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Trump signed the American surrender at Versailles, where Germany surrendered and agreed to pay reparations at the end of World War One. However, the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) is already in trouble. Israel refuses to abide by it and has attacked Lebanon again, so Hormuz is closed again. In addition, Trump is already repudiating parts of what he himself recently signed after tremendous pushback from allies and donors at home. Among other things, he’s claiming that Iran will not be charging fees after the 60 day negotiation period, and that the US may charge fees. This is preposterous, and contrary to the MOU. The very idea that the US is any kind of guardian angel to the region is laughable, after having started the war and failed to protect any of its allies. Trump is once again trying to rewrite reality by fiat. Hormuz lies in Iranian and Omani territorial waters. They will retain control and charge for passage. The matter will not even be discussed with the US, which will have no role.

Trump had signed the MOU after being told that leaving Hormuz closed was leading to an economic catastrophy, which had been obvious to everyone else since the beginning of the war. He had been made aware, belatedly, that there were no further military options available, so ending the war was the only viable choice. Trump made it clear that his only real focus was the stock market, and that he thinks if the market goes up everything must be fine. He’s even on the record saying, in a jaw-dropping display of arrogance and hubris, that the stock market is more brilliant than everyone but himself. These are the terms officially agreed to:

And this is the comparison between the MOU and the previous JCPOA:

Trump appears to believe that the signing the MOU has avoided an energy crunch and financial catastrophy, but this is wildly incorrect. The ships trapped in the Gulf will need to queue up to leave, which will take weeks. Then they’ll need to head back to port for maintenance, for instance to be cleaned of barnacles. The oil they’re carrying will have degraded, so must be tested and perhaps blended before delivery, which will then take weeks before destination ports are reached. The energy crisis will last well in to next year, and likely longer, even if the agreement is fully adhered to, which is currently looking unlikely. It will be exacerbated by a demand spike as all countries will be wanting to build large reserves as insurance against further conflict and disruption. Supply will be lower than before, perhaps permanently due to damage to shut in fields and risk aversion leading to insurance problems. Lower supply combined with higher demand is a recipe for extremely high prices. This will inevitably lead to rationing and ordinary people being priced out of the market in many, if not most, places.

The energy crisis is going to lead to financial crisis as well, as explained here:

Turkey is selling gold, because it needs to buy diesel. It already sold its US treasuries, and is now selling off what it should most want to be keeping. It’s not doing this because it wants to, but because it has no choice. It needs the energy. Many other countries are about to find themselves in the same boat. The countries that are the most vulnerable are those which import most or all of their energy and which keep their reserves in dollars. High energy prices combined with dollar shortages are going to force them to sell whatever they can in order to buy what they must.

If vulnerable countries begin to sell US debt, it’s going to begin to look increasingly risky. Selling pushes down the price, meaning that early sellers benefit most. Selling feeds fear and fear in turn feeds more selling. The risk is a rapid cascade in the bond market. This would force the US to raise interest rates in order to attract buyers, but the interest rate on the ten year bond is already close to a dangerous limit. If it goes much higher, the US will enter a doom loop, where its enormous debt begins to compound on itself. If the interest rate on the debt is higher than the rate if growth of the economy, the US will enter an exploding debt scenario.

Turkey’s sell off of treasuries began in March when the spot price for oil was much lower, and they only began to sell gold after selling 90% of their treasury holdings. There are currently price cushions due to stored reserves, but those are rapidly depleting, notably in the US, which has been stabilising the price by exporting its strategic petroleum reserve. The US is doing this in order to prevent a cascade of selling in the bond market if many countries were forced to liquidate treasury holdings at once. However, once the heavily manipulated futures price and the spot price inevitably converge, as those reserves run out in a couple of weeks, oil prices will spike and that cascade becomes increasingly likely. The US could choose to default on its debt or to print money, and given that choice it will print and destroy the dollar. Already gold has replaced treasuries as the defacto reserve store of value, and this will become increasingly clear over time.

Once countries run out of things to sell in order to get hold of dollars to buy oil or refined products, there will be massive unrest, and potentially revolutions. Sri Lanka is the poster child for this. In 2020 it lost its critical tourist revenue, and its crop yields fell off a cliff after an attempt at rapidly converting from conventional fertilisers to a fully organic system. It entered a polycrisis exacerbated by a dollar shortage, and this culminated in the leader being forced to flee the country after a period of tremendous unrest. Fertiliser will also be an issue this time, as much of this also comes from the Gulf and is also blocked. It’s orice will spike as well, and it may not be available at any price. If this dynamic was occuring simultaneously in many countries, as it very likely will be, there would be no one to come to the rescue this time. Crunch time is rapidly approaching. Brace for impact.

The US and Iran have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), which could be described as a ‘concept of a plan’ as Trump previously described his non-existent plans for healthcare reform, but the tentative agreement remains problematic and fragile. The two main groups opposed to it are Israel and many Americans. Israel has already said it refuses to be bound by a ceasefire that requires them to stop their barbaric violence in Lebanon and leave the country. Israel is determined to sabotage the agreement, and has demonstrated this by increasing the level of their violence. Government minister Itamar Ben Gvir has stated that all of Lebanon must burn, and that the deaths if any of their invasion force must be responded to by slaughtering Lebanese at a ration of a thousand to one. Resistance to Israel’s barabrism is being treated as criminal. He’s also called for kidnapping and abusing Lebanese women and children with a view to intimidating Hezbollah. Iran reserves the right to target Israel without warning if this occurs.

