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

Category: Trump Era Page 2 of 15

Understanding America’s Betrayal Of Ukraine

Let’s start with this: Ukraine is losing the war, and the longer it goes on the worse the peace deal will be. I absolutely agree with Trump that there needs to be a peace deal, and soon.

But the rhetoric coming out of the Trump administration and its proxies suggests that America owes Ukraine nothing, and that indeed, Ukraine owes America for all its support. This sounds reasonable, on the face of it, but only if you don’t know any history.

Let’s start with the 2014 Maidan protests which overthrew the Ukrainian government. They were a color revolution, heavily supported by the Americans and Europeans. Say what you will about Yanukovych, he was the elected President. There’s decent evidence that the sniper massacre was done by Maidan itself (see this academic study), and, post-coup, Ukraine was essentially run by Victoria Nuland.

The Maidan coup came in response to Yanukovych’s decision to accept Russia’s aid package instead of the West’s. This was the correct decision: Russia offered more money and aid with less strings, while the Western aid came with IMF restructuring. If you know anything about the IMF you know that their restructuring is always painful, and it doesn’t improve host nations economies. It does, however, increase inequality, and opens up the economy so foreigners can buy in.

Back in 2008 there was a brief Georgian/Russian war. Georgia had regions which were ethnically Russian, and they were de-facto independent, and recognized as such by Russia. When Georgia invaded South Ossetia, Russia counter-invaded. At the time, I wrote an article for FireDogLake predicting the next Russian war would be over Crimea and Sevastopol. Sevastopol is Russia’s main Black Sea port, and a Russian “hero city,” — much beloved. Ukraine leased it to Russia, and if Ukraine ever moved to kick the Russians out I predicted the Russians would go to war rather than comply.

Put simply, Sevastopol was and is a key Russia interest.

After the coup, Ukraine threatened to end the Russian lease. Russia invaded Crimea, and took it over. (Don’t cry too much, most Crimeans, except the Tatars, would much rather be Russian). Meanwhile, the East of Ukraine went into revolt, because they are mostly, actually Russian and had supported the ousted President. A small war was fought over that. The Russians intervened, routed the Ukrainians, and they set up a peace deal called the Minsk accord, which basically gave Donetsk and Luhansk semi-autonomy.

Notice that without the coup, which was backed by the US, there would have been no 2014 war between Ukraine and Russia, no loss of Crimea, or and no semi-independence for the far East of Ukraine.

The coup was anti-democratic, overthrowing a legitimately elected government which was accepting the best deal offered. (And folks, I’ve studied IMF deals. They are always bad. Always.)

Of course, having lost a war and territory, Ukraine now becomes very anti-Russia, at least in the West of the country. Understandable. Then there’s a HUGE military buildup. And, although Minsk was sold as the end of the matter, it was negotiated in bad faith by the West. This has been confirmed:

The West didn’t want peace, it wanted a chance to build up the Ukrainian military for the next round.

That next round came after Ukraine spent a lot of time shelling the hell out of Luhansk and Donetsk; this was a violation of the Minsk agreement. Then Ukraine and NATO started talking about Ukraine joining NATO, which Russia had made clear was a red line.

Now here’s the thing: Absent the US backed Maidan coup, there would be no Ukrainian war. It wouldn’t have happened. Additionally, absent the huge build up of the Ukranian military, again US- and EU-backed, there would have been no war, because Ukraine wouldn’t have risked it.

The US used Ukraine in a proxy war, after an anti-democratic coup. The West genuinely believed that sanctions would break Russia and allow Ukraine to win the war, and hoped that the loss would cause a break-up of Russia. Unfortunately for them, China needed Russia as an ally, and kept the Russian economy running, and it is Europe that was damaged by the sanctions, while Russia’s economy is, overall, booming.

Back near the start of the war, a peace offer was on the table, far more generous than anything Ukraine can expect now. Boris Johnson, Britain’s Prime Minister, with US support, told Zelensky not to take it — NATO would back him to the hilt, and Zelensky could win the war.

Fast forward: Ukraine is losing the war. On a map, Russian gains over the last year aren’t all that large, but the Ukrainian army is running out of manpower, and is being pushed past its line of prepared defenses. When the Ukrainian army breaks, and it will, the Russians will start making huge advances very quickly.

