May 26 update: "Gaza Humanitarian Foundation" under scrutiny; Greek mercenary madness; The NY State Police unit that never works; ICE scrapes the bottom of the barrel; Fed case against Chicago protesters unravels
An absolutely sodden Memorial Day weekend on North America's East Coast is not the ideal way to start out summer as Europe roasts in record early heat. But worry not, it'll heat up soon enough. The New York Knicks are heading to their first NBA finals since the Twin Towers still dominated Manhattan's skyline. A bloated train wreck of a World Cup looms large over the U.S., Canada and Mexico, with the goons from Department of Homeland Security doing everything possible to ensure foreigners stay away from the American portion of the most popular sporting even on the planet.
And to be fair, who in their right mind would want to travel to our Idiot Reich? Green card applicants are now ordered to leave the country while waiting on permission to stay in the U.S. The Supreme Court (brought to you by Catholic arch-conservative Leonard Leo) shredded the Voting Rights Act in the latest example of why Reconstruction should never have ended. The global economic crisis drags on as Epstein's War grinds to a stalemate. Apparently the alcoholic Secretary of Defense didn't read his intelligence briefings about Iran's capacity to cripple American military facilities across the Middle East.
The United States turns 250 years old this summer, and it's fair to say the country is showing signs of senescence. An increasingly uninhibited, frail and unmoored president fixated on turning the White House into a bunker is plumbing new depths of unpopularity, speed-running Dubya's second-term nadir in less than two years in office. Gas nearing $5 per gallon? Newly-minted college graduates SOL in the job market as Silicon Valley's AI con juices the NASDAQ and S&P 500 to record highs? Silicon Valley Dark Lord Peter Thiel likening a sitting Pope to the Antichrist for his opposition to unchecked Artificial Intelligence? No big deal.
May you live in interesting times, indeed.
This spring has been nonstop for me: it's a challenged to juggle reporting on several different projects while researching and writing Imperial Feedback. There's a lot of progress on the latter and I should have some exciting news to share about the book project in the near future. Regarding shorter-term work, I published my first-ever article in French with my friend Sébastien Bourdon on the growing ties between American Neo-Fascist cult/pyramid scheme Patriot Front and the French Far Right, which is firing on all cylinders at the moment. France's right wing is in the ascendancy beyond the streets, with cinema and publishing falling under the sway of ultra-Catholic billionaire Vincent Bolloré.
As part of my ongoing reporting for WIRED on the Department of Homeland Security's evolving role as Trump's Schutzstaffel, I dug further into the agency's paramilitary units at the forefront of the lethal immigration sweeps. My latest article examined the training of DHS' Special Response Teams, which was run in part by a former Phoenix cop who shot and killed at least four people while "serving" the public. There's far more to come from this project - stay tuned.
Last but not least, Jake Hanrahan and I released the sixth installment of BIG TERROR, focusing on Peter Thiel's favorite company: Palantir, the data-mining giant that has become shorthand for government and private-sector surveillance. Like past episodes of the podcast, it's behind the paywall. Supporting Bleeding Edge means more time for me to work on this initiative as well as longer projects like Imperial Feedback (thank you once again for those of you that do subscribe).
That's long-winded, but there's been a lot of water under the bridge since I last broke radio silence.
Let's get to it.
BLEEDING EDGE JOURNALISM
-It's easy to forget the horrors of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation and the free-fire zone Israeli and American authorities created for starving Palestinians through a shady nonprofit established to supplant the United Nations' relief efforts. The GHF, which is now defunct, is apparently under investigation by Trump's own State Department for how it spent at least $30 million in American taxpayer dollars before discontinuing operations following last October's "ceasefire." The Financial Times explored the organization's spending and alleged food aid distribution (a specious claim of '187 meals delivered, whatever that means) - but there are also huge questions over potential criminal culpability for the ~3,000 Palestinians killed and ~20,000 wounded by private contractors and Israeli soldiers during the GHF's operations last year.
