Brazil election, Gaza rubble, Iran war cost$, Hegseth in the rear, EU wants war

• São Paulo, Brazil: More than a million people took to the streets to assert Brazil's sovereignty and oppose the candidacy of Flávio Bolsonaro, just days before the presidential runoff election on October 25. On October 4, right-wing candidate Flávio Bolsonaro—45 years old and the son of the former president sentenced to 27 years for the attempted coup of 2022—finished the first round with 47% of the vote, ahead of Lula, who stood at 45%. Since then, hundreds of thousands of people—primarily students and teachers—have been taking to the streets daily across the country to protest against what participants view as the risk of Brazilian politics becoming increasingly subordinate to the United States and the potential sell-off of the nation's vast reserves of raw materials. 
• "US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has announced plans to create a new four-star combatant command to leverage AI in warfare. During a “State of the Force” address at Marine Corps Base Quantico, Virginia, Hegseth said the Autonomous Warfare Command (AUTOWARCOM) would be tasked with scaling “autonomous and robotic capabilities across the Joint Force in the fastest peacetime shift in modern military history.” The Pentagon intends to launch AUTOWARCOM by October 2027, but it will need to secure Congressional approval to do so. If approved, AUTOWARCOM will become the military’s 12th combatant command. The last new command was US Space Command, launched in 2019 under the first Trump Administration.
• According to Senator Chris Murphy (D-Connecticut): "Never before has this happened. Never before has a member of Congress been denied access to military facilities and been refused briefings by generals in theater. And from what I understand, this is happening both to Democrats and Republicans when they are traveling to the Middle East. So just understand what this is: This is Secretary Hegseth deliberately trying to cover up the extent of damage, likely in the billions of dollars, trying to cover up the true cost of this war, trying to hide from you, from the American public, not just from members of Congress, the actual consequences of a war that is spiraling out of control by the day. This should be unacceptable to every member of Congress—Republicans and Democrats—and this should be unacceptable to the American public."  (See the 'mighty Hegseth' dragging up the rear below.)

• Reports claim Pakistani aircraft have begun striking targets in Yemen. Pakistani officials told The New York Times that Islamabad is now conducting airstrikes against Ansarallah, marking a potential escalation from military assistance to direct combat operations. Pakistan has already confirmed its military presence in Saudi Arabia, while Reuters reports Pakistani cargo aircraft have delivered weapons and equipment to Saudi-backed forces in Aden. Unconfirmed reports also allege that Riyadh offered substantial financial incentives to secure Pakistan’s participation.
• Washington Post: Ex-Trump officials find new jobs in Venezuela’s lucrative oil industry. Companies and investors are eager to hire those with recent access to the White House and knowledge of the administration’s Venezuela policy or contacts.
• Hundreds of dockworkers, more than 30 ports, refuse to load weapons and military equipment for Israel. Dock unions representing more than 35 European and Mediterranean ports, including the CGT Ports and Docks SN FRANCE, are opposing the loading of weapons, ammunition, and military equipment intended for war zones. The unions are calling for an international day of action on October 30, with the situation in Gaza at the heart of their demands.

• Leader of AnsarAllah, Abdul Malik al-Houthi, in his speech made an interesting remark. He says the Saudi regime played a role in the assassination of Shahid Imad Mughniyeh and, from the very beginning, has supported efforts to assassinate martyr Seyyed Hassan Nasrallah. He also said the Saudis use the term "jihad in the path of God" to deceive the Muslim community. They act against Palestine and in favor of the US, and they create discord within the Muslim world. He also praised Iran and said ‌the “Islamic Republic of Iran has made significant sacrifices in its fight against the aggressive Israeli regime, and at the forefront of these sacrifices is the legacy of its martyred leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.”

• Israel setting up their own Jewish only resorts, chabad houses and mini-settlements in foreign countries like India, Philippines, Thailand, Greece, Cyprus, Crete, Argentina. Colombia, Sri Lanka... and more. Coming to your country soon....  they not only want to steal and rule Palestine, Lebanon, Syria but many other countries outside the Middle East as well. America should give them Texas. They call it 'Greater Israel'. 

