Secretary of State Marco Rubio is in Portugal on the third stop of his NATO alliance tour.  Portugal is very strategic and holds as strong intelligence network through its well-regarded diplomatic corps. [Listen to what Rubio says about the narcotrafficking operation that Portugal and the USA conduct together.]

Secretary Rubio held a press conference with Portuguese Foreign Minister Paulo Rangel. Video and Transcript below: 

[Transcript] FOREIGN MINISTER RANGEL:  Welcome to Lisbon, Secretary Marco Rubio.

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Secretary of State Marco Rubio held a press conference with Giorgos Gerapetritis, the Greek Foreign Minister earlier today. Rubio is on a three-nation strategic alliance tour of Iceland, Greece and Portugal.

The video and transcript of the press remarks and questions are below.

[Transcript] – SECRETARY RUBIO:  Thank you.  Thank you for your welcome.  It’s actually great to be here to have our sixth Strategic Dialogue, which is ongoing, and we’ve begun downstairs a few minutes ago.  It’s an event where our two countries commit to continue to work together on a range of issues.

We are two countries that are bound by a common heritage and by proud histories.  The United States and Greece share a long history of friendship and partnership and alliance.  In fact, the importance of this historical alliance is highlighted by the instability in the world today that we see as a result of conflicts in Hormuz with Iran, or the conflicts in the Red Sea with – in Yemen, or the conflicts in Ukraine and Russia.  As you see a world that faces these destabilizing events, you recognize how important this alliance with Greece is to the United States.

It’s both historic – historical in its foundation, but it is also critical.  It is a source of stability in an unstable world.  And I’m thankful – we’re thankful – that Greece remains a great ally and that we share a common understanding – this is really important – not just a great ally – we share a common understanding of the threats that face our countries, the face – the threat – that face our societies.  And we share a common understanding about the means to address them.

One thing we agree on, for example, is that the nations of Europe need to take on a greater share of the burden in defending their continent, and Greece is doing just that.  They’re on track to meet the commitments that have been made to spend 5 percent of their GDP on defense this year, with over 3.5 of that – of their GDP – percent of GDP being spent on core defense.  They’re also joining the National Guard’s Bureau of State Partnership Program, and they’ll be paired, ironically enough, with the Florida National Guard, which will bring our military collaboration even closer.

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The case against the former head of German Intelligence, August Hanning, is seriously sketchy.

Hanning, 80, was arrested in Bad Toelz-Wolfratshausen in southern Germany. His former Chief of Staff, Manfred D., was also arrested Tuesday in Steinfurt in western Germany and has been charged with aiding and abetting attempted treason and treasonous espionage.

Police were investigating Hanning in 2025 in relation to his involvement in organizing a kidnapping plot.  When police searched his residence, they found documents outlining his activity in receiving state secrets from inside German intelligence and selling classified analysis to a foreign government (not Russia).

Apparently when Hanning left as head of German intelligence, his chief of staff “Manfred” remained at work.  Manfred then continued to give Hanning information from inside German intelligence, which Hanning then used to sell his services to foreign enterprises.

The information Manfred gave Hanning related to intelligence on Russia and Iran that Germany gathered from partnerships with the USA and Israel.  In essence, Hanning was selling 5-eyes secret intelligence on Russia and Iran, to foreign interests.  Hanning was receiving the intelligence from Manfred, his former chief of staff.

GERMANY – A former German spy chief was arrested Tuesday on suspicion of espionage and treason, an embarrassing case at a time when the country is seeking to broaden the powers of its intelligence agencies.

August Hanning, who ran Germany’s BND foreign intelligence agency from 1998 to 2005, is accused of espionage, treason and working for foreign intelligence services, federal prosecutors said.

They did not say which foreign powers were involved. However, AFP understands it was not Russia.

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Susan Kokinda delivers a great contextual overview for the IRGC letter to the world asking everyone, anyone, to help protect them from President Trump’s strategic operation against Iran.

Kokinda opens with the 26-page open letter Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps addressed to the American people weeks before the midterms, which the State Department dismissed as desperate and the Daily Wire read as a call to vote Democrat. She argues the letter tells a bigger story than anyone is reporting: it names the CIA, Israel and the military-industrial complex, but never once the British. After President Trump’s “easy way or the hard way” remark on Iran, and his statement at the U.N. that the election won’t influence his Iran policy, the episode revisits the 1953 overthrow of Mohammad Mosaddegh, whom the letter calls an “Americanophile,” after he nationalized the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, today’s BP, and cites National Security Archive documents showing the British Foreign Office approached the Truman administration in late 1952 to propose a coup.

