Last Wednesday 20 French generals warned the Macron government of an
impending “Civil War” due to leftist and islamist radicalization.
20 French generals, around a hundred senior officers and more than a
thousand other soldiers signed an appeal for a return honor and duty
within the political class
Emmanuel Macron has threatened to punish generals who signed an open
letter warning that the country is heading for ‘civil war’ because of
radical Islam.
Twenty retired generals, as well as several serving soldiers, signed
the letter which warned that failure to act against the ‘suburban
hordes’ – a reference to the predominantly immigrant population of the
housing estates which surround French cities – will lead to deaths ‘in
the thousands.’
The government strongly condemned the letter, which was published on
the 60th anniversary of a failed coup d’etat by generals opposed to
France granting independence to Algeria.
‘These are unacceptable actions,’ Defence Minister Florence Parly
said Monday, adding that serving military members had flouted a law
requiring them to remain politically neutral.
‘There will be consequences, naturally,’ Parly said, adding that she had instructed the army chief of staff to discipline them.
To speak out against the dangers of Islamic radicalism is forbidden by French elites.
Around 1,500 soldiers and retired generals signed the letter.
The elites called it a coup attempt.
Federal agents and police raided the New York City home and office of
President Trump’s former personal attorney Rudy Giuliani as part of a
criminal investigation. On Wednesday, Giuliani’s attorney, Robert
Costello, spoke out on the FBI’s raid and called it totally unnecessary.
He added, it was done to make Giuliani look like some sort of criminal.
The devices and documents that were seized from his home are “filled with material covered by attorney client privilege.”
Costello also highlighted the “corrupt double standard” of the White
House and the DOJ’s failure to go after the real problem. Namely, Hunter
Biden, his father and the millions of dollars in bribes they allegedly
took from Ukrainian businessmen. He also noted the raid was done “just
to put on a show,” which Costello said could have been done with a grand
jury subpoena without the media present.
Meanwhile, Bernard Kerik, a longtime friend of Giuliani who served as
New York City’s police commissioner, said the former mayor called him
as agents searched his home. He said the raid was “extremely concerning”
and they “shouldn’t have been there in the first place.”
Meanwhile, Giuliani’s son, Andrew Giuliani spoke out publicly after the raid, denouncing the move as “disturbing.”
“Anybody, any American, whether you were red or blue, should be
extremely disturbed by what happened here today by the continued
politicization of the Justice Department,” Andrew stated. “This is
disgusting. If this can happen to the former president’s lawyer, this
can happen to any American.”
He reiterated, the only piece of evidence they “did not take up there
today was the only piece of incriminating evidence that is in there.
And it does not belong to my father. It belongs to the current
president’s son.”
The FBI has not commented on the raid and no additional information has been released.
BioNTech is investigating
reports of potential side effects of COVID-19 vaccines. The German
start-up is seeking additional details after Israel reported several
cases of heart inflammation in patients who received the Pfizer vaccine, which BioNTech produces alongside the German pharmaceutical firm.
The condition, also known as miocarditis, is a swelling of the heart
muscle, which causes the organ to perform abnormally and can lead to
more serious illness. According to BioNTech CEO Ugur Sahin, the reports
seem to be anecdotal and not representative of a wider trend as of now.
“So such symptoms must always be well documented and the severity
must also be documented,” he explained. “But what we have already done
is to go into our databases because we get data…over 200 million people
have been vaccinated.”
Meanwhile, the Pentagon reported earlier this week it’s tracking 14
cases of heart inflammation experienced by military patients after
receiving either the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines.
The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations is one of the nation’s top diplomats, second only to the Secretary of State. And one of the most basic, fundamental duties of a diplomat, especially at such a high level, is to manage the image and reputation of a country throughout the rest of the world. And that’s no small or superficial task — a country’s reputation and public image is a core part of its foreign policy. Often referred to in more academic circles as “soft power,” the positive attitudes and feelings that both the leaders and average citizens of foreign nations have toward a country’s culture, people, and political system are one of its major tools for influencing global affairs and managing international conflicts. And it’s generally believed that the more soft power a country has, the less it has to rely on more coercive “hard power” measures like military action, economic sanctions, etc.