Now, Trump comes in, and acts as if America had nothing to do with all this and, further, acts like Ukraine has taken advantage of American generosity instead of Ukraine being an American proxy, which has been devastated after an American coup pushed it into a war with a much stronger country and America and the UK told Ukraine not to take a better peace deal.

Trump’s attempting to get Ukrainian minerals in “repayment” for America pushing Ukraine into a war it couldn’t win, and is not even offering security guarantees in exchange. I loathe Zelensky, but he’s right to reject this one-sided “deal.”

This is despicable. This is honorless. The very least Ukraine deserves from America is a sincere effort to cut, for Ukraine, the best peace deal they can get.

Now Zelensky is delusional. Threats to fight on and a refusal to negotiate are insane. Russia’s BATNA (best alternative to a negotiated agreement) is to just continue the war, win it, and impose an unconditional surrender. Think Japan and Germany at the end of World War II.

But American negotiation seems to be about making the best deal for America, not for Ukraine.

My suggestion would be that Zelensky ask the Chinese to host negotiations. Yes, they’re Russia’s ally, BUT they’ve always supported a peace deal, and more importantly, they’re the only nation which really does have leverage over Russia; without China, Russia cannot survive economically. And, unlike America, China has said it is willing to put peacekeepers in Ukraine. Russia is NOT going to target Chinese troops.

Further, if China promises to rebuild Ukraine, it will do so, and do so quickly and competently. The Chinese are the best in the world at building roads, railways, ports, power plants, and all other types of infrastructure.

Ukraine’s government was effectively controlled by the West, and pushed into a war it couldn’t win. They need to end their Western alliance, and cut the best deal they can get. That means, especially, not letting Trump negotiate, because he’s not negotiating for them, but for America.

It’s a bad hand, an awful one. But it’s the hand Ukraine has to play.

As for American claims that Ukraine used them, rather the other way around, they are without merit and beyond dishonorable.

Let’s give Kissinger the final word:

“It may be dangerous to be America’s enemy, but to be America’s friend is fatal.”

 

You get what you pay for. This blog is free to read, but not to produce. If you enjoy the content, donate or subscribe.

Understanding Trump’s Tariffs Effects on World Trade & How He’s Ending the American Era

To understand how tariffs are going to hit various economies, you need to understand how neoliberal era trade and production was set up. In the old world supply chains were much less integrated. In general, if you made it in your country, your supply chain was in your country. There were always some exceptions, especially for resources like nickel, copper, uranium, etc., but these were the exception to the rule. Trade deals and laws in the old era usually required foreign companies which were set up for production in a host country to source a minimum amount of parts from said host country. Almost always this was over 50 percent. If the infrastructure didn’t exist, the company, usually with government help, would set it up.

Understand clearly that the neoliberal era came out of the inflation crises of the 70s. It had two goals: 1) To reduce consumer inflation and thus growth in petrochemical use, and; 2) To make the rich much richer.

In the post-war era, most production in most Western countries was meant for the internal market. If you needed it, you made it, with some exceptions: The smaller you were, the more you needed to import some goods, and of course, if you’re Norway or Canada you import bananas and coffee, and you imported any resources you couldn’t produce enough of yourself, like wood, oil, gas, and minerals. The high imports of oil were the old world’s achilles heel, and the inability to import substitutes away from them killed it.

So, most things ordinary people bought have an oil input cost, and the more money ordinary people had, the more they’d do things which had an oil cost. There was almost nothing the Arabs needed to buy from the West at the time: They had small populations, and didn’t have consumer economies. We could sell them military goods, but other than that their needs were modest. They had us over an oil barrel.

I remember the post-war world well, it died in stages. In the 70s and 80s, my family lived in Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, and Bangladesh at various times. In all these countries, even Singapore, everything was cheaper than in Canada or America. Ex-pats who had incomes denominated in first world currencies lived very well. When in Canada, we were lower middle class. Overseas we had servants.

Yet despite having cheap goods and services, all those countries except Singapore were third world. Poor.

The post-war developed country play was to keep both prices and wages high, and to make sure wages went up faster than prices, while controlling asset prices, which included home prices and rent. Wages were high because prices were high, and because most production was done in country, or in another high wage country, and because there were tariffs on goods from low cost domiciles, and as they didn’t have much industry anyway, it didn’t matter. Even as late as 1980 or so, America made 97 percent of everything it needed, and the Japanese export surge which changed that still came from a first world, high wage/high cost nation.

