PARACULTURAL CALENDAR FOR JULY 17

On this day in 1917, England's King George V issues a Proclamation stating that the male line descendants of the British Royal Family will bear the surname Windsor. This is done to remove the Teutonic stink from their "royal house", due to rising anti-German sentiment over the First (and eventually, the Second) World War(s).

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On this day in 1918, in Russia, the Bolshevik Party orders - and the Cheka carries out - the murders of emperor Nicholas II and his family. After the deed is done, the victims' bodies are dipped in acid, set on fire, then dumped down an abandoned mine shaft in an undisclosed location, to prevent loyalists from having bodies over which to grieve. Rumors soon began to spread, however, so the murderers retrieved the bodies with the intent of dumping them down a different mine shaft, far away. The vehicle in which they were transporting the bodies broke down along the way, however, and the conspirators had to settle on burying the bodies in a sealed pit 12 miles outside Yekaterinburg. In 1981 Nicholas and his family are canonized as saints by the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia. The bodies remained undiscovered until 1991, soon after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Finally, after a long, strange post-life - and, not so coincidentally, on the 80th anniversary of their murder - the Romanovs' remains are buried in St. Catherine Chapel on this day in 1998.

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On this day in 1945, the leaders of the three Allied nations, Winston Churchill, Harry Truman and Joseph Stalin, meet in the German city of Potsdam to decide the future of a defeated Germany.

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On this day in 1955, animation industry titan Walt Disney's ambitions for total world domination take a big step forward when he first opens Disneyland, his fully-realized, 160-acre model of the Utopian ideal to which he believes all of mankind should aspire. Today, on the American continent alone, Disney's combined Florida and California properties span an impressive 70 square miles, dwarfing the Vatican in both surface area and cultural influence. Can a request to the U.N. for recognition of statehood be far behind?

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On this day in the year 1967, planet Earth passes through some kind of radioactive space cloud that mangles the very fabric of space and time, causing everybody to go slightly bonkers. Milk goes sour in the bottle, toads rain down from the sky, and, perhaps worst of all, guitar legend Jimi Hendrix plays a concert where he's the opening act for… the fuckin' MONKEYS!!!

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On this day in 1985, the EUREKA Network for research and development of new technologies and financial markets is founded by former heads of state François Mitterrand (France) and Helmut Kohl (Germany). A cursory examination of the organization makes it seem relatively harmless - even somewhat inspiring - but I'm pretty sure there's a great potential for some James Bond level villainy behind the scenes, there.

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On this day in 1986, White House Chief of Staff Donald Regan says imposing economic sanctions on the Apartheid government of South Africa wouldn't work because "American women" would never be willing to "give up all their jewelry". One year later, after being forced out of his job due to clashes with the First Lady, Regan would reveal to the world both Nancy Reagan's increasing influence on the President's decision-making process, as well as her frequent consultations with personal astrologer Joan Quigley for advice on national affairs.

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On this day in 1996, Paris-bound  TWA Flight 800 explodes in mid-air off the coast of Long Island, New York,  killing all 230 on board. The authorities urge everyone to "move along" because there is "nothing to see here." Of course, as usual, the authorities are (ahem) full of shit. Or are they? You be the judge, I suppose, in this, the grandaddy of all Internet Conspiracy Theories..

PARACULTURAL CALENDAR FOR JUNE 22

On this day in 1633, the Roman Catholic Church forces Galileo Galilei to disavow his theory that the Earth orbits around the Sun, rather than vice-versa. Three hundred and sixty years later, in 1992, the Vatican admits it made a mistake, and that Galileo was right. Which leads yer old pal Jerky to wonder... how long do you think it will be before they finally admit to making up all that GOD crap in order to keep the rabble in line?

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On this day in 1783, a poisonous cloud created by the eruption of the Laki volcanic fissure system in Iceland reaches the French mainland. All told, six million people around the world would die due to Laki’s multiple eruptions over a two year period, making it the deadliest volcanic event in history.