The second group opposing the MOU is composed of Americans of both parties. Trump’s zionist donors and supporters are horrified. Many Democrats are also opposed, because they believe the false propaganda about Iran being an evil regime. They’re also trying to score political points against Trump by saying what they think people want to hear. The agreement does amount to an American surrender, and many ordinary Americans are wondering why so much money and so much bluster has led only to capitulation. Iran’s demands were actually quite reasonable, but very few Americans understand the situation at all, and so do not realise this. The domestic opposition to the MOU may well force Trump to abandon it, as he typically caves when confronted with pushback. He’s in a truly unenviable position, cast as having betrayed both the US and Israel, and he has no way out. The impending oil catastrophy that prompted him to make the deal will happen anyway, as the strategic reserve is virtually empty, and it will take months to restore passage through Hormuz even if the MOU holds, and that is looking unlikely.

Israel has lost the support of most Americans, especially young people of both sides of the political aisle. People are now openly talking about the attack on the USS Liberty and murder of many American military personnel by the Israelis under the Johnson adminstration. They are speculating about an Israeli role in the assassinations of JFK and Charlie Kirk, and potential involvement in the 911 attacks. Israel knows it will never have American backing for further military excursions once the next generation comes to power. Therefore they regard the present as their last chance to force through their Great Israel project, which thay cannot do without American support. However, it’s likely already too late, thankfully. Israel seeks security by destroying all its neighbours, taking their land and resources, and keeping them radically insecure. It should have faced vastly more international opposition than has, and the lack of pushback is a matter of considerably shame for the international community. The hypocrisy of the West’s erstwhile position on human rights has been fully revealed.

Trump’s chosen envoys – zionists Kushner and Witkoff – are also being blamed for their abject failure as they played at diplomacy with zero experience, and with personal enrichment as their top priority. The corruption they openly displayed was unprecedented. The most recent and blatant display of this has been Kushner’s attempt to to buy a strategic island from the extremely corrupt leader of Albania, situated at a choke point between the Adriatic and Ionian seas and fully equipped with military infrastructure including nuclear bunkers. Zionists, perceiving the threat to the territory of Israel, are now attempting to take over Cyprus and Albania as a Plan B. This is thankfully attracting considerable opposition.

The memorandum of understanding (MOU) signed today is a clear surrender by the US. Under the MOU, Iran would get almost everything it wanted, while the US gets no concessions. Sanctions are to be lifted, reparations are to be paid, Lebanon is to be included in the ceasefire, no nuclear material is to be handed over, and Iran retains control over the strait of Hormuz. Iran is now a major regional power, in a much stronger position than it was at the beginning of the war. Israel is, of course, absolutely livid. They have said they will not abide by the terms of the agreement. Anyone paying attention will be expecting them to sabotage it, perhaps with a false flag attack on an American asset. Netanyahui s set to lose the upcoming election, and his likely successor, Naftali Bennet, has promised to be Iran’s worst nightmare. Bennet is considerably more extreme than Netanyahu. Israel is not the only party that is appoplectic about the deal. Trump’s supporters are furious as well, as it repudiates everything Trump has been saying throughout the war. This does not bode well for the implementation of the MOU. Trump flip-flops constantly under pressure, and he will be experiencing more pressure than ever before during his presidency.

Given how desperately unpopular this deal is in much if the US, it’s suprising that Trump agreed to it. It appears to be that two parties sat him down for a talk. The first was the oil company executives, who pointed out that the US strategic oil reserve is virtually exhausted, and that this will lead to a huge price spike in oil, and then in everything else, as the manipulated futures prices meets the much higher spot price in the very near future. Trump appears to believe that allowing Hormuz to open now would avoid a global economic depression for which he would be blamed by the whole world.

Unfortunately for him, that eventuality is already guaranteed. Even if the strait is fully opened now, resuming production will take months to years, depending on the damage done. It will be months before tankers can deliver to their destinations. Trapped tankers will need to queue up to leave, then return to port for maintenance. They may or may not choose to return to the region, given the heightened level of risk. At least they would be expected to wait for weeks to see if hostilities actually do calm down. Insurance may or may not be available. Trump has already said that he may resume bombing if he doesn’t like Iran’s actions. By the time shipping resumes, assuming it does, supply chains will have fractured, industrial sectors may have ground to a halt, various modes of transport will no longer be operational, planting and harvests will have been missed, food distribution will be heavily impacted, and famine will have hit vulnerable regions.

The second group to bend his ear was the US military, which lacks the capacity to resume the conflict. Missiles and interceptors are in short supply and cannot be replaced quickly. The aircraft carriers are sitting ducks, unable to approach close enough to be useful. US military assets in the region have been very heavily damaged. 16 bases have been hit, all the radars have been eliminated, many aircraft have been lost, and the casualty numbers are much higher than has been admitted. The Gulf countries are no longer keen to allow their airspace to be used for attacks, as this has made them targets. The rest of their energy infrastructure would be destroyed if hostilities resumed. They no longer believe that the America can, or even wants to, protect them, so they may be rethinking their alliance with the US. The empire is being driven out of the region, although its Israeli outpost is still bristling with hostility and thinking itself capable of taking on its neighbours by itself. Israel has become consumed with hatred for all its neighbours, continues to covet their land, and may yet resort to its nuclear Samson option. Trump is caught between a rock and a hard place. He cannot resume the war, but will not be forgiven at home for failing to do so.

If oil does flow out of the Gulf again, demand will be very high, as every country will be wanting to build a substantial reserve supply. Given that supply will still be limited, this is a recipe for strictly rationing fuel use by the public, or perhaps preventing it altogether. There will be substantial demand destruction on behalf of ordinary people and industries crippled by shortages. This will reduce some of the upward price pressure, but higher prices can still be expected. As the world will be in a depression, unemployment will be very high, and purchasing power for ordinary people will have fallen off a cliff, making fuel and other essentials much less affordable whatever the nominal price. Bond markets around the world are signaling risk, hence interest rate hikes are likely, and in a world drowning in debt that will create a sovereign debt crisis, as well as a flood of bankruptcies.

