Ian Welsh

The horizon is not so far as we can see, but as far as we can imagine

Author: Ian Welsh Page 10 of 439

The Amount Of Contempt Elites Have For Public Intelligence Is Breathtaking

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On February 4, 2026

33 Comments

The latest episode is an attempt to suggest Epstein was working for Russia:

This is ridiculous. Epstein was close friends with the Israeli Prime Ministers. Ghislaine Maxwell’s father Robert Maxwell might have been Israel’s most important spy. Israel’s fingerprints are all over the Epstein files, and there are almost no significant ties to Russia. There’s one email where Epstein tries to coach Trump on how to deal with Putin, and some trafficking ties, though more to Ukraine than to Russia, but they are dwarfed by Israeli ties.

Source

Elites think we’re morons. But hey, why not? I mean the “Trump is a Russian asset” lie worked (he massively increased sanctions on Russia). They lied over 80% of the time about Corbyn, including ridiculous anti-semitism smears, and it worked. They lied about WMD in Iraq, and Iraq ties to 9/11 and it worked. They lied about mass baby murders by Hamas and it worked. They lied about Gazan hospitals being Hamas bases and it worked.

They’re completely used to a plurality to a majority of the population believing their lies, so why not this time?

Are they right? Can they tell us the moon is made of blue cheese and get us to believe it? Perhaps so.

This is one of the reasons why, when I talk about war crimes tribunals I always include the media, who lied and lied and lied to enable genocide, child killing, rape and war. The media is almost entirely captured, certainly every corporate media outlet is little more than a source of propaganda. Truth only peaks out when one part of the elite disagrees with another part of the elite, but if the elites are united, as they were against Corbyn and are for mass murder of mostly children in Gaza, well, the media salutes and falls in line.

As I have said many times, the only way to fix the West and especially America is wholesale replacements of the elites and all their courtiers. No one with a conscience works at the top levels, because if someone has a conscience they can’t do the job.

They all have to go, and to ensure there’s no repeat, most of them need to be tried for their crimes, have everything they have beyond basic subsistence taken from them (they’re why so many people are homeless) and be thrown into prison.

This is is also a matter of simple self-respect from the rest of us. Enough pretending these people aren’t psychopaths who would kill or impoverish anyone if it would earn them a single bent nickel or, in many cases, even if it wouldn’t, because it’s how they get their rocks off.

It’s them or us, and so far it’s mostly been us.

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American and Chinese Elites Both Achieved Their Goals

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On February 3, 2026

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Chinese and American flags

The period around 1980 was pivotal to the fate of nations. In the West Thatcher and Reagan came to power and finished the destruction of the post-world War II order, setting the West on a new path. This process had been ongoing since 1968, but the form of the new consensus was not clear until Reagan’s victory: financialization, crushing workers, destroying the middle class, asset bubbles and so on.

In 1978 Deng came to power in China and instituted reforms, especially market ones. This coincided with the West, and especially America, wanting to offshore and outsource their industry. This increased profits and impoverished the working and middle class. It financialized the economy: you could have the profits without the production and without dealing with uppity and powerful workers.

Reagan went after unions hard, Thatcher broke the miner’s union, the most powerful in Britain. The Federal Reserve started a long term policy of raising interest rates every time wages rose faster than inflation, meaning that over a period of decades wages rose less than inflation, and thus were reduced in real terms. The BLS moved towards understating inflation systematically, to undercut things like pensions with cost of live adjustments and to help “boil the frog”. Every change in how inflation was measured, for decades, which I am aware of, reduced the measured inflation rate. That doesn’t happen randomly or if your goal is the accurate measure of inflation.

Deng lucked into a geopolitical moment, and knew exactly how to take advantage of it. “Tired of dealing with uppity workers? Hate environmental regulations? Want more profits without the work of production? Move your production to China and we’ll make you rich!”

Deng exactly spotted the West’s weakness and knew how to take advantage of it. He also delivered: offshoring and outsourcing did make the West’s elites, and especially US and British elites filthy rich.

In exchange China got the industry and with the industry came the know-how and the technology. The technological lead always (always) moves to the country with the factory floor, and so it did in this case. It took quite a while for this to become obvious, so people could fool themselves, but the movement was inexorable. The same thing had happened when the industrial base moved from Britain to America (with tons of British financing). It took about 30 years for the tech lead to follow the industrial base. In this case it seems to have been about 20 years from China taking the industrial lead to tech supremacy, but the movement was the same.

