Ian Welsh

Footage tied to Jeffrey Epstein’s death in federal custody appears to have been altered before it was shared with the public—despite being presented as unedited surveillance video—according to a joint investigation by WIRED and multiple independent video forensics experts.

Here’s what the analysis uncovered:

Hidden metadata embedded in the video file revealed that the footage wasn’t a direct export from the prison’s internal surveillance system. Instead, the file had been processed—apparently using Adobe Premiere Pro, a professional-grade video editing program. Evidence suggests it was stitched together from at least two separate clips, saved multiple times, and exported before being posted on the Department of Justice’s website as if it were “raw” footage.

But you’d have to be really stupid to think it’s the most likely possibility.

So, there are no Epstein files, Ghislaine was not involved in pimping underaged girls and it’s all just a big nothing. Good to know.

The US-UK Special Relationship is Officially Dead

By Sean Paul Kelley

On July 11, 2025

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I doubt any of you will recall, but in 2003 I wrote a long post over at a different place, that NATO was dead. It was useless, much like the Concert of Europe that emerged after the 1848 Revolutions in Europe recast and sought to revise the settlement of 1815, set up by Castlereagh-Metternich and Talleyrand.

So, today it’s official: the US-UK Special Relationship is dead. It’s been moribund for a long time, since after the Iraqi invasion there was a huge groundswell of UK citizens that resented their country being the American poodle. Lip service was paid, but now, no longer. That the Brits have to turned to the French says a lot.

With the Northwood Declaration the Brits have indicated their nuclear arsenal will no longer be under the unified command of SACEUR. The Brits will instead “Decouple” from the Americans and integrate with their continental ally, France. For decades the UK’s nuclear arsenal was inoperable without the USA, as it is so much based on American technology, command and control dependency, even the Brits boomers (SSBN) are dependent on US technology, namely the UGM-133 Trident II, a submarine launched ballistic missile made for the US and Royal Navies in America.

The UK has four Vanguard-class boomers in service, which each carry a potential total of 16 SLBMs. Each SLBM Is MIRVed, deploying a potential total of 192 nuclear warheads with yields of 100kt each per submarine. In 2021 the government of Boris Johnson implemented a policy of ‘deliberate ambiguity’ so the exact size and scope of the UK’s nuclear arsenal is unknown.

France, like the UK, maintains a small fleet of four Triomphant-class boomers. Each French boomer can carry up to 16 French-made M45 or M51 SLBMs, that are MIRVed, and French warhead yields fall between 150kt-300kt. Both British and French boomers have four torpedo tubes, the French can also launch the Exocte anti-ship missile while underwater. French boomers got some teeth.

France also maintains a small aircraft deliverable stockpile of nuclear weapons. The UK decommissioned their nuclear aircraft years ago. By French and UK law each country must have at least one boomer at sea at all times.

In the video I linked above the Deutsche Welle interviewer asks Phillips O’Brien the main question, “how historically significant this is this shift in nuclear posture from France and the UK?”

Phillips answers with typical British understatement, “well particularly from the UK but also from France because both of their nuclear deterrence particularly the UK has basically been inoperable without the USA that it’s been based on American technology a lot of it and very close cooperation uh and the idea that sort of the British would would go in a way to try and establish a nuclear deterrent that could be operated, developed and operated without the USA would be something quite extraordinary because they’ve not done anything like that before. I think it’s a sign that the United States is no longer seen as quite a reliable defense partner.”

This is decline observable in real time. This is the world that Trump has created. The nation that I once called the USS Unsinkable, no longer finds the US a reliable security partner. Imagine what our allies in Asia are thinking?

The Northwood Declaration is a concrete manifestation of how the rest of the world now sees the United States: the primary rogue nation. I knew the world would change a great deal in my lifetime, but I honestly did not think that I would see this. Thirty one years ago this summer I got my first passport and headed to Europe. I remember thinking about my passport as almost like one would think of an American Express card. It was my key to the world and I could go anywhere. That was true until about 10 years ago. What a world we Americans pissed away.

As Churchill once said, “friends are not permanent, interests are.”

Equal Tests For Men and Women in Front Line Combat Roles: Progress or Regression?

By Sean Paul Kelley

On July 10, 2025

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There has been a lot of back and forth about men and women being tested equally for front line combat roles.