The US appears to be oblivious to impending domestic disaster. It projects a 20% increase in energy demand for its datacentre build out, but it is not the energy self-sufficient superpower that it thinks it is. Only one fracked basin is not yet in decline. Drilling in the arctic would take years as the necessary infrastructure would have to be built first. Imports from Venzuela cannot materialise for years for the same reason. There is so far little interest in developing either of these sources. The datacentre boom is unlikely to continue, even if datacentres are allowed to co-opt energy supply from the population. That entire industry is in a massive bubble, which will eventually implode as all bubbles do. With luck this will derail elites plans for a technocratic police state and a transition to a digital finance gulag. These would require a huge increase in socioeconomic complexity, but complexity is a function of surplus energy, and that precondition will not be met. Huge global changes have been set in motion. Chaos is likely to ensue.

Farmers are in trouble worldwide, as the cost of both fuel and fertiliser are soaring, and in some places neither are available at any price. Even in Russia – a major energy producer – deliberate destruction of their energy infrastructure by NATO-controlled Ukraine has had a significant impact. Inputs needed in eastern Russia are being sent to cities in the west. Russian grain exports that typically feed many other countries will be well down. In Western Australia farmers are also losing out to cities, because governments don’t want people in the cities to riot over lack of fuel. People haven’t yet felt the much impact from the war because they are being shielded from those effects as countries reallocate resources from agriculture and burn through their stored reserves. There’s no general sense of crisis, so there has been little demand destruction. People are not feeling the need to conserve, but this simply means the real crisis will hit much sooner and harder than would otherwise have been the case. Our global elites want this to happen, because they want people desperate, and having a polycrisis it all at once is their chosen method for achieving this. It will be used to force the implementation of technocratic control over people and critically over the food supply.

What’s being planned is a hostile takeover of food production by the largest players in the agricultural sector. People are to be separated from the ability to feed themselves by themselves, and all decision-making is to be made top-down. All the major agricultural companies are connected to the WEF, and the WEF agenda is all about top-down control of every aspect of life. The food aspect of that agenda is to deprive ordinary people of nutrious natural food – especially meat, eggs, and dairy – and force unnatural and nutritionally deficient veganism, along with insect protein and fake meat made of toxic seed oils and starch. This is of course a recipe for weakening a population that they wish to reduce substantially.

The plan is to impose centrally controlled technocracy on the food supply system. However, the major players want to avoid liability for the terrible outcomes that are so predictable, so they’re setting up and funding small companies to do the dirty work for them, and to act as a liability shield. These ‘start ups’ are simply off-shoots of all the big players, staffed by them as well as finaced by them. They’re the parties that will be doing genetic modification, tampering with seeds, and creating the frankenfoods that people will be expected to eat. These people never waste a good crisis, and they’ll create one if necessary to force the scaling up that they want to achieve.

One major aspect of the plan by the elites to control farming is to get farmers into debt, so that leverage can be used against them to force them to comply with the new agenda. Farm credit is to be expanded in order that farmers can purchase expensive new equipment (electrified machinery, drones, smart irrigation systems etc), genetically modified seeds with significant requirements for expensive inputs, and ‘bio-stimulants’ like nitrogen-fixing bacteria genetically engineered to have no off-switch. This is the economic hitman approach where loans are made with fancy promises of productivity, but when the promises prove hollow and the debt cannot be repaid then the farm is forfeit. For instance, self-driving electric tractors would be an extremely expensive and useless nightmare.

All food production is to be entered into a single registry, so that informal food production can also be centrally controlled in accordance with standards set by the big players, and enforced by them through various forms of leverage. The powers that be want to know who farms what, where, with what inouts and with what methods. This is all to be fed into a single database so control can be obtained over co-ops, communes, homesteads, and traditional farming. There are to be shared soil standards, forcing small farmers to comply with what the big players consider to be healthy soil, but is actually not healthy at all. This would prevent many vastly better systems, such as regenerative agriculture, and force the use things like bio-stimulants. Access to crop insurance can be made conditional on compliance sith ‘best practice’, as defined by the Big Ag companies. Guaranteed off-take of crops also boxes farmers in, as they would then have only one purchaser, which would then have all the bargaining power. The point is to eliminate family farms and independent farming busineses, turning them into “managed nodes in a blockchain supply chain”, as Christian Westbrook describes here. Comprehensive surveillance would be implemenented, which would facilitate insider trading by those with early access to crop information. The system would be an extractive and exploitative public private partnership.

Christian points out that Russia survived the collapse of the Soviet Union through decentralised food production. The centrally controlled collective farms failed, as uninformed centrally controlled systems tend to do, often catastrophically. People fed themselves by growing food wherever they could, often at their dachas (country cottage properties) if they had access to one, or on apartment balconies if necessary. 40% of the food supply came from these micro-farms, and most people made it through the crisis as a result. The opposite approach is to be implemented now, and it will be a disaster like that of the Soviet collective farms. Decentralised food production can create a sharing mindset with less emphasis on scarcity. When less fear permeates society, it changes how people relate to each other, very much for the better. The opposite would happen under the system being implemented by our selfish and benighted elites.

In the US, the warmongering company Palantir is now aligned with the US Department of Agriculture, and has been given permission to consolidate and control all agricultural data, under the pretext that farming is now a matter if national security. There is to be “one farmer, one file”, with complete surveillance by a company that is a bad actor with an anti-human agenda. This kind of attsmpt at total central control has had tragic consequences many times in the past. For instance, in the 1930s, farm collectivisation in the Soviet Union caused a famine that killed tens of millions of people. Similarly during China’s Great Leap Forward, Mao’s regime created a famine that killed at least 50 million people. The head of Palantir, Alex Carp, says “I need more data so my enemies wake up scared.” Today humanity is his enemy.

