A friend of this page, and an occasional commenter, named Amy Irene White has a couple of internet radio shows. She asked me to mention them and I am a soft touch.

Amy broadcasts a show called Bikers versus Muslims every Monday from 9 p.m. to 11 p.m. Central Time which, if you are drunk when you read this, is ten until midnight in New York, Boston, Rock Hill and Miami and 7 p.m. to nine on the Left Coast. You can listen to the show here.

Tonight the show will feature a long interview with C.J. Allan, a former International President of the Hessians Motorcycle Club. C.J. is an engraver by trade. He started engraving bike parts with Indian Larry and many of you have seen his work.

Of course tonight’s show, like all of them, will feature hearty helpings of Muslim bashing. And, since Amy currently seems to be involved in a Twitter war with the cast of The Devils Ride, tonight’s entertainment may also include a few pointed remarks about that absolutely true and indispensible look at what it is really like to be an outlaw biker.

Biker Bedtime Stories

Amy’s other show is called Biker Bedtime Stories. You can listen to that on Sunday and Wednesday nights at ten Central. Last night’s episode featured the gentle and moderate J.J. Solari, a former Mouseketeer and Easyriders contributor who sometimes offends people in the comments section here.

Those who have not yet encountered J.J. might enjoy his recent capsule review of The Devils Ride:

“The Devils Ride is probably the worst television show in the history of electricity. It is more likely that Searching For Bigfoot will find a bigfoot than that The Devils Ride will achieve a level of entertainment value surpassing the fun of watching maggots devour a carcass. O.J. Simpson smiling his fairylike simpleton smile at a jury is more powerful and riveting entertainment. Seeing the baby grinning a gas-induced grin at Granma is more phenomenally amazing than all the episodes of The Devils Ride put together and played on an Imax screen inside your very asshole. And yet to hear the people connected with the show talk about the show you would think that Vietnam and Korea and all the ordnance used to make it lively and sparkly were as sleeping puppies in the mommy dog’s womb compared to the ferocity of life of The Devils Ride that plays out on the handheld screen as you watch it, yawning, while standing at the urinal taking a piss. “We’re the real thing, bro! Yo! You have no idea! You are talking shit! We know about you! We could tell people some things about you! You better stop talking that shit! We can come down on you hard! You know who you’re talking to?”

Amy Speaks

White also has opinions about bikers and the funhouse mirror of mass media:

“Suddenly, thanks to idiots like Kurt Sutter, there is a new breed of biker,” she writes. “A sagging calf length shorts and white Nike wearing, flat billed baseball cap and rap music toting gangsta style moronic type idiot seems to have emerged from the bowels of Anarchy. The magazines that used to sell gun wallets and print marijuana brownie recipes are now so nauseatingly politically correct that I believe they would disintegrate if a real biker even farted on them. This ‘Oh, we can’t mention drugs or guns or pussy or anything else interesting because it might offend someone’ attitude is to the point that colors aren’t even allowed at some events hosted by popular magazines. There are riding rules that state you are supposed to wear your cut if you are on your bike. What do these event planners expect you to do with your cuts? Stick ‘em up your asses? I say fuck that. Fuck these Justin Bieber-slash-Vin Diesel wannabe bikers. I mourn the loss of the old bikers – the real ones. I cry like a baby at every casket I see containing a grizzled, hairy old guy whose mind held the legends of a million miles. I search in vain at Sturgis, at Daytona…looking for that campfire surrounded by wind weathered, worn leathered ghosts of the past. More and more I feel that it is imperative to get back to who we once were. A force to be reckoned with. Not mice but men.”

This kind of iconoclasm is not everybody’s cup of tea. But if it isn’t you probably stumbled onto this page by accident, anyway. If you are offended, you can get even more offended here.

About a week ago Jason Hervey, who is a co-founder of Bischoff Hervey Entertainment Television and who also produces The Devils Ride, messaged me on Twitter to politely inquire, “So, how did you like the show,” or something like that. Hervey seems like a decent guy. I imagine he was a kid who had to trade his childhood for a handful of lemons and now he is well on his way to owning Minute Maid.

No. Sorry, Jason. My review was held up. For one thing, nobody at Bischoff Hervey could be bothered to send me a DVD, or what The Industry calls a “screener.” Sometimes, an episode of something will be on a website that requires an access code. Nobody sent me a URL or a code either. And, I didn’t watch the thing when it aired. So I finally got around to watching it on Time Warner Cable’s view on demand last night.

The Punch

I do have to admit that it was almost worth sitting through an hour of this steaming heap of entertainment product just to watch Ralph “Rockem” Randolph get popped in the eye by some member or associate of the Dago charter of the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club.

Rockem, the dour fellow in the photo above, got a mouse and a cut that might have been a problem if he was in a prize fight. I suspect he will wear his wound through the next couple of episodes as a red badge of authenticity. I think what Hervey wanted me to tell the world last week was that I recognized five, I think I counted, indicia-less representatives of the Red and White in Dago who got paid behind this particular business venture. Good for those guys! I am all for guys getting paid for standing around a movie set.

Ralph Randolph is a former member of the Angels’ Mesa charter. He obviously left the club in good standing. He probably hooked up his former brothers with this gig. Then after he did that he got punched. No wonder people think we’re all animals.

More About The Punch

The real, live, actual violence was not without precedent. On camera in season one, Laffing Devils wives, a prospect and some of the production crew beat up a photographer named Ashi Fachler. That same season, when the Laffing Devils were still actually a motorcycle club, two members had a well publicized and unfortunate encounter with a member of the Peckerwoods MC. And a month or two after that, several members of a brand name club walked into the Laffing Devils clubhouse during church, helped themselves to some beers and pointedly explained the hierarchy of the food chain to the TV tough guys.

Season Three, Episode One’s punch might very well have been spontaneous and genuine. That’s how it looked and Bischoff Hervey certainly edited the brief exchange melodramatically. Supposedly “the punch” was somehow the result of a one percent diamond on the air cleaner insert on Rockem’s bike. It is plausible.

What is less so is the fact that Ralph and his new “club,” the made for television Sinister Mob Syndicate, are constantly prattling about going to “war” with their arch enemies, the Laffing Devils. Despite all that war talk, like “you guys better be ready to take a bullet for this thing,” neither Rockem nor any of his club brothers put up their hands after “the punch.” So that particular insight into the club life may need a little work. Maybe the Sinister Mobsters should call themselves sisters from now on.

Other than “the punch” episode one was mostly hot air.

No I didn’t watch episode two last night. I traded a couple of semi-lascivious emails with my ex-muse then turned off the television and read a book. Maybe I’ll review episode two next week. How about it Jason? Would you like that?

The Mongols Nation Case will grind on for at least another nine months.

The case, formally titled USA v. Mongol Nation, an Unincorporated Association, began with a criminal indictment a year ago, on February 13, 2013. The case appears to be a recapitulation of US v. Cavazos et al. which was filed in October 2008. A unique aspect of Cavazos was the United States illegal and mendacious demand that the Mongols Motorcycle Club name be forfeited. In practice that demand meant that government thugs with badges were allowed to break into the homes and cars of innocent people looking for Mongols mementos from calendars and snapshots to support tee shirts.

The Global War On Clubs

Most of the world’s English language press reported that American police had been given the power to “rip” Mongols patches “off the backs” of any Mongol they could find whether he had been indicted or not. Police can’t do that legally because the Constitution forbids it. The details are well established in case law. But 64 months after Cavazos the same government attorneys who prosecuted that case, Christopher Brunwin and Steven Welk, are still at it.

Brunwin and Welk and, presumably, everybody else in the Holder Justice Department think government bureaucrats should be empowered to forbid the existence of motorcycle clubs. Currently it is the Mongols. Next will be the Pagans. The next domino after that will probably be the Hells Angels.

