SUGGESTED READING LIST FOR OCT 26, 2017

Yer old pal Jerky firmly believes that it is every American citizen's duty to familiarize themselves with the information contained in McKay Coppins' essential piece for the Columbia Journalism Review, titled What if the Right-Wing Media Wins?, which begins:

It was a sweltering July afternoon in the swamp, and a small group of well-dressed, conservative college students from across the country—the next generation of Megyn Kellys, George Wills, and Tucker Carlsons—was filing into an auditorium at the Heritage Foundation’s Washington, DC, headquarters. They had come to study at the feet of Breitbart News Washington editor Matt Boyle, a zealous prophet of the new right-wing media. Boyle’s sermon was not about how to break into the mainstream media and steer the national news agenda toward conservative aims—it was about the end days of journalism itself. And he was not about to skimp on the fire and brimstone. 

“Journalistic integrity is dead,” he declared. “There is no such thing anymore. So everything is about weaponization of information.” Standing behind a mahogany podium in a baggy dark suit, Boyle preached with the confidence of a true believer. In a stuttering staccato, he condemned the nation’s preeminent news outlets as “corrupted institutions,” “built on a lie,” and a criminal “syndicate that needs to be dismantled.” 

Boyle and his compatriots were laboring to usher in an imminent—and glorious—journalistic apocalypse. “We envision a day when CNN is no longer in business. We envision a day when The New York Times closes its doors. I think that day is possible.” 

Squint at the Trump era, and it’s easy to see a conservative media in crisis. Over the past 18 months, we have witnessed the fall of Bill O’Reilly, the ouster (and death) of Roger Ailes, prominent conservative outlets from Fox News to Breitbart to The Wall Street Journal op-ed page erupt in upheaval and infighting, Milo Yiannopoulos lose his book deal, and Tomi Lahren lose her job at The Blaze (only to land at Fox). Look closer, though, and you’ll see that much of that drama was simply a function of the outlets’ increased political power (and the heightened scrutiny that’s followed)—a bit of routine turbulence accompanying the unprecedented ascent of the right-wing media.

While Donald Trump’s rise may have, as Politico’s Eliana Johnson recently wrote, “scrambled the pecking order” on the right—elevating Breitbartesque populists over the conservative intellectuals at the Journal and The Weekly Standard—the conservative media complex as a whole is bigger, stronger, and more influential today than it’s ever been. And with so many of its most powerful members now pursuing a scorched-earth assault on America’s journalistic institutions, it’s worth considering what they hope it will look like once they’re done burning down our villages, desecrating our temples, and howling at our lamentations. 

Boyle said his goal was simple: “The full destruction and elimination of the entire mainstream media.” Breitbart played up his speech on its homepage that day, but the remarks barely registered in broader media circles. The site and its staff have become known for this kind of bluster, and most journalists have taught themselves to tune it out. Maybe we ought to be paying closer attention.

Trust me, folks... this is a blockbuster article, with tons of usable information and an excellent timeline of organized conservative attacks on the very idea of independent, non-partisan, truth-telling (and scandal-revealing) journalism. As usual with high-quality links here: Read, Save, Share.

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Here... let Shaun King tell you about the Attempted Airport Bombing from Last Week. His report, for the Intercept, explains in part:

I bet you never heard about it. I keep an eye on these types of incidents closely, and I didn’t hear about it. Someone who follows me online who happens to live in Asheville sent me the story this morning — shocked that it hadn’t gotten any play at all beyond a few mentions in the local paper and some isolated pickup by a few national outlets. 

As soon as I clicked on the article, it all made perfect sense. 

The story didn’t go viral and Trump didn’t tweet about it because the bomb was not placed by an immigrant, or a Muslim, or a Mexican. It was placed there by a good ol’ white man, Michael Christopher Estes. Unlike the Las Vegas shooter, Stephen Paddock, whose motive is still hard to discern, Estes wanted to be very clear that his ultimate goal was to accelerate a war on American soil.

There are more interesting and pertinent details to peruse over at the article. Thanks to Shaun for helping to keep track of stories like these in times like these. I think it's an important exercise and history will treat him kindly for doing so.

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Aside from a few arts and entertainment reviews, I can’t remember the last time I was in 100% agreement with an article from the National Review. And yet, there's not a single thing I disagree with in this article, written by Jay Nordlinger, about how the US govt has shamefully aided Vladimir Putin in the latter's ongoing vindictive attacks on anti-corruption crusader Bill Browder. It’s a strange feeling.

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Okay, well, I am NOT going to pretend like I understand this TruthCommand.com article about how sicentists have found what appears to be a "multidemensional universe inside the human brain"... a universe that "calculates" (or at least operates) at an abstraction of up to ELEVEN FUCKING DIMENSIONS (even in the tiniest slice of neural material)... but it's sure as Hell interesting. And the video at the link helps me grok it a little bit, at least. Who knows? Maybe you'll grasp it more easily than I. If you do, and you figure out a way to dumb it down even further, could you please do so in the comments section below? I'd appreciate it.

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And finally, as a little extra, here is an incredibly moving video of an elderly chimpanzee, at death's door, perking up during a visit from an old friend, in an exchange that is profoundly, heart-breakingly human.

SUGGESTED READING ~ OCT 9, 2017

Buzzfeed's Joe Bernstein has just gifted future historians -- not to mention those litigators who will eventually be tasked with investigating the conspiracy and treason that took place in service of the New Fascist International coup (keep watching this space) -- with one of the most important pieces of investigative journalism yet to be published on the subject. Titled "Alt-White: How the Breitbart Machine Laundered Racist Hate", the report is based on a treasure trove of primary documents and correspondences, and it fully exposes at least one of the many tentacles currently being wielded to great and terrible effect by this, the latest evolutionary strain of Movement Conservatism. 

