Nina-Bytes: It Pays to Be an Insider

 

Editor's note: Nina-Bytes is a weekday blogging series that features short analysis and commentary on articles from around the web.

 

Burr’s Brother-in-Law Called Stock Broker, One Minute After Getting Off Phone With Senator

After what has certainly been an exhausting month, I thought we'd close off October with an old fashioned story about corruption in American politics. Do you remember the coronavirus insider trading in government scandal from back in the spring of 2020? In March of that year, we learned that several U.S. Senators dumped millions in stock on Wall Street right before the virus became an inescapable fact and Wall Street melted down. The scandal involved members of both major American political parties, but the actions of two Republican Senators who downplayed the severity of the virus threat at the time, stood out most; Kelly Loeffler and Richard Burr. 

You can read more about it by clicking the links in this article, but the short version is summed up well by David Leonhardt in the New York Times:

"Given the disconnect between what they knew and the public’s understanding, Burr and Loeffler had an opportunity to sound the alarm. They could have broken ranks with other congressional Republicans and told the country to take the situation more seriously. They could have criticized Trump for not doing more. Such criticism, coming from Trump’s own party, would have received major attention. It would have had the potential to alter Trump administration policy and, by extension, the course the disease took.

But Burr and Loeffler did virtually nothing to protect the health and safety of their constituents or of Americans in other states. (Burr went so far as to co-write an article for FoxNews.com bragging about the country’s readiness.) Here’s what the two senators did instead: They sold large amounts of their personal stock holdings, cashing in before the market sharply declined, as the severity of the virus became apparent to everyone."

 

Frankly, this should have been a huge story; this kind of pandemic profiteering by elected officials is beyond outrageous. It's not even remotely a stretch to say that people literally died so rich public officials could bank a profit here. Unfortunately we live in an environment of pervasive corruption and zero accountability, so most of the Senators were eventually cleared by the Department of Justice and the whole scandal just melted away.

As this October 28th report on ProPublica from Robert Faturechi reminds us however, most is not all; former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and soon to be retiring North Carolina Senator Richard Burr remains in the SEC's crosshairs. Turns out there's still an ongoing insider trading investigation into trades made by both Burr and his crooked brother-in-law, Gerald Fauth. And if the Securities and Exchange Commission filing about it is any indication, things are not going well for the Senator. From Faturechi's article:

"After Sen. Richard Burr of North Carolina dumped more than $1.6 million in stocks in February 2020 a week before the coronavirus market crash, he called his brother-in-law, according to a new Securities and Exchange Commission filing.

They talked for 50 seconds.

Burr, according to the SEC, had material nonpublic information regarding the incoming economic impact of coronavirus.

The very next minute, Burr’s brother-in-law, Gerald Fauth, called his broker.”

Well sheeit; how's that for getting your hand caught in the cookie jar? In an environment of legalized bribery where it's almost impossible to prove a give corruption case against powerful public officials, I think Burr might have just found a way to get there. So, presumably arrest warrants for Burr and Fauth (who Biden inexplicably reappointed to the National Mediation Board despite most of this already being in the public sphere) will be forthcoming, right? Don't bet on it sparky. We are after all, talking about a country that just recently realized there's an ethics problem with senior Federal Reserve staff owning and trading stock while controlling much of the American economy. 

No, my money is on Richard Burr riding off into the sunset like none of this ever happened; much the same way Loeffler did. Burr's retirement from the Senate will quell public outrage, and there is no appetite for prosecuting this sort of corruption in Washington. Opening up that can of worms might threaten all the other corrupt Senators in office, and that's a club too numerous and too powerful for even a motivated Department of Justice to challenge. Membership does after all, have its privileges.

nina illingworth

Anarcho-syndicalist writer, critic, and analyst. 

You can find my work at NIDC, Can’t You Read, Media Madness and my Patreon Blog

Updates available on Twitter, Instagram, Mastodon and Facebook. Podcast at “No Fugazi” on Soundcloud.

Inquiries and requests to speak to the manager @ASNinaWrites

Chat with fellow readers online at Anarcho Nina Writes on Discord!

“It’s ok Willie; swing heil, swing heil…”

 

NinaBytes: Police State Fascism Is a Bipartisan Position

 

Editor's note: Nina-Bytes is a weekday blogging series that features short analysis and commentary on articles from around the web.