In this world, there was certainly trade, but countries still strove to make and grow as much of what they needed as they could at home.

Then came the inflation crises, when due to the oil shocks, wages grew slower than prices — a lot slower. I remember the price of a chocolate bar going from 25c to a dollar in the period of two years (I was a kid, so that’s the sort of price that was important to me. Paperback prices also went from about 99c to $2.50 and then up to $3.50).

So, if you’re going to tackle this, you need to reduce the use of oil, which means reduce ordinary people’s use of oil, which means restraining their income growth. This is why, during the 80s and 90s, every time wages grew faster than inflation, the Fed would slam on the brakes and cause a recession.

But the other play, which also helps keep domestic wages down, is to manufacture and grow and produce in really low wage domiciles. You can slowly crush European, American, and Canadian wages, but people in China, Bangladesh, Mexico, India, and so on are already earning one-tenth of what you have to pay first world workers. They were a lot less efficient workers, too, but even so, if you offshored production, you could reduce the price of goods.

So offshoring became a way to reduce inflation. It also juiced profits, since much of the price decreases weren’t passed on to first world consumers, but hey, win/win if you’re a first-world capitalist or financier. Because production was being increasingly farmed out to developing nations, first world economies financialized and the financial elites took control from the old manufacturing elites (who were, for all their flaws, actually capitalists. Financiers are the lowest form of capitalist life.)

This, of course, lead to first-world countries de-industrializing, and eventually to the rise of China, and the loss of the West’s tech lead, along with the evisceration of the middle class, a huge homelessness crisis, and in Europe, sclerosis.

Now here’s the irony: China has very low costs, so low that I’d argue that the idea that they’re still middle income is false. Their ostensible salaries look low to us, but cars in China can be had for 10K. Earbud equivalents can be had for less than $10. Smart phones are cheaper. Almost everything is cheaper. It’s a weird inverse of the old first world situation: Wages are lower, but costs are lower vs. wages are higher, and so are costs.

Either equilibrium, of course, works for prosperity. What the first-world now has is high-ish wages and higher costs. I saw a factoid the other day that claimed that rent has increased 350 percent more than median wages in the US since 1985, for example.

Now, let’s take closer look at the structure of trade in the neoliberal era: It was based around trade agreements like NAFTA and the WTO which made it essentially illegal to run old-style economies where most production for internal markets was domestic. You couldn’t tariff, you couldn’t subsidize, and you couldn’t enforce ownership rules, domestic content rules, or even rules requiring primary processing of raw resources before export (for example, Canada didn’t used to ship raw logs and canned salmon before selling it overseas.) If you did, the independent trade courts would hit you with huge multi-billion dollar fines. You also had to enforce American IP laws, and thus pay a portion of most profits to America.

What this lead to is countries becoming cogs in production networks; they had part of the supply chain for a product without having most of the supply chain. Their economies were dependent on trade because even if they assembled the final product, most of the supply chain was outside their country.

Let’s take an example from Canada’s current dilemma with regard to American tariffs. Canada’s government made some big bets on EVs, especially batteries. It seemed to make sense: We produce the minerals which go into batteries, so why not manufacture them here and ship them to the US?

This was a BIG bet in Canadian terms. Ontario and the Feds put up about 16 billion of subsidies, perks, and land to get VW to build a battery plant in St. Thomas. This plant, if it goes into full production will produce a million batteries a year. Stellantis’s battery plant in Windsor had 15 billion dollars in subsidies. Honda is retooling to make EVs in Canada, and to produce batteries, and other parts, for EVs — with a 2.5 billion tax cut deal and 2.5 billion in direct and indirect subsidies.

Now here’s the issue, which you may have spotted: They’ll make way more batteries than Canada could possibly need for domestic EVs. Way, way more. With tariffs and uncertainty (after all Trump, could increase them again) none of these projects are viable. Perhaps we could re-tool one of them and really push Canadians to switch en-mass to EVs. If the Feds are smart, that’s probably what they’ll do. (Spoiler, the Feds are not always smart.)

But no matter what, Canada’s taking a huge hit.

