Author: Ian Welsh Page 2 of 397

Drill, Baby, Drill; Screw Immigrants; End the 14th Amendment; Climate Change Ho! Trump’s Day One Actions

On January 21, 2025

What can I say, it’s an old picture, but I like it

The Guardian has a pretty good list of Trump’s executive actions day one.

January 6th pardons are the most interesting, to me. Trump should have granted these pardons before leaving office in 2020 but I’m sure they’re still a great relief to those charged or imprisoned. (I actually know one guy who wound up in prison because of J6.) When I say “should” I’m not expressing support for them storming the capital, just noting that a smart leader protects his most fanatical followers. Might need them again, after all.

There are a bunch of oil and climate related orders, which amount to “drill more, and screw any anti-climate change policies or agreements” including leaving the Paris accords. I’m not that worked up, Biden massively increased drilling too, he just protected a few places from it. As for the Paris agreement, it’s always been a dead letter. I notice that Musk has skated by, at least so far, Trump got rid of the “goal” to have half of all autos be electrical, but didn’t get rid of the subsidies, without which Musk would lose hundreds of billions of dollars .

Trump also ordered more work on the wall (Biden hadn’t actually stopped building barriers), ended appointments, seems to have effectively ended refugees and most impressively ordered all government departments not to issue documents related to birthright citizenship of any children born to illegal refugees. This is in direct violation of the 14th amendment as written, but given the makeup of the Supreme Court, the 14th may be a dead letter. He’s also declared an “emergency” so that troops can be deployed to the border, which would otherwise be illegal.

He has declared Mexican cartels terrorists and I’d guess he’s thinking of launching raids across the border, without Mexican government permission, which is going to be a nightmare.

All genders other than male and female have been declared non-existent, all policies allowing or encouraging gender change are disallowed, and the government can’t fund anything. Anti-trans hysteria continues. Pure pandering from Trump, as he’s suggested in the past that he doesn’t really care but is happy to whip up crowds with it. DEI related executive orders have been rescinded. Won’t do a thing to help the competency crisis, but more red meat.

Trump has also removed Schedule F protection for Federal civil servants from arbitrary dismissal. This will be challenged, but the consensus seems to be he’s within his rights. I’m not super worked about this, winning political parties should be able to put their people in place and it will work to the advantage of future Presidents as well.

Overall there’s not much here that’s surprising. For immigrants the real question is his planned immigrant roundups and expelling, which seem likely to start soon. The border guards were always his most loyal servants among the paramilitary forces and I’m sure they’re salivating at the opportunity to beat people up and degrade them.

The most interesting thing is that Musk has thus far bought himself a reprieve. Were I him, I’d showboat less, because Trump doesn’t like people who steal his limelight. Musk was essentially created by Obama era policies and subsidies favoring both private spaceflight and electric cars, and he can be destroyed just as easily by a hostile President.

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Has Israel Lost?

By Ian Welsh

On January 20, 2025

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There’s a lot of celebrating of the Gaza ceasefire. Hamas troops are openly on the streets, hostages from both sides are being returned (that only Israeli captives are called hostages is ludicrous) and it’s clear that Israel came nowhere close to destroying Hamas. This is an impressive accomplishment, Gaza is only 25×5 miles: Gaza is tiny. Hamas’s tunnel strategy clearly worked.

That said, Gaza is a wreck.

The official civilian casualty numbers are under 100K, but I suspect a full population study will find the death toll far higher. All Gaza hospitals are non-operational, often destroyed entirely and a high percentage of the nurses and doctors are dead. Water and power infrastructure has been smashed, and even if Israel turns their side back on most of Gaza will be without.

A great deal will depend on whether the ceasefire sticks. Netanyahu has suggested that the war will start up again.

So, with all due respect to Hamas, Yemen and Hezbollah, it’s going to depend on Trump. Of the three Yemen has the most leverage, it can keep attacking if Israel keeps violating the ceasefire and the only way to get it to stop is to keep the ceasefire, which will re-open shipping as nothing else can, but by itself it’s not sufficient.

However ultimately Trump has plenty of leverage. As Yitzak Brick, the ex-IDF general said:

“All of our missiles, the ammunition, the precision-guided bombs, all the airplanes and bombs, it’s all from the U.S. The minute they turn off the tap, you can’t keep fighting. You have no capability. … Everyone understands that we can’t fight this war without the United States. Period.”

The war doesn’t start up again if Trump is willing to use his leverage. It’s that simple. Trump doesn’t seem to like war, but he’s also surrounded by Zionists and hawks. Israel has already, as usual, violated the ceasefire, as it has thousands of times in Southern Lebanon. It will attempt to find an excuse to re-start full scale bombing.