It's a long piece, but it reads fast, with Bernstein delivering a substantial amount of information and making a significant number of connections with commendable economy and journalistic reserve. Despite much of the material on display being worthy of an outraged response, Bernstein wisely lets the material do the talking. For instance, in the following, particularly galling series of communications that illustrate how a motley crew of despicable fringe-dwelling bottom-feeders suddenly found themselves (and their shitty ideas) circulating at the highest levels of American power:

Early in the morning of August 17, 2016, as news began to break that Steve Bannon would leave Breitbart to run the Trump campaign, Milo Yiannopoulos emailed the man who had turned him into a star. 

“Congrats chief,” he wrote. 

“u mean ‘condolences,’” Bannon wrote back. 

“I admire your sense of duty (seriously).” 

“u get it.” 

In the month after the convention, Yiannopoulos and Bannon continued to work closely. Bannon and Marlow encouraged a barrage of stories about Yiannopoulos’s late July ban from Twitter. Bannon and Yiannopoulos worked to distance themselves from Charles Johnson’s plans to sue Twitter. (“Charles is PR poison,” Yiannopoulos wrote. “Charles is well intentioned--but he is wack,” Bannon responded.) And the two went back and forth over how hard to hit Paul Ryan in an August story defending the alt-right. (“Only the headline mocks him correct,” Bannon wrote. “We never actually say he is a cuck in the body of the piece?”) 

But once Bannon left Breitbart, his email correspondence with Yiannopoulos dried up, with a few exceptions. On August 25, after Hillary Clinton’s alt-right speech, Yiannopoulos emailed Bannon, “I’ve never laughed so hard.” 

“Dude: we r inside her fucking head,” Bannon wrote back. 

And on September 15, Sebastian Gorka, then an adviser to the Trump campaign, sent Yiannopoulos, Bannon, and Michael Flynn Jr., the son of Trump’s future national security adviser, a meme “as found on Twitter.” Watermarked by a conservative satire site called the Patriot Retort, the image was titled “The Deplorables,” and had superimposed various TrumpWorld faces on top of the all-star action movie heroes of the 2010 Sylvester Stallone vehicle The Expendables. 

“I presume you Gents approved of this,” Gorka wrote. 

“THIS IS BRILLIANT. CC’ing LTG Flynn,” Flynn, Jr. wrote back, referring to his father. 

“LOL!” Bannon responded. 

“Yes. I’m jealous!!” Gorka replied.

So... how could this happen? How did America get to the point where it could be hijacked by a cackling cabal of spite-fueled, hate-filled, race-obsessed pseudo-intellectual mediocrities and frauds? Most likely, it happened the exact same way that pretty much everything happens in the USA: via the strategic outlay of significant amounts of money.  

Which brings us -- and Bernstein's piece, which you must read and recommend to others -- to one ROBERT MERCER, the man who has been doing for the Far Right what the Far Right claims George Soros has been doing for progressive causes for years now. Once you're done reading the Buzzfeed piece, here is an overview of Robert Mercer and his daughter Rebeckah (a duo that give off a distinct Chinatown vibe, if you ask me). As usual, keep watching this space for further updates re: the New Fascist International.

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Did you notice something strange about your reaction to last week's record-breaking mass murder in Las Vegas? Like, a certain dull ache somewhere deep inside, not unlike the bittersweet ennui that overtakes one after a particularly powerful orgasm, only to recede like the memory of a vaguely familiar perfume on a light Autumn breeze? Are you wondering what this could possibly have to do with Rick and Morty? Well, here's Mondo2000's Pariah McCree to tie it all together for you in an essay she christened with the ungainly moniker Old and Busted: Learned Helplessness. New Hotness: Nihilism as Survival Trait. She begins:

Last night I finally had the opportunity to spend some quality time with a partner I don’t get to see very often, because our lives reside in vastly different orbits these days. This quality time consisted of sitting on their couch sipping bourbon, shooting the shit, and occasionally glancing over at the television showing a queue full of episodes of Rick and Morty. I’m not particularly interested in television but I can certainly appreciate the antics of a sarcastic, hedonistic, substance using and abusing mad scientist. At some point last night, said partner’s phone began making noises as if it were about to explode, or possibly perish of a combination stroke and heart attack. Knowing them as long as I have and being a product of my time, I immediately extracted my smartphone and began scanning social media. Did the Oompa-Loompa in Chief finally start World War III? 

“Bah. Another mass shooting, this one at the hotel I stayed at this summer. Whatever.” 

I dropped both phone and drink, committing one of the few sins I actually care about (alcohol abuse). “What?” 

“Another mass shooting, this one at a festival in Las Vegas. Initial reports are forty fatalities and at least two hundred injured. Data is still being compiled.” They sipped their drink and tossed their own phone onto the coffee table as Rick prattled on about the racial epithets of alien species. 

“No,” I said. “You just blew it off. This isn’t like you. How much did you have?” 

“Just the one,” they said. “It’s just another fucking mass shooting. They’ll happen more and more often as people get more and more crazy. After your ninth or tenth you stop rising to take the bait and flow with it.” 

I don’t mind saying that I spent the rest of the evening drinking quietly and staring at my long-time friend, co-conspirator, and lover. This is a person who sends flowers when someone’s cat dies, and wept upon discovering that a hamster’s disappearance was due to the creature hiding in its cage to expire quietly. And they’re not even breaking a sweat upon discovering that several hundred people (at last count, more than 500 injuries and almost 60 deaths) were on the wrong end of a jackass with a room full of guns and a week’s worth of ammunition in downtown Las Vegas? Some days I’m not sure how human they are, but last night took the taco. I stayed as far away from the coat closet as I could, lest a cyborg facehugger spring from the shadows and shove its ovipositor down my throat. 

In the shower this morning, where I always do my best thinking (don’t you?) I rolled the events of the previous night around in my head. By my take, there have been about 115 mass shootings since the year 2000. While the numbers bounce around a little bit they’re steadily creeping upward. Add to that the sheer insanity of the past year and… this is our new normal. The pattern of how the aftermath of the Las Vegas massacre is going to unfold is probably going to be just like all the others.