In the old world, where you produced primarily for yourself, and if it was more expensive than foreign alternatives said “eat tariffs”, and maybe subsidized, a foreign government couldn’t just decide one day to destroy your industry. Trade was usually in products the other nation didn’t make or grow itself, or genuinely couldn’t make or grow enough of.

The neoliberal trade structure was designed to make national autonomy, in anything (food, energy, manufactured goods) extremely difficult to obtain. It was a giant hostage situation.

It broke down because of stupidity and greed. The full story is long, but the essence is simple: Americans gave China the full stack. The entire supply line for a lot of goods is domestic for China with smaller chunks in close by allies like Vietnam. They were low cost, they had real competitive markets which kept prices low, and, because the manufacturing floor was in China, they eventually took the tech lead. This required about 20 years.

So China’s now the only nation in the world that has an old style “post-war” economy: It now produces primarily for the domestic market, but it also gets the neoliberal era advantage of selling huge amounts of goods overseas. Win/Win. For them.

What Trump’s team (not so much Trump as certain advisors) is trying to do is to re-shore a full manufacturing stack to America. They noticed that everyone industrializes behind some form of price supports, and that usually those are tariffs (China used currency controls), so they’re instituting tariffs. Given that the market for a lot of goods is in the US, they figure, correctly, that a lot of manufacturing will be forced to move back to America.

All those batteries Canada is making.

This screws every single American ally who allowed their economies to be restructured by American lead trade deals in the 80s and 90s. Every single one.

That’s why Canada and Mexico are in for a world of hurt, and also the EU. It’s also why China is not in for a world of hurt — they’ve got the full stack, and a massive domestic market. Plus, because their goods are cheap, they’ve got almost the entire global South plus most of the SE Asian economies as customers.

And here’s the problem for America: All its got is the US market, because it’s fucking every major trade partner it has. The allies (ex allies?) have to go back to an old style economy too, or form a much smaller and stupider neoliberal bloc, and if they can’t sell to America, they aren’t going to buy from America either. So America can get some full stack back, but only what it’s economy can afford.

And the American economy is much smaller than it looks. Much, much smaller. GDP numbers are massively over-inflated by asset price bubbles, much of the income from foreign assets is going to dry up, almost certainly eventually including IP. If you can’t sell to the Americans, why enforce their IP laws and pay them? Foreign ownership rules will start popping back up, and US assets overseas will be sold to locals — often at cents on the dollar. Of course, the same will happen to foreign assets in the US, but the “world” the US inhabits economically will shrink.

And then, if you can’t sell to the US, why the fuck are you using the US dollar for trade? Trump has made huge threats of tariffs against anyone who moves off the dollar for trade, but if you already effectively can’t sell to the US, again, who gives a fuck? Tariff away, asshole.

And when dollar’s hegemony disappears, the US economy will deflate to its actual size — at least a third, and probably half as large as the official numbers. Think someone pricking a water balloon. It’s going to be amazing to watch.

And that, children, is the end of the American era and Empire. It is very close now, and Trump is making it happen much faster. All praise Trump.

(There’s a lot more to unpack about the effects of Trump’s trade wars but this article is already over 2,000 words. For example, will Trump successfully reindustrialize America and make America, if not great again, at least a decent place to live? More on that soonish.)

You get what you pay for. This blog is free to read, but not to produce. If you enjoy the content, donate or subscribe.

Trump’s Budget Will Cause a Recession

Trump’s new budget is going to hurt the economy massively. There are 4.5 trillion in tax cuts to high earners and corporations and 880 billion in cuts from “Energy and Commerce.”

Energy and Commerce probably sounds innocuous, but that committee overseas healthcare, and it has only 200 billion in spending that isn’t health care, which means cuts to Medicaid, CHIP, and ACA.

DOGE has implemented some massive cuts to research, but those cuts hit research hospitals hard, and are going to result in a lot of loss of hospital jobs because of loss of overhead.

Tariffs will also hit the economy hard, especially tariffs on energy, where there’s little ability to domestic producers to eat cost increases.

Tax cuts to high earners and corporations don’t increase the strength of the real economy; the money will go to buyouts, stock buybacks, executive salaries, and luxury goods, not to investment in production and new jobs. Cuts to the civil service also have an obvious negative effect on the economy, though some will lead to higher profits due to no longer needing to comply with regulations and laws. (IRS cuts to auditors are the worst of these.)