Biden’s DOJ uses a Trump tactic: Federal prosecutors label Black Lives Matter protesters terrorists

In an odious sort of sequel to yesterday's blog post, I'd like to share this opinion piece by Rachel Barkow over at the Daily News. Maybe I'm just not the brightest light on the porch, but liberals are going to have to answer a simple question for me on this one. Namely, which part of stopping the fascists is this?

 

How exactly does continuing to push accusations of terrorism in what amounts to a property damage case, serve the public interest or match Biden's political rhetoric about racial equality? These folks are absolutely not terrorists, and they put no lives whatsoever in danger. The NY Daily News used their mug shots, but both of the defendants (Colinford Mattis and Urooj Rahman) are lawyers who were protesting against racialized police violence during the George Floyd demonstrations. In other words; in the 1960's the papers would be calling them civil rights workers. We're trying to put civil rights workers in jail for decades still, even after Trump? What kind of Hooverism is this Joe?

 

Don't think for a second that I'm exaggerating here. Sentencing these two as "terrorists" for throwing a Molotov at an abandoned police car, while not perusing the same "terrorism" escalator in a case that involved burning a police vehicle, but had nothing to do with protesting for racial justice, makes it clear that this prosecution is purely political. The Department of Justice is cutting deals that reduce a fascist coup attempt to misdemeanor charges, but they're trying to put a couple of racial justice activists with law degrees away for decades. Does that sound like justice, or stopping white supremacy to you?

 

As the author notes, Palooka Joe's hand picked U.S. Attorney for Eastern New York could step in and stop this travesty, but there's plenty of reasons to believe the president probably won't tell him to do so. This is after all the guy who ran on law and order against Downmarket Mussolini of all people. Like I said yesterday, Biden and the Democratic Party's right wing always planned to sacrifice the left and activists to appease the fascists. This is what it looks like in real time; sending civil rights activist lawyers to jail for decades to look tough for cornpone nazis in the cracker discourse.

nina illingworth

Anarcho-syndicalist writer, critic, and analyst. 

You can find my work at NIDC, Can’t You Read, Media Madness and my Patreon Blog

Updates available on Twitter, Instagram, Mastodon and Facebook. Podcast at “No Fugazi” on Soundcloud.

Inquiries and requests to speak to the manager @ASNinaWrites

Chat with fellow readers online at Anarcho Nina Writes on Discord!

“It’s ok Willie; swing heil, swing heil…”

 

Nina-Bytes: Weimar American Justice Strikes Again

 

Editor's note: Nina-Bytes is a weekday blogging series that features short analysis and commentary on articles from around the web.

A Florida Anarchist Will Spend Years in Prison for Online Posts Prompted by Jan. 6 Riot

Well, if this lengthy write up by Natasha Leonard over on the Intercept isn't enough to make your blood boil, I don't know what it would take to do so. You should read the whole story, but to summarize; a Florida judge just sentenced an anti-fascist to almost four years in federal prison for tweets calling for "armed defense against possible far-right attacks on the state’s Capitol." As Leonard points out, this is obscenely bonkers for several reasons.

First, in the wake of the January 6th Capitol Hill coup attempt, and a widely-publicized FBI warning about possible armed protests by right wing extremists at state capitols, the man (Daniel Baker) had every reason to believe such an attack might happen. Additionally, Baker didn't threaten anyone individually, and took no significant action on the tweet. Finally, the pre-trial and post sentencing total of forty-four months is far longer than most of the fascists who actually tried to overturn an election on January 6th will receive. Yes, you read that correctly; the guy got more time for tweets than armed fascists are getting for trying to hunt down and execute a Vice President.

This story exists at the nexus of so many aspects of the American fascism problem that it's hard to know where to start unpacking them. We're talking about a judiciary and a Justice Department riddled with reactionaries, authoritarians, and fascists; and I don't just mean the ones Trump appointed either. Throw in litigators and fascist-friendly police eager to buttress corporate media claims of a (false) moral equivalency between fascist violence, and those who oppose it. Then you top it all off with a liberal political establishment more than happy to purge the left to appease fascists in right wing politics. Please keep in mind, this is Palooka Joe's DoJ now; Merrick Garland works for him, not Trump.