 McCree goes on to elucidate her thoughts in a paradoxically distressing yet lighthearted manner (as befitting her cartoon reference point of choice, I suppose, even though I remain more of an Adventure Time fan, myself). Anyway, you're already half-way through the damn thing, so why not just finish reading it?

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And, finally for today, I bring you the increasingly relevant Norm MacDonald interviewing the increasingly distressing Jim Carrey on his increasingly essential podcast/Youtube show. Cringe-inducing as fuck, and yet also a great showcase for two almost inexplicably twisted comic brains, this video is the greatest fucking thing you're likely to see this week. Two incredibly funny guys just riffing off the top of their heads, caring not whether all the jokes land in the way they intended, and occasionally finding gold where you would expect to find poop. We here at the DDD have always been big Jim Carrey fans, and the same still holds true for the "No Fucks Left To Give" version who has lately been on public display.

DDD EXECUTIVE SUMMARY ~ MARCH 28, 2017

We all know how this White House just HATES to jump to conclusions...

DID YOU KNOW?

• Did you know that, when asked for the White House's reaction to news that a race terrorist (James Jackson) had traveled to New York City and murdered someone (Timothy Caughman) with a sword, spokesman Sean Spicer chose instead to complain about how the biased media had failed to predict that the idiot who called in hundreds of bomb threats to Jewish schools and community centers would turn out to be Jewish, himself? Fucking incredible, ain't it?
• Did you know that over 200 men, women and children were blown to pieces on Thursday during an American bombing raid in Mosul, Iraq? And that military officials are hinting that this may be the fruit of Trump demanding that Obama era "restrictions", designed to lessen the chance and impact of civilian casualties, be dropped?
• Did you know that while White House leakers were planting the story that Trump was "very upset" with son-in-law Jared Kushner for jetting off to Aspen for a family ski vacation during the final days in the disastrous campaign to pass Trumpcare, evidence has emerged that there may be a whole lot more to that Aspen trip than just skiing? Considering some of the other stuff this Eric Rosenwald cat has uncovered recently--and considering who's involved--I'd be avoiding small aircraft and packing heat at all times if I were him.
• Did you know that Alex Jones' apology for helping to spread the incredibly stupid alt.right conspiracy theory-cum-Fascist International psychological operation known as PizzaGate was totally sincere, legit, and above board? Here! Watch and listen for yourself!

• Did you know that Donald Trump supporters in Ohio don't just know that the man they voted for is lying to them on the regular... nor do they simply accept it... but that they've actually grown to ENJOY being lied to and taken for suckers?
• Did you know that Trump's recent meeting with German chancelor Angela Merkel was even more awkward and humiliating than we'd been lead to believe? Aside from the infamous handshake refusal incident, we've since learned that, during their private meeting behind closed doors, Trump handed Merkel a literal, paper and ink, printed out invoice for $374,000,000,000.00?! This, allegedly, is the amount that Trump and his minions have calculated that Germany owes to NATO... you know... for 'protection'. Ah... another totally diplomatic, above board, and not at all thuggish gesture from Trump!
• And finally, did you know that those upstart lefties over at (ahem) Business Insider have put together a month-by-month timeline of events that unfolded during the election that seem to support the FBI's investigation into Trump colluding with the Russians? To paraphrase one of our age's great statesmen: "It's true! It's really true! Bad (or sick) guy!"

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SUGGESTED READINGS

1. Are you ready for an incredibly information-dense serving of food for thought? Iain Sinclair's The Last London, derived from his February 10 presentation of the first of the London Review of Books' Winter Lecture series for 2017, serves as a meal and a half to those ready, willing and able to digest it. Half pre-Apocalyptic post-Modern fantasia and half hauntological mystery tour, it begins:

So: the last London. It has to be said with a climbing inflection at the end. Every statement is provisional here. Nothing is fixed or grounded. Come back tomorrow and the British Museum will be an ice rink, a boutique hotel, a fashion hub. The familiar streets outside will have vanished into walls of curved glass and progressive holes in the ground. The darkened showroom of the Brick Lane monumental mason with the Jewish headstones will be an art gallery. 

So? The Victorian theatre on Dalston Lane is already a windblown concrete slab with optional water jets propping up a reef of speculative towers nobody can afford on a buttress of failed enterprises, themed restaurants forever changing their allegiance and retail opportunities nobody is rushing to take up, despite those elegantly faded CGI panoramas of satisfied customers who never lived in the world as we know it. 

So? I’m trying to teach myself the grammar of a terminated city in which every sentence begins with a confident clearing of the throat: ‘So …’ That’s the entry code. It’s as if you’ve been shoved onstage, without lines, in a play you’ve never read. Smile brightly. Bluff like a politician in a glass booth being manipulated by semaphoring black-suited attendants with clipboards. 

So? ‘All for the best in the best of all possible Londons,’ says the mayor, says the minister, says Joanna Lumley. ‘All for the best,’ say the entitled, the connected, the stakeholders, the investors and the profit-takers. That insignificant ‘so’ has moved with the times. When my children were teenagers, ‘so’ meant ‘so’. 

So!!! So what? A hormonal challenge. Now it’s a signifier, a warning bleep letting the recipient know that nothing that follows has any billable consequence. The speaker, the spokesperson, the hireling expert, is not accountable. Language in the last London is a negotiation, a spin of terminological inexactitudes. 

We are losing the ground beneath our feet. Slipping and sliding on subordinating conjunctions, we are disorientated. We feel as if we are falling as we walk, reaching out for anything cold and hard and more than a week old. In his book Vertical: The City from Satellites to Bunkers, the geographer Stephen Graham quotes Hito Steyerl, a German video artist: ‘Many contemporary philosophers have pointed out that the present moment is distinguished by a prevailing condition of groundlessness.’ 