American elites, wanting to be rich without real work and to destroy their internal enemies, those pesky workers who wanted a cut, got what they wanted. In exchange they destroyed their empire, because the real basis of the American empire was industry and technology.

The Chinese got what they wanted: China became the world’s leading industrial and technological power and a billion people were lifted out poverty.

The Gods often grant want we desire, if we’re willing to work for it. American elites got their wish. So did the Chinese.

Welcome to the Chinese century.

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Epstein Occupied A Structural Position, So Who Has Replaced Him?

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On February 2, 2026

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As sometime contributor DanfromTo points out, Epstein performed “necessary” tasks for the elite: control thru blackmail and the provision of experiences many of them genuinely want to have. Power is allowed to people who can be trusted with it by other members of the elite, who will do what the elites want: whether that be bailing out rich people or committing genocide.

Some people, like Biden, will do these things because they are true believers, but it’s always best to have them collared, in case they have an attack of conscience or just decide that the bread is better butter on another side.

Epstein wasn’t the first pimp to rich people and he won’t be the last. Almost no one who fucked under-age women (or performed worse acts, there are indications of murder and cannibalism in the files) has actually suffered any consequences. There’s no real reason for American elites to stop and Israel, certainly, needs collars on new members of the elite.

So who replaced him?

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A Word On Elite Pedophilia

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On January 31, 2026

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More Epstein documents have been dumped, and they’re atrocious. It seems like most of the US elite was involved.

There are two reasons for this. One is that people who are super-powerful and super-rich feel like ordinary morality and laws don’t apply to them, and rape and torture and pedophilia are, to them, an ultimate rush, a proof of their power.

The other is similar to some gang initiations where if you want to be a member you have to kill someone. (Making your bones.) Once you’ve done that, you’re in, because they have you by the balls. You can’t betray them because they know who you murdered.

If you want to be in the top echelon of American (or Israeli, and possibly UK) elites they need to know you can be trusted. They need blackmail. You have to make your bones. Once you’ve committed an unspeakable crime, and they have pictures and video (remember, Epstein had cameras everywhere), well you can be allowed in, because you’re not going to use any power you have in any way the betrays elite interests, because they can destroy you any time they want.

(This is also how the Yale fraternity “Skull and Bones” is alleged to operate. You tell them your secrets to get in. They push your career. You’re one of them, and you can be trusted by other members, because you all have dirt on each other.)

Elite pedophilia isn’t a bug, it’s a feature, at least to other members of the elite classes.

 

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Open Thread

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On January 31, 2026

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Use to discuss topics unrelated to recent posts.

The Wisdom Of Machiavellian Virtu & Why America Is Losing Its Bill of Rights & Constitutional Virtues

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On January 30, 2026

35 Comments

If you’ve read Machiavelli, especially “Discourses on Livy”, which is actually his major work (“The Prince” is not) you know his emphasis on Virtu of the people and elites as what holds Republics together. Machiavelli thought that Republics were the best form of government and that the greatest feat was to create or maintain a Republic: he was not a fan of autocratic government.

To summarize an important part of the Discourses: good men can make bad systems work, but good systems cannot save bad men. This is the opposite of what most “leadership” and “management” thinkers say today, but they’re wrong and Machiavelli was right.

I mention this because we’re seeing it in the US today. I won’t pretend the Constitution or the Bill of Rights were perfect, or didn’t include substantial evil (aka. slavery), but the Bill of Rights in particular is genuinely good. It’s failing completely right now, the government is just ignoring rulings it doesn’t like. The first thru fifth amendments are essentially dead letters, including habeas corpus.

Likewise the Constitution did include substantial checks and balances and they aren’t working.

It’s ironic that the worshippers of the US constitution have always touted its system of “checks and balances” as part of its distinctive genius and that at present every one of those supposed checks and balances is failing.

But I think this is unfair. The checks and balances exist, the system was designed fairly well, BUT it requires virtuous people to use them. When the Supreme Court, Congress and Presidency are all filled with corrupt men and women with no virtues (virtu), of course they don’t work. The best system in the world won’t work if the people running it don’t want to follow it.

American elites don’t believe in civil liberties. (Remember how the Patriot Act passed with only Senator opposing.) They don’t believe in liberty, freedom or equality. It is asinine to pretend that they do. They believe in nothing but enriching themselves and their donors, and they seem themselves as an elite and feel no duty towards the masses well-being. This is so obvious that arguing against it is absurd.

