There Aren't Any Surprises Here

There's been a near-immediate consensus that the Hamas invasion over the weekend was a failure of Israeli intelligence, less so that US intelligence missed anything.

NBC’s Kristen Welker pressed Blinken on “Meet the Press” on whether it was an intelligence failure. Blinken said that the violence in the region was “an attack that I don’t think anyone saw coming,” but fell short of calling it a failure.

. . . Deputy national security adviser Jon Finer also dodged answering whether it was a failure, again reiterating that there will be time in the future to look into it.

So far, only a few observers are looking at the causes of the invasion. Yesterday's New York Post editorial is a good start:

The Obama administration’s vision saw an empowered Iran as a fulcrum to force action from Israel on the Palestinian question.

Thus the Iran deal, which set the mullahs on the path toward nuclear breakout and regional hegemony they are now speeding down.

. . . Obama’s White House marketed this as “realism.”

It was no such thing but rather part of a pernicious and (as we have now seen) wantonly destructive radical idealism that blamed America and her allies, like Israel, for all global suffering.

The Trump years saw an interruption: a withdrawal from the Iran deal and a return to a close alliances with our actual allies in the region.

But as I posted yesterday, the key figure in this Iran policy since the Clinton administration has been Robert Malley. But it appears that the Deep State had developed certain reservations about Malley months before the invasion, having his security clearance revoked and then putting him on unpaid leave between April and June of this year. According to a story yesterday in the New York Post,

“Rob Malley deserves extensive scrutiny — yesterday, today and tomorrow,” Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) told The Post after the Wall Street Journal reported that officers of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps planned and signed off on this weekend’s atrocity that killed at least 900.

“These reports could not be more concerning, and they hint at what could be the worst State Department scandal since Alger Hiss,” Issa added.

“Malley and others created an incredibly permissive environment for Hamas, for Iran, to do all these things,” added Gabriel Noronha, a former special adviser on Iran at the State Department.

The problem for now is that we know that Malley had somehow gotten crosswise with the Deep State, we know nothing of the details, and the Deep State hasn't been telling us. As of late September, according to House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul,

Every day, the Rob Malley saga gets more alarming. Not only is the Special Envoy for Iran being investigated by the FBI after having his security clearance suspended, new reports allege an official responsible for supporting his Iran negotiating team was a core member of an Iranian-run influence campaign. Somehow this official was able to get a security clearance in spite of that, and now works in a senior position at the Defense Department. Between these egregious violations of trust by Biden officials, their mind-boggling $6 billion hostage deal that enriched the largest state-sponsor of terror, and their refusal to enforce sanctions, the Biden administration’s weak Iran policy is emboldening a dangerous adversary. The American people deserve transparency on the Malley saga immediately.

This was more than a week before the Hamas attack on Israel, but it's plain that thr concern about Malley was well-founded. Even as of July, the State Department was stonewalling requests about the issue:

As a senior Department official charged with a highly sensitive role, Special Envoy Malley enjoyed access to critical intelligence and numerous senior State Department, Executive Branch, and foreign officials. It is alarming that the Department chooses to withhold even the most basic of details from Congress, such as the timeline of Special Envoy Malley’s leave, clearance status, accesses, and foreign contacts. The Committee expects prompt and full compliance with its requests, and it will not tolerate obstruction of its oversight of this national security matter.

As of August 22, Chairman McCaul had received no response, which he'd requested by July 26. On August 22, he and Subcommittee on Oversight and Accountability Chairman Brian Mast wrote to Secretary Blinken again renewing the request:

Accordingly, we are writing to directly reiterate our request that the Department notify and brief the Committee upon any relevant developments regarding the status of Mr. Malley’s employment and his ability to access classified information at the Department. This request is even more important with the recent news that Mr. Malley will be joining both Princeton University’s School of Public and International Affairs as a visiting professor and guest lecturer, and Yale’s Jackson School of Global Affairs as a senior fellow. Both developments would suggest a change to his employment status and that he will be leaving the State Department.

To improve communication and transparency with Congress going forward, we also request that the Department notify and brief this Committee when an Assistant Secretary or higher, a Deputy Chief of Mission or higher, or an individual who is a direct report to you, such as a Special Envoy, has their clearance suspended or revoked.

Both the House Republicans were making the point over last summer that Malley's apparent departure from the State Department and his position as a direct report to Secretary Blinken under security-related circumstances were matters of concern. In a search as of this morning, I've been unable to find any reference to a reply from Blinken to the House Republicans' August 22 letter.

