Max Mosley is president of the International Federation of the Automobile (FIA), the worldwide sanctioning and organizing body for almost 30 major motor racing series, including Formula 1 and World Rally, which lobbies governments for motorists and motor racing and helps set European standards for mileage, emissions and safety among other very serious jobs. Mosley was recently videotaped in the company of five prostitutes, engaging in Nazi-styled sadomasochism. Click anywhere on this line to read the TIME Magazine story on this issue, which has created a worldwide uproar.
What we know now: Adolf Hitler was "a guest of honor", TIME magazine reports, at the wedding of Max Mosley's parents, held in 1936 at Joseph Goebbels' Berlin home (Goebbels headed the Nazi propaganda machine). By 1936, Jews had already been "purged" from every government and corporate job in Germany and were imprisoned, and, just before the start of the 1936 Berlin Olympics, Romanian "Gypsies" in the Berlin area were arrested and sent to concentration camps. (Photo --- F1 leader Bernie Ecclestone (l) and Max Mosley, president of the FIA).
While the FIA is perhaps best known as the governing body of Formula One, it also serves as a lobby for more than 100 million motorists in 130 countries on five continents through member clubs. The FIA is an international sporting organization, one of the largest and most-powerful lobbying groups in the world. (Photo --- Lewis Hamilton leads the F1 pack in the 2008 season-opener in Melbourne, Australia).
The latest news, from TIME Magazine, is that Mosley's parents, both outspoken Hitler and Nazi supporters and leaders in pre-war UK, were married in 1936 at the Berlin home of Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi propaganda master, and that "a guest of honor ... was none other than Adolf Hitler". (Photo --- That's Max Mosley's dad, front and center; he spent all of WW II in a UK prison for his Nazi-sympathizing, and his wife, Diana Mitford, was a celebrity British Nazi sympathizer in the prewar years).
If you are a member of the Automobile Association of America, or one of its regional groups (for instance,
the Auto Club of Southern California, or ACSC), you may have helped pay for Mad Max's playtime. The AAA is listed on the FIA's website as a "member club" of the FIA.
Also "member clubs" of the FIA are: The American Automobile Touring Alliance of San Jose, CA., and the Automobile Competition Committee for the United States FIA Inc. (ACCUS). The Canadian Automobile Association (CAA) is also a "member club" of the FIA.
There is one "press release" on the FIA's website calling for an "Extraordinary General Assembly" at FIA headquarters in Paris; no date given. One single line from that release alludes to what will be the topic at this meeting: "The FIA has noted that Mr Mosley is preparing legal proceedings against the newspaper in question." (That newspaper, which broke the Mosley/prostitute story on their website, is the UK tabloid, "News of the World," owned by Rupert Murdoch).
Many usually secretive FIA and F1 insiders have been public, loud and crystal-clear in their repudiation of Mosley; all except for F1 "Supremo" Bernie Ecclestone. Most of the series' car-makers have chimed-in with their disgust, too, including Honda, BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Ferrari, Toyota and several more.
Mosley's peccadilloes are now plain for everyone to see. His line in the TIME mag story, that the only reason he spoke German to the prostitutes was out of some sort of courtesy, because that was their native language, must force one to think: If Mosley could be so easily enticed and videotaped, what else are they hiding at the FIA? (Photo --- Now-classic first lap, first turn shunt of Long Beach's first F1 race in March, 1977; Carlos Reutemann won that race, James Hunt is still flying ... somewhere).
So, what is next? Perhaps we're to find that those ongoing rumors concerning Ecclestone's F1 "seed money"
coming from his supposed involvement in 1963's "Great Train Robbery" have some truth to them, after all.
It was whispered for many years that F1, in the 1970s and '80s, especially, was involved in moving large sums of cash and drugs between countries. This would have been fairly simple to do, as the local F1 race promoter generally pays for all the travel expenses of the entire F1 "circus". This involves the packing, shipping, unloading and then, packing again for shipment of every single part which F1 brings to their country. Because F1 was nearly always warmly welcomed, as it would provide positive PR around the world for their "nation of the week," customs officers around-the-world might have turned a bit of a "blind eye" to the hundreds of crates and boxes which were entering their countries for only a week's stay.
One thinks back to the Long Beach, CA street race, which, for seven straight years, beginning in 1977, was an F1 event (the very first race, 18 months before the first F1 race, was for F-5000 cars). During those F1 years, a proper motor racing reporter/photographer could have a blast watching the super-twitchy F1 cars of the time (more powerful than they are today, by as much as 300+ horsepower, over 1,000hp or more, total). I remember seeing Rod and Alana Stewart and George Harrison in the pit area along Ocean Boulevard ... The Long Beach F1 events were the introduction of prime Euro-trash to Southern California ... in large numbers. (Photo --- Sir Jackie Stewart, shown here before his retirement as a driver, has called for Mosley's immediate "sacking").
The "founder" of the Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach, as it's now known, was a UK-born Long Beach businessman named Chris Pook --- And from what business did Pook come when he first proposed the event to the city's leaders? Travel agent. Long Beach must have seemed to Ecclestone almost a dream-come-true. And Bernie is still defending his boss, Max Mosley. Can't say enough for loyalty, even when wildly misplaced.
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