Since they don’t want to enforce the Bill of Rights, they don’t. Since they fundamentally are OK with ICE running rampant, genocide, war and impoverishing the American people, they make it happen and certainly don’t push back against it. Why would they want people to have rights? In what way does that benefit them, as long as they have rights (which, mostly, they do. Elite impunity to law is the real Constitution right now.)

Without virtue: without wanting to do the “right” thing, no system intended to produce good results can work. America doesn’t work to produce good outcomes for most people because American elites only want it to produce good outcomes for them. It’s that simple, and no laws or constitution or rights can fix that. The only fix is to replace the entire elite, wholesale, by whatever means necessary.

But that requires a population willing to replace them at whatever price is necessary, and that means the people have to be virtuous (brave, just and desiring the welfare of their fellow citizens) and enough of them aren’t, especially since at least a plurality of regular Americans are cowardly, unjust and want to hurt their fellow citizens.

In such a situation no laws, no constitution, can work and the issue is thrown back on power, as it was during the Civil War but since, this time there is no anti-evil party (Lincoln and the Republicans) there is no clear basis for organizing or fighting. This means a long descent is far more likely than a revival of the good parts of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

Good people can make bad systems work. Bad people cannot make good systems work.

China works because the Communist Party, whatever its flaws, genuinely wants its people to be prosperous, genuinely tries to reduce inequality and genuinely wants China to be strong. America doesn’t work because American elites, including both major parties genuinely wants only a small minority to be wealthy, genuinely wants to impoverish most Americans and genuinely just wants money without the work required to keep or make America strong. And they sure as hell don’t believe in civil liberties.

 

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The Right Thing to Do: Homeless edition

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On January 29, 2026

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So, Utah decided to just give the homeless places to live.  The results are what anyone with sense, or who has followed the topic would expect:

Utah’s Housing First program cost between $10,000 and $12,000 per person, about half of the $20,000 it cost to treat and care for homeless people on the street.

Imagine that.

This is a reprint from 2015, but I think it makes an important point worth repeating, especially for all the new readers since then.

The right thing to do is almost always cheaper and gives better results, at least if the welfare of people is your concern.

If people are poor, give them money.  If people don’t have a house, get them a house.  If people are sick, get them health care.

The fact is, though, that you have to want to do the right thing. People tend to get down on the Church of Latter Day Saints, but for all their issues, I’ve always had a soft spot for them because I’ve heard many stories like this:

The church donated all of this,” Bate says. “Before we opened up, volunteers from the local Mormon ward came over and assembled all the furniture. It was overwhelming. For the first several years we were open, the LDS church made weekly food deliveries—everything from meat to butter and cheese. It wasn’t just dried beans—it was good stuff.” (The Utah Food Bank now makes weekly deliveries.)

I ask him if this is why the programs work so well in Utah—because of church donations.

“If the LDS church was not into it, the money would be missed, for sure,” he says, “but it’s church leadership that’s immensely important. If the word gets out that the church is behind something, it removes a lot of barriers.”…

….

“Why do you think they do it?” I ask(my emphasis)

“Oh,” he says, “I think they believe all that stuff in the New Testament about helping the poor. That’s kind of crazy for a religion, I know, but I think they take it quite seriously.”

A major driver of the social welfare movement in the United States was the social gospel.  The ending of sweatshops, the huge work programs of the 30s, the provision of Medicare and Social Security was driven in large part by Christian crusaders who believed that what they did to the poor, they did to Jesus.

You have to want to do the right thing.

This is just as true when dealing with matters like inequality.  FDR and the politicians of the 50s ran marginal tax rates for high earners at 90% or so because they, and the American people, genuinely believed that no one should have that much money.  They believed that it was earned by the efforts of other people: a rich person is someone who gets rich on other people’s work, with very rare exceptions, and even they get rich because of the society they are in.  (For a complete explanation of that, something most people refuse to understand, read “It’s Not Your Money.”)

Ethics and mores; belief, is why people do things.  It doesn’t exactly come before material circumstances (the two influence each other, with material circumstances, including technology, determining a range of possibilities), but within what is possible, belief in what we should do determines what we actually do.

In the world today we have the resources not just to feed everyone, but to give them a decent life, with education, entertainment, and housing that is warm in the winter and at least not unbearable in the summer.  We can cloth everyone well.  We have had the ability to do this for at least a hundred years or so, in theory, we’ve had it in practice since the recovery from World War II.

