisen from it, in the grand reckoning it has proved a calamity for humankind. Over the span of thirty years, technology has inflicted grievous psychic harm upon me; I see that more and more clearly now. This wicked little genie will not return to her bottle, yet every life is the poorer for her escape.

I speak without exaggeration when I say I feel as though I inhabit a universe of the living dead. I shall not be dragged, kicking and screaming, into accepting this deranged nonsense as some ‘new normal’, for it is nothing of the sort. I refuse to feign happiness in a world that never wanted me to begin with. And as for Jesus—if He is indeed coming—then let Him come swiftly and lay waste to all of this. And if tribulation must precede redemption, then let those already exhausted of will and spirit be permitted to depart before the final horrors begin. I did not start any of this. So, for God’s sake—let me be.—Arthur Newhook, 7 October 2025.

{alternate text for the above image} In a desolate digital wasteland beneath a tempestuous sky, a spectral woman stands alone, cloaked in flowing, monastic robes that billow in the cold wind. Her pale face is upturned toward a fractured heaven streaked with falling satellites and flaming debris, her expression one of solemn revelation. Around her feet lies a vast, ashen expanse of discarded smartphones and shattered screens—an ocean of dead technology still flickering faintly with the ghostly glow of social media icons. The landscape stretches to infinity, symbolising the graveyard of a civilisation consumed by its own inventions. Crimson trails burn through the clouds like apocalyptic omens, while she, the last prophet or mourner of the digital age, stands at the centre of the storm—at once priestess and survivor, elegist and avenger of the fallen world.

Monday, October 6, 2025

Somewhere in time

Somewhere deep within me there lingers a world in which I genuinely relate to—and even like—most of those around me, and they in turn to me. In that other life I am happier, more gregarious, more generous of spirit. I cannot shake the conviction that I was born in the wrong time and place; such scant appreciation as I have known only confirms it. To be unreservedly kind in this age is folly of the highest order. No more. I will hold nothing back about how weary I am of everyone and their endless nonsense. Someone must begin to grow truly angry. I only hope I shall not be forced to bear this burden for much longer, and may one day find some other place in time and space where my own people dwell. But so long as I remain here, I will not dissemble, nor feign contentment with this travesty or with those who populate it. —Arthur Newhook, 6 October 2025.

Damned near futile to care any longer, but no matter...

Rick Wilson poses the million-dollar question—and I rather think we all know where the smart money rests with that wretched lot.

Saturday, October 4, 2025

Trump’s degradation of US generals should affront every American possessed of integrity and the faintest modicum of sense

illustration by Randy Bish

Of all the ignominies committed by Donald J. Trump—both during his presidencies and throughout his sordid life—the public debasement of our nation’s military leadership shall stand among the most contemptible. That grotesque spectacle of humiliation will endure as one of his nadirs, a moment emblematic of his boundless vulgarity and moral void. And ours. It is high time for a reckoning in the glass—ye #MAGA supporters and enablers among the populace, behold thine own reflection. —Arthur Newhook, 4 October 2025.

{alternate text for the above image} A political cartoon portrays a decorated, stone-faced general in full military uniform, his medals and insignia exaggerated to the point of absurd density, symbolising authority and service. Beside him, bold text reads: “AM I INSULTED? A DRUNK AND A DRAFT DODGER JUST TOLD ME THAT I NEED TO DO BETTER.” The juxtaposition conveys his disbelief and indignation at being publicly rebuked by an unworthy superior—specifically, a leader who avoided military service himself. The artwork, drawn in clean, satirical lines, captures the tension between honourable service and corrupt leadership, serving as a critique of hypocrisy within political power.

Copyright 2025, Arthur Newhook. On X-TWITTER: @Sunking278 and @DollsFallen. REDDIT - https://www.reddit.com/user/SiberianKhatru278/. BLUESKY - @arthurnewhook.bsky.social. FULL LIST OF LINKS - linktr.ee/arthurnewhook. DONATIONS GRATEFULLY ACCEPTED on Cash App ($ANewhook), PayPal (paypal.me/Sunking278), and at https://tinyurl.com/ArthurNewhook.

