Greenland Mining Company Plans To Double Size Of Rare-Earth Mine As US Signs Agreement

    Don't get fooled, Greenland is the noise, the real battle of the 21st Century is over resources. Not just oil which powers everything or almost, but all resources: Land, water, air, minerals, metals, fertilizers and especially the most complex to acquire; rare earths.

   We have already entered a period of penury so what we will see over the coming years is not a steady rise of prices but a tumultuous dance between production constraints and demand destruction resulting in very sharp and violent rises followed by drastic falls when demand falter. This is unavoidable and already what we are witnessing. 

   Governments are not panicking yet. They are wrong. They should. Later is always too late. It takes a decade to build a mine and upstream constraints can easily wreak havoc with an unprepared economy which is currently the case everywhere, both in the West and where factories run on lean supply chains. 

   And then of course there are rare earth metals which are hard, difficult and expensive to produce and also happen to be indispensable to high tech industries. I suspect that one of the main reasons why the US cannot increase easily its military production of advanced weapons is due to the new export limits from China. (But this being strategic to the highest degree, you probably won't hear much about it in the media.)

   Finally, the unmistakable rise of tensions all over the world is also intimately linked to resources and as they dwindle and by nature become more difficult to produce (the law of declining return on investment which guaranty that we extract the cheapest ore and resource first), wars are bound to break out both in likely and less probable places, again as we are seeing right now. Buckle up, the roller coaster has reached the top.      

Authored by Jill McLaughlin via The Epoch Times,

Days after President Donald Trump announced a security agreement with Greenland and Denmark, Greenland Mines applied on Sept. 21 to double the size of its rare earth mine to supply magnet metals needed for electric vehicles, wind turbines, and defense systems on the island.

The North Carolina-based company's Sarfartoq rare earth district in southwest Greenland would expand from 74 square miles to about 175 square miles if approved.

"This application is about building Sarfartoq at district scale," said Bo Moller Stensgaard, president of Greenland Mines in a statement.

Greenland Mines is developing a rare earth neodymium and praseodymium project that could reduce the Western Hemisphere's dependence on China for the magnet rare earth minerals. China-based processors control at least 75 percent of the global market for all rare earth elements.

The Greenland Mines project is expected to produce about one-third of the world's neodymium-praseodymium oxide refined outside of China, serving as a key source of the rare earth ingredients needed for energy, transportation, and defense technologies.

China's export restrictions on rare earths have driven prices up in the past year. The Trump administration has focused on supporting and investing in domestic rare earth operations, but a supply of ore is still needed, according to Greenland Mines.

With the signing of the security agreement, Trump said no U.S. adversary could "make sensitive investments [in Greenland] without our express written approval."

"Greenland hosts some of the largest known undeveloped rare earth deposits in the Western world, and a framework that screens adversary capital out of the island makes those deposits more clearly available to allied supply chains," the company stated Tuesday.

Greenland Mines' project includes an open pit and underground mining operation at the site. Initial assessment of the materials at the mine estimate the value at about $2.05 billion, according to the company.

The project would produce rare earth elements used in high-performance permanent magnets.

Critical metals stocks surged Monday on news of the deal, and Greenland-linked market shares rallied when the markets opened.

Greenland Energy, a privately owned Texas company, has an agreement to drill on the Jameson oil and gas project in the Jameson Land Basin on the eastern coast of Greenland. The company, founded in 2025, began shipping drilling equipment to Greenland in late July.

Greenland Mines’ expanding Sarfartoq rare earth district in southwest Greenland. The existing exploration license, outlined in yellow, hosts the Sarfartoq Carbonatite Complex, the ST1 neodymium-praseodymium deposit and several known but less-developed rare earth zones. The new eastern exploration license application is shown in red. Greenland Mines LTD

Critical Metals Corp. is developing the Tanbreez Rare Earth Project in southern Greenland - one of the world's largest deposits with a high concentration of heavy rare-earth elements.

The company's Romanian refinery is also expected to process about 28,000 tons per year of rare earth and critical metal products, including 26,000 tons of high-purity silicon dioxide powder, or silica, used in food, pharmaceuticals, paints, plastics, rubber, ceramics, tech, and electronics.

US Diesel Craters, EU Prices Skyrocket As Politico Reports White House Preparing Plan For 90-Day Export Ban

   Export Ban: Damned if you do, Damned if you don't.

   This is why America should never have elected a real estate magnate with the habit of weaseling his way out of trouble through bankruptcy or other shady deals. (Not that there was much choice between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris but that's another subject.)

   The world economy doesn't work that way. You need a real strategy and if you don't, you end up facing the wall with no exit left which is now the case with Iran, Oil, Russia, China... basically everywhere you look, the outlook is grim. 

   The gut feeling of Trump as explained in "The Art of the Deal" is almost completely irrelevant in international relations where you must play a far more complex game of Chess and Go which is why Trump ends up in almost every single case outsmarted by his enemies who progress step by step, methodically with a long term strategy, understanding that he is the noise and the deep state is the real deal.   

   The price of gas and especially diesel are glaring examples. If they do not come down before the Mid-term elections, Trump is toast. But how do you achieve this without loosing more important pawns on the international stage, is what seems to be the impossible equation which must be solved in the coming few weeks.        

   This is why the risk is so high. Being cornered, what will Trump do? As we discussed yesterday, he may seriously be contemplating the nuclear option. Will the "system" be strong enough to oppose him successfully? It seems to be the case right now but with the pressure rising, how long can it last? Already some dissenting voice are being heard in the background: "What's the point of having nuclear weapons if we can't use them when we need them?" Let's hope this remains a minority opinion but who knows?    

