Roundup: Whipgate and other border news

The New Neo Posted on by

There’s so much news about the southern border that I’m just going to do a roundup:

(1) Child sexual abuse.

(2) The government promotes the false Whipgate narrative. Why not? After all, lying comes naturally to them, and right now their illegal immigration policy isn’t meeting with public favor. So something out of a Hollywood movie is what they fall back on.

(3) The administration’s Haitian policy is being criticized, as well.

(4) Although these next two are unrelated to immigration, since I’m doing a roundup I thought I’d put them in here anyway. The House overwhelmingly votes funds for Iron Dome for Israel’s defense system, but the Squad votes against and AOC weeps – perhaps because political realities forced her to break from the other Squad members and vote “present.”

(5) Something’s going on in China – maybe a leftward pull, maybe not.

Behold, some of the January 6th “insurrection” surveillance video

The New Neo Posted on by

We’ve seen a few carefully selected amateur videos of the events of January 6th at the Capitol, most of them of the more violent aspects – including the moment in which Ashli Babbitt was killed. However, although we’ve known that tons of official surveillance video was taken, we’ve seen little of it till now because the government has fought its release.

That is beginning to change:

There has been a wealth of video evidence in connection with the insurrection, including videos recorded by rioters that were posted online and footage recorded by police body cameras. According to the US Capitol Police, the CCV system captured more than 14,000 hours of footage between noon and 8 p.m. on Jan. 6, creating the most complete video archive of events inside the building that day. USCP has strictly controlled who can access the footage and how much of it can be released to the public; some of it was shared during former president Donald Trump’s impeachment trial in February…

The government opposed making the videos public. In response to a petition filed by the media coalition, prosecutors wrote that the videos featured nonpublic information about entrances and exits around the Capitol, and that releasing them would “compromise the security of the United States Capitol and those who work there.”…

Lawyers for the media coalition argued the government’s national security concerns were too speculative and undermined by the fact that prosecutors in a few other cases had voluntarily released some surveillance footage.

Howell sided with the media coalition, writing in a Sept. 15 opinion that the national security concerns weren’t specific enough. The government might have a stronger case for keeping videos secret that revealed “sensitive” parts of the building, but that wasn’t at issue, she wrote — anyone taking a public tour could see the areas shown in these videos.

“Hundreds of cases have arisen from the events of January 6, with new cases being brought and pending cases being resolved by plea agreement every week,” Howell wrote. “The public has an interest in understanding the conduct underlying the charges in these cases, as well as the government’s prosecutorial decision-making both in bringing criminal charges and resolving these charges by entering into plea agreements with defendants.”

At the link you can find five videos the court forced the government to release. They are, of course, the tip of the iceberg.

I’d like every single video to be released, and then people with far more patience than I can examine them and decide what percentage of the people are violent, how the violence began (who instigated it, and how much was aggressive and how much defensive), how most of the people entered (were they let in?), and even perhaps the ratio of undercover FBI agents to demonstrators (and the role of the agents) can be pointed out.

Here’s one of the videos:

I’ve looked at each video – although not the entire video for the longer ones – and what I see is people milling about, some carrying flags and some taking photos, and then a fairly stable crowd forming outside the Senate wing doors, behind which the Capitol Police stand guard. The particular videos released don’t reveal an insurrection or a riot.

Vast and conspiratorial: more Durham fallout; plus Hunter Biden

The New Neo Posted on by

I keep “circling back” (as Psaki would say) to the Durham investigation and its fallout and possible future fallout.

On the one hand, I expected nothing from it. Oh, perhaps at the very beginning – it seems so long ago, doesn’t it? – I thought “maybe.” But for the last year or so I expected zero from Durham, and had mostly forgotten about him and whatever it was that he was supposedly still doing.

So my initial response to the Sussman indictment was basically to shrug. Nothing would come of it; nothing ever seems to when a Democrat wrongdoer is involved. But as time has gone on and people have done more analysis on it, I have come to realize that, even if no one is ever punished, the revelations (in the sense of things being revealed) are still edifying in terms of how the left works in Washington DC.

There really does seem to be a vast left wing conspiracy that operates with boldness and the confidence that it is impervious to any negative consequences. And the conspirators may be right about the latter – after all, they haven’t faced any consequences yet. So what does it matter to them that a bunch of people on the right are now reading about their machinations to destroy Donald Trump? First of all, their machinations have been successful so far. And secondly, the conspirators are the ones who control the levers of power, and they may now be confident that they control the all-important voting apparatus as well.

In the above paragraph I wrote “a bunch of people on the right” because I doubt that most of my Democrat-voting friends have even heard of the Sussman indictment, and if they have heard of it they probably have only learned the leftist spin on it and will pay the whole kerfluffle no mind. So I doubt there will be major consequences with that voting bloc.

