June 1 Update: Confessing to a Non-Existent Murder; Drones, Drones Everywhere & No Lap Swim; Inside the Mind of a Young Fascist; the Anti-Palestine Origins of American Islamophobia; Wee Man Garry Tan; Border Vigilantes Conspire with Cops

A Japanese rendition of the histrionics outside 100 Centre Street last Thursday afternoon (Unidentified artist, Edo, Japan, mid-19th Century)

Yep, I'm a week late and a dollar short. Can ya blame me, though? Memorial Day is the official start of summer, and I've been busting my ass the past few months.

That's not to say there isn't plenty happening - There's been one sole arrest at UCLA, a month after the April 30 assault on a Gaza solidarity encampment by Zionist counter-protesters. Dozens of attackers have been identified by online sleuths, without concurrent movement by the cops. Meanwhile, students are being barred from graduating by universities (including my own craven, self-satisfied alma mater) left and right . We've got accountability organizations being gutted by SLAPP lawsuits from right-wing billionaires, while some of those very same people (THIEL THIEL THIEL) are bankrolling an ascendant niche 'new right' publishing universe that is growing in cultural exposure, if not clout. Meanwhile, the would-be Mussolini from Jamaica (Estates, Queens County NY) is loading up on overt Fascist phrases, tropes and memes without even as much as a wink or a nod. It's all out in the open.

Oh and did something happen in a courtroom this week? I've not been paying attention, too deep in the weeds on the FBI's ongoing far right investigations (thanks again for helping bankroll that piece, subscribers!) and a few separate strands that have to do with police corruption, that aforementioned Silicon Valley New Right, and some, uh, obscenely corrupt and likely criminal business dealings. Stay tuned, kids.

Lastly, let's hear it for the NYC hardcore kids who broke into the Freedom Tunnels under Riverside Park and put on a whole damn concert down in one of the most iconic graffiti spots in the entire city. There've been a series of train-themed shows in the past year or two from that same scene (here's one from last summer below) and they only keep getting better and better.

Yes I still get out to shows somewhere on Western Long Island, June 2023 ©Ali Winston

That's enough fun and games. Let's get to it

BLEEDING EDGE JOURNALISM

-The courts have protected the ability of police to lie to criminal suspects, falsify evidence, and extort false confessions. Most of the time, the actual crimes took place. However, the Los Angeles Times found a mind-boggling case out of the Inland Empire suburb and hometown of historian Mike Davis (RIP) that involves a murder confession to a killing that never took place. If you want definitive proof of the crying need for accountability in the American criminal justice system, I can't think of a better example.

-As with every military technology worth its salt, surveillance drones have officially become standard police tools, with law enforcement agencies from the NYPD to several Southern California suburban police departments now rolling out these whining, unblinking eyes-in-the-sky as routine response protocol to standard 911 calls. Yes, a report of a burglary, a cat in a tree, a dispute with a neighbor, or even a swimmer in distress (???) can now mean a drone overhead. It's all part of a broader power grab by law enforcement, as public pools go without lap swim, libraries close, and summer lifeguard positions go unfilled while cops consume increasing shares of municipal governments because....SECURITY. It doesn't have to be this way, folks.

-Since the decline of the alt-weekly newspaper, it's increasingly rare for American readers to get a deep, well-reported piece on done-and-dusted criminal cases once the final sentence has been passed and the cell doors close. Matter News in Ohio worked back on a 2023 federal case against a group of would-be skullmask Nazi terrorists conspiring to knock out power infrastructure. Funny how this crowd keeps unsuccessfully gunning for the same targets, eh? This is a piece I've got a personal interest in: my BBC colleague Daniel De Simone and showed how one of these young Fascists, Christopher Cook, exploited a young British girl and eventually drove her to suicide.

-In typically ahistorical fashion, it's become fashionable to flag September 11, 2001 as the origin point for America's virulent affair with Islamophobia, which is a core plank of the Republican Party and tolerated (to put it mildly) by a large chunk of the Democrats. However, that history runs far deeper, tracking back to the earliest iterations of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and then informing developments like the emergence of African-American Muslim movements, the Suez Canal Crisis, the Oil Embargo, and Middle Eastern politics writ large. Thanks to Mustafa Bayoumi and the Guardian for resurfacing this shameful lineage.