Call it ground-zero vertigo. Non-specific paranoia. Territory, as soon as it can be adequately surveyed by drones, or hard-hat visionaries in helicopters, from heights where even the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park looks great, is only there to be explained, improved, colonised and captured. So? 

So? So what?

I realize that sounds like the end of the thing, but trust me, it's only just the beginning. Sinclair goes on, bringing in everyone from Thatcher and Reagan to J.G. Ballard and Michael Moorcock to Punk Rock and Fu Manchu. Also, there's an audio version at the link that serves as both a running commentary to the text and an augmentation of it (differing very much from the work it's allegedly an audio version of, for some reason). If you're sincerely interested in broadening your intellectual horizons and you've got an Internet connection and 90 minutes to kill, you could certainly do worse than read, and listen to, Sinclair's epic editorial peregrinations.

2. While it should in no way be viewed as the final word on the subject, practicing clinical psychologist Bruce Levine's Alternet essay "How Ayn Rand Helped Turn the U.S. into a Selfish, Greedy Nation" is one of the best things I've read about this noxious author in a very long time, and could definitely serve as a very fine critical introduction to--and thus, a good inoculation against--some of the more pernicious elements of her work, her "philosophy", and her cult. After an epigram by Gore Vidal, it begins:

Only rarely in U.S. history do writers transform us to become a more caring or less caring nation. In the 1850s, Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896) was a strong force in making the United States a more humane nation, one that would abolish slavery of African Americans. A century later, Ayn Rand (1905-1982) helped make the United States into one of the most uncaring nations in the industrialized world, a neo-Dickensian society where healthcare is only for those who can afford it, and where young people are coerced into huge student-loan debt that cannot be discharged in bankruptcy. 

Rand’s impact has been widespread and deep. At the iceberg’s visible tip is the influence she’s had over major political figures who have shaped American society. In the 1950s, Ayn Rand read aloud drafts of what was later to become Atlas Shrugged to her “Collective,” Rand’s ironic nickname for her inner circle of young individualists, which included Alan Greenspan, who would serve as chairman of the Federal Reserve Board from 1987 to 2006. 

In 1966, Ronald Reagan wrote in a personal letter, “Am an admirer of Ayn Rand.” Today, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) credits Rand for inspiring him to go into politics, and Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) calls Atlas Shrugged his “foundation book.” Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) says Ayn Rand had a major influence on him, and his son Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) is an even bigger fan. A short list of other Rand fans includes Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas; Christopher Cox, chairman of the Security and Exchange Commission in George W. Bush’s second administration; and former South Carolina governor Mark Sanford. 

But Rand’s impact on U.S. society and culture goes even deeper.

Levine has done yeoman's work, bringing us his specialist's take on Rand's peculiarly popular psychopathologies. If you've got any committed Randroids in your entourage, don't bother sending this to them. But DO send it to anyone you think that Randroid might possibly infect. And remember: Friends don't let Friends read Ayn Rand!

3. Yer old pal Jerky loves him some Mystery Science Theater 3000. In fact, I think it's one of the greatest--and definitely among the funniest--television programs in the history of the medium. I've been down about MST3K's cancellation since 1999 for Torgo's sake! So when news emerged that Joel was doing a Kickstarter for a new version of the show, I was like, YEAH! And then, when they broke all Kickstarter records for a TV show, I was like, HELL's YEAH! And then, when I found out it was gonna be on Netflix, which means all the first season episodes are gonna drop simultaneously, I was like, FRICKEN' ACE! And then, when I found out that the new season of MST3K was basically popping into existence ON MY BIRTHDAY, I was like, PPFFRREAAAAHHRRGGHH!!! Anyway, Today's Suggested Readings are pretty heavy, so here's a 48 second commercial for the new season of Mystery Science Theater 3000. Huzzah!

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QUOTE OF THE DAY

“I think that sooner or later the white working-class constituency will recognize, and in fact, much of the rural population will come to recognize, that [Trump's] promises are built on sand. There is nothing there. And then what happens becomes significant. In order to maintain his popularity, the Trump administration will have to try to find some means of rallying the support and changing the discourse from the policies that they are carrying out, which are basically a wrecking ball to something else. ... And that can turn out to be very ugly. I think that we shouldn't put aside the possibility that there would be some kind of staged or alleged terrorist act, which can change the country instantly.”

- Oh, so now the world's most widely respected public intellectual, Professor Noam Fucking Chomsky, is willing to "go there", is he? Welcome to the Parapolitical Science Club, Noam. Sure fuckin' took you long enough to get here.

DDD EXTRAS

• If you want to learn about some cool and/or weird things that happened on whatever day of history that it happens to be when you're reading this, why not check out our sister-site, Useless Eater Blog? You're sure to find something of interest, guaranteed!
• At the Kubrick U blog, you can viddy some very horrosho, very 70's Clockwork Orange bubble gum collector's cards!

THE TAKEAWAY

I have reformulated my image from the last DDD Executive Summary in order to more accurately reflect the way Trump backed off from his repeal and replace of Obamacare... and to add a tattered American flag. I think this way is better, frankly, because the original invests Trump's self-destruction with far too much conscious agency.

DDD EXECUTIVE SUMMARY FOR JAN/18/2017

THE MAIN EVENT

• Last week, Julian Assange tweeted "If Obama grants Manning clemency Assange will agree to US extradition despite clear unconstitutionality of DoJ case." Yesterday Obama granted clemency to Chelsea Manning. Well played, Mister President. Your move, Julian. I wonder what odds they're giving at Ladbrokes? 
• A Nigerian air force bomber on a mission against the Boko Haram Islamic extremist terrorist group has accidentally attacked a refugee camp, killing scores. Satan, laughing, spreads his wings. 
• UK Prime Minister Theresa May's BREXIT speech continues to reverberate through the corridors of global power... and online, at the Apple Store, where the British Pound won't go as far as it used to.