US Diesel Craters, EU Prices Skyrocket As Politico Reports White House Preparing Plan For 90-Day Export Ban

Summary: 

• New Politico Report Suggests White House Preparing For Diesel Export Ban
• "Definitely Doesn't Work": U.S. Energy Sec Rejects Diesel Export Ban, Risks Creating Bigger Supply-Squeeze Later

Politico Reports White House Prepares Plan For 90-Day Diesel Exports Ban

Diesel is certainly top of mind in the White House as a global refining crisis has sent prices at the pump for the industrial fuel to record-high levels, so high that Apollo's chief economist, Torsten Slok, warned earlier that it could spark a core inflation shock.

Policy maneuvering by the White House is limited, and what has been floated by Trump and some top Republicans is a diesel export ban, while top desks on Wall Street have warned that it's a terrible idea and could exacerbate prices around the world.

Earlier, U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright was at odds with Trump's call for a diesel export ban; Wright said, "The blunt tool of banning diesel exports definitely doesn't work."

Around lunchtime in New York, a new Politico report said the White House was preparing a potential 90-day ban on diesel exports ahead of November's midterm elections.

The report stated that the proposal remains under discussion, with its legal framework unresolved. Politico cited five people familiar with the talks.

"What has overpowered cooler heads [in the White House] is the absolutely, sky-is-falling, we-have-to-do-something concern about prices at the pump" faction, said this person, who was granted anonymity to discuss conversations with White House officials. "That camp has been swept aside by the political camp, which says, 'dammit, something has to happen.'"

AAA Diesel v. Gas at pump

A White House official commented on the report, calling it "another fake news story from Politico."

The immediate price action in the fuel markets was:

• US DIESEL FUTURES SINK MORE THAN 7% TO INTRADAY LOW
• EUROPEAN DIESEL FUTURES SURGE OVER 7% TO SESSION HIGH

Here's what happened:

Last week, Barclays refining and midstream analyst Theresa Chen warned clients that a proposed U.S. diesel export ban would be "detrimental to the US refining complex and unlikely to provide the intended price relief."

Chen outlined one major problem: keeping diesel inside the country does not guarantee it can reach gas pumps.

On Tuesday, Goldman Sachs energy analyst Nikhil Bhandari told clients the global refining system will be stretched through 2027, with diesel and gas prices expected to remain elevated.

The latest EIA data (2025) shows that Mexico is the largest buyer of U.S. diesel, followed by Chile, Brazil, the Netherlands, and the UK.

• Mexico: ~220,000 b/d (17% of total distillate exports). Still #1 but down ~18% from 2024. Mexico imports large volumes of U.S. refined products (gasoline and diesel) while sending heavier crude north.
• Chile: Second-largest destination; volumes rose ~15–16k b/d from 2024.
• Brazil: ~103,000 b/d (third). This is well below earlier peaks near 200k b/d; Brazil has taken more discounted Russian barrels since 2022 sanctions redirected Russian diesel away from Europe.
• Netherlands: ~98,000 b/d (major European trading hub/re-export point).
• United Kingdom: ~89,000 b/d (record annual average).

A case of resource nationalism? Or is the Politico report "another fake news story," as a White House source cited in the report suggests?

"Definitely Doesn't Work": U.S. Energy Sec Rejects Diesel Export Ban, Risks Creating Bigger Supply-Squeeze Later

President Trump will not be pleased...

U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright has publicly opposed calls for a ban on U.S. diesel exports, arguing on Wednesday that the measure would backfire by increasing gasoline and jet fuel prices.

"The blunt ​tool of banning diesel exports definitely doesn't ‌work," ⁠Wright said at an event in New York, as reported by Reuters.

Wright said restricting exports would leave refiners with excess diesel inventories, forcing them to cut refinery output.

Lower refinery runs, he warned, would tighten supplies of other fuels, ultimately driving up costs for consumers and businesses.

His comments put him at odds with President Trump, who signaled support for the idea on Tuesday as diesel prices surge to record highs in the U.S. and Europe (and Treasury Secretary Bessent has been assigned to see "if it's feasible."

Trump's comments already sent European pries for the fuel surging.

With flows from the region's top supplier at risk, Bloomberg reports that European diesel's premium to Brent crude jumped to more than $95 a barrel on Wednesday, a record in Bloomberg data going back to 2011.

Known as crack spread, the indicator has been keenly watched by central bankers as they seek to tame inflation. The equivalent measure in the U.S., meanwhile, weakened.

Trump's threat comes as Europe is already grappling with the loss of diesel shipments from the Middle East, and Russian export curbs have tightened the global fuel market further. The US has become Europe's main overseas supplier, with American exports of the workhorse fuel surging to a weekly record near 2 million barrels a day last month.

A key U.S. oil industry group cautioned against the move, saying it could lower American fuel production and damage the global economy.

Of the 8 million barrels of diesel traded globally by sea each day, the U.S. supplies about 1.5 million of them - about 20%. An export ban would remove the single largest source of global diesel from the market, and the consequences could be catastrophic.

"Restricting exports is not a solution to high prices," the American Petroleum Institute says.

"Removing US diesel from the market could instead result in reduced refinery runs, global economic damage and even higher US prices."

Indeed, as Bloomberg macro strategist, Michael Ball, write this morning,while The White House may be able to engineer a brief drop in U.S. diesel prices by limiting exports, it risks creating a bigger supply problem down the road.

With distillate stocks at seasonally record lows...

...the appeal is obvious with U.S. diesel above $6.50 a gallon...

But a broad curb could strand as much as 1.5 million barrels a day, roughly 29% of U.S. diesel output.

If enacted, Ball writes, the effects would be uneven across the U.S.

A surplus would build on the Gulf Coast, while pipeline, shipping and fuel-specification constraints limit how easily those barrels can reach tighter East and West Coast markets.