Look kids, there's a reason I'm constantly telling you to watch what you say on social media, and this is that reason. The machine doesn't need anti-terrorism laws to send leftists to jail for speech in opposition to fascism; they're doing just fine already. It's not an accident when Democrats talk about unity with fascists. Biden doesn't keep blathering on about "anarchists" because he's confused. Liberal antifascism doesn't extend any further than "Orange Man bad," and if they can knife the left to get the GOP to go back to a neoconservative normal, so much the better; it solves two problems for bougie centrists at the same time.

Liberals aren't going to help you fight fascism; they're more likely to throw your ass in jail for threatening order. That's just the bald truth of it.

nina illingworth

Anarcho-syndicalist writer, critic, and analyst. 

You can find my work at NIDC, Can’t You Read, Media Madness and my Patreon Blog

Updates available on Twitter, Instagram, Mastodon and Facebook. Podcast at “No Fugazi” on Soundcloud.

Inquiries and requests to speak to the manager @ASNinaWrites

Chat with fellow readers online at Anarcho Nina Writes on Discord!

“It’s ok Willie; swing heil, swing heil…”

 

Article Analysis: Law and (the Fascist) Order

Editor's note: this article represents completely new content and has never before appeared elsewhere on the internet. Please also note that I didn't cram just under a hundred hyperlinks in this article to argue about whether or not I know what fascism is with alt-right trolls; click on the links and stop wasting my time.

At this point dear readers, I must confess to having become utterly exasperated with the cowardly and mendacious members of mainstream American society who utterly refuse to acknowledge even the existence, let alone the terrifying progress of the Trump-led fascist creep in America. I certainly don't think it takes a fortune teller to realize that when the President is signalling his open support for a deranged reactionary conspiracy theory that argues all of his political opponents are satanist pedophiles working with George Soros, Black Lives Matter and "Antifa" to conduct a coup against the rightful Furher, Donald Trump - we've gone a little bit past "dog-whistle" politics in America.

In particular however I have grown exceptionally weary of hearing about how Trump and his Pork Reich administration cannot represent an all-American form of fascism because "you can still say he's a fascist" - while the president actively conflates First Amendment protected protest with terrorism, unaccountable cracker murderpigs are taking head shots at journalists during riots started by the police and the administration is threatening to pull broadcast licences from media outlets that don't treat the President "fairly."

This argument is to say the least unsupported by an increasingly growing pile of evidence and perhaps more accurately represents a mendacious call for civility designed to attack the left, in the middle of a fascist takeover by the right. In recent days however, the objectively fascist Trump administration added two more pieces of damning evidence to the pile and disturbingly, the mass media at large hasn't really taken much notice yet. Let's start with this short piece from Vanity Fair's Caleb Ecarma on September 1st, 2020:

DHS Says It's "Working On" a Black Lives Matter Crackdown

First of all, I'd like to point out how completely dysfunctional the American corporate media has become if I'm seriously offering backhanded praise to Vanity Fair for having the balls to publish this story in any sort of context; other outlets that bothered to at least mention the fascist or authoritarian nature of Wolf's comments include the Daily Beast and Esquire, but all in all I think it's fair to say the American media basically sh*t its pants on this incredibly important story.

Why is it important? Well let's see, here we have the fascist head of the Department of Homeland Security (a man appropriately named Chad Wolf) telling noted fascist commentator Tucker Carlson, on national television, about another potential mass arrest plan to round up "the leaders" of "Antifa" and Black Lives Matter the Department of Justice (under noted fundie fascist William Barr, more on him in a minute) is "working on." Just so you don't think I'm f*cking with you, let's grab a screenshot:

Again, please keep in mind that this is the guy currently running the Department of Homeland Security and conducting an objectively fascist paramilitary "policing" war against protesters in Portland and other (primarily Democrat-led) American cities. In other words, when Chad Wolf threatens to do fascism against protesters, there's a fairly recent precedent that suggests you should take him seriously. As you'll see below however, I'm definitely not sure this author, Vanity Fair or the larger American media grasps that concept as of yet. 

After our quoted passage, the article then goes on to offer up some halfhearted, milquetoast push-back on some, but not all, of Wolf's outrageous statements and the conspiracy theories it implicitly supports:

"It’s unclear exactly who the DOJ views as the leaders of nebulous political movements like antifa and Black Lives Matter, as the past few months of nationwide protests sparked by police shootings of Black Americans are largely grassroots, often spontaneous demonstrations organized at local levels."

