FRENCH WOMAN CLAIMS SHE WAS BRAINWASHED BY OPUS DEI

AFP is reporting that a French woman is suing the conservative Roman Catholic secret society/cult known as Opus Dei, claiming they brainwashed her after she enrolled in an Opus Dei-connected hospitality industry school at the age of 14, then used and abused her for 13 years - forcing her to serve as a virtual slave to the organization, reclaiming her wages, etc - until her parents rescued her from their clutches. French authorities appear to have taken her claims seriously, and the defense arguments seem pretty damn flimsy. This could be one to watch, folks.

TEABAGGER MICHELLE BACHMANN (R-IDIOT) FILLED WITH THE SPIRIT OF JOHN WAYNE... GACY!

Not a joke. Not an exaggeration. Just a really creepy Freudian slip.

IT'S FUNNY CUZ IT'S (PROBABLY) TRUE!

Wow! This comic rap about Barack Obama's extra-judicial, extra-jurisdictional execution of Osama bin Laden has the issue covered from pretty much every possible rhetorical angle. Kudos on being so goddamn thorough, whoeva you iz!

AREA 51 CRAZINESS EVEN CRAZIER THAN PREVIOUSLY BELIEVED

From Terry Gross's FRESH AIR show on NPR yesterday:

Ms JACOBSEN: A flying disc really did crash in New Mexico. And it was transported to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, and then in 1951 it was transferred to Area 51, which is why the base is called Area 51. And the stunning part about this reveal was that my source, who I absolutely believe and worked with for 18 months on this, was one of the engineers who received the equipment – he refers to it as equipment – and he also received the people who were in the craft. And so…

GROSS: Do you mean the remains of the people in the craft?

Ms. JACOBSEN: The people were – according to the source – the people in the craft who were child-sized pilots, and there’s a lot of debate about how old they were. He believes that they were 13, although other people believe that they may have been older … And what he says is that the child-sized aviators in this craft were the result of a Soviet human experimentation program, and they had been made to look like aliens a la Orson Welles’ “War of the Worlds.” When the Orson Welles radio broadcast “The War of the Worlds” aired in 1938, people on the East Coast actually took actions based on their belief that Martians had landed in New Jersey and were attacking. And this fascinated the American military – I source all this in my book – and led to a lot of behind-the-scenes thinking about what it meant that American citizens could be so moved by something that was fictional – that was science fiction. And across the pond, Hitler also paid attention to “The War of the Worlds.” He referenced it in a speech. And according to my source, Stalin also paid attention to “The War of the Worlds” and was fascinated by American susceptibility toward science fiction. And so his plan, according to my source, was to create panic in the United States with this belief that a UFO had landed with aliens inside of it.

GROSS: Mm-hmm. So you’re saying that these children were surgically altered.

Ms. JACOBSEN: I am repeating what the source told me is that…

GROSS: Right. That he’s saying. I’m sorry. He’s saying that they were surgically altered.

Ms. JACOBSEN: Yeah. Or genetically. It’s unclear. What he is absolutely clear about is that the iconic images that we have now of aliens with the big head and the nose and the eyes, that is actually what the child-size pilots looked like. And what I asked my source over and over again, where my skepticism came in was, why, originally in 1947, when this craft supposedly crashed with these grotesque humans in it, why on earth didn’t President Truman hold a press conference to show what a horrible, evil, abhorrent man Joseph Stalin was, to be working with Dr. Mengele? And the source’s answer – which took a very long time – was ultimately: because we decided to do the same thing. And that the head of the program – who my source says was a man named Vannevar Bush, who had also been in charge of the Manhattan Project, decided that it was important to figure out what the Soviets had done. And so we began our own rogue program with human experiments. And this, says the source, is why it’s all secret.

This dove-tails so neatly with everything I have believed and written about over the last 13 years, it's not even funny. You can listen to the entire interview with author Anne Jacobsen, who seems distressingly qualified and legit, HERE.

FINALLY, BLOGGER IS DONE INSTALLING THE LATEST SURVEILLANCE SOFTWARE!

After a week-long, previously unannounced "downtime" for the world's biggest blogging outfit, we can now get back to exposing our opinions and proclivities for the Powers That Be to peruse with the greatest of ease, and in the most luxurious leisure and comfort. In the meantime, here's a great video featuring the legendary Robert Anton Wilson giving his (very valid) opinion on conspiracy theories, in which he enumerates the only conspiracy theorists that he trusts - Carl Oglesby being one of them. I bring this up only because I am in the process of preparing to interview Mr. Oglesby, and I will be posting said interview in the very near future. Keep your eyes peeled!

