PLAYING CATCH-UP AGAIN... SHOULD I BOTHER?

CNN's Jim Acosta masterfully calls out the rank hypocrisy of President Rotting Pumpkin Face -- as well as the rank hypocrisy of right-wingers in general -- when it comes to their laughable assertions that Representative Ilhan Omar is some sort of horrible anti-Semite. This, over statements no tougher than that which is spoken and written by Jews within Israel, itself, against the dangerously reactionary Netenyahu regime in Israel.

And to think, these right-wingers enjoy fantasizing about how they're the last stand for freedom of speech in the West! It's absolutely fucking ludicrous. Furthermore, it has been my experience that, even though most try to keep it hush-hush, when push comes to shove, self-styled right-wing "intellectuals" more often than not turn out to be closet Holocaust deniers, or else, at they very least, they have some very "interesting" ideas about the (ahem) "Jewish Question".

***

One of the dumbest ongoing debates in the world of politics surrounds the question of "What is more evil? Fascism or Communism?" The debate is idiotic because the answer is obvious. For a number of reasons, Fascism is clearly more evil than Communism, the main reason for this being that while it is possible for evil people to become dictatorial rulers of nominally Communist regimes, the evil of Fascism is baked right into the ideology, itself. It is simply impossible to have a just, fair, or "decent" Fascist regime. No one, not even Stalin, became a Communist because they wanted to do evil, whereas that is the entire point of Fascism.

Regardless of the debate's obvious stupidity, it will likely continue for years to come, and that's because of two reasons. First, because amateur political hobbyists love to compare body-counts (even though that's a tricky proposition, indeed). And second, because amateur political hobbyists have this weird psychic blind spot that prevents them from looking back any farther than the year 1900 for some strange reason.

Which is fortunate for them, because if they ever do decide to play the body-count game without such a fortuitous limiter guaranteeing their parameters lead to foregone conclusions, they'd be faced with the horrible truth that Nazi Party, the Soviet Politburo, and even Mao's Cultural Revolution were all pikers when compared to... the Western European Capitalism and Colonialism Project.

I mean, for fuck's sake, a recent scientific survey has found that the colonization of America, alone, led to such a vast amount of megadeath over a short period of time that it literally caused a mini-Ice Age! Which makes me worry that some gang of overly ambitious multi-billionaires is going to see the linked article and get inspired by it. Can smallpox infected blankets be looming in all our collective encroaching futures?

***

Speaking of right-wingers getting big ideas, check out The Night Wolves, a short documentary about Vladimir Putin's Russian biker militia fighting alongside more traditional troops in the occupied territories of Ukraine.

According to the directors:

The Russian motorcycle club the Night Wolves first made international headlines in 2014, fighting as a paramilitary group alongside pro-Russian forces during the annexation of the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine. Although the Night Wolves formed as an anti-Soviet countercultural group during perestroika, today they’re sometimes called ‘Putin’s Angels’, having embraced the potent mix of Orthodox Christianity, nationalism, hypermasculinity and Soviet nostalgia that drives the Russian president’s base.

Does any of this sound at all familiar to you? Well, it should. Remember when Trump posed for this ridiculous photo-op? It was only four months ago, when Trump threatened to sic "his" police, bikers, and other "tough guy" supporters on those Democrats who... um... don't like him and oppose his policies, I guess?

Oh well. I'm not saying Trump is copying his hero, Putin, here. I'm just saying it sure fucking looks like it.

DDD SUGGESTED READING LIST ~ DEC 28, 2014

WOULD YOU TRUST THE MAN ON THE RIGHT?

1. You know how, in the strange online world of "conspiracy theory" research, individuals who fall out of favor with any particular message board's groupthink - and stick to their guns about it - will invariably be called out as "disinfo" agents? It's a serious accusation, to declare someone a paid provocateur with a mandate to infiltrate an online group full of legitimate, unbiased truth-seekers and pervert their ability to properly assess the goings-on by mixing a little bit of truth with a whole lot of fabrication, thus rendering everything and anything that group comes to take as an assumed truth more easy to "debunk" at some future point in time. Well, after reading this article from the Leopold Report - an article that paints in intricate, detailed little brushstrokes just exactly how damaging to the concepts of truth and justice and history a real disinformation agent can truly be - you'll never again call someone who is merely wrong-headed or dogmatic a disinfo agent. 

