April 29 Update: CA AG goes after police watchdog; Brazil's Far Right Goes Mental for Musk; Palantir Drives Project Maven reboot in Ukraine; Germany cracks down on Espionage; Corrupt ex-NYPD big kneecaps NYPD oversight
From Harlem to Atlanta to Berkeley to California's Humboldt County, the kids have had it with the bloodshed in Palestine, where roughly 35,000 people (overwhelmingly civilians) have been killed and 70,000+ injured over the past seven months. About as many Palestinian reporters have been killed since October as their Mexican colleagues in the past twenty years. The International Criminal Court is reportedly drawing up arrest warrants for both Israeli and Hamas military personnel, mass graves were found near the site of the Al-Shifah and Nasser hospitals last week, and there's increased pressure on the Netanyahu government for a ceasefire. But you'd be forgiven for thinking the war had migrated to college campuses, given the torrent of coverage of the former and dearth of the latter - see this phenomenal Lorraine Ali column in the Los Angeles Times today on that matter.
Last week was a busy one here on Bleeding Edge, with two (paywalled) exclusives: Neo-Nazi streetfighter Robert Rundo's upcoming Ninth Circuit of Appeals hearing in June, complete with the government's opening brief and some nice details like Rob keeping a framed photo of Hitler by his bedside, and developing political machinations surrounding the derailment of an Oakland Police Department internal affairs investigation into bribery and wrongful convictions. A big thank you to paid subscribers for supporting this work. There's more to come later this week.
Let's get to it
BLEEDING EDGE JOURNALISM
-Eyebrow-raising developments in the criminal justice world out of Los Angeles, where State Attorney General Rob Bonta's office unveiled felony charges against Diana Teran, one of District Attorney George Gascon's top advisors tasked with running that office's police accountability cases. Though the complaint remains sealed as of today - and Ms. Teran was required to post a $50,000 bond on Saturday in an unusual development - her defense attorney told Los Angeles Times reporters that the charges are for unauthorized access to police personnel records that Ms. Teran added to the 'Brady List' of problem officers maintained Los Angeles District Attorney's office. The initial complaint was generated by deposed LA Sheriff Alex Villanueva, who took what let's call an...oppositional stance to external oversight during his term as sheriff. While the unauthorized access allegedly took place in 2018, the records in question have been public in California since the passage of SB 1421 the following year. Needless to say, this case is a must-watch.
James Queally
-Unsurprisingly, South African gem prince and apartheid nostalgist Elon Musk has become a hero of Brazil's far right, where he has challenged court orders for Twitter accounts involved in narcotics trafficking and promoted election denial disinformation in support of Jair Bolsonaro, President Lula Ignacio da Silva's Neo-Fascist predecessor who was barred by Brazilian courts from running for office for eight years and may also be charged with falsifying his COVID-19 vaccination status. Bolsonaro's supporters, many of whom pine for the days of Brazil's military junta, have taken a shine to Musk. The Guardian's Tom Phillips does an excellent job cutting to the chase in this convoluted tale
Tom Phillips
-The Pentagon's inexorable drive towards algorithmic warfare is being beta-tested in Ukraine, where dozens of private sector firms are participating in 'Project Maven,' which some of the older readers might recall as the code name for a once-secret Google/Alphabet contract with the DoD that generated such a backlash from the Silicon Valley firm's employees that the entire initiative was canceled. The firm at the center of the Project Maven reboot will shock no one - it's Peter Thiel's Palantir. Here's the New York Times' David Sanger, who wrote a bit of a hagiography to the entire project that nonetheless unearths critical material.
-Germany has been a soft target for espionage, extrajudicial assassinations and political manipulation by foreign adversaries, particularly Russia (which has killed dissidents in Berlin and bought key aides in the Bundestag) and China (which, like in every major Western country, has a full-bore industrial espionage campaign running). The European powerhouse may not longer be such a fruitful theater of operations, however, as the country's internal security agency very publicly arrested a number of alleged Russian and Chinese agents in the past few weeks. As usual, the Financial Times has the defining second-day macro story.
-Phil Banks, once the second-highest ranking official in the NYPD before resigning amidst a federal bribery scandal that he barely escaped from without charges, has been a stalking horse for Mayor Eric Adams' Giuliani redux criminal justice policies. Unindicted co-conspirator #1, as he is known to the Southern District of New York, is at the heart of a very nasty attempt to kneecap New York City's independent police oversight agency, the Civilian Police Review Board, which had the gall to challenge Eric et al over a very fucked up police shooting in in Bronx from 2019 that will not result in discipline. See Chris Sommerfeldt's New York Daily News dispatch for more.
Chris Sommerfeldt
BOOK OF THE WEEK - This week's must-read is a (new) classic of the American West: Mark Arax's 2019 opus The Dreamt Land: Chasing Water and Dust Across California.
"In California, water is finite, but greed is infinite," the Fresno native writes in this magisterial account of land, power, and agriculture in the region that puts produce on the plates of Americans and foreigners alike WAY out of season. I promise you, a pistachio will never look the same again once you're through with this classic.
FILM - All Day and a Night (2020) is a slept-on pandemic-era release that I absolutely loved - a father-and-son crime drama set and shot in Oakland, California. Jeffrey Wright delivers a typically stolid performance as an ex-con father trying to steer his kid away from the d-boy life, and Ashton Sanders as his conflicted son. You won't regret this one.
MUSIC - Rounding out the California theme is El Cerrito's own Creedence Clearwater Revival, which not only defined the sound of the '60s but also lent a hard edge to the anti-war and student protest movements of their era. "Run Through the Jungle" and "Fortunate Son" are decade-defining songs, but CCR also put out tracks that were inevitably rooted in their home region. For anyone who's broken down in the Central Valley, "Lodi" will ring all too true. Their performance at the Albert Royal Hall in London circa 1970 is a great time capsule of this era.