This week a documentary called Exposure: The Other Side of Jimmy Savile will be broadcast in Britain on ITV1. The documentary centers on allegations made by 5 women against the DJ, and former Top of the Pops and Jim’ll Fix It presenter. It is claimed Sir Jimmy Savile committed acts of serious sexual assault, including rape, against girls as young as 12, whilst an employee of the BBC in the early 1970s.

The attacks are alleged to have taken place at various locations, including hotels, Savile’s Rolls Royce and at the Top of the Pops studio at BBC Television Center, which Savile is alleged to have described as a “happy hunting ground”..

A former detective, Mark Williams-Thomas carried out the TV investigation into the claims against Savile, in particular the presenter’s sexual activities at the BBC, which the program claims were an “open secret” at the BBC.

In response to the allegations which have appeared in various newspapers, the BBC issued a denial that it had investigated allegations of misconduct against Savile, but “no such evidence has been found.”

“Whilst the BBC condemns any of behavior of the type alleged in the strongest terms, in the absence of evidence of any kind found at the BBC that corroborates the allegations that have been made it is simply not possible for the corporation to take any further action.”

It’s the kind of bureaucratic doublespeak one expects form the BBC, which does not explain the fact some BBC employees were aware of Jimmy Savile’s sexual activities.
 

 
More on ‘Exposure: The Other Side of Jimmy Savile’, after the jump…
 

 
I last visited New York in July 2003, around the time the coalition of the willing were getting stuck into dividing Iraq’s spoils between their affiliated corporations, and generally laying the foundations for almost a decade of chaos and sectarian slaughter.

Whenever I’m in the US, it’s always a huge treat for me to gorge myself on the vaguely satanic schmaltz pumped out by its television stations, which at that time naturally consisted of lots of chipper propaganda concerning the occupation (back in the UK, the propaganda was much dourer, and sometimes outright agonized). One very memorable moment was hearing some general-or-other “confide” to some newscaster-or-other that one of the main problems with the freshly “liberated” Iraqis – and so one of the principal challenges faced by the “liberators” – was a want of indigenous “entrepreneurial spirit.”

The phrase entrepreneurial spirit, which can hardly even be enunciated in an English accent (or shouldn’t be – just as Americans do well to steer clear of certain British swear words like “wanker” and “bollocks”), and furthermore conjures – to a Brit – profoundly mundane images of people opening pet shops and pizzerias, clearly possesses some strange sacred quality to various right-wingers across the pond. The general even lowered his voice as he intoned the words, as if to imbue the phrase with its proper dignity, but also spare the blushes of any passing Iraqis that might be within hearing range, swinging by on crutches or whatever (they had, after all, quite recently been subjected to the tough love of Shock and Awe).

Not that, the general immediately added, this unnatural insufficiency was down to some genetic or even cultural predisposition. Hell no. On the contrary, the entrepreneurial spirit – which God Himself lovingly blows into the ear of every human baby – had been contorted, thwarted, crushed (I doubt he used those exact adjectives) by the greed-sapping weight of Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship. But, sure as day follows night, this general could personally testify that, during the few short months coalition forces had been raping, robbing, killing and – you know – occupying Iraq, the green shoots of renewal were already visible.

Well, almost ten years later, and a remarkable story doing the rounds in some of our gaudier news organs last week suggests that the instinct to imaginatively exploit any given circumstance for monetary gain (in which the invasion of Iraq arguably provided a veritable masterclass) is indeed rediscovering its organic apogee among Iraqis.  

Mohamed Bishr (pictured above), is a middle-aged Egyptian bearing a striking resemblance to a certain golden Kalashnikov-loving former Iraqi dictator, a back-handed “gift” from Allah that has seen him repeatedly attacked, and also – I’m guessing – sparked several Saddam-is-alive-and-well-and-living-in-Egypt rumors a la Elvis and Hitler.

For most, Bishr’s uncanny likeness was just that, but one man’s sovereign state is another man’s oil reserves, so to speak, and a few weeks back some men with “Iraqi or Syrian accents” (they are broadly thought to be the former, naturally) approached Bishr and offered him a princely $333,000 to star in a porn film, apparently intending to afterwards palm off the footage as genuine.  Our long-suffering doppelganger, however – a devout Muslim – kept his honor, turning down this opportunity to become (presumably) the world’s best paid porn star, at which point the gentlemen, who may or may not have been organized criminals, became increasingly threatening, eventually kidnapping Bishr off the street and bundling him into the back of a van at gun point.