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On this day in 1813, after learning of American plans for a surprise attack on Beaver Dams in Ontario, Canada, a plucky gal by the name of Laura Secord sets out on a 30 kilometer journey on foot to warn Lieutenant James FitzGibbon. Chocolate ensues.

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On this day in the year 1847, Captain Hanson Gregory took the top of a round tin pepper box and pressed it down into one of his mother's uncooked miniature fried cakes, creating the world's first doughnut! Today, doughnuts are considered a separate food group in Canada, and they make up roughly 35% of the average police officer's diet.

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On this day in 1941, in one of the worst missteps of World War II, Hitler’s Germany invades the Soviet Union in Operation Barbarossa. Needless to say, things do NOT go Hitler’s way.

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On this day in 1954, in Christchurch, New Zealand, Pauline Parker and Juliet Hulme murder Pauline's mother by caving in her skull with a rock. This they do because they believe dear old mum is interfering in their “close” friendship. In 1994, Peter Jackson made a movie about it - Heavenly Creatures – which also introduced Kate Winslet to the world.

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On this day in 1956, playwright Arthur Miller defies the House Committee on Un-American Activities by refusing to "name names," as they used to call it.

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On this day in 1969, the incredibly polluted Cuyahoga River catches fire – yep, you read right, a RIVER caught fire – in northeast Ohio. It is one of those watershed moments (no pun intended) that called attention to ecological concerns and led to an increase in environmental awareness the world over.

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On this day in 1978, American astronomer James W. Christy discovers Charon, a satellite of the dwarf planet Pluto. Creepy name for a creepy moon!

PARACULTURAL CALENDAR FOR JUNE 19

Happy JUNETEENTH, everybody! On this day in 1862, US Congress prohibits slavery in United States, nullifying Dred Scott v. Sandford. News of the Emancipation Proclamation only reached slaves in Galveston, Texas, three years later to the day, on this day in 1865. The anniversary Juneteenth is now a federal holiday, though too many states do not celebrate the holiday, even former Union states! Looking at you, Indiana!

"No man can put a chain around the ankle of his fellow man without at last finding the other end fastened about his own neck." - Frederick Douglass

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On this day in the year 240 BC, some old Greek dude by the name of Eratosthenes correctly estimates the circumference of the Earth to within a few dozen miles. Pretty impressive!

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On this day in 1934, the Communications Act establishes the Federal Communications Commission, still widely reviled as the FCC. On YouTube, you will find a little ditty from Monty Python’s Eric Idle that expresses many people’s feelings towards that particular institution…

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On this day in 1953, husband and wife communist spy team ,Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, were executed at Sing Sing prison, in New York. The Rosenberg were convicted of sharing technical information on how to make a nuclear bomb with the Soviets, which, according to one Congressional study, accelerated Soviet efforts by a year.  Roy Cohn, with such infamous credits as dying in an AIDS ward and "training" Donald Trump (POS, er, POTUS 45 and 47) had a major hand in their death. Being in the closet affects a man...

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On this day in 1954, the Taz the Tasmanian Devil makes his debut in the Warner Bros. cartoon: Devil May Hare! Today, millions of steroid-shooting, raisin-ball’d goons have adopted the whirling freak as an avatar of sorts, stamping his likeness on everything from muscle-shirts to vehicle mud-flaps. Anyone whose favorite Warner Bros. cartoon character is "Taz" is a person that you should try to avoid.

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The first ever Garfield comic strip is published on this day in 1971. It still holds the Guinness World Record for the world's most widely syndicated comic strip. 

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On this day in 1982, the body of God's Banker, Roberto Calvi is found hanging beneath Blackfriars Bridge in London. The story of his downfall involves the Mafia, the Vatican, the CIA and the Freemasons. Folks, things simply do NOT get any more conspiratorial than this story.

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On this day in 1991, the USSR ends its occupation of Hungary. Some really top-notch pornography ensues.