To do so, however, we must believe that we should, and we must be willing to act on that belief.  There will be sacrifices (a lot fewer billionaires, a lot less McMansions), but in the end even most of those who complain would be objectively better off, because inequality is robustly associated with worse health and less happiness, even for those who are the richest.  The top .01%, if they were still the top .01% but had far less money and power, would be happier and healthier in such a world.

As such, the battleground of belief; of ideology, is as important as that of technology. It is belief, mediated by power and turned into behaviour, which determines what actually happens in this world.

America’s Leaders In Waiting Have Identified Themselves

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On January 28, 2026

37 Comments

This was the situation when they fired:

Right hand holding his phone. Left hand on the ground. Zero threat to anyone. His gun, holstered, which he never went for, had been removed by an agent.

This is an execution. The Agent has not been positively identified (though there’s a possible ID floating around), and was immediately removed from Minneapolis. The ICE agents attempted to keep local police from the scene.

This is the best summary I’ve read:

an ICE agent physically assaults an annoying woman who is whistling at him to antagonize him, Pretti steps between the officer and the woman to protect her, Pretti is the restrained by 5 officers on his hands and knees, one of the officers notices he is armed and yells “gun,” an ICE officer disarms Pretti and while running away accidentally discharges the weapon, then another ICE agent reacts to the negligent discharge by shooting Pretti in the back multiple times while he is on his hands and knees.

No one has been charged, I can’t tell if there’s any investigation into the shooting: there certainly isn’t a federal one, and the local governor and mayor appear to be wimping out: going thru the motions without any attention of charging anyone.

This isn’t the first ICE execution, and who knows how many have occurred that weren’t filmed. Then there are all the people dying in detention, where they routinely keep 80 people in a cell, lights on all the time and beat people who ask for medical aid.

One of the ICE agents applauded when Pretti was killed. When Renee Good was killed the agent who shot her called her a “fucking bitch” and refused to let a doctor help her.

Police in the US are almost always bad. The job attracts authoritarians who like the idea of being able to push people around, but even the minimal safeguards were let loose on ICE and the Border Patrol—they took the job because they like being able to hurt people without even the remotest possibility they might be held accountable.

This is part of a larger pattern. The Trump administration ignores about a third of all court orders against it. Just ignores them. The rule of law has completely broken down in America at the elite and enforcer levels. It was already mostly broken, but there was a final red line: elites smarter than Trump weren’t willing to obviously ignore courts. Perhaps important people might ignore Congressional subpoenas, but Congress wouldn’t actually institute contempt against them, so the facade remained.

Now law is gone entirely. The first, second and fourth amendments are in tatters. Habeas Corpus is dead, ICE and the BP just routinely ignore it. This a common law protection, centuries old. (In the UK they’re making it illegal for jurors to not convict people if the judge disagrees, ending jury nullification.)

Civil liberties seem like “nice to have”, and so does the rule of law, but they aren’t. Without them a society can’t function. That whole “high trust” thing goes away, and no one trusts anyone else. The economy grinds to a halt and civil society collapses.

The silver lining here, the hope, is that Minnessotans have come together to resist this. Thousands of people, not just protesting, but feeding those who can’t leave their houses, helping legally, and putting their bodies on the line. There are good people left in the US, but what they need to recognize is that fixing this requires replacing almost every member of the current elite: Walz has failed, Congress has failed, business has mostly been supine to trump as have universities. Everyone who’s in a position of power, whose duty and responsibility it is to resist has either failed or not even tried.

What needs to be done is to note the ones who tried or resigned rather than engage in illegality and immorality. Go after everyone else, replace them and if they actively engaged in evil, convict them and send them to prison. Put the people who did resist back in, not just politicians but prosecutors and judges and city councillors and so on, and then fill the rest of the ranks with people who went out on the streets in Minnesota and elsewhere and put their bodies in the way of evil, or who otherwise meaningfully resisted.

These are the people who proved themselves. When the brownshirts came,  they are the ones who stood up. We now know who is actually moral, who is actually brave and who can actually be trusted when the chips down. This is the new leadership cadre, if Americans are wise.

Not saying this will be done, but these are the slivers of hope. The Brownshirts came.They were resisted. Those who actually resisted proved themselves.

Those should be your leaders. Anyone who failed should be out or in prison.

 

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