Ian Welsh

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

Month: January 2026 Page 3 of 4

Canadian LapDog Breaks For Exit After Trump Declares Dog Is On The Menu

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On January 16, 2026

30 Comments

Canada has cut a trade deal with China. This is what I have been suggesting for ages, and it’s finally happening. (Not, of course, because Carney reads me, but because it’s the obvious play and of all Western leaders he’s been the most resistant to Trump’s threats and blackmail.) Canada cuts a deal:

Chinese leader Xi Jinping and Canadian PM Mark Carney have announced lower tariffs, signalling a reset in their countries’ relationship after a key meeting in Beijing.

China is expected to lower levies on Canadian canola oil from 85% to 15% by 1 March, while Ottawa has agreed to tax Chinese electric vehicles at the most-favoured-nation rate, 6.1%, Carney told reporters…

…

In the deal struck on Friday, Canada will allow only 49,000 Chinese electric vehicles into the Canadian market at the 6.1% tariff rate.

The cap is in response to Canadian automakers’ fears of an influx of affordable Chinese EVs.

As well as relief for canola producers, there will also be reduced tariffs on Canadian lobsters, crabs, and peas.

I would expect that if the Chinese are willing to manufacture in Canada we’ll give on other things. The limit on autos is to get China to manufacture here. US manufacturers of automobiles are no longer reliable and Stellantis has started to pull out of Canada, there are no major “Canadian” manufacturers, so US manufacturers they must be replaced. The 100% tariff on EVs was to please the US (Trump can’t be pleased), and to protect Canadian jobs. Since those jobs are now at risk and almost certain to be lost, well…

The BBC says this move is in reaction to Trump’s on and off again tariffs, but that’s only half true. I keep noticing this in much of the media, they talk about tariffs and not about the annexation threats and both are a factor. You can’t have your primary trade partner be a nation which wants to invade you or break you up with covert actions and color revolutions. Then, of course, there’s Trump’s comments that the US doesn’t need anything from Canada. OK then, if you don’t need it, guess we’ll have to sell it to someone else, and since that has to go two ways, guess we’ll phase out buying American cars and buy Chinese instead.

This will break the ice for many nations. As I have argued for ages, even before Trump came to office, everyone needs to cut a deal with China because it’s the rising power. It’s already the most powerful nation in the world in many ways, and it will be in all ways that matter in less than ten years. Perhaps five.

But it’s also that you can make a deal with the Chinese. They keep their deals unless you cross very clear red lines like supporting Taiwanese independence. Even before Trump the US did not keep its deals. As a Canadian I’m aware that America just ignored trade rulings against it in favor of Canada even twenty years ago. America is simply untrustworthy, they don’t really believe they have to obey even rules they themselves have agreed to. Trump is “ignore inconvenient rules on steroids” but pretending he hasn’t just ramped up an already existing American characteristic would be delusional.

It’s also worth noting that this is, in the words of commenter Carborundum, “seismic”. Canada has been extremely hostile to China ever since Justin Trudeau was elected, including arresting the Huawei heiress for America, slapping on those 100% tariffs and multiple other incidents. We did this in order to keep America happy, calculating that we needed America more than China. (I never agreed, but I was in the minority). Under Justin Trudeau we were America’s second most faithful lapdog (no one can ever beat the UK when it comes to lick-spittle toadying.)

So this is, if not a 180 degree turn at least a 100 degree turn. Carney said all the usual bullshit about human rights and Hong Kong, but they were pro-forma. They won’t get in the way of a deal, and I suspect that public scoldings and statements along those lines will become much less frequent. The issues will be given a nod when some journalist asks about them and little more.

Canada was the first of America’s lapdogs to make a break for the exit after Trump decided dog was on the menu. We’ll see who goes next. Because when Carney said that this was preparation for the new world order (down, conspiracy types) he was right: the old world order is all but dead, and everyone has to re-orient away from the setting sun of America towards the rising sun, China.

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Just How Heritable Is IQ

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On January 15, 2026

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The IQ debates are, to me, tiresome. I’m pretty high IQ, not what I consider genius level (I’ve encountered true geniuses) but just under, in the one-in-ten thousand range. Which is to say, if I’m around 10K people I expect that no one is smarter than me, unless it’s a place that selects for IQ. At MIT I’d be nothing special.