So with that in mind, consider the recent controversy-generating comments made by President Biden’s newly appointed UN ambassador, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, in a remote address:
I have seen for myself how the original sin of slavery weaved white supremacy into our founding documents and principles. But I also shared these stories to offer up an insight, a simple truth I’ve learned over the years: Racism is not the problem of the person who experiences it. Those of us who experience racism cannot, and should not, internalize it, despite the impact it can have on our everyday lives. Racism is the problem of the racist. And it is the problem of the society that produces the racist. And in today’s world, that's every society. In America that takes many forms. It's the white supremacy that led to the senseless killing of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and so many other black Americans. It's the spike in hate crimes over the past three years against Latino Americans, Sikh, Muslim Americans, Jewish Americans, and immigrants. And it's the bullying, discrimination, brutality, and violence that Asian Americans face every day, especially since the outbreak of COVID-19. That's why the Biden administration has made racial equity a top priority across the entire government. And I'm making it a real focus of my tenure at the U.S. Mission to the United Nations.
The reason I highlight these comments now is not to litigate them directly, however controversial they are. And they indeed remain controversial, on multiple levels, despite what feels like a thorough cultural revolution in every institutional power center in the country. But I think in this instance there is far more to be learned by setting aside that debate, resting your culture war trigger finger for a moment, and instead asking the question: What on earth could possess America’s UN ambassador to decide to broadcast the message that America is a deeply racist country down to its bones? Even if you were to accept some, or maybe even all, of what she’s saying as being true, what sort of powerful incentives could convince a top diplomat to engage in a highly controversial debate that not only has nothing to do with her job, but is in fact quite literally the opposite of her job description? How did we get here?
Wokeness isn’t radical, it’s repressive
One thing to know about Ambassador Thomas-Greenfield is that she isn’t exactly a radical activist storming the gates of power. She is power. Prior to becoming the UN ambassador, Thomas-Greenfield was a Senior Vice President at a “global business strategy” firm called Albright Stonebridge Group, an international lobbying and PR firm for multinational corporations and financial institutions, and perhaps the most powerful and influential of its kind. It was founded and is chaired by former Clinton Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. The main service it offers is to help the world’s wealthiest and most powerful corporate and non-governmental entities navigate political and regulatory hurdles in foreign countries (often very poor countries: Thomas-Greenfield headed their Africa practice).
But perhaps an even better example of this phenomenon is the very man who appointed Thomas-Greenfield: President Biden. In the nearly half century he spent in political office before assuming the presidency, Joe Biden wasn’t exactly known for being a social justice crusader. From his tough on crime focus, anti-busing stance, and drug war hawkishness to his open affection for colleagues who were former segregationists and his trademark habit of making politically incorrect gaffes, Biden was about as unwoke of a politician as they came. But that all now seems to have completely reversed: It feels as if not a day goes by where Biden isn’t heard decrying the country’s “systemic racism” while branding every new initiative as a step toward achieving the newly fashionable concept of “equity.”
And while he might be the most high profile (and perhaps most consequential) example, Biden’s overnight conversion characterizes a broader elite “awokening” that seems to have infected nearly an entire leadership class. What could explain all of it?
It’s extremely common to find critics of “wokeness” and critical race theory decrying it as a radical activist- and academic-driven plot to upend the basic foundations of American society. And while it certainly does like to present itself that way, and is even believed to be exactly that by its most true believers, it’s an analysis that fails to explain why every Fortune 500 company, establishment politician, media executive, and entertainer has become an evangelist for these ideas. After all, radicalism is about threatening and upending existing power structures. What we’re seeing now is quite the opposite. Far from seeing these ideas as a threat, the existing power structure is enthusiastically adopting them as something of a ruling class ideology. So unless you think all of these people are critical theory sleeper cells who are just now being awakened to carry out a plot decades in the making, the more likely explanation is that not only are these ideas compatible with power, but something about them must actually lend themselves to protecting and even enhancing that power. In other words, it’s an ideology that seems much more suited not to radicalism, but to the opposite: repression.
The privatization of politics
One of the most conspicuous things about woke politics is that it politicizes everything. It inserts politics into every space, interaction, and relationship. It problematizes, deconstructs, and dismantles. It calls out and it cancels. And above all, it personalizes politics. But in doing so, it redefines politics itself away from something that takes place in the public sphere — as a way of taking collective action to solve public problems and hold powerful people and institutions accountable — and instead into a matter of personal morality, behaviors, and actions. It privatizes, diffuses, and decentralizes politics. Something that we used to do collectively with a set of defined common purposes with clear objectives is increasingly becoming something we do in the office, with our friends and family members, or while sitting alone at home on the internet.