Her review then then turns to a Foreign Affairs newsletter citing the 1956 Suez crisis as a parallel to the war with Iran, President Eisenhower’s refusal to back Britain and France at Suez, and Gamal Abdel Nasser’s 1955 Foreign Affairs article on how the British ran Egypt. It closes with Richard Haass on Morning Joe, the morning after Trump’s U.N. speech, calling it “the end of 80 years of American foreign policy,” Chatham House director Bronwen Maddox on Europe having to defend itself against the U.S., and Mark Carney telling the New York Times he spent the past year preparing for the “extreme tail risk” of U.S. military action against Canada.  WATCH:

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A few weeks ago, the voters in Iceland rejected a referendum to join the European Union.  Iceland remains a NATO ally, but not an EU member, this dynamic becomes more important when considering the Arctic defense strategy of President Trump and Secretary Rubio.

From the State Dept: Secretary of State Marco Rubio will travel to Reykjavík, Iceland; Athens, Greece; and Lisbon, Portugal from October 5-8, 2026.

Secretary Rubio will meet with Icelandic officials in Reykjavík to discuss economic and security collaboration.  In Greece, Secretary Rubio will lead the United States delegation for the Sixth U.S.-Greece Strategic Dialogue, deepening our partnership on key Administration priorities, including defense cooperation and regional and energy security.  Secretary Rubio will then travel to Lisbon to meet with Portuguese officials to advance defense, economic, and technology cooperation. (read more)

Rubio delivered remarks just before departure.  RAF Fairford, Russian Plague, Brazil Election, Saudi and Houthis, and more. WATCH:

I would also emphasize a little-known aspect to the Portuguese relationship.  Portugal has one of the most effective intelligence operations in the world, in part due to their diplomatic corps who have groomed very strong relationships with allies and not-s0-friendly nations.  Portugal maintains a very well-run, albeit very quiet intelligence system.

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Media are now reporting the U.S. has removed all Air Force’s bombers, including B-1s, B-2s, and B-52s, on Sunday from RAF Fairford base in the U.K.

The bombers were redeployed back to their home bases in the United States, AP reported, initially citing a Pentagon official who was not authorized to discuss sensitive military movements and spoke on condition of anonymity.  However, multiple news outlets are now reporting on official statements from the Pentagon.

SKY NEWS – […] “While operational security precluded us from confirming the movement of our assets and forces in real-time, we can acknowledge now that all US bombers that were deployed to RAF Fairford have redeployed to their home stations in the United States.

“The Airmen that operate America’s bomber force, including B-1s, B-2s, and B-52s, remain ready to deliver precision global strike capabilities – including through operations that launch and recover from the continental United States – anywhere, anytime.” (source)

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I don’t want to focus too much on this, because there are multiple angles still at work.  However, against the backdrop of the non-coincidental coincidences that followed the August 2025 Alaska Summit, the Lukoil story looks strategically interesting.

The New York Times is looking at Lukoil from the perspective of President Trump organizing financial gains for people close to his administration, specifically Witkoff and Kusher.  {GO DEEP}

That aspect is nonsense, total nonsense; however, if you pull back and look at the background story without the Trump derangement overlay, there’s a potential here for something very good to come out of it.

As the story is told, Russian President Vladimir Putin has inquired about the potential for the U.S. to remove sanctions against Lukoil, a quasi-private energy company based out of Russia.  Before, getting too weedy about it, remind yourself of the statements that surfaced during the Trump-Putin summit in Alaska, August, 2025.

You might remember that both the U.S and Russia spoke of strategic partnerships surrounding the energy sector.  Obviously, this makes sense when we consider the “west” is actually fractured on the topic of energy.  There are two competing interests that overlap in the financial side of the issue, the ‘trillions at stake’ aspect.

On one side you have the “climate change” team, those who are fully invested (literally) in the financial mechanisms of the climate change, green new deal, build back better talking points.  The Green Energy team in the west.  The Paris Climate Treaty and carbon-trading proponents et al.

On the other side you have the pragmatic energy team in the west.  These are the Trump-minded and aligned western perspectives that look at oil, natural gas (LNG), clean coal and nuclear technology.  These are the “all the above” aligned voices in the more pragmatic view of low-cost energy production and development.

In the middle, between both sides of the fracture, are the banking and finance systems.  This is the BIG MONEY play, with the Climate Change team supported by banking ideology inside the city of London, while the Carbon Use team is constantly having to assemble finance and insurance from outside the banking control mechanisms.