This Oswald LeWinter fellow (1931-2013) described at the link is a criminal of the highest order, and you'll be shocked to discover how one CIA-connected literature prof's twisted lie/truth combos have hindered and poisoned investigations into everything from the murder of Olaf Palme to the October Surprise. Everyone from InterPol to Pentagon whistleblower Barbara Honegger got caught up in his web of bullshit.

A key bit:

[Journalist Robert] Parry asked LeWinter why he had contacted journalists to - as he claimed - expose October Surprise, when he had submitted so much obviously false information. One of these was that he claimed that one of Reagan's advisers had been in Paris and negotiated with the Iranian leadership, when it was easy to prove that the same person at that time was in the US - as a participant in a live television program (Parry 1993:67ff). 

LeWinter replied:

"I was asked by some people to mount a disinformation campaign". [..] "Barbara Honegger [..] had started enough interest in the newspaper community and the media to throw a negative light on George Bush's candidacy, potentially a negative light. The people who asked me to intervene felt that the country could not stand another Watergate, another major political scandal and upheaval, and also worried that the Democratic party's candidate might have hurt the intelligence community, which was just in the process of recovering from the damage that had been done to it during the Carter administration." 

His next statement is important: 

"I contacted Barbara Honegger through another person. [..] I managed to pass on some information to her which had factual elements in it, but also elements that with a little bit of digging could be discovered to be questionable. The story would lead some investigators to spend time and effort running into blind alleys, with the result that eventually the whole story would be discredited." 

LeWinter also admitted to having received USD 100,000 in payment for his disinformation campaign.

Ultimately, it took a man like investigative journalist Robert Parry (a personal favorite of mine) to suss out just a bit of the truth about LeWinter's true character. This is truly terrifying stuff, and one of the reasons why perjury is considered such a serious goddamn crime. 

2. Even though I can't help but harbor suspicions that Western accounts of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin's criminal depravity have been exaggerated for a century's worth of propaganda purposes, this American Scholar article about Stalin's unlikely rise to power is still very much worth your time.

Except for Mao, and perhaps Genghis Khan, Joseph Stalin stands as the greatest mass murderer in history. His war on the peasantry killed perhaps 14 million people, half of whom were deliberately starved to death. This project of “dekulakization” and “collectivization” overshadows even the Great Purge of 1936–38, which claimed some four million lives. Several small ethnic minorities suspected of disloyalty lost half their population, and tens of millions were swallowed into the massive system of forced labor camps known as the Gulag Archipelago. ... 

How was all this carnage possible? How did a revolution made in the name of social justice, and supported by so many progressive spirits around the world, lead to such monstrous results? What made Stalin capable of such cruelty, and how did he manage to accumulate the power to practice it?

Keep reading to find out more!

3. One of the most intriguing if little known episodes of the Cold War Collapse era involved Frank Zappa's brief tenure as "special ambassador to the West on trade, culture and tourism" for the newly-liberated nation of Czechoslovakia. See, it turns out Vaclav Havel - dissident author and leading figure in the "Velvet Revolution" - was a really big fan of Zappa's band, The Mothers. As journalist Jack Anderson explained it in his oddly apologetic account of the events:

Havel, a playwright known for absurd satire, met Zappa in Prague in January 1990, and the two men hit it off immediately. Havel had long been a fan of Zappa's music genius and even credited his music as part of the inspiration for the anti-communist revolution. A Czech group, The Plastic People of the Universe, named after one of Zappa's songs, copied his style and became an underground sensation in Czechoslovakia. Their revolutionary lyrics so irritated the communist government that the group was thrown behind bars for disturbing the peace. That mobilized Havel and other artists to form a dissident group that led the opposition and, after communism was toppled, formed the nucleus of the current Czech government. So Havel had plenty to thank Zappa for. He was so grateful, in fact, that he impetuously created the special ambassadorship for Zappa. The musician left town with Havel's praise in his ears and the adulation of hundreds of fans who treated him as a Czech national hero.

