Today's Live Stream follows shortly upon my trip to Chicago to attend the Intergrity Media Awards Forum, an exciting and stimulating event in itself. Much however continues to happen. A French official coming out of an intelligence briefing held before Macron in the Élysée Palace a few days ago spoke of his sense of 'vertigo' over the scale and pace of events, which were discussed at the briefing, and which he said was 'unprecedented'.

We have two wars - the war in Ukraine, which is now indisputably being lost, and a war in the Middle East which is in impasse, with the high probability that it too will eventually be lost.

We have growing tensions between the US and China, with the Chinese threatening to call off the meeting between Xi Jinping and Trump in New York if the US goes ahead with its proposed big arms sale to Taiwan.

We have what is starting to look like a systemic crisis in the political system in Germany.

We have growing economic strains across the West. I should say that during my trip to Chicago I saw significantly more signs of economic stress in the US than I did a few weeks ago in Chattanooga. That mirrors the picture I saw in August in Germany: visible economic stress in the cities, which has not however yet reached the small towns, but which over the next year or so is all but certain to do so.

And of course we have the hysteria and war panic in Europe, which is far greater than I have known at any time in my lifetime. My view is that it reflects first and foremost a realisation of the terrible truth, that after the failure of this summer's drone offensive the war in Ukraine is lost, exposing the limits of the US's and the West's power. That, together with the similar exposure of the limits of the US's and West's power in the Middle East, explains the feeling of 'vertigo'.

So much to talk about......