I suppose if anything happens to Sussman of any consequence as a result of this indictment, it might make the other people who were involved nervous. Maybe they’re even a bit nervous now. But more likely, in my opinion, they’re used to fixing things through the media and social media, and their friends in high places (especially the judiciary), and therefore trust that all this smoke will produce no real fire.

Nevertheless, for your reading pleasure:

(1) More on how the Russiagate hoax was concocted and disseminated, from the Durham charging document against Sussman, can be found here.

(2) Here’s Jonathan Turley on the role of “journalist” Franklin Foer, who may be “Reporter 2” in the Sussman indictment.

(3) Biden’s White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan is supposedly implicated in Russiagate as well.

(4) And for extra credit, we have Glenn Greenwald on how the conspiracy to suppress the Hunter and Joe Biden story worked. In addition, here’s some information on a scheme Hunter (and Joe?) cooked up to get money from frozen Libyan assets.

It’s a lot to read and digest, I know.

Two years ago I wrote a post entitled “Is Russiagate worse than Watergate?” It began this way: “Yes, it is. And not just worse; much worse.” I suppose I could now add another “much” or two – or three or four – to that second sentence. At the time I wrote that post, most of what we knew had to do with the co-opting of government agencies into the Russiagate hoax. Now we’re learning more about individuals such as lawyers and “journalists” and their roles, and of course Hillary Clinton and her aides, and how the whole thing fit into the seamless whole of a hugely influential and corrupt power structure.

The computer may be the best tool tyranny ever had

The New Neo Posted on by

When I saw this news story about a Biden administration proposal for the feds to monitor “all business and personal accounts from financial institutions, including bank, loan, and investment accounts,” it struck me – and certainly not for the first time – that the internet has enabled a degree of governmental control heretofore only dreamed about.

Orwell envisioned telescreens constantly monitoring the public. But in his dystopia, the telescreens had to be manned by humans. That would be labor-intensive, to say the least. But now things like that can be automated, and computers can do a comprehensive job through AI. Any tyranny that manages to put such practices into law would be able to keep a much tighter grip on the public in terms of surveillance. It can put the “total” into “totalitarian state.”

China has gone in that direction with social credits. We are trending that way, too. Civil disobedience and backlash can occur, but I’m not at all sure how many people are troubled by these developments and these possibilities. So many people seem to have the extremely worrisome attitude that if surveillance is done for a cause they consider good, it’s okay.

If you’re seen the movie “Idiocracy,” you probably recall that each citizen had to be tattooed with an ID that could be scanned. That movie, which is a satire and a comedy, unfortunately seems more and more relevant as a serious forecast as time goes on.

Here’s the scene in which the main character – a man of our time who accidentally is catapulted into the Idiocracy future – receives his tattoo:

Melanie Phillips: on the desire to end “forever wars”

The New Neo Posted on by

This piece by Melanie Phillips packs a lot into a fairly short essay. Phillips is a British writer who is a former liberal and who is not the least bit “woke” in her opinions. I believe she is spot on about the Western dream of ending “forever wars” against Muslim extremists who are committed to waging war forever – or until they win:

….[T]he west has continued to repeat its fiascos by indulging in the same fantasies that it will end the “forever wars” — whether through the Israel-Palestine “peace process,” the Iran nuclear deal or abandoning Afghanistan, where both British and American governments are now spinning themselves the fantasy that Taliban “realists” will keep the Taliban jihadists in check.

For Islamists, war is indeed forever. For such fanatics, defeat is only ever temporary.

For the west, however, there are no “forever wars.” Its wars are either won or lost; there are victors and vanquished.

And military strength matters less than belief. The 9/11 attackers didn’t use sophisticated military hardware. They hijacked civilian aircraft and turned them into ying human bombs of enormous destructive potential.

What fuels the jihad is the power of an idea. That idea is the cult of death.

To overcome a cult of death, the west needs a belief in life. Its own life. That is the way to draw the necessary courage and resolve from this most sombre anniversary [of 9/11]; but alas, it seems the most difficult of lessons to learn.

It is understandable to yearn for peace. But if the enemy doesn’t believe in it, we cannot pretend – actually, we can pretend, but the results will be disastrous. Sometimes the only way to get the enemy to believe in peace is to vanquish that enemy. That may seem paradoxical to some people, but it’s not.

This might be a good time to call your attention to a discussion between Victor Davis Hanson and H. R. McMaster on Afghanistan. In it they touch on why we were in Afghanistan, how long we should have stayed there, and how the situation was rarely properly explained to the American public over the years. It’s a long video, but it’s not necessary to watch the whole thing to get something out of it:

One thing Hanson and McMaster discuss in that video is a speech Trump gave on Afghanistan on August 22, 2017. They think it was a good one; you can find the text here if you’re interested. I didn’t recall writing about it, but indeed I did, and here’s my post on the subject.