But what I’ve also noticed is that high IQ, and I’ve spent a lot of time around high IQ people and reading them, has very little correlation to being right about the sort of problems which interest me. Virtually all the high IQ economists were wrong about, well, everything, for generations. Larry Summer is extremely high IQ and he’s reliably wrong. If you want to be right about something, find out what Larry Summers thinks, and you at least know one wrong view.

IQ is very good at following rules, even very complicated ones, at seeing correlations and at pattern matching. Without judgment all IQ does is get you to where everyone who shares your priors, as the youngs say (I call them axioms or assumptions), faster.

I also believe that IQ can change over time. The more you do of something, the better you get at whatever that is. Being good at economics makes you better at economics and the types of reasoning and math it uses. (It does not make you better at understanding economies, that’s something entirely different.)

And I think that IQ is only somewhat heritable.

Right now we’re in an period where the consensus among smart non-specialist is that IQ is highly heritable and most of this comes from the result of twin studies.

David Bessis, a mathematician, has a long post based based on a lot of work where he actually looked at the twin studies. You should read it.

The conclusion is that these studies are extremely flawed and can’t be used to make the claims made. The twins were often placed separately not immediately after birth, in fact in some cases as late as eight years old. The effects of mother’s on babies in the womb is huge (smoking, drinking, lead exposure) and that’s environment, many of them were placed with extended family and almost all were placed with middle class families similar to the ones they came from.

This debate matters. High heritability means that certain families are just superior. Bessis has a good summary of this. (The current strong case is 80% heritability.) I’m going to quote him here:

Let’s say, for example, that you are a genetically average person. How much does that affect your prospects?

  • Surprisingly, at 30%, it’s as if your genes didn’t matter at all. With an average potential, you still have a decent chance of landing at the top or bottom of the IQ distribution. Actually, in this specific random sample, one of three smartest people around (the top 0.3%) happens to have an almost exactly average genetic make-up, and the fourth dumbest person has a slightly above-average potential.
  • At 50%, being genetically average starts to limit your optionality, but the spread remains massive. Had you been marginally luckier—say, in the top third for genetic potential—you’d still have a shot at becoming one of the smartest people around.
  • At 80%, though, your optionality has mostly vanished. It’s still possible to move a notch upward or downward, but the game is mostly over. In this world, geniuses are born, not made.

This discussion is generally omitted by hereditarians, which is unfortunate, because it is the only way to clarify the stakes. There is a fundamental asymmetry in the debate. Heritability matters a lot when it is extremely high, because it then supports genetic determinism, but for the rest of the range the exact figure has little practical significance.1

Now while Bessis doesn’t go into it, what I find even more disturbing are the racial/ethnic version of genetic IQ determinism. I think they’re largely bunk (that’s another post) but many very smart people believe them. Koreans and Chinese and Ashkenazi Jews are smarter than whites who are smarter than blacks and so on, and this is taken to explain differences in how well various countries do, not their history or their environment. Blacks are, in this view, innately stupid. It’s not that they were colonized and brutalized and that the environments they grow up in are harmful to IQ development, nope, it’s innate.

If heritability is 80%, well, they just “deserve” their fates, and there’s really nothing that can be done about it. (If IQ determines national success, which is also BS if you ask me. If it was that simple, China would never have had its century of humiliation and whites shouldn’t have ruled the world for hundreds of years when Chinese and Koreans and Ashkenazi Jews are so superior to us.)

It’s not, in this view, that Talmudic study and cultures that place an obsessive value on learning like Korea and China do, develop higher higher IQs, it’s that they start smarter.

Now, as with Bessis, I think there IS a genetic component to IQ. It’s not like it doesn’t matter at all. I just think other things matter too, and that IQ matters less than people think it does.

We may revisit this issue, though I’m unsure. For a lot of my writing career I spent a great deal of effort debunking bullshit. The problem is that it never works, most people aren’t convinced, it takes longer to debunk than produce, and there’s always more of it because the pernicious types of bullshit are highly funded. It’s hard to compete with entire think tanks spewing out garbage, and that’s the job of 90% of think tanks: what they believe is pre-determined, donors want “intellectual” arguments to back up what they already believe or what they want others to believe because it is beneficial to them.

If excellence, however determined, is 80% hereditary, then aristocracy, however defined, is justifiable. The best people come from certain genetic lineages and deserve their place in the world. Whites deserve to be above blacks, Chines and Koreans above whites, and Ashkenazi Jews are the super race. (As an aside, though not genetic, trans women blow Ashkenazi out of the water in terms of average IQ, which I find hilarious, since it means that the people who love IQ and think it’s determinitive, should love trans women.)