We have a lot more to learn. The Tablet article I linked yesterday makes the point,

It seems likely that by the time of her appointment to the Pentagon’s special operations office, [Malley protégé Ariane] Tabatabai’s covert activities on behalf of the Iranian regime were well known in Biden administration and intelligence circles.

But this implies that Malley's intelligence activities must have been just as well known -- with the exception that Malley was a direct report, as a Special Envoy, to Secretary Blinken. And Blinken has so far resisted attempts to investigate why Malley's security clearance was revoked.

My instinct tells me Blinken will now be the first, but not the last, Biden cabinet member to go. The Republicans definitely now need a new and more aggressive speaker. My guess is this will outdo Alger Hiss as a State Department scandal. Hiss made the State Department look bad and Nixon look good, but nobody made the Secretary of State resign.

Robert Malley -- How Did This Story Get Lost?

As of this posting, Robert Malley's Wikipedia entry is a version that was last updated on October 3, in response to an October 1 story in the Tablet that I linked yesterday. The Wikipedia entry notes, "On June 29, 2023, Malley was placed on unpaid leave as special envoy to Iran, his security clearance was suspended amid an investigation into possible mishandling of classified material."

I took note of the Tablet story only over this current weekend, assuming it must have been part of the prior weekend's bad news dump. But as I dug deeper, the story is months old. It was covered in a Washington Post op-ed on September 6, referring to events four months earlier:

Anyone who criticized the Chinese government for its secrecy surrounding the disappearance of former foreign minister Qin Gang (including me) is guilty of hypocrisy unless they acknowledge that the U.S. government is being similarly opaque about the fate of one of America’s top diplomats. Congress and the American people deserve to know more about what’s going on with the State Department’s Iran envoy Robert Malley.

. . . Until four months ago, Malley was leading the U.S. diplomatic effort on Iran’s nuclear program and the fate of U.S. hostages held by Tehran. But it was only two months ago that Congress and the public learned — from the media — that the State Department had suspended his security clearance because of an investigation into a possible mishandling of classified information. It’s since emerged that the FBI is also investigating this matter. (In some cases, mishandling classified information may constitute a federal crime.)

. . . we now know, through leaked U.S. government documents published by the state-controlled Tehran Times, that Malley was informed on April 21 that he was under investigation for mishandling protected information and that his security clearance was suspended. Yet the State Department told Congress and the public nothing about this for weeks, and Malley continued to conduct some of his duties that did not require a security clearance.

Note that the April 21 date for his security clearance suspension conflicts with the Wikipedia date of June 29, when he was also placed on leave. But prior to either of those dates, his main job had been to negotiate the complex $6 billion hostage exchange deal with Iran that's currently being criticized as funding the Hamas invasion of Israel, although his full range of duties was much broader. The Wikipedia entry says,

On January 28, 2021, President Biden named Malley U.S. special envoy to Iran, where he was tasked with trying to ease diplomatic tensions with Iran and rein in its nuclear program by compliance to the original pact.

He had previously served in the Clinton administration from 1998 as Special Assistant to President Clinton for Arab-Israeli Affairs, a post he held until the end of the administration in 2001. Then, according to Wikipedia,

Malley provided informal advice to the [Obama] campaign in the past without having any formal role in the campaign. On May 9, 2008, the campaign severed ties with Malley when the British Times reported that Malley had been in discussions with the militant Palestinian group Hamas, listed by the U.S. State Department as a terrorist organization. In response, Malley told The Times he had been in regular contact with Hamas officials as part of his work with the International Crisis Group. "My job with the International Crisis Group is to meet with all sorts of savory and unsavory people and report on what they say. I've never denied whom I meet with; that's what I do", Malley told NBC News, adding that he informs the State Department about his meetings beforehand and briefs them afterward.

The New York Times reported on 18 February 2014 that Malley was joining the Obama administration to consult on Persian Gulf policy as senior director of the National Security Council. On 6 March, the National Security Council announced that Malley would be replacing Philip Gordon as the Special Assistant to the President and White House Coordinator for the Middle East, North Africa and the Gulf Region, effective on 6 April 2015.