The underlying story is that the global war on terror has become a global war against motorcycle clubs. The war has more facets than a diamond. For example, politicians in the Australian State of Queensland recently outlawed 25 motorcycle clubs, including the Mongols, there. And even more recently, friends and relatives of deceased Hells Angel Elliott “Cisco” Valderrama have been denied permission to enter the United States to attend the dead man’s funeral because their names have been placed on a big, secret list of potential terrorists – because they were related to a Hells Angel.

New Trial Date

Obviously the Justice Department will continue to exploit the war against Al Qaeda to enforce ever more rigid social controls on Americans. It doesn’t matter that this argument over what government apparatchiks can forbid is slower than chess. The government is already punishing the Mongols by forcing the club to defend itself against the same accusations over and over. That’s why Mongol Nation is important.

The Mongols tried to get the case dismissed last October. The presiding judge, a blatantly stupid man named Otis D. Wright, angrily refused and ordered “the Mongols” to go on trial on March 25. A month ago Wright finally allowed Bob Bernstein, the exasperated attorney who had sought a dismissal, to resign from the case. The Mongols hired Joseph Yanny to replace him.

Yanny is one of the cleverest criminal defenders in Los Angeles. He has advised the Vagos Motorcycle Club for several years and he represented that club when the town of Hemet, California and half the politicians in the state accused the Vagos of terrorism in 2010.

The first thing Yanny requested was a continuance of the trial. Judge Wright granted that late last month. So Mongols Nation, a turn of phrase, will now be tried for racketeering beginning at 8:30 a.m. next September 30.

Sometimes the best way to tell an enormous story is with a few spare details. The big story is Queensland’s Vicious Lawless Association Disestablishment Act of 2013 or as everyone calls it the VLAD law. Like Vlad the Impaler. The spare detail is a guy named Ben Wilson.

Wilson (in the photo above) is a concrete mason in Brisbane and a friend of a member of the Rebels Motorcycle Club named Darryl Cook. Cook had leased a commercial building that his club used as a clubhouse. The Queensland government ordered the clubhouse closed and decreed that it was a “proscribed place,” a place no Rebel was allowed to enter. Cook, who was stuck with the lease, decided to turn it into a retail store called 12-Gauge Clothing. His wife would manage the place. And since Cook couldn’t legally enter the building he asked his friend Wilson to paint over the Rebels insignia outside and refurbish the interior for him.

Arrest

The store was scheduled to open last December 8. Three policemen visited the store the previous morning, questioned Wilson and two other people who were working there, then left them alone for the rest of the day.

Wilson was there the next day for the grand opening. So were 30 cops. Wilson and some other volunteers set up a bounce house. The police searched it. They also searched a charitable booth the men had set up inside. Police demanded to see Wilson’s drivers license. When they discovered it had expired three days before they cited Wilson even though he was standing on a sidewalk at the time. Then Wilson went back to selling tee-shirts inside the store.

Police arrested Wilson as soon as a television news crew arrived. He was charged with being an associate of the Rebels, a forbidden organization, and walking into a prescribed place.

Detention

Police then searched Wilson’s home for proof of the accusation that he was a Rebels’ associate. They found a Confederate flag that Wilson, a Dukes of Hazard fan, had purchased on eBay. The flag is now the principal evidence against Wilson.

He made his initial appearance in a Brisbane Court 11 days later, wearing the clothes he had on when he was arrested, and he was denied bail. Wilson has been in jail since then. Unable to work to pay his bills, he has lost his car, motorcycle, his home and most of his furnishings. His girlfriend and his two children have moved in with her parents.

Under the VLAD law, Wilson faces a mandatory sentence of six months in solitary confinement.

Wilson hasn’t yet raised the money he needs to hire a lawyer. His girlfriend, Ashley Metcalf, has started a Facebook page to solicit donations for his defense. You can find the page here.

Joseph A. Yanny, the Century City Attorney who now defends the Mongols Motorcycle Club in a criminal case that seeks to effectively outlaw the club and confiscate its insignia, filed a motion late Friday that seeks to disqualify Otis D. Wright II, the flagrantly partial district court judge who now presides over the matter.

The case, titled USA v. Mongol Nation, an Unincorporated Association is a do over of another racketeering case called US v. Cavazos et al. When that older case was unsealed on October 21, 2008 then United States Attorney Thomas P. O’Brien bragged:

“The racketeering indictment seeks the forfeiture of the trademarked ‘Mongols’ name, which is part of the ‘patch’ members wear on their motorcycle jackets.

“In addition to pursuing the criminal charges set forth in the indictment, for the first time ever, we are seeking to forfeit the intellectual property of a gang,” O’Brien said. “The name ‘Mongols,’ which is part of the gang’s ‘patch’ that members wear on their motorcycle jackets, was trademarked by the gang. The indictment alleges that this trademark is subject to forfeiture. We have filed papers seeking a court order that will prevent gang members from using or displaying the name ‘Mongols.’ If the court grants our request for this order, then if any law enforcement officer sees a Mongol wearing his patch, he will be authorized to stop that gang member and literally take the jacket right off his back.”

O’Brien resigned les than a year later in the middle of an ethical scandal. He is now a defense attorney specializing in accusations of white collar crime.

Judge Cooper

Pulling the Mongols patch was unequivocally the principal point of the 2008 indictment. The indictment culminated a three year-long domestic spying operation conducted by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives called “Operation Black Rain.” Numerous former Mongols pled guilty to Count One of the Cavazos indictment. That count alleged that the Club is a murdering, drug dealing criminal enterprise. Beyond a shadow of a doubt, the government coerced defendants in that case into pleading guilty to racketeering in order to build its case against the club as a whole. Among the confessed criminal conspirators was former club President Ruben “Doc” Cavazos who claimed ownership of the club’s trademarks and attempted to forfeit them to the government as part of his plea deal.

Cavazos was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Christopher Brunwin who is also prosecuting Mongol Nation. The general idea was to outlaw the Mongols Motorcycle Club and then outlaw all other motorcycle clubs. A subsequent case against the Pagans Motorcycle Club titled US v. Barbeito et al. used the same argument to try to “literally take the jacket right off the” backs of Pagans whether they had been found guilty of a crime or not.

The Judge who presided over Cavazos was the late Florence Marie Cooper, an erudite and moderate jurist who was the only judge in the federal district without an undergraduate college degree. Cooper, as she would later explain to Brunwin, had been misled by prosecutors into thinking that the Mongols insignia was a tangible asset with significant monetary value. She issued a preliminary order of forfeiture of the Mongols collective membership marks in order to preserve that asset pending the outcome of the criminal case.

Cooper also presided over a related civil case awkwardly titled Ramon Rivera versus Ronnie A. Carter, Acting Director, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF); John A. Torres, Special Agent in Charge, ATF Los Angeles Field Division; and Eric H. Holder, United States Attorney General. Rivera was a Mongols member in San Diego who was never charged let alone convicted of any crime and who objected to having to forfeit his Mongols insignia. In that case Cooper enjoined “…the Government, its officers, agents, servants, employees, and attorneys, and anyone in active concert or participation with any of the foregoing persons, from seizing, or asking or directing any other person or entity to seize, from Plaintiff any property or item bearing or displaying all or part of the collective membership mark at issue in (the case) United States v. Cavazos.”

A week later Cooper denied “the Government’s Application for Entry of Preliminary Order of Forfeiture as to Registered Trademarks, Pursuant to Guilty Plea of Ruben Cavazos.” In the same ruling Cooper also denied “the Government’s Motion for an Order Striking Motion by Movant Mongols Nation Motorcycle Club, Inc. for Amendment of Post-Indictment Restraining Order.” Briefly stated, Cooper ruled that the Mongols patch was not a “trademark” but a “collective membership mark” and was a constitutionally protected form of free expression. The issue of whether the government can arbitrarily seize a Christian cross, a Star Of David, the Masonic Square and Compasses or the Mongols logo should have been definitively settled then and would have been except that Judge Cooper died in the middle of the case. ATF officials and prosecutors publically gloated over her death because it gave them another chance to effect the prohibition of what they saw as an antisocial organization by simply hurling accusations at the nonconformists.

