THINGS THAT MAKE YOU GO "HMMMM..."

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 15, 2016

1. Okay, take a deep breath and dive right in...

On a crisp Saturday in November 2014, a black Mercedes SUV pulled onto the tarmac of an Austrian specialty aviation company 30 miles south of Vienna. Employees of the firm, Airborne Technologies, which specialized in designing and equipping small aircraft with wireless surveillance platforms, had been ordered to work that weekend because one of the company’s investors was scheduled to inspect their latest project. 

For four months, Airborne’s team had worked nearly nonstop to modify an American-made Thrush 510G crop duster to the exact specifications of an unnamed client. Everything about the project was cloaked in secrecy. The company’s executives would refer to the client only as “Echo Papa,” and instructed employees to use code words to discuss certain modifications made to the plane. Now the employees would learn that Echo Papa also owned more than a quarter of their company. 

A fit, handsome man with blond hair and blue eyes got out of the Mercedes and entered Airborne’s hanger. Echo Papa, who was often just called EP, shook hands with a dozen Airborne employees and looked over the plane. “He was the sun, and all the management were planets rotating around him,” said one person present that day.

Thus begins this epic Intercept investigative report about Erik Prince, founder of the "private security" (i.e. mercenary) firm Blackwater, and Grade A War Pig who will one day be crawling on his knees, begging mercy for his sins, while Satan, laughing, spreads his wings. It's an incredible story about one rich asshole's ambition to circumvent pretty much all the laws in his efforts to create a private, fully kill-capable private airforce. We're talking crop dusters outfitted with missile and bomb ports, pods for mounting high-powered 23 mm machine guns, advanced laser targeting capabilities, etc.

2. And for today's second offering, I bring you yet another incredibly important article, this one about the super-shady origins and ultra-creepy, unspoken goals of the so-called “alternative media”, in the particular case of Art Bell's Frankenstein creation, Coast-to-Coast AM. Hopefully, this detailed and devastating article will constitute the crack in the dam that precedes the deluge that ends up washing the rats out of the foundation, because a reckoning is long overdue for the vast sheeple factory that the so-called Alternative Media has turned into.

3. And now, for a feel-good story to help you recover from the two above massive injections of truth serum, here is the absolute BEST STORY EVER about how a promoter for The Rolling Stones got to humiliate Donald Trump in his own freaking house. It's also a story about the thuggish depths to which Trump is willing to sink (hired goons with brass knuckles?!) and how Keith Richards and the Rolling Stone road crew are genuine bad-ass motherfuckers, willing to back up their co-workers with whatever kind of muscle is required for the job.

ON THIS DAY IN PARAPOLITICS, MAY 23

On this day in 1498, friar, preacher, reformer, prophet and heretic Girolamo Savonarola is burned at the stake in Florence, Italy, on the orders of Pope Alexander VI.

On this day in 1618, four Catholics are thrown out a window in Bohemia, and even though they survive - it was a third floor window and they landed in a pile of horse-shit - it still kicks off the Thirty Years' War. This odd event is referred to as the Second Defenestration of Prague... which means there was a first. Which is weird.

On this day in 1734, Austrian hypnotist and all-around weirdo Franz Anton Mesmer is born. One of his secrets? Inducing orgasm in female "patients".

On this day in 1934, American bank robbers-cum-folk heroes Bonnie and Clyde are ambushed by police and killed in Black Lake, Louisiana.

On this day in 1945, one day after being arrested by British forces, Heinrich Himmler, the closest thing to a High Priest of the Nazi Party and the leader-for-life of the elite S.S. "Schutzstaffel" storm-troopers - commits suicide before he can be questioned.

On this day in 1958, communist dictator Mao Zedong launches China's Great Leap Forward, trying to use China's vast population to rapidly transform the country from an agrarian economy into a modern communist society through the process of rapid industrialization and collectivization. The experiment ended in catastrophe, with an estimated death toll ranging from 18 million to 45 million, although some scholars question these numbers. Regardless, the failure led to Mao being criticized in party conferences, which led him to initiate the Cultural Revolution in 1966, with a whole new slew of fresh terrors being inflicted upon that particularly masochistic population.

On this day in 1961, the Ford Motor Company puts the finishing touches on a specially modified Lincoln Continental convertible sedan for use by the President of the USA. The jet-black Lincoln, with swing-back suicide doors, is dubbed the SS-100-X. Two and a half years later, John F. Kennedy is shot and killed in that very car, making it perhaps the single most widely-seen automobile in history. 

On this day in 1992, Italy's most prominent anti-mafia judge Giovanni Falcone, his wife and three body guards are killed by the Corleonesi clan with a half-ton bomb near Capaci, Sicily. His friend and colleague Paolo Borsellino will be assassinated less than 2 months later, making 1992 a turning point in the history of Italian Mafia prosecutions.

On this day in 1995, in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, the remains of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building are imploded to make way for new construction and a memorial to the Oklahoma City bombing by right-wing extremist Timothy McVeigh.

UN-FUCKING-BELIEVABLE

Why is it that we're all supposed to blindly "support the troops" no matter what?