Malley's background is upper-upper crust. Again via Wikipedia,

Robert attended École Jeannine Manuel, a prestigious bilingual school in Paris, and graduated in the same class (1980) as U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

. . . Malley attended Yale University, and was a 1984 Rhodes Scholar at Magdalen College, Oxford, where he earned a D.Phil. in political philosophy. There he wrote his doctoral thesis about Third-worldism and its decline. Malley continued writing about foreign policy, including extended commentary about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He earned a J.D. at Harvard Law School, where he met his future wife, Caroline Brown. Another fellow law school student was Barack Obama. In 1991–1992, Malley clerked for Supreme Court Justice Byron White, while Brown clerked for Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.

At this point, all we know is that Malley's security clearance is suspended, he's on leave from the State Department, and neither the FBI nor the State Department will say much more. The target="_blank">most visible allegation against Malley is that he

helped to infiltrate an Iranian agent of influence named Ariane Tabatabai into some of the most sensitive positions in the U.S. government—first at the State Department and now the Pentagon, where she has been serving as chief of staff for the assistant secretary of defense for special operations, Christopher Maier.

On Thursday [September 28], Maier told a congressional committee that the Defense Department is “actively looking into whether all law and policy was properly followed in granting my chief of staff top secret special compartmented information.”

. . . Malley’s protégé was an active participant in a covert Iranian influence campaign designed to shape U.S. government policy in order to serve the interests of the Iranian regime. Her requests for guidance from top Iranian officials, which she appears to have faithfully followed, and her desire to harmonize her own words and actions with regime objectives, are hardly the behavior of an impartial academic, or a U.S. public servant. Tabatabai’s emails show her enthusiastically submitting to the control of top Iranian officials, who then guided her efforts to propagandize and collect intelligence on U.S. and allied officials in order to advance the interests of the Islamic Republic.

. . . It seems likely that by the time of her appointment to the Pentagon’s special operations office, Tabatabai’s covert activities on behalf of the Iranian regime were well known in Biden administration and intelligence circles. “The hoops you have to jump through to get a bare-bones top secret clearance even without compartments or special access programs are enormous,” says [retired CIA analyst Peter] Theroux. “They grill you on your foreign contacts. Contacts with any foreign government raise more red flags than Bernie Sanders’ honeymoon. Contacts with senior officials from enemy governments, classified as non-frat governments like Russia, China, Cuba, as well as Iran, are in a different category altogether—what would normally be totally disqualifying.”

. . . Why an Iranian operative is still at the Pentagon, especially in a job which gives her daily access to classified information that puts the country’s most sensitive military operations at risk, is another matter entirely. “The optimistic reading,” says Theroux, “is that they were watching her to see what she does and the FBI has her apartment all teched up. But to be an optimist you have to believe the FBI is clean, rather than see this as a huge counterintelligence failure. Though, of course, it’s not a failure if they were complicit.”

Irrespective of any further investigation of the Malley-Tabatabai association, the Hamas invasion of Israel is beginning to look like a major intelligence failure for both Israel and the US and a diplomatic disaster for the US. So far, the Malley-Tabatabai affair seems to be a key part of the story. It's remarkable how little interest either legacy media or Conservative Inc has shown in it so far.

My impression is that Malley's potential role as an Iranian agent of influence is a scandal as big as, if not bigger, than the Cambridge Stalinist spies in the UK or Alger Hiss in the US. It's worth noting that the UK in particular has spent generations coming to grips with the Cambridge spies. Robert Malley seems to be a somewhat parallel case, an individual apparently considered beyond reproach given his elite background, and fast-tracked through the Ivy establishment -- but at some point, he appears to have been recruited for the dark side.

Contexts We Aren't Examining In The Hamas Invasion Of Israel

The news of an attack on Israel leading to the first declaration of war in 50 years has mostly raised questions for me about contexts that I'd been noticing for some time. The first is Biden's recent slights against both Israel's President Herzog, on which I posted here, and Prime Minister Netanyahu, which I covered in this post. On July 18,

President Joe Biden seemingly fell asleep today while sputtering gibberish during a high-level meeting with the President of Israel, Isaac Herzog.

“The Israelis and the Palestinians… uh… on a political level… They uh, and… uh… They uh… And, I… Agwai endhole and whole shegwam… And uh…” said Biden.

My assessment at the time was that this was deliberate, an indication at best that Isreal's head of state wasn't worth Joe's full attention, however pro forma this might seem. Then there was a not fully unequivocal exchange with Prime Minister Netanyahu on September 20:

Biden noted that he worked with Netanyahu as a freshman senator, joking that he “gave up counting” how long they had been friends, with Netanyahu adding later that it had been “over 40 years.”

