June 15 Update: Endless Football; Sinaloa Cartel in the Golden State; 764 In-Depth; French Far Right on the Cusp of Power; Boeing's Fraudulent Titanium; Hochul's Congestion Pricing Catastrophe
Ahhh summer. Torrential rain, early fires, a heat wave for 250 million Americans, right wing parties ascendant in Europe - you'd think I'd be drowning in tears. But no, because I'm a simple creature and we are at the start of two straight months of nonstop football with the European Championship in Germany and the Copa America here in the United States. Bread and circuses worked for the Romans, and it sure as hell works for me.
Two articles of mine will come out in the next coming days over at the Guardian: one about extremism within the NYPD's ranks, and another about white collar crime, artificial intelligence and eugenicists in the East Bay. There's more in the cue as well.
Let's get to it
BLEEDING EDGE JOURNALISM
-Veteran Ioan Grillo is my go-to for reporting on Mexico's drug cartel wars and their broader impact on that fascinating country's politics and culture. His 2011 book El Narco (2011) sweeps through cartel history as well as the intertwined network of graft, violence and influence that are the unfortunate pillars of Mexico's power structure. Ioan is running his own subscription site these days and breaking serious news these days, most recently a sharp-eyed look at the Sinaloa cartel's extensive trafficking operations in Southern California, based on a federal law enforcement sweep that took place earlier this month.
Ioan Grillo
-After seven years of condescension, Neoliberal policies benefiting the 1%, and violent oppression of any political descent under President Emmanuel Macron, is it any surprise the French are fed up? Widespread discontent with the Parisian elite, coupled with raging xenophobia towards native-born French of African and Arab heritage as well as Europe's influx of migrants, all fueled by a hyper-concentrated, reactionary media environment controlled by Vincent Bolloré, France's own Murdoch, means the Neo-Fascist Rassemblement National run by the Le Pen family is now the country's ascendant political force. The RN, founded by former paratrooper, Third Reich apologist and coup plotter Jean-Marie Le Pen and now run by his daughter Marine, stands a real chance of taking control of parliament in snap elections called by Macron following the RN's resounding success in last month's elections for the European Union legislature. The Financial Times ran a solid analysis of the RN's ascent this week. I'm tracking this story closely, along with the street element of France's extreme right, which is among the most active in Europe.
Leila Abboud
-Popular Front's Skeleton Key on contemporary Fascist militancy is reason alone to subscribe to my colleague Jake Hanrahan's media project, now well into its sixth year. This month's episode is devoted to the exhaustive investigation into an international child exploitation and abuse network known alternatively as 'com', '764', or any number of myriad splinter groups. My contribution to this effort ran in Wired this March, with companion pieces in Der Spiegel, Recorder (R0mania) and the Washington Post. Jake interviewed myself and our good friend Roman Höfner from Der Spiegel about this chilling topic for Skeleton Key, which is available over on Patreon but paywalled at the moment.
-Not content with killing whistleblowing employees, Boeing is now dead-set on taking the rest of us to an early grave, along with European competitor Airbus. Both companies are under investigation for using sub-standard Titanium in the manufacture of airplane fuselages and parts, which came from a Chinese supplier with falsified paperwork. Take the train when possible, I guess?
-Last but not least, New York's latest idiot governor appears to have fucked up gloriously with her unilateral decision to indefinitely postpone a 15-year-old congestion pricing plan for Midtown and Lower Manhattan that was set to take effect at the end of June. Her rationale for canceling the program - which was passed into effect by the state legislature and set to provide $15 billion in funding to mass transit through the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, appeared to have more to do with not pissing off suburban voters and 'endangering' New York City's economic rebound from the COVID-19 pandemic. No need to worry about that, rents are at all-time highs, the hordes of obnoxious tourists are back and getting appropriately fleeced, and the streets are choked with traffic. Predictably, this will not help either Governor Hochul or the Democrats come November's general election, per an intelligent and well-researched article in Vital New York. A word of caution about the publication: it's linked with some major figures from plutocrat Michael Bloomberg's three terms in office, which were essential in creating the dismal state of affairs in New York City re: income inequality, over-development, mass tourism etc.
Bradley Honan
BOOK OF THE WEEK - The Ghost Forest by Greg King (2023) kept me highly entertained during a recent camping trip in Sequoia National Park. King is a native of Northern California's redwood region, and devoted much of his life to battling the timber companies, state agencies, politicians and hedge funds responsible for reducing the iconic giant forests to 4 percent of their historical range.
The Ghost Forest is a compendium of his unique experience as a tree sitter, journalist, and activist on the front lines of the dramatic and often violent confrontations with loggers and cops during the 1980s and 1990s. King also treats readers to a deep history of California's timber industry, with extensive attention paid to the barons of industry who directed this gruesome harvest, their deep fascination with and promotion of eugenic race science so closely copied by Adolph Hitler's regime, and the role of the Save the Redwoods League in 'greenwashing' the clear-cutting of redwood groves and stymieing decades of genuine conservation plans.
FILM - Greg King's book brought back memories of the 2011 documentary If A Tree Falls, which detailed the direct action campaign of the Earth Liberation Front against over-development, pollution and environmental degradation at the turn of the Millennium. Like their predecessors who camped out in the crowns of giant trees, wrecked logging machinery spiked tree trunks to keep loggers from cutting them down, the 'elves' had no qualms with property destruction, most infamously torching a ski resort under construction near Vail, Colorado. They were so reviled by big business and law enforcement that in 2005, the FBI declared 'ecoterrorists' as the biggest domestic terrorism threat in the United States, just a mere decade after Neo-Nazi Tim McVeigh killed over a hundred people in the Oklahoma City bombing and Al Qaeda took down the World Trade Center in 2001. If A Tree Falls gets deep inside both the ELF and the FBI's pursuit of the group, making clear not only the convictions of the guerilla group but how far authorities were willing to stretch the laws to bring them to heel.
MUSIC- Texas may be a bit of a fallen (Lone) star these days given the parlous state of its political class and daily life (abortion ban, Uvalde massacre, wild boar infestations, Houston flooding every few years), but there's no doubt that my grandfather's home state is a cultural fount unlike any other. The music is no exception, particularly the mesmerizing blend of country western and blues embodied by artists like Townes Van Zandt, the scion of an old-line Anglo family so embedded in Texas history that an entire county bears their name. Townes, a manic depressive obsessed with poetry, Hank Williams Senior and blues master Lightin' Hopkins dropped out of law school in the mid-1960s to play music full time. His classics include Pancho & Lefty, Lungs, and Waiting Round to Die. This 1993 recording of Van Zandt in a small club captures his virtuosity on the guitar, vocal range and depth of connection with his audience.