After Cooper’s death Cavazos was split between two other Central District of California judges, David O. Carter and Wright. That is how the embarrassingly undistinguished Wright was interjected in the Mongols mess. For the last five years Wright, a former Deputy Sheriff has so favored prosecutors that it is easy to speculate that he was exactly the incompetent judge prosecutors wanted and that he was assigned to the Mongols case because arms were twisted. It is a side of federal justice the public never sees. In a stunningly candid statement in open court, Judge Carter remarked, “If the people knew what happens here they would burn the courthouse down.”

Disqualifying Judge Wright

In a pretrial hearing last October 21, Wright was so fatuous, condescending, ignorant and hostile to Bob Bernstein, the Mongols previous attorney, that Bernstein quit the case. The Mongols’ motion for disqualification cites Judge Wright’s remarks in that hearing and attaches a full transcript of them.

Judge Wright may voluntarily withdraw from the case. If Wright does not simply withdraw the motion will be considered by Judge George H. King who is the Chief Judge for United States District Court in the Central District of California.

In addition to Wright’s disqualification, the motion filed yesterday asks the court to “order the Clerk’s office to produce all records pertaining to this case’s assignment to Judge Wright.” Yanny has also requested “that the Court to whom this motion is assigned set a hearing so that the parties may present oral argument and inspect the requested documents.”

Brunwin intends to fight against Wright’s disqualification. Yanny also writes: “Prior to filing this motion for disqualification of Judge Wright, I conferred with Assistant U.S. Attorney, Christopher Brunwin, regarding the same via conference call and follow up emails. About one week later I called Mr. Brunwin again at which time Mr. Brunwin informed me that the Government was unwilling to stipulate to the motion.”

Yanny argues that Wright’s prejudices against the Mongols fossilized after he officiated over 40 of the coerced plea deals in the Cavazos case. The Mongols lawyer writes: “Mongols Nation Motorcycle Club, LLC respectfully submits that comments, which have been memorialized in the public record, unquestionably display Judge Wright’s bias against the sole defendant in this case, the Mongols Nation Motorcycle Club, which bias was formed before properly receiving one shred of evidence in this case, regarding this defendant, as a consequence of Judge Wright’s prior exposure to the charges, proceedings and the voluntary guilty pleas of forty separate criminal defendants in a previous matter over which he presided, entitled US v. Cavazos. Those plea agreements are currently under seal, and this Defendant was not afforded the niceties of Due Process in those prior proceedings.”

“Although this Defendant has never been before this Court in trial, Judge Wright’s comments suggest that he has already found the Movant guilty of the most critical of ultimate facts regarding culpability, by virtue of a presumed association with individuals who pled guilty in the Cavazos case. Additionally, Judge Wright has already pronounced sentence with respect to this Defendant’s property rights without properly receiving on shred of evidence in the penalty of a case involving this Defendant. ‘Regrettably,’ and with all due respect to Judge Wright, Movant submits that any reasonable Citizen would conclude that Movant cannot possibly obtain a fair trial in the instant case unless Judge Wright is recused from this case. Indeed, given the persistence of Judge Wright’s obvious bias against the Mongols that is now reflected in the public record, recusal is not only required by statute, but it is necessary to ensure public confidence in the Judicial System.”

“…on October 21, 2013, it became eminently clear that Judge Wright had already pre-judged the ultimate facts of the instant criminal case regarding a defendant that had yet to appear before him at trial, present any evidence or cross examine even one witness. He was willing to do this based solely on consent decrees entered against other separate and distinct defendants who had not fully and fairly litigated their matters, but had opted – for whatever expediency – to take pleas. The record establishes that Judge Wright appears to be willing to find this separate and distinct criminal defendant guilty of being ‘a criminal enterprise’ by a presumption of guilt by association – an impermissible leap of logic. Prior to hearing any evidence regarding the defendant in this case, which the Government describes as an ‘unincorporated association’ allegedly consisting of every ‘full-patched’ member of the Club, Judge Wright explained his view of the link between this collective/organizational defendant and the plea bargains of forty individual alleged former members of the Mongols Motorcycle Club. First, the Court stated that, because of what those alleged former members pled guilty to in Judge Wright’s courtroom, the Club’s internal rules prohibiting illegal conduct among members are ‘laughable.’”

A Taste Of Wright

At the October hearing, when shown a set of Mongols bylaws that forbid club members from criminal conduct, Wright groused from the bench: “Those bylaws are a joke, and you know it. I am surprised you even mentioned it. This is a criminal enterprise as evidenced by the admissions of same by no fewer than 40 people who appeared before me. I can’t speak to the other 40 who appeared before Judge Carter. This is a dangerous enterprise.”

When Bernstein tried to argue that the Mongols Motorcycle Club might not be a criminal racket, Wright hectored Bernstein like this: “…you are saying that it is no different than them having perhaps having been Lutheran and they are of doing all these criminal things and it is just coincidental that some of them were Lutheran; right? It is not the same thing, is it? They are operating under the banner of the Mongols. It is that name, that reputation, that intimidation factor which enables them to do what they do, isn’t it?”

BERNSTEIN: I can’t….

WRIGHT: Go like that.

BERNSTEIN: I can’t answer that, your Honor.

WRIGHT: I can. I have seen them. Alright. They have all been here. I have seen them. And that is why they are fighting so hard to hang on to those colors. Those colors mean something…. If the association is convicted, relinquishment or forfeiture of those marks will be part of the sentence…. If that organization is convicted, its interest in those marks is forfeitable to the government; right?

BERNSTEIN: I don’t agree. That is the rub.

WRIGHT: You lose.

Prosecutors have not yet responded to the motion.

Anyone who has heard of Operation Fast and Furious understands how corrupt and half assed ATF investigations can be.

And anyone who is at all familiar with recent, major ATF investigations of motorcycle clubs including Operation 22 Green, Operation Black Biscuit, Operation Black Rain and last summer’s Operation Pure Luck understands that all of those investigations were half assed and corrupt in exactly the same ways. Obviously the key qualifications to become an undercover agent provocateur for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives are stupidity and psychopathy. In return for possessing these treasured qualities successful candidates can expect to make about $180 thousand a year not including what they steal.

ATF investigations are awe inspiringly expensive. Operation Black Rain, for example, cost more than $100 million dispersed among the budgets of multiple federal agencies and departments like the Marshals Service, the Bureau of Prisons, the Federal Judicial Districts, the Department of Homeland Security and multiple subsets of the Department of Justice. The question nobody with a real, national voice has yet thought to ask is how the ATF keeps getting away with it.

Why

Part of the answer is journalistic sloth and gutlessness. Most reporters are terrified of motorcycle outlaws. It is the same reason many reporters seem to think The Devils Ride is “real” or “documentary.” Federal police agencies are adept at manipulating public opinion in books and news and television accounts. Virtually everything written or broadcast about these investigations has been written and verified by federal police. And nobody in television, news or publishing thinks there is anything amiss when the job of defining consensual reality is left to policemen. Unfortunately, the propagandization of journalism is the least disturbing and dangerous aspect of letting the stupid thugs do whatever they want.

More dangerous is that the ATF and other high profile police departments like the FBI are enabled, abetted and encouraged by both federal prosecutors and judges. Prosecutors now routinely use various unethical tactics to coerce defendants into plea deals. Defendants are punished on the basis of accusations made by federal cops. Typically, those defendants are kept locked up and threatened with mandatory, decades long sentences until they confess. Judges endorse the plea bargaining system because otherwise their courts would be swamped. The official lie on which this system rests is the fantasy that policemen tell the truth.