If you want to re-industrialize, you have to force companies to invest in new production, which means ending things like stock buybacks, executive options, and various other ways for corporations and rich people to juice their income without doing something productive.

In other words, this is a very good budget if you’re rich, and a very bad budget if you aren’t. It’s going to hit red states harder than blue states, since they are overall more dependent on federal budget spending.

This budget will make America weaker, damage administrative capacity, and hurt everyone but maybe to the top 5 percent or so.

Welcome to Trump’s America.

You get what you pay for. This blog is free to read, but not to produce. If you enjoy the content, donate or subscribe.

Understanding DOGE’s War Against the 20th Century

To understand DOGE, it’s best to start with Reagan. Reagan reduced regulation massively, and where he couldn’t get rid of laws, he and his successors just stopped enforcing them regularly. This took steam over time. So, for example, there was some anti-trust action up until George W. Bush. In fact, without anti-trust actions, there would be no Microsoft as we understand it. IBM had MS write the operating system for the IBM PC because they had been hit by anti-trust action repeatedly and wanted to avoid it. It’s not like IBM couldn’t write its own operating system

Gates himself engaged in repeated violations of anti-trust law, and most of it was allowed to slide; eventually the Feds went after him. The case was going badly for him, but George Bush Jr. ordered it shut down.

Generally, regulations do impose a cost, and in return, the public receives a benefit. There’s also some benefit to corporations, because regulations increase trust. But as time goes by, people assume companies are trustworthy, and regulations start seeming like pure cost.

Cut regulations, and you increase profits. It’s often that simple. The decay of trust which loses money takes decades, and the profits are now.

Likewise, when you cut government workers, the work usually still needs to be done. Contractors take over, and they charge more and usually do a shittier job, if not immediately, but certainly in due time. Here in Toronto, where I live, half the garbage collection was given to private enterprise. At first, they were cheaper, but within ten years, why, they were more expensive than union work, though somehow the actual workers were getting paid less. Strange, that.

Nor is the Federal bureaucracy in any significant way bloated:

The chart above is in absolute numbers, which means the size of the federal workforce, relative to population, has been declining. You wonder why you’re getting bad service? That, plus contractors, is why.

All of this, of course, doesn’t include the fact that Musk was under investigation by multiple agencies. This Grok (his own AI) generated lists from February, amuses:

Before the election, Musk said:

Billionaire Tesla and X boss Elon Musk suggested Monday that he will end up behind bars if Vice President Kamala Harris beats former President Donald Trump in next month’s election.

“If he loses, I’m f—ed,” Musk told Tucker Carlson of the Republican nominee in an interview broadcast on X.

“How long do you think my prison sentence is going to be?” the world’s richest man quipped. “Will I see my children? I don’t know.”

Perhaps more important is the larger picture of financial enforcement. Musk wants X to be an “everything app,” which includes making it a payment system, and in effect, a bank. Like Crypto-entrepreneurs and many others, he wants the profits of a financial corporation without the oversight, including without the FDIC deposit insurance.

Tech bros have spent over 30 years staring at financial elites and seeing how rich they are, they’re salivating for some of that easy money. Destruction and intimidation of regulatory agencies is what is required to make it truly happen. Remember that Musk and other politically active tech-bros like Peter Thiel made their first bundle from PayPal.

Finance firms have been the most politically powerful special interest group since at least the 90s, but they are being replaced by politically-connected tech firms — an industry they helped birth, and billionaires who would not exist without tax and financial law changes spear-headed by Wall Street.

DOGE’s purpose isn’t to cut costs. It’s to open up new profit opportunities, attack resisting parts of the deep state, and remove legal risk from breaking the law. That’s all. It’s why the second part of the government shut down entirely was the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

The idea, as always, has been to end the reforms which began with FDR’s New Deal and go back to the 1890s. Notice how obsessed Trump is with ending income tax and going to tariffs: That’s a 19th century political economy setup.

Welcome to the new Gilded Age, with even richer oligarchs.

 

You get what you pay for. This blog is free to read, but not to produce. If you enjoy the content, donate or subscribe.

 

Trump’s Actions Are Opportunities

And lo, there was much gnashing of teeth and rending of hair.

Trump’s human garbage, of course. A bully, probably a rapist, suffering from some sort of mental disability, incoherent and mean.