Woke politics makes politics less about what powerful people do, and more about what everyone does. Sometimes it’s even about what dead people did, in which case we might take down a statue if there is one, or just call for a “reckoning” (whatever that is).
But at a certain point, this stops looking like politics at all, and instead a sort of “anti-politics” — something that diverts energy and attention away from traditional political activity and toward something completely different. And when you see the most powerful people in society, from CEOs to elected officials — the people for whom politics is explicitly an accountability and power-limiting mechanism — championing and encouraging this trend, it has to make you wonder at least a little bit: Maybe the point of politicizing everything is to make you forget what actual politics is?
The “awokening” of our elites is also an unburdening
In many ways, I think we can view this woke political moment as the “gig work” revolution arriving at the doorstep of politics itself: Shifting the moral burden of governing a nation and solving its problems away from the people and institutions who hold the power and authority to actually do so and instead onto the masses themselves. It is now all of us who must “do the work.” Where public servants once faced politics as a force for accountability, they can increasingly now passively preside over a country as it educates itself, recognizes its privilege, and “reckons” with its past. Corporations that once existed in a fundamental tension with a political sphere that had the power to regulate them now see that sphere contracted to make way for a privatized political realm that requires them only to emblazon the latest slogan on their marketing materials. Celebrities who once faced scrutiny for their impact on mass culture and can now easily plug into the latest hashtag and effortlessly assume the mantle of moral influencer.
Instead of antagonizing power and holding it to account, wokeness makes it invisible. It flattens everyone, elite and not, into fellow participants in a national religion, one in which those with power merely serve as a ceremonial priesthood whose sole responsibility is to ensure faithful observance. The great “awokening” of America’s elites is also something of a great unburdening — an unburdening from the responsibilities, accountability, and scrutiny that comes with power. Ultimately, it’s an unburdening of a leadership class from a country and its people. The question is: Can any country survive that?
In the late 1990s and early 2000s, a group of prominent atheist
scholars dubbed “The New Atheists” set about demonizing religion, and
Christianity in particular. Books like The God Delusion, The End of Faith, and God Is Not Great
argued that “religion poisons everything,” inspiring hatred,
intolerance, war, you name it. Yet as America has become more secular in
the last two decades, partisan rancor has increased, not decreased.
U.S. church membership held roughly steady at 70 percent or higher from 1937 through 1976, according to Gallup.
The average dropped slightly — to 68 percent — from the 1970s through
the 1990s. Yet in the past 20 years, church membership has dropped
precipitously. While 77 percent of Americans identify themselves with an
organized religion, only 50 percent say they are a member of a church
or synagogue.
Fewer Americans identify as Protestant (43 percent) or Catholic (20
percent) than in previous decades. Meanwhile, the “nones” — atheists,
agnostics, and those claiming no religious affiliation — have grown
rapidly, hitting 22 percent.
The New Atheists may have partly achieved their goal, but declining
church attendance and religious affiliation haven’t exactly translated
into more peace and rational discourse. A rising “woke” orthodoxy among
secularists has even targeted “New Atheist” Richard Dawkins himself for excommunication — over one tweet.
In the past few decades, America has gotten more polarized, as
conservatives and liberals increasingly talk past one another. It seems
as if we inhabit two different worlds, believing in worldviews at
loggerheads with one another.
As Shadi Hamid recently noted in The Atlantic, “American faith, it turns out, is as fervent as ever; it’s just that what was once religious belief has now been channeled into political
belief. Political debates over what America is supposed to mean have
taken on the character of theological disputations. This is what
religion without religion looks like.”
Both conservatives and liberals claim the American label, and accuse
the other side of being “un-American,” heretics to the American ideal.
The problem isn’t just that the other side is wrong, it’s that it
appropriates the language of America’s lofty ideals while twisting them
out of recognition.
We conservatives — rightly, in my humble opinion — see the Left as hostile to America’s very foundations.
Leftists claim that modern American society is “institutionally
racist,” sexist, homophobic, transphobic, you name it. They want to
remake the Constitution in their image in order to achieve their
supposedly righteous agenda.
