PARACULTURAL CALENDAR FOR MAY 16

On this day in 1918, the United States Congress passes the Sedition Act, which extended the Espionage Act of 1917 to cover a broader range of offenses, notably speech and the expression of opinion that cast the government or the war effort in a negative light, or interfered with the sale of government bonds. Basically, these laws made criticism of the American government an offense punishable by hefty fines and/or incarceration. The Espionage Act (an umbrella law that covered the later Sedition Act) was repealed by Congress in December of 1920. Democrat Woodrow Wilson was President during both enactment and repeal.

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On this day in 1943, after 28 days of bloody fighting, armed resistance by Jews in the Warsaw ghetto comes to an end as Nazi soldiers overwhelm the area.

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On this day in 1988, a report issued by United States' Surgeon General C. Everett Koop states that the addictive properties of nicotine are similar to those of heroin and cocaine. To be perfectly honest... he's very wrong about that.

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On this day in 1991, Queen Elizabeth II becomes the first British monarch to ever address the United States Congress. She spends most of the speech congratulating President George Herbert "Poppy" Walker Bush on his magnificent handling of the Gulf War in Iraq.

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On this day in 2005, Newsweek magazine retracts a story in which it was claimed that investigators had found evidence the Quran was desecrated by interrogators at the U.S. naval prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The story had sparked deadly protests in Afghanistan and elsewhere. Of course, despite the retraction, it's clear that the desecration did take place - that, and far, far worse - and that Newsweek cracked under pressure by The Powers That Be.

ON THIS DAY IN PARA-CULTURE, JUNE 1

On this day in 1495, friar John Cor brews up the first known batch of scotch whiskey.

On this day in 1921, the Black Wall Street Riot takes place. A prosperous black community in Tulsa, Oklahoma was burned to the ground by a mob of 5,000 white people enraged that a group of armed black men had convened on City Hall to prevent the lynching of a shoe-shine boy accused of raping a white woman (she later reversed her story). At one point, the city called in bi-planes to bomb the community with dynamite, leveling it. Officially, the body-count was 81 - 21 whites, 60 blacks - but estimates have ranged as high as 3000. Many records were destroyed during and after the attack, and efforts are underway to examine abandoned mine-shafts in the area, long-believed to have been used as mass graves for hundreds of unaccounted-for blacks.

On this day in 1980, Ted Turner's Cable News Network - better known as CNN - begins broadcasting its particular blend of USA Today-style quasi-news-nuggets and obsessive-compulsive over-coverage of irrelevant bullshit.

On this day in 1979, after 90 years of European rule, Rhodesia holds elections that put Bishop Abel Muzorewa's ZAPU party in power. The nation is promptly re-named Rhodesia-Zimbabwe and Muzorewa builds a power-sharing government with the former ruling whites that lasts all of six or so months, at which point Robert Mugabe's ZANU party wins in a violent, fishy election marred by terrorist intimidation of every other party. Upon gaining power, Mugabe drops the "Rhodesia" entirely, leaving just plain "Zimbabwe". Today, Zimbabwe is one of the only nations on Earth capable of giving North Korea competition as the most totally FUBAR place in the world.

Up until this day in 2001, Nepal's King Birendra was the only Hindu king in the world, a man beloved by his subjects for presiding over that nation's constitutional monarchy with grace, patience, and wit. That all came to a sudden end, however, when his useless, fat-faced son - the sullen Party Boy Prince Dippy, as the press called him - went bonkers, unloading a couple clips of ammo into King Birendra and seven other royal family members, including the Queen and his own brothers and sisters, before turning the gun on himself. In a shocking twist, as he lay in hospital, brain dead, Prince Dippy was crowned King of Nepal in accordance with the laws of the land. Sparing the mountain nation the indignity of having a mass murderer as the head of its royal family, Prince Dippy graciously succumbed to his wounds later that same day. At this point, Gyanendra, brother of slain King Birendra, was crowned King just in time to preside over the funerals of over a half-dozen of his family members.

"A MEMO TO SENATOR OBAMA"

From Newsweek Magazine, May 24, 2008.

THE NET: THE UNABOMBER, LSD AND THE INTERNET - A STUDY GUIDE

CLIP AND SAVE FOR FUTURE REFERENCE

A CONCORDANCE 
or a series of notes and thoughts on 

THE NET, THE UNABOMBER, LSD AND THE INTERNET

a documentary by Lutz Dammbeck (2003) 

The following notes were taken by myself during two separate viewings of the film. The text presented includes all of the subtitles from the film (indicated by quotation marks), as well as a number of observations, side references and potential avenues for further inquiry that came to mind as I watched. The reasons for my engaging in this admittedly somewhat pedantic exercise are twofold. Firstly, I do it because I believe this film to be an important and insufficiently propagated document in the field of parapolitics, and anything I can do to help get it seen by more people - and, in particular, the RIGHT people - I see as worth doing. Secondly, I wanted to create an easy-to-use text and image based "concordance" that both documents and compliments the original film. I leave it for you readers to decide whether or not I have succeeded on that count. - YOPJ - 26/04/2012

PRELUDE 

"In 1930, Viennese mathematician Kurt Godel shakes the foundations of mathematics with his incompleteness theorems. He demonstrates that in every formal logical system there are problems that are not solvable or conclusively determinable. The truth is superior to provability."

