February 17 Update: Toxic Tesla's Turmoil; German Youth Swing Rightwards; Yet Another Zionist Land Grab; Red State Renewables at Risk; Trump's Pro-Rapist Presidency; BBC Correspondent Nails MI5 on Lies, Abuse Coverup
It's been a rough bad week for those out there who still think the rule of law matters in the 'Home of the Free' - not only do you have an unelected billionaire and his band of children with undeveloped frontal cortexes rooting through the Treasury, the Pentagon and the Internal Revenue Service, but the Justice Department has decided that corruption prosecutions are conditional. New York City's extremely felonious mayor, ex-cop and ex-Republican Eric Adams, will have his corruption prosecution tossed over the strenuous objections of federal prosecutors at the Southern District of New York and at the Public Integrity Section of Main Justice in Washington, D.C. Whether or not the judge over the case goes along with the program, or if the New York Attorney General or Manhattan District Attorney decide to take up the case remains to be seen. Remember, much of the actual casework was done by the city's Department of Investigation.
However, it's heartening to see some officials in Eric's City for Sale vote with their feet, as four key deputies tendered their resignation over last week's blatant quid pro quo that will 86 the Southern District of New York's corruption case against Hizzoner in exchange for allowing Immigration & Customs Enforcement agents unfettered access to city jails, schools and other facilities. It's a good time to stand up and be counted, be it in City Hall, the Beltway, or wherever you can happen to make your stand. None of this happens without silence or acquiescence.
Just one item from me this week over at Vanity Fair, foreshadowing the coming shifts in American counterterrorism policy away from the extreme right (responsible for an outsized proportion of fatal domestic terrorism incidents) and towards make-believe entities like BLM and Antifa' (that's what Fox News likes to called anti-fascism, which even the immediate past FBI director labeled as an ideology, not an organization). One pretty clear articulation is the recent use of the Treasury Department's official sanctions listing against the International Criminal Court's lead prosecutor in charge of its investigation into Israel's genocidal campaign in Gaza. By contrast, the last folks added to that list by the Biden Adminstration were three purported members of the Neo-Nazi Terrorgram Collective.
One final note, and an unfortunate echo of last week: there's been an absolute torrent of new subscribers to Bleeding Edge. The more, the merrier, but a reminder I've had to move to a higher support tier on Ghost.io's payment structure to support the influx. If two or three of the two hundred of you shift over to a paid subscription, that mitigates the cost. There a ton of original reporting behind the paywall here, and there will be far more.
Let's get to it.
BLEEDING EDGE JOURNALISM
-There is a huge backlash out there against Donald Trump's favorite South African Fascist's business concerns. Protests are breaking out at Tesla dealerships around the United States and Europe, the vehicles and their salesrooms are being vandalized (in some cases, firebombed), and sales are dropping by double-digit percentages in California (the largest single car market in the US), the France (67% drop in year-over-year sales), Spain (75% drop), Germany (59% drop) and elsewhere across the European Union, which has a significantly higher rate of electric vehicle adoption than the US. But then again, if Elon successfully backdoors his way into the Treasury to siphon off taxpayer funds while securing absurd no-bid federal tenders - will it matter? WIRED digs into the company's disastrous recent headlines.
Carlton Reid
-Ahead of this month's key parliamentary elections in Germany, the BBC explored the growing popularity of the far-right/Nazi-apologist party Alternative für Deutschland, which is over a decade into its remaking of politics in the European Union's keystone nation. It's unsurprising that the old-East/West divide figures critically here, but so does a dynamic that is present in North America and elsewhere throughout the West: the far right's success in carving out space as a youth counterculture.
