MacDougall: To stop Trump, drain the social media swamp

2025/02/08 Leave a comment

Agree, but how to make this happen, no matter how needed:

…The West used to have systems in place to resist such people. The main bulwark of that system was a free and independent press and its scrutiny function. We have spent the past 20 years (inadvertently) dismantling that system. In the recent past, you couldn’t lie and expect to get to first base in politics. Now, lying is the key to hitting a home run.

Trump first mused about running for the presidency in the late 1980s. If you read the coverage of the time, much of Trump’s message was the same: the United States was getting ripped off and it was time somebody did something about it. His target was then (mostly) Japan, the then-economic upstarts “stealing” American jobs and prosperity. It’s not Trump that’s different; it’s the universe around him.

The moral for our story is: Trump’s 1980s bluster fell apart the first moment it was challenged by someone working for a serious news outfit. The same was true when he tried to run for the presidency in 2000. Moreover, he had no way to easily co-opt what was then a vibrant Republican Party, with its hierarchies and power blocs. It took hard work to be a serious contender and Trump doesn’t do hard work. The system screened him out.

All this changed in the 2010s when the information economy suddenly gifted Trump a megaphone he could use to get around the hard work of organizing. Twitter gave Trump a playground of shamelessness where fringe topics like “birtherism” were fuel for a political career, rather than a career-killer.

If Canada wants to inoculate itself from Trump, it should club together at the G7 and G20 and start asking why democracies like ours allow the (most American) behemoths of the attention economy to operate in the way they do. Why is “free” an acceptable business model when the cost to society is so great? Why do the authoritarians of the world keep these platforms out or use them as weapons (i.e. TikTok), while we allow ourselves to become addicted to them?

If we want to limit Trump, we need to start by draining the swamp that is the attention economy. Because in the current system Trump — or someone equally shameless — wins every time.

Source: MacDougall: To stop Trump, drain the social media swamp

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Young: The hidden truth about migrant deaths at the Canada-U.S. border

2025/02/08 Leave a comment

While every death is a human tragedy, the known numbers are small compared to the number of irregular arrivals and other asylum seekers. Useful to have some data:

…Death at the border

Our research identified 15 deaths at the Canada-U.S. border between 2020 and 2023, and another 23 deaths going back to 1989. Given the lack of official records, the actual number is likely higher.

We filed access-to-information requests on both sides of the border. The RCMP acknowledged just one death in Canada, and the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) produced no results. Instead, we systematically collected media reports on border deaths and analyzed that data.

Roughly three-quarters of migrants whose deaths were covered in news reports were travelling towards the U.S. Their remains were mainly recovered on the Canadian side of the border. 

Migrants face a range of dangers when crossing the Canada-U.S. border irregularly, but drowning represents the most significant threat, followed by hypothermia — 23 and six of the 38 recorded deaths, respectively.

Three people died in encounters with border patrol agents, with two fatally shot on the American side and one dying in a car crash while being chased by Canadian agents.

Invisible deaths

Our requests for official data on border deaths in both the U.S. and Canada came up empty-handed. After more than a year and the conclusion of an independent complaint investigation into the RCMP’s lack of response to our Canadian request, we were provided with information on one single death. The request filed in the U.S. returned no information. 

Researchers in both countries regularly report frustration with slow processes and a lack of results from such requests.

This experience led us to believe that border enforcement agencies do not track deaths along the Canada-U.S. border in either country. This is a problem. The public is left in the dark, while potential migrants are not provided with information about the dangers of irregular crossings.

It is particularly odd that American authorities don’t provide information on deaths at this border, given that deaths along the U.S.-Mexico border are tracked and publicly reported.

If there’s been a policy decision not to track deaths at the Canada-U.S. border, it reveals a lack of concern and a willingness to obscure the full picture from the public. Both the Canadian and American governments need to change their approach to documenting border deaths, detailing all known cases publicly.

More death on the horizon

Trump’s return to the American presidency might lead to an increase in irregular migration between Canada and the U.S. The Canadian government’s move to beef up border security enforcement, in turn, makes it more likely that migrants will perish after choosing dangerous crossing points. 

Even when migrants die amid human smuggling operations, a lot of the responsibility lies with government decisions. 

