Things to Keep an Eye On

Events in Rome, in Israel, Gerard Depardieu tax fraud investigation, Warren Buffett is down on the U.S., Israel invades Syria, DOGE comes for the consultants, Epstein kayfabe

Vatican City at night, via Naval S / Flickr

Events in Rome

The Major Penitentiary of the Apostolic Penitentiary, Cardinal De Donatis, was announced to be presiding at Ash Wednesday liturgies in Rome, and the Cardinal Vicar of Rome was leading prayers for the Pope in St. Peter’s Square this week. Both of these positions are ones that are retained in the event that the See of Peter is vacant. This could indicate an awareness of the need for continuity of government planning, so to speak. Announcements about the health of the Pope have indicated improvements and reverses throughout the week, and his condition is clearly still very fragile.

The Pope’s Wednesday audience was cancelled due to his illness, but he continues to fulfill the teaching office of the papacy from his hospital bed, releasing a catechetical statement on hope and the Canticle of Simeon.

A number of causes of saints were advanced this week, including Father Emil Kapaun, the Kansas-born priest who died in a North Korean prison camp, who has been declared Venerable. In addition, Bartolo Longo has been beatified, a 19th-century Italian occultist who converted and devoted his life to works of charity and devotion to the Holy Rosary.

In the United States, the Catholic Mobilizing Network has released a statement in support of the Supreme Court’s decision to throw out the conviction and sentence of Richard Glossip, who was on death row in Oklahoma.

Gerard Depardieu under tax fraud investigation

Depardieu, a well-known French actor, is an associate of the plaintiff against me in Rome, Pierre Louvrier, with whom he celebrated Russia’s annexation of Crimea. Depardieu is under investigation in France, via the Times of Malta:

Actor Gerard Depardieu is under investigation for aggravated tax fraud in France, a source close to the case told AFP on Monday.

Depardieu, 76, already accused in a string of sexual assault and rape cases, is suspected of falsely declaring his tax residency to be in Belgium since 2013, the source said.

A probe of his tax status, opened this month by financial crime prosecutors and now run by police, has involved raids in France and Belgium as well as police interviews, the source said.

Depardieu is the highest-profile figure to face accusations in French cinema’s version of the #MeToo movement.

The situation in Israel is getting even harder to defend

Ralph Nader published a piece this week suggesting the number of dead may be closer to 400,000:

In August 2024, based on available historical, empirical, and clinical records, we estimated about 300,000 Palestinians had been killed. (See the August/September 2024 issue of the Capitol Hill Citizen). By now it is over 400,000. Yet the media still uses the figure by Hamas and ignores the lives blown apart under the killing fields in Gaza.

At 400,000 and growing, far more Palestinians have been killed in Gaza than the combined total of deaths from Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and Dresden in World War II. This week, Netanyahu dropped leaflets in Arabic signaling a forthcoming violent exclusion of Gaza’s trapped, unsheltered Palestinians from their homeland. More accurately estimated civilian casualties matters morally and for the intensity of the political, diplomatic, and civic resistance when the world learns the truer toll of death and injuries in this tiny enclave the geographical size of Philadelphia.

Meanwhile it is far from clear that the U.S. is going to hold Israel to Phase II of the deal. The IDF has moved further into Syria this week, promising to defend what they claim is a Druze village on the outskirts of Damascus.

The big question is whether Turkey steps in. Their foreign minister has condemned Israel’s incursions further into Syria, which they are calling expansionist, and the PKK’s imprisoned leader has called for it to be dissolved.

A document was leaked this week purporting to show the composition of the transitional Syrian government. There are a number of women, and if the document is true, the minister of foreign affairs is a Catholic. It’s a fairly pro-U.S. government, whereas Israel’s government is pro-Russian.

Netanyahu himself has claimed the Bibas family died from strangulation, but there is no evidence at all for it. A corpse that’s been dead for a year, especially that of a child, is likely to be in an advanced state of decomposition. Israel’s head of forensic medicine merely said in his video that they did not die from bombing:

On Saturday, the head of the Israeli Institute for Forensic Medicine, Chen Kugel, made a one-minute video to supposedly back the claims. Kugel’s presentation curiously did not focus on what he found, but on what he did not find. “There is no evidence of harm due to bombing,” he said.

Remember, these are bodies of people who died about one and a half years ago. How exactly one determines that one did not die under bombing (which does not always mean death from direct trauma) is unclear but certainly requires further explanation as to how it has been definitively ruled out.

The odd thing is that Kugel did not determine what they did die of. Instead, the doctor used his short presentation to wax emotional on how hard they are working to identify everyone, and added that “We have encountered abysses of evil and malice that we could not imagine existed”.

So this is atrocity propaganda Netanyahu is whipping up his troops with in advance of going back into Gaza. Mike Flynn, who has been traveling around the country in the last few years with his freemason buddy whipping up the Qanon set, has called for Israel to finish the job on Twitter, saying “the Arab world needs to decide what to do with the Palestinians, not Israel.” Secretary Rubio has used emergency authorities this week to approve $4 billion more in arms transfers, an authority that must be invoked because there is no way under ordinary U.S. law to continue to justify these transfers.