Bloomberg Intelligence estimates Gulf Coast storage could only absorb about three weeks of net diesel exports before constraints bite.

The global impact would be worse.

Kpler argues there is no real replacement for U.S. export volumes, leaving Latin America and Northwest Europe particularly exposed and increasing competition for Indian barrels.

China could compound the squeeze as domestic inventories fall and the risk of renewed export curbs rises.

The response from refiners would create a negative feedback loop.

If trapped barrels crush margins, refiners are incentivized to cut runs and undertake maintenance.

S&P Global Energy estimates crude runs might need to fall by nearly 2 million barrels a day - more than 10% of the current production level - to clear the surplus.

That is the asymmetry: lower U.S. diesel prices first, tighter global product markets follow, and potentially less U.S. fuel supply later.

The more aggressive the restriction, the greater the risk that today's price relief becomes tomorrow's supply problem.

 

Trump’s Exit Strategy Disappearing in Ukraine & the Middle East with Col Lawrence Wilkerson (Video - 56mn)

   How dangerous is Trump with his unbridled rhetoric? All hat and no horse as they  say in Texas or are we staring down the barrel of a nuclear cannon?    

   The strategy against Iran, if we can call it a "strategy" has spectacularly failed. Not only in the Middle East but in the US too thanks to the transfer mechanism of high oil prices. The immediate consequence is that Trump is heading strait into defeat for the mid-term elections. He may be irremediably delusional but eventually someone in the Republican party will tell him that the chances of winning are getting slimmer by the day or more practically distance himself from the President.

   The smart move would be to claim victory and go home. This is not a great option but the least bad at this stage. A worse option would be to double down. Even in a perfect world, the last few months have proved that bombing alone cannot achieve anything on which a "victory" label can be attached. The price of oil would skyrocket, the elections would be a disaster with the lost of both chambers and the President impeached.    

   But then there is the Hail Mary option of launching a nuclear strike on Pickaxe Mountain under the pretext that no other mean can achieve the objective, opening the Pandora Box. We know that Trump has thought about it and the army is rightly reluctant or so we are told.   

   Col Lawrence Wilkerson believes Iran already has a few nuclear devices. Nobody knows for sure but they certainly have the technology as well as nuclear material. How long would it take after a nuclear strike for Iran to actually build a bomb? Weeks? 

   The fact that such a possibility can now be entertained and discussed seriously is what should scare everybody. At the very least, the market would crash spectacularly and international trade would falter almost immediately. The willingness to use the bomb on a made up pretext with no existential risk for the US would raise international tensions to an extremely dangerous threshold. Can China and Russia live with a country ready to bomb them on short notice? The second "cold" war could get very hot very fast!   

Trump’s Exit Strategy Disappearing in Ukraine & the Middle East /Col Lawrence Wilkerson

 

Oil and the Houthis?

   The price of oil is skyrocketing and obviously the Houthis are responsible, or this is what it looks like at first sight.  

   Forget the fact that Ukraine has been bombing oil refineries in Russia for months because this is clearly against the will of President Trump who just a few days ago once again asked Ukraine "not to!"

   Forget the other fact that the closure of the Strait of Hormuz has been on and off for months too as this was an unintended consequence of a war gone wrong. Not only that but since the war went sideways, the US military has kept bombing Iranian oil facilities and tankers insuring that the oil shortfall would indeed materialize eventually. 

   And then finally the Houthis. They did bomb refineries in Saudi Arabia, especially around Yambu, there is no doubt about it.

   But what about the Saudi pipeline crossing the country and avoiding Hormuz? When it was bombed, we were told this too was the Houthis although they didn't confirm and strangely the drones came from the direction of Iraq. Trump told us it was Iran which was immediately denied with the country actually sending a mystery plane to Saudia the day after. The Shia faction in Iraq likewise denied they launched the drones. 

   So who is left who has access to secret bases in Iraq and who would have an interest in throwing oil on the fire, although here practically it is rather fire on oil? Who is capable of launching a very precise strike on a very specific target? 

   If your answer is Israel, you may be heading in the right direction. 

   Let's look at it objectively from their point of view: Trump was manipulated into the Iran war believing it would be a quick win. He is now having second thoughts. Saudi Arabia refused the last ditch push to sign the Abraham accords and deserves to be punished. Finally, Trump needs to be convinced for his own political interest that the price of oil will not come down without a major push in the Middle East. Isn't all this worth a "small" missile crossing the fog of war to reach the right political target in the middle of the desert? Who would notice anyway? Apparently no one indeed!      

   The official version below is just Houthis:  

 ⚔️ Why the Houthis are almost impossible to stop — and why Saudi Arabia is running out of options

For a decade, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, the US, Britain, and Israel have pounded Yemen with airstrikes — and the Houthis have only grown stronger. Now, with the group holding Yemen's entire Red Sea coast and striking Saudi oil infrastructure, there is little left to try that hasn't already failed.

🔴 The terrain is the weapon: The Houthis operate across a large, mountainous territory where they disperse fighters and military infrastructure — while threatening major oil facilities and key trade routes just across the border. Air power can't hold ground. And the Houthis don't need to hold it — they just need to threaten it.

🔴 They make their own weapons: The Houthis now field ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, anti-ship missiles, naval drones, and UAVs — capable of reaching every Gulf state and Israel. Iran may support the movement with training. But the Houthis manufacture most of their weaponry domestically — and may be using AI to build better missiles.

🔴 The numbers are damning

🪖 30,000 fighters in 2015 — when Saudi Arabia intervened
📈 Up to 350,000 fighters by 2024 — a more than tenfold increase

A decade of bombing produced a larger, better-armed, more experienced enemy.

