Continuity of Totalitarianism

There exists, somewhere deep in the belly of the NSA, a database so large, so secret, and so illegal, that few government officials will dare talk about it, even off the record.

Sources familiar with the program say that the government's data gathering has been overzealous and probably conducted in violation of federal law and the protection from unreasonable search and seizure guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment.

According to a senior government official who served with high-level security clearances in five administrations, "There exists a database of Americans, who, often for the slightest and most trivial reason, are considered unfriendly, and who, in a time of panic, might be incarcerated. The database can identify and locate perceived 'enemies of the state' almost instantaneously." He and other sources tell Radar that the database is sometimes referred to by the code name Main Core. One knowledgeable source claims that 8 million Americans are now listed in Main Core as potentially suspect. In the event of a national emergency, these people could be subject to everything from heightened surveillance and tracking to direct questioning and possibly even detention. [emphasis mine]

Are you on the list? You have no way of knowing. There's no way to reason with them, to tell them you're not a threat. There's no recourse, no due process, no rights.

This is the dark heart of our government, silently beating away in the darkest corner of a military base somewhere deep underground. There are people in position who long for (or at least plan for) the chance to take power in the next emergency. The Constitution would be suspended, Congress rendered impotent, martial law declared and cities locked down.

For what?

Fear. This government fears its citizens, not because they're all terrorists, but because many of them still believe in democracy. Such people are dangerous. Believing in the Constitution might be enough to get you on the list.

Let's imagine a harrowing scenario: coordinated bombings in several American cities culminating in a major blast—say, a suitcase nuke—in New York City. Thousands of civilians are dead. Commerce is paralyzed. A state of emergency is declared by the president. Continuity of Governance plans that were developed during the Cold War and aggressively revised since 9/11 go into effect. Surviving government officials are shuttled to protected underground complexes carved into the hills of Maryland, Virginia, and Pennsylvania. Power shifts to a "parallel government" that consists of scores of secretly preselected officials. (As far back as the 1980s, Donald Rumsfeld, then CEO of a pharmaceutical company, and Dick Cheney, then a congressman from Wyoming, were slated to step into key positions during a declared emergency.) The executive branch is the sole and absolute seat of authority, with Congress and the judiciary relegated to advisory roles at best. The country becomes, within a matter of hours, a police state.

Why? Why do we need to become a police state in order to become "secure"? Well, I already mentioned it above; the people who put these COG plans together are not patriots. They are traitors who wish to dispense with the annoyances of representative government and move instead to a system where everything is much smoother... for those in power.

It's strange that they would throw 200 years of liberty at the first sign of trouble ... if you don't know who these people are. Notice who gets protected in the scenario above. They aren't saving the Constitution, they're saving their own asses. They don't have contingency plans in place to ensure that citizens' rights are upheld; no, they're only concerned with maintaining their power and their control over us.

It's not necessary that the government be saved. We can start a new one and Lord knows it'll be better than the one we've got. But the one we've got is intent on saving its own skin, Constitution and Bill of Rights be damned. This isn't a Continuity of Liberty plan. This is a Discontinuation of Liberty plan.

The totality of this plan, the way every tactically-important aspect has been planned for seizure and "continuity", is to me indicative of Totalitarianism. The state and those in power can't even imagine why we wouldn't want the government to control everything. The idea that we could survive just fine without a bloated Federal government doesn't even occur to them.

You know, the United States of America was originally supposed to be an alliance amongst soveriegn states. If something bad happens in Washington D.C. that shouldn't directly affect Arizona or Minnesota, except as far as Federal money is concerned (the main tool by which the Federal government has tightened its control over the states).

Realize this: We don't need a strong Federal government! We have state and local governments to take care of things important to every American; things like roads, power, water, communications and other services.

And who's planning all this stuff anyway? Surely a competent agency with a devotion to civil liberties, right?

Haha, just kidding. You know we're fucked: It's FEMA!

Under law, during a national emergency, FEMA and its parent organization, the Department of Homeland Security, would be empowered to seize private and public property, all forms of transport, and all food supplies. The agency could dispatch military commanders to run state and local governments, and it could order the arrest of citizens without a warrant, holding them without trial for as long as the acting government deems necessary.

Seriously.