It also means that there’s one less reason to improve circumstances of the majority of people. The few sports will rise to their level of genetic fitness and everyone else deserves to be where they are and doesn’t need support to improve their excellence, since that’s determined by genetics not environment.

This stuff is fought over because it matters, just like the divine right of Kings mattered. It’s about justification of how society runs, or an argument to change how society treats different people. Material circumstances matter, but so do ideas. We are slaves to what we believe the world is like and what we believe people are like. We often act on those beliefs. As the sociological maxim says “things believed true have real consequences even if not true.”

Twin studies don’t show 80% hereditability because those studies were extremely flawed. That matters.

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The Black Book Of Capitalism: Sanctions Version

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On January 14, 2026

30 Comments

There’s a black book of Communism, which essentially claims that every death caused by a Communist government is the fault of communism.

A while back some people decided to put up an article on the death toll of Capitalism in Wikipedia, very carefully sourced. It was deleted.

Anyway, there is zero question that Capitalism has killed more people than Communism, no matter what number you use for Communism. It’s absurd to pretend all deaths caused by the Great Depression weren’t capitalist deaths and without the Great Depression (which, by the way, did not effect the USSR) there is no World War II, so you can add in all those deaths. Not to mention all the Imperialist wars and native genocides, which were definitely part of capitalism.

But even recently capitalism is a death machine:

I’d say that almost all deaths by hunger in the world are caused by capitalism, as are those from lack of shelter. After all, with very few exceptions the world is run on capitalist principles. Since there is more food produced than needed to feed everyone, and since capitalist markets the primary distribution method for food this is entirely reasonable.

Capitalism as an ideology is, in any case doomed. Climate denialism idiocy aside, as climate change and environmental collapse accelerates it and “democracy” will be blamed, as they should be, since almost all the damage occurred under their watch and what’s more they knew and not only did nothing but accelerated the process. We knew in the 70s, I remember the debates and the response wasn’t to do a big renewables push or try and seriously systematically reduce hydrocarbon use, it was to try and figure out how to pump more oil.

Obama famously bragged that he was responsible for the fracking boom and Trump is pro-coal, pro-oil and anti-renewables, while gutting EPA rules on environmental contamination.

Not to speak of over-fishing, destroying our soil, the collapse of insect populations and so on.

A system of production and distribution which runs on planned obsolesence cannot be good for the environment and is obviously stupid. “Let’s make things break quickly so we can make more” is insanity. It’s what capitalist markets require and if you don’t understand how moronic it is I don’t even know how to explain it.

(Aside: Related to the America’s fall I note that sanctions are the main reason the US is going to lose dollar hegemony so soon, it could have been kept for a few decades yet if it hadn’t been abused.)

Anyway, when it comes to mass murder the problem that Communists had is a combination of a weird sort of honest “just kill them” and getting blamed for things like famines that somehow capitalism isn’t responsible for.

No system in world history, no ideology will be near to capitalism’s final death tool. Not by at least an order of magnitude, and likely two orders of magnitude.

 

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Preparing for Bad Times Thread

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On January 13, 2026

381 Comments

This is a thread for comments on how to prepare for bad times. All off-topic comments will be deleted. The thread will be re-upped occasionally so that resources can build over time.

(I’m going to bring this back to the top at least once a month, maybe more, so people can read the old advice and add theirs.)

Trump’s Attack On Defense Contractors & The Fed

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On January 12, 2026

15 Comments

This is another case of Trump doing the right thing in theory. From Matt Stoller:

Trump also issued an executive order to ban buybacks, dividends, and cap executive compensation for defense contractors. The rumor is that DOD deputy secretary Steve Feinberg complained about the unwillingness of the contractors to do competent work. Feinberg is a private equity guy, and he proposed this crackdown.

“Many large contractors,” goes the order” “while underperforming on existing contracts — pursue newer, more lucrative contracts, stock buy-backs, and excessive dividends to shareholders at the cost of production capacity, innovation, and on-time delivery.”

Now this is all good policy. In fact I’ve called for similar policies (I would allow reasonable dividends) on all corporations, without exception. Corporations are run, right now, to make the most money possible for those who control them, which usually means the executives, with some exceptions. Since stock options are how much of the excessive pay is delivered, and since stock-buybacks drive up stock prices, instead of spending money on organic corporate growth executives juice stock prices and thus their compensation.