• The US has sought to influence Brazilian politics for decades, including through the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and has played a role in the country’s current presidential election, independent journalist and geopolitical analyst Pepe Escobar has told RT. “The Americans put a lot of money in this election,” Escobar said, calling for a federal investigation into possible foreign influence. He singled out Brazil’s influential evangelical churches, claiming that the CIA had spent “decades” funding efforts to cultivate them and that this was now “paying off.”  The runoff is widely seen as a highly polarized contest over Brazil’s political direction. Lula has sought to strengthen the country’s role in BRICS and deepen ties with China and other Global South powers, while Bolsonaro has advocated closer relations with Washington. 
• Pressenza: It’s remarkable that there are still a notable though dwindling amount of people who think that European (and Canadian) leaders like Ursula von der Leyen (EU President), Fred ‘BlackRock’ Merz (Germany’s leader), Andy Burnham (England’s PM), Banker Emmanuel Macron (France’s PM) and Banker Mark Carney (Canada’s PM) are somewhat level-headed, practical leaders despite the fact that their entire game plan for the next 5-10 years rests on Europe getting into a full-on war with Russia. This is the image of the future that these leaders are presenting to the young people of Europe: Perpetual war and austerity until victory. No plan B, just get ready to rumble. These leaders aren’t even hiding any of this. “Russia is coming, Russia is coming!”, they shout. Meanwhile Russia wants absolutely nothing to do with the rest of Europe, let alone to go to war with them. Bottom Line: These European leaders are willing to risk the destruction of Europe in order to please donor class elites who’ve invested, literally, trillions of dollars in “Project Ukraine” since the early/mid 2010s. 

• The world should accept some “bad things” including hacks, scams, and misuse in exchange for the benefits of artificial intelligence and keeping the technology broadly accessible, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has said. In an interview with Politico, Altman rejected the idea that preventing all harmful uses of AI would justify placing the technology under tighter control.

• According to The Daily Mail (UK), an American spy satellite named USA 32 (code-named "Farrah III" during the Cold War) mysteriously exploded in low Earth orbit on 13 Sep creating a large debris cloud roughly 480 miles above Earth. Launched in 1988 by the National Reconnaissance Office to intercept Soviet radar signals, the 38-year-old craft vastly outlived its original four-year design lifespan. While the US Space Force has not yet determined an official cause, initial intelligence reports indicate no signs of a deliberate weapon strike, suggesting the breakup was likely triggered by an internal tank rupture or a collision with micrometeorites. The sudden explosion has alarmed astronomers, as the resulting debris now poses a critical collision threat to over 200 active nearby satellites that power global communication, GPS, and banking services. 

• Kaja Kallas’s public confession that her appeals to European capitals to surrender their remaining air-defense systems have “fallen on deaf ears” exposes the structural deadlock of the Atlanticist alliance. Having spent months terrifying their own domestic populations with shrill propaganda claiming that Russia will invade Europe in “months, not years,” European defense ministers cannot hand over their last Patriot PAC-2/3 or SAMP/T batteries to Ukraine without leaving their own capitals defenceless. Furthermore, Western military officers understand the operational reality: Patriot systems are ineffective against low-altitude, jet-powered Geran drones, and cannot reliably intercept hypersonic Zircons or maneuvering Iskander-M ballistic missiles. 

• CounterPunch: News reports that next year’s US military budget will top out at $1.5 trillion if President Donald Trump gets his way are misleading at best. The true total, if Trump’s proposal passes, could be at least $1 trillion higher. Long before Trump took office, US taxpayers have spent far more on the Pentagon — and its wars — than most know. For decades, Congress, the White House, and the Pentagon have hidden the military’s true cost through little-known bureaucratic practices and budgeting tricks. Journalists, academics, and think tank experts have, with rare exceptions, perpetuated the problem by repeating “official” numbers that don’t come close to telling the full story. Total Military Spending by Agency (FY2025) below.