As Public Safety Canada warned in 2023, more difficult border crossings lead to increased criminality in human smuggling. Government decisions drive people away from safer crossing points and into the influence of criminal organizations.

The governments of Canada and the United States have a moral obligation to inform the public about deaths — and do everything in their power to prevent further tragedies.

Kira Williams (University of Toronto Scarborough) and Caroline Cordeiro (Johnson Shoyama Graduate School of Public Policy) contributed to the research for this article.

Source: The hidden truth about migrant deaths at the Canada-U.S. border

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Ottawa accused of stalling on visa approvals for thousands of Gazans stranded at critical time

2025/02/08 1 Comment

Suspect the necessary security clearances are part of the reason for delays:

Almost 5,000 Palestinians who applied last year to take part in a special Ottawa program to help them flee war-torn Gaza and join relatives in Canada have been deemed eligible by the government, but so far only 620 – or fewer than 15 per cent – have arrived.

Immigration lawyers representing Palestinians and their Canadian relatives are accusing the government of deliberately stalling applications, and are urging officials to take advantage of the Israel-Hamas ceasefire and reopening of the Rafah crossing to press Israel to allow applicants still in Gaza to exit.

They say scores of Palestinians have paid thousands of dollars in bribes to cross into Egypt to complete biometric checks in Cairo required by the Canadian government and have been waiting for months there for final approval. Others are waiting in Gaza for confirmation that their visas have been approved.

Yameena Ansari, an immigration lawyer, said Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada “is fully capable of expediting processing of applications. They do it regularly for many lines of business. So, if the Gaza applications are not being expedited, that is not an accident.”

Immigration lawyer Warda Shazadi Meighen of Landings LLP in Toronto said Canada must act swiftly to uphold its commitments under the Gazan program. “For those still seeking relocation – particularly individuals with family in Canada – this moment presents a crucial opportunity to fulfill our humanitarian obligations,” she said.

Matthew Behrens, who co-ordinates the Rural Refugee Rights Network, said “it is inexcusable” for IRCC to sit on applications for over a year, warning that “the border could be closed again at a moment’s notice.”

Ottawa’s program faced criticism over security concerns when it was announced. Last year, Marco Rubio, then a senator and now secretary of state in President Donald Trump’s administration, wrote to the U.S. Homeland Security Secretary, warning that the program raised the risk of allowing people with ties to terror groups, such as Hamas, to get easier access to the United States….

Source: Ottawa accused of stalling on visa approvals for thousands of Gazans stranded at critical time

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Rioux | Le sexe des anges [arguing #s more important for integration than approaches]

2025/02/08 Leave a comment

Rioux is consistent in the sources he cites and the positions he takes. Numbers are important, as recent Canadian and other experiences attest, but policies and approaches all matter too:

…C’est d’ailleurs tout le drame de l’immigration. Malgré certaines expériences individuelles positives qu’on aura beau brandir comme un étendard, dans l’immense majorité des cas, elle est d’abord une souffrance pour ces individus à qui l’on demande de faire table rase de leur famille, de leur langue et de leur culture pour être ballottés comme de simples produits au gré des besoins du marché. Ensuite, indépendamment des individus, cette immigration massive devient vite un problème. Cela se vérifie partout. On ne transplante pas impunément des populations entières dans n’importe quelle communauté sans ébranler la cohésion sociale et créer inévitablement des réactions de rejet. Réactions que les bonnes âmes auront beau condamner, mais que l’anthropologue Claude Lévi-Strauss jugeait « normales, légitimes même, et en tout cas inévitables ». Une réalité devant laquelle les discours soporifiques sur l’ouverture à l’Autre seront toujours impuissants.

C’est ce que disait Rémy Girard dans Le déclin de l’empire américain : « Il y a trois choses importantes en histoire : premièrement le nombre, deuxièmement le nombre et troisièmement le nombre ». Cette citation que l’on prête à l’historien Michel Brunet est encore plus vraie en matière d’immigration. Et Rémy Girard d’ajouter que « l’histoire n’est pas une science morale. Le bon droit, la compassion, la justice sont des notions étrangères à l’histoire ». Ce qui peut avoir du sens pour l’accueil d’un petit nombre d’individus n’en a plus guère dès lors que l’on parle d’un phénomène de masse. En France, même le premier ministre centriste François Bayrou, qui penche généralement à gauche, a dû se résoudre à parler de « submersion migratoire ». Les chiffres les plus récents étant d’ailleurs là pour le prouver.

