Paracultural Calendar for April 9

[Mark Thibodeau]

*"Read Free or DIE!!!"* The first ever tax-supported public library opens
its doors in Peterborough, New Hampshire on this day in *1833*.

***

On this day in *1860*, a French fellow by the name of *Édouard-Léon Scott
de Martinville* makes the oldest known recording of an audible human voice
- his own, singing *Au Clair de la Lune,* very slowly - on a machine of his
own devising, which he christened the *Phonautograph Machine!* You can
listen to this brief but creepy echo from the far, distant past here
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonautograph>, on the machine's Wikipedia
page.

***

On this day in *1865*, after four years of bloody combat that left 600,000
dead, Confederate General *Robert E. Lee* surrenders the Army of Northern
Virginia to *Ulysses S. Grant* at the Appomattox Courthouse in Virginia.
This effectively ends the American Civil War. Today, many revisionists try
to argue that the Civil War wasn't about slavery - either the practice at
it had evolved in the South, or its expansion into the newly developing
Western states. Anybody who tries to argue this point is either
pathetically ignorant of history or a bald-faced liar, and anything they
have to say about any topic can therefore be dismissed as a-historical
balderdash and/or right-wing propaganda.

***

On this day in *1992*, a U.S. federal court finds former Panamanian
dictator and notorious, CIA asset, and *Bush Crime Family
<http://worlddesk.org/2011/12/11/noriega-in-chains-the-george-bush-connection/>*
 crony *Manuel Noriega* guilty of drug and racketeering charges. Sentenced
to 30 years in prison, Noriega was ultimately extradited to France in 2010,
where he was tried for money laundering, and then back home to Panama in
2011, where he was tried over the murder of a domestic political
challenger, and where he remains behind bars to this day.

***

On this day in *2003*, the world first learns that *Patient Zero* in the
*SARS* pandemic just happened to fly on *seven different planes* to *six
different international locations* in the span of *six fucking days* just
two weeks earlier. He flew from Hong Kong to Munich on March 30, then flew
to Barcelona where, according to authorities, he began developing symptoms.
Undaunted, he hopped another plane to Frankfurt, then switched off and flew
to London (same day, different plane). The day after that, he flew to
Munich, then headed back to Frankfurt, again on a different plane.
Eventually, he made his way back to Hong Kong, where he checked into a
hospital and was confirmed to have SARS. Regarding these suspiciously
ostentatious travel habits, authorities said: "He travels a lot." In other
words: "Move along, nothing to see here."

***

On this day in the year *2003*, after the application of a little "Shock
and Awe" by the "Coalition of the Willing", the city of Baghdad falls to
advancing American forces. In the center of the city, a statue of *Saddam
Hussein* is pulled down in what the mainstream media described as regular,
everyday Iraqis turning on symbols of their former leader. In fact, that's
still the way Wikipedia portrays those events. In reality, however, even
the Pentagon was forced to admit that the whole thing was a *stage-managed
psychological operation
<http://www.fair.org/blog/2011/01/04/propaganda-and-the-saddam-statue-conspiracy/>*.
Oh well, it might have been a Big Lie, but at least it ended the war!


I'm kidding, of course. Because even though *Preznit Dubya* and all the
bought-and-paid-for whores in the right-wing military/industrial/media
propaganda complex declared victory, in reality, the war in Iraq had barely
just begun. Ten years, six thousand dead Americans, a hundred times that
many dead Iraqis and over a TRILLION wasted dollars later, the only
undeniable truth about the war in Iraq. is that it was a wasteful, Satanic
enterprise built upon a foundation of *propaganda, forgery, and lies*
<http://www.buzzflash.com/farrell/03/04/01.html>. There was no valid
ethical, moral or legal justification for it, no matter how "easy" the task
might have seemed back in the early days of what would ultimately turn out
to be a completely Pyrrhic victory.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://waste.org/pipermail/pynchon-l/attachments/20150409/82db44c1/attachment.html>