-Napoleon Complex poster boy Garry Tan, who runs an heavyweight Silicon Valley startup incubator and is trolling Washington, D.C.'s corridors of power in search of friends and influence, is many things. A drunk, a loudmouth, and an all-round piece of shit who succeeded in getting police reports filed against him by several San Francisco Supervisors after leveling death threats against them because they dared to disagree with his pet projects (a parallel state, unregulated cryptocurrency and self-driving cars, schools where kids from every background stand an equal chance of getting a good education, et cetera). He's a key funder of that gray money influence network I wrote about in February for the Guardian, and critically, despite hiring high-powered PR consultants to seed favorable profiles in Axel Springer & Sulzberger publications (look em up yourself or take my word, they don't deserve the click), has continued to threaten progressive Bay Area politicians, most recently Sheng Thao, Oakland's embattled mayor who may face a tech and real estate-driven recall this fall. Gil Duran's recent piece about Tan on his Parallel Mirror site unpacks Tan's history of menace (all online, mind you, he's not the sort to throw hands since his arms are probably too short) and contextualizes these escalating threats against political opponents with the darker echoes in NorCal's recent history, including Dan White, Chauncey Bailey, and even Nancy Pelosi's husband.

-All the way back in 2006, when I was a cub reporter, vigilante border patrols were all the rage in media circles. They were photogenic, appropriately unhinged, and gave a lunatic cast to opponents of comprehensive immigration reform, which seemed like a bi-partisan certainty. Then the unexpected happened - Congress dropped the ball in 2007 and failed to pass anything to fix our broken immigration system and regularize the status of more than 10 million undocumented folks in the United States at the time, resentments continued to fester as undocumented migration continued to fuel sooo many under/un-regulated sectors of our economy, cartels swallowed the human trafficking trade whole, and widespread instability worldwide (economic, climate, war, political strife, etc) drove record numbers of people to cross the southern border. The vigilantes never really went away - they're back, stronger than ever, and working hand in glove with the Border Patrol, local law enforcement, and the National Guard with chilling results, according to this chilling report from the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting.

BOOK OF THE WEEK - University of Illinois-Chicago Professor Cedric Johnson does not toe the company line on anything: he's unequivocal in calling for left political movements to learn from, but leave behind the pernicious 1960s nostalgia for militant groups like the Black Panther Party and the Weathermen in search of a modernized, contemporary approach to inequality, power, criminalization, economic disenfranchisement and racism. It's the old "race AND class" lens, not the predominant "race OR class" approach that turns everything into zero-sum identity politics and leads to Congressional reps in kente cloths taking a knee with fists raised.

Johnson tackled the 2020 George Floyd Uprisings in a seamlessly written, exhaustively researched book called After Black Lives Matter (2023), which marries his post-mortem of that year's massive but short-lived BLM protest cycle with chapters from past revolts like Baltimore in 2015 and Chicago in 2016. It's worth a read particularly if you're interested (like I am) in Chicago's unique blend of neoliberalism and that city's spirited attempts to build a different, brighter future dating back to Harold Washington's Rainbow Coalition. It's the best account I've read of 2020 - and there have been many.

FILM - Science Fiction films can be gorgeous, thought-provoking and prescient, but rarely all three at the same time. 2008's Sleep Dealer, by Mexican director Alex Rivera, hit all three of those notes for me, taking the contemporary maquiladora factories that have churned out consumer goods in Tijuana, Juarez and other border cities for consumption north of La Linea and combining that concept with that of undocumented migrant labor to envision a future where workers in digital sweatshops would jack in to Stateside robots and perform construction, domestic labor and other occupations.

It's....becoming close to reality. The visuals are still excellent, the plot is solid, and the soundtrack is excellent. If only there were more ambitious projects like this today instead of the endless stream of comic book films and lifeless sequels.

MUSIC - No albums this week, just one pithy, poignant song that fits the moment. Thank you, Joe Strummer, for this version of Sonny Clarke's classic.