My country of New Zealand is at the far end of a long and vulnerable supply chain for imports, including for fertiliser. While New Zealand produces about a third of its nitrogen fertiliser demand domestically, from its Taranaki gas deposits, it remains heavily dependent on imports from the Gulf region, and those are no longer available. Prices will inevitably climb during high demand season, and usage is very likely to fall, with a corresponding impact on yields of crops and carrying capacity for pastures. The critically important dairy industry would be particularly badly affected. Given that one of the WEF priorities is the elimination of animal agriculture, this is likely of no concern to those who dictate policy to our government. What passes for leadership in this country has already considered importing foot and mouth disease from Indonesia, so as to have an excuse to cull cows, sheep, and pigs, and fearmongering around bird flu could provide an excuse to cull chickens and turkeys as well. New Zealand is so far following the same unfortunate path of war on farming as other western countries, and has been doing so quite enthusiastically. There seems to be no understanding of the impacts to come.

It’s possible that the elites behind the WEF may fail early in their attempts to impose technocracy, given that maintaining (let alone increasing) socioeconomic complexity is a function of surplus energy, and the world is looking at an energy deficit in comparison with previous demand. However, even if they ultimately fail, a great deal of damage will already have been done. Many countries, including New Zealand, will have to become as self-sufficient as possible as quickly as possible. Both imports and exports are likely to decrease drastically as supply chains fail for lack of energy. The potential good news is that if New Zeland and Australia no longer produce so many agricultural products for export, the carry capacity can be used instead to produce for the local population, and this could be far less fertiliser dependent. Of course the loss of imports and exports would also mean a major drop in material prosperity. Those who benefitted disproportionately from globalisation also suffer disproportionately as the globalised economy fragments, but what remains is a decent resource base. What will be required is the will to redevelop it in a very different and more localised form, and the ability to get expectations in line with what a new reality can hope to deliver.

The situation in China is not what so many commentators suggest. It is not the new shining city on the hill, although it does remain a manufacturing powerhouse, at least for now. Many western politicians wax lyrical about following China’s example, obviously without understanding what that means. China is a land of glitzy urban façades, but it has not lifted millions of its people out of poverty. Poverty and homelessness are endemic in a country with no social safety net. It has hit a demographic wall, where the population – already considerably overstated due to attempts to hide the impact of the long one child policy – is shrinking at an accelerating rate. The society is rapidly aging and youth unployment is skyrocketing, but each young person is responsible for four grandparents due to the lack of a retirement system. The middle class is being hollowed out in a spiral of downward mobility. This is a system destined to break, and it’s already breaking its people.

The ‘flexible worker’ sector of the economy is growing rapidly – from 280 million people in 2025 to a projected 320million in 2026. That’s half the workforce with no stablity, and there’s an increasing number of highly educated people with no choice but to enter the gig economy. Some sectors of that are already saturated, meaning it’s becoming more and more difficult for each individual to earn a survivable income. At least half of the flexible workers are significantly under-employed. The wage gap between blue and white collar workers is shrinking, but not because blue collar workers are doing better. White collar workers are being forced out of stable employment as the economy enters a crunch. The turning point was 2019, with the forced shutdown of much of the economy. Employers became very risk averse around hiring, and many smaller businesses died, at the same time as ever more graduates were turned out to compete for fewer stable jobs. More and more people are being forced into an extremely precarious position. Even people with jobs are not necessarily being paid, and may be forced to live on savings for months. Complaining to employers achieves nothing, so there’s an epidemic of disgruntled workers burning down their places of employment.

In formal employment, people tend to become more valuable over time, as they gain skills and experience, and build networks. In contrast, in the flexible economy there is no career progression, no adding of skills or experience, and no ability to save. Career capital is destroyed, and no cushion can be created for old age. Such employment is essentially the draining of a human battery. The significant costs of working this way mean that the actual net income is barely enough to survive, and people must work all hours. There is no such thing as work life balance, and no time or resources for raising a family. This is exaccerbating China’s steep demographic decline.

The longer a person works in the informal economy, the harder it is to transition to, or back to, formal employment. China is following in Japan’s footsteps in this regard, although under much less advantageous circumstances. After the crash of its bubble in 1989 and subsequent economic stagnation, Japan a large chunk of Japan’s workforce entered an employment ‘ice age’ from 1993-2004. Career progression either never properly began or stalled out for many, and most have never recovered earning power, despite attempts by the government to assist them. In Japan’s case this cohort was comprised of about 18 million people. In China the same dynamic is setting up, as its bubble has also burst, and it’s looking at about a hundred times as many people affected.

Japan had significant advantages over China’s current position. It was already rich before it hit the wall. It had stable institutions, strong corporations, savings, and a social safety net. China hit the wall before becoming rich. Even by official figures, the average earnings per year are only about $18,000, and the cost of living is rising. The property sector, in which the majority of citizens placed multigenerational savings, was structured as a ponzi scheme and is collapsing. Local governments, which had been financing themselves through development fees, are now deep in bad debt in in comsiderable trouble. Many people, notably the flexible workers, earn very much less than the average wage, and there is no safety net. Savings are depleted as workers are not paid. Neither coporations nor government are at all responsive to the needs of the population. There are also no services to assist people broken by the system, so these people are increasingly engaging in revenge against society attacks. The most common forms of this are knife attacks on young children or vehicular manslaughter. Such events occur regularly. Unlike Japan, China is a very low trust society, where people have been trained to look after number one and cheat wherever possible to gain personal advantage. This is not a recipe for social cohesion, especially during a period of economic stagnation which will shortly morph into outright contraction. Conversely, it’s a recipe for a social explosion.