Si le nombre est de loin le critère déterminant, d’autres comme la proximité culturelle et la volonté de s’intégrer jouent un rôle. C’est toute la difficulté que connaît la France aujourd’hui dans ses banlieues ethniques. L’intégration de populations de culture musulmane est évidemment plus difficile que celle, hier, des Italiens ou des Portugais. Cette intégration est d’autant plus ardue que des idéologies comme l’islamisme la combattent ouvertement. En 2015, le président Recep Tayyip Erdoğan était venu à Strasbourg présenter la Turquie comme le seul défenseur de la « vraie civilisation » et soutenir que l’assimilation était « un crime contre l’humanité ». Des organismes comme l’Organisation du monde islamique pour l’éducation, les sciences et la culture (ICESCO) incitent ouvertement les immigrants musulmans à ne pas acquérir les valeurs de leur pays d’accueil.

Mais encore faut-il aussi que pour intégrer, on ait confiance dans sa propre culture. Les efforts destinés à favoriser l’intégration sont évidemment louables. Mais ils ne pourront jamais rien contre le nombre. De grâce, cessons de traiter un problème démographique qui est en train de devenir la grande affaire politique du siècle comme une banale question de compassion et de bonne volonté.

Source: Chronique | Le sexe des anges

Filed under Integration, Multiculturalism Tagged with

International student graduates earn much less than Canadian peers, study shows

2025/02/07 1 Comment

Of concern, particularly at masters and PhD levels:

International students earn substantially less than their Canadian counterparts upon graduation, and a larger proportion of them end up in sales and service jobs, new research from Statistics Canada shows.

The data – part of a report by the agency examining the labour-market outcomes of university and college graduates in Canada – capture the inequity in wages and types of jobs that international students eventually obtain compared with Canadian graduates.

Over all, international student graduates earned 19.6 per cent less than Canadian graduates three years after graduating, the report found. Moreover, their annual incomes were lower than Canadian graduates at all levels of study, regardless of if they earned a diploma or a doctorate degree.

The report used data from a 2023 national survey of graduates conducted by Statscan, and focused on the graduating class of 2020.

Foreign students with a bachelor’s degree, for example, earned a median annual income of $52,000, compared with Canadian graduates at $65,200. At the master’s level, international students earned 16.6 per cent less than Canadians – $70,000 compared with $83,900, annually.

A critical difference in the employment outcomes for foreign students compared to Canadian graduates can be seen in the proportion of international students who work in sales and service occupations. Across all education levels, approximately 28 per cent of international student graduates worked in sales and service jobs, compared with roughly 12 per cent of Canadian graduates.

Some examples of sales and service occupations, according to the National Occupation Classification system, include retail and restaurant workers, door-to-door salespeople and call-centre operators. These jobs tend to pay lower wages than, for example, management occupations or jobs in business and finance.

Brittany Etmanski, the report’s author, suggested that one reason for the significant earnings differential between foreign graduates and Canadian graduates was because more of the former group tended to be college and bachelor’s degree holders employed in the low-wage sales and service sectors.

“However, this does not explain the difference in income at the masters and doctoral levels,” she wrote….

Source: International student graduates earn much less than Canadian peers, study shows

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Nicholas | Petit peuple

2025/02/07 Leave a comment

A lire:

J’ai eu envie de revisiter Rhinocéros, parce qu’on nous demande beaucoup de nous montrer forts face à Donald Trump. Quelle est, au fond, cette force que l’on nous demande ? Une force de domination de raison ou du cœur ? Face à la brutalité du trumpisme, qui avons-nous envie d’être ?

