Lots going on this week. Rounded up a few stories we might not see with our normal viewing habits.

Some unexpected sources of the public support I have seen for Hegseth's speech are those who read the speech and did not simply watch video clips. (note: I have not taken the time to read yet.)

Hegseth's Speech and Fitness Standards for Soldiers Ian Welsh Oct 2, 2025

I took the time to read a transcript of Secretary of War Hegseth’s speech to the gathered generals and admirals. To my surprise, I agreed with a lot of it, though not all. The crazy bits, especially combined with Trump’s statements, are the talk of domestic enemies and using the military against them.

But most of the speech is about standards. No beards, no slobs, and most of all, fitness standards:

This interview with Col Douglas McGreagor included in Evening Blues yesterday covers to the Judges surprise McGreagor's support of the speeches content. This clip starts at the point McGreagor is explaining the type of oath military personal make to Protect and Serve. It is different than the civilian oath the Judge made when ha became a judge.

COL. Douglas Macgregor : War With Iran Is Imminent. (starts 30:37 full length 37:14) Oct 2, 2025

This is the hardest video to watch (Warning - do not throw objects at the computer screen or phone.) His views reflect his professional career as a Special Operations officer. A couple of significant points are US had not been complying for some time to the Geneva Convention and we have/had an assassination program.

LtCOL. Tony Shaffer : US Intel Targeting Russian Troops (26:36 min) Oct 2, 2025

After listening to Tony I have been wondering what happened to Obama's kill list. Does it live on inside a government agency as an automatic task or has it been taken up by an international actor.

A 'Macabre' Process: Nominating Terrorists To Nation's 'Kill List' National Public Radio All Things Considered May 29, 2012

One of the day's most-discussed stories has to be The New York Times' report headlined "Secret 'Kill List' Proves A Test Of Obama's Principles And Will."

For Shane, it was the Defense Department's "rather open process by which they nominate" suspects to that kill list. As he and Becker wrote:

"It is the strangest of bureaucratic rituals: Every week or so, more than 100 members of the government's sprawling national security apparatus gather, by secure video teleconference, to pore over terrorist suspects' biographies and recommend to the president who should be the next to die."

It is "this strange, secret trial in a way," Shane told Melissa.

The nominees get sent to the White House, where the president and his top advisers hold "Terror Tuesday" meetings to go over the list and related topics. If, when it comes time to fire a missile at one of the suspects and it appears there might be family members or other civilians nearby, Obama "has reserved to himself the final moral calculation," the Times reports.

"Obama and John Brennans Kill List" (7.46 min) July 13, 2025

Lying to the FBI is a crime easier to prosecute than an actual crime.

Perfect Irony: 20 Years Ago Comey Put Martha Stewart in Jail, Now He's Charged with the Same Types of Crime the Western Journal Oct 1, 2025

As Comey put it in 2003, regarding the Stewart indictment on charges related to insider trading allegations, according to Fox News, “That is conduct that will not be tolerated.”
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In a documentary released in December, Stewart attacked Comey and his criminal case against her as unnecessary. Stewart settled an insider-trading case with the Securities and Exchange Commission. What Comey indicted her for were statements she made during the course of the insider-trading investigation — process crimes.

“It was so horrifying to me that I had to go through that to be a trophy for these idiots in the U.S. Attorney’s office,” she said in the Netflix documentary “Martha,” Fox reported.

The irony of the National Guard deployment in Oregon is in the late 1990's Oregon's Democratic Governor John Kitzhaber pushed through the ability to place National Guards on US soil for supporting roles to assist civil law enforcement. Could not find any supporting artices, but my memory of the events are real. Of course it was about drugs and criminal gangs. The Bloods and Crips were moving their rivalry north. The distribution, sale and use of illegal drugs is very disruptive to communities and provides repeatable opportunities to expand policing power.

Portland’s ICE office has become a character in real-life drama The Oregonian Oct 3, 2025

Federal officers and Portland police have arrested about 60 people at the building on allegations including assaulting officers, destroying government property and failing to follow lawful orders, many of them at the outset of the protests.