Well, I guess I should look at the silver lining: FEMA will probably be just an incompetent at taking our liberties away as at helping those in need... But that's probably optimistic on my part. The reason FEMA sucks at disaster relief is because it was never really set up to be a benevolent agency; the idea behind FEMA was always this: Seizing control of the nation during an emergency.

This is the real purpose of the War on Terror. It's to get us used to the idea that the government needs to step in and take over when things get rough. What they don't tell you is that they're intentionally creating a culture of fear to make the poisonous medecine go down easier, and they're probably working the other end of things too, creating the conditions for terrorists to thrive so they'll launch attacks and trigger the COG plans that were the whole point of the War on Terror in the first place. So, like the War on Drugs, the WOT is reall just a War on Liberty.

All this brings us back to the Main Core database:

Another well-informed source—a former military operative regularly briefed by members of the intelligence community—says this particular program has roots going back at least to the 1980s and was set up with help from the Defense Intelligence Agency. He has been told that the program utilizes software that makes predictive judgments of targets' behavior and tracks their circle of associations with "social network analysis" and artificial intelligence modeling tools.

"The more data you have on a particular target, the better [the software] can predict what the target will do, where the target will go, who it will turn to for help," he says. "Main Core is the table of contents for all the illegal information that the U.S. government has [compiled] on specific targets." An intelligence expert who has been briefed by high-level contacts in the Department of Homeland Security confirms that a database of this sort exists, but adds that "it is less a mega-database than a way to search numerous other agency databases at the same time."

The fact that there are 8 million of us in this database is nothing less than horrifying. If there were really 8 million terrorists in the USA we'd have people exploding with Baghdad-like regularity... but we don't. Nope, it's far more likely that the people in this database are those like myself who believe in liberty and democracy. We are the true threat a tyrannical government would face in an emergency because we would want the Constitution to be reinstated. The COGers won't let that happen.

That is why we need to be monitored. All of us. All the time. For no reason other than we might be a threat some time in the future. Maybe. The pesky 4th amendment makes this so much more difficult than the government would like, but after years of merciless attack there's not much left of it in the public consciousness or on the law books. Here's a look at what they monitor:

The following information seems to be fair game for collection without a warrant: the e-mail addresses you send to and receive from, and the subject lines of those messages; the phone numbers you dial, the numbers that dial in to your line, and the durations of the calls; the Internet sites you visit and the keywords in your Web searches; the destinations of the airline tickets you buy; the amounts and locations of your ATM withdrawals; and the goods and services you purchase on credit cards. All of this information is archived on government supercomputers and, according to sources, also fed into the Main Core database.

Basically, you are being monitored at all times. The NSA has been scooping up anything and everything on the internet for years. They already had phone conversations and financial transactions.

The privacy concerns are horrifying enough, but what's worse is that the database is probably useless at preventing terrorism:

In any case, mass watch lists of domestic citizens may do nothing to make us safer from terrorism. Jeff Jonas, chief scientist at IBM, a world-renowned expert in data mining, contends that such efforts won't prevent terrorist conspiracies. "Because there is so little historical terrorist event data," Jonas tells Radar, "there is not enough volume to create precise predictions."

But there is a lot of data on regular Americans who aren't planning any attacks. And that data can be misused, and it probably will be at the first opportunity.

Fake! Museum says Crystal Skull not Aztec in origin

But where did the 12 crystal skulls come from and do we need to gather them by Dec. 12th, 2012 to stop the Earth from flipping over?!! Anybody know where the 13th skull can be found?! Paging Dr. Indiana Jones…

But though no crystal skull yet found at archaeological digs has proved to be authentic, the 12 located around the world continue to arouse interest and speculation.

Apart from the Paris, London and Smithsonian skulls, nine belong to private individuals -- the skull of destiny, the Sha-Na-Ra skull, the synergy skull, the Max skull, the Maya skull, a so-called E.T. skull, the amethyst skull, the reliquary cross skull and the pink crystal skull.

Each skull was supposed to correspond to 12 worlds in which human life was present. They were brought by the Itza, the ancient people of Atlantis, to their civilisation in order to pass on their knowledge to man.

The 13th world, the land, also had its own crystal skull, and all 13 skulls were kept in a great pyramid by the Olmecs, the Mayas and ultimately the Aztecs.