A DEEPER DIVE

• Israel's scandal plagued, right-wing extremist Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu referred to the growing international call for the establishment of a Palestinian state as "the last flutters of yesterday's world." Oh yeah? Well... that's just, like, your opinion, man!
• The gunman who attacked a nightclub in Istanbul, Turkey on New Year's Eve, killing 39, has been captured in a police sting operation, and has confessed, saying he did what he did in the name of ISIS.
• If you plan on going to Washington in order to protest Donald Fucking Trump's inauguration, be aware that a James O'Keefe--a well funded, Far Right agitator with a known history of infiltration, agitation, and the creation of lie-packed propaganda on behalf of, and in concert with, more "reputable" conservative and Republican groups--is up to his dirty tricks again. See the above graphic and this link for more information... and be safe!  

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SUGGESTED READINGS

1. Ah, thank Cthulhu for Matt Taibi! I don't know if I could take it if he ever went the mushy-headed, leftier-than-thou, Putin-apologizing way of Glenn Greenwald and Julian Assange. His latest for Rolling Stone--entitled The Russia Story Reaches a Crisis Point--is a must-read, no matter where you stand on the much-debated Trump Dossier, and the ethics of the media treatment of those materials. And it ends with a bang, too. Taibi writes:

...Ynet in Israel is reporting that Israeli intelligence officials are deciding not to share intelligence with the incoming Trump administration. The report indicates they came to this conclusion after a recent meeting with American intelligence officials, who told them the Russians have "leverages of pressure" to use against Trump. 

This is an extraordinary story. If our intelligence community really believes this, then playtime is over. 

No more Clapper-style hedging or waffling. If Israel gets to hear why they think Trump is compromised, how is the American public not also so entitled? 

But if all they have are unverifiable rumors, they can't do this, not even to Donald Trump.

There's more. Be sure to read the whole thing. It's killer!

2. How cool is The Watchmen? Not the movie, but the graphic novel. Turns out it's pretty fucking cool... especially if you dig obsessive creative genius. I've been a fan for decades, and I learned some new stuff from this listicle, which is rare!

3. As if life wasn't terrifying enough these days, here's a batch of supremely terrifying short films to keep you even MORE awake at night! Some of them are lame, but some others really dug their clutches deep into the old grey matter... like, for instance, this one...

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TWEET OF THE DAY

Protests 2009: Our black President is a secret Muslim terrorist!

Protests 2017: Please don't kill me. pic.twitter.com/YSbEMTjQjp

— Cody Johnston (@drmistercody) January 15, 2017

DDD EXTRAS

• If you want to learn about some cool and/or weird things that happened on the 18th day of January, check out our sister-site, Useless Eater Blog.
• Over at Kubrick U, we've got a whole bunch of cool artwork related to The Shining, as well as the somber news of the passing of legendary Leonard, of "Hair by" fame. All this and more, in the latest Kubrick News In Brief.

THE TAKEAWAY

I lost an ENTIRE COMPLETE fucking DDD Executive Summary today somehow. Not even sure how I did it. Sorry if this one feels rushed, but it was.

SUGGESTED READING LIST, APRIL 22, 2016

1. This New York Times op-ed piece about the growing threat of non-Muslim religious and politically conservative movements and organizations contains some information that might seem counter-intuitive to some people reading this. It begins:

THIS month, the headlines were about a Muslim man in Boston who was accused of threatening police officers with a knife. Last month, two Muslims attacked an anti-Islamic conference in Garland, Tex. The month before, a Muslim man was charged with plotting to drive a truck bomb onto a military installation in Kansas. If you keep up with the news, you know that a small but steady stream of American Muslims, radicalized by overseas extremists, are engaging in violence here in the United States. 

But headlines can mislead. The main terrorist threat in the United States is not from violent Muslim extremists, but from right-wing extremists. Just ask the police.

Before I leave you in the NYT's capable editorial hands, here's an info-graphic containing another intriguing if uncomfortable info-nugget that suggests a certain lack of proportion as regards where US law enforcement's priorities and resources are currently aimed.

2. Over at The New Inquiry, A.M. Gittlitz has written a very interesting piece about how today’s Alt.Right, New Right and techno-futurist circles are echoing the unorthodox beliefs of Nazi cosmologists. See if you feel a chill shiver of disturbing recognition creep across the back of your neck as you read this essay, which begins...

Shortly after the National Socialist party consolidated their power, a writer named Peter Bender convinced some Nazi brass to attempt an experiment that, if successful, would send a rocket from Magdenburg to New Zealand. The intercontinental ballistic missile was still decades away from completion, but Bender believed he had figured out how to attack the other side of the Earth—by firing directly into the sky. 

He had come under the influence of an American occult group that believed in a particularly bizarre variation on the Hollow Earth theory. While the concept of habitable layers beneath the Earth’s crust had been popular for centuries amongst occultists, Bender’s Hohlwelt-theorie argued that the Earth was a vault within an endless field of matter. The sun was somewhere in the middle of this vault, and the stars in the sky were the lights of cities from the other side. 

“An infinite universe is a Jewish abstraction,” wrote Bender. “A finite, rounded universe is a thoroughly Aryan conception.” The anti-Semitic aspect of the theory attracted the attention of Herman Göring but was quickly dismissed in favor of Hanns Hörbiger’s slightly less fanciful World Ice Theory. The idea nonetheless remained compelling to some, and the German Navy attempted to locate British fleets using astronomical instruments.

Hollow Earth and World Ice theories were only two particularly laughable examples of a Nazi cultural regression that included radical alterations in the fields of mathematics, psychology, and physics. It is arguable that the rejection of Einstein’s theory of relativity in place of Deutsche Physiksprevented the Nazis from developing nuclear technology and many other weapons. ...  