But if Trump really doesn’t want that, it doesn’t happen. That simple. Israel still has tens of thousands of internal refugees, a huge loss of middle and small sized businesses and it also requires US financial and economic aid. Israel can’t fight if Trump brings down the hammer.

I will note, that at least so far, it appears that those who refused to vote for Biden because of the Gaza genocide were justified, and that those Muslim leaders who appeared publicly with Trump appear vindicated. Biden was pro-genocide, and refused to his leverage to stop the war. Trump, even before taking power, said that if the hostages weren’t returned by January 20th, there’d be hell to pay, and lo-and-behold, on January 19th the hostages were returned. Trump’s envoy forced Netanyahu to meet him during Shabbat, after Netanyahu initially refused.

Israel has a great deal of power in the West, thru its operatives and donations, but it is the tail to America’s dog, and a determined President, like Reagan in Lebanon or George Bush Sr. can stand against if they decide to. Since Trump can’t have a third term, he doesn’t need to kiss AIPAC’s ass.

We’ll see how it plays out, but at least the start has been promising.

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The Tik-Tok Ban Is Hypocritical Nonsense

By Ian Welsh

On January 17, 2025

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The justification for the TikTok ban is that it supposedly collects a ton of data.

TikTok’s data collection practices are insane. The app gather data that other apps normally consider off limits, including the content of users’ private messages, and the full contents of a user’s device contacts.

I agree, this is insane. But it isn’t unusual, and it isn’t even the worst in class.

That’s a lot of data – but it’s worth noting that TikTok does not seem to collect more data than other social media companies. A privacy researcher working with the Washington Post found that TikTok gathers less data than Facebook in some cases.

So it’s obviously not about data collection. As for sharing with the Chinese government, well, Google sells user data to the Chinese thru third parties.

Perhaps it has something to do with TikTok users being against genocide?

But most revealing of all is that Biden and Trump are both trying to avoid a TikTok shutdown. See, what Congress wants is the Chinese parent company to sell TikTok to an American. But TikTok has refused and has said it will shut down on the 19th.

And here Biden is saying he won’t enforce the shutdown, and Trump saying he wants to find a solution.

It’s a shakedown.

Whatever it is, it isn’t because Congress has suddenly decided to crack down on apps collecting too much user data.

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The Tech-Company Fad For Laying Off “Low Performers” Is A Bad Idea

By Ian Welsh

On January 17, 2025

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General Electric, once one of the most important companies in America started firing the bottom 10% of performers every year when Jack Welch took over. Seems smart, right? Strangely, however, GE was driven into the ground by Welch. It made a lot of money, for a while, but it was burning down the house and now it’s a has been company. The routine firing wasn’t the only reason, but it was part of it.

Lately I’m seeing companies like Meta and Microsoft saying they’re doing large lay-offs of the lowest performers. Seems smart, eh?

Problem is that most performance reviews have nothing to do with performance. They ask other people to rate you, often the so-called 360 degree rating, but sometimes it’s just your boss. Problem is, people suck at rating.

what you find in statistical studies is that their ratings only correlate to their own personality. We don’t see other people, we see ourselves. Groups don’t make this better; increasing the number of people who are bad at rating others doesn’t, in aggregate, turn the ratings good. Everyone is wrong. (There’s a bunch of other statistical stuff here, but what it comes down to is everyone is that there is NO way to measure the performance of knowledge workers.

Generally the best thing to do, counter-intuitive as it is, is have people rate themselves. When asking others, the questions are:

Who do you plan to promote?

Who do you go to get X done well?

Who do you go to when you need extraordinary results.

This is still subjective information, but it is reliable.

The better question to ask during lay-offs is “does this job need to be done?” If it does, unless it’s clear the person isn’t doing his job (in which case they should have already been fired), then lay them off.

Lay-offs generally do more harm than good. There’s plenty of evidence of this. Companies don’t lay-off into greatness, it’s a sign something is wrong and muscle gets cut at least as often as fat.

But using performance reviews (which, as they exist, should be tossed anyway) is extra stupid even if it seems like “duh, of course” idea.

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Doctorow Has the Best Idea for How Canada Should Retaliate to Trump’s Tariffs + Make It So Americans Can’t Drive

By Ian Welsh

On January 16, 2025

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Just break the IP laws and set up app stores with 5% feeds. Create jail break kits for John Deere tractors, and so on.

There’s no reason that a Canadian app store would have to confine itself to Canadian software authors, either. Canadian app stores could offer 5% commissions on sales to US and global software authors, and provide jailbreaking kits that allows device owners all around the world to install the Canadian app stores where software authors don’t get ripped off by American Big Tech companies.