“We're seeing these things like that we rarely saw in the country before.” Measles outbreak in upstate South Carolina

Shutterstock

{WYFF 3 October} ‘DPH: Measles outbreak reported in Upstate, South Carolina’

At least eight cases have been confirmed, five traced to a single school which, apparently, remains open. The report further notes that vaccination rates have declined markedly since 2020, when the anti-vaccine smear campaign achieved viral and mainstream traction. This, alas, is but the visible tip of a far greater catastrophe to come—especially now that public health in the now-former United States lies in the hands of lunatics and half or more of its population rejects science and common sense.—Arthur Newhook, 4 October 2025.

{alternate text for the above image} A close-up photograph shows a young girl lying on her side, her face and upper body marked by the distinctive red spots of measles. Her pale skin contrasts sharply with the inflamed lesions scattered across her forehead, cheeks, and arms. She gazes softly toward the camera with weary blue eyes, her expression subdued, a mixture of fatigue and quiet resignation. The soft lighting and muted bedding lend the image a fragile, intimate stillness, underscoring the vulnerability of childhood illness. The photograph captures both the physical manifestation of disease and the poignant stillness of convalescence.

Friday, October 3, 2025

The US Treasury is weighing the minting of a $1 coin in Trump’s honour—an act in direct contravention of federal law

via the US Treasury Department

{The Guardian 3 October} ‘US treasury considers special $1 Trump coin reading ‘fight, fight, fight’’

It is scarcely surprising that Trump should demand his likeness upon a coin. Yet what The Guardian omitted to note is that US federal law has long forbidden the depiction of living figures upon coinage. The statute traces back to the Civil War, when Treasury engraver Spencer Clark, given authority under a Congressional resolution to honour ‘Clark’—intended for the explorer William Clark—presumptuously placed his own portrait upon a fractional banknote. Outrage followed, and in 1866 an amendment to an appropriations bill forbade the appearance of living persons on currency.

That proscription has been reaffirmed in more recent times, most notably in the Circulating Collectible Coin Redesign Act of 2020, which authorised the semiquincentennial dollar coinage for 2026 while underscoring the prohibition. Yet, with a compliant Republican Congress that will not move to impeachment under any circumstance, one wonders what remedy would exist should the Treasury, at Trump’s obvious direction and encouragment, simply proceed with minting Trump coins regardless. And why stop there? His devotees in the #MAGA faithful have long fantasised about chiselling his countenance into Mount Rushmore itself. Idolatry is proscribed outright in scripture; yet in Trumpistan it is enjoined, even as its zealots brandish the cross and fancy themselves soldiers of Christ.

{alternate text for the above image} A monochrome sketch of a proposed US Treasury coin depicts Donald Trump rendered in heroic, authoritarian style. At its centre, he raises a clenched fist before a billowing American flag, his expression stern and resolute, the folds of his suit and tie drawn with deliberate gravitas. Around the rim, the word “FIGHT” is repeated three times, echoing the combative motif, while inscriptions at the base include “UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,” “E PLURIBUS UNUM,” and a denomination of “$1.” The composition recalls the visual language of propaganda medals, casting Trump as both emblem and rallying cry for a politicised vision of national identity.

Ageing infrastructure is lethal infrastructure: witness the conflagration at a 114-year-old Californian oil refinery

Los Angeles Times

Residents described experiencing seismic-level alarm:

The El Segundo refinery, built in 1911, is Chevron's second largest in the US and produces 285,000 barrels of crude oil every day.
It supplies a fifth of all motor vehicle fuels and 40% of the jet fuel consumed in southern California, Reuters reported.
El Segundo Mayor Chris Pimentel said firefighters were able to respond immediately to the blast.
"Our station is about a .25 mile away from the gates of Chevron," Pimentel told reporters. "Obviously, we are very concerned, and there is a lot of investigative work to be done to see what has happened."
The blaze was visible as far as Los Angeles and filled the air nearby with the smell of petrol.
In addition to investigating the explosion, officials in the city of El Segundo said they are monitoring air quality levels for signs of pollution.
One nearby resident, Mark Rogers, told the Los Angeles Times that the blast was startling for people nearby.
"I thought we got nuked or something," Mr Rogers told the local newspaper. Another resident, Keith Mohr, said the flames looked like they were "300-foot".
"I didn't know if a plane crashed or there was an earthquake or both," he said.