JAMES WEBB AND THE OCCULT UNDERGROUND/ESTABLISHMENT

Currently reading Scottish researcher James Webb's excellent and authoritative work The Occult Underground - originally published in 1973 as The Flight From Reason - and I knew he'd committed suicide tragically at a young age in the early 80's, so I thought I'd seek out more info. Found a really quite thorough and engrossing article on Webb in the absolutely essential Fortean Times archive. Thought I'd share. Enjoy!

AARON RUSSO (RIP) ON PRETTY MUCH EVERYTHING

GEORGE SOROS EDITORIAL ACTUALLY QUITE GOOD

Billionaire investor George Soros -- frequent target of right-wing (i.e. stupid) conspiracy theories and theorists -- has written a thoughtful, thought-provoking editorial about philosophy, science, economics and ideas. Gee, no wonder the Right hate his guts! I recommend that everyone read the piece as a corrective to the years of O'Reilly/Limbaugh/Beck that we've all suffered through, and in order to understand what public intellectuals should really sound like.

APOLOGIES FOR THE LACK OF UPDATES...

Hey folks! I'll begin updating this place more regularly by the end of the week. I just have some emergency freelance work that I've got to do to keep my ass from getting evicted from my totally shitty apartment. Speaking of which... anybody in the Toronto area have some spare room and wanna put up a fading Internet pseudo-celebrity for a month or two? Hehe... just kidding. Anyhoo, I'll try to put up at LEAST a little something for you once every weekday in the interim, so here's something interesting for you to watch. - YOPJ

THIS DAY IN PARAPOLITICAL HISTORY - APRIL 22

On April 22 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.

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.

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.

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

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... the SAVAGES!!!

On this day in 2010, British Petroleum's Deepwater Horizon oil rig sinks to the bottom of the Gulf Of Mexico after suffering a blowout two days previous. This precipitates the largest oil spill in U.S. history... and we've already all but forgotten about it.

And, finally, it was on this day in the year 2011 that you finally learned the difference between England, Great Britain and the United Kingdom, by watching the video, below...

THIS DAY IN PARAPOLITICAL HISTORY - APRIL 21

On April 21 in 753 BC, those bitch-tit-sucking twins Romulus and Remus found Rome. Empire ensues.

On this day in 1519, Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés lands in Veracruz, on the east coast of Mexico, where he is greeted by the large native population. Things go about as well for those poor devils as yer old pal Jerky suspects it will go for us when the aliens -- or Archons, or whatever the fuck they really are -- finally decide to stop pussyfooting around and initiate contact with someone other than gasoline-huffing NyQuil addicts from Squalor, East Virginia.



On this day in 1863, in Persia, the founder of the Baha'i faith -- Bahaullah -- declares his mission as "He Whom God shall make Manifest". Baha'i is an interesting faith, with an interesting history. I'm not suggesting it was created by shadowy elites as a more progressive, rational alternative to the "religions of the book" that emerged from Antiquity. However, if a shadowy elite wanted to create a more progressive, rational alternative to the "religions of the book" in order to control the masses... that faith would most certainly look an awful lot like Baha'i.

On this day in 1966, Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie visits Jamaica, an event now celebrated as "Grounation Day". Jamaica's Rasta believers considered Selassie -- traditionally seen as a descendant of the Queen of Sheba and King Solomon -- to be the prophesied Second Coming of Christ... the Messiah. They still do. But during his first visit to Jamaica, over a hundred thousand Rasta descended on the airport, smoking "spliffs" and "chalices", creating both a cloud of marijuana smoke and a human crush so dense that Selassie refused to de-plane. Eventually Rasta representatives climbed aboard to meet with Selassie, then emerged and instructed the crowds to be respectful and move back, which they did. The rest of his visit went smoothly.

THE ILLUSION OF INTERNET ACTIVISM - MUST WATCH!

SOMETHING IS HAPPENING. SOMETHING IS COMING.

THIS DAY IN PARAPOLITICAL HISTORY - APRIL 20

On this day in 1939, Adolf Hitler's 50th birthday is celebrated as a national holiday in Nazi Germany. Six years later, in 1945, Hitler makes his final trip to the surface of the Fuehrerbunker in order to award Iron Crosses to boy soldiers of the Hitler Youth. After returning underground, he would never resurface alive.

