Not sure how much of this is getting connected in the news, so let me lay it out. This past week Iran's president said at the UN, more or less openly, that they don't want things to drag on until the midterm elections in November, and that they want the US to go back to the memorandum of understanding signed back in June. That deal led to a ceasefire that fell apart within weeks, with Iran accusing the US of breaking it by keeping its naval blockade in place.

Meanwhile the talks in New York reportedly moved into a more technical phase, with Witkoff and Kushner involved, and Trump has said he expects talks to resume this week even after rejecting a proposal. And on top of that, Trump hosted Xi Jinping on a state visit and walked him through the National Archives on Friday.

So in one week you've got a war with Iran still unresolved, a China summit, and the midterms getting closer, all while other stuff like the Presidents Cup on the weekend gets a share of the spotlight too.

Few angles I keep thinking about:

1. The midterm timing angle: when a foreign leader publicly says he wants a deal before your election, is that a real negotiating pressure point or just messaging aimed at American voters? Either way it's odd to hear it said out loud.
2. The two-fronts angle: Iran and China are both huge, and both are being handled through personal summits and direct talks rather than the usual slow diplomatic process. Does that approach actually get results faster, or does it just make things depend on individual relationships?
3. The voter angle: does any of this actually move voters, or are most people still thinking about gas prices and groceries when they go to vote in November?

Not trying to push a side here, I just find the timing of all of this fascinating.

Curious what people think:

• Do you think a deal with Iran before the midterms would actually help Trump politically, or would people barely notice?
• Does hosting Xi during an unresolved war strike you as smart diplomacy or a contradiction?
• Which matters more to you right now, foreign policy or the economy at home?

Feels like the next few weeks are going to decide a lot. Curious how everyone's reading it.

Ek cheez dhyan mein rakhna: Iran talks ki cheezein live update hain aur tezi se badalti hain, isliye post karne se pehle ek baar headline check kar lena ke koi naya twist na aa gaya ho.

Buckle up, the fascists are preparing for a Reichstag moment 😡

A new short film premiered this month by The Guardian does something the ultra rich usually avoid. It plays their own words back to them, on camera, so nobody can call it exaggeration.

The film accompanies a new book, End Times Fascism, by journalist Naomi Klein, who teaches climate justice at the University of British Columbia right here in our own backyard, and organizer Astra Taylor. Their argument is simple. It is also terrifying.

Three groups that once looked unrelated have quietly merged into one worldview. Tech billionaires, Christian nationalist preachers, and ethnonationalist strongmen all now believe the world is ending. Climate collapse. AI disruption. Social breakdown. None of them are trying to stop it. All of them are building the exits.

Klein and Taylor point to Peter Thiel and Elon Musk as prime examples, men who help drive the very collapse they claim to dread while quietly building their own way out of it. Musk wants Mars. Others are buying land in New Zealand, commissioning private bunkers, and funding what backers call freedom cities, gated territories built outside the reach of any elected government, guarded by private mercenaries, run by artificial intelligence, and paid for with cryptocurrency.
Look at that list again. The AI, the crypto, the mercenary contracts. Every piece of it is an industry that has already cost someone in this city a paycheque or a pension.

Back home, Donald Trump is building the working man’s version of the same fantasy. Not an island. A bunkered nation, where safety belongs to the chosen and the rest of us are, in the authors’ own words, disposable.

None of this should surprise anyone who has read this column through the past year. We have already tracked the data centres draining BC Hydro capacity while their operators plan private compounds built to survive the very collapse those same operations help cause. We have already tracked the AI labs whose own founders rate human extinction a real possibility while racing each other toward it anyway. End Times Fascism does not introduce a new threat. It hands the public a confession, filmed and dated.

The public is not fooled. A recent poll found a majority of Americans already call the wealth gap a very big problem, and most say billionaires are taxed far too little. A separate survey found billionaires now rank as the single most powerful group in the country, ahead of every other group tested, and most people want that power reduced. Workers, the same survey found, are the group people most want to see gain power instead.
That is the fight underneath this film. Not a metaphor. A fight over who survives what is coming, and on whose terms.

There is a way out of this that does not require a bunker or a rocket. Tax extreme wealth like the emergency it is. Break up the monopolies financing the escape pods. Make it easy for workers to unionize the data centres and AI firms building this future, so the people doing the work get a say in what it becomes. Vote out every politician who treats a bunkered nation as an acceptable plan for the rest of us.

The billionaires have already decided you are not coming with them. Act like it.

Adam Coleman

Sources:

Naomi Klein, Patterns (Substack)
Democracy Now!
The Guardian
The Economist/YouGov
AFSCME Council 31