Judges can plausibly pretend to believe that but prosecutors know it is a lie. Assistant United States Attorneys regularly employ strategies and games to protect their symbiotic partners, the police. One thing accomplished by the plea bargaining system is that trial jurors rarely examine the evidence against defendants in context. Commonly defense attorneys don’t see much of that evidence either. Federal prosecutors routinely hide exculpatory evidence and when it must be turned over to defenders it is frequently hidden in great avalanches of paper and DVDs called “evidence dumps.”

Operation Pure Luck

No case epitomizes all of this more than the current federal prosecution that was born with Operation Pure Luck.

Pure Luck began in 2009, floundered for four years while its participants desperately tried to entrap their wily and street smart targets and finally concluded with a self-congratulatory press conference at the end of June 2013. The investigation was aimed at members of the Vagos Motorcycle Club. The ATF has been trying to pin something on the Vagos since the late 90s. Shortly before the press conference, police in Nevada, California, Utah, Arizona, Texas, New York and Hawaii arrested members of the Bandidos, Chosen Few, Wicked Riderz and Green Machine Motorcycle Clubs. Most of them faced state charges. Three Vagos named Jeremy Halgat, Anthony McCall, and Robert Morrow were indicted on federal charges of “Conspiracy to Possess with Intent to Deliver a Controlled Substance” and “Using and Carrying a Firearm.”

The investigation was supervised by an ATF agent named Matt Wear and a Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department officer named David Arboreen. Arboreen was assigned to the ATF as a Tactical Field Officer or TFO. Other active participants assigned to the investigation included Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Deputy Agostino Brancato; Montebello, California Police Sergeant Christopher Cervantes and Montebello Detective Ray Camuy.

The Dirty Duo

Brancato and Cervantes had previously worked for the ATF during Operation Black Rain, the long infiltration of the Mongols Motorcycle Club. Cervantes has been accused of impropriety during a shooting at Nicola’s nightclub in Whittier. He participated in the two-years-long debriefing of former Mongols President Ruben “Doc” Cavazos and he was arrested in the middle of Operation Pure Luck, in July 2012 in San Diego, on charges of public drunkenness and resisting arrest.

Brancato and Cervantes were introduced to the Vagos in Las Vegas by an influential and well known Vago named Angel “Diablo” Ramirez. Ramirez was a board member of the Southern Nevada Confederation of Clubs. In that position, he lobbied against a Las Vegas bikers rights attorney named Stephen “Bowtie” Stubbs. Brancato patched into the Vagos with Ramirez assistance. The Aging Rebel believes but has been unable to confirm that Cervantes also became a full member of the Vagos Motorcycle Club.

Major Drug Deal

A year ago, on February 22, 2013 Brancato lured Halgat, McCall and Morrow to his electronically surveilled residence and told the three men, “I’ve got a $500,000 coke deal going on for my family. If I fuck it up, they’ll kill me.” The three accused men were led to believe that Brancato’s “family” was a Mexican drug cartel and they were enticed to help keep their club brother alive. Brancato told the men that he had to pick up a shipment of cocaine that would be flown in from Mexico and then ensure the drugs trans-shipment to Georgia. Brancato told the men all their lives would be endangered and urged them to bring firearms.

On March 2, the three accused men arrived at Brancato’s residence with four firearms: An AK-47 look alike, a shotgun and two revolvers. All of the guns were legally possessed and transported. Brancato then drove the Vagos to an airstrip in Searchlight, Nevada. As the four men watched, Camuy landed in a single engine Cessna aircraft and exited with a blue duffel bag containing ten kilos of cocaine. While Halgat, Morrow and McCall stood guard, Brancato loaded the cocaine into his car. The government charges that Morrow and McCall helped Brancato wrap the packages of cocaine with fabric softener sheets and load them in the TFOs car. Then Brancato paid each of the three men $1,000, which is the long established rate for providing security at bogus ATF drug deals.

Brancato

The bogus drug deal was Brancato’s one bright and shining moment during Operation Pure Luck. According to multiple informed sources providing “deep background” on the case, Brancato, Cervantes and Ramirez all committed multiple crimes during the investigation in hopes of inspiring other members of the Vagos to commit similar crimes. In one instance, Brancato, wearing a recording device hidden in a key fob, tried to convince a high ranking Vago to sell him drugs. In an incident that echoes similar entrapments during Operation Black Biscuit, Brancato’s device continued to record while he telephoned Wear.

“You fucked that up,” Wear reproached the TFO. “Now he can prove entrapment.”

“I don’t care,” Brancato brazened. “Maniak sold me the shit.”

“But he didn’t,” Wear replied, displaying unusual honesty for an ATF agent. “Because you fucked up.”

Games Prosecutors Play

Sources with knowledge of the case also describe the Reports of Investigation or ROIs written by Brancato and Cervantes as being riddled with lies. It is customary in ATF undercover investigations to write ROIs well after the incidents they describe and for those reports to fabricate events and conversations. ROIs are almost never compared to the electronic surveillance that could either prove or disprove their veracity. The reports are, however, considered by grand jurors and judges to be unimpeachable proof.

In questionable investigations, prosecutors inevitably refuse to “discover” evidence that could undermine their cases: For example the audio and video recordings that could substantiate or disprove the investigative reports in Pure Luck. The case that resulted from Operation Black Biscuit was very diminished when prosecutors refused to turn over evidence to defense attorneys that might have proven that the agents and informants involved – the most well known of whom was best selling author and national treasure Jay Dobyns – lied, entrapped, broke laws, consumed drugs, enjoyed extramarital sex with one another and generally partied like rock stars.

The Pure Luck case echoes Black Biscuit. In the last six months defense attorneys have tried to exclude “transcripts of recordings due to inaudibility and unreliability;” have sought to examine the personnel files of Brancato, Cervantes and other ATF employees assigned to the case; have filed multiple motions and sent dozens of less formal emails in an attempt to inspect the evidence against their clients; filed an “Emergency Motion To (1) Compel… Discovery and Brady, Giglio And Jencks…Materials The Government Refuses To Disclose, (2) For The Production Of The Undercover And Confidential Informant Cell Phones For Expert Inspection And (3) Request For Exclusionary Sanctions;” and have filed motions to compel the discovery of surveillance logs and other materials that would support the government’s ROIs. The government has also formally moved to forbid defenders from using the entrapment defense.

Prosecutors are stonewalling which is why the trial has already been delayed several times. It is now scheduled to begin on May 13 which gives prosecutors another three months to intimidate the defendants into taking plea deals. It is an interesting game of chicken. If the defendants can be enticed to cop a plea, as they were once enticed break two laws, the government can sweep all of this mess under a rug.

Jeffery Lee “Jeff” Smith, a long time member of the Mongols Motorcycle Club in Oklahoma, a sometime contributor to Brothers Behind Bars and a friend of this page, died Monday, February 17 of an undisclosed ailment.

Smith, a physically small, thin man was born in Delaware, Ohio on January 28, 1952. He joined the Mongols in 1978. Three years later, on June 28, 1981 Smith and several of his club brothers were in a bar in Tulsa when a fight broke out. Within seconds and for unknown reasons, a doorman began shooting at customers. Smith and two other Mongols charged the doorman and tried to disarm him. All three were shot. One Mongol died. Smith was left paralyzed and spent the rest of his life in a wheelchair.

Smith dedicated the last 33 years of his life to his club brothers. A welder by trade, he was well known for helping both Mongols and members of other clubs. He was elected president of the Tulsa chapter multiple times. One of his club brothers described him as a “symbol of the Mongols MC in Oklahoma.”

Funeral arrangements are incomplete. There will be a gathering of friends and family members to celebrate Jeff Smith’s life this Saturday, February 22, from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. at the Moore Funeral Home’s Rosewood Chapel, 2570 South Harvard Avenue in Tulsa. Motorcyclists who wish to ride to this celebration with Jeff’s friends and brothers are advised that the pack will assemble at the Tulsa Fairgrounds at noon.

