July 22 Update: DDOS Robot Dog; Project 2025 & Wall Street Dark Money; California's Solar Wars; The Oil Firms Knew; ICJ Declares Israeli Occupation Unlawful; Silicon Valley's Apartheid Ties; The Ex-LA Sheriff's Thin Skin
Some weeks it's so hot that the basic daily tasks seem like a chore. Guess we can firmly say the second half of summer is well and truly upon us, if not the dog days and hurricane season (cross your fingers though: Hurricane Beryl gave us an early start, and the death toll from that storm is still rising ). Then again, those tasks don't come as fast and furious this time of year, with school out of session, vacation season in full swing and everyone with their heads screwed on properly seeking to spend as much time outside as possible. Enjoy those late sunsets while you got em, we're well past the summer equinox.
As baseball edges into the post-All Star Break business end of the season, I'm plugging away on some those larger-scale projects (features, a new book proposal (more about that to come, some potential documentary work) and keeping tabs everyone's favorite goons. A couple items of interest in the far right world: last week, the feds indicted the head of a murderous Eastern European skinhead gang with close ties to the 764/com child exploitation network. 'Commander Butcher,' a young Georgian man who spent several months in the United States back in 2022, is facing serious felony charges for conspiring to cause a mass casualty event (he wanted to hand out poisoned candy to Jewish children in New York City while dressed as Santa Claus on New Year's Eve - sort out the logic on that one). I wrote up the indictment for WIRED, which, along with the several other related prosecutions in the U.S. and abroad, indicate that law enforcement is taking the 764/com network very seriously.
And after a long, tortuous road replete with not one, but two dismissals and as many reversals by a higher court, serial Neo-Nazi gang founder Robert Rundo is heading to trial in Southern California. Last Thursday, a three-judge panel from the Ninth Circuit of Appeals unanimously reversed a controversial order from U.S. District Court Judge Cormac J. Carney (retired as of June) that dismissed Rundo's federal indictment on conspiring to violate the Anti-Riot Act in 2017, when his Rise Above Movement gang brawled at political rallies across California and in Charlottesville, VA. Rundo's defense, and Carney's rationale for the 2024 dismissal? 'But What About Antifa'? Carney previously dismissed the case in 2019 after finding the Anti-Riot Act unconstitutional, which the Ninth Circuit also reversed in 2021. No trial date or judge have been assigned yet, but at this point Rob not only faces potentially ten years on his base charge, but another possible felony count for the use of a fraudulent American passport he procured while ducking the law in Eastern Europe. I've written about Rundo, the Rise Above Movement, and the 'Active Club' network he helped create a lot over the years, and will be covering his case as it progresses.
Let's get to it.
BLEEDING EDGE JOURNALISM
-In today's dystopia, 404 Media reports that police now have access to a new type of 'robot dog' that comes with the capability of taking every internet-connected device in a home offline. The device, which is manufactured by Philadelphia's Ghost Robotics and recently purchased for use by the United States Department of Homeland Security, is allegedly intended for 'booby-trapped' homes but will almost certainly be used to disable communications. It's a big step forward in the merging of police and military-grade technology.
Jason Koebler
-As the 2024 campaign narrative shifts from Grumpy Old Men to actual issues of substance, the support of American financial giants for Trump's return to power is receiving significant scrutiny. The revanchist platform to peel back many features of American life (The National Weather Service? Actual effective climate policy? Separation of Church and State) has become a quick reference point to the authoritarian Christian Nationalist vision the Heritage Foundation and its ilk want to implement in the United States - and it is being bankrolled with dark money funneled through the country's financial titans. Continuing its hot streak of reporting well ahead of the curve, here's Katya Schwenk's scoop for The Lever.
Katya Schwenk
-Despite its well-earned role as America's green energy titan, in recent years California's regulatory agencies have worked hand-in-glove with the state's (private, criminal) power utilities to roll back many of the policies - including net metering - that incentivized the adoption of residential solar by homeowners and landlords throughout the state. But to the displeasure of SoCal Con Edison and Pacific Gas & Electric, residential solar meant the utilities not only had to pay panel owners for the energy they generated, but decreased their profit margins and made Californians less reliant on large-scale, investor-owned utilities for power. That's all being reversed thanks to Gavin Newsom's Public Utilities Commission and other regulatory bodies, one of which decided this month to increase the amount of red tape required to install home batteries that store surplus energy generated from solar panels. Add to that the CPUC's major rate hike this year and the utilities' increased insistence on building large, remote solar farms that require large transmissions lines instead of distributed urban solar, and a very clear picture emerges.
