What Holder should do

The New Neo Posted on by

Paul Cassell lists seven steps Eric Holder should take in the wake of Ferguson, the Garner incident, and the murder of officers Ramos and Liu.

I say: dream on, Mr. Cassell. I predict that Holder will not comply with a single one of the suggestions.

They are good ideas, though:

1. Send 30 representatives from the administration to the officers’ funerals.

Holder should send 30 representatives to the slain officers’ funerals. Why 30? Symbols matter here. The administration sent three representatives to Brown’s funeral. That choice was (to put it mildly) a curious one…

2. Meet with the slain officers’ families.

Holder should travel to New York and meet with the slain officers’ families. Here again, this step could help undo fallout from another curious choice Holder made in the wake of Brown’s shooting. Shortly after that event, Holder met with Brown’s parents…

3. Clear Officer Darren Wilson in a public report.

Holder has it in his power to dissipate at least some significant part of the public outcry about Brown’s shooting. Like many protesters around the country, the shooter of the two NYPD officers appears to have operated under the spell of the “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot” myth. The St. Louis County grand jury rejected that narrative in declining to authorize charges against Officer Darren Wilson. But in the wake of the grand jury’s decision, the attorney general missed an opportunity to support the grand jury and instead released a statement saying that “the Justice Department’s investigation into the shooting of Michael Brown remains ongoing”…

4. Meet with Wilson.

After the attorney general has cleared Wilson, he should meet with Wilson. On Saturday night, the attorney general praised law enforcement officers, saying “[t]hese courageous men and women routinely incur tremendous personal risks, and place their lives on the line each and every day, in order to preserve public safety. We are forever in their debt.”

One of the officers to whom we owe that debt is Wilson. He was patrolling the streets of Ferguson when he encountered Brown…

5. Expedite a conclusion to the Garner investigation.

…Part of the reason that the protesters have been in the streets is that they lack confidence in the conclusion of the Staten Island grand jury clearing the officer involved…Holder has said, “We have all seen the video of Mr. Garner’s arrest. His death, of course, was a tragedy. All lives must be valued. All lives,” appearing to reference the popular protest phrase “black lives matter” that has been seen on protest signs in Ferguson and across social media.

…almost immediately after the grand jury’s decision in the Garner death was announced, Holder made it a point to hold a news conference during which he…announced that the Justice Department would conduct an “independent, thorough, fair, and expeditious” federal civil rights investigation into Garner’s death.

It is no exaggeration to say that wrapping up that investigation may now be a life-or-death matter to law enforcement officers in New York (and elsewhere)…

Unfortunately, Holder’s record on expediting investigations does not inspire confidence…

6. Stop tolerating lawbreaking by protesters.

The attorney general has gone out of his way to remind authorities that protesters have First Amendment rights. And, of course, they do. But at times, the attorney general’s remarks appear to have gone beyond mere reminders to actually expressing agreement with the protestors…

7. Recognize a national day for support of police.

I really suggest you read the whole thing.

The article spotlights the subtle ways in which this administration has encouraged the unrest, both by what they’ve done but even more by what they haven’t done.

Let me repeat: if Eric Holder (or Barack Obama, for that matter) does any of the things Cassell has suggested, I’d be extremely surprised.

The narrative must be that Brinsley was mentally ill

The New Neo Posted on by

The line between politically motivated killings and mental illness can be a thin one. Absent an obvious problem like untreated schizophrenia featuring delusions, what does a vague history of emotional troubles mean?

Not much, really. How many completely well-adjusted people shoot their girlfriends in the stomach and then set out to randomly murder two policemen? I would say the answer would be “zero.” But the fact that angry ideologies of revenge and hatred appeal to people who are already nursing some sort of maladjustment and unhappiness is to state the obvious. However, maladjustment, unhappiness, and antisocial behavior do not a mental illness make.

Yet we have this headline in today’s NY Times: “New York Officers’ Killer, Adrift and Ill, Had a Plan.”

Here is the sum total of the evidence that Brinsley was “ill”:

Relatives told the police he had taken medication at one point, and when he was asked during an August 2011 court hearing if he had ever been a patient in a mental institution or under the care of a psychiatrist or psychologist, he said yes. He had also tried to hang himself a year ago, the police said.