🔴 Air power alone doesn't win wars: Any lasting defeat would require ground troops. But the anti-Houthi ground forces are deeply divided — Saudi-backed government loyalists and UAE-backed southern separatists fought each other as recently as January. In recent weeks, they've fallen back from one position after another.

🔴 The interceptor problem: Saudi Arabia has US-supplied aircraft and advanced missile defenses — but its high-end interceptor stocks are under pressure. With Patriot reserves drained by the Iran war and the US unable to spare any, it's unclear how long Riyadh can keep warding off attacks from the Houthis and Iran-backed militias in Iraq — which already shut down a crucial east-west pipeline.

🔴 Diplomacy is a dead end: The Houthis demand Saudi Arabia lift its blockade — which would be an admission of defeat and pave the way for even more support from the Axis of Resistance.

The Houthis cannot be bombed into submission. They cannot be starved into surrender. They cannot be defeated by proxy forces that fight each other. And they cannot be negotiated with from a position of weakness.

The Saudi Arabia and the US are learning this the hard way.

UAP are on the horizon... again!

  It all sounds like a joke but it's not, just in time to distract from Epstein and Iran dumpster fires: Trump reportedly plans big ‘aliens’ reveal.
 
 Trump is reportedly “sitting on a finished speech confirming humanity isn’t alone” in the universe, and the US government is gradually setting the stage for disclosure day, Wired reports.

From hints by his officials that the administration is treating the issue with the utmost seriousness, to fan service to UFO enthusiasts via a trickle of videos and docs on mysterious flying objects (five batches and counting), to congressional hearings and priming of the public through media, celebrities and Hollywood (Spielberg’s new Disclosure Day movie), something ‘big’ may be on the horizon.

In August, GOP megadonor and UFO enthusiast Robert Bigelow said he met with Trump and personally saw an excerpt from his aliens speech, reading: “A non-human, intelligent presence has been on Earth for a very long time, using spacecraft and with performances completely beyond our capabilities and our human physics.”

Trump has reportedly also told members of his inner circle there are aliens living in the Earth’s oceans.

That’s all well and good, but why now? What could possibly be going on in the world that requires an urgent distraction? The Middle East and Eastern Europe on fire? Check. Energy prices skyrocketing? Check. US debt on the brink of a potentially irreversible calamity? Check. Global elites implicated in a monstrous child abuse scandal? Big check. Quick: release the little green men!

In 1958, Soviet-Russian sci-fi author Ivan Efremov speculated on humanity’s first contact with an alien lifeform, concluding that this could take place only between civilizations that had resolved all the economic and social contradictions on their home planets to reach for the stars.

Look around – does our world look anything like it’s anywhere close? Why would aliens want to hang out with an orange man-child threatening to wipe out whole civilizations, anyway?

 This said, it is indeed in time of crisis that "things" tend to happen. So let's be optimistic. Do not count on alien bodies at Area 51, but better pictures and military witness accounts are not impossible.  

Greenland's Icecap Grew This Year

    Listening to European media, you would be forgiven not to have noticed the news that in fact, globally, 2026 is proving to be a rather average year concerning temperatures. 

   Yes, Europe was far warmer than usual, reminding us of unpleasant years such as the heat dome of 2003 or the long lasting drought of 1976. But Japan had a rather cool, wet Summer (冷夏の夏、reika) while the North Pole saw its ice cover grow and the Southern hemisphere is grappling with relentless cold fronts. 

   The reality is that the climate is messy and in fact significantly becoming messier. The temperatures have been on a gentle upward trend for the last 200 years since the Little Ice Age. In the past, people wrote a lot about cold periods since crops failed and they were consequently painful (David Ricardo developed the Principles of Economy in 1817 based on these premises of rising prices.) but not so much about warmer periods in-between such as the Bronze Age optimum or the subsequent Roman warn period or the Age of the cathedrals. When traveling across the British Isles, here and there you will encounter Roman "Villas". Why on earth would the Roman build Italian style villas so far north, except for the fact that the weather was then hotter and drier than in the subsequent centuries? 

   But isn't the climate changing nevertheless? Of course it is! Except for the oxymoronic "Climate Change" trope, the climate is indeed changing as it has done for millions of years and will keep doing so for as long as we're here to witness the changes... and beyond. 

   What is nevertheless interesting is to see what's actually happening which no model prepared us for. I remember when very young, I was shown a minuscule stream in the Alps and told that over millions of years, this minute body of water built the immense valley in which I was standing. At the time, I found this fact amazing as I was completely unable to relate the two. Although of course, now we know the answer: All periods are not born equal. Some are quieter. This was the case of the 20th century. And some tend to be much more violent. This is more and more the case of the 21th century as we see small rivers raging downstream and carving valleys as just happened in Nepal and countless other places.       

   In the 18th century, a major scientific controversy erupted when we discovered the depth of time and the fact that millions upon millions of years laid burried under our feet. It opposed the catastrophists who believed that violent, sudden events had structured the world to uniformitarians who believed in slow, incremental changes. [Wikipedia] In the end, we now know that they were both right. The world goes through long periods of very slow changes intermitted by sudden, violent events. 

   With the jet streams meandering up and down more violently, we are having almost everywhere sudden burst of unseasonably hot and cold weather. This is not a bug but an indication that the Earth system is changing mode and adjusting to a new complex equilibrium that none of our models predicted.  

   We may see famines and droughts in the coming years, but although we will be told that these are the consequence of "Climate Change", don't be fooled, it will be the consequence, mostly, of wars and human disruptions. Do you know, for example, that in spite of the news about catastrophic fires in France of Spain this Summer, these fires do not even register on the global scene, dwarfed by giant fires in the Boreal forest of Canada and Russia which are themselves dwarfed by immense fires in the Amazon and the Congo? If we truly wanted to preserve the "climate", not burning these forests is where we should start. It would be cheaper and more productive than the elusive fight against carbon dioxide which is both meaningless and harmful for nature. (But this is another discussion altogether.)     