Jeffery Lee “Jeff” Smith had just turned 62. There was no better friend. There was no more fearsome enemy.

Requiscant In Pace

The good news for the Mongols in the club’s racketeering case titled USA v. Mongols Nation, an Unincorporated Association is that a judge has been appointed to decide a proposed reassignment of the case to a judge Mongols’ attorney Joseph Yanny thinks may be more impartial. The bad news is that the judge who will decide that issue is 90-year-old U.S. District Judge Manuel L. Real.

Real has had a reputation as one of the nation’s most controversial and ill tempered federal judges for decades. He was appointed by Lyndon B. Johnson in 1966. Real was chief judge of the Central District of California from 1982 to 1993. He has been effectively censured eleven times. In 2006, his 50th year on the bench, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Sensenbrenner tried to have Real impeached. Eventually, Sensenbrenner gave up.

Judge Charming

Los Angeles attorneys, speaking anonymously, tell stories about Real’s reprehensible conduct in open court. One pointed anecdote concerns the time Real expelled a Sikh from his court for wearing a turban. As a tenet of their faith, Sikh men must not cut their hair and must wear a turban. According to a source, Real told the Sikh, “Get that towel off your head or get out. I don’t let Jews in here with yamakas and I’m not going to let you wear a towel on your head.”

In recent years Real was formally censured by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in 2006 and was formally criticized by the Ninth Circuit in 2009.

In August 2009, the Los Angeles Times ran a 1700 word feature titled “Critics want to bench Judge Manuel L. Real.” The Times characterized Real as “an active judge with a full caseload, stirring fresh complaints of imperious behavior as well as a high number of reversals by appellate courts.”

Mongols Nation

USA v. Mongols Nation is a racketeering case that is essentially a recapitulation of 2008’s US v. Cavazos et al. The government’s primary goal is to strip the Mongols Motorcycle Club of its name and insignia – a stylized rendering of a medieval Mongol warrior in bell bottom jeans, sunglasses and boots seated on a rigid framed motorcycle and brandishing a scimitar.

Last week Yanny, who is the second attorney to represent the Mongols in this case, moved to disqualify Judge Otis D. Wright II from presiding over the case. In his motion Yanny wrote, “Mongols Nation Motorcycle Club, LLC respectfully submits that comments, which have been memorialized in the public record, unquestionably display Judge Wright’s bias against the sole defendant in this case, the Mongols Nation Motorcycle Club, which bias was formed before properly receiving one shred of evidence in this case, regarding this defendant, as a consequence of Judge Wright’s prior exposure to the charges, proceedings and the voluntary guilty pleas of forty separate criminal defendants in a previous matter over which he presided, entitled US v. Cavazos.”

The life of Elliott S. “Cisco” Valderrama was remembered, celebrated and mourned last Saturday, February 22, in the great, rolling, thundering, unstoppable, three-mile-long spectacle that is a Hells Angels funeral. Valderrama had been a member of the club since January 13, 1966. He was the President of the Oakland charter.

Mourners at the service included Sonny Barger, Mickey Rourke and Hells Angels from as far away as Norway and Brazil. Valderrama was of Filipino descent. Out of malice and spite, some relatives of the dead man who wanted to attend the funeral were forbidden entry into the United States by the Department of Homeland Security.

Cisco Valderrama was born in San Francisco six days before Pearl Harbor. He was raised in East Los Angeles. He moved to Santa Rosa, California in 1965 and he began prospecting his motorcycle club that year.

In his time, Valderrama was a mason, hod carrier, movie producer, actor and writer. Stories about him abound. He was a member of the Oakland Charter when Hunter Thompson hung around the club. He was at Altamont Speedway in December 1969 when the vilification of the Hells Angels began in earnest.

Dave Burgess, a former President of the Nevada Nomads charter of the Hells Angels who was framed and is now wrongfully imprisoned, described Valderrama like this: “Cisco has this very confidant air about himself and everyone is drawn to him. I am not sure how to explain it, but Cisco treats everyone (that he likes) like they are his children. When you are with Cisco, you feel safe, and if he likes you, you are safe.”

Cisco Valderrama is survived by Joann Valderrama, his wife of 52 years; his sister Virginia McManus, his best friends Timmy, Shannon, Yamo, Chrissie and all his Oakland Angels brothers.

He died of respiratory failure. He was 72. He will never be forgotten.

Requiscant In Pace.

In the last week, the center of the global war on motorcycle clubs has shifted to Canada and the prime target there is the Hells Angels.

Last week, the Department of Justice for the Canadian province of Manitoba officially declared the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club to be a “criminal organization.”

Manitoba

The declaration means that Manitoba prosecutors no longer have to prove that the Hells Angels are an organized criminal entity in order to enhance the sentences of club members found guilty of breaking the law. Until now, prosecutors had to prove that an accused man was actually a racketeer before sentencing him like one. Now in Manitoba, Hells Angels are no longer presumed to be innocent. They are now presumed to be racketeers.

Manitoba Justice Minister Andrew Swan called the abandonment of a presumption of innocence “…a milestone for Canada and a clear signal that Manitoba will continue to develop and use every tool available to fight criminal organizations and the threat they pose to Manitobans. It is now law in Manitoba the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club is a criminal organization.”

“The Hells Angels Motorcycle Club was actually given the opportunity to come forward and present some evidence to suggest they were not a criminal organization,” Swan told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. “As I understand it, there was no response to that.”

A defense attorney named Jay Prober told the CBC he doesn’t think the new declaration will make much difference in criminal cases. “I don’t think it was necessary. It’s window dressing, but it makes good politics and gets votes,” Prober said. “I doubt this piece of legislation will withstand a constitutional challenge.”

Forfeiture

Where the new law will make a difference is in civil forfeiture cases. What Manitoba police and prosecutors seem to be after is an easier path to stealing the assets of Hells Angels charters and patch holders. The new declaration will make it harder to fight forfeiture.

Yesterday Kim Bolan, the Vancouver Sun’s beat reporter covering “gangs, terrorism, crime and justice,” wrote that Angels charters in Canada had begun to liquidate their assets to avoid forfeiture. Bolan quoted Detective Sergeant Len Isnor of the Ontario Provincial Police Biker Enforcement Unit who heard it through the grapevine that Canadian Angels are saying, “it’s not worth it and they are selling their assets. It seems to be a new trend in Ontario.”

Sergeant Isnor told Bolan that Manitoba made the criminal declaration because “They were tired of waiting for the federal government. The courts are just bogged down…. We are proving water is wet over and over again.”

Bolan also reported yesterday that the British Columbia Nomads recently sold their clubhouse for $2.175 million.

No corpus. No corpus delicti. No assets. No assets to forfeit.

What the world needs now is, of course, another biker reality television show. Don’t cringe yet. This one might star you.

A producer named Emily Brookstein who works for a production company in New York called Eastern TV is casting a new television program. Eastern has previously produced must see television like Crazy Hearts Nashville, Love and Hip Hop Atlanta, When Robots Rule, Apocalypse Island and Cocaine: History Between The Lines. Obviously, if Bischoff-Hervey can get a biker show on the air anybody can.

The job of starring this as yet untitled show pays money. If you can recommend someone for the lead part you can make some easy money, too. The contact email is casting@eastern.tv. The casting notice might offer you a little insight into how these television shows happen. Here it is. Go for it.

Casting Notice

NOW CASTING MOTORCYCLE CLUB MEMBERS FOR MAJOR CABLE NETWORK

Are you a man with miles of hard road behind you, ready to ride toward a bold new horizon? Read on…

We’re looking for a family man who has spent years in loyal service to his motorcycle club and wants to kickstart a new life starring in a brave new series commissioned by a major cable network. If you’re an outlaw with a heart of gold your greatest adventure might be about to begin…by sending us an email.