Mathematician Kurt Godel

THE NET 

We begin on a commuter plane travelling from Frankfurt to New York. Director Lutz Dammbeck explains that he has some interviews lined up for a film he's been working on about the evolution of information technologies. But lately he's become distracted. He explains:

ALBERT'S BLOG ON ALL THINGS PARAPOLITICAL

Check out Albert's Blog BDC192, the new blog by my old pal - and very interesting character in his own right - Albert Venczel. He's working on a media degree at a prestigious Toronto university, and he's undergoing a trial by fire right now as an adult student back in school at a later point in his life. He's a good man who's had some intriguing encounters, and his work on a variety of 9/11-truth-oriented projects (among other things) deserves some attention, so here's a link to his work. Wish I could do more for you, Albert! Sorry I lost all my audience! Seriously. It sucks for both of us.

ENEMIES OF THE REPUBLIC DOSSIER #001: BILL O'REILLY

In yer old pal Jerky's opinion, Bill O'Reilly is one of the most inscrutable, mysterious players on the contemporary politico-socio-cultural stage.

On the one hand, he's clearly a ridiculous ass-clown. He's a thuggish, pompous, preening caricature of a human being; a living illustration of conservatism's warped ideal of manliness. A know-nothing know-it-all, his clumsy lies -- which he mostly spits out off the cuff for fear of having his encyclopaedic ignorance exposed -- crumble under a bare minimum of scrutiny. He's a living paradox; a sexual predator who masquerades as an upstanding moralist, and an arrogant, slander-spewing bully whose own ego is of such crystalline fragility that any criticism directed towards him -- no matter how mild or undeniable -- is grounds for launching all out war.

In these wars, O'Reilly uses every weapon at his disposal. His prime-time perch on FOX News, his nationally syndicated, three-hour daily radio broadcast, his many books and his various newspaper columns have all served as ordnance in his personal battles against a host of blood enemies, including the dastardly likes of Al Franken, Keith Olbermann, the nation of France, people who say "Season's Greetings" instead of "Merry Christmas", and the very concept of Truth, itself.

And yet, despite all the times he's been exposed as a liar and a hypocrite, despite every failed frivolous lawsuit, despite every dark threat of physical retribution, despite every time he's come off as an unhinged psychopath on the edge of total mental collapse... there he is, day after day, night after night, occupying acre upon acre of prime real estate on our TV screens, radio airwaves and bookstore shelves.

The question begged is: WHY?! What possible purpose could it serve to have such a contemptible, shameless buffoon as one of the conservative movement's preeminent media personalities? Nobody with a shred of common sense or a modicum of human dignity takes Bill O'Reilly seriously. They can't, because he won't let them. O'Reilly swallows up all of conservatism's alleged character strengths and vomits them back up as perverse parodies of what they once were. Resoluteness becomes pig-headed obstinacy. Loyalty becomes blind obedience. Stoicism becomes shrill victimhood. Individualism becomes meddlesome pecksniffery. It's almost like FOX News is using O'Reilly as the human equivalent of one of those signs you see at the entrance to carnival rides: "You must be THIS STUPID to believe this shit."

Maybe that's it. Maybe by being so intolerably awful, O'Reilly and his ilk are helping to winnow the truth-hungry wheat from the unquestioning, herd-like chaff. Studies have shown that FOX News watchers know less about current events than people who don't follow the news at all. This apparent contradiction makes sense only if the purpose of FOX News isn't to inform, but to indoctrinate. And as the house organ of The Powers That Be, that's exactly what they're doing. They're leading by example, providing ready-made role-models for the day -- and if TPTB have their way, that day is coming soon -- when all those mindless, nihilistic couch-potatoes are called upon to serve as the citizen spies, conformity enforcers and concentration camp guards of tomorrow.

So you'd better get used to Bill O'Reilly's smug, blotchy face, because unless some drastic changes take place, it's the face of your future.

WHY YOU SHOULD STRIKE WHILE THE IRON IS HOT!

Damnit! I wanted to write a story about the rash of on-air gibberish melt-downs that have taken place over the last couple months, and now I see that frickin' asshat Drudge has linked to a story about it. I could have beat these bastards to the punch and had a scoop! Maybe Drudge even would have linked to Useless Eater! Or even just linked to a story that linked to UEB. Ah, I guess there's no point getting upset over spilled scoop... I'll have more on this story later, regardless.