Authored by Paul Homewood via The Daily Sceptic,

Greenland's icecap is melting away thanks to global warming, at least that is what we are told. According to the EU's European State of the Climate 2025 Report, the ice sheet lost 139 Gt last year. They say that is equivalent to about 1.5 times the amount of ice stored in all the glaciers in the European Alps, and raised global mean sea level by 0.4 mm. (A gigatonne is one billion tonnes.) Since 1972, losses have amounted to 5,747 Gt. The rate of ice loss has increased by around five times since the 1980s and is expected to continue increasing beyond the end of the century.

These amounts sound terrifying, which is of course the object of the exercise - at least until you realise that at present rates it would take Greenland 27,000 years to melt away.

I am always suspicious when 'scientists' present trends since the 1970s, a time when the Earth had gone through three decades of cooling and there were genuine fears among both scientists and world leaders about the return of the Little Ice Age. I am even more suspicious when I discover that official data about the Greenland ice sheet is publicly available back to 1840.

In 2021, a peer-reviewed study calculated the annual changes in the ice sheet mass balance since 1840. (The heavy black line represents the net changes, which is of relevance to this discussion):

The graph confirms that the ice sheet has been losing mass since the 1980s. But crucially, we can see that the melting began around 1900. During the period 1920 to 1970, ice loss was running at similar levels to the last three decades - this is hardly surprising, as temperature records across Greenland show that it was just as 'warm' then as now. In between times, there was a sharp decline in temperatures in the 1970s and 80s.

In other words, this is not a new phenomenon, as we are expected to believe. It is part of a much longer process, which began long before so-called man-made global warming began.

Scientists have long established, with the help of ice cores and other evidence, that the 19th Century was probably the coldest era in Greenland since the Ice Age. During warm eras, such as the Middle Ages, Roman times and earlier millennia, the ice cap was smaller than it is now. Any reduction in the ice cap in the last century must be viewed as part of these longer-term cycles.

Ice mass data is still regularly published and provisional data is now available for the year ending August 2026 - Greenland ice data is normally presented by "hydro-year", September to August.

Since the 2021 study, ice loss has continued to slow down and is back to 1920s levels. The 2025/26 season actually saw a small increase of 6 Gt in ice mass. Greenland never really had a summer this year. Whereas the summer melt usually begins in early June, cold, snowy weather persisted well into July. As a result, summer melt was around 200 Gt less than normal.

It is worth noting that the poor summer in Greenland was part of the wider jet stream setup, which brought our hot summer. While we had a summer dominated by high-pressure systems, the rainy weather stayed out in the Atlantic, battering Greenland.

6 Gt is of course a tiny amount, given the massive uncertainty in how these things are calculated. There is no way to directly measure ice cap changes; instead, the numbers are calculated from computer models fed with data such as precipitation and temperature. The experts accept that they can often be wrong by as much as 100 Gt.

Nevertheless, it is abundantly clear that Greenland's icecap is doing just fine. It is still much larger than it has been for most of the last 10,000 years and, if it is shrinking at all, it is doing so no faster than a century ago.

Iran DESTROYS A-10 & EIGHT F-15s as US Navy RETREATS by Ben Norton

    It is difficult to highlight how much of a disaster the Trump lack of strategy is having for the whole world as we have been warning for months that the current outlook was the most probable outcome of terrible moves which staked upon each others are finally giving us a full blown financial crisis with interest rates exploding everywhere, not just in the US where the long term rates are hovering around 5%, oil prices are once again at 110 dollar per barrel, gas is a 4.50 dollar per gallon and diesel above 6 dollars.

   The worst part of this worst case scenario is that it was entirely predictable and predicted right from the beginning. Trump as the real estate magnate that he was and never ceased to be is now proposing to literally bribe (5,000 $ per adult) the whole US population at insane costs to the budget (1.4 Trillion dollars) and inflation of course hoping that people will have forgotten by the election the tariff dividend of 2,000 dollars they never saw earlier this year.   

   It would be quite natural to dismiss all this as the normal Washington political shenanigan "show" if the consequences were not so deep with the world witnessing the military humiliation of a military paper tiger which outsized budget has financed marble Mac-mansions in the District of Columbia belt instead of actual capabilities. (For those who remember the brick city Washington was 40 years ago, outside the central Mall obviously, the contrast is amazing and loud.) or the acceleration of the build-up of a multi-polar world unmoored from Western institutions.       

   In the end, Trump said he was going to transform the US but instead of the one horse trick of the current AI bubble, what will be remembered of his presidency, is another failure on the scale of the Hoover presidency which inaugurated the 1929 Great Depression. We're still in September, but in September 1929, everything was still looking fine, actually better than today! 

   There is more in the interview below: 

CONFIRMED: Iran DESTROYS A-10 & EIGHT F-15s as US Navy RETREATS | Ben Norton

 

Remembering 9/11 - 25 years later.

   For those who remember 9/11 in 2001, the first thing that comes to mind is the choc of the event and the second one is that the world after was different than the world before. 

   Then the story: A man in a cave in Afghanistan of all places arranged a daring terrorist coup with a bunch of semi literate half-pilots to dive jetliners with an astounding precision into the right spots to crash the World Trade Center towers into their own footprint.       

   If you are a pilot, you will wonder why no planes were sent to intercept the jetliners. The fighter jets were all on a couple of exercises far off into the ocean from which they could not come back fast enough. Clearly caves in Afghanistan had amazing intel about the US military's schedule! 

   Then you will wonder how people who could barely fly a Cessna, managed the aiming of a jet at full speed into a target which in reality is extraordinarily small. Luck most certainly. Twice! 