-Yep, they knew. The Guardian, which is about the largest English-language newsroom with consistently aggressive covering of climate change, global warming and the culprits behind it, dug up an article from Marathon Petroleum's internal magazine from 1977 outlining the potential for 'social and economic calamities', including mass starvation, that may result from anthropogenic global warming and the sustained burning of hydrocarbons for energy. Marathon's successor company, which was recently purchased by Conoco Phillips is facing civil lawsuits for its role in polluting the planet and currently runs the largest network of petroleum supply stations in the U.S., with over 6,000 fueling stations.
Geoff Dembicki
-Israel's military and intelligence apparati, which stand accused of genocide and engage in some of the wildest forms of surveillance and algorithm-driven preventative detention known to mankind, simply could not function without Silicon Valley's giants. Google and Amazon in particular are at the core of Project Nimbus, which offers a massive cloud computing infrastructure to the apartheid nation with the apparent blessing of the Pentagon and the White House. Caroline Haskins has the exclusive over at WIRED, which is fast becoming one of the most aggressive, fast-paced investigative newsrooms out there. But hey. I'm biased when it comes to that.
-In yet another blow to the 57-year-old state of play in the Middle East, the International Court of Justice passed down a landmark ruling last week determining that Israel's ongoing occupation and settlement of the Palestinian West Bank and East Jerusalem is entirely illegal under international law and must immediately end. For decades, Israel has flaunted international agreements like the Camp David accords and sponsored the construction of illegal settlements throughout the West Bank (of course, controlled by Israeli law and under the protection of the Israeli Occupation Forces) to the point where maps of the ostensibly sovereign Palestinian territory resemble Swiss cheese.
Though there is no immediate practical consequence for the Netanyahu regime, the ICJ's ruling is yet another blow to Israel's international reputation amidst the ongoing slaughter of an untold number of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip (that death toll may well exceed 100,000, as I noted in an update some weeks back). That said, coupled with a separate case in front of the ICJ alleging the current carnage amounts to genocide and the arrest warrants issued by the court for both Netanyahu and Hamas' leadership council, the 'only democracy in the Middle East' has taken a hell of a beating in the court of global opinion.
-If you've ever wanted to see the anatomy of a snowflake, look no further than this Los Angeles Times examination of ousted LA Sheriff Alex Villaneuva's pathetic attempts to investigate his own internal critics and journalists digging into the conduct of one of the country's largest - and most corrupt - law enforcement agencies. It's a sordid tale, but also makes abundantly clear the need for aggressive, well-supported journalism that takes the measure of powerful politicians and government institutions. SoCal journalism is going through a very difficult patch at the moment, so it's encouraging to see reporters plug on in despite of the macro environment.
Alene Tchekmedyian
BOOK - Few lived lives as fully charged as Victor Serge, an Anarchist insurrectionist, author and, oddly, member of the ComIntern during the 1920s and '30's. Serge experienced first-hand the tumult of inter-war European politics as well as the social upheaval that resulted from the rise of Fascism and its defeat in the carnage of World War II.
His novel Unforgiving Years (1971) follows the trajectory of a former Soviet spy seeking to claim his life and identity back from the course of 1920s Paris through shattered Germany of the post V-E day moment to Mexico, where Serge himself spent his final years. Sometimes the beach is the best place to dive into noirish material. You won't find bleaker or more gripping storytelling than this.
FILM - I'm not going far afield with this week's film recommendation - the 2009 Werner Herzog/Nicholas Cage/Val Kilmer fever dream that is Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans. As much as I'd hoped when it first came out, this is NOT a remake of the 1992 Abel Ferrara/Harvey Keitel nightmare of a debased, depraved NYPD officer, but a completely different portrait of a burnt-out New Orleans cop delving into the murders of five immigrants.
Cage and Kilmer are outstanding, as is Eva Mendes and the incredibly photogenic decay of New Orleans itself. And of course, the real star of the show is the iguana. You've gotta watch to find out more.
- MUSIC - I'm real annoyed to miss their West Coast tour at the beginning of next month, but I've always been a fan of South Central's punk stalwarts Generacion Suicida. They've got a lot of influence from LA's amazing backyard scene that spawned god knows how many punk and hardcore bands, and yet play real tight and clean. It's hard to choose between their five studio albums and EPs - this 2023 performance makes clear simply how good they are live - but I'd go with 2013's Con La Muerte a Tu Lado as a good entry point for their sound. If you happen go to one of these shows, PLEASE cop me a shirt!