In reports, Bishr complains of his abduction having taken place in plain sight of numerous bystanders, who apparently “did nothing.” We understand how you must feel, Bishr, but try to see it from their perspective. One minute they’d be thinking, “fuck me, isn’t that Sadddam Hussein?” and the next they’re watching Sadddam Hussein get stuffed into a van with a gun to his head. Absolutely anyone, having pinched themselves, would be sure to keep their head down.

Fortunately, having been threatened and roughed up a bit, Bashr’s abductors let him go (the whole thing rather resembles Bob Dylan’s recent video for the splendid “Duquesne Whistle”). Casting aside the small issue of Bashr’s right to “self-determination,” you have to concede that, while they might still be lacking that Anglo-American capacity to stick to your guns until you see the money, these were some pretty ingenious gangsters. The entrepreneurial spirit, it appears, is finally spreading its wings across the Middle East. Yeehaw!

 
Police state in Portlandia?

Between 60 to 80 FBI officers, working in conjunction with agents of the Joint Terrorism Task Force, armed to the teeth and wearing paramilitary uniforms, stormed the homes of several suspected “anarchists” in Portland in late July.

The house where Dennison Williams and Leah-Lynn Plante live was one of them. When Williams heard loud noises and saw a flash grenade go off, he began yelling that he was upstairs and unarmed. He told Sarah Mirk from The Portland Mercury:

“I was scared,” he said. “The police in this town have a history of shooting people, I was worried they would accidentally shoot me.”

According to Williams, FBI officers entered his room with assault rifles and kept them aimed at him while they handcuffed him. They put him in a chair for about 30 minutes while they searched his house. Williams says there were about 15 FBI officers in the house, plus one Portland police officer on the street outside. According to the property receipt Williams received from the officers, the feds seized several items, including his computer, phone, hard-drive, two thumb drives, and various clothes (including black jeans, black t-shirt, and a black bandana). They then served him a subpoena to appear at a grand jury in Seattle next Thursday, August 2nd.

Williams is not sure exactly what the grand jury is meeting about, but that likely they want to ask him about other people. The FBI has said only that the raids are part of an ongoing “violent crime” investigation.

“It’s related to political opposition, it’s related to political dissent,” says Williams. “They’re trying to create a wedge within people who are resistors… They’re specifically pursuing anarchists.”

The FBI search warrant states that they are looking to seize items which may be evidence regarding the crimes of conspiracy to destroy government property, interstate travel with intent to riot, and conspiracy to travel interstate with intent to riot. Those items include: Clothing and related items work during commission of offenses; paint; sticks and flags similar to those used or carried during the commission of the offenses, and material for making flags; anti-government or anarchist literature, documentation or communications related to the offenses, flares, computers or electronic storage media of any kind.

On July 10th, Seattle police officers staged a similar raid on the house of some Occupy Mayday protesters in Seattle. On the day Williams’ house and two other houses in Portland were searched, the FBI served grand jury subpoenas to people in Olympia and Seattle, as well. Williams was not sure how many people were served subpoenas, but thinks it is somewhere around seven people, and says he “will not cooperate” with the grand jury. Anyone who refuses to testify when subpoenaed can potentially face jail time. (Emphasis added)

Read that last sentence again. Grand jury subpoenas have also been served to activists in Olympia and Seattle. Apparently, these subpoenas involve the investigation of May Day vandalism, according to the Seattle Chapter of the National Lawyers Guild, who urged in a statement that the U.S. Attorney’s Office drop the subpoenas because they feared they were being used “as a pretext for harassing political activists.”

The Seattle lawyers guild spokesman Neil Fox said it was the seizure of political literature from those subpoenaed that most concerned his organization:

“It concerns us any time there are law-enforcement raids that target political literature, first amendment-protected materials,” Fox said. “There’s a chilling effect these things have on people.”

With these coordinated raids and grand jury subpoenas, the Feds are announcing that they’re going to tighten the screws on leftist activists by threatening them with prison time if they won’t rat people out. Rat them out for what is still unknown as the subpoenas are sealed and expected to stay that way, according to the FBI. 

