Ian Welsh

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

Just Let the Peons Die, The Rich Must Get Richer, French Edition

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On July 31, 2026

3 Comments

Sometimes even I can be sickened by the banality of evil:

“Heavy users of healthcare”, aka: the sickest people.

Always it is the weakest who are targeted. Once we taxed the rich to help the poor, now we kill the poor so the rich can afford another vacation property or mega-yacht, or, really, keep up with the Musks.

When the revolution comes, people like Macron need to be charged with mass homicide, and either be executed or sent to prison if (when) they are found guilty.

The West’s rich are in a red-Queen’s race with each other. If you fall behind, you get bought out and even if you still have lots of money, you’re no longer a player in the game. To keep their place in this game they must immiserate everyone else. The other option, to stop playing the game and put in controls over buying out other members of the elite never serious occurs to them.

It’s similar to how carbon taxes are always regressive, rather than massively hitting private jets and private mega-yachts and people with multiple homes. Nope, hit farmers and ordinary people. Certainly don’t really tax oil majors.

The West has only one inviolable rule during this sub-ideological period: the rich must always get richer. Everything else is sacrificed to that goal.

 

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Capacity v.s. Desire: What I Got Right & Wrong At The Start of the Gaza Genocide

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On July 30, 2026

22 Comments

Regular readers will remember that I thought the resistance could defeat Israel over the genocide in Gaza. Iran, Syria, Iraqi militias, Hezbollah and Ansar-Allah.

I was right.

They could. But the decision was made not to.

I base this on the fact that Iran is defeating the US and Israel.

If they can do it now, they could have done it then, when they still had Syria and Hezbollah hadn’t been mauled.

They didn’t because they didn’t want to. They still don’t: what has changed with the leadership is a willingness to defend Iran and Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. The MOU failed, ultimately, because Israel would not stop attacking in Lebanon.

When the US and Israel took out the previous leadership, they changed the desire: what Iran wanted to do. Iran is no longer willing to play nice, and it is willing to stay at war to help Hezbollah. It wasn’t willing to go to war to help Hezbollah or stop the Gaza genocide before, and it won’t stay at war to stop the genocide now. It will, however, try and stop the ongoing ethnic cleansing in Southern Lebanon, which is more than the Lebanese government will do, so there’s that.

There are three parts to understanding in situations like this

  1. What can be done.
  2. What elites will do.
  3. What the consequences of action or inaction are. The real world has the final say.

The consequence of Iran not intervening was the death of substantially all of their senior leadership, and the same happened to Hezbollah. Oh, and at least half a million deaths in Palestine (if you believe the official numbers you’re so stupid I’m surprised you can breathe.) And, of course, the loss of Syria.

(Slightly inaccurate, one other person survived)

There was a complete insistence on never seizing the initiative or even responding significantly to Israeli or American attacks, so they just sat their and let Mossad and the CIA line up their ducks and knock them down.

This is always the hardest part of analytic prediction of events. There really is a lot of freedom at the top: they have a great deal of choice about what to do and what not to do. (Trump has shown that, contra arguments I heard for decades, that in fact, the President can “just do things”.)

Constitutionally cautious, Iran’s leadership was unwilling to ever fire first, or if fired on, to even fire back in a genuinely painful fashion. They certainly weren’t willing to shoot a missile to save an ally.

And so, emboldened by their apparent weakness, the Israelis and America eventually went to war with them: after stripping them of their Syrian ally, shattering Hamas and badly damaging Hezbollah: after weakening their allies, whom Iran refused, repeatedly, to defend.

But, and this is the important point: Iran always had more missiles and drone and production ability to run the US and Israel out of interceptors. It always had the ability to win a war, its leaders just didn’t have the desire.

I got the capability right, and the intention wrong. A lot of people got it the other way around: they assumed America and Israel were stronger than Iran in a local fight, and that Iran was holding back because they were weak. Since they thought Iran was weak, starting a war made sense.

It’s good that Iran’s new leadership has decided there’s an ally they won’t let die rather than do nothing, even if it comes after half a million dead Palestinians and the capture of Syria by actual terrorists. And it’s also true that Iran has done more than anyone nation except Ansar-Allah (oddly, the only actually ethical nation in the entire world: the only one actually willing to go to war to stop a clear genocide). So I don’t want to be too harsh.