American defense contractor performance during the Ukraine war has been embarrassing. Russia increased its production of weapons and munition massively, while the US has barely increased production at all. This has led to Russia having massive artillery, drone and missile advantage.

This is an attempt by Trump to force defense contractors to use their profits to increase production and re-invest in things like quality and research.

Trump often does the right thing conceptually, he just almost always screws up the details, as he did with tariffs. I rather doubt this will work much better. Still it’s a step in the right direction, though I don’t think increased production of American weapons is good for anyone.

Combined with Trump’s proposed 50% hike in the military budget this makes the Trump administration’s play obvious, if it wasn’t already. The only thing the US has left right now is its military. It’s behind in 89% of techs, the dollar is well on its way to losing reserve and primary trade currency status, and China has far more industry.

But the US still has the world’s best expeditionary and force projection military. This has been demonstrated in Venezuela, not so much by Maduro’s kidnapping, as by the attempt to blackmail Venezuela with a naval blockade to give control of its oil to D.C. (I don’t think this is going to work out very well for the US, for a variety of reasons, but it may work for a few years.)

If all you’ve got is a big stick, well, that’s what you will use. But if defense contractors don’t get their act together you could spend three times as much money and get almost nothing for it, since they can’t build any large amount of weapons or ammunition or ships in any amount of time that isn’t measured in years. Longer than Trump’s remaining term.

(Note that China has a veto over all this. They can shut down almost all weapon production any time they choose just by restricting military use tech and resources like rare earths. They can do what FDR did to the Japanese with ban on oil sales any time they choose, and they’re not stupid, they know it. The more they disentangle themselves from the US, the more they may consider doing so, as America keeps attacking their trade partners.)

Now on to the Fed. The DOJ has charged the head of the Federal Reserve with perjury.

Here’s a transcript of Powell’s video statement.

Good evening. On Friday, the Department of Justice served the Federal Reserve with grand jury subpoenas, threatening a criminal indictment related to my testimony before the Senate Banking Committee last June.

That testimony concerned, in part, a multi-year project to renovate historic Federal Reserve office buildings. I have deep respect for the rule of law and for accountability in our democracy. No one-certainly not the Chair of the Federal Reserve-is above the law. But this unprecedented action should be seen in the broader context of the Administration’s threats and ongoing pressure.

This new threat is not about my testimony last June or about the renovation of the Federal Reserve buildings. It is not about Congress’s oversight role. The Fed, through testimony and other public disclosures, made every effort to keep Congress informed about the renovation project. Those are pretexts.

The threat of criminal charges is a consequence of the Federal Reserve setting interest rates based on our best assessment of what will serve the public, rather than following the preferences of the President. This is about whether the Fed will be able to continue to set interest rates based on evidence and economic conditions, or whether, instead, monetary policy will be directed by political pressure or intimidation.

I have served at the Federal Reserve under four Administrations-Republicans and Democrats alike. In every case, I have carried out my duties without political fear or favor, focused solely on our mandate of price stability and maximum employment. Public service sometimes requires standing firm in the face of threats. I will continue to do the job the Senate confirmed me to do-with integrity and a commitment to serving the American people. Thank you.

The problem here is that we have two bad actors colliding. Trump wants to set interest rates based on his political needs, but the Federal Reserve’s policies for over 45 years now have blown multiple asset bubbles, bailed out rich people repeatedly, and deliberately kept unemployment higher than it would otherwise have been. Powell has been no better than his predecessors, his policies have favored the rich and Private Equity.

As a philosophical matter I don’t believe in central bank independence. It should be controlled by elected officials. But these charges are, as Powell notes, obviously political bullshit, just another weaponizing of law enforcement against Trump’s enemies. The irony is that Trump could get what he wants using his actual powers: he can’t replace the Federal Reserve Chair, but he can fire every other board member for cause. Even if the Supremes decide not to back him, which is unlikely, he’d have his own people in place for quite a while before they could act and they could outvote Powell.

And, since Trump is an incompetent boob, control of the Federal Reserve wouldn’t make things better.

As Stoller notes none of this is likely to amount to much because Trump’s team is deeply infiltrated by the usual suspects, people who don’t really want to control prices, reduce inflation or reduce the amount of money rich people get. Even if Trump wants to, his team won’t execute and he’s not the type of executive who’s capable of riding herd on uncooperative subordinates.