Meanwhile, leftists see conservatives as the American heretics. If Republicans don’t want to add new states, add seats to the Supreme Court,
abolish the Senate or its rules, or reject the Electoral College, it’s
because they oppose the Will of the People. Even Republican demands for
basic election integrity measures like voter ID are considered “voter
suppression” or “Jim Crow on steroids.”
The Left and the Right both view America as a noble ideal that their
ideological opponents have betrayed. Sadly, we increasingly can no
longer agree on the basic terms of debate. I would argue that the best science contradicts
climate alarmism, transgender identity, and the idea that abortion does
not involve the killing of a human individual. I’d also claim that some
medical concerns arguably weigh against extreme precautions to fight the COVID-19 pandemic.
Yet Democrats see all these claims as not just a disagreement on
matters of policy but an opposition to science and life. Leftists claim
that if you disagree with transgender identity, you are responsible for
contributing to the suicide of people who suffer from gender dysphoria.
Leftists claim that abortion is empowering, even life-saving.
Leftists also claim that — despite the repeated decades of climate
predictions failing — the upcoming fallout of the “climate crisis” is as
certain as the sun rising in the East.
Meanwhile, conservatives like me want to defend the innocent lives of
the unborn. We warn that kowtowing to transgender identity will open
the floodgates of social dysfunction: from biological males in women’s
restrooms and in women’s sports leagues to children and adolescents mutilating their own bodies
in pursuit of a gender identity that will always conflict with their
biological sex. We warn that climate regulations will hurt the economy
and damage the prospects of the less fortunate — those who most need
cheap energy to survive and find a leg up in the job market.
These aren’t just policy disagreements — they’re worldview divides
that concern practical decisions in the here and now. Because these
beliefs often go to a person’s very understanding of identity, his
desire to protect the vulnerable, and his concern for justice, they take
on a religious significance and lead to social cliques — a new
tribalism.
Religion has similar social and cultural effects, but it also carries
the potential to defuse concrete tensions in the here and now. As a
Christian, I place my ultimate hope in the Resurrection from the dead,
not in the present world. No matter how good or bad things get here in
America, this country is not my home and my ultimate allegiance is to
God, not politics.
Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and other faiths encourage a
similar otherworldly holiness, to one degree or another. While bad
actors have used each of these faiths as a pretext for war or political
oppression — yes, even Buddhism — these religions also have the
potential to deescalate political concerns in the here and now.
However, the more secular Americans become, the more we tend to
immanentize the eschaton. Materialism and consumerism naturally lead us
to see the world in terms of progress — we enjoy more comforts and
prosperity than our ancestors did, and we want the world to keep getting
better for our own children. But we see our political opponents as the
enemies of progress, so we must defeat them in order to secure the
forward trajectory.
If we become so focused on the pleasures of this world that we
abandon the pursuit of otherworldly holiness, that gives an increased
weight to every political decision. Policies are not just a matter of
wealth or poverty or even life and death — they become cosmic forces of
good and evil.
Thus, when President Donald Trump reversed the Obama rule that gender
dysphoric people could serve in the military according to their
transgender identities, leftists cried that Trump was “erasing” people,
as if he had committed an act of ethnic cleansing. Democrats on the 2020
presidential circuit broke out their “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry
Climate God” sermons, predicting the apocalypse in a matter of years.
Joe Biden promised fewer fires, floods, and hurricanes if he prevailed — as though he were a Mesopotamian king whose gifts to the gods could fend off disaster.
After the death of George Floyd, protesters took to the streets, and
many engaged in violent rioting, looting, and arson. Some were merely
agitated after months in lockdown, and some had merely taken advantage
of the situation, but others seemed to view the moment as a kind of
spiritual reckoning — an opportunity to throw out America’s supposedly
racist heritage and build a new foundation.
I must confess that we on the Right had our own excesses as well.
Donald Trump pledged to “Make America Great Again,” a vague promise to
restore the country’s inherent greatness. Trump, ever the man of
hyperbole, painted a heroic picture of himself slaying the Deep State
and rescuing Americans from China. I support his policies and agree with
much of the rhetoric, but I have to admit that his self-declared
grandiosity also made him something of a religious leader.
