December 23 Update: Proud Boy Cop Informant Guilty; Violence & Cover-up at New Folsom; CA AG's False Progressivism; Ag Megacorps Brook No Dissent; Yarvin & the 'Red Caesar'; Climate Regulations that...Work??

So long, Man of Steal

2024 is limping to a close, and as I expect with many of you, the last month of the year has been a marathon. It's been a sprint to keep up not only with the news cycle, but also pushing existing projects to a conclusion while running out thread on newer reporting lines for 2025. There are some exciting prospects for the latter, but laying the groundwork has been time-consuming and taken a lot of logistics and legwork that ate up time I'd rather have put into writing on some more pressing items like, say, Luigi Mangione and the eyebrow-raising terrorism charge leveled against him for the December 4th murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in Midtown Manhattan. But as I've said before, this site is explicitly not about pack journalism. There'll be other chances to revisit that matter.

Earlier this month I did put out a string of articles for WIRED and the Guardian, including courtroom reporting on the time-served sentence received by Neo-Nazi Robert Rundo for conspiracy to riot stemming from violence he and other members of the Rise Above Movement fomented across California back in 2017. There's plenty about Rundo's six-year legal saga in this website's archive for those interested in the backstory. From my perspective, it was quite apparent in the courtroom that no one aside from the attendant reporters was surprised at the light sentence, which left Rundo a free man as of December 13. Given his role in setting up a worldwide network of RAM clones (which I wrote about for WIRED on the same day) imbued with the same Neo-Fascist ideology, zero mention by federal prosecutors of Rundo's continuing role in far-right organizing at his sentencing hearing, the absence of courthouse support and the deafening silence from the Active Club Network in the week-plus since Rob's release....and you get the impression someone may well have debriefed and cut a deal with the feds. Time will tell.

My WIRED editors were also kind enough to let me dig into the backstory of The Order, Justin Kurzel's new film about Robert Jay Mathews' original Aryan terror brigade from the 1980s that continues to inspire generations of Neo-Nazis, white supremacists, skinheads, bank robbers and other miscreants. Based on a phenomenal 1989 book (since reissued) by journalists Kevin Flynn and Gary Gerhardt, the movie stars Nicholas Hoult as Mathews' ice-cold mastermind and Jude Law as a haggard, live-wire fed pursuing the Order through their campaign of counterfeiting, robbery, and assassination. There's a third main character in the book, but you'll have to read my piece to get into how the director, actors and producers behind this slept-on modern classic built such a compelling watch.

There's been some, uh, movement at the top of the NYPD hierarchy. I'll be writing on that for paid subscribers later this week, building on last month's look at new Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch's family and work history.

On a final note, Rest in Power, Rickey Henderson. One of the Gods of baseball has left us. There will never be another like him.

Let's get to it.

BLEEDING EDGE JOURNALISM

-Dozens of active-duty and former police officers were present at the January 6, 2021 insurrection attempt at the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C., and reams has been written about the complacency of law enforcement towards violent right wing extremists intent on overturning the 2020 election results. While 1,200 participants are facing charges or have been sentenced for their involvement in the insurrection, one of the most important cases concluded today with the conviction of former D.C. Metro Police Lieutenant Shane Lamond for leaking confidential informant to Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio about a warrant for his arrest prior to January 6. Lamond was the head of Metro PD's intelligence unit and developed a suspiciously close relationship with Tarrio that federal prosecutors spelt out during a two-week bench trial. Whether or not the conviction sticks remains to be seen: Tarrio has already appealed to Trump for a pardon and commutation of his 22-year prison sentence for seditious conspiracy. Lamond is likely to do the same.

-Prisons are infamously difficult environments to report on: journalists have no right of access to the facilities, communications with inmates are either highly controlled or done through high-risk contraband cellphones, and records for carceral institutions are walled off behind a barricade of adverse legal decisions, pliant judges and an army of taxpayer-funded attorneys. That's why Julie Small and Sukey Lewis' KQED investigation of violence against inmates and corrections officers at California's New Folsom State Prison is so impressive and necessary. Not for the faint of heart.