And those are his good points.

Trump’s destroying the remains of America’s empire. He’s probably accelerating America’s decline, though there’s a possibility he might slow certain aspects of it, if others (like the EU) let him.

But most of what Trump is doing is creating opportunity. Let’s take the cuts to science funding: they’re going to leave a lot of scientists out of work.

That means there are a lot of scientists that other countries could easily, trivially even, scoop up. If they have the sense of a gnat, which most of them don’t. University and research cuts have been the rage in many countries (UK, I’m looking at you) because of delusional austerity policies, but central banks like the ECB can print hundreds of billions, even trillions of dollars, it would be simple enough to print a few hundred million to set up a bunch of research positions.

Anyone who wants to can do this: Europe, Canada, Australia, various Asian countries. Scientists want to science, and if you offer them a credible opportunity to do so, they’ll emigrate to your country and work for you. Same thing with engineers, great philosophers, etc, etc…

So as Trump lays waste, glean the corn which lies in his wake.

Likewise Trump’s attack on his allies opens up possibilities which were not politically viable before. Leaving NATO, for example. Putting on your own tariffs, which is illegal, basically, but since Trump has just broken about every trade treaty the US is signatory to, why not? Give subsidies, also usually illegal, but who cares? Ignore trade rulings against you which favor the US, why not, they don’t obey those rulings. Run full fledged industrial policy, because while it’s still technically illegal, it’s now politically viable.

Stretch a little. Instead of, as some European symps are suggesting, offering Trump more anti-China policies, go to China and cut a deal with them instead: tariff America and cut a trade deal with China which allows you to build some industry, or gets your branch plants and so on.

Stretch a lot. Tell Russia you want the gas to FLOW and offer to help rebuild the pipelines. Send out your navy to patrol and make sure there are more accidents. This is your chance to save Europe’s remaining industry from being slurped down by America.

Trump has changed the world. He’s done, doing and will do things that were unthinkable to previous Presidents. But that frees you, he’s broken the Western consensus, and done so in a way which makes it clear he doesn’t care what harm he does to America’s allies/vassals/satraps.

So break free! The real chains are in  your minds, politicians. You’ve spent generations doing thing one way, but now you don’t have to. Break the chains of your mind, and then break the chains of your nations.

Freedom awaits, along with the responsibility which comes from it. Fail to accept freedom and responsibility and America and Trump will decide what your country becomes.

If that’s what you want, if you want to avoid responsibility, be assured you’ll get what you deserve.

This blog runs on donations and subscriptions from readers. It’s free, but not free to produce. If you value it, please give.

Gaza Ceasefire Deal In Danger Of Collapse

So, Hamas decided to not release any further hostages until Israel meets its end of the phase I deal.

The response from Trump?

“If all (not only those agreed in the ceasefire deal to be released in multiple phases) prisoners are not freed by noon Saturday, the ceasefire will be revoked, and hell will be unleashed on Hamas.”

Trump has also made clear his plan to take over Gaza:

“I will owe Gaza and, as far as us rebuilding it, we may give it to other states in the Middle East to build parts of it. We are determined to own it, to take it. We’re going to make it a very good place for future development. The Palestinians will have no right of return to Gaza under my plan to take it over.”

And he has told both Jordan and Egypt that if they refuse to take the Palestinians, he will cut off all aid to their countries, crashing their economies.

Hamas has really only two choices: agree to ethnic cleansing in hopes of avoiding further genocide, or withhold the hostages to maintain some level of leverage, since the hostages are clearly important to Trump, if not Israel. Trump, of course, though cunning and a bully, is and always has been rather dull and undisciplined. As a bully, he can sometimes be backed down by those willing and able to stand up to him.

Israel hasn’t met its side of the deal. Until it does, Hamas can’t meet its side of the deal or it will, like Hezbollah has, lose all effective leverage.

I find it hard to predict Trump. I expect even Trump finds it hard to predict Trump. We’ll see what happens going forward, but a return to the genocide seems more than possible.

Trump proved that the President can control Israel if he wants to, and that he can end the genocide essentially at will, but all the people whispering in his year are Zionists, with no one to speak for Palestinians who is close to him.

That doesn’t bode well.

This blog runs on donations and subscriptions from readers. It’s free, but not free to produce. If you value it, please give.