[NOTE: I also wrote a somewhat relevant post in 2007 about the general belief that “war is not the answer.”]

Once more, with feeling: shipwreckedcrew on Durham and Russiagate

The New Neo Posted on by

Shipwreckedcrew knows a lot about law, and this is what he has to say about Durham’s indictment of Sussman. He finds it very unusual:

Typically, a “false statement” indictment will consist of a brief description of how the federal investigators came to ask the question, the answer given by the defendant which is alleged to be false, and what a truthful answer would have been. …

That is all one needs for a single count indictment charging a defendant with a violation of 18 U.S.C. Sec. 1001. That paragraph tells the defendant the date and location of the offense and the specifics of the offense conduct.

Paragraphs 1 through 44 were not necessary to charge Sussmann. That makes what Durham returned a “speaking indictment.” It discloses information in a public document that would not otherwise be known if the indictment set forth only facts needed to meet the requirements of due process.

A “false statement” charge does not require a litany of factual allegations regarding the conduct and statements of the defendant and numerous third parties over the course of weeks or months leading up to the making of the false statement. In over 30 years of practice as both a federal prosecutor and a defense attorney specializing in federal cases, I’ve never before seen anything remotely resembling the Sussmann indictment in a single count “false statement” case.

John Durham is far too serious of a career prosecutor, with a very long and established record of meticulous investigation and preparation, to have rolled out an indictment in this fashion if he was intending to wrap up the remainder of his work with a report to the Attorney General….

Trying to understand the new information in the indictment against the backdrop of what was uncovered about the original story in 2016 and 2016 — and then cross-referencing the timeline and actors against what is now known about Crossfire Hurricane and the Mueller Special Counsel Investigation — is a task worthy of a book.

He thinks this indictment took so long because there was a fight over getting the billing records from Perkins Coie, which were central evidence against Sussman.

First, as part of this fight, I believe it’s highly likely that Durham suggested to the Perkins Coie law firm that the firm itself might be — or is/was — a “target” of the investigation. Sussmann and “Campaign Attorney-1” — presumably Marc Elias based on the description — were doing legal work for firm clients as part of their employment when that legal work crossed the boundary into criminal conduct as alleged with regard to Sussmann at least.

Any corporation can be subject to criminal liability for crimes committed by managers or employees performing work within the course and scope of their employment. One way a corporation can seek to avoid criminal liability is to cooperate completely in the government’s investigation into the suspected criminal conduct of the employees.

Or perhaps it was the DNC, Clinton Campaign, and/or Tech Executive-1 who fought the disclosure, rather than the Perkins Coie law firm.

Why were the Durham investigation’s actions on this kept so quiet till now? “Disputes over the production of documents to a federal grand jury — and I was involved in just such a matter earlier this year — take place behind closed doors.” Of course, that doesn’t explain why it wasn’t leaked – although I suppose it wasn’t in the left’s interests to have it leaked, so even if it was leaked I would guess the MSM would be inclined to sit on it.

More on what it all might mean (accent on the “might”):

…[T]he most likely justification for ordering production of the records to Durham was the “crime-fraud” exception to the Attorney-Client privilege.

Simply stated, the exception applies when the communications or records at issue involve a future crime or fraud under consideration or a crime or fraud that is currently underway and continuing.

A crime by the client, that is, not the firm. And the clients here were the DNC, the Clinton campaign, and/or Tech Executive 1. Shipwreckedcrew thinks these fights for disclosure took place in a district court other than DC, for various reasons.

I still am very skeptical that this will lead to anything further. And I think that, whatever happens, Biden will probably pardon everyone. But it’s still quite fascinating. I have to say that I wasn’t even expecting this much from Durham at this point, so who knows?

Babylon Bee: Trump playing 4D chess

The New Neo Posted on by

From the Babylon Bee:

Trump has revealed to reporters that Biden’s so-called “victory” in the 2020 election was actually a 4D chess plot by himself to make his own presidency look good. According to Trump, every time there’s a major crisis now, people will look back fondly on the years 2016-2020, remembering the last great golden age of America when everything was great and we had a “really handsome, extremely smart president.”

I wonder whether any NeverTrumpers are having buyer’s remorse. I doubt it, for the most part, although there’s this:

The Biden administration: lying with impunity

The New Neo Posted on by

What does it mean to lie with impunity? It means to lie with no bad consequences, with “freedom from punishment, harm, or loss.”

Commenter “physicsguy” writes of the Biden administration, the Democrats, and the left as a whole:

It is rather amazing to take an objective view and watch what is happening: Install a puppet as president through massive voting fraud. Then use the puppet as a means to initiate all the programs. The puppet can also distract from the real agenda by the comical bumbling that the puppet displays. Blatantly lie about everything, and keep repeating all the lies; no need to worry as the MSM is in their corner. An example: Raggedy Ann saying no need to be concerned with the vaccination status of all those streaming across the border as most of them will not be staying in the US, all the while shipping them all off to various US cities. Such a laughable lie, but never challenged.