First, let me make it very clear, I am one hundred percent for equality between men and women. I’ve worked under women bosses, had no issue with it. While at Morgan Stanley I had a woman business partner for a year and a half. It was a very sucessful relationship, we’re still friends.

I’ve learned a lot from the women in my life, begining with my mother; the vast majority of which has added significant value to my life. And although I can’t say much nice about my two ex-wives: I learned hard lessons from each of them as well.

Finally, I’ve no issue with men and women serving in combat roles together on the front lines. To put it at its most crude: a woman can stop a bullet just as well as I can. But, and it is a big one, in any physical role in which men and women serve together as physical equals, they must be physical equals. Full stop.

So, this new army fitness test rolling out this summer is a very good outcome.

Disagree? Please explain then.

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Trump’s Absolutely Crazed Tariff Policies: Brazil and Copper Edition

By Ian Welsh

On July 9, 2025

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So, Trump sent a letter to Brazil announcing 50% tariffs. His demands are that Brazil stop prosecuting Bolsonaro (ex-President who tried to steal the last election, and stole the one before by getting Lula locked up on bogus charges) and that they let US social media platforms operate unfettered the country. If Brazil puts tariffs on US goods, then the US will increase its tariffs by the same amount.

Here’s the thing, Brazil and the US have essentially even trade:

(light blue is exports, dark blue is imports)

The most recent services data I can find indicates that the US has a services surplus.

But more to the point, Trump wants to interfere in Brazil’s internal politics in a way that no Brazilian patriot could countenance. Nor would would Lula be wise to submit.

And Brazil’s exposure to the US market isn’t as serious as it may seem, the exports amount to a bit less than 2% of Brazil’s GDP. It can weather this storm easily. It’ll just sell more elsewhere or even just eat the loss.

What it does do is encourage Brazil to move away from trade with the US entirely, and the US’s main exports to Brazil are refined petroleum, aircraft and parts, nuclear reactor parts and electrical machinery and parts. With the partial exception of aircraft parts and nuclear parts (for US manufactured aircraft and US designed reactors) there’s nothing there Brazil can’t buy from someone else and Brazil imports the things any sane trade policy would want other countries to import: largely manufactured goods other refined petroleum.

Even with nuclear and aircraft, China is now an alternative for new planes and new plants.

So Trump doesn’t have much leverage, actually. Way less than with Europe and Canada and Mexico and Japan and even Canada, Mexico and Japan have resisted his trade war.

All Trump is doing is pushing Brazil away and into the arms of Chinese, and giving them reason to de-dollarize sooner and faster.

Insanity.

Then there’s Trump’s announced 50% tariff on copper imports. Now, on the face, this makes some sense: copper is important in industrial manufacture and having the US dependent on other countries, especially China is bad.

BUT starting at 50% just means that costs for virtually all manufacturing in the US will go up and US manufacturing will be less competitive.

Once again, the way to do tariffs is announce they will happen in X years, where X is the amount of time it will take to build new mines and refineries in the US. Or you could star them at 1% say, and raise them another percentage point every two months till they reach whatever level is necessary to get people to mine and refine in the US.

Just imposing them is the stupidest possible way to do it.

Trump’s just fundamentally incompetent at policy. He can’t do it. Policy under Trump only works if he lets someone else do it and leaves them alone, but for anything high profile he constantly wants to meddle, and he’s a boob.

Trump’s economicpolicy mix — defunding research wholesale, starting a trade war with the entire world, vastly slashing social welfare, discouraging visitors and immigration and getting rid of migrant workers is just accelerating America’s decline.

Trump is an idiot, a fool and the will likely go down as the President who sealed America end as a hegemonic great power. Among post-war Presidents only Obama and Reagan are in competition with him for last place, but because they started and managed US decline, they will avoid much of the blame.

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Trump’s Admin Claims the Epstein Files Don’t Exist, Why?

By Ian Welsh

On July 8, 2025

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How stupid do they think everyone is?

I’ll state the obvious, then make one observation.

The Obvious Epstein was an intelligence operation, probably US intelligence and Mossad working together. Every room had cameras, and everyone who partook can be blackmailed.

Observation: The great temptation with the Epstein files isn’t to release them or destroy them, the great temptation is to use them, because they represent a vast amount of power.

Anyway, British and American elites have a predilection for under-age sex and various sexual pecadillos. A taste for being spanked and buggery, in particular, are endemic in the English ruling class due to what goes on in a lot of boys boarding schools. This is so much the case that enjoying being beaten used to be called “the English vice”. We pretend it was just a Victorian thing, but it continues.