 

My Call Of Half A Million Gaza Deaths Appears Close + Trump’s Gaza Policy

Trump has repeatedly said that he wants to move Palestinians out of Gaza and that there are about 1.7 to 1.8 million people to move. The pre-war population of Gaza was 2.3 million. About 100,000 Gazans managed to flee to the Sinai in Egypt (presumably a combination of bribes and sympathetic border guards who disagree with Sisi’s “let them die” policy.

So we’re looking at 400,000 to 500,000 deaths if Trumps figures are accurate. Yes, I know, Trump: but he’s been briefed and why use those numbers?

I wrote:

That is to say that the indirect death multiplier is almost certainly higher than average in Gaza. So let’s assume just slightly higher than average: an eight times multiplier.

Now do the math 8*60,000=480,000.

A reasonable estimate of the death toll in Gaza is thus 480,000 people. Almost half a million and about seventeen percent of the pre-war population.

The idea that the death toll was around 50K was always ludicrous, given the constant bombing, lack of food, destruction of hospitals, deliberate murder of doctors and nurses, disease and lack of water.

I would assume the death rate was accelerating and if the genocide had gone on would have continued to accelerate: starvation, disease and lack of water tend to work that way.

Meanwhile, having stopped most of the bombing, Trump wants the US to take over Gaza and rebuild it as a resort, as best I can tell. His son in law, Jared Kushner, in February of 2024 said:

“Gaza’s waterfront property could be valuable… It’s a little bit of an unfortunate situation there, but I think from #Israel‘s perspective, I would do my best to move the people out and then clean it up.”

This requires either Jordan or Egypt to take the Palestinians, and neither of them want them, since they’re destabilizing and will also strain budgets. America can offer money, but America’s promises have become increasingly… erratic of late. Egypt, of course, already receives a ton of money from America in exchange for peace with Israel, but Palestinians being pushed into Egypt would violate the treaty which started those payments.

Bear in mind that Hamas is an offshoot of the Islamic Brotherhood, Sisi’s mortal enemies whom he couped in order to become “President.”

And the Palestinians may not all go voluntarily, so military force will be needed, presumably American boots on the ground.

This plan is very obviously ethnic cleansing, which is evil. It is, however, the lesser evil compared to Biden’s “keep them locked up and bomb and starve them all to death”, which would have presumably continued if Harris had one. Hard to say how this will play out, Trump might well let Israel go back to full on genocide, but so far it appears that Trump was the “lesser evil” at least as far as Gaza is concerned.

Egypt needs to be talking to the Chinese about aid, stat and figure out what they can offer the Chinese. Though a chance to poke a finger in Trump’s eye is likely appealing to Xi right about now. Trump has no respect for treaty obligations and will definitely threaten Egypt’s funding to force an acquiescence.

Meanwhile Turkey, Egypt and Iran all need to get off their asses and get nukes.

 

This blog runs on donations and subscriptions from readers. It’s free, but not free to produce. If you value it, please give.

Is Trump Running A Coup?

Commenter GrimJim makes the case, using my own writing:

Ian, I am beginning to think that someone working for Trump and Musk must have read your works.

That, or they read the same books you have used as the groundworks for your own beliefs.

Particularly, on how to run a revolution:

https://www.ianwelsh.net/7-rules-for-running-a-real-left-wing-government/

and

https://www.ianwelsh.net/revolution-basics-1-who-cares-what-you-think/

And I am sure there are more. I know you’ve posted about how you have to run a purge first thing.

They are essentially following your playbook.

Media Law: They already own it and are locking it down harder. The Masters of Media are going to kneel to Trump or be punished.

Banking Sector: Already own it and are reformatting it further, and Musk has now gained access to everything that the Feds knew and manage, completely outside of legal channels.

Administrative Class: Purging the government and quickly gaining power over the industrial administration that was not already onboard.

Distribution and Utilities: Same, even showing off that he can screw with state-level works by pouring the water saved for California’s farm on fallow fields.

Reduce Your Vulnerability to the World Trade System: Again, making them kneel or alienating them so much that they will no longer be part of the system.

Be Satisfied with What You Can Grow and Make: That’s what the tariffs are all about. Stupid way to go about it, but that’s what they’ve got. Maybe they figure they will provide required subsidies to important (oligarch-owned) interests once everything is under their control, and masses of Poors have died off in the coming financial cataclysm.