Better known than their cosmology was the mystical underpinnings of the Nazis’ firm belief in racial superiority. SS leaders Rudolph Hess, Wilhelm Landig, and Karl Maria Miligut developed a cult based on the Nordic pantheon, esoteric rituals, and psuedo-anthropology. Landig, already a major influence on the occultist Thule Society that influenced National Socialist theology in its earliest days, developed the Black Sun as the cult’s symbol. ...  

Nationalists, Radical Traditionalists, and the futurist “neoreactionaries” deploy the myth that inverting these divisions, instead of abolishing them altogether, help us conceive of an idealized bygone time. The internationalist, anticapitalist, and egalitarian aspects of the last half-decade of struggle have only furthered modernity’s march away from these simpler times, they argue, and should be disregarded as agents of degradation.

It should not be news to anyone reading this that the Black Sun has already risen in Ukraine, Greece, and Hungary, using a different name wherever it goes: Avoz, Golden Dawn, Jobbik. This piece will help you recognize the nature of the Beast.

3. With the recent court decision quite rightly finding Canadian radio celebrity Jian Ghomeshi not guilty of a variety of sexual assault charges (not that this decision gave him back the career, or life), a reactionary movement has arisen that claims we should always believe claims of rape and/or sexual assault. This Center for Inquiry article examines an unfortunate implication of said proposition, namely the fact that accepting every claim of rape and/or sexual assault at face value involves swallowing a whole bunch of heinous, life-destroying lies. Please read the article - and maybe this very informative Wikipedia page on the surprising prevalence of false rape accusations- before showing up at my place with torches and pitchforks. M'kay?

DDD SUGGESTED READING ~ SEPT 4, 2015

1. From the Dig Within website, a few words about Fourteen Incredible Facts about the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001. It begins:

As the 14th anniversary of 9/11 approaches, it’s important to remind people that we still don’t know what happened that day. What is known about 9/11 is that there are many incredible facts that continue to be ignored by the government and the mainstream media. Here are fourteen. 

1. An outline of what was to become the 9/11 Commission Report was produced before the investigation began. The outline was kept secret from the Commission’s staff and appears to have determined the outcome of the investigation. 

2. The 9/11 Commission claimed sixty-three (63) times in its Report that it could find “no evidence” related to important aspects of the crimes. 

3. One person, Shayna Steinger, issued 12 visas to the alleged hijackers in Saudi Arabia. Steiger issued some of the visas without interviewing the applicants and fought with another employee at the embassy who tried to prevent her lax approach. 

4. Before 9/11, the nation’s leading counter-terrorism expert repeatedly notified his friends in the United Arab Emirates of top-secret U.S. plans to capture Osama bin Laden. These treasonous leaks prevented Bin Laden’s capture on at least two separate occasions. 

5. Former National Security Advisor Sandy Berger was caught stealing documents from the National Archives that had been requested by the 9/11 Commission. The Commission had previously been denied access to the documents but the White House reluctantly agreed to turn them over just as Berger was trying to steal them. 

6. The official story of the failed air defenses on 9/11 was changed several times and, in the end, paradoxically exonerated the military by saying that the military had lied many times about its response. The man who was behind several of the changing accounts was a specialist in political warfare (i.e. propaganda). 

7. Military exercises being conducted on the day of 9/11 mimicked the attacks as they were occurring and obstructed the response. NORAD commander Ralph Eberhart sponsored those exercises, failed to do his job that day, and later lied to Congress about it (if the 9/11 Commission account is true).

To read the other seven facts, and to check out the multiple references embedded into the above text as evidence, click on this link.

2. As an addendum to the above article, here's this thorough (and, for me, thoroughly disappointing on a personal level) takedown of one of the guys I used to think was one of the few "good guys" working from the inside of the Bush regime at the time of the September 11 terrorist attacks: former counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke. This revelation alone, is enough to shatter that delusion:

In 1984, Clarke was selected to take part in one of the most highly classified projects of the Reagan Administration. This was the secret Continuity of Government (COG) program run by the National Program Office that continued up to and after the attacks of September 11. Other than Clarke, the members of the COG group included Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, George H.W. Bush, Kenneth Duberstein, and James Woolsey. If not a formal member of the group, Oliver North reported to it and acted on its behalf. Although Cheney and Rumsfeld were not government employees throughout the twenty years that Clarke participated in this official government program, they both continued to participate. COG was developed to install a shadow “government in waiting” to replace the U.S. Congress and the U.S. Constitution in the event of a national emergency like a nuclear war. In 1998, Clarke revised the COG plan for use as a response to a terrorist attack on American soil. The first and only time that COG was put into action was when Richard Clarke activated it during the 9/11 attacks. As of 2002, that shadow government continued to be in effect as an “indefinite precaution.”

3. After the above terror-related horror, I thought we could cleanse our palates with a bit of alien sex-related horror. Because, apparently, thanks to the Internet, there's no fetish so strange, so off the beaten path, that it doesn't exist anymore. So say hello to the creator of Primal Hardware's "alien ovipositor" sex toy, which "is basically a big dildo that lays goopy eggs molded from gelatin in the body cavity of your choice." It's an interesting interview with the item's creator, a dude who goes by the name of "Lone Wolf". The promotional video promising "enhanced splorch" is particularly enlightening.

ON THIS DAY IN PARA-CULTURE, MAY 30

On this day in 1431, in Rouen, France, shortly after being captured by Burgundian troops in the English-occupied French region then known as Compiègne, the virgin-warrior "Maid of Orleans", Joan of Arc, is burned at the stake as a heretic. She was only 19 years old, but in the two years that she'd led a devoted army of rugged warriors to numerous impressive victories in the name of the Charles Dauphin (whom she lived to see crowned King of France), she had managed to transform the Hundred Years War into a religious war, terrifying superstitious English soldiers and inspiring French warriors to the point of fanaticism... which made her brutal execution all the more devastating to her many devoted admirers. Twenty-five years after her execution, an Inquisitorial court authorized by Pope Callixtus III examined the trial, pronounced her innocent and declared her a martyr. Joan was beatified in 1909, and canonized in 1920... Saint Joan, Patron Saint of France. Some modern historians think Joan fell prey to a plot by the very King Charles she'd helped to crown, because he wanted to make a deal with the Burgundians while she favored destroying them, militarily. It's impossible to know for sure at this point, but it does make for one hell of a story, that's for sure.