{BBC News 3 October} ‘Massive fire at Chevron refinery in California contained, officials say’

{alternate text for the above image} A dramatic night-time photograph shows the El Segundo oil refinery in California engulfed in flames during the early hours of 3 October 2025. Vast plumes of orange fire and black smoke billow skyward, staining the low clouds and casting a sulphurous glow over the sprawling industrial complex. Illuminated stacks, tanks, and pipelines stand silhouetted against the inferno, their skeletal frames stark in the blaze’s glare. Emergency lights flicker across the grounds below, dwarfed by the scale of the conflagration, while the lights of Los Angeles shimmer faintly in the distance. The image captures both the raw power of industrial catastrophe and the precarious fragility of infrastructure under fire.

“I’m sitting in my parents’ house on LinkedIn 24 hours a day.” University degrees in the former United States have become scarcely worth the paper upon which they are inscribed

image generated via Google Gemini

{CNBC 3 October} For first-time job hunters, a college degree isn’t unlocking the opportunities it once did, data shows

‘No country for young grads’. A labour market of anaemic hiring and grudging firing is disproportionately scourging the newly credentialled. Unemployment among recent graduates has risen to a nine-year peak, with no prospect of relief—least of all as artificial intelligence begins to drastically reconfigure workforces both great and small. Bearing in mind that this malaise is not confined to the former United States, it remains nonetheless symptomatic of a deeper affliction besetting our dying nation: wherever one looks—government, corporate boardrooms, or the spaces between—one beholds a polity grown too vast, too unwieldy to endure. It has become the ultimate victim of its own success. Now the reckoning has come; we are paying the piper, and the edifice collapses around us. —Arthur Newhook, 3 October 2025.

{alternate text for the above image} A stylised illustration portrays a young woman in graduation robes and mortarboard seated despondently on a park bench. Tears streak her face as she clutches her diploma, its red seal stark against the gloom. Beside her rests a makeshift sign reading “DEGREE = JOB”, its irony underscored by a nearby newspaper whose headline declares “Job Market Collapse – No Prospects for Grads”. The backdrop of a grey, leafless park with looming city towers deepens the sense of futility, framing her as a symbol of betrayed aspirations: educated yet abandoned, caught between ceremonial achievement and the economic void that renders it meaningless.

Who will pull the trigger? Loyalty, indoctrination, and the fate of a nation’s people

image generated via ChatGPT

When one considers whether United States military personnel would fire upon their own citizens if so ordered, the answer is neither a simple ‘yes’ nor an unqualified ‘no’, but a question of the individuals asked to do the shooting and the groups or persons designated as targets. Many would comply; some would not. And though I do not impugn the honour of American service members as a whole, I am convinced those who would under absolutely no circumstances fire upon a civilian are the minority. These are human beings—susceptible, as all are, to manipulation, indoctrination, intimidation, prejudice, and superstition.

As more of the principled generals resign their commissions, their places shall be filled by those more malleable to the corrupt regime that the American electorate has restored to power. Simultaneously, the radicalisation of boys and young men immersed in the ‘manosphere’ are swelling the ranks with feral jackboots whose veins run with bloodlust and whose hearts seethe with hatred. We are in grave peril. This is no mere passing storm. By this time next year many of us may be gone. I cannot divine my own fate, only that something—one way or another—is going to have to give before too long. —Arthur Newhook, 3 October 2025.