   Thankfully you won't linger on the acrobatics of the flight into the Pentagon or the amazing ability of these apprentices to fly a couple of meters (yards) above the ground. When you've done hundreds of landings you know that it is technically almost impossible. You either stall and let the plane land, 99.9% of the cases, or bounce back into the air as the compression of the air between the wings and the ground send you back up. There is no middle ground. Well, except on 9/11.  

   If you are an architect, you will find it amazing that for the first time in the history of construction, a building crashed in its own footprint, 3 times with WTC-7! You will remember that the WTC were built on a central column with steel reinforcement getting thicker as you go down and wonder why we didn't end up with a center jutting into the sky at the base. 

   You will ask for an investigation, thousands of architects will in fact, because you need to know what was wrong with the design to avoid future mistakes but will receive no answer. 

   If you are an investigator, you will ask to see the girders and the rubble to find clues but will not be granted access not to interfere with the express clean up of the site. Why would you need to check anything? We all saw what happened with our own eyes, right? 

   If you're a statistician, you will marvel at the accumulation of odd events, like the sale of the towers a few weeks earlier as well as the amazing insurance coverage, the astounding fact that the wing of the Pentagon destroyed which was under reconstruction also contained the accounting documents of the missing "trillion" of the military budget, or the completely unrelated location of the CIA office in WTC-7. 

   If you're Hercule Poirot, you will look at strange details and may even have "questions" like why is it that the only unburned document found on the ground of the WTC was the passport of one of the terrorists, or how could a stewardess communicate with the ground with a mobile in 2001 to warn that one of the plane had been taken over by terrorists with cutters, and conversely why the pilots had all communication cut instantly on all the planes preventing even a simple "Mayday" when the button to cut communication is rather difficult to access?          

   In reality, once you're done examining all the strange facts and the oddities of the case, it becomes extremely difficult to believe a single word of the official story.

   And this surprisingly links us back to the real risk of AI. For a human, all this looks like coincidences, happenstances and "stories". Prompted with all the facts, an advanced AI can calculate the odds and if they happen to be infinitesimal, then the logical conclusion will stand out: 9/11 didn't happen the way we were told.  

   And this is just an example since today happens to be September 11, 2026. But imagine hundreds, thousands of stories coming up day after day. Soon enough people will start doubting and the narrative will crumble. Not immediately of course. Thousands of false stories will be planted to discredit the truth. AI will be used to create false videos, documents, even archives. But eventually, in the end the doubt will grow, The evidences will become stronger and finally the paradigm will shift. People will stop believing, become more circumspect and possibly angry of having been lied to for so long.     

Iran Targets Marine Barracks In Jordan, Sends Drones On Bahrain & Kuwait, After Trump's New Strikes

   This is an update of the on-going war with Iran but unfortunately this is more and more "background noise" compared with the "real" war which is entirely financial. 

   The Gulf is important, don't get me wrong, but in retrospect it will have been far less important that the rising interest rates which will soon run amok with the economy. Forget the 40 trillion dollars of US debt, what really counts is the 2 trillion rise in a year. This is unsustainable. But the US dollar remains the world currency so it can last for a while. Europe is in much worse shape. France is now paying more for its OAT bonds than Greece. This will not stop the EU from providing Ukraine with 90 billion Euros (Good luck receiving the money!) or accelerating its green transition. 

   Just like Trump, Europe cannot back down. So who will? Iran being bombed anyway? Russia? China? In the end, who's right and who's wrong will not matter much as we escalate further and the coming depression approaches which is why I believe looking at the issue from a different perspective is legitimate: Knowing all this, why not escalate if you're cooked anyway?  

   Democratic institutions or what's left of it, should protect us against such a drift, but of course they won't. On the one hand, people do not want war, but on the other hand they want their pensions paid. States must find the right answer. War is what happens when talks falter. There is no talk between the US and Iran. None either between Europe and Russia. China remains too big to be ignored for now but for how long?         

   I will be offline for some time in September while events accelerate but this blog is not a news site anyway. Often, I post within a week of important events knowing that two or even three weeks would be safer to understand the true meaning of what's going on. But the news cycle tends to crowd out old news quickly. So be it. Let's catch up later, with hopefully better news, although realistically we most probably will get a very hot autumn.   

Iran Targets Marine Barracks In Jordan, Sends Drones On Bahrain & Kuwait, After Trump's New Strikes

Summary

• Explosions in Jordan reported amid initial Iranian retaliation, drones on Bahrain.
• Reports of fresh US strike wave on southern Iran, oil soars
• Bessent Says Hormuz Will Be "Worthless Piece of Water" In Two Years
• Iran offers conditional ceasefire: Pezeshkian says Iran will return to talks if the US honors prior commitments, which Tehran says it has violated.
• Tankers hit in Strait of Hormuz: Two supertankers struck exiting Hormuz, escalating energy-market risks.
• Oil prices surge: Brent crude rose above $92/barrel.
• Diesel supply squeezed: Refinery disruptions are driving diesel prices and margins sharply higher.

Strait of Hormuz traffic returns to normal by October 31?
Yes 12% · No 89%
View full market & trade on Polymarket

*  *  *

Iran Targets Marine Barracks in Jordan, Drones Sent on Bahrain, Kuwait

Iranian state media is saying that the military retaliation is ongoing, with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Aerospace Force announcing that it launched a heavy ballistic missile attack targeting the US Marine barracks at Camp Titin, located near the Gulf of Aqaba in Jordan - which is at a significant distance, in the country's far southwest corner. State media sources further detail:

According to the IRGC, the strike destroyed multiple military installations and attack helicopters, inflicting heavy casualties on U.S. forces. The operation was executed as the second wave of retaliatory actions under the code name “Ya Rasul Allah.”