The Climate Change team have support based on ideology within the finance system.  However, the Carbon Use team have the advantage of low-price outputs, global dependency and actual profits as leverage.  This is a fight essentially inside the larger energy sector, and we are all very familiar with it because it has been happening for decades.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney is currently the main tool deployed by the Climate Change team on behalf of the London finance system.  Carney’s main opponent is U.S. President Donald Trump.

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There’s generally a strategy to the madness; you just have to wait until it starts to become visible.  The anniversary of October 7, 2023, massacre is right around the corner.

Hamas-led attacks on Israel on 7 October 2023, which killed about 1,200 people and involved mass shootings, hostage‑taking, rapes and horrific assaults on civilian communities.

As noted in the end of this article about the French protests, “student organizations are nevertheless calling for protests to continue, with the movement now looking towards Tuesday’s National Day of Action.”

EUROPE – Around 400 of France’s 3,700 secondary schools were closed on Friday on the orders of police prefects, with many schools switching to online lessons.

Education Minister Edouard Geffray urged parents to intervene, warning that young people were putting themselves at risk.

“Children are in danger on the streets,” he told BFMTV. “Parents must, quite clearly, take action and tell their children not to go [to the blockades].” The protests began over staffing, funding and school conditions and have spread rapidly across the country.

The Interior Ministry said 1,027 secondary schools were affected on Thursday, including 222 that were blockaded. Around 30 university campuses were also blocked.

It said 1,949 people were arrested on Thursday alone, mainly in connection with violence, unlawful gatherings and attacks on people in positions of authority. (read more)

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Once again, you may have seen a lot of banter, interpretation and discussion in western media about Russia speaking of defending Kaliningrad with nuclear weapons if needed.  To gain a full understanding of the context, I strongly suggest reading the transcript below.

Vladimir Putin addressed the plenary session of the 23^rd annual meeting of the Valdai Discussion Club. It is a very lengthy discussion.  I am pulling out the key segment and suggest everyone take some quiet time to read.

President Vladimir Putin – […] Let me digress from the main topic for a while. There are people here in this room who hold a very diverse mix of opinions regarding an extremely acute present-day conflict – the Ukraine conflict, and what caused it. I would like to say a few words on this matter. It is a fact that many hundreds or even thousands of experts, your colleagues who will study the materials from this Valdai Club meeting, they have their own opinions on this matter. I am, of course aware that some within the expert community might ask why Russia started the war while talking about peace. I have commented this many times already, but let me say this once again in front of this audience.

Where is the truth? The truth is that we did not want and were not the ones who started to fight. In fact, they started to fight against us. They should have refrained from encouraging aggressive nationalism and Russophobia in Ukraine so as to turn it into a tool for fighting Russia. NATO should not have embarked on an effort to make our historical territories part of its military space in its own interests and should not have planned setting up its bases there. Radicals in Kiev should not have been pushed to a government coup while the de facto illegal regime should not have been pumped full of all kinds of offensive weapons after that. Plans for setting up concentration camps for the people from Donbass and Crimea should not have been drafted. Unarmed people should not have been rolled over by tanks, shelled with missiles and bombed from the air and burnt alive just for being Russian, in terms of both their ethnic background and their spirit.

The list of these do-nots goes on, but let me stop at that. I am convinced that this was an intentional effort to place Russia in a situation when it was simply forced to defend itself with arms in hand to respond to this obvious act of aggression. They pushed us to this brink knowingly and intentionally. Overall, Russophobia, oppressing and killing Russian people and destroying Russia should not be turned into state ideology while striving to inflict a strategic defeat on Russia. This was the way it was all articulated, right? No one forgot this. At least, we did not forget this.

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The French interior ministry said police had made more than 1,949 arrests through Thursday, while 305 police officers had been injured, as youth migrants run amok in multiple regions. {source}

French “students”, young Black Bloc (Antifa) members and hoards of migrants have set fires and erected blockades outside schools in several cities, as violence and mayhem continues all over the country.  Several school principals and teachers have been injured, harassed or assaulted at high schools, according to media reports, regional education authorities, prefectures and teacher union representatives.

PARIS, Oct 1 (Reuters) – France’s intelligence agencies briefed a government crisis meeting on Thursday that a wave ​of student protests, sometimes violent, that has swept across the country was initiated by hard-left politicians, a person close to the prime minister ‌said.

The protests against teacher shortages and dilapidated school buildings erupted in the Paris region last month but have turned increasingly violent as they spread nationwide, with dozens injured and with police making hundreds of arrests.

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