Chinese abuse of small-business programs

Important story by Kate O’Keefe:

The Republican leaders of three US House committees have begun an investigation into what they called China’s “systematic exploitation” of two federal funding programs that the Pentagon and other agencies use to tap innovation by American startups and small businesses.

“Due to inadequate oversight and weak due diligence measures, it appears that China has become one of the largest beneficiaries of these programs — turning what should be a pillar of American innovation into a tool for the CCP’s technological and military advancement,” according to a letter from the committee leaders, referring to the Chinese Communist Party.

The letter, dated Wednesday and reviewed by Bloomberg News, was sent to the 11 federal agencies that make awards through the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) programs including the Defense, Health and Human Services, and Energy Departments, as well as the National Science Foundation.

DOGE updates

The Associated Press claims most of the DOGE cuts won’t actually save money:

Nearly 40% of the federal contracts that President Donald Trump’s administration claims to have canceled as part of its signature cost-cutting program aren’t expected to save the government any money, the administration’s own data shows.

The Department of Government Efficiency, run by Trump adviser Elon Musk, published an updated list Monday of nearly 2,300 contracts that agencies terminated in recent weeks across the federal government. Data published on DOGE’s “Wall of Receipts” shows that more than one-third of the contract cancellations, 794 in all, are expected to yield no savings.

That may be true, but the benefits of strangling a number of these contractors to death is probably underrated. Most of these companies are staffed by overachievers who think they’re hot shit, while their hubris and groupthink has led their country to a series of bad decisions and insolvency. Forcing them to take a time-out, during which they might hopefully educate themselves beyond Arthur Schlesinger and Netflix might have some benefits. To that end, the GSA is going for the big consulting firms:

The top-10 highest-paid consulting firms contracting with the federal government are set to make “$65 billion in fees” in 2025 and beyond, the General Services Administration says. But according to the agency’s acting leader, that “needs to, and must, change.”

GSA acting Administrator Stephen Ehikian issued this week a memo, obtained by FedScoop, calling for the termination of contracts with those top-contracted consultants:

• Deloitte Consulting LLP

• Accenture Federal Services LLC

• General Dynamics IT

• Booz Allen Hamilton

• Leidos

• Guidehouse

• Hill Mission Technologies Corp.

• Science Applications International Corp.

• CGI Federal

• IBM

Zelensky’s next move

In the vein of things being revealed, Ukrainian President Zelensky’s visit to the White House this week is widely seen as not having gone well. The Europeans continue to have his back with many supportive statements, but their ability to follow through with real support is on the wane. Zelensky has no choice but to put himself back in President Trump’s good graces. He doesn’t need to grovel, and he shouldn’t. What he should do is release evidence of the fraud and graft in the military aid given to his country. He has every right to be upset about it, and it would reveal just how corrupt the DMV-area contracting business is, and just how self-interested the support of the federal nomenklatura is.

This moment has, at long last, woken the Europeans up from their fantasy. In general that will be a good thing. Smarter European leaders are already talking about the need to spend more on defense, rather than expecting U.S. taxpayers to do it for them. The mixed blessing of this for the U.S. is, once they do, European defense companies are a lot leaner than American ones, and they’re likely to kick their asses. If they go forward with a European Defense Bank, U.S. companies will be in trouble, because they’ll finally be facing real competition:

European nations have begun discussions around a groundbreaking financing mechanism that could raise hundreds of billions of euros in international bond markets, as the continent embarks on an unprecedented coordinated effort to upgrade its military capabilities in response to the ongoing threat from Russia – and fears that the US, which has underwritten its security since the end of World War II, has become an unreliable ally.

Finance officials from several European countries met on the fringes of the G20 meeting in Cape Town, South Africa, to discuss proposals to fund a dramatic increase in defence spending without triggering a political or market backlash for countries already facing tricky fiscal constraints. One of the options discussed was the creation of a new special purpose vehicle, a kind of European defence bank, that would fund itself in international capital markets.

Warren Buffett is long on the zaibatsu, but cutting U.S. stocks

From one piece this week:

It surely says nothing cheerful that Warren Buffett, the world’s most famous and successful investor, now holds more than half of his company’s net assets in cash and Treasury bills.

Or that the legendary chairman of the Berkshire Hathaway conglomerate now has more in cash than he does in traded U.S. stocks.

Or that in his latest annual letter to investors, the 94-year-old has taken a break from his usual patriotic boosterism, and instead is warning about the risks to America from “fiscal folly” and from “scoundrels and promoters” who “take advantage of those who mistakenly trust them.”

