MINUTIA & INCONSEQUENTIA / INNOCENT QUESTIONS

MINUTIA & INCONSEQUENTIA

• It's been fairly well established in certain circles that the New York office of the FBI was essentially a "Trump for President" campaign center. In fact, there have been some incredibly dark suspicions raised by the behaviors of some very dark actors, indeed, including "Count Rudolph" Giuliani, "Bloody Erik" Prince and other elements within that office who conspired to wreck Hillary's chances and boost Trump's. Seth Abramson has been doing a fantastic job of tying together the flailing strands of this story-yet-to-be-told from the very beginning, even before the election. Read this comprehensive and hair-raising narrative about it -- accurately titled "Bigger than Watergate" -- to get a better idea of why yer old pal Jerky has been so fucking freaked out and frazzled lately. Personally, I think Abramson is right on the money. It's just one more piece of the puzzle when it comes to the New Fascist International installing their boy Trump in the White House.
• Well, what do you know? It turns out this bullshit neocon anti-Obama hit-piece, which accuses Obama of going easy on Hezbollah not to endanger his Iran nuclear deal negotiations and is being echoed and amplified by the Far Right Fake News propaganda echo chamber is absolute, 100% BULLSHIT! Seems like a popular strategy with The Powers That Be these days, though, doesn't it? Trump does something awful, and then a bunch of twits pop up screaming "OBAMA DID IT TOO!" Trump's racist gestapo deportation efforts, the Facebook/Cambridge Analytica revelations... all led to "OBAMA DID IT TOO! OBAMA DID IT TOO!" And then, when you look into it, it invariably turns out that, no... No, he did not. But hey, I'm sure it keeps the base happy. Right?
• Every day, from increasingly desperate insiders trying to get the word out, we learn more about how Donald Trump seethes, ruminates and deteriorates mentally. Meanwhile, nobody seems to be willing to talk about the fact that hardcore Christo-fascist right-wingers who've been groomed from infancy to be the instruments of God’s wrath on Earth (via the world's largest nuclear arsenal, which they hope to put to use at the first possible moment) and who've been placed strategically throughout various governmental agencies in case an opportunity precisely like this one were ever to present itself, giving them a chance to turn Biblical prophecy into reality, thus justifying their worldview and wrapping up all of reality with a bright red bow, which I guess, in some ways, would make them the “winners”? Jesus Camp. Special universities that cater exclusively to home-schooled members of the Dominionist and Reconstructionist Christian cults, funded by billionaire benefactor True Believers who take the most promising graduates and put them to work in their network of think tanks and policy institutes and almost never in actual, real academia (which they're working tirelessly to denigrate and sideline), because peer review and public scrutiny would soon suss out the fact that they are a danger to themselves and others, and where nihilistic eschatological theology is generally frowned upon, particularly as public policy. Know what I mean?

INNOCENT QUESTIONS

Innocent Question #257837 ~ In all seriousness, have the Trump regime and the GOP hired veteran Scientology propagandists to run their ongoing multiple smear campaigns against those they deem to be a threat to their lucrative criminal pursuits? Because their recent efforts reek of 90's era Scientology tactics. Take a look at this disgusting and ludicrous website that they slapped together to smear James Comey as a case in point.

Innocent Question #257838 ~ Have you ever wondered why it is that the Alt Right so often sympathizes with insane mass murderers? Personally, I think it's because they're all just one sub-optimal encounter with a minimum wage service industry drone away from shooting up and/or crashing their mom's car into the nearest crowd of innocent bystanders, themselves. ALL OF THEM.

Innocent Question #257839 ~ Don't believe Stormy Daniels about being threatened by a Trump thug? Then how about these people? Please note that not only did these people describe their encounters with Trump-hired goons contemporaneous to the events in question, but some of them even contacted the authorities at the time, which once caused Trump to behave in highly suspicious behavior afterwards, in an obvious, desperate, and failed attempt to make himself look blameless.

ERIC GARLAND'S GAME THEORY 5

(AUDIO VERSION)

If you'd rather read it, or want to clip and save it (which I recommend), then check out the post on Eric's blog, instead.

LIGHT READING FOR HEAVY TIMES

MORE FORMER TRUMP-RUSSIA "SKEPTICS" ARE ACCEPTING THE OBVIOUS

The latest to come around? Renowned investigative journalist James Risen. And he's done so in the pages of infamously and unreasonably Russo-skeptic online journal The Intercept, no less, in an ongoing series entitled Trump and Russia, in which "James Risen weighs the evidence for accusations of Russian election interference, collusion, and obstruction of justice."

So far, two parts have been released. First came "Is Donald Trump A Traitor?" The second part is "The Absent Professor"

I can recommend this series both to those who already have a good handle on why the rest of us see red when ostensibly intelligent people try to claim "there's no evidence of Trump colluding with Russia" and also to those who are laboring under the idiotic, propaganda-implanted assumption that there's no evidence of Trump colluding with Russia.

***

WE'RE DOOMED:

THE CLIMATE REALITY NOBODY IS ADDRESSING.

Are you in a good mood? Then maybe DON'T read this Guardian interview with social scientist Mayer Hillman, in which you'll encounter such cheery and enlightening paragraphs as:

Although Hillman has not flown for more than 20 years as part of a personal commitment to reducing carbon emissions, he is now scornful of individual action which he describes as “as good as futile”. By the same logic, says Hillman, national action is also irrelevant “because Britain’s contribution is minute. Even if the government were to go to zero carbon it would make almost no difference.” 