When it became clear that Trump’s challenges to the 2020 election
would not prevail, a portion of the crowd that protested the Electoral
College certification on January 6 violently broke through the Capitol
Police lines and stormed the U.S. Capitol. These riotous lawbreakers
were partly comical — a man wearing a horned hat carried an American
flag like a spear and howled inside the Capitol.
Yet these rioters represented a movement of existential hopelessness
in the face of electoral defeat, a movement not entirely dissimilar from
the Black Lives Matter and antifa agitators who engaged in violent
rioting after the death of George Floyd. To the Capitol rioters, Trump could not have lost,
because that meant the end — a kind of Ragnarok. The loss wasn’t just
political, it was existential. The forces of evil had prevailed, and a
new dark age would descend upon America.
To the other side, the rioters represented another kind of Ragnarok —
the end of democracy. Americans could no longer accept the results of
an election in which their side lost. Democrats have attempted to use
the specter of right-wing terrorism to destroy the Republican Party.
Thankfully, GOP leaders rightly condemned the Capitol riot and nipped
this Ragnarok spirit in the bud. Trump rightly conceded the election,
ending any potential threat.
As Hamid put it, Christianity has always been “intertwined with
America’s self-definition.” It was part of the common heritage of our
culture, even though non-Christians have strongly influenced America
from the beginning. As the influence of a “mere” Christianity wanes,
politics becomes more nasty and divisive.
Christians can put temporary political losses in perspective. After
all, the Jews lost their freedom time and time again, and Christianity
first grew amid Roman persecution. This world is not our ultimate home,
and our human efforts cannot bring about heaven on earth.
Of course, Christians can be part of the problem, as well. The LGBT
movement is constantly targeting religious freedom, and Christians are
right to fight back, so long as we can do so without compromising the
hope and joy of the Christian gospel.
While Biden promised a kind of bipartisan “unity,” his presidency has
only stoked the fires of division. The partisan rancor is only likely
to get worse, but Christians can and should keep things in perspective.
Christianity can be a powerful calming agent in these turbulent
times, enabling us to love our enemies, strive for peace with our
neighbors, and ease our angst by looking to God for our ultimate
satisfaction. Increasing secularism is not helping Americans come
together, but a revival might set us straight.
It’s now been the better part of a month since it broke in the New York Times that Matt Gaetz was being investigated for sex trafficking a minor, and he still has yet to face an on-the-record accusation.
Since then, the minor has morphed into a “former minor”—it turns out she was 18.
Gaetz was also accused of sharing revenge porn of a former girlfriend, including by Katie Hill, whom Gaetz had previously defended in her own revenge porn scandal. Two of that girlfriend’s friends told Politico it wasn’t revenge porn, and that she told them “this is the best I will ever look in my life.”
So the two most dramatic claims of the Gaetz scandal seem to be false, and we are still without an on-the-record accuser. Given Gaetz’s reputation as a playboy, and the leakiness of this investigation, you’d think something substantial might have come out by now.
The girlfriend Gaetz was accused of sharing revenge porn of, according to Politico, also fears the “former minor” was recording calls attempting to incriminate the congressman. It also now appears that Joel Greenberg, the Seminole County tax collector who has been indicted on a slew of charges, was paying for the “former minor’s” legal fees.
Another friend of Greenberg told Politico he thought messages to him involving the “former minor” “felt like a setup.”
So we have two, albeit unnamed, sources who believe Greenberg or the “former minor” he was paying were trying to incriminate them. And that “former minor” he was paying is the one who accounts for the apparently untrue child prostitution allegation.
What does this look like to you?
Greenberg’s lawyer has also pointed the finger at Gaetz, strongly implying the tax collector had flipped on him, saying outside the courthouse recently, “I am sure Matt Gaetz is not feeling very comfortable today.”
It’s a mystery to me, given what this all seems to look like, why Gaetz hasn’t pointed the finger right back at Greenberg.
***
Up until now, the Joel Greenberg situation and the bizarre scheme to bilk Don Gaetz for $25 million in an Iranian hostage rescue have been considered separate things in the media. I’m not sure why. The note to Matt Gaetz’s father specifically links the two, as do the messages published by TAC that indicate Bob Kent’s friend who works at the Israeli consulate had inside knowledge of the Greenberg investigation before it broke in the New York Times.