So according to Brinsley he once took medication and at least on one occasion had visited a psychiatrist or psychologist, two things that he shares with a huge percentage of Americans, most of whom are not mentally ill. Incarceration in a mental hospital is a better marker for actual mental illness, but we have no evidence that Brinsley was ever in a mental hospital. A failed suicide attempt is the same thing: it can be evidence of mental illness, but often is not. And we have no idea of the seriousness of Brinsley’s attempt, or how the police came to learn of it.

All in all, pretty slim evidence to hang a headline on.

Here’s how the Times describes Brinsley’s taking his own life after the murder of the police officers:

He fired four shots, killing both men. He fled to a nearby subway station, where he shot himself.

Readers can be forgiven for thinking Brinsley’s suicide was part of the plan all along. What the Times omits is the story I wrote about here, which is that two police officers had chased Brinsley into the subway station, and in a wild scene told everyone to hit the decks as they “engaged” him and he then shot himself. In other words, he was cornered, and chose to take his own life rather than be taken in and/or wounded by police. Yet the Times—and nearly every other report I’ve seen—fails to mention what really happened. It seems likely they would be prefer to keep it ambiguous in order to further the narrative of mental illness rather than the idea that Brinsley’s suicide was more of a rational act.

What we do know is this: Brinsley’s life had been a long and messy succession of failures, anger, violence, and law-breaking. Something was wrong with the guy; of this there is little question. But emphasizing the slim evidence for “mental illness” is mostly a way to counterbalance the idea that this was a politically motivated killing based on the recent furor over the Michael Brown and Eric Garner cases.

Pan Am Flight 103: unhappy anniversary

The New Neo Posted on by

Today is the 26th anniversary of the destruction of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing all 243 passengers and 16 crew members aboard as well as 11 people on the ground. Until 9/11, it had the distinction of having the largest loss of American life of any terrorist attack.

The families of the victims still grieve; there was a memorial service at Arlington National Cemetery to commemorate the day, where there is a special memorial cairn:

The town of Lockerbie later shipped 270 blocks of locally quarried sandstone to America. Each block of the distinctive reddish stone represented a life lost in the disaster. The task of building these blocks into a memorial was undertaken by Frank Klein. A builder from New Jersey, whose daughter Patricia had been on PA103, Frank moved to Washington DC with some of his workers, and over several months lovingly erected the cairn that now stands in a secluded part of Section 1 in Arlington National Cemetery…[R]elatives gather every December at Arlington, where the names of their loved ones are engraved into the marble base of the Lockerbie Memorial Cairn – a unique and powerful tribute to such a devastating loss.

The town of Lockerbie has also dedicated part of its cemetery to the victims:

In a quiet corner of Lockerbie’s cemetery is a Garden of Remembrance. It is lovingly tended by local people, who have adopted those victims buried there, vowing always to visit the graves on behalf of their families.

Syracuse University, which lost 35 of its students—returning for Christmastime from a semester abroad—holds a memorial service as well.

There are others unlikely to forget:

Jaswant Basuta, a 47-year-old car mechanic, had checked in for Pan Am Flight 103, but arrived at the boarding gate too late. Having attended a family wedding in Belfast, he was returning to New York to start a new job. Friends and relatives from nearby Southall, came to see him off at the airport terminal, and bought him drinks in the upstairs bar. When “gate closing” flashed on the departure screen, Basuta hurried through security and passport control and sprinted to the departure gate, but the room was empty except for Pan Am ground staff who denied him access to the aircraft. He never made it to Pan Am 103 ”“ but his luggage did. Basuta was initially considered a suspect, as his checked baggage had been on the flight without him. This suspicion may have been heightened by Basuta having been a Sikh, and militant Sikhs having been implicated in the bombing of Air India Flight 182 three years previously. Basuta had also travelled from Belfast, a place notorious for terrorism linked to The Troubles. After questioning at a Heathrow police station, it was established he had no connection to the attack, and he was released without charge. Twenty years later, in an interview with the BBC, he talked about his narrow escape from death: “I should have been the 271st victim and I still feel terrible for all the other people who died.”

Al Megrahi, the only man ever convicted for the bombing of Flight 103, died in 2012 (if you do a search, you can find many posts about him on this blog). Qaddafi, of course, is likewise deceased.