Those unable to find work in the city cannot simply return to the countryside and become subsistence farmers. The agricultural system has been industrialised, and they lack the necessary skills. There’s essentially no other employment in rural areas. As China climbed the ladder of progress, it effectively kicked out each lower rung as it ascended, so there’s no way back down that doesn’t involve societal upheaval. The government refuses to loosen its bureaucratic and highly authoritarian control over people through reform, for fear of weakening the state to the point of potential failure, as arguably happened to the Soviet Union. The system remains rigid and therefore brittle. This will not end well.

Today was Trump’s birthday, and he wanted a blockbuster announcement to celebrate it. He was also desperate to forestall Iranian retaliation for Israel’s latest attack on Lebanon. For these reasons he has announced agreement on a memorandum of understanding (MOU), which one could also describe as a ‘concept of a plan’ in Trumpian terms, to be signed on June 19th. Iran then stood down its planned retaliation and published the terms of the MOU. The American side has said nothing about the terms, likely because they’re entirely favourable to Iran, unfavourable to the US, and catastrophic for Benjamin Netanyahu.

If these terms stand then the MOU amounts to a complete capitulation by the American side. Iran will have achieved virtually everything it had been asking for – control over the strait of Hormuz, the right to charge fees for passage, the end of sanctions, the release of frozen funds, and substantial reparations for damage caused. All of these are things Trump has previously said he would never agree to, and all of them would put him in very hot water with his donors and supporters. This means the likelihood of him walking this back tomorrow is very high. Israel has already said it would not abid by the terms of the deal, so it’s almost certain to fail in any case. Trump has constantly flip-flopped on every pronouncement he’s made, careening wildly from extreme threats to conciliatory remarks from one day to the next. There’s no reason to expect consistency from him this time.

Trumpmis caught between a rock and a hard place. Whether or not this agreement goes ahead, the US has lost the war. All Iran had to do to win was survive until the US exhausted its capacity to continue the war (and Trump’s attention span), and it has done so remarkably well. Trump can accept an obvious and humiliating defeat now, or he can act to keep the war going, which will exacerbate the coming energy crisis exponentially the longer it continues. This will have drastic domestic political implications for him, beginning in the relatively near future, as the US strategic petroleum reserve will be depleted in approximately three weeks. At that point it will no longer be possible to manipulate the futures price in order to pretend all is well, and the futures price will converge with the much higher spot price. A global economic depression is already inevitable, and Trump will be blamed for all of it, and not just in the US, but globally. The longer the war continues, the greater the humanitarian disaster will become. Already the situation has probably signed death warrants for millions of people in Asia and especially the global south. Given Trump’s extremely poor health, he may not live to see the consequences of his actions, which will likely be the implosion of American hegemony globally and civil war domestically. Unfortunately, a human tragedy of epic proportions lies directly ahead.

The US, Iran, and the mediator -Pakistan – have all said that some kind of agreement is close. This is the first time all have agreed. Usually such statements come only from Trump and are merely for the purpose of market manipulation. However, there are significant caveats. What is being proposed is not actually a deal, but merely a memorandum of understanding (MOU). There are still huge differences in the public stance of both the US and Iran, and Israel has said it won’t agree to anything. The MOU is meant to be phase one of an agreement, involving a sixty day ceasefire during which further details are to be negotiate, leading to phase two.

Iran has said that their conditions for an MOU are that the ceasefire must be total, in other words it must include Lebanon and Gaza, and that Israel must retreat from these areas completely. In addition, frozen assets must be released, and sanctions on their energy sector must be lifted. The US has categorically refused to the latter two conditions, and Israel has indicated that it has no intention of withdrawing from occupied territory, nor will it cease its ethnic cleansing of either Gaza or southern Lebanon. Benjamin Netanyahu has stated that his conditions are a handover of all enriched uranium, the destruction of all enrichment equipment, a strict limit on Iran’s missile arsenal and cessation of assitance to Iranian ‘proxies’ (actually merely allies) in the region. In addition, Trump insists that the strait of Hormuz be open to all for free passage. This is also not going to happen. Hormuz lies in Iranian and Omani territorial waters and they will not be surrendering control of it. Ships will pay a fee to pass, and ships from hostile nations will not get permission to transit. None of the US or Israeli conditions will ever be accepted by Iran.

Israel has a long history of violating ceasefires it has agreed to, and it doesn’t even agree to this one. Under the circumstances, it seems unlikely that any meeting of minds is possible. Even if somehow the US and Iran could find a way to move forward, it’s extremely likely that Israel would sabotage the attempt, given that their goal is the utter destruction of Iran, and they want to the US to do it for them. They’re fond of false flag attacks, and could plan something that would lead Iran to retaliate against them. This would almost certainly drag the US back into conflict to defend them. The difficulty with that from the American perspective is that they lack the capacity to defeat Iran. The war in Ukraine, the previous twelve day war, and the current conflict have depleted American stocks of missiles and interceptors, and it lacks the surge capacity to replace them quickly. It has glide bombs, but these require aircraft to face Iranian air defence, which has not been destroyed as the US has claimed. The US has also run out of reachable military targets, and even dual use targets. The targets it would like to hit lie deep beneath mountains and are impervious even to nuclear strikes. Hitting more purely civilian targets would destroy America’s reputation to an even greater extent than is already the case.