-It shouldn't come as a surprise that Israel is not withdrawing from Southern Lebanon following its incursion last year during tit-for-tat violence with Hezbollah. Seizing additional territory up to the Litani River is a decades-old goal of the Zionist state, and the hostilities of the past 16 months provided a perfect window to accomplish that goal. It's also to be noted that IDF operations in the West Bank and pogroms carried out by extremist settlers have caused the highest level of displacement for Palestinians since 1967. Put this together with Trump's stated desire for the United States to 'own' the Gaza Strip, and it's a full blown Nakba redux.
Neri Zilber
-There's a lot of wishful thinking amongst White House ideologues and the fossil fuel industry about reversing the inexorable march of renewable energy in the United States, which produces electricity than is now cheaper kilowatt than power generated from coal, oil or natural gas. Predictably, red states are starting to have buyer's regret now that their affordable and reliable power generation from solar and wind energy is at risk. The Guardian takes an intelligent, on-the-ground approach to reporting on the freezing of Biden-era funding for renewables around the country. If there ever was a way to start a recession, making power more expensive while slashing manufacturing and utility jobs is high on the list.
Dharna Noor
-As if it wasn't bad enough having a true-blue sex offender as president, the United States' official policy towards sexual predators appears to be one of....support? That's the only takeaway I can possibly have from Rick Grennel's decision to pressure the Romanian government restore travel privileges to Andrew Tate and his brother. Both men currently face a raft of sex trafficking charges in that country as well as in the United Kingdom. But the manosphere loves them, so of course the Incel Reich will go to bat for people who should never see the light of day.
-Last but absolutely not least is BBC correspondent and longtime colleague Daniel De Simone's flabbergasting tale of a years-long court battle to report on an MI5 informant's torture of his domestic partner. The whole thing bears reading, as does Daniel's initial 2022 investigation, but essentially De Simone caught MI5 lying to the courts in order to protect their paid confidential informant, securing a court order that restricted what the BBC could reveal about the CI's alleged crimes towards his battered and severely abused ex-girlfriend.
BOOK OF THE WEEK - Marlon James' A Brief History of Seven Killings (2014) is a terrific mid/late winter novel. Ranging from the country's mid-Twentieth Century independence and subsequent CIA-fueled factional violence to the 1990s drug trade that nurtured the legend of Shower Posse boss Christopher 'Dudus' Coke, the book's dramatic scope is hard to replicate.
Rich scenery and vivid storytelling aside, Seven Killings also shares the distinction of being written almost entirely in patois. Seldom does a contemporary novel live up to the hype engendered by 'best of' lists and first-tier awards, but James' masterpiece certainly did. Shame he's not come close to matching it since.
FILM - Longtime readers of Bleeding Edge and my reporting elsewhere will be painfully familiar with the 'Active Club' movement - a transnational network of Neo-Fascist fight clubs created by Queens native Robert Rundo and Russian Neo-Nazi Denis Kapustin in the early 2020s. The United Kingdom is one of the most recent countries to witness the rise of these organizations, which masquerade as fitness clubs and then gradually inculcate participants with far right ideology. For their excellent new documentary, ITV News infiltrated an English Active Club and identified a number of criminal participants, violence perpetuated by members against people of color, and ties to other banned extremist groups. As a result, I'd not be surprised if the UK formally banned Active Clubs in the same way they cracked down on National Action and the Terrorgram Collective.
MUSIC - This is a eat-your-vegetables kind of week: documentaries for film, podcasts for your audio selection. There has been so little good reporting on the motivations and mindsets of the Silicon Valley elite that are clearly the driving force behind the current American administration and the dismantling of government as we know it. Gil Duran spent much of 2023 and 2024 exploring the first forays of David Sacks, Jason Calcanis and the rest of their mob into politics out in Northern California, applying the principles of the 'network state' first to a failed libertarian city in the Sacramento River Delta, then in the recalls and reactionary remaking of San Francisco's municipal politics. His recent conversation with Emile Torres and Kate Willet about how these developments on the Left Coast prefigured the current dismantling of the administrative state we're now witnessing in Bablyon by the Potomac bears close listening. Take notes.