Cop-killer’s suicide was a little more complicated than that

The New Neo Posted on by

Most of the coverage of the death of Ismaaiyl Brinsley, the murderer of the two NYC policemen, indicates he killed himself on a subway platform. While this is true, his suicide wasn’t spontaneous.

Details that have emerged include the following actions of Brinsley prior to the murders:

The gunman who fatally ambushed two police officers in their squad car had a long criminal record, a hatred for police and the government and an apparent history of mental instability that included an attempt to hang himself a year ago, authorities said Sunday.

Moments before opening fire, Ismaaiyl Brinsley approached people on the street and asked them to follow him on Instagram, then told them, “Watch what I’m going to do,” Chief of Detectives Robert Boyce said…

Brinsley, 28, had at least 19 arrests in Georgia and Ohio, spent two years in prison for gun possession and had a troubled childhood so violent that his mother was afraid of him, police said.

After the murders, it appears that police pursued Brinsley into the subway station and this is what precipitated his suicide. It was like a scene from a movie:

Brinsley fled south on Tompkins to the subway where “they engaged the guy and he ”˜did’ himself,” an NYPD investigator said.

“While on the platform, Brinsley shot himself in the head ”” took his own life,” the commissioner said…

Carmen Jimenez, 32, a social worker from Bed-Stuy, was on the subway platform when the gunman ran in, pursued by cops.

“It looked like two cops came in. There was lots of yelling and they said, ”˜Everybody get down,’”‰” said Jimenez, who is eight months pregnant.

“People were screaming. People were trying to run,” she said.

“I threw myself on the floor. I was afraid for my life and afraid for my baby.”

Trying to account for Brinsley’s actions in killing Ramos and Liu based on a single motivation would seem futile. He’d been a criminal most of his adult life. He was volatile and aggressive, sometimes towards himself. He may have been mentally ill but perhaps not. All in all, a frightening character to those who crossed his path, including his family.

But he hadn’t murdered anyone yet. Something set him off, and it seems to have been the publicity around the Michael Brown and Eric Garner cases, and the hatred and calls for violence against police. The analogy would be to lighting a match in a room that’s been filling with gas. You get an explosion.

Two NYC police ambushed and killed by gunman: looking forward, looking back

The New Neo Posted on by

When I read the news of the murder of NYPD Officers Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu by shooter Ismaaiyl Brinsley as they sat in their police car, it had a sickening familiarity.

If you’re as old as I am, and especially if you’re from New York, you remember.

You remember that in the early 70s a war against police began, a war in which police were gunned down by cold-blooded killers with a racial/political agenda and a convict past. The assailants were members of various black militant groups, mostly offshoots of the Black Panthers, such as the Black Liberation Army (BLA), which specialized in racially-motivated cop killings.

It was almost inevitable that the furor against police officers that’s been whipped up over the Brown and Garner deaths would end in some person or persons deciding that killing a cop would be just the thing. Whether Brinsley was crazy or not—and he may have been—and a lone wolf or not, even crazy people can be sparked to violence by an atmosphere of orchestrated hatred.

There is also evidence that Brinsley was not a lone wolf, however, but instead may have been a member of a group known as the Black Guerrilla Family. The Family shares similar antecedents with the BLA, including a prison genesis and a stated leftist/socialist/Marxist philosophy.

Probably the most famous police officer ambush case was that of partners and Vietnam vets Gregory Foster and Rocco Laurie, which occurred in January of 1972. Witnesses and an investigation indicated that they were shot in the back by BLA members as the officers walked down the street on their beat, and then shot again multiple times as they lay dying and the murderers had grabbed their service revolvers. The murders of Foster and Laurie caused a furor because they were part of a war on police, but also because both were well-liked, young, handsome, left young grieving wives and a great deal of fear in the NYPD, and because they were good friends and an interracial team (Foster was black and Laurie white). There was a 1974 book and a 1975 movie about the heinous crime, and although there were suspects (some of which have died or been killed in the ensuing years), no one has ever been tried for their murders.

The atmosphere today resembles the feeling that was in the air back in the early 70s, and that is most definitely not a good thing. This mood could be felt building and building prior to the murder of Ramos and Liu, and the fear is that it will keep on building. Today, unlike in the 70s, even our leadership—and by that I mean Barack Obama (who consorts with the likes of Al Sharpton), Eric Holder, Bill de Blasio, for example—fans the flames of the hatred in ways subtle and not-so-subtle.