The empire has lost this war, while Iran has emerged far more united and powerful than it previously was. Trump’s extreme narcissism will not allow him to admit this, hence his continued beligerence and refusal to acknowledge any aspect of the reality on the ground, including accurate casualty figures and the extent of damage to American military assets in the region. The casualty figures will be much higher than admitted, and the damage to all US bases in the region is extensive. Most will not be useable again. The losses are easily in the billions of dollars. It’s unlikely that any attempt to rebuild them would be allowed by the host monarchies, given that the US has failed to protect them. In fact the US has angered allies further afield (as far away as South Korea), since it’s reclaimed military hardware from them in order to hand it over to Israel. It’s become clear to US vassal states that bases on their territory were never for their protection, but evidence of their subjugation.

China, which prioritises stability, has likely been pressuring Iran through Pakistan to find a way to end the conflict, although it likely recognises that the current US regime is agreement incapable due to Trump’s extreme emotional reactivity. Iran may be prepared to agree to phase one in order to present themselves as peacemakers, knowing that the other side will not honour it anyway, so phase two will not happen, and the empire will eventually be forced into a humiliating defeat from the entire region. Trump’s days are numbered, either due to his failing physical and mental health, or politically due to his disastrous handling of both foreign and domestic policies.

The world is at the mercy of an American president in severe cognitive decline, which everyone around him recognises but will not publicly acknowledge. He is incapable of strategic thought, and incapable of admitting or correcting mistakes due to his extreme narcissism. Starting an unwinnable war with Iran has been described by military professionals as the worst geopolitical error in a hundred years, and this error is continually compounded by constant confabulation and rhetorical flip-flopping, sometimes from one hour to the next. Trump is attempting to forge his own reality through power of will, hence his repeated assertions that a deal is close, when it’s obvious that the two sides hold mutually exclusive positions and Iran credibly denies that any talks are even taking place. The US is agreement incapable under what passes for leadership with this regime, which bears striking resemblance to an organised crime network.

Trump has no understanding of diplomacy. As a narcissist, all his deals must be win-lose, and the losing side must be humiliated into the bargain. This is exactly how he operated as a New York real estate developer, when he would refuse to pay people who had worked for him and would drag them through the courts to bankrupt them if they tried to claim what they were owed. In the context of the war, he’s insisting on complete capitulation entirely on his terms or he threatens to bomb the country into the stone age. He has openly stated that “an entire civilisation dies tonight” if Iran did not agree to his terms, and has threatened to use nuclear weapons for the purpose according to White House insiders. This is the behaviour of a mobster, not a president. These severe threats were then followed the next day by a declaration that the Iranian side was now “being reasonable”, so the attack was called off. The mobster is living in a fantasy world of his own making, the main effect, besides confusion, is market manipulation. His friends and family have profited enormously from insider trading on his contradictory statements.

In order to avoid any chance of peace, Israel declared its intention to carpet bomb the Beirut suburb of Dahia, in the full knowledge that this would trigger a proportionate reaction by Iran. Both of these action then transpired. Next an American apache helicopter went down over the Gulf, although both pilots were rescued. It was claimed this was the result of an Iranian attack, but this is highly unlikely since the pilots survived. It’s much more likely that it was an accident due to flying low over water with poor visibility, but it’s being used as an excuse for another round of bullying and destruction.

Initially Trump chose to ignore this, but he was pressured by the warmongers he surrounds himself with, and by Israel, which insists on the complete destruction of Iran and would fatally undermine any attempt at peace. Trump then decided to resume bombing, and also declared that the US would invade Kharg Island to take full control of Iran’s oil industry output. There have been many justifications for the war, beginning with defending protestors to preventing Iran from having a nuclear weapon, but the real reason was always gaining control of the oil. Trump is on the record saying that the US should become the world’s oil baron. He started with Venezuela, and has said that he intends the same for Iran – to collapse the government and install a puppet regime that would allow him full control. His next target will be Cuba, which is in dire straights due to being cut off from Venezuelan oil as collective punishment. He also has his imperial eye on Greenland and Canada, both for reasons of another resource grab.

The US bombed several targets around the strait of Hormuz, including drinking water facilities on Siri Island in the Gulf. Naturally Iran retaliated strongly, and is now in control of the escalation ladder. It has now closed the strait of Hormuz. Trump continuous claims that Iran’s military has been obliterated are obviously false. Iran never had a conventional airforce or navy. What it does have are missiles, drones, underwater drones, manouverable torpedos, armed speed boats, and air defence, all in quantity. None of this capacity has been significantly degraded. It also has the capacity to absob far more punishment than the US could bear. It can easily wait for the US to run out of what remains of its missile arsenal. At some point the US will be forced to admit defeat.

The bombing of the water infrastructure has deprived the civilian population of water at a time if extreme heat, and is another form of collective punishment. The US Department if Defence was renamed the Department of War under Trump, but should really be considered the Department of War Crimes. Yesterday Trump was threatening a more intense bombardment following on from Iran’s retaliation, and today, in yet another policy flip-flop, he’s returned to saying that a deal is close. There have still been no talks, and there will be no deal. Iran is in the driver’s seat, and their terms have not changed throughout the war. They will, together with Oman, retain sovereignty over Hormuz, and transiting ships will be required to obtain permission and pay a fee, similar to the arrangement Turkey has over passage through the Bosphorus. Given that Hormuz lies entirely within the territorial waters of Iran and Oman, this is not unreasonable, and it would provide Iran with an income stream in lieu of reparations for the damage caused by the war.

Trump, who has been selling oil from the US strategic reserve in an attemot to keep the oil price down, appears to be oblivious to the fact that an operational limit is rapidly approaching. Exports from the strategic reserve will be forced to cease in approximately three weeks. At that point the true price if oil will be revealed worldwide as the futures price and the spot price converge at the spot price, which is already $200/barrel in Singapore. A catastrophy is approaching for the global economy, and the US will be badly affected, as it is a importer of the grade of crude from the Gulf that all importers are after, and that its refineries require in order to operate. It can source some of this from Canada, but not yet from Venezuela despite what Trump proclaims. Oil production from Venezuela will take years to be realised due to chronic lack of investment. Chevron is the only oil company involved since other declined, and even it is reconsidering. Russia produces this grade of crude, but Russia’s oil infrastructure is being degraded by the NATO-backed Ukrainians, and its tankers are being partially blockaded in both the Baltic and the Mediterranean.