It smells like a “fishing expedition” to me, but maybe they aren’t expecting to get any information. Perhaps all they really want to do is to send the earsplitting LOUD AND CLEAR message to would-be far-left activists: “This could happen to you, too!”

Matt Duran, one of the individuals caught up in the Feds’ snare, was thrown into prison on the 16th for civil contempt for his refusal to testify before the Grand Jury Committee against his community. Leah-Lynn Plante also refused to testify, and was released after being re-subpoenaed.

From Leah-Lynn Plante’s statement:

No, I will not answer their questions. I believe that these hearings are politically motivated. The government wants to use them to collect information that it can use in a campaign of repression. I refuse to have any part of it, I will never answer their questions, I will never speak.

It is likely that the government will put me in jail for that refusal.

While I hate the very idea of prison, I am ready to face it in order to stay true to my personal beliefs. I know that they want to kidnap me and isolate me from my friends and my loved ones in an effort to coerce me to speak. It will not work. I know that if I am taken away, I will not be alone. We have friends and comrades all around the world standing behind us, and even though this has been one of the most traumatizing experiences of my life, I have never felt so supported or loved. I can only speak for myself, but I have every faith that the others subpoenaed to these hearings will likewise refuse. And I know that hundreds of people have called the US Attorney demanding that they end this tribunal. Hundreds of organizations, representing thousands of people, signed onto a statement expressing solidarity with those of us under attack and demanding an end to this sort of repression.

From Matt Duran:

My name is Matt Duran and I will do everything I can to resist this Grand Jury. I’m releasing this as it’s come to my attention that the strategy my lawyer and I have been working under will more than likely not work; the prosecution wants to grant me immunity before I even have a chance to testify. I want to make it clear that I am in no way ever cooperating with the state now or ever. Anyone who knows me well enough to be a close friend knows that I will fight with my political allies and for them with every fiber of my being. If I ever did cooperate, it would bring an immeasurable amount of shame upon myself, my community, and my family as they have risked more in resistance than I have in my life so far.

The Committee Against Political Repression has set up a website to post information about the case as it unfolds and take donations for the defendants’ legal defense fund. They declared in a statement of solidarity with those who have been subpoenaed:

…Though the FBI has said that the raids are part of a violent crime investigation, the truth is that the federal authorities are conducting a political witch-hunt against anarchists and others working toward a more just, free, and equal society. The warrants served specifically listed anarchist literature as evidence to be seized pointing to the fact that the FBI and police are targeting this group of people because of their political ideas. Pure and simple, these raids and the grand jury hearings are being used to intimidate people whose politics oppose the state’s agenda. During a time of growing economic and ecological crises that are broadly affecting people across the world, it is an attempt to push back any movement towards creating a world that is humane, one that meets every person’s needs rather than serving only the interests of the rich…

Thank you, Juan Monasterio!

 
So rarely have I ever been quite beautifully claw hammered by a movie than I was by the 1965 film, Who Killed Teddy Bear? It’s one of those films that can leave you slack jawed over what you have just seen and all the while it just seeps further and further into your consciousness. It’s been days since I last watched it and I still cannot stop thinking about it.

The basic plot revolves around a young, beautiful DJ and aspiring actress, Norah (Juliet Prowse), who soon becomes the focal point of a stalker. He starts off as a creaky voiced, hot and heavy breathing obscene phone caller, making comments like “I know what you look like right now” and “I can make you feel like a real woman.” She’s annoyed at first but gets progressively more rattled as the number of calls grow and violence starts to blossom around her.

Where things get really interesting is that instead of building up the identity of Norah’s mystery obsessive to the very end, we find out who he is midway through the film. The lithe but muscular figure, often shiny with sweat and clad in white briefs, turns out to be the boyishly handsome busboy, Lawrence (Sal Mineo), who works with her at the discotheque. The jolt of seeing former teen idol and Rebel Without a Cause star Mineo as the sexually damaged obscene phone caller with homicidal tendencies is as strong now as it must have been back when it was originally released.

But Mineo’s performance is much more than just a teen dream novelty. He brings some serious depth and layers to Lawrence, creating a character who is alternately sad and frightening, mostly due to his childhood rooted dysfunction. Whether he is taking his mentally challenged sister to the zoo or working out with an intensity that precedes either the hottest sex act or the worst murder, Mineo is a powerhouse here. His Lawrence is right up there with Anthony Perkins in Psycho and John Amplas’s titular role in George Romero’s Martin.