Biden, however, crossed himself when Netanyahu referred to the 40 years, an ambiguous gesture at best that I thought at the time corresponded to the cryptic "God save the queen" remark he occasionally makes to indicate some level of skepticism over whatever is being discussed.

Then there's the peculiar correspondence between a $6 billion transfer to Iran, whose proxy Hamas invaded Israel yesterday:

According to Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, Iran sends $100 million annually to Hamas, $700 million annually to Hezbollah, and tens of millions to Islamic Jihad. Hamas also uses Iranian technology and logistical support to produce arms locally. What Hamas does not produce it smuggles into the Mediterranean enclave from tunnels under its border with Egypt.

Republican presidential candidates have claimed that the $6 billion to Iran funded the Hamas invasion:

Trump, like others, directly blamed the $6 billion — “American taxpayer dollars helped fund these attacks,” he said in an earlier statement — and argued that, under Biden, the U.S. is perceived as being “weak and ineffective” on the global stage, opening the door to hostility.

“They didn’t have that level of aggression with me. They didn’t have it. This would have never happened with me either,” Trump claimed, adding later in Cedar Rapids that Biden had “betrayed Israel” with the deal.

But every story from the Hamas invasion to bite reports on poor canine Commander seem to have kept the story of the Iran spy ring from getting the prominence it should have:

The Biden administration’s now-suspended Iran envoy Robert Malley helped to fund, support, and direct an Iranian intelligence operation designed to influence the United States and allied governments, according to a trove of purloined Iranian government emails. . . . They showed that Malley had helped to infiltrate an Iranian agent of influence named Ariane Tabatabai into some of the most sensitive positions in the U.S. government—first at the State Department and now the Pentagon, where she has been serving as chief of staff for the assistant secretary of defense for special operations, Christopher Maier.

. . . The contents of the emails are damning, showing a group of Iranian American academics being recruited by the Iranian regime, meeting together in foreign countries to receive instructions from top regime officials, and pledging their personal loyalty to the regime. They also show how these operatives used their Iranian heritage and Western academic positions to influence U.S. policy toward Iran, first as outside “experts” and then from high-level U.S. government posts. Both inside and outside of government, the efforts of members of this circle were repeatedly supported and advanced by Malley, who served as the U.S. government’s chief interlocutor with Iran under both the Obama and the Biden administrations. Malley is also the former head of the International Crisis Group (ICG), which directly paid and credentialed several key members of the regime’s influence operation.

The picture that's tardily emerging from the Malley-Tabatabai revelations strikes me as analogous at least to the allegations against Alger Hiss, though it's hard even now to imagine Hiss as an active Stalinist, as opposed to an elitist dreamer. Malley and Tabatabai operated at a much more practical and detailed level, and they clearly had direct policy impacts. It's hard to avoid thinking they influenced the $6 billion payment to Iran and facilitated plans for the Hamas invasion.

What did Biden and his handlers know? Was the Malley-Tabatabai group paying any of them? Even leaving questions of payment to the Bidens for policy decisions aside, this Iran spy ring cries out for serious investigation, especially in the context of the new Hamas-Israel war.

What's Going On With Joe, His Dogs, And The Secret Service?

REPORT: President Biden has “mistreated” his dogs by punching and kicking them according to sources close with Judicial Watch.

Biden’s dogs are just like his son: Poorly trained.

Documents from the United States Department of Homeland Security, reveal injuries from attacks… pic.twitter.com/dDGRuYxc1P

— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) October 6, 2023

The video in the post at X above bothers me in several ways. I've had five pet dogs in my life, none has been a German shepherd, but I think dog body language is pretty consistent across breeds. What I see in the video, if that's his most recent dog, Commander, is Commander being led off the helicopter by Joe and promptly becoming confused. He's on a leash, Joe heads for the limo, Commander hangs back and in fact turns the other way. As best I can read, Commander has his head low and is wagging his tail more or less level to the ground, indicating he's not sure what to do.

Joe somewhat awkwardly gathers Commander in, first with his arms, but then with his knees, shoves him toward the limo door, and then impatiently and forcefully urges him inside with the action of his legs. I would say he doesn't quite kick Commander, but Commander sure doesn't want to get into that limo. (As a lifelong pet owner, I would almost say Commander is playing dumb.) At best, all I can say is this isn't how you get a dog to cooperate. I've also got to think this relationship has been going on for a while. Dogs want to bond with their owners. Dogs want to be with the program. One basic thing dogs want to do, always and everywhere, is hop in the car. Something here isn't working.