If this isn’t you, but sounds like someone you know, and the network selects them for the series, we will give YOU a $500 finders fee!

What it takes…

You need to be hard and uncompromising, with a personality big enough to fill the screen.

Your family is as important as you are. If you’ve got a little girl you can’t say “no” to and a wife who knows exactly how to tell you “no,” we’re off to a great start.

You need to be ready to put the outlaw years behind you and make a new start at something totally different. It’s great if you know what you want to do next, but if not, having the desire is enough: we can help with the rest.

Next steps…

Write us an email telling us a bit about yourself. It doesn’t have to be too long – a couple hundred words is perfect. If you have a picture of yourself and your family you can attach that would be very helpful. We are working on a tight deadline with this so you can expect a quick response.

If you made it this far and you are having trouble imagining what life would look like as the star of your own reality show just remember what the Butthole Surfers said… “It’s better to regret something you did, than something you didn’t do.” If you are our guy you’ll know what this means.

Looking forward to hearing from you,

casting@eastern.tv

Four days ago the independent journalist Glenn Greenwald posted an article on his blog, The Intercept, that described in part the tactics that government agencies are using to subvert and discredit websites like this one. Greenwald writes:

“Among the core self-identified purposes of JTRIG (The Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group) are two tactics: (1) to inject all sorts of false material onto the internet in order to destroy the reputation of its targets; and (2) to use social sciences and other techniques to manipulate online discourse and activism to generate outcomes it considers desirable. To see how extremist these programs are, just consider the tactics they boast of using to achieve those ends: “false flag operations” (posting material to the internet and falsely attributing it to someone else), fake victim blog posts (pretending to be a victim of the individual whose reputation they want to destroy), and posting “negative information” on various forums.” You can read all of Greenwald’s piece here.

Two days ago on a right of center blog called Personal Liberty Digest (read it here) a staff writer named Sam Rolley responded to Greenwald’s piece by bluntly stating, “…readers no longer have to take the word of ‘paranoid’ bloggers who relate tales of paid government trolls lurking in comment sections and other concentrated top-down efforts to muddy the information provided by alternative media.”

Greenwald’s piece is based on documents stolen by the arguably treasonous whistle blower Edward Snowden.

The Aging Rebel

This page has long been to object of government misinformation and various government dirty tricks. Multiple on the job government policemen have commented on this page over the last five and a half years. Until recently their comments have been easy to spot. However about six months ago a couple of new forms of attack began to appear.

First of all, for the last half year this site has been subject to software attacks. The site was offline through most of September as a result of “software problems” that suddenly appeared. Earlier this week, the email account associated with this site was hacked and numerous correspondents complained of “phishing attacks” originating at the email address rebel@agingrebel.com.

In light of the Snowden documents Greenwald released this week, it seems somewhere between plausible and likely that these attacks originated from a federal agency. Commenting on the newly released Snowden documents Rolley writes “…these documents reveal that Western spy agencies with the purported mission of recognizing and preventing terror activity possess the ability and absolute willingness to implement utterly Orwellian controls on free speech. In other words, it takes no stretch of the imagination – even for those who have resisted considering the possibility of malevolent intent on government’s part — to assume that the mission of organizations like the NSA and GCHQ is ultimately more about quelling citizen dissent than stopping citizen bloodshed at the hands of terrorists.”

Trolls

The second new form of attack that has appeared on this site in the last six months is a proliferation of internet trolls. There are, obviously, a handful of readers who comment here solely to insult and bully other commenters. Anyone who reads this site regularly has noticed this phenomenon. The Aging Rebel is aware of these personal attacks and is taking steps to ban from commenting any commenter who engages in malicious personal attacks in the future.

The effect of these trolls has been to discourage informed readers from commenting here. And some of the trolling has worked. Members of multiple motorcycle clubs have been warned by influential members not to comment here.

Greenwald writes: “Then there is the use of psychology and other social sciences to not only understand, but shape and control, how online activism and discourse unfolds. Today’s newly published document touts the work of GCHQ’s ‘Human Science Operations Cell,’ devoted to ‘online human intelligence’ and ‘strategic influence and disruption.’”

The goal of these troll attacks is to blatantly disrupt and water down public discourse.

That certainly is what has been going on here. Be assured it is about to stop.

In case you’ve been stuck in the hole for the last month, the first thing you need to know is that there is a revolution in progress in the Ukraine, which is an independent country that used to be part of the Soviet Union.

One of the leaders of the revolution is Vitali Klitschko, a former heavyweight contender whose brother Wladimir is the current heavyweight champ. Wladimir, who is about six foot six, is also famous for dating the gaminesque American starlet Hayden Panettiere who is about four foot eleven.

President Obama is aware of the crisis. He has been petulantly frowning over it and throwing lukewarm words at it. The immediate danger to the United States and other Western nations is that the president might write a check with his mouth that American sons will then be compelled to try to cash.

The Ukraine is sandwiched between Russia on the north and east, the former Russian satellites Poland, Slovakia and Hungary on the west and the Black Sea on the South. The recently overthrown President of the Ukraine was widely considered to be a Russian puppet. The new government, if given the chance, will probably seek closer ties with the West. Russia is not enthusiastic about that idea. The Russian Black Sea Fleet’s home port is in Sevastopol on the Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula. The Crimea has a large population of ethnic Russians and is a strategic enough geographic feature that many wars have been fought there. Florence Nightingale became Florence Nightingale in the Crimea. The British Light Brigade charged and died there.

This morning the Night Wolves, the preeminent motorcycle club in Russia and the only motorcycle club in the world that enjoys official state support began rolling into the Ukraine with the goal is helping to put down the revolution.

The Surgeon Speaks

The Night Wolves maximum leader for life, Alexander “The Surgeon” Zaldostanov, is famous for being hug buddies with Russia’s maximum leader for life Vladimir Putin. Putin is the Night Wolves highest profile hang around and last year he gave Zaldostanova a medal for helping to restore a monument to Soviet War heroes during the Battle of Stalingrad. Zaldostanova sees himself as a Russian patriot. He also sees himself as a defender of Russia against incursions by Bandidos, Hells Angels and Mongols. (See the video below.)

Zaldostanov flew into the Crimea yesterday – apparently he trailered the bike – and he immediately held an informal press conference. “What’s happening right now in Ukraine is very big for me,” Zaldostanov said. He called the revolution a “humiliation of the Russia population.”

“I want to understand what people here really need to protect them from the fascists,” he continued. And he promised, “If needed to stay at the front, we (the Night Wolves) will be staying.” He promised that a column, not a pack but a column, of Night Wolves “will start at 8:00 a.m. and ride across the whole eastern part of Ukraine.”

“For me it’s one country,,” The Surgeon said. “Whoever cut it was traitors. It’s like you live in a flat and you decided to make the border between the kitchen and the bedroom. Then you must all the time to come to the kitchen to make the papers that you stamp, the visa. It is time to stop this shit.”

Meanwhile Dmitry Simichein, the President of the Sevastapol chapter of the Night Wolves, told a Russian news agency that local police were supporting the club. “People in Sevastopol are the most patriotic on the planet,” he said. “They don’t need organizing. They just come out to protect their country and their families.”

There should be a reality show about Lauge Jensen – a Danish bike builder whose name is pronounced something like Lowl-guh Yen-sin. About five years ago he started producing S&S powered Harley clones. The bikes are all bespoken and meticulous. They meet European pollution standards and they all growl and bark rather than purr.

The last motorcycle built in Denmark was the four cylinder, 750 cc Nimbus built by Fisker and Nielsen in Copenhagen. After 1960 that company concentrated on building vacuum cleaners. As a result, when Jensen started, motorcycle manufacturing was completely unregulated in Denmark. He managed to survive in a little town called Gedved which is about halfway up the Danish peninsula.