Unfortunately for Frank, the Bush Crime Family didn't much care for the cut of his jib. They dispatched their most trusted consigliere, unindicted co-conspirator James Baker III, to threaten Havel thusly:

"You can do business with the United States or you can do business with Frank Zappa."

Frank Zappa happens to be my very favorite musician, as well as a personal hero and an ongoing inspiration for more reasons than I could possibly list in this space. So you'll forgive me for being suspicious about the fact that this rather formidable individual would be dead and buried a mere three years after his brush with Pure Evil, chronicled above.

ON THIS DAY IN PARAPOLITICS, MAY 26

On this day in 1647, in Hartford, Connecticut, Alse Young becomes the first person to be executed as a witch in the British American colonies. She had a daughter, Alice Young Beamon, who would, herself, be accused of witchcraft in nearby Springfield, Massachusetts, 30 years later. Fortunately, she would not suffer her mother's fate. As was often the case, Alse Young was a woman without a son when the accusation of witchcraft was lodged, which implied that she would be eligible to inherit her husband's estate upon his death. Young's execution took place a full half-century before the far more infamous "witchcraft panic" at Salem, Massachusetts.

On this day in 1805, everybody's favorite world-beater Napoléon Bonaparte assumes the title of "King of Italy" and is crowned with the Iron Crown of Lombardy in Milan's gothic Duomo di Milano cathedral. The crown (see above) is said to have been forged from a nail taken from the True Cross. Personally, I think it's god-awful looking.

On this day in 1908, At Masjed Soleyman in southwest Persia (in modern-day Iran), the first major commercial oil strike in the Middle East is made. The rights to the resource are quickly swept up by the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, which, in 1935, would be re-named the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, which, in 1954, would be re-named British Petroleum. This nomenclatural erasure of one side of the "partnership" could well serve as a telling short-hand for the long, sad story of the West's petro-political dealings with Iran. Oil and its commercial exploitation are, without a doubt, key linchpins to developing a holistic understanding of the parapolitical 20th century (and beyond).

On this day in 1930, America's Supreme Court rules that purchasing booze does not violate the Constitution. Kindly insert your own anti-marijuana-prohibition comment here.

On this day in 1938, the House Un-American Activities Committee or HUAAC begins its first session, to investigate alleged disloyalty and subversive activities on the part of private citizens, public employees, and those organizations suspected of having communist or fascist ties. Soon, they were grilling members of the Federal Theater Project over the political ties and activities of the various writers, directors, actors, dancers and artisans who helped put together those shows. The hearings went on for months. Meanwhile, the committee decided against opening investigations into the Ku Klux Klan, because, as committee member John E. Rankin (D-MS) remarked: "the KKK is an old American institution." How right he was.

On this day in 1986, the European Community adopts the European flag (see below).

Exact measurements and element orientation... picky, picky!

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.

ON THIS DAY IN PARAPOLITICS, MAY 21

Leopold, Darrow and Loeb

On this day in 1863, the Seventh Day Adventist Church - an offshoot of the Apocalyptic creed of Millerite Protestantism - is organized in Battle Creek, Michigan. Today, there are over seventeen million "Sevvies" around the world, and they are one of the most ethnically diverse branches of the Christian faith. Seventh Day Adventists celebrate the Sabbath day on Saturday, in the Old Testament style of the Jews, and they place a strong emphasis on healthy eating and living. Probably the most lasting impact that they've had on popular culture is the introduction of ready-to-eat breakfast cereals to the North American diet.

On this day in 1871, French troops invade the Paris Commune and engage its residents in street fighting. By the close of "Bloody Week" some 20,000 anarchist and Marxist "communards" will have been killed and 38,000 arrested. Thus ended a historic, two-month experiment in self-rule by the people of Paris.