I'm sensing other vibes here, too. The limo and the helicopter seem to be drawn up so close that it looks awkward for Joe to get into the limo, dog or no dog. I assume the Secret Service choreographs the transfer, and maybe a little like Commander himself, they seem to want to make all this a little harder then it needs to be. Even the Marine sergeant who salutes Joe on his way out seems to be briskly saluting a mote in the middle distance, not Joe the man. These people don't like Joe.

Searching the web, I'm finding this isn't new. Here's a post in The Hill from last December:

President Biden doesn’t trust some of the Secret Service agents around him and doesn’t believe certain details of the biting incident with his dog Major, according to a new book about the administration.

Chris Whipple’s “The Fight of His Life: Inside Joe Biden’s White House” says Biden has trust issues with some agents, due in part to the fact that some agents are strong supporters of former President Trump.

. . . There are also issues around the March 2021 incident in which Major, the president’s German shepherd rescue dog, allegedly bit a Secret Service agent. The president was reportedly skeptical about the Secret Service’s report of the situation.

Biden “wasn’t buying the details,” such as the location of the incident, although he didn’t dispute that the bite took place, Whipple wrote. Biden told a friend that Secret Service agents are never at the location of the incident, which was allegedly on the second floor of the White House.

“Somebody was lying, Biden thought, about the way the incident had gone down,” Whipple wrote.

Major, who is believed to be the first shelter rescue animal to live at the White House, received private training following the biting incident. Biden at the time defended Major and said he is a “sweet” animal simply adjusting to life in the White House alongside Secret Service details.

Major was removed from the White House on December 21, 2021 after numerous biting indicents and replaced by Commander. In fact, it appears that Major's biting incidents were minimized, as have Commander's more recently, while he was in the White House:

President Biden’s German shepherd Major attacked many more people than the White House has disclosed, according to newly released emails.

The documents indicate that Major bit members of the Secret Service eight days in a row in early March — though only one such incident was publicly acknowledged.

At least one White House visitor also was bitten in early March, according to the emails, which were released Thursday by the conservative transparency group Judicial Watch, which slammed the “cover-up” of the incidents.

. . . Major and Biden’s elderly and since-deceased dog Champ were whisked back to Delaware around March 9 for what the White House claimed was a prearranged visit with family friends.

. . . But emails among Secret Service employees indicated the dogs were returned to Delaware due to a spree of attacks.

Judicial Watch, which had sued for records involving Major's biting incidents, is back on the case with Commander:

Judicial Watch announced today [October 6] that it filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the U.S. Secret Service for records regarding incidents of aggression and bites involving President Joe Biden’s Dog, Commander (Judicial Watch Inc, v. U.S. Department of Homeland Security (No. 1:23-cv-02960)).

The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia after the Secret Service (a component of the Department of Homeland Security) failed to respond to a July 31, 2023, request for all records involving the “Biden family dog, ‘Commander,’ including but not limited to communications sent to and from [Secret Service] officials in the Uniformed and Non-Uniformed Divisions involved in White House operations and the Presidential Protection Division.”

. . . The dog reportedly has been removed from the White House after its most recent attack on a Secret Service agent and other White House staff. According to a Judicial Watch source, President Biden has mistreated his dogs. Judicial Watch has learned he has punched and kicked his dogs.

“It is beyond belief that, even after Judicial Watch exposed their attacking 10 Secret Service personnel, Joe and Jill Biden have continued to let their dog menace and attack Secret Service and White House staff. Let’s be blunt: the dangerous dog could kill someone,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “The ongoing Biden administration cover-up of the Biden dog attacks on Secret Service agents is dangerous corruption.”

The White House apparently has a different spin. According to the UK Daily Mail, although Commander, like Major before, is now out of the White House,

White House staffers have blamed President Joe Biden's dog Commander's biting problems on the unfriendly expressions of Secret Service agents.

The 2-year-old German Shepherd reportedly had his 11th bite of one of the president's key protectors just last week - but is said to be pleasant around West Wing staff.

Secret Service emails obtained by Judicial Watch in July revealed the dog had bitten or threatened at least 10 people, making this the 11th incident involving it.