But the bottom line is that if Iran, under its old leadership, had fought sooner they’d have had a lot more allies, and been in a stronger position militarily. Perhaps being 100% the clear victim and reasonable party is worth the losses, there are those who argue it is so.

But that’s a lot of dead, maimed, tortured and raped people to get to “we’re the reasonable victim.”

 

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Burning Down The Great Library Yet Again

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On July 29, 2026

21 Comments

Sigh:

AI companies are bulk-buying rare books, scanning them through high-speed machines that cut the spines off, and shredding the originals. A service called ISBNdb facilitates orders of up to a million books and keeps buyers anonymous. Pre-2022 books are premium because they’re free of AI-generated text. A federal judge ruled the practice is fair use because eliminating the original means only one copy exists at a time. Anthropic hired the former head of Google Books partnerships to obtain “all the books in the world.”

My Take This got to me. A bookseller told 404 Media that rare books with almost no surviving copies are being fed into this pipeline. Books that survived wars, fires, and centuries of handling are being shredded so an AI can learn to write a better marketing email. ISBNdb’s website literally says “‘AI company destroys two million books’ is not a headline that generates sympathy,” and they still built an entire business around making it happen quietly. They offer NDAs as a feature. They coach clients to call it “digital preservation.”

I’ve covered AI companies scraping the internet, torrenting libraries, and stealing music. This is worse because it’s irreversible. You can re-upload a website. You can reprint a bestseller. You can’t replace the last three copies of an 18th-century botanical text once someone shreds them for training data. And the judge said it’s legal. So it’s going to accelerate. “We shred rare books and offer NDAs so nobody finds out” is a legitimate business model in 2026. What a timeline.

These people are barbarians. Philistines. As bad as destroying the library of Alexandria or Mongols burning libraries in Baghdad.

This knowledge is irreplaceable and it’s not worthless (if it was, they wouldn’t be scanning it.) If it were up to me this would be a capital crime. Not exaggerating for effect. Everyone involved would go for the long jump.

(To give credit where credit is due, apparently Musk does not shred books for his AI. He’s scum in many ways, but one should praise the correct actions of bad men.)

We all have a limited time here, to destroy that which could live much longer than us and speak of the past to the future is a monstrous crime.

Truly most of the people who run AI are scum.

 

What I write here is for the benefit of everyone, but alas, I live in capitalism and I, and the site, take money to keep running. If you value the writing here and can, please subscribe or donate.

We Live In Epochal Times

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On July 28, 2026

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History has cycles. When dealing with ideas about how to organize societies there are ideological and sub-ideological cycles. Various nations have been capitalist since the 16th century, but what the means kept changing, usually every 50 to 80 years. Britain started very protectionist. It had periods where imperialism and capitalism were very intertwined. It had laisszez faire periods. All of these were forms of capitalism, but they were quite different from each other. The Roman Empire is an empire from Augustus to the end, but the Rome of Augustus is very different from future Romes, with their serfs (something Augustinian Rome didn’t have), their German legionaires, and so on.

In our times there are people alive who remember two and a half transitions:

  • The transition from laissez-faire (in America) to New Deal.
  • The transition of New Deal to Neoliberalism.
  • The transition of neoliberalism to whatever the new system will be called. (This is not the old system, Trump’s crazed tariffs, export controls to major buyers, the severe cutting of research, etc… all show that.)

In China they remember:

  • The change from warlordism and Republicanism to Maoism.
  • The change from Maoism to Dengism.
  • The recent change from Dengism to Xiism.

Globally we remember multiple transitions as well

  • The transition from the multi-great power world centered on America/Europe to the Cold War world dominated by the USSR and US. (Note this transition involved two world wars.)
  • The transition from the cold war world to the unipolar superpower world with the US the world hegemonic power.
  • The current transition from the American hegeomonic world to whatever will replace it.

In energy technology we have one and a half transitions:

  • The transition from the coal world to the petrochem world;
  • The current transition from the petrochem world to the electrical world based on other power sources.

Note that the technological cycle is a LOT slower. (And yes, I’ve left out the digital/telecom, but you could easily make the same sort of schema.