Canadian companies like Honeybee already make “front-ends” for John Deere tractors – these are the components that turn a tractor into a plow, or a thresher, or another piece of heavy agricultural equipment. Honeybee struggles constantly to get its products to interface with Deere tractors, because Deere uses digital locks to block its products:

https://honeybee.ca/

Canada could produce jailbreaking kits for John Deere tractors, too – not just for Honeybee. Every ag-tech company in the world would benefit from commercially available, professionally supported John Deere jailbreaking kits. So would farmers, because these kits would restore farmers’ Right to Repair their own tractors:

This is the ultimate “break glass in case of fire” situation. US elites make a ton of their money from IP, and breaking it would hurt them extremely. It’s something I thought Russia could do in the face of American sanctions, but why not Canada? If the US won’t keep its deals with us, any deals we have with it are ours to break.

And Doctorow’s right that this is the perfect retaliation: any sort of exit-tariffs or retaliatory tariffs hurt Canada too. This just hurts the US, and hurts the decision makers, not ordinary people. Heck, many of them might benefit.

To make this really work, and make sure the population backs it, share half the profits with Canadians: just split them evenly.

If the US wants Canada to not be its good ally, then why not become a semi-neutral country? We can sell to the US and China and Europe, and become a data haven.

The other, less fun, but very devastating thing to do is to cut off raw crude. US refineries are reliant on Canadian crude oil, and by about a month after Canada doing so there would be absolute shortages of gasoline in half of America. Not “the price is high”, but “we don’t have it.” Canada can handle this for a few months. Just cover the company losses and insist they keep paying workers until we say otherwise.

Finally, and obviously, all countries being hit my Trump tariffs should get together, support each other and work to hurt the US and Trump as much as possible. Trump’s handed us allies, we should use them.

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The Competency Crisis Is Not About DEI

By Ian Welsh

On January 15, 2025

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That DEI (women and brown people) are responsible is a constant right wing cry.

The competency crisis is a result of an economy where making money without making a product is easier than making something. We prioritized financial profits—multi generational rises in asset prices that were faster than inflation. Housing went up. Stocks went up. Private equity earned money buy buying companies, larding them up with debt, and running them into the ground. Profits were juiced by moving production offshore and engaging in regulatory and labor arbitrage.

The best profit came from playing financial games and rentierism. You didn’t have to make anything or delivery anything, you just had to find a way to squeeze money out of something by making it go up faster than inflation, or by destroying something which was already built, taking all the future value now and giving it to yourself. Even the (old) Middle Class got in on this, by buying houses when they were cheap, watching them appreciate faster than wages, then selling them when old and moving south to be have their bums wiped in cheaper southern states by brown immigrants.

Everyone wanted to make money without having to create to get it. Mostly they either wanted to get unearned money from appreciation, to destroy what others had built, or to capture a market in an oligopoly or monopoly so they could juice prices.

Meanwhile, the manufacturing floor moved to China and elsewhere. The people who knew how to make things retired, moved to other jobs, retired and eventually died.

We can’t build most things because we haven’t prioritized building things, or getting better at building things since the 70s. The eighties are where predatory capitalism took hold, and since then the whole game has been rentierism, unearned gains, predation and arbitrage.

DEI doesn’t much matter in comparison. The people running the economy for the last 45 years have been mostly white males, and that doesn’t matter either. Women or brown people would have done the same thing. Margaret Thatcher was a woman, and one of the founders of this mindset.

No one’s competent at actually doing things, except profit extraction, because our societies haven’t prioritized doing anything but extracting profit for over 45 years. Everyone who lived in a society that was about really delivering products and making things is dead or retired.

if you want a competent society again, make it so that no one can get wealthy, let alone rich, without really making something or improving people’s lives. And no, Facebook and Google and so on don’t count, because they were started as good, and made shitty to increase profits. That’s the opposite of what’s needed. (AI in the US will be the same.)

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Gaza Ceasefire Proves Biden Wanted Genocide

By Ian Welsh

On January 13, 2025

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Trump famously said that he wanted the hostages released by January 20th or there’d be hell to pay.

Well, we now have what appears to be a ceasefire deal. All hostages won’t be released by the 20th, but it won’t be long afterwards.

As Ryan Grim states, Biden wasn’t “weak”, he was for the genocide. And as many of us noted, the war could always have been ended by the US with one phone call, because it could not be waged without US support. Israel is completely dependent on American weapons and ammunition shipments, as well as US economic aid.

Lots of stuff is still up in the air, including who will control Gaza afterwards, and we’ll see if Israel actually lets aid in. But the deal appears to be basically the same deal as the one offered in July which Netanyahu kiboshed. The difference now is that Trump, even if not officially President yet, is calling the shots. Biden could have ended it in July and saved a ton of lives.