. . . In the batch of emails released in July, Secret Service officers called the dog 'freaking crazy,' argued he would have been 'put down' if he didn't belong to the Biden family and said he needed a muzzle.

On November 10, 2022, Jill Biden 'couldn't regain control' of Commander as the dog charged another member of the Secret Service.

My own take is this is not a normal relationship between a family and its dogs.

Well, Son Of A Bitch!

The last we heard of Sarah Ashton-Cirillo, late a 46-year-old Florida man named Mike who'd turned up as "Sarah", the oficial spokestrans for the Ukrainian territorial defense force, was that once the story attracted the attention of Ohio Sen Vance, he'd been suspended from the role of spokestrans.

On social media, the TDF said: “The statements of (Junior Seargant) Ashton-Cirillo in recent days were not approved by the command of the TDF or the command of the AFU. When conducting military operations against the aggressor, the defense forces of Ukraine strictly observe the norms of international humanitarian law.

“The command of the TDF will conduct an official investigation into the circumstances of these statements. Appropriate decisions would be taken. Sergeant Sarah Ashton-Cirillo will be suspended immediately pending the investigation.”

It looks like the official investigation has taken place, the appropriate decisions have been taken, and, son of a bitch, Sarah's back on the job!

Ukraine’s controversial transgender spokesperson Sarah Ashton-Cirillo has claimed to have been reinstated in the role representing the Territorial Defence Forces (TDF) after being suspended last month.

“I continue in the role of TDF spokesperson. Truth, trust, and humanity will always prevail over accusations, allegations, and artificial intelligence,” Ashton-Cirillo said on Tuesday.

The original story of Sen Vance's letter and Ashton-Cirillo's suspension broke on September 20. However, on September 22,

National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan announced Thursday that President Joe Biden would name Penny Pritzker, a billionaire heiress and former commerce secretary, to manage Ukraine’s economic recovery from the ongoing war.

In this post, I discussed Penny Pritzker's position as a Democrat megadonor, as well as her cousin James Nicholas Pritzker AKA Jennifer Natalya Pritzker, the first transsexual billionaire. There can be little question that getting Sarah her job back must have been one of Penny Pritzker's earliest priorities as Ukraine's recovery czar.

But one of my biggest points in my post last month on "Sarah" was that he seemed already to have had friends in high places: "[W]ho vouches for him? He must have handlers. Who are they?" Yesterday's Breitbart link raises additioonal questions:

The American citizen, born as Michael John Cirillo before ‘transitioning’, went on to claim to have signed two book contracts with Potomac Books publishing, with the first volume set to be released in the summer of next year.

Potomac Books says on its website,

Potomac Books has a long and distinguished pedigree. Founded in 1983 as the U.S. imprint of Brassey’s, a renowned British publishing house established in the nineteenth century, Brassey’s-U.S. was acquired by Books International in 1999 and renamed Potomac Books in 2004.

The University of Nebraska Press bought Potomac Books in 2013, acquiring its impressive backlist in military history, politics, current events, international affairs, terrorism, intelligence, and national security. As a general-interest imprint of UNP, Potomac continues to build on its strong roots in these fields, keeping readers informed about the critical issues and challenges of today’s world.

Later, the Breitbart link says,

Last year Ashton-Cirillo was presented with awards from Nevada Democrat Senator Catherine Cortez Masto and Democrat Congresswoman Dina Titus.

Mike's previous publishing history is as a vanity self-publisher; now he's writing for a respected publisher in the military and intelligence fields. So far, I've been able to find no reference at all to any academic or journalistic achievement that might qualify Mike to write for a university press on military or intelligence issues. For instance, Mike doesn't appear to have either a four-year or a two-year degree, or any job ever with a recognized news outlet, much less The Atlantic or the Washington Post.

Yet somehow Mike is traveling in rarefied circles with the likes of Anne Applebaum and David Ignatius. I can only think he's got highly influential friends in extremely high places. Sen Vance in his letter last month had a point:

. . . Is this individual an American citizen? Did they ever serve, in any capacity, in American intelligence services?