There is also the environmental question, and that’s part of various cycles. We aren’t different from other cultures in this regard: one thesis for the fall of Mesopotamia from the world’s leading region for six to eight thousand years is environmental. They aren’t the only ones.

We have multiple changes income all once:

  • Sub ideological changes in how capitalism and democracy run in Europe and the US.
  • A more or less complete change in China from Dengism to Xi-ism.
  • A change to the world political system, with the rise of China and the weakness of America.
  • Environmental collapse
  • Climate Change

All of these at the same times. Not only is “nothing ever happens” bullshit (as it always was) but we live in a period of radical change, and it’s only going to become more obvious over time.

But there are people alive, albeit not many, who remember the pre-WWII world.

Change is constant. It seems slow to humans, but those who live a long life have seen a great, great deal of change. And we didn’t even discuss the way daily life has changed due to the change from the analog world to the digital one. (A change I personally think was probably more bad than good, though I certainly love large parts of it.) And, of course, there’s the revolution in war making technology, strategy and tactics, as big as the change to trench warfare, then the change to blitzkrieg and air war.

Everything changes. And if you have a perspective longer than a couple decades, everything changes pretty fast, actually. Certainly the world I grew up in, that I remember from the 70s and early 80s no longer exists.

In human affairs nothing is constant save change.

What I write here is for the benefit of everyone, but alas, I live in capitalism and I, and the site, take money to keep running. If you value the writing here and can, please subscribe or donate.

“Nothing Ever Happens”

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On July 27, 2026

16 Comments

Oh?

Almost everything is on track.

  • Covid?
  • The financial crisis?
  • This war? China officially leading the US in tech and industry?
  • Global warming coming on faster than expected?
  • Massive wildfires every summer?
  • Trump being President?
  • The Ukraine war?
  • That little genocide in Palestine?
  • The US being unable to build enough weapons?
  • The complete breakdown of international law and (more seriously) the WTO trade order?
  • A revolution in war making technology which has allowed middle powers to fight great powers?
  • Multiple payment systems challenging dollar privilege.
  • Serious collapses in animal and insect populations, so much so that bug splat doesn’t exist in much of the world any more and that I rarely see songbirds.
  • Constant, inexorable rises in food prices, even before the war.

Notice that food per capita line. Remember all the screaming about fertility rates and look at the births line (though I think the collapse is more severe than modeled.) Industrial output is still increasing, as the chart suggests, but China’s about to go over a demographic ledge and I expect it will peak within ten years of the chart’s prediction. Resources are very definitely being depleted, though less fast than predicted. Still, it’s happening. Just read in detail about oil production.

Collapse happens slowly, then all at once. The post-USSR order has collapsed. It’s gone. The trade order has collapsed. Military supremacy is gone. Every summer we get wildfires and smoke in major cities, which did not happen before about 2019. This is a textbook example of climate change re-ordering the environment. What will grow up afterwards will be a different mix of plants and animals.

Things are happening. Big things. If you want the official “big collapse” well, it’s not here yet for the first world, but the death by a thousand self-inflicted wounds continues. As much as I admire what China has done, and as impressed as I am by solar and so on, they are still an industrial society based on planned obsolescence and over-production and are about to hit a demographic cliff (good in the long run, but it will cause issues.) The only escape from much of the resource trap would be large scale off world mining. Musk isn’t going to manage it. The Chinese are taking a shot, we’ll see. That wouldn’t, by itself, fix ecological collapse, however and won’t supply all necessary resources. It’s also unlikely to come on line in time, if at all.

You’re living thru an epochal period, similar to the WWI thru WWII period: everything is changing, but this time including serious environmental issues. There’s also all the social issues related to AI, phones, the collapse of reading and reasoning ability in some societies, mass surveillance and the rise of authoritarianism, even as civil liberties are contracting in almost every country in the world.

The post-war and post-cold war orders are dying or dead. The negative consequences of the industrial revolution are hitting home after we got the goodies for a couple centuries.

Things are happening. More things will happen over the next couple decades. If you can’t see that, you’re blind.

What I write here is for the benefit of everyone, but alas, I live in capitalism and I, and the site, take money to keep running. If you value the writing here and can, please subscribe or donate.