On this day in 1968, English C/conservative politician Enoch Powell -- who looks like a Monty Python parody of an English C/conservative politician -- makes his controversial "Rivers of Blood" speech, in which he claims that "in 15 or 20 years time, the black man will have the whip hand over the white man", and that allowing immigration from "colored" lands was like "watching a nation busily engaged in heaping up its own funeral pyre." The following video is a documentary about the speech, its ramifications and legacy.

On this day in 1978, Soviet fighter jets open fire on Korean Air Flight 902, killing two passengers and forcing an emergency landing on a frozen lake. The Soviet government claimed that the plane, which had invaded Soviet airpace, had not replied to requests for indentification, but Korean Air released tapes that showed the pilots had, indeed, identified themselves.

On this day in 1998, the left-wing German terrorist group Red Army Faction, also known as Baader-Meinhof, announces its dissolution after 28 years. Seeing as most of the terrorist attacks attributed to them (and many other left-wing European groups) were actually committed under the aegis of Gladio, a clandestine fascist remnant, they needn't really have bothered. This documentary is a good starting point if you want to understand the truth about the evolution of Western Civilization in the latter half of the 20th century.

On this day in 1999, the Columbine High School massacre occurs when psychopharmaceutically saturated high school nihilists Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold kill 12 classmates and one teacher -- injuring 24 others -- before committing suicide in Jefferson County, Colorado. To this day, eye-witnesses claim there was a third shooter, and compelling evidence supports this assertion.

THIS DAY IN PARAPOLITICAL HISTORY - APRIL 19

On April 19, in the year 1961, the USA's 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.

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.

On this day in 1985 the FBI siege on the compound of the White Supremacist and Christian Identity group known as The Covenant, The Sword, and the Arm of the Lord comes to a non-violent end in Arkansas with the leaders giving up without a fight. Eight years later, in 1993, the same cannot be said of a similar siege, near Waco, Texas, against a similar (though less criminally inclined) group, the Branch Davidians. Eighty-one people perish in that catastrophe. Two years after that, a moving truck parked outside the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City explodes, destroying the building and killing 168 people, including dozens of preschoolers. Meanwhile, in Arkansas, Covenant/Sword/Arm cult-member Richard Wayne Snell is put to death in Arkansas for double-homicide. Snell claimed to have videotaped then-governor Bill Clinton accepting shipments of cocaine at Mena airport in Akransas, and was instrumental in getting Timothy McVeigh involved with the insurrectionist, Apocalyptic Christian Identity commune known as Elohim City.

On this day in 1999, The German Bundestag returns to Berlin, the first German parliamentary body to meet there since the Reichstag was dissolved in 1945.

THIS DAY IN PARAPOLITICAL HISTORY - APRIL 18

On April 18 in 1775, the American Revolution, a.k.a. the War of Independence, begins when the British advancement by sea begins, as Paul Revere and other riders warn the countryside of Redcoat troop movements. In 1783 -- eight years later to the day! -- the final few flare-ups of combat come to an end, signaling the final chapter in the American Revolution.

On this day in 1958, a United States federal court rules that American poet Ezra Pound should be released from St. Elizabeths Psychiatric Hospital, the asylum where he'd been held since the end of World War II for making pro-Fascist broadcasts on behalf of Mussolini, among other insults to The Powers That Be. Prior to the First World War and for a short while after it, Pound had been one of the most -- if not the single most -- influential Western intellectual in the Modern tradition. He helped usher in the carreers of everybody from T.S. Eliot and James Joyce to Robert Frost and Ernest Hemingway. Blaming the meatgrinder slaughter of World War I on international capitalism and usury, he devoted his life to seeking out a more equitable monetary system and finding an alternative, more mystical view of life. He thought he'd found the latter in Fascist Italy. He was wrong, with tragic results.

Relating to the above post: Earlier this month, I wrote that I was willing to give Ayn Rand's novels a chance because simply being an awful person doesn't mean one will produce awful literature. In Rand's case, unfortunately, the literature really is almost as awful as the human being who produced it. Pound, on the other hand, is one of those glorious exceptions... a vile man who was capable of producing transcendent, glorious writing. As Hemingway said of his works: "The best of Pound's writing -- and it is in the Cantos -- will last as long as there is any literature."

THIS DAY IN PARAPOLITICAL HISTORY - APRIL 17

On April 17 in 1969, Sirhan Sirhan is found guilty of assassinating presidential candidate Robert Francis Kennedy. Just as in the assassination of his brother, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, serious doubts and troubling questions remain.