{alternate text for the above image}A dark, cinematic scene depicts armed soldiers in heavy helmets and tactical gear confronting a crowd of subdued civilians outside a neoclassical government building draped with American flags. The atmosphere is suffused with foreboding: soldiers grip rifles, some aimed menacingly at the unarmed figures, whose expressions range from fear to grim resignation. The building’s tall columns loom in the gloom, its lit windows casting faint, watchful glows against a turbulent dusk sky streaked with red. Smoke or mist clings to the ground, intensifying the sense of oppression and imminent violence. The composition evokes the imagery of authoritarianism, civil unrest, and the fragile boundary between order and brutality.

Thursday, October 2, 2025

An ominous portent, to understate it: US hiring intentions for the September quarter sank to their lowest ebb since 2009

image generated by Google Gemini

In addition, seasonal recruitment projections have fallen precipitously from last year’s levels. At the same time, planned job cuts have surged to heights not witnessed since the darkest months of the COVID-19 pandemic, when entire sectors contracted under the weight of lockdowns and economic paralysis. Employers are bracing for further and greater turbulence, shedding labour where they can and withholding opportunities where they might once have expanded. And the principal culprit being cited? Why, the tariffs that our fearless leader claims are going to save our economy. This is the inevitable consequence when a nation of the economically illiterate—not that I profess any particular genius in the field myself—entrusts its fortunes to an economic illiterate who, corrupt to the hilt and beholden to foreign despots, was once again elevated to high office after having proven to be an abject failure in his first run. #Murica —Arthur Newhook, 2 October 2025.

{Yahoo Finance 2 October} ‘US hiring plans sink to lowest since 2009 in September as labor market slowdown continues’

{alternate text for the above image} A graphic illustration, evocative of mid-20th century Pop Art, delineates a tableau of fiscal pandemonium. In the foreground, a statuesque female figure with a platinum blonde coiffure and a demure verdant frock stands immobilised, her visage a study in profound disquietude, her eyes wide with unutterable consternation. Surrounding her, the floor of a financial bourse erupts in a paroxysm of hysteria. A cacophonous throng of male financiers, their features contorted in agony, gesticulate wildly amidst a maelstrom of plummeting indices displayed on electronic boards. The composition starkly juxtaposes her static, doe-eyed paralysis against the kinetic frenzy of capitalist collapse, creating a powerful allegory of innocence confronting a cataclysm of avarice.

Priorities: Trump regime to persist in disfiguring White House grounds with a garish ballroom, even amidst a government shutdown

Getty Images

{ABC News 2 October} White House ballroom construction to continue through government shutdown

Essential programmes are cut, the most vulnerable suffer—yet many of those afflicted (the poor, often rural white ones) still cheer Trump as he inflates his ego and fleeces all in sight beneath the guise of making the former United States ‘great again’. The nation draws perilously near a breaking point. Those exhausted by Trumpism will not endure in their patience forever and at some point there is going to be a revolt; and he and his millions of acolytes ought not delight so blithely in that prospect. They are toying with fire, and in time it shall be they who are consumed. Their minds and souls are already forfeit, and how fortunate for their manipulators that is so. —Arthur Newhook, 2 October 2025.

{alternate text for above image} A night-time photograph of the White House grounds circa 2009, featuring a large temporary ballroom tent illuminated from within, its chandeliers casting a warm golden glow. The translucent roof and side panels reveal a gathering of guests inside, dressed formally, with soft light spilling through the arched windows of the walkway that connects to the main structure. The Washington Monument rises in the distance, starkly lit against a moody sky, anchoring the scene in its broader national context. Trees frame the edges of the composition, their dark silhouettes enhancing the contrast between the festivity of the interior and the sombre, clouded night beyond. The image captures a juxtaposition of grandeur and impermanence, the tented structure providing a fleeting stage for ceremony and spectacle upon historic ground.

Copyright 2025, Arthur Newhook. On X-TWITTER: @Sunking278 and @DollsFallen. REDDIT - https://www.reddit.com/user/SiberianKhatru278/. BLUESKY - @arthurnewhook.bsky.social. FULL LIST OF LINKS - linktr.ee/arthurnewhook. DONATIONS GRATEFULLY ACCEPTED on Cash App ($ANewhook), PayPal (paypal.me/Sunking278), and at https://tinyurl.com/ArthurNewhook.