 

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – July 26, 2026

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On July 26, 2026

24 Comments

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – July 26, 2026

by Tony Wikrent

 

Prosecutor Investigating U.S. Boat Strikes and Claims of Torture Was Murdered in Ecuador 

Camila Lourdes Galarza, July 23, 2026 [Drop Site]

QUITO, Ecuador—Alexandra Bravo, the prosecutor assigned to investigate U.S. strikes on three Ecuadorian boats and the 36 survivors’ subsequent accounts of torture and kidnapping, was shot dead in the coastal city of Manta last month. According to police, on June 14 a hitman aboard a black motorcycle opened fire on Bravo as she and her sister were leaving a café at about 11 a.m. Bravo’s sister, who jumped to protect her, was also killed in the attack.

 

Are Foreign Intelligence Agencies and Criminals Killing Donald Trump’s Enemies to Earn His Favor. The Quiet Dismantling of America’s Defenses Against Foreign Assassination on U.S. Soil.

Christopher Armitage, July 25, 2026 [The Existentialist Republic]

 

War on Voting

Don’t Let ICE Freeze Voting

Guest article by Jay Inslee, former governor of Washington State [MeidasTouch Network, Feb 03, 2026]

… Ask yourself this – why would Trump NOT surround polling places with camo-clad, face-masked, helmet-wearing, semi-automatic long gun carrying ICE and Border Patrol agents on election day, in every Democratic-leaning precinct in any targeted district? What would restrain him? His well-developed sense of propriety? His internal moral code? The spineless Republicans in the House and Senate that would have to threaten him with impeachment if he did this? Good luck finding those Profiles in Courage.

This would be devastating. He would not target all the precincts, just those with heavy Democratic performance. Given the fact that the Trump administration shoots protesters and then lies about them, the abject fear these troops would put in the minds of thousands of people who just want to vote cannot be measured, but is surely significant, particularly given the close margins in the House….

 

THE PLOT AGAINST THE MIDTERMS

Seymour Hersh [via Naked Capitalism 07-24-2026]

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Open Thread

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On July 25, 2026

32 Comments

Use to discuss topics unrelated to recent posts.

Oilpocalypse Incoming

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On July 25, 2026

28 Comments

So, it seems that Ansar-Allah (the Houthis) struck an oil refinery in Jizan, Saudi Arabia. They also took a shot at a refinery in Yanbu, apparently intercepted by a battery the Greeks had there (what?)

Anyway, this is getting real. Between the Ukrainian strikes on Russian refineries, which have been very successful, Iranians hits, and now the Houthis, I don’t see how we avoid serious shortages. It’s the refineries that matter most: crude is worthless without refineries and they’re expensive, take a long time to build and aren’t always easy to repair, depending on what exactly got hit.

I also don’t see how we avoid massive famines and increased food prices in places that don’t have a formal famine. A lot of fertilizer runs from oil thru refineries.

The irony here (conspiracy theorists of elite intentions to depopulate the world, here you go) that Trump confirmed he OK’d the Saudi strike on the Houthi airport which set Ansar-Allah off. They’ve closed the strait and they’re going right for the jugular vein with these refinery strikes. If they keep shooting, the missiles will get thru. The defenders have to be lucky every time, they only have to be lucky on occasion.

Beans and rice. If you need distillates like diesel or motor oil, stock up now. It’s hard to stock up on medicine, but a lot also used petrochemicals, so do what you can: even simple things like aspirin are included.

Anyway, I don’t think Trump is together enough to have a diabolical super villain plan. To the extent he can plan at all, it’s about his next corrupt scam or bribe. But it amounts to the same thing in the end.

It’s hard to overstate how much this will destroy all goodwill for America in the globe. I mean all of it. Everyone knows the US started the war and refuses to stop it, whatever their reasons are. And when people can’t eat, the hatred will be immense. Iran will catch some backlash, but most people get that they’re defending themselves.

Empires end ugly and stupid. The rule of incompetence in late Imperial rulership maintains its record. I expected stupid, but it’s still flabbergasting to witness late Imperial Roman levels of moronitude.

Amazing.

Amazing is not a synonym for good.

 

What I write here is for the benefit of everyone, but alas, I live in capitalism and I, and the site, take money to keep running. If you value the writing here and can, please subscribe or donate.

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