Being part of the ruling class traditionally comes with the ability to ignore conventional mores, but members of that class didn’t (and still don’t seem to) fully understand what the changes is surveillance technology mean. Every time some idiot is outed because they filmed their own sexual perversions I laugh, but, simply put, if one must be depraved, keep it in house, don’t film it, you moron, and don’t trust anyone. (This isn’t exactly advice, but a powerful person being blackmailed is even worse than a powerful person with a private vice.)

Trump’s has so far been able to push his program thru, but his approval ratings are underwater and important goals, like the end of birthright citizens immunity to revocation of citizenship are still to come. Trump needs leverage. I suspect he’s decided to use the leverage on hand.

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The End Of Cash & The Rise Of The Non-Person

By Ian Welsh

On July 8, 2025

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Image by TW Collins

Back in 2017 I wrote “The End of Cash”:

Understand, however, that getting rid of cash is part of this. Understand that blockchains, “coins” do not have to ultimately be a technology of freedom, but can easily be a totalitarian technology. Understand that virtually no one in a position of power is your friend on this: They want to know, they want to control, they want to be able to decide how you spend your money and your time, and they want to have an electronic dossier on you which is complete, and which will be usable to destroy you, because no one has never done or said something which cannot be made to look not just bad, but terrible and illegal, especially if you can pick, say, ten quotes or actions out of a lifetime.

In the 80s and 90s it was possible to live the cash economy, or the near cash economy (some checks, but no bank account.) Around 1990 I worked as a dispatcher for a printing company. There was an independent food stall nearby, the sort of place that was all “skilled short order cook” food. I bought most of my lunches there, and the owner ran a tab. When I was paid, by cheque, I endorsed them to him, he took 2%, and paid me cash, minus any tab I’d run up. I paid my landlord in cash, and I bought my food in cash.

At other points I was entirely casual labour: I painted, did light construction work for homeowners, various landscaping jobs, and helped people move. In most cases they paid me cash, if they paid me with a check and I didn’t want to wait the 28 days the banks often insisted on for “clearance” I’d endorse the check, lose 2% and count it not entirely unreasonable.

It’s very hard to do that now. Most people don’t pay with cash, or even checks, and everything goes thru a bank or payment processor and they are very picky about who they allow as customers. Legal activities (say selling nootropics, or porn) are often frozen out, and, indeed, banks have closed down clients accounts without even saying why. Indeed this was done to someone as prominent as Britain’s Nigel Farage, though he had enough fame and political clout to handle it. Perhaps you remember when PayPal, Visa and Mastercard all decided to stop letting people donate to Wikileaks.

Here’s a new case, in Germany, from the EU:

Here is a man, Hüseyin Doğru, a German journalist (of Turkish origins, but not a dual citizen) whom the EU authorities have found a novel, immensely cruel, way of punishing for his coverage of, and views on, Palestine.

The German authorities learned a lesson from my case. Not wishing to be answerable in court for any ban on pro-Palestinian voices (similar to the court case I am dragging them through currently), they found another way: A direct sanction by the EU utilising some hitherto unused directive, one introduced at the beginning of the Ukraine war, that allows Brussels to sanction any citizen of the EU it deems to be working for Russian interests. Clinging to the argument that Hüseyin’s website/podcast used to be shown also on Ruptly (among other platforms), they are using this directive aimed at an ‘anti-Russian asset’ to destroy a journalist who dared oppose the Palestinian genocide.

In practice, this means that Hüseyin’s bank account is frozen; that if you or I were to give him cash to buy groceries or make rent then we would be considered his accomplices and subject to similar sanctions; it also means that if he were a civil servant, he would be fired; if he were a student he would be expelled from his university; if he received a pension it would be suspended; if he received any social benefit it would be frozen. It also, astonishingly, means that he cannot leave Germany!

Last, but definitely not least, it means that Hüseyin cannot sue his government for turning him into a non-person but only challenge the European Commission in Brussels – where he is not even allowed to go!

Beautiful stuff, even cash is forbidden, BUT, of course, cash is hard to trace. Thing is, these days, most payments are electronic.

Back when the Trucker Protest happened in Ottawa Canada I opposed freezing their accounts, even though I thought they were a bunch of fools and opposed their agenda. Why? Because it is punishment without a trial or facing a jury. It’s devastating. And I understood that if it could be done to people I disagree with, it could be done to people I do agree with.