Manchester, England, on Yom Kippur: at least two dead in synagogue attack. The blood of this day stains many hands

Getty Images

{BBC 2 October} “What we know about Manchester synagogue attack”

TO THE RIGHT-WING EXTREMISTS, you keyboard Nazis: persist with your preposterous, long-debunked anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, by all means. TO THE FAR-LEFT ZEALOTS who assiduously ascribe all blame for Gaza’s horrors to Israel and Zionism while exculpating Hamas and its Islamist cohorts — continue your plaints. Do so, and you will only ensure that more Jews and other innocents pay with their lives. Blood is on the hands of many today, and each and every time acts of hatred are inflicted upon the Jewish people.

My grandfathers and uncles—one of them lost upon the beaches of Normandy—fought and prevailed in history’s greatest struggle to consign Fascism and anti-Semitism to oblivion; yet here we stand once more before their spectre. Lord, I have long felt Your enmity towards me from the hour of my birth, but have You now abandoned the world entire? It assuredly appears so. —Arthur Newhook, 2 October 2025.

{alternate text for above image} A solemn group of men, clad in sombre suits, stand with arms entwined in a gesture of solidarity and grief, their bowed heads framed by the distinctive kippot that mark their faith. Photographed from behind, their figures lean into one another as though bracing against an unseen storm, embodying the collective weight of loss following the attack on a synagogue in Manchester on 2 October 2025. The quiet intimacy of their embrace, against the blurred greenery beyond, speaks less of spectacle than of endurance—an affirmation of identity and shared sorrow in the face of violence.

Copyright 2025, Arthur Newhook. On X-TWITTER: @Sunking278 and @DollsFallen. REDDIT - https://www.reddit.com/user/SiberianKhatru278/. BLUESKY - @arthurnewhook.bsky.social. FULL LIST OF LINKS - linktr.ee/arthurnewhook. DONATIONS GRATEFULLY ACCEPTED on Cash App ($ANewhook), PayPal (paypal.me/Sunking278), and at https://tinyurl.com/ArthurNewhook.

Polish press: “Russian special services allegedly planned a terrorist attack in Poland using cans of explosives disguised as canned corn.”

Wikimedia Commons

{UNN 2 October} 'Instead of corn - explosive material: Russian special services prepared an insidious terrorist attack in Poland - Wiadomości Warszawy'

The European Union should have sealed its frontiers with Russia and its vassal Belarus three and a half years ago; though, even that might scarcely suffice to thwart Putin’s operatives from staging false-flag outrages, their obvious aim being to cast blame upon Ukraine and to sunder Kyiv from Warsaw. However absurd it may appear to those unclouded by Kremlin and far-left/far-right propaganda to imagine Ukraine striking a vital ally, millions—indeed, perhaps billions—particularly in the now-former United States, have shown time and again their readiness to embrace any lie, however fantastical, so long as the demagogues who utter it—Putin, Trump, and their ilk—are seen to be hurting the people in their societies whom they despise (such as Jews, Blacks, homosexuals, atheists, anyone with an IQ of three digits, so forth: it is a very long list, as we know). —Arthur Newhook, 2 October 2025.

Wednesday, October 1, 2025

Israeli foreign ministry: activist Greta Thunberg detained aboard Gaza aid flotilla, reported ‘safe and healthy’

AFP

{Reuters 1 October} Israeli foreign ministry reports activist Greta Thunberg, detained aboard a Gaza aid flotilla, is being held in safety and good health

Unbidden counsel to Miss Thunberg: confine yourself to championing climate awareness, and abandon any pretence of advocacy for a society of Islamist zealots who visit unspeakable cruelties upon their women and lay every ill at the feet of the Jews. Why imperil your life on behalf of those who, given the chance, would sooner despoil and slaughter you?