These are of course fairly logical counter-points to Wolf's argument but to say they leave a lot of important information out would be a bit of a mild understatement. 

What about the fact that Americans have a legal right to protest? What about the fact that a protest movement isn't the f*cking Mafia and trying to use RICO charges to silence antifascists and African Americans exercising their First Amendment rights is in fact, fascist? Should I applaud Ecarma for vaguely hinting at the idea Trump is wrong for suggesting simply protesting his Junta is "terrorism" at the top of the article, or would now maybe be a good time to expect our media to be a little more explicit about why that's textbook fascism? 

The article then goes on to tie-in Tucker Carlson's sympathetic coverage of far right vigilante murderer Kyle Rittenhouse, the growing (and open) GOP conspiracy that protesters are being flown around the country to conduct riots and finally Rand Paul's bizarre claim that protesters who targeted him near the White House after the Republican National Convention are “interstate criminal traffic being paid.” 

What it doesn't do at any point in time however is offer up any sort of righteous indignation, urgency or alarm at the fact that the f*cking head of Homeland Security is openly talking about "working with" the Attorney General on a plan to "round up" protesters like mobsters or terrorists based on the unhinged and objectively false conspiracy theories of the American far-right and their swine emperor, Donald Trump; conspiracy theories happily supported by fascists in US corporate media, might I add. 

This then brings us to our second and perhaps even more terrifying article of evidence that we are indeed roiling in the throes of an all-American fascist creep; let's start with this September 4th, 2020 article from Christina Carrega at CNN:

Barr says streets are 'safer' after killing of an alleged Antifa member

So for starters, just let me say here "holy f*ck" are you folks at CNN kidding me? The fundie fascist Attorney General cuts an objectively unhinged statement justifying the extrajudicial murder of a supposed member of a completely fictional organization, on the Friday before a holiday weekend no less - and the best you mendacious minions can come up with is a 281 word blurb treating Barr's assertions at face value, that somehow doesn't contain a printed copy of the (now repeatedly altered) statement? Let's take a look at that full statement below:

Okay so did the US Attorney General, the de-facto head of the U.S. Department of Justice just describe an extrajudicial execution (without evidence, a trial or any judicial process whatsoever) of someone suspected of a crime as a triumph for justice, while effectively signalling to law enforcement that the government will have their back if they kill anarchists or members of "Antifa?" You betcha; that is exactly what just happened - but don't tell CNN or the rest of mainstream "liberal" media in America, they clearly don't consider it very important that the President just put a hit out on a man (who might have acted in self defense) for political purposes, or that his fixer Attorney General then justified that revenge killing as necessary to maintain public safety. 

Naturally, CNN wasn't the only outlet to accept Barr's blatantly politically motivated arguments in favor of Michael Reinoehl's execution as gospel truth, they're just the ones that did so with the least amount of effort to do anything resembling journalism. There is of course just one problem, well aside from the fact that this isn't how the rule of law works at all; namely that it's increasingly looking like Barr straight up lied about Reinoehl pulling a gun on the fugitive task force that was trying to "apprehend" him by... shooting at him before they even uttered any commands. 

Now look, I might not have a fancy journalism degree from Columbia but I think it's safe to say that when protesting against the government is terrorism, it's worse in the eyes of the state to be antifascist than a violent nazi terrorist, and murderpigs are coordinating with far right extremists to exterminate the left, it's pretty f*cking obtuse to be quibbling about definitions of the word fascism. We're here, even if our media establishment is still too terrified to say it out loud.

So what pray tell has the stalwart opposition in the Democratic Party been up to while all of this is going on? Actually, it's probably for the best that you don't ask.

- nina illingworth

Independent writer, critic and analyst with a left focus. Please help me fight corporate censorship by sharing my articles with your friends online!

You can find my work at ninaillingworth.com, Can’t You Read, Media Madness and my Patreon Blog

Updates available on Twitter, Mastodon and Facebook. Podcast at “No Fugazi” on Soundcloud.

Inquiries and requests to speak to the manager @ASNinaWrites

Chat with fellow readers online at Anarcho Nina Writes on Discord!

“It’s ok Willie; swing heil, swing heil…”