On this day in 1924, two young, well-to-do homosexuals named Leopold and Loeb murder 14 year-old Bobby Franks. At the time, this murder was considered one of the vilest and most sensational crimes in U.S. history, because the killers did it just for kicks. Defending the young murderers in court, legendary lawyer Clarence Darrow claims that the boys would never have become killers if they hadn't read the works of German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, whose theory of the Ubermensch - a highly evolved idealization of humanity who exists above and beyond the mundane conceptions of "good" and "evil" - he claims twisted their minds.

On this day in 1946, physicist Louis Slotin is blasted with a fatal dose of radiation in a criticality incident during an experiment with the aptly-named Demon Core - a 6.2 kilogram subcritical mass of plutonium - at Los Alamos National Laboratory. It was the second time that such an incident resulted in the acute radiation poisoning and subsequent death of a scientist. After these incidents, the core was used in an atomic bomb test in 1946, and proved in practice to have a slightly increased yield over similar cores which had not been subjected to criticality excursions. Here's a dramatization of the Slotin incident from the movie Fat Man and Little Boy.

On this day in 1969, Palestinian immigrant Sirhan Sirhan is sentenced to death for killing Robert Kennedy in a restaurant kitchen. The sentence is never carried out, as California got rid of the death penalty.

On this day in 1979, the White Night Riots take place in San Francisco following the manslaughter conviction of Dan "Twinkie Defense" White for the assassinations of mayor George Moscone and openly gay city councilman Harvey Milk.

On this day in 1981, the Italian government releases the membership list of Propaganda Due, also known as the P2 Lodge, a Masonic lodge operating under the jurisdiction of the Grand Orient of Italy from 1945 to 1976 (when its charter was withdrawn), and a pseudo-Masonic or "black" or "covert" lodge operating illegally (in contravention of Italian constitution banning secret lodges and membership of government officials in secret membership organizations) from 1976 to 1981. During the years that the lodge was headed by Licio Gelli, P2 was implicated in numerous Italian crimes and mysteries, including the collapse of the Vatican-affiliated Banco Ambrosiano, the murders of journalist Mino Pecorelli and banker Roberto Calvi, and corruption cases within the nationwide bribe scandal Tangentopoli. P2 came to light through the investigations into the collapse of Michele Sindona's financial empire. It has also been connected to the CIA-connected European right-wing black-ops org known as Gladio.

ON THIS DAY IN PARAPOLITICS, MAY 15

On this day in 1648, the first documents of the Treaty of Westphalia are signed in Osnabrück and Münster, setting in motion the machinations that would bring about the Peace of Westphalia. At the time, this was as huge as huge could be, ending the Thirty Years' War in the Holy Roman Empire, and the Eighty Years' War between Spain and the Dutch Republic, with Spain formally recognizing the independence of the Dutch Republic. Everybody was involved in this. The Holy Roman Emperor, Ferdinand III, of the House of Habsburg, the Kingdom of Spain, the Kingdom of France, the Swedish Empire, the Dutch Republic, the Princes of the Holy Roman Empire, and sovereigns of the free imperial cities. This was truly a world-historic development, and, for the most part, a good one.

On this day in 1817, the first private mental health hospital opens its doors in the United States. It is called the Asylum for the Relief of Persons Deprived of the Use of Their Reason. Such a great name.

On this day in 1829, John the Baptist materializes somewhere in the American mid-west and anoints one Mister Joseph Smith, ordaining him to start the Church of Mormon. Of course, this is all according to Joe, himself, so you may want to take it with a grain of salt.

Mickey Mouse made his first appearance on this day in 1928, in a cartoon entitled Plane Crazy... and the character still isn't in the public domain. Most people haven't got a problem with this. Should they? I don't know. All I know is, when you work at Disney, nobody fucks with the mouse.

On this day in 1940, McDonald's opens its first restaurant in San Bernardino, California. Today, the Golden Arches are as recognizable as the Nazi Swastika, and the role played by Mickey Dee's in the implementation of a population-controling Genocide Diet cannot be under-estimated or over-stressed.