Il y a aussi ce poème du pasteur allemand Martin Niemöller, qui regagne en popularité. « Ils sont d’abord venus chercher les socialistes, et je n’ai rien dit parce que je n’étais pas socialiste. Puis, ils sont venus chercher les syndicalistes, et je n’ai rien dit, parce que je n’étais pas syndicaliste. Puis, ils sont venus chercher les Juifs, et je n’ai rien dit parce que je n’étais pas juif. Puis, ils sont venus me chercher, et il ne restait plus personne pour me défendre. »

Le premier ministre ontarien, Doug Ford, a dit mardi, alors qu’il ne savait pas qu’un micro était ouvert : « Le jour de l’élection, étais-je heureux que ce gars-là [Trump] gagne ? À 100 % ! » Il continue : « Mais le gars a sorti un couteau et il m’a poignardé. »

Well, M. Ford, karma is a b***. Plus je réfléchis, plus je me dis que ces menaces de tarifs douaniers peuvent sérieusement affecter notre économie, et peut-être racheter nos consciences. Ou du moins, la conscience d’hommes tentés par la rhinocérite — pardon, le trumpisme — et qui ne comprenaient pas la violence politique avant d’en sentir eux-mêmes le poignard. Des hommes qui ne bronchaient pas trop quand ils sont venus pour les « wokes », les antiracistes, les personnes trans, les féministes, les musulmans, les immigrants, les journalistes, les scientifiques, les travailleurs précaires, tout le peuple palestinien. Par un coup de chance tragique, ils sont venus chercher la classe dirigeante canadienne avant qu’il ne reste plus personne pour les défendre.

La vitesse avec laquelle Donald Trump s’est retourné contre nous, le principal allié historique des États-Unis, nous offre une chance de réfléchir collectivement à notre rapport à la force.

En 1976, René Lévesque disait à la population québécoise : « On n’est pas un petit peuple, on est peut-être quelque chose comme un grand peuple. » On comprend le moment de l’histoire où ces mots ont été prononcés. Face au trauma qui a marqué le parcours de tellement de francophones, le premier ministre nous incitait, avec raison, à relever la tête.

Près de 50 ans plus tard, l’humeur collective a profondément changé. Lévesque choisirait sûrement d’autres mots pour traduire la même émotion. Je ne crois pas que je serai la seule à avouer qu’il peut me prendre l’envie, devant le feu de poubelle qu’est l’état de la planète, d’emmerder profondément les grands de ce monde, tout comme l’idée même d’aspirer politiquement à la grandeur. J’avance trop au ras des pâquerettes pour ne pas savoir que les grands, les puissants, les empires, ces admirables nations qui aspirent à l’universalisme, qui veulent rendre tout le monde à leur image, finissent par piétiner quantité d’humains avec leurs sabots, leurs cuirasses, leurs armes.

Ces grands qui, hier encore, dessinaient la carte de l’Afrique dans une conférence à Berlin, ou rêvaient de faire plier l’échine des Amériques sous leurs bottes de cow-boy, sont encore là à planifier la transformation de la bande de Gaza en jolie Côte d’Azur. J’ai envie, pour ma part, d’appartenir à un peuple qui n’en a rien à foutre de cette grandeur-là.

Comme Québécois, il devrait nous être plus facile de ne pas être séduits par l’idée de la domination, de la force brute, de la loi du plus fort : le plus fort, en Amérique, ne sera jamais francophone. Certains de nos compatriotes d’ici ou d’ailleurs au Canada se sont pourtant pris au jeu d’être un pays du G7. Ça leur est monté à la tête. On dessaoule ces jours-ci. On comprend que, face à l’empire américain, nous appartenons nous aussi au camp des petits.

Et c’est tant mieux. La prochaine étape de guérison, de maturité collective, c’est d’assumer qu’il n’y a absolument rien de mal ou de honteux à être un petit peuple. Au contraire. Pour résister aux sirènes de la violence politique, à cette épidémie de rhinocérite qui s’empare de l’époque, il nous faudrait reconnaître chez les petits du monde qu’ils viennent chercher… notre humanité en partage.

« Make America Great Again », beuglent-ils. Le vaccin contre la rhinocérite, c’est de savoir répondre : greatness is overrated. C’est ainsi que jusqu’à la toute fin, comme Bérenger face à tous les rhinocéros, nous ne capitulerons pas.