The net effect for the world will be a major shortage of refined products requring heavy oil as an input, namely diesel, jet fuel, and bunker fuel, all of which are essential for transport. This will cause substantial demand destruction as transport fuel will likely become unaffordable for major importers, poor countries, and ordinary people. Trump will be blamed for this worldwide. We can expect fuel poverty and a new round of lockdowns as a result. Our government may try to cover up the fuel issue with a false justification of a new pandemic, but this will not stand up to scrutiny. The 15 minute city idea is very likely to be revived, as it’s a fuel rationing measure in disguise.

Internationally, a major powershift is underway from the 500 year reign of maritime powers back to Mackinder’s heartland model. Russian foreign minister Sergei Kavrov has proposed an allinace between Russia, China, Iran, and the Gulf states, following the American inability to protect the latter during the war. Pieplines and railroads are being constructed throughout Asia in order to bypass the maritime choke points that the US and its vassal states are attempting to control. The shift of power eastwards is unstopable, and the US finds itself caught in Thucydides Trap, as the declining power trying in vain to prevent the rise of a new power.

Useful detailed discussions from yesterday, prior to the latest TACO:

The hype around AI has been relentless, and the billionaires who own the companies working on it have seen their wealth soar. Companies in the AI space claim to be worth staggering sums, and several are about to attempt an IPO in order for their founders to cash out at the top (by fraudulently using pension money as their exist liquidity as explained in orevious posts). Those founders know perfectly well the corrosive effects the AI boom is having on society, but they have no concern for the ordinary people affected. Their goal is to secure sufficient resources to survive the dystopian society they’re helping to create. The point of the AI rollout is to create a technocracy, thereby depriving the population of agency by surveilling and controlling every aspect of life in order to monopolise decision-making. The billionaires, who seek to become trillionaires in the process, plan to hide out in their bunkers while any semblance of a coherent society disappears.

Ordinary people have been told that AI will inevitably be involved in every aspect of their lives, and will likely cost them their jobs. AI use has increased, partly because bosses are forcing employees to use it, partly because it does have some significant uses, and also because many people are becoming addicted to it interacting with chatbots that always praise them. The epidemic of loneliness makes the latter seem attractive, but it can lead to AI psychosis.

AI research is not science, as results cannot be replicated due to unstable hardware. Failure modes cannot be traced. Since it isn’t possible to know how an AI arrived at its position, there’s no way to know if a strange result might be indicative of something real and interesting, or simply a result of a chip malfunction. Unfortunately, companies are finding that AI’s tendency to hallucinate – confidently stating incorrect ‘facts’ – means that all output must be checked by humans, and this tends to take longer than having a human perform the task in the first place. Extensive reliance on AI is actually reducing productivity, and if mistakes are missed by human fact checkers, those mistakes can become very expensive. AI use in general is becoming increasingly expensive, with no way to calculate return on investment. Companies are billed for the number of tokens they use in a month, and the cost is steadily increasing.

The sense of inevitability created by the narrative the billionaires have been pushing had led to fatalism and a general sense of powerlessness. Data centres are being built with no regard to the various impacts on the area and its population, and these impacts are significant. They are heat islands, they create a constant humming noise, they’re far too bright at night, they use enormous quantities of electricity so local people’s bill are skyrocketing, they require huge amounts of cooling water but are often built in arid regions and compete with homes for scarce water, and the generators that power them emit toxic fumes. They can be built right next to residential neighbourhoods with no consultation, and are adversely affecting people’s health and the value if their properties. The government designates them as a matter of national security in order to override planning legislation.

From Collective Evolution on Facebook:

What a Data Center Actually Does to the Place You Live – They tell you it’s just a building full of computers. Here’s what they don’t tell you.

AT THE FENCE LINE:

The air around a data center is not the same air you grew up breathing. These facilities require diesel backup generators by the dozens, sometimes hundreds, and those generators release fine particulate matter (PM2.5) and nitrogen oxides (NOx) that are directly linked to asthma, heart disease, and respiratory illness. We’re talking 200 to 600 times more nitrogen oxides than a natural gas plant produces. (World Resources Institute) At the xAI facility in Memphis, a Time Magazine investigation found that nitrogen dioxide levels in surrounding areas measurably increased after the facility opened.

The noise never stops. Internal noise levels can reach up to 96 decibels, well above the 85 dB threshold considered harmful to human hearing. (PubMed Central) Neighbors near a Virginia facility reported 90 decibels at their homes. One resident said he can no longer open his windows. Another put mattresses against the glass to block it out.

The light runs all night, disrupting the natural circadian rhythms of the body, including melatonin production and sleep cycles. (EHP) Sleep disruption, chronic stress, hearing loss. These aren’t hypotheticals. They are documented outcomes in communities that said yes before they understood what they were agreeing to.

WITHIN A MILE:

The land changes fast. The average data center site in 2024 covered about 224 acres, roughly 450 football fields, which is a 144% increase in footprint since 2022. (World Resources Institute) Farmland gone. Forests cleared. Viewsheds destroyed.

The water starts disappearing. A mid-sized data center uses roughly 300,000 gallons of water per day, the same as 1,000 homes. (Nixon Peabody) Between 80 and 90 percent of that comes from the same surface water and groundwater sources your tap water comes from. (Fwpcoa) Most of it evaporates in cooling towers and never returns.