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On this day in 1981, the heaviest known orange in the history of the world – weighing in at an impressive five pounds – is exhibited in Nelspruit, South Africa. Meanwhile, on that same day in India, the APPLE communications satellite is launched into orbit. Apples and oranges! A coincidence? Yeah, right…

PARACULTURAL CALENDAR FOR JUNE 12

On this day in 1942, Dutch teenager Anne Frank receives a diary as a birthday present. Years later, she will have to posthumously endure every teen-age girl's worst nightmare as millions of people go over every word she wrote in it.

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On this day in 1963, civil rights leader Medgar Evers is murdered in front of his home in Jackson, Mississippi by Ku Klux Klan member Byron De La Beckwith. Beckwith would evade justice until his third trial, in 1994.

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Two years after his arrest, anti-apartheid activist and ANC leader Nelson Mandela is sentenced to life in prison for sabotage in South Africa on this day in 1964. He would remain behind bars, occasionally in barbaric conditions, until being freed in 1990.

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On this day in 1967, the United States Supreme Court declares all US state laws which prohibit interracial marriage to be unconstitutional in the well-named case of Loving versus Virginia.

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On this day in 1978, the "Son of Sam" killer David Berkowitz is sentenced to 365 years in prison for six killings in New York City. To this day, he claims he was part of a network of “Satanic” murderers and that some of the Son of Sam killings were perpetrated by others who remain at large.

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On this day in 1979, a California cyclist named Bryan Allen flew a human-propelled aircraft by the name of Gossamer Albatross across the English Channel. It took him two hours and forty-nine minutes. Also on this very same day, Kevin St. Onge takes an ordinary, everyday playing card and flicks it an incredible one hundred and eighty-five feet… a world record that still stands to this day.

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On this day in 1987, US President Ronald Reagan publicly challenges Mikhail Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall during a speech given at the Brandenburg Gate.

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On this day in 1994, Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman are murdered outside her home in Los Angeles, California. O.J. Simpson is later acquitted of the killings, but is held liable in wrongful death civil suit. Alternative theories have a serial killer or even OJ's son as the true culprit.

PARACULTURAL CALENDAR FOR JUNE 9

On this day in 53 AD, Roman Emperor Nero marries Claudia Octavia. Fifteen years later to the day, Nero commits suicide, thus ending the Julio-Claudian Dynasty and starting the civil year known as the Year of the Four Emperors.

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The first legal corporation in the Americas is established on this day in 1650 when the Harvard Corporation establishes its charter.

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On this day in 1946, Thailand’s King Bhumibol Adulyadej ascends to the throne, where he still sits to this day, having survived military juntas and coups and revolutions and more. He is currently the world's longest reigning monarch, with one of the most loyal group of subjects any reigning monarch could ever want to have... a fact which yer old pal Jerky found out the hard way a number of years ago...

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On this day in 1954, US Army special counsel Joseph Welch famously rebukes Red Scare-mongering Senator Joseph McCarthy during the Army-McCarthy hearings on whether Communism has infiltrated the American military. Welch’s impassioned defense of a young subordinate whom McCarthy had smeared on live TV resonated across the nation: “Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?” It was the beginning of the end for the vile thug Joe McCarthy.

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On this day in the year 1978, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, known to you and I as the Cult of Mormon, strikes down its long-standing policy of excluding black men from the priesthood, probably because they're running out of stupid white people to con into believing their sham mythology.

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On this day in 1980, legendary comedian Richard Pryor accidentally sets himself on fire while freebasing cocaine. Badly burned over 80% of his body, it was a tragic irony that during his months-long hospital stay, Pryor added a variety of pain-killers and powerful laxatives to the already lengthy list of substances to which he was addicted.