Still, there’s a clear policy direction here: an attempt to make the levers of government work for the administration. Lower prices domestically (won’t work) and make the military more effective so that the US can use it as a club, since all other sources of American power are in decline or outright failing.

Trump could screw up boiling water, but there’s a lot of legacy strength still left in the US. Expect things to get worse for weaker powers and American citizens for some time to come.

 

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Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – January 11, 2026

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On January 11, 2026

26 Comments

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – January 11, 2026

by Tony Wikrent

 

“A curtain of darkness is settling over our nation.”

[TW: For a reason I shall explain, there were a number of posts this past week that struck me but I have not included all of them here. What struck me was the impression that the writers are beginning to wrestle with some truly fundamental questions of human nature, and how human nature can be molded — or more accurately, channeled and contained — by how society is organized, according to which principles, and whether the leaders of society embody, to some degree or another, those principles. So, I was greatly encouraged a couple days ago when a reader from this site reached out to me using Facebook messages to initiate a discussion of civic republicanism.]

In Defense of Pretexts — Paying tribute to virtue is better than the alternative…

Brian Beutler, Jan 09, 2026 [Off Message]

…my impression is most people, even many of Trump’s own loyalists, haven’t experienced all this as just another week in Trumpville. They feel more disturbed—or, in MAGA, more titillated—as though a new threshold of wickedness has been crossed.

That’s been my feeling since Sunday morning, for reasons I at first struggled to articulate.…

I would of course prefer to live in a world where policymakers and elected officials were scrupulously honest and above board. If that were our condition, we wouldn’t have pretexts, because we wouldn’t start any wars. We might finish them, but we wouldn’t go looking.

Building a world like that should be our north star. But in the world of today—of mixed and rotten motives, where wars of choice happen whether I want them to or not—I’ll take false justifications for bad acts.

If you care about America’s highest aspirations—freedom, equality, self-governance rule of law—the pretexts matter. We can be clear eyed about the people who lay false claim to these ideals, yet still take some solace in their lies, because the lies confirm that the ideals still have power.

Why pretend that a war of plunder is meant to spread democracy or fight communism or defend the homeland, unless you know that the public values certain higher principles, and may revolt if you traduce them? If your true motives are toxic, you have to conceal them, because the people—we the people—are better than you.

This is the tribute vice pays to virtue in the rawest sense, and it is revealing. These are cynical people, many of whom have no place in their hearts for principle or consistency. But if that is their nature, why would they pay tribute to anything? Vice is vice.

They do it because virtue still controls. It’s still the default. Because they haven’t won the masses over to uncut evil.

By dispensing with the pretexts, Trump suggests he thinks he’s overcome that obstacle, worn the public down, made us as malevolent as he is. He still pays some tribute to virtue. He won’t cop to having launched a war. But the theft and subjugation are right there on the surface, without any tributes to virtue.

I think this is what has people so unsettled. Why he has to be stopped preemptively and forced to reverse, or else be run out of office. If he prevails—not just in acting lawlessly, but in doing so nakedly, and without pushback—then it’s over. We become changed.

That’s why I miss the pretexts. It’s also why I take some solace in the fact that his Venezuela “policy” polls poorly. That his menacing of Greenland polls even worse….

The Future of Democracy Depends on the Republican Party — The Battle for a Liberal Society is Happening Within the Political Right

Ryan Enos, Jan 09, 2026

Right now, the Republican Party is enabling the authoritarian leader who is ignoring the law and terrorizing his own citizens. Because of this party’s leader, we no longer live in a full democracy. But, despite this or, perhaps, because of it, the future of democracy in the United States will depend on choices made within the Republican Party.

This must be the path because a liberal democracy requires more than one functioning party, and, at least in the foreseeable future, the Republican Party will be one of them. Our plan for sustaining that liberal society can’t be shutting the GOP out of power, but rather must include shaping the Republican Party, the party that will represent the approximately half of society that inevitably holds right-wing beliefs, into a party that upholds liberalism (small l) and democracy.

The alternative is to hope that Democrats win all elections moving forward. But if this is our plan for sustaining democracy, we are cooked…..

Trump not violating any law

‘He who saves his Country does not violate any Law’

Trump Stuns By Saying ‘I Don’t Know’ When Asked Directly NBC’s Kristen Welker ‘Don’t You Need to Uphold the Constitution?’