Obey the Laws of Purges: In progress, the worst is yet to come.

“Why should I care what you think?” They don’t. They’re showing that in no uncertain terms and have even stated so in black and white to the courts. We will know that this process is complete if/when SCOTUS somehow decides against them, “The Supreme Court has made their decision; now let them enforce it!”

They are following the formula to a T.

The Republic is almost finished; I think we can stick a fork in it very soon.

I’m less sure, though parts of this are definitely true. Let’s deal with the quibbles: Trump isn’t doing tariff wars for the reason a left wing government under the WTO-Neoliberal-Sanctions regime would. They know that sanctions and trade can be used to destroy their economy. America isn’t in that position. Tariffs and tariff threats are about something else. In some cases, making countries bow, in other cases Trump appears to believe tariffs are free money, and there’s probably also an attempt to re-shore industry. Biden was already Cannibalizing European industry through high energy prices forcing energy sensitive industries to relocate to the US after the NordStream sabotage. Tariffs, for countries with trade surpluses with the US, are intended to have the same effect.

I think a lot of this comes down to something we’ve talked about before. “You go for the King, you’d better not miss.” I warned, repeatedly, that prosecution of Trump was an all-or-nothing matter. You either take him out, completely, or you’re fucked, because you’ve destroyed an elite norm against going after ex-Presidents seriously. (Note that Trump said he’d prosecute Hilary Clinton, but never did.)

Trump’s first actions have included a purge of law enforcement and prosecutors who went after him, the people who tried to help him steal the 2000 election, and his January 6th shock troopers.

What the hell did Democrats expect? That they could prosecute Trump and his people and that if he got back into power he’d shrug it off? How fucking stupid are these people?

If you prosecuted Trump, you had to make it stick and throw him in prison and take every red cent he had. You don’t go after an ex-President who still has a power base without making sure you finish him off.

The bloody fools.

In some respects Trump is just self-protecting. He has to take control of the Justice system so that when he leaves office he’s safe, at least, from any sort of Federal prosecution and with his loyalists in charge of the Justice system, attempts to end-run using the State system can be countered by simple threats. “If you do, we’ll go after your people, and we’re a lot more powerful.)

Trump is taking control of government: the treasury system and all expenditures, and the legal enforcement system. No one will be prosecuted who he doesn’t want prosecuted. No one will get money whom he doesn’t want to get money. Anyone he does want prosecuted will be and anyone who wants to have money, will have money.

Is it a coup? That depends on intention. Does he intend to step down in 2028 and allow free and fair elections? Or does he intend to make sure that elections are only a fig-leaf and he, or more likely given his age, his chosen successor is essentially appointed?

Trump could just intend to punish his immediate enemies and make sure the government does exactly what he wants, or he could intend to turn this into a permanent Republican state, with at least his successor chosen by him.

If he really wants to be safe, well, he needs to appoint his successor.

GrimJim is right about the court system. There are two plays: one is the Supremes wave thru his stuff, but the really dangerous moment would be if he was ruled against and he said “The Supreme Court has made their decision, now let them enforce it!”

Since he’s taking control of the federal enforcement arms, the idea is that no one will obey the courts if Trump disagrees. Their loyalty will be to him.

State governors may try to resist, but Trump can crush them if he so desires.

I admit I never saw Trump as this dangerous, mostly because he’s fundamentally incompetent. But he’s been mishandled by Democrats and the (not so) permanent state. Tulsi Gabbard looks likely to be confirmed, and her job is to do to the intelligence apparatus what is being done to the FBI and DOJ: make it Trump safe. If anyone takes out Trump, it will be the intelligence apparatus. He threatens them, just as JFK did, and they may act. That said, JFK threatened from the left, and intelligence services do love to serve a right wing tyrant. Trump may restrict their foreign games somewhat, but he will give them domestic power they have always wanted.

So, America gets out of this only if Trump either doesn’t really intend a coup and is just being a petty tyrant who wants to go back to the spoils system for government, or if his and Musk’s incompetence brings them down.

We’ll talk more about this as time goes by.

This blog runs on donations and subscriptions from readers. It’s free, but not free to produce. If you value it, please give.

Page 2 of 15

Powered by WordPress & Theme by Anders Norén