Trump’s attention and rhetoric has led to a recent bump in demonstrations, including about 200 people who converged on the site Sunday night after Trump ordered the troops to Portland. Police arrested two people that night after they said they saw participants with opposing views fighting.
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The ICE office in South Portland handles the cases of immigrants from a handful of counties in Oregon and four in Washington, according to ICE’s website, which doesn’t offer much other information about its operations.

The Portland facility is one of three similar immigration offices in Oregon. The others are in Eugene, which also has seen small and largely peaceful protests outside, and in Medford.
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The building also has temporary cells where people are held while they’re being processed.

Under the building’s conditional land-use approval with the city, immigration authorities cannot hold people for more than 12 hours. That’s a rule that Portland city officials last month said ICE had broken 25 times. The city gave ICE 30 days to address the violations.
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Oregon doesn’t have a place for long-term detention of immigrants

Oregon became the nation’s first sanctuary state in 1987. Under the sanctuary laws, which were strengthened in 2021, “a person may not operate a private immigration detention facility within” the state.

People detained by immigration officials in Oregon can be released and asked to later check-in with immigration authorities or they can be transported to the immigration detention center in Tacoma, which can hold close to 1,600 people.

Just a bit on the environmental front.

Solar-powered farming is digging Pakistan into a water catastrophe Reuter Oct 1, 2025

As Pakistan undergoes a solar revolution, farmers like Ali are increasingly ditching diesel and grid power for sun-powered tube wells, according to interviews with 10 growers, as well as government officials and analysts.
The solar boom has coincided with the rapid depletion of water tables in Pakistan's most populous province, according to previously unreported Punjab water authority documents viewed by Reuters. The documents did not pinpoint any cause.
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The explosion in availability of cheap solar panels is posing a particular threat to water levels in the South Asian bread basket of Punjab.

The water table has shrunk below 60 feet - a level designated as critical by the provincial irrigation department - across 6.6% of Punjab as of 2024, according to maps published for internal use by water authorities and seen by Reuters. That marks an increase of some 25% between 2020 and 2024, while the deepest pockets - with water levels beyond 80 feet - more than doubled in size during the same period.

Pakistan power minister Awais Leghari told Reuters in June that it was a "misconception that solar tube wells are depleting groundwater."

Farmers using devices were drawing similar amounts of water as before, he said. "The land under cultivation hasn’t increased. They’re just replacing expensive diesel with solar."
The minister didn't respond when presented in September with the accounts of farmers indicating that they had increased their irrigation of crops and data showing an expansion in rice fields.

Breaking ground: ADAK 150AC electric hauler puts Iran among global trucking giants Press TV Sept 2, 2025

The ADAK 150AC marks a monumental leap in Iran’s domestic industrial capabilities. This fully electric, 150-ton mining dump truck has been meticulously engineered to eliminate the country’s historical reliance on foreign machinery and the notoriously unreliable support networks that accompany it.

Built for the most demanding deep-pit mining operations, the ADAK 150AC is designed to replace outdated, inefficient, and costly diesel-powered trucks with a modern, environmentally conscious, and economically superior alternative.

At the heart of its innovation lies a sophisticated, fully indigenous AC electric drive system, a technological marvel that eliminates traditional mechanical components like gearboxes and differentials. This design drastically reduces potential points of failure and minimizes the extensive downtime typically associated with maintaining such complex equipment.
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The global market for ultra-class haul trucks, vehicles with payload capacities of at least 150 tons, is dominated by a handful of established industrial giants, alongside emerging manufacturers such as Iran’s Gohar Sanat.

Most modern ultra-class trucks now utilize electric drives, typically in a diesel-electric configuration, where a diesel engine powers a generator that feeds electricity to wheel-mounted electric motors.

This approach offers substantial advantages over traditional mechanical drives, including improved traction control, superior retarding on declines, higher availability due to fewer mechanical components, and lower cost per ton hauled over the vehicle’s lifetime.
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The ADAK 150AC positions Iran within this elite class of ultra-class haul trucks, representing not only a leap in domestic industrial capability but also the potential to compete with international leaders in a strategically critical sector.