Psychic warfare: a jeremiad on why the advertising industry in the former United States demands drastic reform

image generated via Google Gemini

For the sake of mankind, stringent and rational constraints have to, starting yesterday, be imposed upon the American advertising industry (and probably elsewhere, too). Indeed, what is needed is nothing less than an entirely new model, for the televisual advertising apparatus has leapt too many proverbial sharks to be reformed or redeemed. The sheer cacophony and inanity to which one is subjected merely to watch a ball game—or most any broadcast at all—is increasingly intolerable, yet the American public, as with so much else, remains insensate to the psychic warfare daily waged upon them in the service of crony capitalism. (‘Crony’ is the operative word; I am no foe of capitalism per se, but we long ago surpassed the point at which the beast required taming and proper stewardship.)

Yes—psychic warfare it is, with the populace as its unresisting casualties. Every operative of the advertising agencies might well deserve committal, so relentless is the idiocy they have strewn across our airwaves and into our very consciousness over decades. Pure f**king garbage, in layman’s terms.

Does anyone ever pause to reflect upon the sheer juvenility and absurdity of roughly ninety-five per cent of these advertisements? Is there no one—besides myself—who yearns for a quieter, more decorous and properly ordered nation and world? Must we truly profess such affection for the prattling gecko, the mawkish caveman, the washed-up sitcom geeks in the T-Mobile spots, or that benighted emu and his handler Doug, along with the countless other inanities to which we are ceaselessly subjected? Do we not care that so many of the songs which accompanied our coming of age have been debased into mere marketing jingles?

A less intrusive, more humane model of advertising must be forged, though, as with so much else, I fear we are already too far gone to rescue ourselves from the abyss. —Arthur Newhook, 1 October 2025.

Ukrainian strikes on Russian refineries drive one of the world’s largest energy giants to implore China and others for fuel

Sputnik/AFP/Getty

{Newsweek 1 October} ‘Russia has a fuel problem after series of Ukraine strikes’

Karma is a bitch, yeah?

“Russia is set to import gasoline from Asia to offset a growing fuel shortage since Ukrainian attacks have disrupted nearly 40 percent of the country’s oil refining capacity, it has been reported.”

{alternate text} Vladimir Putin seated against a backdrop of the Russian tricolour, the vivid red and blue of the flag contrasting sharply with the pallor of his complexion. Dressed in a dark suit, white shirt, and patterned red tie, he leans slightly to one side in a high-backed, ornate chair, the gilt trim and patterned upholstery suggestive of ceremonial authority. His expression is one of weary detachment, the downturned mouth and heavy-lidded eyes conveying an impression of morose calculation rather than animation. The lighting accentuates the sallow planes of his face, highlighting age and strain, yet the posture remains rigidly controlled, projecting the cold restraint for which he is known. The overall composition conveys not vitality but the weary gravity of a man both entrenched in power and isolated by it, a portrait steeped less in grandeur than in the brittle opacity of autocracy.

Copyright 2025, Arthur Newhook. On X-TWITTER: @Sunking278 and @DollsFallen. REDDIT - https://www.reddit.com/user/SiberianKhatru278/. BLUESKY - @arthurnewhook.bsky.social. FULL LIST OF LINKS - linktr.ee/arthurnewhook. DONATIONS GRATEFULLY ACCEPTED on Cash App ($ANewhook), PayPal (paypal.me/Sunking278), and at https://tinyurl.com/ArthurNewhook.

ADP reports firms in the former United States shed some 32,000 posts in September

{NBC News 1 October} ‘U.S. companies shed 32,000 jobs in September in latest sign of labor market weakness’

Bleak news all around:

ADP may be the only jobs data reported this week. The government shutdown, which began Wednesday, means that the Bureau of Labor Statistics is closed and unable to publish the official government jobs report Friday.
Companies with fewer than 50 employees were among those hit the hardest in September, with firms employing 20-49 employees shedding 21,000 jobs and those employing fewer than 19 workers losing 19,000 jobs.
ADP said the negative number was due in part to recently revised BLS data but "the trend was unchanged; job creation continued to lose momentum across most sectors." Additionally, "pay gains for job-changers slowed to 6.6% from 7.1% in August."
ADP also revised down August's employment growth of 54,000 to a loss of 3,000.

