Items for This Week
The planned desecration of a Jewish grave in Arlington, alleged O9a arrest, Grail-Illumina, U.S. Steel, Sensetime founder's death
Having paid attention to a number of the grave desecration incidents that end up on ADL lists, I’m quite frustrated by how infrequently the culprits are caught. The root of my suspicion is that the ADL is never able to point to a time in which anti-semitism is not rising. That seems statistically fairly unlikely.
However, in the case of the resting place of sculptor Moses Ezekiel, a charter member of the B’nai B’rith, whose remains are interred at the Confederate Memorial in Arlington National Cemetery, we know perfectly well who’s going to do it. A judge put a stay on the removal this week, which has now been lifted, and as of this moment the removal is scheduled to go forward.
I’m against this sort of thing. Moses Ezekiel has a poor reputation as an artist—he is considered a fusty classicist—but he had a very interesting life. He knew Gabriele D’Annunzio, was an Italophile and a proud Southerner, and the first Jewish graduate of the Virginia Military Institute. Like many Southern Jews he had substantial Sephardic ancestry.
I have a difficult time understanding, for instance, why a supporter of Trump’s order on classical architecture would support this removal. There seems to be no principled reason to take that view. The last several years should have demonstrated fairly conclusively that this was never just about Confederates.
O9a arrest in Hawaii
The Order of Nine Angles is a satanic group about which much has been written. There is no confusion about their beliefs and intentions, they are what they say they are. The feds just arrested a purported member in Hawaii.
From Court Watch:
The FBI has arrested the founder of a Neo-Nazi online community that has systematically targeted minors for abuse. According to federal dockets, Kalana Limkin was arrested on Friday in Hawaii and charged receipt, distribution and possession of child pornography.
An affidavit filed by a member of the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force says the Bureau opened an investigation into Limkin in May 2023. Law enforcement say that “Limkin was an associate of the groups known as CVLT and “764” and the “founder of a splinter group, “Cultist.”
The Justice Department first noted the existence of ‘764’ in a New York federal criminal case two months ago. Previously, the Guardian also had a lengthy writeupof the organization and its goals.
I’ve written some elsewhere about some of these almost comically evil neo-Nazi satanist groups. Out in Kansas I read some of the correspondence between James Mason, author of Siege, which is looked to by Atomwaffen as a seminal text, and Charles Manson, whose aspirations to spark a race war are interesting to them. Mason’s letters to Manson are mostly curious and respectful, even—though I cringe to use this word—reverent, and the letters going the other way are, as you might expect, incomprehensible.
One of the Atomwaffen publishers received tens of thousands of dollars from the FBI, meaning, essentially, that the FBI was underwriting the promotion of satanic neo-Nazi propaganda. Seems like a bad idea. I told A.C. Thompson of ProPublica about the Mason-Manson correspondence and sent him a few pages, he expressed his interest then went dark on me. I found out later from the librarian he had visited. Of course he didn’t use the interesting material in what became the SPLC-Frontline documentary on Atomwaffen. Like I said, these guys hide things.
Grail-Illumina merger scuttled
New York magazine had a big piece about a rough year for Lina Khan of the FTC, but all I see is winning. It’s a big win for Carl Icahn too. From Reuters:
Gene sequencing company Illumina (ILMN.O) said on Sunday it will divest cancer diagnostic test maker Grail (GRAL.O) after the companies battled both U.S. and European antitrust enforcers for more than two years and faced fierce opposition from activist investor Carl Icahn.
The divestiture will be executed through a third-party sale or capital markets transaction, San Diego-based Illumina said in a statement, adding that it would finalize the terms by second quarter of 2024.
Grail will continue to be held separate with committed funding from Illumina for the company's business through the divestment process, the former said in a separate statement.
Grail, valued at $7.1 billion under Illumina's deal, is seeking to market a blood test that can diagnose many kinds of cancer, known as a liquid biopsy.
Illumina had spun off Grail in 2016 but retained a 12% stake. It reacquired Grail in 2021 despite competition concerns.
There were all sorts of messed-up things at Illumina.
Nippon Steel’s purchase of U.S. Steel
The usual suspects on the right, glomming onto populist rhetoric, have come out against the Nippon Steel purchase of U.S. Steel. I think they are not thinking this through clearly. If these guys have said nothing about Ihor Kolomoisky, the Ukrainian Israeli citizen now on trial for treason, who was buying U.S. steel mills, and in some cases have been involved with a fair amount of Chinese stuff themselves, it’s a little hard to take them seriously. The macroeconomics here are such that J.D. Vance can squawk all he wants, but this is going to happen.
Nippon Steel is by far the best option at the moment to own U.S. Steel, and should probably be seen as the Japanese helping us clean up our steel industry after it was messed up by the Eastern Europeans. AUKUS needs steel, and aligning incentives with Japan (rather than, for instance, ArcelorMittal in Europe) which has a vested interest in U.S. power projection in the Pacific, is a good thing.
The contrast here, between the Chinese investing in all this nonsense Silicon Valley vaporware and farmland, and the Japanese investing in hard industry, could not be more stark.
What Douglass Mackey should do
Douglass Mackey, the famous 2016-election pro-Trump troll who has now done time, is caught in a trap. Andrew Kaczynski, formerly of Buzzfeed but now at CNN, has been reminding everyone of his bad behavior, while he’s being praised by Donald Trump Jr. What everyone fears is him turning on his Israeli handlers. That is, of course, the only way to cut the Gordian knot he’s in, so that’s exactly what he should do.
Sensetime founder’s death
Tang Xiao’ou, the founder of the Chinese facial recognition giant Sensetime has unexpectedly died this week, which seems pretty important:
The sudden death of Tang Xiao’ou, a key figure behind China’s facial recognition technology and a cofounder of SenseTime Group, is the latest challenge to face the US-sanctioned artificial intelligence (AI) giant, with its shares losing 11 per cent in Hong Kong on Monday.
Shares of SenseTime, once held up as a model of China’s AI capabilities thanks to the strong research credentials of Tang, a professor with the Chinese University of Hong Kong, have dropped to their lowest-ever level since its initial public offering on December 31, 2021. The stock is currently trading at one fifth of the IPO value.
One immediate challenge following the death of Tang, who died on Friday from an undisclosed illness at the age of 55, is the company’s voting structure, as Tang was its controlling shareholder with dominant voting power through his class A shares.
A note
Lastly, I wish to note that it’s being reported that Norman Lear was baptized by a Dominican last year, meaning Archie Bunker is officially Catholic.