They really have totally won, and continue to consolidate their power.

I have noticed this same thing about the administration’s lies: they are absurd and are not meant to convince. They are meant to do a number of other things, and the collusion of the MSM is the key to making it work. If the majority of our “journalists” were doing their jobs correctly, it would not be difficult at all for them to successful point out the lies and disseminate that information t the public. But they see their task as propping up the left and also keeping their jobs.

So what are the lies for, if not to persuade? They are meant to give the already-convinced – the Democratic rank-and-file voter – their ready-made excuses for not paying attention to whatever objections the right may make or point out. The Democratic voter can shrug off any concerns they themselves may have, too, in a shallow and facile way. They also give the many pundits on the left their talking points, and if the talking heads on TV and the columnists hammer them home enough, the repetition makes the lies sound more like truths. After all, if all these smart people agree, who is the listener to differ?

Lastly, these lies have a function that is similar to what was going on with the Soviets – the lie as mockery and insult and sadistic tease. In that regard, obvious lying is a feature, not a bug, and it helps that the lie is absurd. It’s a show of power meant for the opposition to view, a way to say, “we can state any stupidity we want as truth, things both you and I know are ridiculous, and will we say it with a straight face to illustrate the extent of our power over you. We don’t have to pretend to make sense. We’re in control and you’re not. We are laughing at you.”

That’s the point we have reached.

Let me add that not only was Psaki’s statement absurd because obviously most of the illegal aliens streaming across the border will be staying indefinitely, but also because even if they were to stay only a few weeks or so, if infected with COVID they could pass it on in short order. So her statement was absurd on several levels.

RIP Angelo Codevilla

The New Neo Posted on by

Sad news:

Terrible news out this morning of the death of Angelo Codevilla, at age 78, reportedly the victim of a drunk driver.

It is hard to overstate the importance and brilliance of Angelo. If you only knew him by his many books and columns (including this 2015 piece he wrote for Power Line on Trump’s significance and prospects), it would be sufficient to establish his greatness. But he was also at the storm center of key aspects of American intelligence and foreign policy going back more than 40 years.

The entire post is worth reading, if you’re largely unfamiliar with Codevilla’s work (as I have mostly been). Here’s an except from an interview with Codevilla:

David Samuels: In 2010, you wrote an article, which then became a book, in which you predicted the rise of someone like Donald Trump as well as the political chaos and stripping away of institutional authority that we’ve lived through since. Did you think your prediction would come true so quickly?

Angelo Codevilla: I didn’t predict anything. I described a situation which had already come into existence. Namely, that the United States has developed a ruling class that sees itself as distinct from the raw masses of the rest of America. That the distinction that they saw, and which had come to exist, between these classes, comprised tastes and habits as well as ideas. Above all, that it had to do with the relative attachment, or lack thereof, of each of these classes to government.

David Samuels: One of the things that struck me about your original piece was your portrait of the American elite as a single class that seamlessly spans both the Democratic and Republican parties.

Angelo Codevilla: Of course, yes. Not in exactly the same way, though; what I said was that the Democrats were the senior partners in the ruling class. The Republicans are the junior partners…

…As the junior members of the ruling class, they are not nearly as tied to government as the Democrats are. And therefore, their elite prerogatives are not safe.

We have seen that play out very dramatically in the phenomenon of the NeverTrumpers. As I’ve said many times, it made some basic sense to be very worried about Trump before he became president ; I voiced my own worries here, which amounted to a lack of trust and a feeling that he was a loose cannon. But it didn’t take long, once he was acting as president, for those fears to quiet, and to be replaced by a feeling that he was doing some very good things. The failure of the NeverTrumpers to come to that realization, too, and in particular their seemingly incomprehensible alliance with the left that was working for everything these “conservatives” had professed to stand for, caused me to think a great deal about what was causing the persistence of their detestation of Trump.

I decided it has been due to three things. The first is that it’s hard to publicly change your mind, once you’ve staked out a strong position. It needs to be done if you’ve been wrong, but it’s something most people have trouble doing. The second is snobbery and elitism, as Codevilla (whom, alas, I don’t think I’d read) has been pointing out. And the third is related to that – and for all I know, Codevilla explained this as well – and it is the elevation of that identification as a person of a certain class and a certain intellectual standing above all other considerations. If that identity, and the preservation of that identity and sense of self, is paramount to a person’s feelings of value and self-worth, then supporting Donald Trump was apparently a bridge too far and could not be contemplated.

Codevilla sounds as though he was a man of exceptional brilliance and insight, and he will be sorely missed. RIP.