The essence of the Quantico address: a calculated rite of humiliation, with Trump imperilling the patience of US generals

Alex Wong/Getty Images

{USNI News 30 September} 'Pentagon issues fresh edict on physical fitness and grooming standards in the wake of the Quantico address'

An assembly of generals, all feigned enthusiasm, hanging rapt upon each syllable uttered by the Secretary of War and the President of the United States. (/obvious sarcasm).

To be fair, the new directives, taken on their own, possess a surface logic—most notably in prescribing stricter standards of physical fitness and ensuring combat readiness. Yet what is far more disquieting is the pageantry of their unveiling, staged unmistakably as a ritual of humiliation. For years—since his first tenure in the White House—Trump has inveighed against generals who honoured their oaths. His disdain for the military is unvarnished, at once putting them on a pedestal and emasculating them. Thus to assemble them, and then subject them to over an hour of his typical rambling irrelevance, was to reduce the nation’s senior commanders to the theatre of abasement. They recognised as much; their stony demeanours and reluctant postures betrayed the truth.

It may yet be these very generals—men, and a diminished handful of women, many of the latter already purged by this regime—who preserve the republic. For they did not appear as a cadre inclined to betray their oaths, nor to contort the Constitution into sanctioning a presidential war against his own citizenry and all whom he capriciously names ‘enemy’. One suspects, or at least strongly hopes, they confer in private, formulating strategy for the inevitable hour—fast approaching—when the Commander-in-Chief’s commands trespass so egregiously into unlawfulness that they cannot, in conscience, be obeyed.

{alternate text) In this photograph taken on 30 September 2025, rows of senior US military officers, clad in dark dress uniforms heavy with insignia, ribbons, and medals, sit in stony formation at Quantico. Their faces, rigid and unsmiling, betray an air of discomfort that undercuts the ceremony of their appearance. Some look downward, others stare blankly ahead, while a few allow the faintest flicker of exasperation to cross their features. The sea of green and blue uniforms, punctuated by the glint of brass and polished cloth, forms a tableau of disciplined composure masking inner disquiet. Against the gravity of their bearing, the mood is unmistakably strained, the officers’ silent demeanour reflecting a collective unease at being compelled to endure the rambling oratory of President Donald Trump. It is an image less of military pomp than of professional stoicism tested by political theatre, each face a study in the art of concealing disdain under the iron weight of duty.

Monday, September 29, 2025

CDC issues Level 2 Cuba travel alert as chikungunya outbreak spreads—an affliction leaving victims bedridden for months.

{Daily Mail 29 September}:

Americans are being advised to practice caution when traveling to a Caribbean island because of an outbreak of a deadly virus.

The CDC has placed a Level 2 travel warning on Cuba after local officials raised the alarm over an outbreak of chikungunya virus, a painful viral infection that can leave victims bedridden for months.

The disease is spread by mosquitoes, with patients suffering a sudden fever and then joint pain in the hands and feet that can be so severe that sufferers are left unable to walk for months. In rare cases, the disease can be fatal.

Officials in Cuba have not revealed how many people are infected, but say that the outbreak is focused in Matanzas province, 60 miles east of Havana. There have been no deaths reported so far.

It is not clear what prompted the CDC advisory, but the alert comes just days after US health officials began investigating a possible locally acquired case of chikungunya on Long Island, New York, the first ever detected in the state.

The infection was detected in a woman who said she had not recently traveled off the island, home to more than eight million people and the celebrity-loved Hamptons.

And amid a surging outbreak of the disease in South America, with health officials at the Pan American Health Organization warning that Brazil, with 210,000 cases, is among the worst affected.

Globally, more than 317,000 cases and 135 deaths involving the virus have been detected this year, according to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, which tracks international figures. In 2024, there were 620,000 cases and 213 deaths.