Instead, says Hillman, the world’s population must globally move to zero emissions across agriculture, air travel, shipping, heating homes – every aspect of our economy – and reduce our human population too. Can it be done without a collapse of civilisation? “I don’t think so,” says Hillman. “Can you see everyone in a democracy volunteering to give up flying? Can you see the majority of the population becoming vegan? Can you see the majority agreeing to restrict the size of their families?” 

Hillman doubts that human ingenuity can find a fix and says there is no evidence that greenhouse gases can be safely buried. But if we adapt to a future with less – focusing on Hillman’s love and music – it might be good for us. “And who is ‘we’?” asks Hillman with a typically impish smile. “Wealthy people will be better able to adapt but the world’s population will head to regions of the planet such as northern Europe which will be temporarily spared the extreme effects of climate change. How are these regions going to respond? We see it now. Migrants will be prevented from arriving. We will let them drown.”

But don't worry... the news isn't ALL bad! Here's Hillman trying to accentuate the positive:

...optimism about the future is wishful thinking, says Hillman. He believes that accepting that our civilisation is doomed could make humanity rather like an individual who recognises he is terminally ill. Such people rarely go on a disastrous binge; instead, they do all they can to prolong their lives.

Um... Hooray?

***

RED ICE CREATIONS AND THE FASCIST TAKEOVER

OF THE CONSPIRACY WEB

One of yer old pal Jerky's long-standing projects has been to explore and uncover the facts surrounding the New Fascist International's very deliberate takeover of the conspiracy web, so when I see an article like Anti-Fascist News' Red Ice Creations and the New Fascist Media, I experience a strange combination of gratitude that they've done the work, and shame that I didn't get to it first. In any case, this article is a must-read, even if it doesn't go as far as I would like it to in exposing the NFI's strategy of taking over an entire new media ecosystem for their propagandistic purposes. It begins...

The world of the pseudo-intellectual far right used to be relatively isolated. There was a small network of blogs and then a few that peaked above the others, namely Alternative Right, American Renaissance, Occidental Observer, Counter-Currents Publishing, and a few others. Alternative Right morphed over to the National Policy Institute and the Radix Journal, where they continued their use of meta-politics to introduce white nationalism and used podcasts as a primary means of media communication. In only the last five years this network of online “Alt Right” spaces has expanded exponentially, starting largely with Human Biological Diversity blogs that continued “race and IQ” arguments. They began creating a generalized subculture of trolls, social media warriors, and those who have taken the jargon and influences of the more academic Alt Right and brought them down to the level of the average racist. 

Today, podcasts and videos are commonplace for Alt Right commentators who are trying to jump into the fast Internet media cycle, and attempting to create a fascist version of what we see on the left. Through this, the Daily Shoah and the Right Stuff radio network have become incredibly popular for their crass racist audio tracks, and places like Radix have continued to pump out their interview focused episodes with fascist “celebrities of the week.” While all of these have maintained an increasing popularity as Donald Trump mainstreams white nationalism, all of their work combined still pales when compared to a relative newcomer in the fascist Internet scene. 

Red Ice Creations, which jumps between Sweden and the U.S., has created a media infrastructure that is more formal and has more socio-political crossover points than you see in other racist media. They have taken up the mantle started by people like Richard Spencer, now doing a regular feed of audio and video programs.

What follows is an excellent breakdown of Red Ice's modus operendi, as well as their evolution since launching operations, and their increasingly obvious, not-so-hidden agendas. In a world where, in the short term, it's becoming more and more important to "know thy enemy", you could do a lot worse than this article. Read it. Share it. Clip and save it for future reference.

WHO IS TO BLAME?

This short film by the brilliant VIZ cartoonist Barney Farmer, creator of the Beckett-level strip Drunken Bakers, also scripted a brilliant short film based on another one of his strips, The Male Online, really flew under the radar. But here it is, for your delectation!

ALEXANDRE BISSONNETTE'S TWITTER HISTORY RELEASED

The authorities who have been conducting the investigation into Alexandre Bissonnette--the terrorist who opened fire in a Quebec mosque, killing six and wounding more--have made public some of their findings, including a chart detailing his social media activity, and it's pretty much exactly what you would expect.

Here it is:  

Gee! Who knew a steady diet of non-stop honking cant from a pack of lying, reactionary, racist propagandists like Ben Shapiro, Tucker Carlson, "Baked Alaska", Richard Spencer, Infowars' Paul Joseph Watson and Alex Jones, Ann Coulter, Mike Cernovich, David Duke, Laura Ingraham, Gavin McInnes, Stefan Molyneux could be so bad for your mental health, not to mention the world at large?

That is, of course, a rhetorical question. I'm pretty sure every single one of you reading this already knew that reading or watching any of the above idiots (and a tragic number more billionaire-bankrolled brain-whores and Patreon Panhandlers) would have dire civilizational consequences. We're all reaping what they've sown.

IS THE TRUMP PRESIDENCY A RELIGIOUS CULT?

WORST JOKE OF THE DAY (IN VIDEO FORM)

A POEM FROM OUT OF NOWHERE AND A PROPOS OF NOTHING

Right

The Cain hand

Abel slew

Left behind

Left holding the bag

Right

The thing that might makes

Right

Not asked for

Taken

CULTURAL ARTIFACTS WORTH UNEARTHING

Citizen Shane is a DIY documentary about Shane Ballard, and the less you know about him going in, the more you'll get out of this incredible, obscure cinema verite golden nugget.

HUGE thanks go out to our old pal Don Alex of Subterranean Cinema infamy for keeping this obscure relic alive and circulating. The man is a national treasure who deserves much better than he's gotten.

CULT OF DUSTY TAKES ON THE DARK PROFESSOR

And let me tell you, Dusty does a damn good job of taking this charlatan down a peg or three. Enjoy!