The film itself is a powder keg of beautifully moody B&W cinematography and the grimy underbelly of the human condition. The opening credit sequence alone sets the tone, featuring a blurry undulation of bodies as a little girl watches, clutching her cherished teddy bear. She turns away, only to fall down the stairs, with her face now suddenly blank, as if she is dead or brain damaged. Without a breath of relief, the actual film starts in a cramped, shadowy bedroom, complete with a nightstand littered with lurid publications, featuring titles like French Frills and When She Was Bad. A mirror reflects the image of a man caressing his bare chest while looking at photos of Norah, right before calling her up.

The elements of sleaze continue as Norah encounters police Lieutenant Dave Madden (Jan Murray), a single dad whose fascination with all manners of sexual deviancy infects his home life. (At one point, one of his coworkers mentions how Dave’s young daughter talks like a “vice squad officer.”) Even Norah’s boss, the glamorous ball buster Marian (Elaine Stritch), comes across like an uneasy mixture of maternal and less than pure motive. We even get some now-historic footage of a seamier New York City, with the highlight being Lawrence’s jaunt to an adult bookstore. Seeing shelves lined with girlie mags and books ranging from Fanny Hill, William S. Burroughs Naked Lunch, Hubert Selby Jr.‘s Last Exit to Brooklyn to more purple prose titles like Dance Hall Dyke and My Naughty, Naughty Life is a much beloved peek into the pre-gentrification and Disneyfication of Times Square. 

Who Killed Teddy Bear? is a brave film that gives you no easy answers. Sadly, it didn’t really do a thing for anyone that was involved, career-wise. Mineo did continue to do film, TV and theater work, including staging a controversial version of the prison drama Fortune and Men’s Eyes that featured a young Don Johnson. All of that was cut short in 1976, when he was murdered by a drifter. Elaine Stritch continues to be a monolithic character actress on Broadway, film and TV. Juliet Prowse, Jan Murray and Daniel J. Travanti, who has the small role of Carlo, Marian’s deaf bouncer, all went on to have healthy careers in television. The same could be said for director Joseph Cates, though perhaps that is the biggest shame given that he never was given the chance again to direct anything as nuanced and challenging as Who Killed Teddy Bear?. In an ideal world, this film should have forged a different career direction for Cates and certainly for Mineo, whose wounded eyes and brutal actions are hard to forget.

Who Killed Teddy Bear? is ripe for proper rediscovery. It’s a mystery why this great film is still not available legally on DVD here in the US. (It did get a release in the UK, though that appears to already be out-of-print.) It is viewable on YouTube, for anyone who does not have access to the UK, PAL formatted disc. Hopefully, it will someday get the proper release that it so justly deserves.
 

 
Posting at the Nashville City Paper, Ken Whitehouse reports that an anonymous hacker, or plural, hackers, is claiming in a Pastebin message to have gained “all available 1040 tax forms” from Mitt Romney by accessing computers in the Franklin offices of financial services firm PricewaterhouseCoopers. If this is true, this was an incredibly ballsy thing to attempt.

An excerpt from the hacker message says:

“Romney’s 1040 tax returns were taken from the PWC office 8/25/2012 by gaining access to the third floor via a gentleman working on the 3rd floor of the building. Once on the 3rd floor, the team moved down the stairs to the 2nd floor and setup shop in an empty office room. During the night, suite 260 was entered, and all available 1040 tax forms for Romney were copied. A package was sent to the PWC on suite 260 with a flash drive containing a copy of the 1040 files, plus copies were sent to the Democratic office in the county and copies were sent to the GOP office in the county at the beginning of the week also containing flash drives with copies of Romney’s tax returns before 2010. A scanned signature image for Mitt Romney from the 1040 forms were scanned and included with the packages, taken from earlier 1040 tax forms gathered and stored on the flash drives.

The group will release all available files to the public on the 28 of September, 2012.”