Copyright 2025, Arthur Newhook. On X-TWITTER: @DollsFallen and @Sunking278. BLUESKY - @arthurnewhook.bsky.social. REDDIT - https://www.reddit.com/user/SiberianKhatru278/. FULL LIST OF LINKS - linktr.ee/arthurnewhook. DONATIONS GRATEFULLY ACCEPTED on Cash App ($ANewhook) and at https://tinyurl.com/ArthurNewhook.

Yet more Russian mothers to have their sons slaughtered, with Putin ordering the largest conscription drive in nine years

Vladimir Gerdo/TASS

“Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday ordered the conscription of 135,000 men by the end of 2025, the largest conscription drive in nine years.” {The Moscow Times 29 September}

Copyright 2025, Arthur Newhook. On X-TWITTER: @DollsFallen and @Sunking278. BLUESKY - @arthurnewhook.bsky.social. REDDIT - https://www.reddit.com/user/SiberianKhatru278/. FULL LIST OF LINKS - linktr.ee/arthurnewhook. DONATIONS GRATEFULLY ACCEPTED on Cash App ($ANewhook) and at https://tinyurl.com/ArthurNewhook.

From Ryder Cup to ruin: bearing witness to a country’s self-caricature

Reuters

{The Guardian 28 September} Bryan Armen Graham: ‘US fan ugliness at the Ryder Cup was merely a reflection of Trump’s all-caps America’

A nation of overgrown children, beset by pathetic Daddy issues and divested of courtesy and basic civility. The former United States have become the world’s laughing-stock, yet, like pigeons, Americans befoul every ground upon which they tread and strut as though possessed of innate superiority. I state, unequivocally, that I desire no share in a universe populated by such people, still less to remain marooned behind enemy lines. I would be gone already had I the requisite capital; and, as I have said before, I shall ever despise myself for not foreseeing this collapse a quarter-century ago. Had I known, I would have devoted myself solely to amassing the means of escape, rather than to the puerile follies in which my idiot peers and I were then engrossed.

Copyright 2025, Arthur Newhook. On X-TWITTER: @DollsFallen and @Sunking278. BLUESKY - @arthurnewhook.bsky.social. REDDIT - https://www.reddit.com/user/SiberianKhatru278/. FULL LIST OF LINKS - linktr.ee/arthurnewhook. DONATIONS GRATEFULLY ACCEPTED on Cash App ($ANewhook) and at https://tinyurl.com/ArthurNewhook.

Teenager charged with setting fire, unlawful entry, at a Beverly, MA, church

Wangkun Jia/Alamy

{NBC Boston 29 September} Pilgrim Cumberland Presbyterian Church fire

At this very moment, something especially grievous is unfolding within the psyches of adolescent boys and young men, and the consequences for society are already revealing themselves in forms ever more grotesque and alarming. Merely observe who their role models are, and it is scarcely surprising that juvenile delinquency—among boys especially—is soaring within this decaying nation. It shall grow yet more grievous with every passing day, and I shall persist in chronicling this decay until, at last and mercifully, I am released from this wretched planet and its denizens.

Copyright 2025, Arthur Newhook. On X-TWITTER: @DollsFallen and @Sunking278. BLUESKY - @arthurnewhook.bsky.social. REDDIT - https://www.reddit.com/user/SiberianKhatru278/. FULL LIST OF LINKS - linktr.ee/arthurnewhook. DONATIONS GRATEFULLY ACCEPTED on Cash App ($ANewhook) and at https://tinyurl.com/ArthurNewhook.

Fed-up

Time to get this blog back up and running in earnest, as relying solely on social media for anything is foolhardy and dangerous. Especially bloody Facebook. Screw that company to all Hell.

Am presently of a particularly rarefied order of fury—and without a drop of drink in me. Many should count themselves fortunate that, though I have instilled the fear of God in some when necessity demanded, I am neither psychopath nor sociopath, nor, indeed, a murderer. No matter; in these accursed years nothing is appreciated. I know I am thrashing a carcass long dead, yet I fully intend to proclaim my sentiments to the entire world for as long as I must endure this thankless existence. —Arthur Newhook, 29 September 2025.