On this day in 1778, renowned French philosopher and author François-Marie Arouet - better known as Voltaire - passes away at the tender age of 84. He is still widely read today, and his works still have the power to amuse, inspire, and offend, in equal measure. I recommend Candide, in which he rails hilariously against the naive philosophical optimism of Jean Jacques Rousseau and Leibniz.

On this day in 1972, in Tel Aviv, Israel, members of the Japanese Red Army carry out the Lod Airport Massacre, killing 24 people and injuring 78 others, leaving everybody scratching their heads, wondering what in the high holy FUCK kind of gripe those Japanese goofs could possibly have against the Jews, anyway?!

ON THIS DAY IN PARAPOLITICS, MAY 18

On this day in 1152, King Henry II of England marries Eleanor of Aquitaine, an incredibly fascinating world-historic person in her own right.

On this day in 1804, Napoleon Bonaparte is proclaimed Emperor of the French by the French Senate, which kind of flies in the face of the ideals behind the entire Revolutionary Project, but whatever.

On this day in 1896, a mass panic on Khodynka Field in Moscow during the festivities of the coronation of Russian Tsar Nicholas II on the day of his 28th birthday results in the deaths of... hold on, can this be right? 1,389 people?! Sheez, that must have been some serious-ass panicking!

On this day in 1910, the Earth passes through the tail of Halley's Comet. Despite many contemporaneous prophecies to the contrary, life as we know it does not cease to exist right then and there.

On this day in 1927, 45 second-to-sixth graders are killed and 58 more are wounded when a huge cache of explosives planted by anti-tax activist Andrew Kehoe explodes beneath a school in Bath, Michigan. It took Kehoe a year to plan his atrocity, and months to pack the school full of explosives which he then detonated remotely, herding his victims for maximum carnage, before blowing up his own shrapnel-packed car with himself inside it. He even issued a number of vague threats before doing the dirty deed, but nobody caught on. 

On this day in 1944, the Soviet Union exiles more than 200,000 Tartars from Crimea because they were collaborating with the Nazis. And to think… the only thing the USA did with their Nazi collaborators - Preznit Dubya's grand-daddy being chief among them - was give them a slap on the wrist and hand their descendents the keys to the White House. It's kind of funny, in an utterly fucking disgusting kind of way.  

On this day in 1974, India becomes the sixth nation in world history to explode an atomic bomb... not counting Atlantis.

On this day in 1980, Mount Saint Helens erupts, gushing forth billions of gallons of volcanic ash, killing between 57 and 65 people (depending who you ask) and blasting away a huge chunk of the mountainside. 

On this day in 1995, a crystal-meth-addicted, half-psychotic, authority-hating Army vet named Shawn Nelson steals an M60 Patton Tank from a National Guard base in San Diego and goes on a rampage, destroying cars, fire hydrants and other property before being gunned down by police after getting stuck on a median.

ON THIS DAY IN PARAPOLITICS, MAY 17

On this day in 1642, French explorer Paul Chomedey de Maisonneuve founds the city of Montréal. Today, Montreal is the second most populous city in Canada after Toronto, and the fifteenth largest in North America. It contains the largest metropolitan French-speaking population outside of France and remains a vibrant cultural hub.

On this day in 1792, the New York Stock Exchange is formed when the "Buttonwood Agreement" is signed by 24 stockbrokers outside of 68 Wall Street in New York, under a buttonwood tree.

On this day in 1804, the historic duo of Lewis & Clark begin exploring the land acquired from Napoleon by Thomas Jefferson, in a sweetheart deal known as the Louisiana Purchase. 

On this day in 1902, Greek archaeologist Valerios Stais discovers the Antikythera mechanism, a fascinating ancient mechanical analog computer designed to calculate the positions of the planets and certain stars. The construction has been dated to the early 1st century BCE, and - according to establishment-approved historical record - technological artifacts of similar complexity did not reappear until the 14th century, when similar astronomical clocks were built in Europe.

On this day in 1933, Vidkun Quisling and Johan Bernhard Hjort form Nasjonal Samling, the Nazi party of Norway. Hence the origins of "quisling" as an insult-word denoting an enthusiastic collaboration with evil.

On this day in 1974, police in Los Angeles, California, raid the headquarters of the self-styled left-wing urban militant "revolutionary vanguard" terrorist group, the Symbionese Liberation Army, killing six members, including leader (and most likely CIA mind-control test subject) Donald "Cinque" DeFreeze and Camilla Hall, who was shot in the head while trying to give herself up to police. The raid remains one of the most vicious firefights in LAPD history... and that's saying something. 

On this day in 1978, Charlie Chaplin's coffin is discovered ten miles from the Swiss cemetary where the infamous director had recently been buried. An officer at the scene drops dead of a heart-attack when, upon opening the coffin to verify that Chaplin's remains were still present, a giant boxing glove shoots out and pops him a good one right in the chops. I'm kidding of course. Moving right along... 

On this day in 2004, Massachusetts becomes the first U.S. state to legalize same-sex marriage.

ON THIS DAY IN PARAPOLITICS, MAY 14

On this day in 1607, the English colony of Jamestown, in the state of Virginia, is first settled. It was the first permanent English settlement in the New World, coming on the heels of some epic failures - like the Lost Colony of Roanoke - and would serve as capital of the colony for 83 years. 