On this day in 1972, In Laurel, Maryland, Arthur Bremer shoots and paralyzes Alabama Governor George Wallace - called "the most influential loser in American politics" by some - while the latter was campaigning to become the Democratic candidate for President on a segregationist platform. Wallace, after receiving great treatment and loving care form a succession of black nurses, would go on to renounce his racist views before dying in 1998. Bremer served 35 years in jail for his crime, and was released in 2007.

On this day in 1991, while former CIA chief/then-President George Herbert "Poppy" Walker Bush escorts the Queen of England to a Baltimore Orioles game (I kid you not), the Defense Department releases documents showing that Central American dictator Manuel Noriega was, at one time: "The CIA's man in Panama."

On this day in 1988, after more than eight years of fighting, the legendarily hard-ass Soviet Red Army begins its withdrawal from Afghanistan, defeated by a rag-tag assembly of heroic, CIA-funded Mujahideen! ...or, at least, that's what the neo-conservatives used to say is what happened. They don't like to talk about it so much now, after one of those heroic heroes masterminded the September 11 terror attacks. See Adam Curtis' documentary The Power of Nightmares for clarification. Here's Part One to get you started. Seriously, if you haven't already watched this, what the fuck are you waiting for?!

CONSPIRACY CALENDAR FOR MAY 2

ON MAY 2 IN PARAPOLITICAL HISTORY!

On this day in 1536, England's Queen Anne Boleyn - consort to King Henry VIII (who destroyed the Catholic Church in England just to be with her), and mother of the woman who would go on to become the hugely influential Queen Elizabeth I (last of England's Tudor royals) - is arrested and imprisoned in the Tower of London on charges of adultery, incest, treason and witchcraft. She would be found guilty of all charges and beheaded 19 days later. Ah... fickle fate!

On this day in 1670, King Charles II of England grants a permanent charter to the Hudson's Bay Company to open up the fur trade in North America. That's right... a permanent charter. In fact, there's a whole whack of information about Hudson's Bay Co. that seems ripe for parapolitical exploration.

On this day in 1808, the people of Madrid rise up in rebellion against French occupation, prompting Goya to memorialize the event in his painting The Second of May 1808.

On this day in 1816, German/Belgian royal Léopold de Saxe-Coburg marries Princess Charlotte Augusta of Wales, thus initiating the "royal" Saxe-Coburg Gotha bloodline - name-changed to "Windsor" in England around the time of the Great War, due to anti-German sentiment - that has ruled much of the "free" world over the last century-and-a-half.

On this day in 1933, Adolf Hitler bans trade unions in Germany.

On this day, not one but two ultra-right-wing American lunatics kick the bucket. In 1957, Senator Joe McCarthy, of Red Scare II infamy, dies of multiple health problems exacerbated by alcohol and general mean-spiritedness. In 1972, J. Edgar Hoover - whose abuses of power make Joe McCarthy's seem almost adorable by comparison - dies when his own shriveled black heart finally realizes exactly the type of vile creature its beats had helped to sustain over the years before giving up in disgust. Oh, and by the way... from Little Rock to organized crime, he also pretty much sucked at his job.

On this day in 1998, the European Central Bank is founded in Brussels in order to define and execute the European Union's monetary policy. So far, it seems to be working out just fine.

On this day in 2000, President Bill Clinton announces that super-accurate GPS technology would no longer be restricted to the United States military, paving the way for some very interesting and useful consumer technology... as well as the allowing for the propagation of a technology that will eventually facilitate the more perfect tracking of pretty much every single citizen in our rapidly evolving Surveillance State.

And, finally, on this day in 2011, Americans celebrate “Mission Accomplished Day – Part II” when President Barack Obama announces that Osama bin Laden, the evil genius mastermind behind the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, had been found, then killed, in full-throttle action-movie style by SEAL Team Six in Abbottabad, Pakistan! Of course, he couldn't show us Osama's corpse, because it was dumped at sea in an undisclosed location, in accordance with some kind of Muslim religious doctrine that nobody's ever heard of before. And of course, they couldn't show us any photographic evidence of his death, because that would have been disrespectful to one of the worst alleged mass-murderers in the history of mass-murder... right? I mean, it's not like there's anything fishy about all this... right? Right?!