Norway is not refusing to fuel up U.S. ships

There was a false report late this week about an allegation that Norway was refusing to fuel up U.S. ships. This apparently came from statements on social media and from an executive that they would refuse to do so, and was promoted by the Russian influence network including Pravda, and Visegrad 24. This is the sort of report you ought to doubt for a lot of reasons. Virginia class submarines are nuclear powered, first of all, and that was the one mentioned. Second, there is an acquisition and cross-servicing agreement between the U.S. and the Kingdom of Norway, which means our ships are entitled to resupply services on the same terms as those of the Norwegian Navy, so the decision is not really in the company’s hands anyway. Unfortunately Norway’s Minister of Defense had to release a statement denying the allegation.

The Rep. Cory Mills situation

Police were called to Florida Congressman Cory Mills’ penthouse this week over a domestic incident involving his alleged mistress, a Pahlavist Iranian woman. No arrest warrant was issued, and the woman in question has made no public statement:

D.C. police confirm they are investigating an alleged assault of a 27-year-old woman by U.S. Rep. Cory Mills, a Republican representing a district northeast of Orlando, calling it an active criminal investigation.

The Metropolitan Police Department also is investigating its own handling of the incident, which did not result in an arrest.

Police reports obtained by News4 show the alleged incident started at a penthouse in a luxury apartment building in The Wharf area of Southwest at 1 p.m. Wednesday.

Mills’ office told NBC News: “This week, law enforcement was asked to resolve a private matter at Congressman Mills’ residence. Congressman Mills vehemently denies any wrongdoing whatsoever, and is confident any investigation will clear this matter quickly.”

Lee Fang on the U.S. Institute of Peace

The USIP is in the crosshairs of DOGE, an institution the British would call a “quango,” or quasi-NGO. You could call it many things, a retirement home for foreign service officers, a think tank, or what have you, but Fang rightly notes they are rather supportive of the Afghan heroin trade:

Over the last few years, the USIP has pursued a curious line of advocacy around Afghanistan. After the U.S. withdrawal in 2021, the ruling Taliban government rapidly snuffed out widespread poppy cultivation, effectively ending the heroin trade – which had long flourished under local warlords and other allies of the U.S.-backed occupation government.

The end of the heroin trade, however, is strongly opposed by USIP.

The institute has published several reports decrying the end of the trade as dangerous because Afghan farmers are now growing “low-value wheat” and other agricultural products. The new economy, USIP warned in December, may “worsen rural poverty, increase dissatisfaction among landholders and spur political instability.”

I wrote about the USIP more than a decade ago in the context of its building. It’s in the line of sight of the Lincoln Memorial, and designed by the Canadian-Israeli architect Moshe Safdie. The land where it is built was taken from the Old Naval Observatory, where the Secretary of Defense traditionally lives. When it was built, the Historic Preservation Act was clearly flouted.

Another model case from Homeland Security Investigations

Labor trafficking laws are a great tool to handle the magnet effect of illegal immigration:

A Simi Valley couple were arrested today on charges that they abused asylum-seeking immigrants from Latin American countries by forcing them to do domestic labor around the house and hand over money they earned working outside the home.

Carolina Rojas, 50, and her husband Jairo John Gastelo, 45, were each charged with one count of conspiracy to commit forced labor and four counts of forced labor.

Rojas was separately charged with an additional four counts of trafficking with respect to forced labor, three counts of giving immigration documents to unauthorized persons, one count of encouraging and inducing illegal entry, and one count of witness tampering.

Guilty plea in another purported Soleimani revenge plot

From the DOJ:

A former Navy sailor has pleaded guilty in federal court in Chicago to plotting to attack Naval Station Great Lakes in North Chicago, Illinois, purportedly on behalf of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

Xuanyu Harry Pang, 38, of North Chicago, Illinois, pleaded guilty to conspiring to and attempting to willfully injure and destroy national defense material, national defense premises, and national defense utilities, with the intent to injure, interfere with, and obstruct the national defense of the United States. The guilty plea was entered on Nov. 5, 2024, in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois and ordered unsealed today.

According to court records filed in the case, in the summer of 2021, Pang communicated with an individual in Colombia about potentially assisting with a plan involving Iranian actors to conduct an attack against the United States to avenge the death of Qasem Soleimani, a general of the IRGC Quds Force who was killed by the U.S. military in 2020. The Quds Force is a branch of the IRGC that conducts unconventional warfare and intelligence activities outside of Iran.

The Epstein kayfabe

Meanwhile as various events of great consequence were unfolding in the nation’s capital and around the world, the short-bus team of conservative influencers received binders full of previously-released documents pertaining to Jeffrey Epstein, and told the world it showed how transparent the Trump administration was. Chad Prather, LibsofTikTok, Liz Wheeler, DC Draino, and Mike Cernovich were on hand. Pam Bondi quickly had to place the blame elsewhere, on the SDNY, or maybe Kash Patel.

Elsewhere in DOJ matters, Dan Bongino was installed as Deputy Director at the FBI, and Harmeet Dhillon had her first committee hearing to be confirmed as head of the DOJ Civil Rights Division.