THIS DAY IN PARAPOLITICAL HISTORY - APRIL 16

On April 16 in the year 73 AD, the Jewish fortress of Masada falls to the Romans after several months of siege... or not. The only thing we really know for sure about this legendary siege and the site on which it is located is that the remains found there -- which were given a state funeral with full military honors by the Israeli government in 1982 -- mostly consisted of (ahem) pig bones.

Despite the fact that George Orwell had used the term Cold War to describe the simmering tensions between Western and Soviet bloc nations on two previous occasions, popular convention has it that the financier, presidential advisor and One World Government proponent Bernard Baruch coined the term on this day in 1947, in a speech given in South Carolina. Google "The Baruch Plan" for some startling and revelatory reading.

On this day in 2007, the deadliest killing spree in modern American history takes place at Virginia Tech, when an apocalyptically awkward South Korean student by the name of Seung-Hui Cho -- or was it someone else? -- guns down 32 and injures another 23 before turning the gun on himself. The fact that his sister works for McNeil/Veritas, a company with deep ties to the American intelligence apparatus, is of no interest whatsoever. And the fact that he went to high school with another "deranged lone nut-job" assassin is just one of those crazy coincidences that so often pop up in events of this nature.

THIS DAY IN PARAPOLITICAL HISTORY - APRIL 15

On April 15 in 1865, Abraham Lincoln succumbs to the wound inflicted upon his person the previous evening.

On this day in 1896, the first Olympic Games of the Modern Era come to a close in Athens, Greece, with a relatively simple closing ceremony. First-place winners didn't win gold medals, but silver ones creepily stamped with the big, staring face of Greek pagan deity Zeus. Second-place winners got copper medals. Third-place got a handshake and a signed, autographed picture of His Royal Majesty Lord Jack Fucking Squat.

On this day in 1912, two and a half hours after hitting an iceberg, the Titanic sinks in the North Atlantic with 1,517 people still on board. The wreck would not be located until 1985.

On this day in 1947, Jackie Robinson debuts for the Brooklyn Dodgers, breaking baseball's color line, not to mention the brains of, like, a dozen million racist assholes.

On this day in 1952, a prototype B-52 Stratofortress super-bomber -- known inside the military as the BUFF, which stands for Big Ugly Fat/Fucker/Flying/Fellow, depending on who you ask -- takes off from Boeing Field in Seattle to Larson Air Force Base, Moses Lake, Washington, with test pilot "Tex" Johnston at the controls, and if this brings to mind the movie Dr Strangelove or How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the Bomb, that's probably not a coincidence. B-52s would circumnavigate Soviet airspace with redundant nuclear payloads for years, refueling in mid-flight, staying up in the air for weeks at a time, until Inter Continental Ballistic Missiles -- with a little help from rocket scientist and dedicated occult practitioner Jack Parsons -- made these flying fortresses obsolete.

On this day in 1955, milkshake-machine salesman Ray Kroc opens the doors to his first franchise of a McDonald's Brothers restaurant in Des Plaines, Illinois. The McDonald's restaurant chain dates its founding to this day.

On this day in 1989, 96 soccer fans die in what authorities describe as a "human crush" during the FA Cup semi final at Hillsborough Stadium.

On this day in 1989, protesters begin gathering in Tienanmen Square in the People's Republic of China to commemorate the death of the recently ousted and publicly humiliated General Secretary Hu Yaobang, who was relatively liberal and reform-minded by Chinese standards. The protests would grow and intensify until June 4, at which point all Hell broke loose.

And now for some birthday announcements!

On April 15, in 1452, Renaissance painter, sculptor, engineer, scientist, mathematician, anatomist, geologist, cartographer, inventor, musician and all-around super-genius Leonardo da Vinci is born. Seventeen years later, in the Punjab, Nanak Dev is born. He will go on to found the Sikh religion and be its first Guru. The dictionary is born on this day in 1755, when Samuel Johnson's A Dictionary of the English Language is first published in London. The General Electric Company is founded on this day in 1892, and since corporations have the same rights as human beings nowadays, I guess it's only fitting that this event be listed as a birthday. In 1920, psychiatrist and humanist Thomas Szasz is born. He later emerges as one of the most eloquent voices speaking out against the mis-use and abuse of science, reason and medicine as a tool for social control. The road atlas was born on this day on 1924, when Rand McNally publishes the first book of its kind. In 1942, Bush Crime Family crony Kenny-Boy Lay is born... Enron ensues. And, finally, on this day in 1970, exactly nine months after his parents consummate their wedding vows while bathed in the flickering glow of a Niagara Falls motel room TV set reporting the stupendous news that two human beings were actually walking on the goddamn Moon... yer old pal Jerky is born.

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.