Joe DePaolo, May 4th, 2025 [mediaite.com]

Rep. Omar Warns Trump Aims to Provoke Enough Agitation in Minnesota So He Can Declare ‘Martial Law’

Jon Queally, Jan 10, 2026 [CommonDreams]

Cold Blood: A New Reichstag Plot Begins With Murder — Minneapolis is the target of a blatant effort to incite a new wave of domestic oppression.

Jim Stewartson, Jan 07, 2026 [MindWar]

Following ICE murder of Renee Nicole Good, Trump officials threaten mass repression

[Countercurrents, via Naked Capitalism 01-10-2025]

… The conscious and deliberate character of Good’s killing is underscored by the open and unapologetic defense of the murder by Trump administration officials. By hailing the killing, Trump and the coterie of fascists in the administration are making clear that it was an expression of official government policy.

Everything coming out of the mouths of administration officials is a lie, and everyone knows it is a lie. On Thursday, Vice President JD Vance held a press conference in which he slandered Good and praised her killer. He called the federal agent’s actions “legitimate” and denounced the media for “talking about this guy as if he’s a murderer,” adding menacingly, “Be a little bit more careful.”

The Trump administration is seizing on the murder of Good as a pretext for a sweeping escalation in the criminalization of political opposition. Vance announced the creation of a new assistant attorney general position that will answer directly to the president. Asked about his message to “far-leftist agitators,” Vance declared: “Now they have an assistant attorney general who is going to prosecute and investigate their fraud and their violence more aggressively than it has ever been investigated.”

Vance accused “a group of left-wing radicals” of using “domestic terror techniques” to oppose the government’s immigration policies.

He never referred to Good by name, instead smearing her as “that woman,” a “deranged leftist” who was “brainwashed.” He insisted the killer was “protected by absolute immunity,” denounced the local investigation into the murder, and declared, “The unprecedented thing is the idea that a local official can actually prosecute a federal official with absolute immunity.” ….

In an extraordinary statement, Trump declared that he operates outside of any legal constraint. Asked whether there were any limits on his ability to strike, invade or coerce other nations, Trump responded: “Yeah, there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.” He dismissed international law outright—“I don’t need international law”—and made clear that he would be the sole arbiter of any legal constraints: “It depends what your definition of international law is.” ….

While leading Democrats have issued insincere statements in response to the killing of Good, their main concern is to contain the explosive growth of opposition within the United States…. At a press conference Thursday, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries were asked if they would use their budgetary powers to rein in ICE. They refused to answer….

Letters from an American, January 10, 2026

Heather Cox Richardson, Jan 11, 2026

…Hours after Good’s death, Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem appeared in Manhattan behind a podium emblazoned with the words: “ONE OF OURS, ALL OF YOURS.”….

We’re All “Domestic Terrorists” Now

Ross Rosenfeld, January 8, 2026 [The New Republic]

In ICE’s Own Words, It’s “Wartime” in America 

Michael Tomasky, January 9, 2026 [The New Republic]

ICE just launched a “wartime recruitment” campaign and seeks agents who want to “defend” their “culture.” There will be more Renee Goods….

Trump Lays Out a Vision of Power Restrained Only by ‘My Own Morality 

[New York Times, via Naked Capitalism 01-09-2025]

No Authority. Only Violence.

Jim Stewartson, Jan 09, 2026 [MindWar]

A word often used to describe Trump is authoritarian. But this is insufficient. Authority is the recognized right to control outcomes within a set of constraints accepted as binding—familial, religious, cultural, moral or legal.

The U.S. federal government is deliberately destroying the idea of any authority being legitimate except the ability to project coercive violence. We are living in the “might makes right” world of neo-Nazi ideology, a kratocracy.

  • William Montague defined kratocracy as: a government by those strong enough to seize control through violence or deceit.

In ‘Unhinged’ Rant, Miller Says US Has Right to Take Over Any Country For Its Resources

Julia Conley, January 06, 2025 [CommonDreams]

Trump admin sends tough private message to oil companies on Venezuela 

[Politico, via Naked Capitalism 01-04-2026]

Administration officials have told oil executives in recent weeks that if they want compensation for their rigs, pipelines and other seized property, then they must be prepared to go back into Venezuela now and invest heavily in reviving its shattered petroleum industry, two people familiar with the administration’s outreach told POLITICO on Saturday….