The NY police have certainly noticed the similarity in atmosphere:

The first assassination of an NYPD officer since the 1988 ambush of Edward Byrne has rattled the rank-and-file ”” and prompted cops to adopt drastic “wartime” policing tactics not seen since the 1970s.

“At least two units are to respond to EVERY call, no matter the condition or severity, no matter what type of job is pending, or what the opinion of the patrol supervisor happens to be,” an e-mail widely circulated among cops advised Saturday night.

…The memo also pointed to potential slowdowns in arrest and ticketing activity: “IN ADDITION: Absolutely NO enforcement action in the form of arrests and or summonses is to be taken unless absolutely necessary and an individual MUST be placed under arrest,” the statement said.

“These are precautions that were taken in the 1970s when police officers were ambushed and executed on a regular basis,” the statement added.

The police remember.

RIP Liu and Ramos:
LiuRamos

RIP Foster and Laurie, and all the other police officers killed in action by those determined to murder them:

fosterlaurie

There is still time to order your Christmas and Chanukah gifts from Amazon through neo-neocon

The New Neo Posted on by

Now we’re really down to the wire, aren’t we? But you can still solve all your gift-giving dilemmas by turning to that online colossus, Amazon.

And if you use those widgets on my right sidebar to click through for all your Amazon purchases (now and at any other time of year) you will also be giving a small but still not insignificant gift to neo-neocon (it adds up, folks), and all without spending any extra money yourself. What could be more wonderful?

I thank you all in advance. And I thank everyone who’s already ordered gifts through my Amazon portal. I am deeply appreciative.

[NOTE: In case you have ad blocker or something of that sort, and the Amazon widgets don’t show up on your computer, go here. You can also click on any Amazon book link within a post and anything you order during that click-through gets credited to me. I believe it’s true even for things you put in your cart but don’t order till a bit later, although there’s a time limit on how long they can be there and still get credited when ordered (I’m not sure what that limit is, though, so best to order sooner rather than later).]

Closing times

The New Neo Posted on by

When I was a child—which was not all that long ago—the supermarkets used to close at 5 PM.

You could also get almost anything delivered, too: meat from the butcher, fish from the fishmonger, vegetables and fruits from the man with the traveling truck. Likewise, bread from the bread truck (which the driver once let me ride in for a block—a memorable occasion that involved standing next to him, since there was only one seat).

Milk and butter appeared every couple of days in a small metal-lined box with a flip top that was permanently parked on our side stoop. Even the drugstore delivered, especially prescription medicines if you were sick.

But only during the day. It all closed down in the evening, and banks closed for business in mid-afternoon. If you wanted something later, tough. Wait till tomorrow. And on Sunday, wait till Monday.

I don’t even recall people imagining the concept of an all-night grocery, and I don’t recall anyone wishing (aloud, anyway) that stores stayed open later. It just Wasn’t Done. I don’t know what year this all changed, but it was fairly early in my life, and is linked in my mind with the installation in our supermarket of the first automatically opening door I ever saw. Magic!

I’m a night owl, and so for me the fact that stores stay open late is a wonderful thing. At least, if feels like a wonderful thing. But I also know the price we pay for it.

Why single-payer died in Vermont—for now

The New Neo Posted on by

I guess they ran out of other people’s money before they even started. Fancy that.

Vermont, the nation’s most leftist state, has given up on single-payer health insurance.

For now:

“It is not the right time for Vermont” to pass a single-payer system, Shumlin acknowledged in a public statement ending his signature initiative. He concluded the 11.5 percent payroll assessments on businesses and sliding premiums up to 9.5 percent of individuals’ income “might hurt our economy.”

Will there ever be a “right time”? Not according to some:

“If cobalt blue Vermont couldn’t find a way to make single-payer happen, then it’s very unlikely that any other state will,” said Jack Mozloom, spokesman for the National Federation of Independent Business.

“There will never be a good time for a massive tax increase on employers and consumers in Vermont, so they should abandon that silly idea now and get serious,” Mozloom added.

Mozloom aside, they will never stop trying. Never:

“It is time to put the interests of patients first, ahead of political expedience,” said Andrew Coates, president of Physicians for a National Health Care Program. Single-payer is “the only reform that will cover everyone, save lives and save money. Mr. Shumlin, of all our nation’s governors, knows this well.”