Source: Chronique | Petit peuple

I wanted to revisit Rhinoceros, because we are asked a lot to be strong against Donald Trump. What is, basically, this strength that we are asked of? A force of domination of reason or of the heart? Faced with the brutality of Trumpism, who do we want to be?

There is also this poem by German pastor Martin Niemöller, which is regaining popularity. “They first came for the socialists, and I didn’t say anything because I wasn’t a socialist. Then they came to get the trade unionists, and I didn’t say anything, because I wasn’t a trade unionist. Then they came to get the Jews, and I didn’t say anything because I wasn’t Jewish. Then, they came to look for me, and there was no one left to defend me. ”

Ontario Prime Minister Doug Ford said on Tuesday, when he did not know that a microphone was open: “On election day, was I happy that this guy [Trump] was winning? 100%! He continues: “But the guy took out a knife and stabbed me. ”

Well, Mr. Ford, karma is a b***. The more I think, the more I tell myself that these threats of tariffs can seriously affect our economy, and perhaps redeem our consciences. Or at least, the conscience of men tempted by rhinoceritis – sorry, Trumpism – and who did not understand political violence before feeling the dagger themselves. Men who didn’t flinch too much when they came for “wokes”, anti-racists, trans people, feminists, Muslims, immigrants, journalists, scientists, precarious workers, all the Palestinian people. By a tragic stroke of luck, they came to look for the Canadian ruling class before there was no one left to defend them.

The speed with which Donald Trump has turned against us, the main historical ally of the United States, gives us a chance to collectively reflect on our relationship with strength.

In 1976, René Lévesque told the Quebec population: “We are not a small people, we are perhaps something like a great people. We understand the moment in history when these words were spoken. Faced with the trauma that has marked the journey of so many Francophones, the Prime Minister was rightly urging us to raise our heads.

Nearly 50 years later, the collective mood has profoundly changed. Lévesque would surely choose other words to translate the same emotion. I don’t think I’ll be the only one to admit that it can take away my desire, in front of the garbage fire that is the state of the planet, to deeply annoy the greats of this world, just like the very idea of politically aspiring to greatness. I advance too far with the daisies not to know that the great, the powerful, the empires, these admirable nations that aspire to universalism, who want to make everyone in their image, end up trampling on many humans with their hooves, their breastpies, their weapons.

These adults who, until yesterday, drew the map of Africa in a conference in Berlin, or dreamed of bending the spine of the Americas under their cowboy boots, are still there planning the transformation of the Gaza Strip into a pretty Côte d’Azur. For my part, I want to belong to a people who don’t give a damn about this greatness.

As Quebecers, it should be easier for us not to be seduced by the idea of domination, brute force, the law of the strongest: the strongest, in America, will never be French-speaking. Some of our compatriots from here or elsewhere in Canada have nevertheless taken the game of being a G7 country. It went to their heads. We’re unleasing these days. We understand that, in the face of the American empire, we also belong to the camp of children.

And that’s all the better. The next step of healing, of collective maturity, is to assume that there is absolutely nothing wrong or shameful about being a small people. On the contrary. To resist the sirens of political violence, to this epidemic of rhinocerite that is taking hold of the time, we would have to recognize among the little ones of the world that they come to look for… our humanity in sharing.

“Make America Great Again,” they yell. The rhinoceritis vaccine is to know how to answer: greatness is overrated. This is how until the very end, like Bérenger in front of all rhinos, we will not capitulate.

Filed under foreign policy Tagged with ,

Clarkson: The Aga Khan believed in Canada

2025/02/07 Leave a comment

Good tribute:

…We didn’t always talk about profound things, but everything he said was measured, calm and meaningful. He thought very highly of Canada and had a great belief in our values. He wrote that he wanted his people to live here, “where the threat to democracy is minimal and seeks to draw on the experience of established democracy to make a vibrant and civil society and is sensitive to cultural difference. In this way, they can be effective in improving the quality of life of all their citizens. Canada is a prime example of such a country.”

He had such a belief in us. And that is why he established the Global Centre for Pluralism in Ottawa, which works to examine the experience of pluralism in practice. At a time when we are being faced with manic pronouncements and threats to our sovereignty from our nearest neighbour, we must remember that the Aga Khan, the greatest spiritual leader of our time, believed in Canada.

