March 23 update: com/764 Updates; Ohtani's Missing Millions; National Action's Origins; Eric Adams' Worsening Term; Federal Infiltration of Standing Rock Exposed

A useful reminder for all those drivers with 'thin blue line' skull decals on their cars (© Ali Winston)

We're smack in the midst of shoulder season, where leaves and allergies (if you're so inclined) bloom alike. For all of us, I think, this time of year will always carry extra weight thanks to the novel coronavirus pandemic of 2020 and the ensuing death, lockdowns, uncertainty and massive social disruption that ensued. One could say we're in a better place today, but with two intense wars raging in Europe and the Middle East, that's a dubious statement.

There's been a bit of movement in the com/764 world since that big-lift collaboration published last week. A number of the criminal cases are reaching the business end, both in the United States and abroad. Kierre Cutler, a Winston-Salem man who went by the handle 'MK Ultra', was sentenced to seven years in prison on child pornography distribution charges this Wednesday. Cutler's case, in a soon-t0-be-familiar pattern, was described by U.S. District Court Judge Loretta Biggs as one of the most disturbing she'd seen (Cutler's abuse is detailed in my WIRED piece). Another member of 764, Richard 'Rabid' Densmore of Kaleva, Michigan, plead guilty to CSAM possession, distribution and enticement of a minor charges this week. A former sex offender who ran his own Discord server through the beginning of this year despite being raided by the FBI in early 2023, Densmore faces over a decade in prison.

In the United Kingdom, teenager Vincent Charlton was sentenced to two years and four months in prison for possession of CSAM material and banned extremist publications. Charlton was deeply immersed in 764 and the Order of Nine Angles, an ideology that propagated in the contemporary far right thanks to FBI informant Joshua Caleb Sutter. For more on Sutter's peregrinations, see this post from earlier in the week, behind the paywall.

Lastly, I'll be in Southern California at the beginning of April to cover the opening of Atomwaffen Division member Sam Woodward's trial for the 2018 killing of Blaze Bernstein, which I covered for ProPublica way back when. Holler at me if you wanna say hi while I'm behind the Orange Curtain.

Let's get to it.

BLEEDING EDGE JOURNALISM

-So for those who don't know already, I fucking love baseball. Even with the inane rule changes, feckless owners switching cities in search of higher tax breaks, steroids, overpriced seats and all, the game means a huge deal to me. And that's why for the past few days I've been engrossed by the unfolding saga involving the Japanese Babe Ruth, Shohei Ohtani, whose interpreter and close friend has been implicated in illegal gambling and a $4.5 million debt that may or may not actually be Ohtani's. While that would be pocket change to the Los Angeles Dodger phenom, who earns in the ballpark of $70 million annually, this has the potential to be a generational scandal. Pete Rose was famously banned from baseball for life over betting on games he presided over as a manager. Ohtani is now under massive scrutiny from the league, and might face criminal action, since sports gambling is illegal in California.

-I'm a week or so late in highlighting the latest installment of Jake Hanrahan's Skeleton Key podcast on Neo-Fascism, but this episode is a must-listen. Daniel De Simone, a friend, colleague and correspondent for the British Broadcasting Corporation, unpacks the history and legacy of National Action, a now-banned Neo-Nazi terrorist organization with more convicted members in Great Britain than the Islamic State (that's right). Formed in 2013, NA adopted the aesthetic and street protest tactics of European Anti-Fascist formations in the 2010s and were a major inspiration for Atomwaffen Division founder Brandon Russell. Some of its members, particularly Ryan Fleming, also introduced the Order of Nine Angles into the ecosystem of the youth Fascist revival. A must for anyone interested in this topic on either side of the Atlantic.

-Things keep going from bad to worse for the cop-turned-state legislator-turned mayor and inveterate grifter that is Eric Adams - yet another one of his donors plead guilty to election-related crimes in connection with Hizzoner's 2021 mayoral run. There are at least two separate federal investigations into Adams' campaign contributions in the Eastern and Southern Districts of New York that now involve significant contributions from Turkish and Chinese nationals, a no-no for American elections. Add to that a pretty grim sexual assault lawsuit dating from his time as a transit cop in the 1990s and it's clear the man who once declared himself the future of the Democratic Party is...anything but.

-Grist has been on a tear recently, and their recent report from Alleen Brown about the extent of federal infiltration of the Standing Rock protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline last decade is a prime example of why this publication deserves your support. Relying on depositions from key FBI personnel in North Dakota, Brown builds on years of reporting the counter-insurgency campaign mounted by oil companies and law enforcement against the NoDAPL movement and proves the protest camps were riddled with informants and agent provocateurs. The depositions are linked in the story below, and very much worth a read if you want to have a few belly laughs about North Korea funding Native American protest movements. I shit thee not.

BOOK OF THE WEEK- Anna Seghers' Transit (1944) is one of the best accounts of the toll of war and flight on civilian populations. Set in Marseille, her narrator is a twenty-something German left winger who fled the Nazis and their early concentration camps (which were for political opponents and social undesirables as well as Jews), and is seeking passage to Great Britain, the United States, or anywhere else other than occupied France.

Made into a modernized, slightly odd film by director Christian Petzold in 2018, Transit is, in my mind, unparalleled in excavating the nostalgia, boredom and gnawing angst that are so universal to the experiences of refugees. And the woman can write as well.

FILM/TV - Years ago I plowed through James Clavell's King Rat one summer, a wrenching novel about life in a Japanese prison camp during the Second World War. It was so good that I took a chance on his historical fiction, a genre which I never read, and picked up Shōgun, his Sengoku-era epic of feudal Japan through the eyes of an English pilot, John Blackthorne, who was sent to the Far East in order to contest the Portuguese monopoly on trade with the then-secretive islands.

https://sportshub.cbsistatic.com/i/2023/11/29/d3878285-2e54-4c38-bae5-8d87ff42f0b8/fx-shogun-tv-series-release-date-2024.jpg?auto=webp&width=1200&height=1500&crop=0.8:1,smart

The current remake on FX and Hulu is, to put it lightly, excellent. The scenery is fantastic, the acting first rate (Japan has an amazing theatrical and cinematic tradition with a deep bench of quality actors), and it is refreshing to see the Japanese characters centered rather than yet another Eurocentric white savior yarn a la The Last Samurai. And lord knows there's enough material for an indefinite number of follow-up seasons.

MUSIC - Burial's Untrue (2007) is a timeless album. I'd describe his style as a darker Aphex Twin without the whimsy but with a far better ear for rhythm. The South London producer is not everyone's cup of tea, but if his sound catches your interest it is impossible to get out of your head. Worked many a late night with this in my ears.