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On this day in 2001, FBI agent Robert Wright gives the FBI a mission statement he wrote that outlines his complaints against his agency. It reads, in part, “Knowing what I know, I can confidently say that until the investigative responsibilities for terrorism are removed from the FBI, I will not feel safe. The FBI has proven for the past decade it cannot identify and prevent acts of terrorism against the United States and its citizens at home and abroad. Even worse, there is virtually no effort on the part of the FBI’s International Terrorism Unit to neutralize known and suspected terrorists residing within the United States. Unfortunately, more terrorist attacks against American interests, coupled with the loss of American lives, will have to occur before those in power give this matter the urgent attention it deserves.” Three months later, almost to the day, the terrorist attacks of September 11 would take place.

PARACULTURAL CALENDAR FOR JUNE 8

On this day in 632 AD, the prophet and founder of Islam, Muhammad, dies in Medina. His rule is succeeded by Abu Bakr, who becomes the first Caliph of the Rashidun Caliphate.

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On this day in 793 AD, the Scandinavian invasion of England begins when Vikings raid the abbey at Lindisfarne in Northumbria. These raids would continue for over a hundred years, until the Vikings convert, en mass, to Christianity, and become relatively docile almost overnight.

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On this day in 1794, French Revolutionary figure Robespierre inaugurates France’s new state religion: the Cult of the Supreme Being! Despite coming complete with large organized festivals to be celebrated all across France, it fails to catch on.

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On this day in 1949, an FBI report names celebrities Helen Keller, Dorothy Parker, Danny Kaye, Fredric March, John Garfield, Paul Muni and Edward G. Robinson as members of the American Communist Party. Meanwhile, in England, George Orwell's prophetic dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four lands on the nation’s bookshelves and consciousness with the force of a rogue comet.

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On this day in the year 1959, the Navy submarine U.S.S. Barbero fires a guided missile carrying 3,000 letters at the Naval Auxiliary Air Station in Mayport, Florida. "Before man reaches the moon," one official opined at the time, "mail will be delivered within hours from New York to California, to Britain, to India or Australia, by guided missiles." And so it was, and so it always shall be. I mean, can you imagine a world without guided missile-delivered mail?!

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On this day in 1967, Israeli warplanes launch a savage attack on the USS Liberty, an American intelligence gathering ship, killing 34 of her crew and wounding another 171. Israel tried to claim it was a friendly fire incident… but it wasn’t.

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On this day in 1972, Associated Press photographer Nick Ut takes his Pulitzer Prize-winning photo of a naked 9-year-old Phan Thị Kim Phúc running down a road after being burned by napalm.

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On this day in 2004, Venus transits across the Sun for the first time in modern history. The previous transit took place over a hundred years previous, in 1882. Because these transits happen in pairs, separated by roughly 8 years, the 2012 transit was the last one of the 21st century. There won't be another for a long, long time.

PARACULTURAL CALENDAR FOR 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.

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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.

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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.

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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 sub-critical 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.

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

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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.

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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.

PARACULTURAL CALENDAR FOR MAY 2

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!

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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.

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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.

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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.

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

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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, contrary to popular legend, from Little Rock to organized crime, he also pretty much sucked at his job.

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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, disregarding the UK in 2016.

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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.

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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?! By the way, there is one group that performs burials at sea for "dishonored enemies"... Freemasons! Trying to find a link to back this up, but all Google can find is a song called "Burial at Sea" by some shitty band called The Secret Lives of Freemasons. Interesting how that works out, idnit?

PARACULTURAL CALENDAR FOR APRIL 22

Senator McCarthy and Trump's Mentor, the unctuously evil Roy Cohn

On this day in the year 1864, Congress passes the Coinage Act, which mandates that, from that day forward, all United States currency should be inscribed with the motto: "In God We Trust." Which God, exactly, is a matter still up for debate.

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On this day in the year 1912, the first issue of Pravda, the voice of the Bolsheviks in the soon-to-be Soviet Union, is published in Saint Petersburg. Seeing as this was in pre-revolutionary Russia, the tone of discourse and the level of philosophical rhetoric was pretty elevated. The comics section, however, was just sad.

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On this day in the year 1954, live television coverage of witness testimony during the Congressional Army-McCarthy Hearings begins...as does the Red Scare, in earnest.