On this day in 1643, Louis XIV becomes King of France upon the death of his father, Louis XIII. The Bourbon royal, popularly referred to as the Sun King, was only 4 years old at the time, enabling him to eventually become Europe's longest-reigning monarch, ruling France and Navarre for 72 years and 110 days.

On this day in 1796, medical researcher Edward Jenner administers the first ever smallpox vaccination. Just imagine how thick that dull the syringes must have been back then... Ugh.

On this day in 1948, in the city of Tel Aviv, Jewish Agency chairman David Ben-Gurion declares: "We hereby proclaim the establishment of the Jewish state in Palestine, to be called Israel." Within hours, Israel is repelling military attacks from pretty much all of its neighbors.

On this day in 1955, the nations of Bulgaria, Hungary, East Germany, Poland, Romania, the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia sign a mutual defense treaty. They call themselves the Warsaw Pact.

On this day in 1970, the Red Army Faction, or RAF, is established in Germany by Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin, Horst Mahler, and Ulrike Meinhof. The RAF described itself as a communist and anti-imperialist "urban guerrilla" group engaged in armed resistance against what they deemed to be a fascist state. Their terrorist activities mostly consisted of attempts to free jailed members of their gang using violent means. They eventually hook up with the Socialist Patient's Collective, or SPK, a real bunch of nutters who believed that "illness as the protest against capitalism and considering illness the anticipation of the human species that does not yet exist but that should be created through illness." As such, they took a hard-line stance against capitalism... and doctors. I'm not kidding. In their own documents - some of which were co-written by respected French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre! - they proclaimed themselves to be staunchly "pro-illness." You couldn't make up this crap if you tried.

On this day in 1984,  Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg is born. That's right... the fucker ain't even 30 years old yet. How's that Mac'N'Cheese taste, amigo?

On this day in 1995, the Dalai Lama proclaims 6-year-old Gedhun Choekyi Nyima to be the eleventh reincarnation of Panchen Lama, thereby proving that, contrary to popular supposition, Tibetan Buddhism isn't any more enlightened than any other world religion.

Oh, and today is also World Naked Gardening Day. Just thought you'd want to know.

ON THIS DAY, APRIL 20

On this day in 1939, Adolf Hitler's 50th birthday is celebrated as a national holiday in Nazi Germany. Six years later, in 1945, Hitler makes his final trip to the surface of the Fuehrerbunker in order to award Iron Crosses to boy soldiers of the Hitler Youth. After returning underground, he would never resurface alive.

On this day in 1968, English C/conservative politician Enoch Powell -- who looks like a Monty Python parody of an English C/conservative politician -- makes his controversial "Rivers of Blood" speech, in which he claims that "in 15 or 20 years time, the black man will have the whip hand over the white man", and that allowing immigration from "colored" lands was like "watching a nation busily engaged in heaping up its own funeral pyre." The following video is a documentary about the speech, its ramifications and legacy.

On this day in 1978, Soviet fighter jets open fire on Korean Air Flight 902, killing two passengers and forcing an emergency landing on a frozen lake. The Soviet government claimed that the plane, which had invaded Soviet airpace, had not replied to requests for indentification, but Korean Air released tapes that showed the pilots had, indeed, identified themselves.

On this day in 1998, the left-wing German terrorist group Red Army Faction, also known as Baader-Meinhof, announces its dissolution after 28 years. Seeing as most of the terrorist attacks attributed to them (and many other left-wing European groups) were actually committed under the aegis of Gladio, a clandestine fascist remnant, they needn't really have bothered. This documentary is a good starting point if you want to understand the truth about the evolution of Western Civilization in the latter half of the 20th century.

On this day in 1999, the Columbine High School massacre occurs when psychopharmaceutically saturated high school nihilists Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold kill 12 classmates and one teacher -- injuring 24 others -- before committing suicide in Jefferson County, Colorado. To this day, eye-witnesses claim there was a third shooter, and compelling evidence supports this assertion.

OH, WHAT A TEFILLIN!

Have you heard about Alaska Flight 241 from Mexico City to Los Angeles? When it landed in L.A., the flight was met with a full barrage of police, firetrucks, FBI agents and TSA officials. Why? Because some members of staff  freaked out after spotting three oddly-dressed men speaking a foreign language and messing around with little black boxes with cables trailing out of them.

Turns out the men were Orthodox Jewish passengers performing "tefillin" - a ritual which involves praying out loud in Hebrew while simultaneously tying black wooden boxes to one's forehead and arms with black leather straps.

Authorities cleared up the "misunderstanding" so quickly that the men were able to make their scheduled connecting flights, no problem. And yet, regardless of the fact that nothing fucking happened to these guys, in an editorial for the Huffington Post, rabbi Brad Hirschfield expresses dismay that the three were "hassled", and says that "ignorance" of tefillin among airport security personnel is "not acceptable".  Hirschfield did concede, however, that anti-Semitism "probably" wasn't a factor in this case.

This does beg the question: In this day and age, when people traveling by air are routinely forced to take off their shoes, throw away their shampoo, drink their own breast milk, renounce Islam and convert to Christianity before being allowed to board a flight, does it not stand to reason that being seated next to some bearded, chanting religious whacko all strapped up in black leather and weird wooden boxes - with nobody from the flight crew daring to say "boo" about it - might possibly spark a certain degree of resentment?

And another thing: If a certain demographic is given a pass to perform this particular type of ritual mid-flight, then what's to stop some enterprising Jihadis from growing out their peyos, donning spodik and black bekishe, filling their tefillin with SemTex and pulling a September 11 copycat attack under cover of "political correctness"?

Is it me? Is it really too much to ask of our religious brothers and sisters that they hold their horses for a few measly hours and wait until they're on terra firma before initiating conversations with their imaginary friends? Or is the fact that we're even entertaining a debate about the appropriateness of this kind of behavior on a commercial flight just plain retarded?

Comments are more than welcome, as always!