There are other aspects of the Bob Levinson rescue business that have so far escaped mention by the media, but are worth considering. Bob Kent, the man at the center of the alleged extortion effort, probably had reason to believe he was operating with at least the implicit sanction of the U.S. government. You don’t go on Chris Cuomo’s show and make reference to an operation to spring a prisoner out of Iran, which would be illegal without USG approval, without it.
The U.S. government’s approval may have been more than just implicit: According to a senior Trump administration official, Kent was approved to receive $75,000 from the State Department for services related to the Bob Levinson case. A State Department spokesperson declined to comment on this.
While we can’t assume the State Department knew about the subsequent $25 million ask, that a federal government contractor is accused of extorting a U.S. congressman is deeply troubling.
***
A few more points about the background of the Levinson rescue effort are also worth reviewing here. First, as a matter of public record, it isn’t clear that Levinson was or is actually in Iran. Statements from the State Department, including by Hillary Clinton, as well as resolutions from Sen. Marco Rubio, consistently say he’s being held “somewhere in Southwest Asia.” When President Barack Obama discussed the Levinson case with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, an unnamed official close to the investigation told CNN, “We have every reason to believe that he’s alive and that the Iranians control his fate,” which is an odd turn of phrase to use for someone being held in Iran. The partisans of the Levinson rescue effort in the United States will say his lack of inclusion in the 2016 prisoner exchange is just evidence that the Obama administration didn’t really care about him, but it’s hard to square that with the president bringing it up at the highest level.
Second, we should note that the ask to Don Gaetz, in amount ($25 million) and purpose (to get him out of legal trouble in the United States), is identical to the one the FBI approached Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska about in mid-2008. That doesn’t prove it came from the same people, but it’s perhaps a bit suggestive. Deripaska told John Solomon in 2019 that he believed Levinson was dead.
Third, during the Trump administration there seems to have been a pattern of consistent skepticism from the FBI about freelance intelligence sources related to Levinson, contrasted with credulity from the State Department.
Jeff Stein wrote in the Daily Beast that Kent “showed me Interior Ministry and other security agency documents he’d obtained, which upon expert examination turned out to be a mix of clumsy fabrications and authentic papers of unconfirmed provenance. He now claims to have ‘proof of life’ videos that the FBI says are ‘inconclusive.'”
Kent also isn’t the only source of information related to the Levinson case that the FBI regarded as unreliable. Walton Martin, a Philadelphia researcher who has worked with the FBI in the past, is another one the bureau seems not to have trusted, though his reports were being passed directly to John Bolton and Mike Pompeo. All caveats about the reliability of the FBI aside, one has to wonder if they had a reason for distrusting these sources.
One other bit of Stein’s reporting is worth dwelling on further; he wrote in his recent piece about the Gaetz scandal:
Back in 2018, Kent and his associates told me that men “with CIA connections” had offered to pay his Iranian helpers $100,000 for a proof-of-life package, including fingerprints and a blood sample and what he and Kent’s associates claimed was a recent, 41-second video clip of Levinson. “Another $150,000” would be needed “for the rescue,” Kent told me. But just as he was preparing to leave for the Middle East on Dec. 10, 2018, with $250,000 cash in hand for payoffs, he said, the federal government short-circuited the caper over sanctions issues related to Iran.
Three years later, the amount of money Kent was asking for grew by two orders of magnitude. Contrary to the texts from Israeli consulate employee Jake Novak to Scott Adams published by TAC, they don’t seem to have “come way down” from $25 million, they actually appear to have come way up to it.
In the Trump administration, action on Levinson actually seemed to ramp up just as consensus was growing that he was probably dead, a conclusion his family heard from the FBI and accepted in March 2020. The Treasury Department didn’t apply sanctions to two Iranians related to the Levinson case until December. It was well after Levinson’s family gave a statement saying they believed him to be dead that the law firm of the Levinson family’s attorney, David McGee, incorporated convicted felon Stephen Alford’s consulting company, the man Don Gaetz was supposed to meet. It’s somewhat difficult to see it as a good-faith rescue effort after this point, if it didn’t have the support of the family. Alford won’t say how he got involved in the scheme to free Bob Levinson.
There’s clearly a lot going on behind the scenes here. Alas, after the Justice Department’s performance these last five years, I don’t have any confidence we’re ever going to get the full story. I’d love to be proved wrong.