I’m a little surprised by this, but apparently Trump wasn’t just pandering to Muslims when he said he’d end the war. As for Biden, he’s human filth, a genocidal bastard. I refused to endorse him because I won’t support genocide, period.

Those who said Trump would be even worse for Gaza appear to have been wrong.

Don’t support genocide. Ever.

This also appears to be a loss for Israel, though it will depend on the details. Israel’s goal was ethnic cleansing at the least. If the Gazans keep control of all of Gaza, Israel lost. Frankly, at this point, not something I expected, but we’ll see as the deal and Israeli compliance with the deal becomes more clear.

America is in decline, possibly terminal decline, but it’s still a great power and Israel is entirely America’s creature, though the influence of AIPAC often makes it unclear whether the dog’s waving the tail, or the tail the dog.

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What Should Europe Do About American Cannibalizing It & The Chinese Threat?

By Ian Welsh

On January 13, 2025

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So, Trump has threatened, most of the world, including most Germany and much of Europe, with 25% tariff rates. Under Biden, with the destruction of three of the four underseas pipelines from Russia to Europe, along with sanctions, Germany in particular and Europe in general have been losing energy-price sensitive industry to America. They close down in Europe, they open up in the US. Natural gas from America is much more expensive than Russian gas.

Meanwhile, the Chinese are coming on strong in automobiles and other consumer goods. Right now it’s mostly hitting European exports, so much so that BMW is planning on shutting down plants. The Euros have sold a lot of cars to China, but domestic producers are now cheaper and in many cases better, especially EVs.

Down in Africa, practically every country that France had troops in has or is planning to kick them out. The French bought a lot of resources from their ex-colonies at cheaper than market prices and screwed their ex-imperial possessions on loans and even charged some for “infrastructure built during colonization.” Now that those nations can get security from Russia and goods from China, they’re kicking the French out en-masse.

No love lost. Can’t imagine why people would be upset by being conquered, then charged for it. Ungrateful bastards.

Anyway, all of this has put Europe in a pickle. They’re behind China, the US, Japan and South Korea technologically. Their goods can’t compete with Chinese goods, and they’re losing their access to cheap resources from Africa, and have cut themselves off (with an explosive assist, almost certainly from the US) from cheap Russian resources. Meanwhile Trump is threatening Greenland, and saying the Euros need to spend more money on NATO.

Fun times in the garden. Nothing the Euros don’t deserve for refusing to end their vassalization back in the 2000s when they were up and the US was other occupied, but water under the bridge and all that.

So what should the Euros do? (Not what will they do. They love being American vassals and may well hug trumps leg as he kicks them until they cough blood.)

Well, for one, end the anti-Russia BS. If the Eastern Euros don’t like it, the Westerns should just kick them out of the EU or end the EU and start something else. Poles talk big, but they suck at the Euro teat. The Americans aren’t going to send them as much money as the EU does. If they want to be anti-Russia while Germany loses all its industry, get rid of them.

Russia has constantly stated its happiness to start selling to Europe again. Sure, China and India will buy their resources, but without Europe they lose a lot of bargaining power. Plus they built all the infrastructure and it can be fixed.

Second, reasonable trade deals with everyone else the US under Trump is fucking with tariffs. Canada and Australia are a good start. Japan seems to be avoiding the tariffs, but is worried and still pretty anti-China. Cut a deal with them as well.

The issue is that Europe has a high cost structure. Prices for their goods can’t compete with China. They need resources. Canada and Australia and Japan are high cost producers.

Form a trade bloc. Put up their own tariffs so that their domestic industry can compete. Insist that the Chinese build factories in country to avoid the tariffs. Europe’s still high income. Foster tech transfer from China. Massively invest in tech and science. Shut up about Chinese human rights, it’s none of their business and after Gaza it’s laughably hypocritical. China isn’t genociding the Uighurs, even if they don’t treat them great. So zip it.

Make your own trade area, consisting of high income, high cost structure nations with whom you can compete. Tell the US to fuck itself (politely but firmly) and rebuild the European military, not as part of NATO but independent.

France has nukes, expand that program and get them on modern missiles. Put allies under the European nuclear shield.

Form, in other words, a third pole.

Oh, there’s more that needs to be done. Neoliberal austerity needs to end, rents and housing and stock bubbles need to be slammed into the ground, and it needs to be policy that if you want to get rich you have to actually make stuff. No more finance bullshit, or landlordism.

But start by ending Europe’s vassalization and forming their own bloc.

Europe needs to grow up. The era of being America’s ally, and having a good standard of living without really having to work for it is over. America’s declining and they want to cannibalize their vassals to slow or (they hope, but hah) reverse the decline.

Don’t let them.

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