And more via state WANA News Agency: "The IRGC stated that the action was carried out in retaliation for a U.S. strike on a residential home during a wedding ceremony in Sirik, which resulted in nearly 50 civilians killed or injured, including children." Iranian claims of US casualties will as usual be hard to verify, but CENTCOM has said no casualties have resulted, per news wires:

US officials says no US casualties from Iranian attack on facilities in Jordan so far

In the wake of the US CENTCOM campaign, which may still be ongoing, Iran's Hormozgan grid is under blackout. Further damage is likely to be assessed and publicized in the coming hours. Bahrain, Kuwait also targeted:

• Iran's army launched drone attacks on the US base in Bahrain, according to Fars News Agency
• Kuwait Army says air defenses are confronting attacks by hostile drones
• Jordan intercepts 10 ballistic missiles from Iran, three fell in remote areas: army

Initial unconfirmed footage now widely circulating of alleged IRGC attack on Jordan base...

Iranian Retaliation on regional Bases Begins

Iran is already hitting back, according to some early reports of what looks to be their latest retaliation, despite President Trump having earlier warned the Islamic Republic will be hit harder if it responds.

"If the failed Nation of Iran retaliates for this very justified attack, they will be hit again at a much harder and higher level, but it will not be the biggest attack of them all, that is waiting in the wings and, when it is over, there will be very little left of the Islamic Republic of Iran!" he stated earlier.

The White House indicated it is focused on taking out IRGC targets. But this has triggered the expected reaction:

• Fars: Some Arab sources report that an explosion was heard in Jordan; several explosions were heard from American bases in Jordan
• IRGC says US attacks will tighten the lock on the Strait of Hormuz
• Explosion heard in Erbil, Iraq, reports Fars

The last tit-for-tat instances also saw US bases in Jordan targeted.

One Atlantic Council analyst points out the obvious - today's action is yet another indication that the administration still does not understand how the Iranian government and leadership thinks (unless the intent is actual runaway escalation). Danny Citrinowicz writes:

Threatening Tehran with even more devastating strikes if it retaliates is unlikely to prevent an Iranian response. In fact, it may do the opposite. From Tehran’s perspective, failing to respond to a direct U.S. attack would undermine the very deterrence equation Iran has spent months trying to establish. The Iranian leadership believes it must demonstrate that American military action carries a price. That means Iran is likely to retaliate and it may even conclude that a broader or more painful response is necessary precisely to rebuild deterrence against future U.S. attacks.

This is the fundamental problem with Washington’s approach: it assumes that sufficiently strong threats will convince Iran to back down. But Tehran may draw exactly the opposite conclusion, meaning that backing down under threat would invite additional American strikes. Threats will not solve this problem. If Washington wants to prevent another cycle of retaliation and counter-retaliation, it needs a political strategy for ending the confrontation. Otherwise, each side will continue using force to restore deterrence after the previous round — creating an escalation cycle that becomes increasingly difficult to control.

The latest Pentagon leaks to the Washington Post happened days ago, and now this:

More latest via AJ:

• The United States military says it is striking targets in Iran over attempted attacks on shipping as Iranian media reports explosions in Asaluyeh, Jiroft, Bandar Abbas, Qeshm Island, Konarak, Chabahar, Jask, Sirik and Lavan.
• Iran’s army and IRGC promise the US will regret and face “severe punishment” for the aggression.
• US President Donald Trump says “if the failed Nation of Iran retaliates for this very justified attack, they will be hit again at a much harder and higher level”.

Trump: 'Large & Powerful Strikes' in 'Retaliation' For Mining Hormuz Strait

Confirmation from the President, describing these new airstrikes as ongoing and "large and powerful"... He added that this is retaliation for the Iranians mining the Strait of Hormuz. The full Truth Social post:

Notably he is warning the Iranians will get hit again "much harder" if they don't cooperate with Washington demands.

Early reports of US Strikes on Southern Iran Send Oil Soaring

Rare US strikes against Iran in the middle of US trading hours? Bold move if so. Some breaking headlines:

• REPORTS OF BLASTS ACROSS IRAN'S SOUTHERN REGIONS: STATE TV
• PENTAGON UNLEASHES FRESH ATTACKS On SOUTHERN IRAN
• Al Arabiya: ‘DEFENSIVE’ BOMBING — source to Faytuks
• EXPLOSIONS REPORTED IN KONARAK IN SOUTHEASTERN IRAN: FARS
  US FORCES BEGAN STRIKING IRGC TARGETS IN IRAN AT 12PM ET TODAY

And from Al Hadath: "Explosions heard east of Bandar Abbas and Qeshm Island; Five explosions heard in Qeshm and four near the Strait of Hormuz." CENTCOM has confirmed:

Today at 12 p.m. ET, U.S. forces began striking Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) targets in Iran. The strikes follow recent attempted attacks by the IRGC against commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz and against American service members deployed to the region.

Confirmation of the attacks also from the Iranians:

The Deputy Governor for Security and Law Enforcement of Sistan and Baluchestan Province says four projectiles hit the counties of Chabahar and Konarak, Iranian news agency, IRNA, reports.

General Ali Khalil Abadi confirmed the attacks stating: “Expert investigations are underway to determine the details of the incident, potential damages, and further information.”

Oil prices shooting up on the new apparent 'shoot-up', which has been previewed in various reports this week. Trump is now pulling the trigger on Hegseth's plan, it seems:

WTI nears $90...

US attacks on Iran have almost always come in nighttime and overnight hours - and typically only after US market hours close, so a daytime attack is very rare indeed...