We must always remember how much he believed in us.

Source: The Aga Khan believed in Canada

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Why are Canadian immigration lawyers up in arms over proposed rules to target ‘ghost agents’?

2025/02/07 Leave a comment

Of note, applying to everyone rather than where the risk of fraud greater:

A government proposal to give authorities more power to investigate immigration consulting frauds is being criticized by lawyers as an overreach that fails to target the real culprits.

The proposed changes would grant immigration officials broad inspection power to investigate, adjudicate and penalize those who are unauthorized to give immigration advice for a fee, as well as licensed lawyers and consultants “counselling fraud and misrepresentation on their clients’ applications.”

However, provincial law societies and the Canadian Bar Association said lawyers are already subject to tight professional regulations. And they say the new rules would put them in a bind between their obligations under solicitor-client privilege and the ability to fight for their innocence.

“The regime would infringe on the law societies’ exclusive authority to govern their licensees,” the Federation of Law Societies of Canada, representing the 14 provincial and territorial law societies, said in a submission Monday in response to the government’s proposed changes. 

“The broad powers under the regime to inspect documents may be in conflict with the law of solicitor-client privilege in Canada.”

Currently, anyone who provides immigration advice for a fee must be a member of a law society or the College of Immigration and Citizenship Consultants, and immigration applicants are supposed to declare who their authorized representatives are.

While the professional regulators have the power to police and discipline their members for wrongdoing, many “ghost agents” — those who are unlicensed and offer immigration advice under the radar — have continued to operate without paper trails; many are overseas and beyond the reach of the regulators’ jurisdictions.

A parliamentary report in 2017 on improving oversight of immigration consultants raised concerns about weak governance of the consultants’ regulator and insufficient resources for investigations and enforcement. Among the recommendations were a policy review addressing the practice of “ghost consultants,” and considering increased fines and sentences.

The Immigration Department said unscrupulous agents “counselling fraud and misrepresentation” on clients’ applications are a threat to the integrity of Canada’s immigration and citizenship systems.

Source: Why are Canadian immigration lawyers up in arms over proposed rules to target ‘ghost agents’?

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Lederman: Powerful documentary No Other Land provides important context to Trump’s musings on Gaza 

2025/02/07 Leave a comment

Hopefully will make it to a streaming platform:

…For Palestinians and Muslims, this is a difficult film, documenting their people’s pain. But any viewer with a pulse will feel anguish – including, maybe especially, anyone who cares for and about Israel. In one charged scene, Mr. Abraham challenges the Israeli army for taking the Palestinians’ building tools. A soldier asks the Israeli why he cares. “I care because it’s all done in my name,” Mr. Abraham says.

No Other Land has won many festival prizes and is nominated for the Academy Award for best documentary. But it couldn’t land a North American distribution deal, no doubt because of the subject matter. So the filmmakers are releasing the film independently; it lands in Toronto and Vancouver theatres on Friday.

In the film, Mr. Adra says documenting the destruction may force the U.S. to press Israel to stop the expulsions.

Today, the threat is coming from the would-be saviour.

Mr. Trump called Gaza a “hellhole” as he floated his plan at a news conference Tuesday. What kind of god complex allows for this kind of unilateral, devilish declaration?

No Other Land is a stark reminder that the Palestinians displaced by the Israel-Hamas war and now under threat of permanent displacement by Mr. Trump’s ambitions are in fact people. They are not pawns or faceless figures in a geopolitical dust-up. They are people who want to live their lives in peace, and to live those lives at home. And home is Gaza.

Source: Powerful documentary No Other Land provides important context to Trump’s musings on Gaza

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Goldberg: The Familiar Arrogance of Musk’s Young Apparatchiks

2025/02/06 Leave a comment

Good and appropriate comparison between de-Baathification and de-wokeification, and the comparable risks:

Appearing on an anti-feminist podcast in 2021, JD Vance compared his ambitions for a conservative takeover of America to U.S. policy in postwar Iraq. “We need like a de-Baathification program, but a de-wokeification program in the United States,” he said, referring to the campaign to root out members of Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party. If and when Donald Trump returned to the White House, Vance argued, he should “fire every single midlevel bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state, replace them with our people.”