-Every Spring and Summer, the Mediterranean and Aegean seas churn with hundreds of thousands of migrants piling onto small and dangerously overcrowded vessels attempting to make the shores of Europe. Since its 2004 accession to the European Union, Greece has been one of the prime destinations due to its massive coastline and dozens of islands. Consequently, Greek authorities adopted draconian measures to repel migrants, often with lethal consequences. A recent BBC investigation this spring exposed the employment of mercenaries by the Greek police to push back would-be border crossers and migrant boats with physical force. The catch? The thugs-for-hire are migrants themselves. Yet one more example of the race to the bottom on Europe's southeastern edge.
Jessica Parker
-It takes genuine effort to outshine the laziness of New York City cops, who almost certainly hold the top North American rankings for Candy Crush Saga and can always be found stuffing their faces with some variety of junk food. The New York State Police's Bridge & Tunnel unit (a name sure to make citydwellers smirk) has done just that: the unit of nine tie-and-Stetson wearing staties did precisely nothing during their shifts for the past four years. Nothing, that is, which pertained to police work: the cops "stared at the bridge" while listening to music for their entire shifts, dropped work to sleep with their girlfriends, and in one case, drove to a strip club in Jersey where they were arrested for assault. A state investigation identified at least three dozen shifts where no work was performed, though publicly available statistics show the B&T unit hasn't taken enforcement action since November 2022. New York under Kathy Hochul is a hell of a place, eh?
Sammy Sussman
-ICE's Trump-era hiring spree, thanks to the Democrats' gormless performance in Congress last year and the additional $75 billion from the Big Beautiful Bill funneled to that agency, is yielding rotten fruit. In their rush to staff up the deportation Gestapo, the feds are waving through unfit, unqualified agents, per this Associated Press investigation. Sadly, the AP will not be able to do work of this quality if it insists on laying off core journalists amidst a sadly-familiar "pivot to video" and bullshit restructuring.
Ryan J. Foley-The federal conspiracy case against six Chicago-area activists charged for the dastardly crime of protesting outside Immigration & Customs Enforcement's Broadview gulag for deportees fell apart last week, the latest pratfall for what remains of the Department of Justice. For those with short memories, this prosecution was supposed to be the Trump Administration's marquee case from Operation Midway Blitz, with the intent of establishing a novel theory of pre-emptive conspiracy that would have criminalized the act of gathering at a specific location to engage in a protest. The First Amendment would have been seriously jeopardized had that flown - but instead, federal prosecutors are now facing the possibility of serious repercussions regarding their conduct in front of the grand jury that handed down the indictments. One to watch.
BOOK - I am a massive sucker for noir literature, particularly novels that immerse themselves in a particular region and culture.
There's little that comes close to the late reporter-turned-novelist Jean-Claude Izzo's Marseille trilogy from the 1990's, centering on a veteran police detective and fisherman whose past entangles him in an ugly feud with the city's waning Corsican mafia and ascendant Maghrebin drug crews. The first novel, Total Chaos, is engrossing, and the second two won't disappoint. Ideal beach/lake reading for the summer, even if Provence isn't on the cards for you.
FILM - What the hell - let's watch RoboCop (1987), Paul Verhoeven's hilarious and disturbingly prescient movie about megacorporations, de-industrialization, the drug trade, cybernetics and of course, militarized policing.
Long dismissed by the critics as shoot-em-up garbage, RoboCop looks sharper with every passing year, from the bigger-scale quandaries about life extension and sentience in the digital age to municipal-level questions about whether the private or public sector wields ultimate control over the functions of a city. That's leaving aside the hilarious scenes of killer robots trying to negotiate stairs, something that the humanoid drones of today also seem to struggle with.
MUSIC - Sax legend and Harlem native Sonny Rollins passed away this week at the remarkable age of 95. He was one of the last mid-century legends of African-American classical music we had left. In his memory, here is 1956's Saxophone Colossus, with Max Roach on the drums. The opening number, "St. Thomas", is a calypso tribute to the island nation where his parents hailed from and part of the long New York City tradition of putting a distinctly urban twist on the native sounds of the Caribbean.