Former US ambassador to Mexico, Christopher
Landau, says Mexico has taken a 'laissez faire' approach to cartels,
which now control vast swaths of territory.
Christopher Landau, U.S. ambassador to Mexico during the Trump
administration, said during a roundtable event with former diplomats
last week that drug cartels control between 35 and 40 percent of Mexican
territory.
“I think there is no doubt that they play a broad role in the governance of Mexico,” Landau said.
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, he added, has taken a passive approach to the cartels.
“He sees the cartels as his Vietnam,” Landau said, noting that López
Obrador has tried to avoid open conflict, and instead adopted a “laissez faire attitude towards the cartels.”
In comments Wednesday, López Obrador dismissed Landau’s assessment, saying, “It’s not like that,” and boasting, somewhat implausibly, that he travels all over Mexico without bodyguards.
But after a string of high-profile attacks and assassination attempts
by cartels last year, along with a dramatic string of indictments and
intrigue among top former Mexican officials, it’s hard to argue with
Landau’s assessment.
Last June, in an unprecedented and brazen display of force, dozens of
cartel gunmen armed with grenades and .50-caliber sniper rifles ambushed the armored vehicle of Mexico City police chief Omar García Harfuch.
The dawn attack, thought to have been carried out by the powerful
Jalisco New Generation Cartel, or CJNG, took place on Paseo de la
Reforma, a boulevard leading to the posh neighborhood of Lomas de
Chapultepec, home to various foreign embassies and mansions — just about
the last place one would expect a cartel ambush.
Harfuch
was shot several times but ultimately survived the assassination
attempt (two of his bodyguards and a female passerby were killed), but
the fact that the attack happened in broad daylight in an exclusive
neighborhood of Mexico City underscored the impunity with which cartels
now operate in Mexico. “There has never been an attack as blatant,”
Landau said, “And, to my surprise, the central Mexican government
basically did nothing.”
The same could be said of the Battle of Culiacán in October 2019,
when the Mexican military captured a son of jailed drug kingpin Joaquin
“El Chapo” Guzman and were quickly besieged and outgunned by Sinaloa cartel forces
that blocked all exits to the city, dispatched custom-built armored
vehicles, and kidnapped the families of the soldiers holding El Chapo’s
son. After launching more than a dozen separate attacks on government
forces in Culiacán, López Obrador himself ordered the Mexican military
to stand down, release El Chapo’s son, and surrender to the cartel.
Images and footage of the battle could have been mistaken for scenes
from Syria or Yemen, where central governments really don’t exercise
total sovereignty over those countries. It’s not too much to say that
the Battle of Culiacán marked a turning point in the collapse of the Mexican state.
Unable to pull off the apprehension of a high-ranking cartel member,
and unwilling to exert the force necessary to defeat paramilitary cartel
forces, the Mexican government left little doubt about who is in charge
of Sinaloa — or the rest of the country for that matter.
That conclusion was bolstered by the release and subsequent exoneration in January of former Mexican defense minister Gen. Salvador Cienfuegos Zepeda,
who was arrested in the United States late last year on drug
trafficking charges. Specifically, General Cienfuegos, who served as
defense minister under President Enrique Peña Nieto from 2012 to 2018,
was accused of taking bribes in exchange for protecting drug cartel
leaders. They apparently referred to him as “El Padrino,” or The
Godfather.
But
his arrest in Los Angeles triggered a mini-diplomatic crisis. An
outraged Mexican government demanded that Cienfuegos be released to
Mexican authorities, and assured the U.S. Justice Department that the
full weight of the Mexican justice system would be brought to bear on
his case. The United States complied, turning over Cienfuegos and
hundreds of pages of evidence against him. Not long after, the general
was completely — and very publicly — exonerated, and the classified
evidence against was made public. In a statement, the Mexican attorney
general’s office claimed, absurdly, that Cienfuegos “never had any
encounter with the members of the criminal organization.”
As shocking as it might seem that such a high-ranking member of the
Mexican government was in the pay of a powerful cartel, the Cienfuegos
case wasn’t isolated. In December 2019, Genaro García Luna, former
security chief under President Felipe Calderon from 2006 to 2012, was arrested on charges he took millions in bribes from the Sinaloa cartel when it was under the leadership of El Chapo.