Vance’s words were prophetic, because the first days of the second Trump term have a distinct Coalition Provisional Authority vibe. For those lucky enough not to remember, the Coalition Provisional Authority was the administration that George W. Bush and his team put in place after charging heedlessly into Iraq, convinced that it would be easy to remake a government about which they knew next to nothing. It was full of right-wing apparatchiks, some barely out of college, who were given enormous responsibilities. Six people initially hired for low-level administrative jobs after sending their résumés to the conservative Heritage Foundation were assigned to manage Iraq’s $13 billion budget. A social worker who’d served as director at a Christian charity was put in charge of rebuilding the health care system.

Meanwhile, 50,000 to 100,000 Iraqi government workers, many of whom had joined the Baath Party only to get their jobs in the first place, were fired. Schools went without teachers. As Syrus Solo Jin wrote in Time, budget blunders by overwhelmed novices meant that the police weren’t paid on time. The de-Baathification that Vance wanted to emulate is widely seen as a disaster that contributed to the deadly chaos and instability that followed America’s invasion.

The United States government, of course, has yet to be dismantled to the same extent as Iraq’s, though not for lack of trying. During the transition, Trump’s allies used the phrase “shock and awe” — another throwback to the Iraq war — to describe his plans for the first 100 days.

Soon after taking over, they created a crisis by shutting down huge segments of federal government spending, though they restarted at least some payments after a judge slapped them with a court order. Late Friday, Elon Musk seized control of the Treasury Department’s payment system, which disburses trillions of dollars and houses sensitive data about millions of Americans. Some of the people helping him take over the government — who include, as Wired reported, a half dozen engineers between the ages of 19 and 24 — appear to be even less experienced than the neophytes who staffed the C.P.A. in Iraq.

Employees at the General Services Administration, which manages office space, transportation and technology for the federal government, told Wired that Edward Coristine, a recent high-school graduate who spent three months at Musk’s company Neuralink, has been on calls where “workers were made to go over code they had written and justify their jobs.” Another young member of Musk’s team, a software engineer named Gavin Kliger, sent out an email to USAID employees informing them that the headquarters has been closed and they shouldn’t come in; Musk said that he’s “feeding USAID into the wood chipper.”

At the Department of Education, employees have been put on leave for doing diversity training sessions that their managers recommended, and The Washington Post reports that Trump will soon begin dismantling the department altogether. More than a thousand people at the Environmental Protection Agency who work on issues like climate change and reducing pollution have been told they could be fired imminently.

Trump’s lackeys are purging the security services. Thousands of F.B.I. agents are being scrutinized for their work investigating and prosecuting the Capitol rioters, and according to The New York Times, scores or even hundreds of agents could be forced out. Meanwhile, leading administration jobs are going to cranks and fanatics. Darren Beattie, whom Trump reportedly plans to tap to be under secretary for public diplomacy and public affairs, wrote last year, “Competent white men must be in charge if you want things to work.”

Many are describing Musk’s assault on the federal bureaucracy as a coup, which isn’t quite right. Trump was, alas, elected, and delegated outsize power to Musk voluntarily. But the reason it feels like a coup is that we have no precedent for an administration treating its own government like a hostile territory to be conquered and exploited. In his memoir of America’s war on Iraq and its aftermath, Ghaith Abdul-Ahad described being ruled by “young, naïve zealots who held unchallenged powers to reshape Iraq the way their masters wanted. They represented the worst combination of colonial hubris, racist arrogance and criminal incompetence.” We’re now getting a taste of that experience.

It’s as if we’ve come full circle. America’s war in Iraq, in addition to killing hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and destabilizing the Middle East, also set the stage for Trump’s rise by fostering a widespread sense of distrust and betrayal in the United States. Trump, in turn, is imposing on us a milder version of the careless, unaccountable governance we installed there. As he does so, jingoist mobs and craven elites are cheering him on, just as many cheered George W. Bush. (Before there was the “Gulf of America,” there were “freedom fries.”)

Eventually, the destruction wrought by this new regime will be undeniable, even to some of its supporters. But breaking a country, unfortunately, is a lot easier than putting it back together.

Source: The Familiar Arrogance of Musk’s Young Apparatchiks

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