Bessent Says Hormuz Will Be "Worthless Piece of Water" In Two Years

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told the audience at the Group of 20 finance ministers' meeting in Asheville, North Carolina, that Iran's ability to weaponize the Strait of Hormuz will be reduced to zero because "oil will be going through pipelines across the land."

"Iranians are trying to use the Strait of Hormuz as a chokepoint. It's not a chokepoint for the US, but it is for many other countries. That will be bypassed in 2 years. In 2 years, the Strait of Hormuz will be a worthless piece of water. The oil will be going through pipelines across the land," Bessent said.

Bessent's comments this morning should come as no surprise to readers, since we've detailed the existing pipelines that bypass Hormuz and the new pipeline projects planned by allied Gulf producers.

However, these new 'alternative energy route' initiatives are wrought with an array of unknowns - especially in terms of security and infrastructure/construction protection in an obviously volatile region, cooperation among transit states (in overland routes), as well as immense cost notwithstanding. For but one recent headline example:

Iraq-Syria Pipeline To 'Bypass' Hormuz Likely To Take Four Years, $15BN To Build

And with both these named countries coming out of recent decades-long 'forever wars', and with especially Syria still being largely destroyed and fragmented, efforts to bring to fruition Bessent's anticipated bypass system "across the land" - as he says - will more likely be something that drags on far longer than the Trump administration itself is in power. 

Read the full note here.

Also read Goldman's latest energy flow data through the Hormuz (here).  

Pezeshkian: We'll Return to Ceasefire if US Does

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian on Tuesday reiterated his country's willingness to return to talks with the US, but made clear that Washington must return to its prior commitments made.

"I state explicitly that if the United States returns to its commitments under the ... memorandum of understanding, the Islamic Republic of Iran will immediately take reciprocal action," Pezeshkian said on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. 

It is significant that he's there at the Kyrgyzstan-hosted summit in person, receiving a welcome from the likes of Putin, Xi, Erdogan, the UN's Guterres, and others.

Pezeshkian still blasted the US for "reneging on its commitments" under the agreement, which unraveled in June - leading to various weeks of sporadic tit-for-tat attacks - the latest which occurred just at the start of this week.

President Trump yesterday told reporters in the Oval Office that there will be a "response" to the Iranian attacks, but also cautioned that this would not mean a return to full-scale war.

US officials have talked about "mowing the grass" with a series of indefinite strikes, while ironically having an aversion to anyone applying the label "forever war". 

Two Supertankers Hit

Two oil supertankers were struck by unknown projectiles while transiting the Strait of Hormuz early Tuesday, signaling yet another sharp escalation in hostilities along the world's most critical energy chokepoint.

The attacks follow President Trump's warning Monday that additional strikes against Iran remain possible. Traders are pricing in a further war risk premium, pushing Brent crude futures above $92 a barrel, while US diesel crack spreads have breached the critical $100-a-barrel threshold.

Maritime security consultant Marisks reports that Saudi shipping giant Bahri's VLCC Sidr was hit northeast of Khasab, Oman. The Sinokor-operated Senegal Prosperity was reportedly struck by three projectiles farther east. Both tankers were exiting the maritime chokepoint. 

UK Maritime Trade Operations separately confirmed that a tanker completing an outbound transit of Hormuz reported three projectile strikes but did not identify the vessel.

Brent crude futures ripped higher during Asian and European trading on the news, with the benchmark firmly above $92 as of 0600 ET.

More US Strikes on Table, Trump Warns

"President Donald Trump warned Monday that further strikes are possible, pushing Brent back above $91/bbl and driving another bear-steepening move across global bond markets," UBS analyst George Redman wrote earlier. 

US diesel crack spreads were above $100 as of 0600 ET.

As we've extensively detailed, the energy crisis is not necessarily in crude itself but in refined products. Gulf diesel and gasoline shipments have declined amid disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz, while damage to Russian energy infrastructure from Ukrainian one-way attack drones has created a perfect storm in global refining markets in late summer.

'Diesel at Epicenter of Supply Squeeze'

Goldman's energy expert Daan Struyven warned in his most recent note that "diesel is at the epicenter of the supply squeeze."

"Rising strikes on refineries in the Middle East and Russia have further constrained already-stretched global refining capacity, pushing refined-products margins to new highs," Struyven and Yulia Zhestkova Grigsby wrote in the note, adding, "Diesel remains at the epicenter of the rally."

Struyven and his team estimate that global refinery runs are down 7 million barrels per day from last year and have averaged nearly 6 million barrels per day below seasonal norms since March, around the time the US launched Operation Epic Fury and Ukraine ramped up one-way drone attacks against Russia's energy infrastructure.

Meanwhile, there may be some diplomatic traction in the Gulf area, with Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian saying on state TV: "I state unequivocally that should the US return to its commitments under the aforementioned Memorandum of Understanding, the Islamic Republic of Iran will also take reciprocal action immediately."

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent's "Operation Economic Outcast" is also ramping up as the Trump administration deploys sanctions to pressure Tehran into submission.

More Latest Developments

via Newsquawk...

• Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesperson Baghaei said Europe cannot claim strategic autonomy while following Washington's orders, stressing that true autonomy means making independent decisions.
• Pakistan's Deputy PM and Foreign Minister met with Iran's Foreign Minister Araghchi in an informal manner in Bishek at the holding room of the SCO Council of Head of States, according to journalist Anas Mallick.
• Gulf Corporation Council condemned Iran's attacks on Jordan, saying they pose a direct threat to the security and stability of the region, according to Al Jazeera.
• Yemeni armed forces targeted early on Tuesday the bases of Saudi and Emirati mercenaries in Al Makha and Al Khuwakh located in the southwest of the country, according to IRIB.
• Hapag-Lloyd's (HLAG GY) CEO said it is reasonable to expect the Strait of Hormuz will remain blocked for the foreseeable future.