-California Attorney General Rob Bonta is clearly gunning for the Golden State's Governorship, as termed-out Gavin Newsom fixes his sights on the 2028 Presidential Race after spending the second half of 2024 pumping tough-on-crime and anti-homeless policies in a failed bid to shore up Kamala Harris' law enforcement credentials. Bonta - who is potentially in hot water with the feds over his ties to a very dirty East Bay waste management company - talks a good game on issues like criminal justice reform and police accountability. However, his track record is anything but, as L.A. TACO's Lexis Ray-Oliver makes clear in a deep examination of Bonta's post-conviction review unit. Similar failures run through Bonta's oversight of law enforcement misconduct and police killings. Another reminder that 'progressive' prosecutors are still still cops.

-It's not bad enough that the United States' meat producers are highly concentrated into a handful of massive conglomerates that drive family farmers out of business. Megacorporations like Tyson Foods are now pushing hard to silence whistleblowers and smaller farmers who call attention to their anti-competitive practices and unsafe working conditions, per a new project from Investigate Midwest's Lauren Cross. Not only that: Tyson Foods has since subpoenaed at least two news reporters for their notes and records for communications with small farmers who went under as a result of the company's predatory behavior. Expect to see similar stories from emboldened corporations during the next administration

-To understand the deeper intellectual currents that underpin the seeming madness of Trump's transition team and proposed cabinet picks, you've got to get your head around the New Right. And in order to do so, understanding who Curtis Yarvin is and what he's about is essential. My colleague Jason Wilson put together a good explainer for the Guardian over the weekend on a real piece of work who is dead-set against representative democracy and authored a detailed plan on how to install a 'Red Caesar' for life in Washington - in other words, a dictator. That is what we are dealing with here, and don't let Peter Baker or Maggie Haberman try to spin it otherwise.

-Lest we forget, there was one definite loser this November: American climate policy. While Biden's climate policies can justifiably be criticized as too market-centric, too inchoate and too reliant on the private sector to drive meaningful reductions in U.S. fossil fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions, this is a discussion about science and when the numbers show progress, we've got to acknowledge it. The plunge in methane emissions (26% annual reduction from 2022 to 2023) following increased regulation of oil and natural gas infrastructure in Texas and New Mexico is unlike anything previously achieved in American industry. All this will go by the wayside now, a wistful reminder of what could have been.

BOOK OF THE WEEK- In dark times, it's important to 1) remember that history goes in cycles 2) not take yourself too seriously 3) laugh. While that may seem nigh on impossible in the present moment, I'd like to offer a simple corrective: Voltaire's Candide (1759), a riotous satire written during some of the grimmest days of pre-Revolution France, when the Crown, the Catholic Church, and the secret police created by Cardinal Richelieu a century earlier created a stifling, repressive powder keg that popped off a few decades later (Vive La Republique, and yes you all need to read the Three Musketeers as well). The humor carries over incredibly well across the centuries, and the story's lampooning of contemporary life traverses events of the era like the Seven Years' War. Once you read Candide, you'll see echoes of the book's black humor all throughout modern literature and film, from Huxley to Pynchon to Heller and beyond.

FILM - In the short weeks since Syria fell there's been a rush of journalists into the war-torn country, seeking to document an epochal change from the decades of Al-Assad rule. Documenting the horrors of the dictatorship's repressive apparatus has been happening from afar for years thanks to insiders like 'Caesar'. However, documentarians are finally getting access to the regime's torture chambers and dungeons. Popular Front had a man on the ground, young Canadian reporter Fin DePencier. Here's the censored version of the doc - the full version is available on PF's Patreon.

MUSIC - Snow, gray skies, quiet streets. That's what Christmas week has always evoked for me, for whatever reason. And what better music to enjoy that solitude with than ambient pioneer Aphex Twin's latest release. Richard D. James only gets better with age.

Happy holidays to you all.