Show Not Go

His bikes are all powered by 109 inch engines and the European pollution laws have taken their toll. Jensen’s only make about 70 horses and he estimates their top speed to be a buck ten. But they are pretty machines, which is, after all, a custom bike’s job – to sit there and look pretty, not to prowl around the gravel parking lot of a honky tonk.

The enthusiasm for motorcycles as art seemed to cool after the economic recovery began in 2007. But there are obviously still collectors who view bikes that way and who buy them with the intention of parking them in their marble foyers or just inside their bullet proof living room windows.

Jensen’s least expensive bikes start at about $44,000 if you are Danish. If you aren’t he doubles the price. Jensen targets very high end buyers – the motorcycle as art crowd. His success indicates that the economy is booming at the very top and that someday soon all that disposable cash may even trickle or even rain down on the rest of us. Jensen also brands and sells everything from helmets to tee-shirts. All he sells are status symbols. Jensen has even designed a special pod with an integrated crane that allows oil sheiks and Russian oligarchs to easily transport their custom motorcycles on their yachts.

The Gold Bike

Jensen’s latest creation is a gold plated Harley clone. The bike has 859 gold plated parts and it is decorated with 250 small diamonds that total about seven carats. The seat is covered with “unique cognac colored crocodile skin.” Jensen built the machine on spec and exhibited it at bike shows in Monaco and Dubai. He won’t say who bought it but he does brag that the price was $850,000. Technically, the gold bike is manufactured so it is the most expensive new, manufactured motorcycle ever.

He expects to break that record soon. He has told a dozen media outlets in Europe that his next motorcycle will sell for more than a $1 million. He describes it as a piece of jewelry on two wheels. “It’s going to have a lot of stones and diamonds,” he told Robert Frank of CNBC. “We’re talking pretty wild stuff.”

There are at least two automobiles with seven figure window stickers. The Bugatti Veyron sells for a million and change. The Lamborghini Veneno sells for about $4 million. But this is new territory for motorcycles.

Obviously, if you have to ask why you don’t get it. So don’t bother to ask.

It is a slow news day. Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin have not yet officially arranged a duel to the death with Bowie knives. So the half-assed, corporate carnival show that is American journalism twisted our attention back to the many beautiful angles of the “biker attack” on Alexian Lien last September 29th.

Lien was on his way to a celebratory dinner with his wife and two-year-old daughter when he crossed paths with a sloppy pack of jackasses on sport bikes. The sport bike jackasses intended to disrupt traffic and they were on their way to Times Square. Lien, who apparently is some sort of an important person, decided to try to bully the sports bike jackasses out of his way. Lien ran into one of the bikes and knocked the rider down. Various members of the pack tried to damage Lien’s SUV. Eventually, Lien ran over three motorcyclists and severely injured a guy named Edwin Mieses, who is pictured above.

Roughed Up

The pack then chased Lien down, slashed his tires, broke his car windows and gave him the sort of beating real bikers usually describe as “roughed him up.”

Mieses, on the other hand, was hurt bad. He suffered two broken legs, a broken back and spent a couple of days in a coma. And there then followed about three weeks of fools in newsrooms around the country yelling “fire!” Eventually, eleven people were arrested for the attack on Lien. One of them was a New York City cop named Wojciech Braszczok whose principal duties are to spy on social dissidents and try to entrap them in any crimes Braszczok, or his handlers, can imagine. Neither Lien or Mieses were among the accused.

Initial coverage of this little tragedy focused on the word “biker.” The first day George Christie, Jerry Langton, Kerrie Droban and Gloria Allred were all asked to react to this latest example of the biker menace. That angle still dominates coverage of the incident. Braszczok, the despicable agent provocateur, is routinely described in news stories as a “biker.”

Tha Newz

There has been little to report on this story. As most readers of this page already know, the law is a drunk that staggers slowly and frequently falls down and the result of that is that there hasn’t been much news. But news directors, editors and reporters the world over love this story because it writes itself. It is pseudo news. It panders to emotion. It can be written adequately with a minimum of facts.

So six days ago the New York Daily News reported “Alexian Lien’s injuries are not healing as well as previously hoped, leading prosecutors to maintain gang assault charges against the defendants.”

Then this morning, 157 days after the fact, it was NBC’s turn to flog the human interest angle. Mieses, who will probably never walk again, appeared on the Today show. “I don’t blame him,” Mieses told a television journalist named Savannah Guthrie. “Because at the end of the day, I’m not him to know what was going through his mind.”

The injured victim explained, “As soon as I turned around and started walking back towards my bike, that’s when I got ran over. As soon as he hit me, I shut my eyes. I didn’t want to open my eyes because I knew that he had hurt me.”

“I was fully conscious for the whole entire thing.” Mieses told Guthrie that a young girl appeared as he lay suffering in the street, and that she was his guardian angel. “She was like an angel,” he said. “She kept throwing water on my face to keep me awake.”

That’s what happened today. There’s your news. We’ll try to do better tomorrow.

Hector Chavez, a member of the Santa Cruz charter of the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club, died unexpectedly after a lingering illness on March 1. He was a well known and widely respected member of his club. He was last seen in public on February 22 at the funeral of his friend and club brother Elliott S. “Cisco” Valderrama.

Chavez died without means and the expense of his burial will be born by his club brothers. The Santa Cruz charter has requested that anyone who wishes to help contribute here.

Chavez will be buried in Salinas on March 22 and this page will run his obituary the week before his funeral.

Requiscant In Pace

Largely due to the lobbying of the American Motorcyclist Association, a bill has been introduced in the United States Senate that would “restrict the Secretary of Transportation from granting funds to any government entity for a program to check helmet use or to create checkpoints for an operator of a motorcycle or a passenger on a motorcycle.”

Representative Jim Sensenbrenner introduced a similar bill in the House of Representatives last May 7. (See “Sensenbrenner’s Bill” here.) http://www.agingrebel.com/8538

The Senate bill’s sponsors are Republicans Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire and Democrats Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire and Joe Manchin of West Virginia. Both the Senate and House bills are titled the “Stop Motorcycle Checkpoint Funding Act.”

Motorcycle Checkpoints

The federal bills are part of a reaction to a federal court decision that found that motorcycle only checkpoints were not an unreasonable search and were therefore constitutional.

The federal decision followed a program of dragnets in which the state of New York conducted 17 “motorcycle safety checkpoints” in 2008. All of the checkpoints were conducted on roads leading to or from large motorcycle rallies. A total of 1,064 tickets were issued. Nine hundred and sixty-five of the tickets were either for non-safety offenses or for wearing the wrong kind of helmet. On average, riders were detained for between 30 and 45 minutes. The “safety” aspect of the searches was only rhetorical. The searches were implemented by cops dressed in riot gear.

Those New York checkpoints ignored “speed” and “alcohol;” and were conducted by officers of the New York State Police Special Investigation Unit and gang task force for the purposes of “criminal interdiction.” The checkpoints were paid for by a grant that was intended to fund “overtime for intelligence gathering and subsequent criminal and traffic enforcement resulting from this effort.”

Since the federal ruling that motorcycle only checkpoints are reasonable, California, Missouri, North Carolina, Illinois, New Hampshire and Virginia have passed state laws that limit or ban those roadblocks.

The AMA

The American Motorcyclist Association has been tracking the use of checkpoints since 2008.

In a press release issued this week, AMA vice president for government relations Wayne Allard stated, “During the past two years, federal, state and local governments spent more than a half million dollars on motorcycle only checkpoints. The AMA believes that money could be better spent supporting programs that conduct rider education, reduce distracted driving and encourage motorist awareness of motorcycles.”

According to the AMA, “The state of Georgia used funds from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in March 2011 to conduct motorcycle only checkpoints as thousands of motorcyclists rode through the state on their way to Daytona Beach, Fla., for Bike Week. Another motorcycle only checkpoint was conducted in northern Virginia during one of the nation’s most visible motorcycle rallies – Rolling Thunder – over the 2011 Memorial Day weekend.” And “Motorcycle-only checkpoints also were conducted in Utah when thousands of riders attended a world-class road-racing event.”