The rest of the article is devoted to proponents of single-payer saying why it is that although maybe the Vermont plan wasn’t quite right, single-payer is still a great idea. It just needs to be done in a different way, or at the federal level.

This really sums it up:

Gottfried has been introducing his New York single-payer bill every year since 1992. The cause is “not for the faint of heart,” he said.

And there is no question in my mind that leftists are not faint of heart. They are models of patience and dedication. The laws of economics are nothing in the face of their drive, and they see this merely as a temporary setback.

How can a thinking person make a statement like this one, and believe it? (That is, assuming the person actually does believe it, which may or may not be the case):

Oregon considered adding a public option ”” not the same as single-payer, but with similar challenges ”” to its Obamacare exchange in 2010, but ultimately decided the startup costs were too high, even if savings were forecast down the road.

“People have to ultimately understand that it’s going to cost them less even though their taxes go up,” McGuire said.

According to McGuire and those who argue similarly, the initial increase in cost will be reflected in taxes, but “ultimately” there will be savings. Based on what? Projections of folks like Jonathan Gruber? And what will the other costs of those “savings” be (in the unlikely event the savings ever do materialize), in terms of decreased choice and the decline in the quality of care for the majority of people?

What was that they say about a free lunch?

More from the WaPo on Obama and Cuba

The New Neo Posted on by

The WaPo’s editorial board keeps hammering home on this issue:

…[I]t’s important to know the reaction of those Cubans who have put their lives on the line to fight for democracy and human rights. Many have supported engagement and opposed the U.S. embargo. But they are now pretty much unanimous in saying that the way Mr.”‰Obama has gone about this is a mistake.

Actually, “mistake” is the polite word used by Berta Soler of the Ladies in White, an astonishingly courageous group of women who march each week in support of political prisoners. “Betrayal” was the term used by several others, who asked why Mr. Obama had chosen to lift economic restrictions and dispatch an ambassador without requiring the “significant steps toward democracy” he once said must precede liberalization.

Guillermo Farié±as, the general director of the dissidents’ United Anti-Totalitarian Front, told reporters in Havana that Mr. Obama had promised in a November 2013 meeting with himself and Ms. Soler that any U.S. action on Cuba “would be consulted with civil society and the nonviolent opposition. Obviously this didn’t happen .”‰.”‰. they didn’t take into account Cuban democrats.”

The negative response from the people whom Mr.”‰Obama portrays as the beneficiaries of his initiative is one reason to question his contention that Cuba should be treated like China and Vietnam, two Communist nations with which the United States normalized diplomatic and economic relations decades ago…

…Mr. Obama should have learned and applied some of the hard lessons of normalization with China and Vietnam ”” most notably that engagement doesn’t automatically promote freedom.

Much much more in that vein. It’s remarkable not so much for what it says but for who is saying it, and how clearly.

[ADDENDUM: Here’s a good interview with Marco Rubio on Cuba, a topic on which he certainly knows his stuff.]

[ADDENDUM II: I notice quite a few comments to the editorial from people who are hopping mad at the WaPo for going off the leftist reservation on this one.]

What does Obama want?

The New Neo Posted on by

Commenter “janetoo” asked a good question in the thread about Obama’s Cuba “negotiations”:

What I want to know is this: what is Obama’s end game? What does he want from all this discourse with our enemies?

My answer, which I will expand on a bit now, was this:

The transformation of America, just as he said. He wants to transform it by weakening it and its allies, and strengthening its enemies (particularly those on the left), and he wants to do it so thoroughly that there’s no turning back.

It’s easier to wreck than to build. A president whose attitude towards this country and its power is malignant, who has the support of the press (as Obama has most of the time), and who is immune from worrying about any election consequences (which he is now), can do a lot of damage in the two years he has remaining.

His motive is both ideological and personal. His ideology is leftist, his methods Alinskyite plus Orwellian rhetoric. He knows the attitude of the press towards him, plus his race, has made him immune from the usual checks and balances.

Some think he is also a closet Muslim, and that is part of it. I don’t know; that has never seemed quite right to me, although he does identify with Muslims because of his upbringing. I see him as an agnostic or atheist, however, who sees religion as a prop to use politically, rather than a believer of any sort.