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On this day in the year 1970, the first ever Earth Day is celebrated... by PAGANS!!!

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On this day in the year 2000, absolutely nobody is hurt when 6-year-old Elián González is rescued from the clutches of his celebrity-craving relatives' home in Miami, Florida, after a lightning raid by federal agents... those SAVAGES!

PARACULTURAL CALENDAR FOR APRIL 19

On this day in 1961, the clandestine invasion of Cuba ends in spectacular failure when JFK refuses to lend air support to the unapproved covert military action kicked off by CIA-trained Cuban ex-pats who land at the rocky cliffs at Cuba's Bay of Pigs.

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On this day in 1971, cult leader Charles Manson is sentenced to die for his role in the Tate/LaBianca murders, which serve as an unofficial demarcation zone for the 1960's.

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On this day in 1985, the FBI surrounds the compound of the radical Christian identity group known as The Covenant, The Sword, and the Arm of the Lord, in Arkansas. The siege ends quickly, without bloodshed, as negotiators succeed in convincing the groups leaders to lay down their arms and come out peacefully. Eight years later, after studying the strategies engaged in during the CSAL standoff, the FBI chose this date to put an end the standoff in Waco. This time, as detailed in the next entry, things don’t go exactly as planned...

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On this day in 1993, the FBI puts their plan to end the standoff at David Koresh's Branch Davidian Compound into action. At 5:59 in the morning, via megaphone, Koresh and his followers are told that they are under arrest, and to come out peacefully. They are also once again warned to stay out of a central tower where the insertion of tear gas is slated to begin. The previous night's reaction to these warnings was to hold children up to the windows, as well as signs that read: "Flames Await." At 6:02, two FBI combat engineering vehicles begin inserting gas into the compound. At 6:04, the Davidians start shooting. At 7:30, a CEV breaches the front side of the building on the first floor, injecting more gas. At 9:30, another CEV begins enlarging the opening in the front of the building, and a third CEV breaches the rear of the building, creating openings from which the FBI hoped cult-members would escape. At seven minutes past noon, the Davidians are seen starting fires throughout the compound. At 12:12, negotiators get on the phone and ask Koresh to lead the Davidians out to safety. Nine Davidians flee the compound, and are arrested without incident. Ten minutes later, the sound of gunfire can be heard coming from the compound. At 12:41, fire-trucks begin pumping water on the now rapidly-burning buildings. By mid-afternoon, it was confirmed… 86 corpses, including over a dozen children, lay dead under the rubble of the compound. After 20 years of studying this tragedy, during which time your humble correspondent has read and watched documentation from every conceivable viewpoint - including but not limited to the documentaries The Rules of Engagement and A New Revelation - I have come to believe the following: After 51 days of begging for it, those members of the Branch Davidian Cult remaining in the compound finally managed to succeed in their bid for collective "suicide by cop", making themselves martyrs and heroes to right-wingers and religious fundamentalists in the process. Which brings us to our next entry...

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In the early morning of 1995, enraged by the conflagration at Waco two years earlier, Timothy McVeigh drives a rented Ryder truck up to the north side of the A.P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. At 9:02, a huge fuel-bomb in the back of the truck detonates, collapsing the north face of the building, and snuffing out the lives of 168 unsuspecting souls, including many children who had just been dropped off at the building's daycare center. Once again, a huge volume of "alternative journalism" has risen around this event, some of it good, but much of it not. Regardless, serious and substantial questions do remain about what really happened in the days and weeks before, during and after this Satanic conflagration. Most of the popular conspiracy theories center on the federal government's foreknowledge of and even participation in the bombing. Ironically, your humble correspondent finds the more persuasive arguments to be on the other side of the fence, by which I mean probably a lot more Christian identity extremists were involved than we have been led to believe and the clown concurs.

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On this day in 2011, after 45 years in charge, Fidel Castro resigns from the Communist Party of Cuba's central committee.

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?!

ON THIS DAY IN PARAPOLITICAL HISTORY - MAY 2

May 2

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?!