Monopoly Round-Up: A Gunboat Oligarchy Goes After Venezuelan Oil

Matt Stoller, Jan 04, 2026 [BIG]

[TW: a history lesson that is grandly encouraging. Wright Patman would be a wonderful subject for Ron Chernow’s next book (but so also would be Lincoln economic advisor Henry Carey; Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner, who delivered one of the most important American explanations of civic republicanism; and Pennsylvania Congressman Thadeous Stevens, whose warnings of the dreadful consequences of failing to seize the wealth of the slave-holders proved to be entirely accurate). Also important is Stoller noting that Trump is really just a continuation of Bush. Implication: getting rid of Trump will not solve the underlying problems of an entrenched oligarchy controlling both major political parties, and the militant conservative and libertarian movements that are nurtured and richly funded by that entrenched oligarchy.]

Trump kicked off 2026 with a military attack on Venezuela and a naked seizure of oil resources. Wall Street is overjoyed. Plus, Mamdani takes office and billionaires rage at a wealth tax….

…U.S. domination of the oil reserves of South America is not new. And neither is the fusion of corporate and state interest.

Ninety five years ago, in 1931, Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon, who owned Gulf Oil (now Chevron), forced the President of Colombia to give his company the Barco oil concession, which borders Venezuela. How? Well Wall Street banks and the U.S. government threatened to withhold vitally needed bank loans if Colombia did not cede the franchise….

At the time, Democrats were incompetent and split, as it was an era of deep reverence for the wealthy and bitter culture warring over race and alcohol. For instance, the head of the DNC in the late 1920s, a Dupont executive named John J. Raskob, published a pamphlet titled “Everybody Ought to Be Rich” encouraging Americans to borrow money to invest in the stock market.

Just as there is increasing support for cynical and nihilistic figures today, many in the 1920s felt warmly towards Mellon, Mussolini, and authoritarianism in general….

But then came the 1929 crash, and a period of “debunking” of myths, as Louis Brandeis put it. The old order was discredited. And a political realignment occurred. The Democrats turned to liberalism, and former party elites like Raskob became bitter foes of FDR in the 1930s. But more importantly, Patman’s impeachment campaign succeeded. Mellon was fired, because then-President Herbert Hoover was under political pressure over the widespread revulsion towards economic elites. You get a sense of this dynamic by going through Patman’s Congressional correspondence. “We have just got Al Capone,” wrote one Texan. “Now let’s get some of the others.”

…Ultimately, what the attack on Venezuela shows is that Donald Trump decided to use his 2024 mandate for change to revert back to a traditional gunboat diplomacy framework, both domestically and abroad. Like Mellon, Harding, Hoover, and George W. Bush, Trump is operating on behalf of financial capital. Indeed, Trump more reflects Bush than anyone else; his administration is staffed with former Bush Republicans, and the GOP Congress is full of Bush adherents.

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Open Thread

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On January 10, 2026

31 Comments

Use to discuss topics unrelated to recent posts.

Iran Can’t Afford To Keep Fucking Up

By

On January 9, 2026

38 Comments

This will offend some people because supposedly outsiders aren’t supposed to do anything but cheer Resistance actors or something.

  • Russia offered them a formal military alliance and they refused;
  • They have and had sufficient missiles and drones to overwhelm Israeli defenses;
  • During the Gaza war they did not attack Israel which allowed Israel to defeat Hamas (note that if they had, Hezbollah would have gone all in if they encouraged it, so it would have been absolutely massive, 80% of Hezbollah’s missile stockpile had not been destroyed at that point.)
  • They did not send troops to save Assad and keep Syria in their sphere,
  • During the brief Israeli/Iran war, they were winning and Israel was a week or so from running out of interceptors. Israel asked for a ceasefire and they agreed;, and,
  • They keep refusing to get nukes despite having the capability.

These are deeply foolish people and if they keep refusing to actually fight or make alliance, and keep letting Israel and the US take swings at Iran at times and places of their choosing they are eventually going to lose.

They should also get that formal alliance with Russia and make whatever agreements are necessary to get full economic support from China, which could end their inflation problems in half a year

The counter-argument is that winning the missile war might lead to nuking. I don’t think Israel would do that unless it was existential, nuking Iran would cost them extremely. But Israel having nukes is precisely why Iran either needs to get their own or to get under a nuclear powers umbrella. (Ideally you first make an alliance with Russia, then you get the nukes.)

I don’t know what the dysfunction is, exactly, but if they don’t fix it, it’s likely to be terminal. I suspect a lot comes from Khameini, certainly the nuclear ban does.

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