Let's Revisit The Great Replacement

According to Wikipedia,

The Great Replacement (French: Grand Remplacement), also known as replacement theory or great replacement theory, is a white nationalist far-right conspiracy theory disseminated by French author Renaud Camus. The original theory states that, with the complicity or cooperation of "replacist" elites, the ethnic French and white European populations at large are being demographically and culturally replaced with non-white peoples—especially from Muslim-majority countries—through mass migration, demographic growth and a drop in the birth rate of white Europeans. Since then, similar claims have been advanced in other national contexts, notably in the United States. Mainstream scholars have dismissed these claims as rooted in a misunderstanding of demographic statistics and premised upon an unscientific, racist worldview. According to the Encyclopædia Britannica, the Great Replacement "has been widely ridiculed for its blatant absurdity."

Regular visitors know my views are tempered by the common-sense observation that just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you, but this neglects the whole question of whom they're out to get. If you're a white guy worried about Latins streaming across the border, maybe you're paranoid and maybe you aren't. On the other hand, as I've been noting here pretty frequently, if you're black, you have more urgent reasons to mistrust white Democrats. Planned Parenthood was and is aimed at reducing the population of blacks.

Yesterday I was especially puzzled that the black mayors of Chicago and New York trusted their white Democrat governors to work with white segregationist Joe Biden to temper the effect of Latin immigrants surging into their cities. Black residents of Chicago turn out to be asking the same question: is there in fact a Great Replacement under way, and just who is being replaced?

On Tuesday afternoon, a protest took place outside the Amundsen Park Fieldhouse in the city’s Galewood neighborhood, where residents voiced their concerns about a plan to transform the space into a migrant shelter.

"We ain’t having that. No! You want to tell us what to do in our park? You cannot do that! We pay our money," said Linda Johnson, community member.

Critics argue that turning the site into a migrant sanctuary will disrupt crucial park programming and youth activities for residents – programs that took years to build.

"You want to take the little scraps of resources we have and put us at the bottom of the barrel? That’s not fair!" one woman said. "A lot of these young boys, they don’t have fathers so a lot of these coaches, they are their fathers. They spend part of their weekend here along with during the week, that keeps them in a safe place, it gives them mentorship, it shows them discipline."

The story goes on to outline other parts of the city where there are similar conflicts between established black neighborhoods threatened by Latins surging into newly designated immigrant shelters. It mentions Gov Pritzker's approach, which if anything seems to lack any special urgency:

At the same time, Governor J.B. Pritzker is urging the Biden administration to address the migrant crisis. He penned a letter to the president on Monday, emphasizing that the influx of migrants in Illinois has become "untenable."

Illinois has already allocated $330 million to tackle the migrant crisis, and Pritzker believes that additional resources can be provided by the White House and Congress to assist blue states targeted by Texas Governor Greg Abbott's bussing campaign.

In other words, blah blah blah -- except that Pritzker also recognizes that it's Texas Gov Abbot who's forcing action:

"You don't hear him telling Republicans that they need to go to work in Washington on behalf of reform. Instead, he is just sending busloads across the country and causing chaos really," Pritzker said.

Pritzker says he's been in regular discussions with the Biden administration since the first bus arrived in Chicago in August 2022, seeking effective ways to address the ongoing challenges posed by the migrant crisis.

In other words, blah blah blah. What I'm beginning to notice about the latest Republican strategies is that they're forcing choices on Democrats. You can open the spigot and bring in all the Latin migrants you want, and you can have programs that support black communities, until you have to start to choose. And let's recognize that whether or not Gov Abbot charters buses to New York or Chicago, those are the places the migrants prefer, and they'll get there by charter bus or some other way.

Thus we have what appears to be a reversal by Homeland Security Secretary Mayorkas:

DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas is citing an "acute and immediate need" to waive dozens of federal laws in order to build a border wall in south Texas as the illegal immigration crisis grows utterly out of control.

The problem I keep seeing is that, whether or not bien pensant opinion agrees, mass migration from the global south has been an agenda item. The assumption up to now has been that the intent is to make the world a better place, with a US electorate that looks more like -- who knows? -- Costa Rica, Colombia, Paraguay? -- than the current US, and those replaced might just be those of northern European backgrounds. But when policymakers are forced to choose, all of a sudden, they're choosing to replace the blacks. The northern Europeans, represented by the white Democrat governors doing the choosing, will be just fine.

Plenty of blacks have understood this all along. Yes, there's a Great Replacement agenda. The question isn't that there's an agenda, the question is who's being replaced.

Biden's Border Calculation

Recent weeks have brought indications that there are strains in the remaining Democrat coalition. Both Illinois Gov Pritzker and New York Gov Hochul have complained that the migrant incursions on the southern border are too big to handle, since once they cross, the migrants often head to New York or Chicago, where they stay and consume government services.