Wildlife changes too. Researchers describe data centers as potential “sensory danger zones,” places where light and noise levels exceed the thresholds at which species experience measurable fitness consequences. (National Wildlife Federation) Animal communication breaks down. Migration patterns shift. Nesting fails.

MILES AWAY AND DOWNSTREAM:

The water table doesn’t stop at the property line. Heavy groundwater use can deplete aquifers in ways that threaten ecosystems and long-term water availability for entire surrounding regions, not just immediate neighbors. (Waterplan)

The power plants feeding these facilities pollute far beyond the data center itself. Data centers increasingly rely on large-scale plants that are now being co-located nearby to avoid grid upgrade delays. (arXiv) Whatever that plant burns, your airshed absorbs.

A September 2025 study found that air pollutants from data center operations increase rates of respiratory and cardiovascular disease, and elevate cancer risk in nearby communities. (EHP)

However, the fatalism is beginning to dissipate as resistance grows and collective action begins to show some successes. The Epstein class of billionaires regards the rest of the population as somewhere between livestock (if they’re useful) and pond scum (if they’re not), so they tend not to recognise that ordinary people have agency and are capable of collective action. The pushback has begun in earnest, and it coincides with a growing awareness of the fact that the companies involved are actually consistently losing money and that the hype is just a gigantic bubble. In addition, people are realising that the billionaire class is changing the rules in order to force these loss-making companies on to the stock exchange, which will allow the founders to cash out through an IPO at the expense of ordinary people’s pension funds, which would become exit liquidity. This is evidence of the staggering degree of contempt the founders have for the rest of the population, and people are taking note.

The billionaires are attempting to force through compliance despite opposition by buying political influence, following the model used by the crypto industry. Huge amounts of money are poured into political campaigns, dark money channels are deployed, Congress members are bought, local officials are bribed, and influencers are paid to push the narrative of AI inevitability. The Trump administration’s policies are for sale to the highest bidder, so Trump, who is entirely transactional and driven by personal profit, has facilitated everything his techbro donors wanted. The level of corruption is unprecedented. The techbros are trying to create a fait accompli by bulldozing their way through the consent process quickly enough that opposition can’t coalesce into an effective opposition in time, but they appear to be losing the race. The AI bubble might be on the verge of implosion, which is how all bubbles end.

Israel doesn’t do actual ceasefires. It continues to kill indiscriminately in many ways, but may refrain from bombing civilians for a period of time. Israel regards Lebanon as part of its own territory, where it can act as it pleases. The Lebanese government is already firmly under its thumb, and has been so thoroughly disarmed that the army is incapable of defending its own territory. Only Hezbollah can do this, so naturally it is considered the enemy by both Israel and its Lebanese proxy government. Israel would really like to see civil war in Lebanon, in order to further destroy a state that it wishes to annex in its entirety into the Greater Israel project. Non-Jews are regarded by Israel as subhuman, possessing only 3/5 of a soul, while only Jews posses a full soul, and are therefore fully human and superior to all others. This is of course merely racist hubris, but this deeply held belief is driving Israel to commit countless atrocities against its neighbours. It believes that its only path to security is to render all other inhabitants of the region radically insecure. It has become a barbaric pariah state.

Israel could not do any of this without the full complicity of the US, which both bankrolls and arms it. While both American parties are fully bought and paid for by the Israeli lobby, only Trump was stupid enough to go to war with Iran on their behalf. All Israel has to do was tell him it would a quick in and out, like his criminal kidnapping of the Venzuelan president. Having convinced him to attack Iran, the Israelis now undermine any attempt to end the war, so Trump is trapped. Israel wants nothing less than the utter destruction of Iran, and won’t accept anything short of that. Meanwhile the IDF is sounding the alarm that it’s over-extended and beginning to collapse, and Hezbollah is inflicting substantial casualties on the troops invading Lebanon on a daily basis with fibre optic drones. Netanyahu is becoming increasingly unpopular due to his lack of success in achieving the full anihilation of it Israel’e perceived enemies, and will likely be replaced at the next election by someone even worse.

The US is paying an enormous price for its complicity. It’s international reputation is in tatters, as it’s now wildly perceived as the evil empire. It’s alienated all of its former allies by insulting, humiliating, and extorting them. It’s arms donations to both Ukraine and Israel, and its participation in the war, have substantially depleted its own stocks of weaponry. The US military is no longer the powerful force it once was. Its military industrial complex operates for profit, not victory, and much of its weaponry is obsolete in the age of drone warfare. The US has nothing resembling actual leadership. It has instead a bloviating pathological liar with zero understanding of any of the relevant issues, and seemingly has never heard of diplomacy. Diplomacy is relational, whereas everything with Trump is purely transactional. Trump does not believe in win-win scenarios. He must always win while the other side must lose, preferably humiliatingly. His profound narcissism is responsible for this behaviour. This approach is a recipe for disaster in global geopolitics.

Hezbollah is not a proxy of Iran, merely an ally. It only exists because of the earlier Israeli occupation of Lebanon (1978-2000), when Lebanon required the ability to defend itself. It ended that occuoation, and drove the Israelis out when they tried again in 2006. It is now working to drive them out again. Iran is including Lebanon in its demands for a full ceasefire because its goal is to secure peace across the region, and for that to happen, Israel, which is the cause of regional the destabilisation going back decades, must be reined in. Somfar the US, under its weak and fackless administration, refuses to do so. Israel is threatening to flatten an entire suburb of Beirut, but if it tries to do so, Iran will escalate against it. The farce of a ‘ceasefire’ is looking more fragile by the day. This war is by no means over, traffic through the strait of Hormuz remains greatly reduced, and the clock is ticking towards the inevitable global economic depression. The longer this continues, the more supply chains will fracture, and the deeper the depression will be.