Why does he want revenge on the US? Dinesh D’Souza has a theory about anti-colonialism that may have some validity, but I’m not at all sure about that one either, not as the leading motivator anyway. Leftism (and even liberalism, as I’ve observed it in recent years) involves hatred of America in general and seeing it as the source of much of the grief in the world. When I write “as I’ve observed” I’m not just talking about Obama or the more leftist members of Congress, I’m also talking about my relatively non-political friends and acquaintances who trash America with a certain kneejerk regularity. That attitude, writ large and augmented by true venom, appears to be the viewpoint Obama holds.

Obama could never have gotten elected if he’d been upfront about this in 2008. And even though discerning people realized it in 2008, and more realized it by 2012, even then not enough were paying close attention and/or not enough were discerning enough. Obama knows that, and was counting on it. Obama is the first president who didn’t merely disappoint and fail to follow through on certain issues, but who fundamentally lied about who he was in the most basic sense, and about what he had planned (sometimes he was just vague; “hope and change” doesn’t tell you what the hope is for or what the change is to).

I challenge you to find a president who offered a more basic lie about the self than this one from Obama in 2008, for example:

The biggest problems that we’re facing right now have to do with George Bush trying to bring more and more power into the executive branch and not go through Congress at all. And that’s what I intend to reverse when I’m president of the United States of America.

I called it a lie. But it was not necessarily a lie, it may have been one of those cleverly ironic hidden Orwellian messages. From David Bernstein at Volokh:

Some foolish voters thought that Obama meant that the big problem was that George Bush was bringing more and more power into the executive branch and not go[ing] through Congress. In fact, Obama obviously meant that the big problem was George Bush bringing more and more power into the executive branch and not go[ing] through Congress. So Obama kept his promise. George Bush is no longer bringing more and more power into the executive branch and ignoring Congress. President Obama is.

Here’s another comment worth discussing:

Sometimes I think we give Obama too much credit. He wouldn’t be able to transform America if she hadn’t already been teetering on the edge. He was just the right guy at the right time. If he was as talented as people make him out to be, what he is doing wouldn’t be so obvious (to those not willfully blind).

My reply:

I completely agree that Obama took advantage of already-existing weaknesses, many of them the result of the left’s Gramscian march through our institutions (education, media, entertainment, religion, etc.).

But he is also politically brilliant, or at least very very smart. Politics is his focus and almost nothing else, and in that regard he has finessed his opposition nearly every time.

Even the 2014 election meant absolutely nothing to him in terms of his ability to wreak havoc. He has understood that a very audacious president can trump Congress every time unless they have the votes to override his veto. Most of the time when government is split and the president is one party and Congress another, Congress lacks a supermajority. Previous presidents in that position have been more interested than Obama in public opinion and catering to it, in part because of fear of impeachment, in part because they are patriots, in part because they care about the election prospects of fellow party members, in part because of fear of the press’s criticism. Obama has no such reservations, and thereby exposed a weakness in our entire system of government (a weakness the Founders realized was there, but which was unavoidable).

And by the way, what Obama is doing still doesn’t seem to be obvious to the majority of people, although they may have some vague sense of unease and disapproval. The rest approve, because they believe the ends justifies the means.

Sierra Leone: another top doctor dies of ebola

The New Neo Posted on by

The ebola news has been quiet since the flare-up in the US has died down.

But ebola’s destructive power goes on.

Note that Dr. Willoughby died after treating a patient who was not known to have ebola, but who later was diagnosed with the disease. This is another indication of the fact that sometimes ebola is quite contagious before it is even recognizable as ebola.

In the US, because there were very few cases, this phenomenon was not at all obvious. But in countries such as Sierra Leone, where the disease is endemic, a certain percentage of cases will be of this hard-to-recognize variety, and that helps spread the illness.

On Rolling Stone’s Jackie: it gets worse

The New Neo Posted on by

Here’s an update for those who are still interested in the continuing subsequent unraveling of the UVA rape story.

It has now been revealed that the emails supposedly sent from Jackie’s attacker to Jackie’s buddy Randall/Ryan after the rape were not only sent from fake accounts she had set up, but their content was taken from various internet websites and was based heavily on scripts from the TV show “Dawson’s Creek.”

The ruse was very elaborate, it seems.