While neither Pritzker nor Hochul has pointed specifically to the de facto open border itself, both complain that there's no federal coordination in relocating the migrants, no policy that will allow the migrants to work, and no federal aid for the cities providing services to the migrants. On Monday, Pritzker outlined the problems in a letter to Biden:

On top of the 15,000 that have arrived in Chicago and Illinois over the last 13 months, we are now seeing busloads more migrants at increasingly higher rates being sent specifically to Chicago each day. Our state government has been forced to dedicate over $330 million to provide humanitarian aid — and that amount is increasing each day. . . . Though we have found temporary housing in existing buildings for a majority of the refugees, we are challenged to find additional housing for the continuous flow of people who keep coming and are now forced to sleep in police stations and on sidewalks. This situation is untenable and requires your immediate help beyond the coming work authorizations for some of the asylum seekers.

. . . First and foremost, I recommend that there be one person in the federal government who works directly for you in the White House who can lead the oversight of our nation’s efforts at the border. Right now, we have too many different federal department contacts — who are uncoordinated with one another — that handle various programs related to this humanitarian crisis. A single office with an identified leader must be assigned to work for the cities and states across the silos of government to manage the challenges we all face.

Surely Gov Pritzker is aware that Joe has already appointed a single person in the White House to handle the border crisis, Vice President Harris, who has never displayed much enthusiasm for the job. Part of the problem is that Harris hlds her position as representing the urban black faction of the Democrat coalition, but that community is the one directly affected by the open border influx in several ways. No matter, the white Democrats have never had blacks' interests in mind.

First, the inflow of refugees to New York and Chicago adds to the demand for basic social services in their inner cities. As both Pritzker and Hochul point out, the federal government isn't reimbursing the cities for increased use of police, public housing, and welfare services the migrants cause -- more deamnd for the same-size pie. This in turn directly decreases the level of services available to the existing black inner city residents.

Second, the lack of coordinated federal action is yielding control of the southern border to Mexican drug cartels. Per NewsNation earlier this year:

Drug cartels are controlling operations at the southern border as they force migrants across the Rio Grande at gunpoint and hold asylum seekers in stash houses, Border Patrol reports.

The cartel sees what is happening on the US side and takes advantage of the lack of resources, pushing people and drugs through the holes while border patrol is busy processing, according to Vice President of National Border Patrol Council, Art Del Cueto.

Per the New York Post,

Drug cartels are besieging the border by deliberately sending thousands of migrants a day to hand themselves over to Border Patrol officers in different US border towns, sources revealed to The Post.

The tactic is meant to tie up already overworked border agents so Mexico’s cartels can carry on their drug and human smuggling operations undisturbed in less populated areas, law enforcement officials explained.

. . . The mass give-ups are being fueled by cartel lies including about the Biden administration’s CBP One app to schedule immigration appointments, multiple law enforcement sources told The Post.

“They’re circulating false information that anyone waiting for a CBP One appointment can turn themselves in and get asylum,” one source revealed.

This facilitates the cartels' importing larger quantities of fentanyl, cocaine, and methamphetamine, which in turn reach black inner city areas in places like New York and Chicago at lower prices, putting more strains on the population there.

My question continues to be who benefits. Among those who almost certainly don't are the migrants themselves, who are sustained in often inhumane conditions for indefinite periods. The poor and working class in the northern cities don't, since the new migrants demand government services that had previously gone to their communities. To the extent that the migrants work, normally off the books, they take existing jobs from existing residents.

The non-profits who collect government payments to address migrant and homeless problems without ever solving them benefit, and they often benefit local politicians via family and other connections. Beyond that, the big beneficiaries have got to be the cartels who bring the drugs across the border and the gangs who transport them across the US and distribute them in the cities. But that in turn suggests to me that there are payoffs and kickbacks at all levels to keep the system in place, which go to politicians as well.

What Govs Pritzker and Hochul are pointing out is an essential conflict within the current Democrat coalition whereby an existing and long-standing political establishment continues to have the cards loaded against urban blacks, to the establishment's immense ongoing profit. The black politicians, especially the mayors of New York and Chicago, are making a mistake to trust their white Democrat governors to look after their interests.

For the time being, Joe is showing no interest in making any changes to the system he's created. I've got to assume he's making money out of things as they stand.