Then a follow up letter was also posted that reads:

Dear PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP
Using your Office @ 830 Crescent Centre Drive, Suite 260, Franklin, TN 37067 Telephone: [1] (615) 503-2860 we were able to gain access to your network file servers and copy over the tax documents for one Willard M Romney and Ann D Romney. We are sure that once you figure out where the security breach was, some people will probably get fired but that is not our concern.

All major news media outlets are going to be sent an encrypted copy of the most recent tax years that your company had on file since you did not have them all in a convenient electronic form. The years before 2010 will be of great interest to many. If the parties interested do not want the encrypted key released to the public to unlock these documents on September 28 of this year then payment will be necessary.

The deal is quite simple. Convert $1,000,000 USD to Bitcoins (Google if if you need a lesson on what Bitcoin is) using the various markets available out in the world for buying. Transfer the Bitcoins gathered to the Bitcoin address listed below. It does not matter if small amounts or one large amount is transferred, as long as the final value of the Bitcoins is equal to $1,000,000 USD at the time when it is finished. The keys to unlock the data will be purged and what ever is inside the documents will remain a secret forever.

Failure to do this before September 28, the entire world will be allowed to view the documents with a publicly released key to unlock everything.

Bitcoin Address to Stop Release:
1HeF89wMjC48bWNgWvVo7Wu3RaLW8XVsE8

And the same time, the other interested parties will be allowed to compete with you. For those that DO want the documents released will have an different address to send to. If $1,000,000 USD is sent to this account below first; then the encryption keys will be made available to the world right away. So this is an equal opportunity for the documents to remain locked away forever or to be exposed before the September 28 deadline.

Who-ever is the winner does not matter to us.

Bitcoin Address to Promote Full Release:
12AP6iCwRNFQqKLStH3A4b4hw3SL6RaNgB

Cheers!

Reference to avoid Fakes that only you will have.
1.all these considerations did not deter me from the path of duty
2.he moment I understood the will of my Heavenly Father

Despite the Mission Impossible meets a Nigerian 419 email scam feel to this one, it’s pretty obvious who the loser is in all of this, isn’t it? Hard to say exactly what’s going on here, but if this is a scam, it’s a goddamned elaborate one done in the full glare of the media. And the claims are so specific. Clearly it would be known to someone within the Franklin offices of PWC if there is any truth to this story of the break-in and quite simply if Romney’s tax returns could even be retrieved from that particular office or via an intranet that someone working there would have access to. They would just know.

Whitehouse writes that the City Paper was unable to independently confirm with county officials or representatives of PricewaterhouseCoopers if they have received packages like the ones described in the message. Neither would federal law enforcement confirm or deny an ongoing investigation into the alleged hack.

UPDATE: PricewaterhouseCoopers is saying that there is no evidence a break-in occurred, according to TPM, and gave the following statement:

“We are aware of the allegations that have been made regarding improper access to our systems. We are working closely with the United States Secret Service, and at this time there is no evidence that our systems have been compromised or that there was any unauthorized access to the data in question.”

SECOND UPDATE:

Secret Service Eyes Romney Tax Return Blackmail Attempt

George Ogilvie, a Secret Service spokesman, confirmed to TPM that the agency is “investigating the incident,” but could not add further details.

In an interview with The Tennessean, the executive director of the Williamson County Republican Party said she also initially thought to treat the matter as a hoax.

“A million dollars seemed kind of low,” Jean Barwick told the paper. “If you’re going to go for a million, why not go for $100 million.”

At first, she contacted only the state GOP, to see if it got a similar package. But then on Wednesday, Barwick decided to contact the police. Charles Warner, a spokesperson for the Franklin Police Department, told TPM that based on what officers were told, the department called the Secret Service. (Warner added that the Franklin police did not respond to any complaints at the offices of PricewaterhouseCoopers’ during August.)

No one from either county party appears to have attempted to look at the contents of the USB drives.

Burr, the Democratic Party Chairman, said he had kept the USB drive in his briefcase. At one point, Burr said, he considered plugging the drive into an old computer, but he said the “last thing I wanted to do was plug it in to a computer that I cared about.”

Wednesday morning, Burr’s office started to get calls.

“We got a call from an affiliate of The Tennessean newspaper here,” Burr said. “Almost immediately after that we got a call from the Secret Service.”

Secret Service members came by a few hours later, and took the materials with them.