To grasp how big of deal Luna’s arrest was, understand that he served
as the head of Mexico’s Federal Investigation Agency from 2001 to 2005
(the equivalent of our F.B.I.), and from 2006 to 2012 was Mexico’s
secretary of public security, a cabinet-level position under Calderon.
In that role, it was his job to lead Calderon’s war against the cartels —
chief among them the Sinaloa cartel, which, it turns out, he was
working for all along.
Given all of this very recent history, it’s not a stretch to say, as
Landau did last week, that cartels play a broad role in the governance
of Mexico. In some places, they act as the government, not just by
controlling police and security forces, but also in providing welfare
and public services to local residents, as they did this past year
during the pandemic shutdowns, distributing food and aid packages to the public, sometimes in boxes marked with cartel branding and logos.
As the border crisis deepens, the cartels’ role in fomenting and profiting off illegal immigration
has also become clear, leaving no doubt that at least in northern
Mexico cartels really do control much, if not most, of the territory.
I hate to write this, but there is just no good way to look at this. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, specifically Presiding Judge James Boasberg, has hired former DOJ National Security Division head, Mary McCord, as amici curiae advisor to the court. [LINK] The placement was first noted by an announcement from Georgetown Law ICAP.
Presiding Judge James Boasberg, is the decision-maker in the appointment of Amici Curiae to the FISA court. There is no way, NO WAY, Judge Boasberg does not know Mary McCord was at the epicenter of the fraudulent FISA application used against Carter Page. Remember, in addition to being the FISC Presiding Judge, Boasberg was also the trial judge in the case against Kevin Clinesmith, the FBI lawyer who lied about Page working for the CIA on the FISA application. {Go Deep}
Boasberg knows Mary McCord took over from former DOJ-NSD head John Carlin (October 2016); and it was McCord who guided the Carter Page FISA application through the court and across the finish-line (October 2016 and January 2017). That FISA application was built upon fraud and Mary McCord was at the center of it.
Mary McCord was also the DOJ-NSD official who went with Sally Yates to confront the White House Counsel, Don McGhan, about the Michael Flynn interview with the FBI. {Go Deep} It was also Mary McCord who had Michael Atkinson as the chief-legal-counsel for the DOJ-NSD -that’s her office attorney- when the FISA application was submitted in October 2016, and renewed in January 2017.
Michael Atkinson went from DOJ-NSD counsel to become the Intelligence Community Inspector General (ICIG). {Go Deep} In that new role Atkinson changed the rules to allow an anonymous CIA whistleblower (Ciaramella on behalf of Vindman) to file the complaint that led to the Ukraine impeachment effort. {Go Deep} Who was the lead lawyer in the Jerry Nadler led House Judiciary Committee? Why Mary McCord of course. Judge Boasberg knows all of this… AND MORE.
Boasberg knows the details of the fraudulent FISA application. Boasberg knows the details of the Inspector General Michael Horowitz report about the fraudulent FISA application; and all the DOJ and FBI participants… which included Mary McCord. Boasberg knows exactly who Mary McCord is, and what activity she has taken on behalf of the political resistance inside the DOJ and inside congress. FISC Presiding Judge James Boasberg also knows Mary McCord has broken the law….
…And yet Boasberg appoints McCord as amici curaie?
Let’s be really clear here. The FISA court is a small unit. The judges in/around Washington DC are also a small unit. They know everything that is going on in and around their DC network. A FISA judge inside that DC system knows every granular detail of everything that comes into their purview. All of it. Judge Boasberg even wrote the last two FISA court opinions (2019 and 2020) about the FBI abuses of the FISA-702 process and warrantless, illegal violations of the NSA database.
There is simply no other way to look at the placement of Mary McCord other than to see what it is. The FISA court is compromised; AND, McCord is being installed in order to coordinate any defensive measures that are needed to cover-up that compromise. [ex. if special counsel John Durham makes something public and Durham has been to the FISC with questions.]
There isn’t another way to look at this other than to see bad motives. There’s not a shred of possibility that Judge Boasberg does not know exactly who Mary McCord is, and what roles she played in the surveillance of candidate Donald Trump, President-elect Trump, President Trump and the House impeachment effort to remove President Donald Trump. Boasberg knows exactly who Mary McCord is.
There is no other way to look at this.
I hate to say it so bluntly, but the FISA Court is compromised.