Fellow non-conforming motorcycle enthusiasts, our long national nightmare is about to end. Tonight is the conclusion of season three of The Devils Ride.

The last five episodes have been about convincing impressionable teenagers, Rolling Stone reporters and the sorts of people who are too stupid to get out of jury duty that The Devils Ride is a real look inside real motorcycle clubs. Of course, it is not. It is a poorly written, atrociously acted pastiche of cliches and tropes. But, in a series of twitter exchanges with Kurt Sutter, The Aging Rebel, professional iconoclast J.J. Solari, internet radio host Amy Irene White and others, cast members of this reality thing tried futilely to intimidate the program’s detractors.

Sutter And Solari

Sutter wondered “Is Devil’s Ride still on?” He responded to the woofing about how ferocious the Laffing Devils and the Sinister Mob Syndicate are by tweeting, “My thespians are harder than these Bitches. Don’t take my word, ask any OMC in the fucking world.”

Solari, who really should have his own television show, parroted the twitter exchanges Devils Ride actors have been posting all season. “We’re the real thing, bro! Yo! You have no idea! You are talking shit! We know about you! We could tell people some things about you! You better stop talking that shit! We can come down on you hard! You know who you’re talking to?”

Solari continued, “This is the level of the conversation if you have the golden opportunity to critique anyone connected with the show in an interview or confrontation. If you can call having bad dialogue from a high school shoving-match in Watts in 1980 tossed into the air like dirt from a hole a badger is digging a ‘confrontation.’ Ric Flair having a shouting match with a microphone under his nose resulting in the microphone dripping sheets of saliva down onto the floor is more menacing and less comical than listening to a Devils Ride employee insist that the lummoxes in the show are doing and saying things not written down on foolscap by retards from the Home For Twekos And Dorks.”

“Oh yeah? Well FUCK that, bro! You don’t EVEN wanna FUCK with me, bro! That’s BULL-shit!”

“Yeah, ok, ok, calm down, Mr. Ferocity. The last thing I want to do is get YOU riled up, Iron Man 4. Watching The Devils Ride is not only embarrassing, its borderline shameful. UNLESS YOU ARE AN IDIOT.”

In Tonight’s Episode

All season long, the most entertaining thing about this sterling example of postmodern mass media has been the Twitter feeds. Now that is about to end and all we will be left are the reruns.

It tonight’s banal and ludicrous conclusion: “The Laffing Devils just raided Sin Mob’s clubhouse only to find that no was there. As they look for a possible rat within their ranks, tempers boil and new President Mad Max can’t stop his members from fighting amongst themselves. With Sin Mob, Rockem decides to invite the Devils to a showdown in the desert. Despite both clubs having numerous members with serious injuries, they prepare for a battle and bid farewell to their families. Meanwhile, a cohort of bikers allied with one of the most legendary one percenter clubs catches wind of the planned meeting. When the Devils and Sin Mob roll up to the showdown, they find themselves facing an epic decision that could change their lives forever.

Stay classy Devils Ride. Small world. See you all around. Try not to get stabbed.

The Hells Angels Motorcycle Club will hold its National Run in Cody, Wyoming this August. The club last visited Cody for its World Run in 2006, which was a very heavily policed event that resulted in five misdemeanor arrests for drug offenses.

About 1,300 club members attended the World Run. Cody police expect about 600 Angels to show up this summer.

Cody is a city of about 9,000 in northwest Wyoming 50 miles from Yellowstone and 360 miles from Sturgis. It caters to tourists. It is named for Buffalo Bill Cody, hosts an annual rodeo called the Cody Stampede and is surrounded by six national Scenic Highways. It is a destination for thousands of motorcycle riders every summer.

Then

In preparation for the great Hells Angels invasion of ought six, the state Attorney General gave regional police departments $600,000 to buy lunch and overtime for a counter invasion of cops. Federal police departments including the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the U.S. Marshals Service and the Department of Homeland Security helped surveil and document the event. Units of the Wyoming Army and Air National Guard were mobilized. Federal police brought in a Blackhawk helicopter.

The amount of the federal cost has never been disclosed. The state funds amounted to $120,000 per arrest and $500 per Hells Angel.

The World Run was also highly propagandized by police. Park County Sheriff Scott Steward accused three club members of trying to intimidate his nine-year-old daughter. The FBI called Cody a “hot spot” for rival clubs.

Cody Police Chief Perry Rockvam (the smiling man above) accused club members of trying to “intimidate” police. He told the Billings Gazette that large groups of Angels would watch police make traffic stops.

Powell, Wyoming Police Chief Tim Feathers told the Gazette, “If they can come in and intimidate police and cause them to back off, that opens the door wide open to behave however they want. It’s happened in the past. There’s no doubt about that. It’s the history of the group.”

Now

Earlier this week Ruffin Prevost who works for the Reuters News Agency and also reports for the Yellowstone Gate analyzed public documents to show that local citizens were in fact victimized during the event and that their victimizers were not motorcycle enthusiasts. Prevost found that hundreds of locals were ticketed for traffic offenses

“Local motorists were detained, warned or cited for relatively minor traffic infractions because police had to treat visiting bikers and others equally during the event,” Prevost wrote.

Chief Rockvam told the reporter, “We heard those complaints loud and clear from the last time. We’re definitely going to take that into consideration” this time.

Gail Nace, co-owner of the Silver Dollar Bar in Cody, told Prevost it was an “overwhelmingly positive” experience the last time the Angels were in town. “I appreciate their (law enforcement) presence, but I don’t think it was necessarily the Hells Angels they were concerned about,” Nace said. “It was unfortunate some of the locals got caught in the fray for things like speeding two miles over the limit.”

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Time for some happy-happy news. Tidepool Films, which is really the corporate road name of a filmmaking couple in Missoula, Montana named Eric Ristau and Geneva Liimatta, is making a film called Sit Stay Ride: The Story of America’s Sidecar Dogs.

Documentaries often take years to make. So far the couple has shot in Washington, California and Montana. “We’ve found other amazing sidecar dogs in other parts of the country,” Ristau said in a press release. The filmmakers intend to film other dogs in Louisiana, Florida, North Carolina, Wisconsin, Utah, Colorado. “We really want to include them in the movie.”

Funding It

The film is funded mostly through Kickstarter, which bills itself as a “way to fund creative projects.” Since 2009, 5.8 million people have pledged about $1 billion to fund 57,000 creative projects through Kickstarter. Ristau thinks the film will cost about $28,000 to complete. So far Tidepool Films has raised about $10,000. If you chip in you get a souvenir tee shirt.

“By focusing on the dynamic and sometimes eccentric individuals who travel with their dog in a sidecar, we are actually exploring the essential relationship between humans and canines; the extraordinary bond that exists between them and flourishes through shared experiences and adventures,” Ristau said. “Sit Stay Ride will be a rollicking, upbeat film that introduces us to the interesting personalities and heartwarming relationships that exist on the highways and byways of America through a series of insightful interviews, stunning visuals, and intimate portraits of dogs doing what they love best.”

The dogs in the film are all strapped into the sidecars and all wear doggie goggles. None of them wear helmets.

Rescue Dogs

“In addition to being entertaining,” Ristau continued in his unusually likable press release. “It is our sincere desire that Sit Stay Ride be used as a tool to bolster advocacy for organizations concerned with animal welfare and adoption – causes near and dear to our own hearts as a number of our own treasured dogs have been rescues. Many of the canine personalities featured in this film were adopted from the Humane Society and other incredible organizations. Seeing them sporting their ‘doggles’ and smiling their big, doggy grins while cruising down the highway makes it unbelievable that they were ever given up for adoption in the first place.”

The film is about 30 percent done and should be completed this year. A clip from the movie follows this story. You can learn and see more at www.sidecardogs.com.