Via TPM

 
One of the most influential drug lords of all time, Griselda Blanco has been shot dead. Credited as the “innovator” of drive-by shooting on motorcycle, Blanco was eventually felled by her own technique. She was known as much for her ruthlessness as the massive amounts of cocaine she smuggled; her body count included multiple late husbands, and her ex-lover said she killed a 10-year-old after his parents refused to pay his ransom.

Outliving Pablo Escobar and serving her time, Griselda Blanco had some of the bloodiest hands in Colombia. Her life was chronicled in 1990’s gloriously pulpy (and-now-out-of-print-so-be-jealous-I-have-one) The Godmother, as well as the 2006 documentary Cocaine Cowboys 2: Hustlin’ With The Godmother, the sequel to the more comprehensive, Cocaine Cowboys.
 

 
As they motor off into the neon-lit night, their leader, Mad John can be heard shouting, ‘Hey, if the LSD don’t get us, then the cannabis will.’ It’s part joke, part bravado, a youthful two-fingers up to the world.

Made in 1973, this is a fascinating documentary, if at times funny through its overly sensationalist tone, on the Hells Angels Motor Cycle Club of England - ‘900ccs or over’. It follows the dozen-or-so members of the London Chapter, established in 1969, by a transatlantic decree from the Californian Hells Angels. The London Chapter is run by Mad John (who first appeared in court aged 12, and had 5 other convictions at the time this film was made), and his Sergeant-at-Arms, Karl (who considers himself a psychopath, and was once so violently assaulted his eyes were popped out from their sockets, and were replaced in cross-eyed).

We follow Mad John and Karl as they prepare to take a ride down to the coast. The film tellingly reveals John’s visit to his ex-partner who is unimpressed by the Angels and their juvenile antics. Unable or unwilling to talk to his wife or children, Mad John spends the visit collecting mail and playing with his Alsatian dog Hitler. John has an naive and unhealthy interest in Nazi’s, and towards the end of the film makes an odd analogy between Hitler’s vision for an Aryan Germany with his vision for a Universal Chapter of Hells Angels.

Inadvertent comedy comes from a Python-like interview with one of the Angels’ moms (‘He’s a nice boy, really’), and the Chapter’s failure to make it all the way down to the coast. Instead, they end up on a disused canal barge Katrina, where the Angels spend the night drinking, smoking and er…watching Doctor Who.
 

 
They look like characters from a Graham Greene novel, these mug shots of petty criminals from Newcastle, England. Each face suggests its own tale of hardship, poverty, seedy boarding houses, cobble-stone streets, smoky pubs, and fierce, grubby violence. One died in action, another in the Blitz. They dazed with need, or as William Burroughs once said:

‘The face of evil is always the face of total need.’

These mug shots came from a Newcastle Police ID Book, which had been discarded in a junk shop, where it was discovered and then donated to the Tyne & Wear Archives and Museums.
 

 

 
More mug shots of lawless Geordies, after the jump…
 

 
What a shock. Via Back2Stonewall:

A longtime anti-gay activist, California Prop 8 donor,  and elementary school teacher was taken into custody on August 17th after admitting inappropriate contact with young boys.Caleb Douglas Hesse, a teacher for the Morongo Unified School District since 1987 (most recently, he was teaching first grade at Friendly Hills Elementary School in Joshua Tree) and a longtime youth volunteer with the virulently homophobic Evangelical Free Church of Yucca Valley, has confessed to sexually abusing “numerous underage boys,” with authorities believe the crimes occurred between the early 1980’s and as recently as a week ago.”

Investigators say Hesse met the majority of the victims during overnight outings with a youth group at the Evangelical Free Church.

During his arraignment on August 21st Hess recanted his confession and changed his plea to “not guilty.”

HOW could you recant a confession like that? “Ha ha! I was just messin’ with your heads!”??? How would that even work?

Hess is being held on a $2.5 million bond.

Sad, but hardly surprising.
 

 
An elderly woman (who goes unnamed) with “good intentions” decided a 19th-century Spanish fresco on a church titled “Ecce Homo” by Elias Garcia Martinez needed a lil’ facelift.

“The restoration work was completed without permission” writes The Telegraph.

Employees at the Centro went to check on the mural at the church of Santuario de Misericodia only to find it drastically altered.

What we are left with is something that now resembles André the Giant.
 

 
With thanks to Seán Sansom!