So Germany has made it so Huseyin will wind up homeless and possibly even starve to death simply by making him an economic non-person.

This is made much easier by the fact that there’s barely a cash economy any more

These sorts of administrative penalties are becoming more common. Palestine Action, for example, was designated a terrorist organization recently (at the same time as the terrorists who took over Syria were removed.) I’m going to come back to this, because it’s important.

But, basically, the end of the cash economy has made it MUCH easier for authoritarian governments to crush dissent, and in general, the removal of cases from courts, plea bargains, lack of jury trials, making it illegal to tell juries about jury nullification and the rise of “sanctions” and administravie orders has been extremely chilling.

Europe is trending hard authoritarian, with Britain and Germany leading the way. The US, of course, is working hard to end Habeas Corpus and other legal protections. Canada is moving in the same direction.

We need a new conception of how societies should run and until that happens we need a new conception of how to run organizations that the elite doesn’t approve of.

We’ll cover this more, soon.

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Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – July 06, 2025

By Tony Wikrent

On July 6, 2025

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by Tony Wikrent

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]

Welcome to the Age of Disappearance: America’s new era of secret police

Hamilton Nolan, July 02, 2025 [How Things Work]

…an avalanche of new funding for the Department of Homeland Security, ICE, and anti-immigration measures is, in fact, coming. This is going to spill well past the bounds of what any sane person would consider to be “immigration enforcement.” It is going to create a lavishly funded, unaccountable, quasi-secret police force that will transform our nation for the worse. Very soon.

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about the terrifying scale of this new funding. This bill contains enough money to build a new system of immigration detention centers far bigger than the entire federal prison system. The American Immigration Council says that it will be enough to facilitate the “daily detention of at least 116,000 non-citizens.” It will let ICE hire more field agents than the FBI. Its $170 billion in funding for Stephen Miller’s rabid campaign to purge America of brown people is comparable to the total annual funding for the United States Army.

Donald Trump envisions himself as an all-powerful leader whose will is equal to law. He is bent on revenge against his political enemies. He has installed extreme loyalists in the Justice Department, the FBI, the Defense Department, the Department of Homeland Security, and all other security departments. The courts have declined to meaningfully restrain his abuses of these departments. This budget will give him the final piece of the puzzle that he needs to achieve his fever dream: a nationwide army of masked, unaccountable armed agents empowered to snatch anyone they like off the streets, and the physical infrastructure to imprison or deport those people at will. Thousands of men with guns, unrestrained by judges or local police, who do not answer to Congress, who point guns at the press, who arrest whoever they want, for reasons they do not share, and do whatever they wish with those people. The implications of this are going to make America a much darker place….

…ICE has already arrested a number of Democratic elected officials, including mayors and members of Congress and a judge. In this environment, it is a trivial matter for Trump and his loyalists to concoct reasons to arrest almost anyone. People can be arrested if they are immigrants, if they look like they might be immigrants, if they illegally harbored or assisted immigrants, or if they somehow impeded ICE’s quest to arrest immigrants. The mission can and will be scaled up from “deport immigrants” to “punish those who want to stand in the way of our mission.”….

16 Thoughts On The Republican Budget Atrocity

Brian Beutler, July 03, 2025 [Off Message]

Quite apart from the economics, this secret police force and the prison network that will be built for it, is the most repugnant and frightening aspect of the bill; Medicaid can be funded again, food stamps can be funded again, clean energy can be funded, taxes can be increased progressively. But an immigrant prison network, overseen by Trump-loyal paramilitaries, with no resources for due process, will be very hard to dislodge, and could easily be turned against the citizenry. This is Stephen Miller’s wet dream and it will stain the whole country….

Trump falsely questions Zohran Mamdani’s citizenship, threatens to arrest him over ICE operations

[ABC, via Naked Capitalism 07-02-2025]

Trump’s Threat to Deport Mamdani Isn’t a Joke

Ken Klippensteinm, July 3, 2025

Last month, according to an internal memo, the Justice Department ordered its attorneys to “prioritize and maximally pursue denaturalization proceedings” — the process by which naturalized Americans can be stripped of their citizenship — not for fraud or criminality, but “against individuals who pose a potential danger to national security.”

Strategic Political Economy

There’s a Race to Power the Future. China Is Pulling Away