The Aztecs are said to have been responsible for the dispersal and loss of the skulls, which when brought together possessed great powers, including being lined up on the last day of the Maya calendar -- December 21, 2012 -- to prevent the earth from tipping over.

Yes, this all may be a bunch of mumbo jumbo but I think it's pretty fucking cool. After all, this is the stuff great movie plots are made from.

Wouldn't it be cool to own one of these skulls? Imagine whipping it out at parties: "Yeah, this is an ancient Olmec skull that was brought to South America by the escapees from Atlantis. It needs to be gathered with the other skulls on December 21, 2012 or we're all fucked. Pretty sweet, eh? I had to kill a bunch of Nazis to get it."

Ah, true fiction. Chicks dig guys with ancient crystal skulls possessing mysterious powers... or so I've heard.

Ring in a New Era with a Frigid Lunar Eclipse

It was cold. February cold. -5 degrees cold, plus windchill.

But that made for perfect viewing conditions. Amazingly, there wasn't a cloud in the sky and the moon filled up the night sky like a giant flashlight searching for some ancient, lost love. I watched the eclipse envelope the moon in shadow over at Andy's place and then drove home after finishing up practice. I told myself I wasn't going to break out the telescope since it was so fucking cold, but after staring at the moon in my driveway for a bit I figured, "what the hell; why not?"

I nearly froze my ass (well my hands really) off trying, but I eventually managed to snap a decent shot with the aid of the telescope. Check it out:


The moon looked amazing through the telescope. I couldn't replicate what I was seeing because my hands kept shaking from the cold. I snapped about a dozen crappy shots before the one above came out. I fled inside instantly and put on Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon.

I don't know what an eclipse "means" but this one meant something to me. I just wish things were different. Everything's fucked up in my life and the world as a whole, but I think seeing an eclipse can remind you that some things really are preordained. How many hundreds of years ago was this eclipse predicted in some ancient ephemeris? I dunno, but like clockwork it happened last night. There's something comforting about that.

Mostly I hope that this eclipse is the harbinger of a new era, as it was 500 years ago when Columbus used a similar eclipse to scare the shit out of some natives. Maybe this time we can start off on the right foot and bring everything up a notch. We each set the tone for our reality. We can erase our fears and free our souls from this torment if we'd each let our hearts ring true. But there's the rub; we need to do it together. One person freeing his mind is a lunatic. A billion doing the same is a global awakening.

I keep hoping against hope; a fool's hope. But sometimes that's all you've got. And even with the pain and heartache of being let down so many times I wouldn't trade that foolish hope for anything except the truth. I know the bell is cracked, but I hope it will ring again someday anyway. Is that stupidity? Delusion?

I know it's stupid. My logical brain tells me unequivicably that it is. But something deeper tells me that things are not always as they seem.

Maybe that will be the first lesson of a new era.

Economic Collapse

The pyramid scheme that is our economy is teetering on the brink of collapse. The subprime loan disaster is looking more and more like the detanator that will nuke the dollar, the banking industry and our economy as a whole.

When US homeowners default on their mortgages en-mass, they destroy money faster than the Fed can replace it through normal channels. The result is a liquidity crisis which deflates asset prices and reduces monetized wealth, says economist Henry Liu.

The debt-securitization process is in a state of collapse. The market for structured investments, MBSs, CDOs, and Commercial Paper---has evaporated leaving the banks with astronomical losses. They are incapable of rolling over their their short-term debt or finding new revenue streams to buoy them through the hard times ahead. As the foreclosure-avalanche intensifies; bank collateral continues to be down-graded which is likely to trigger a wave of bank failures.

Henry Liu sums it up like this: Proposed government plans to bail out distressed home owners can slow down the destruction of money, but it would shift the destruction of money as expressed by falling home prices to the destruction of wealth through inflation masking falling home value. (The Road to Hyperinflation, Henry Liu, Asia Times) It's a vicious cycle. The Fed is caught between the dual millstones of hyperinflation and mass defaults. There's no way out.

We are so fucked.

Unless somebody has a new economic system waiting in the wings I'll have to start learning how to survive on rats, rabbits, squirrels ... and probably human flesh at this rate. And that is not my idea of a good time.

The worst part is the feeling of helplessness. I can only watch these "financial experts" make one stupid decision after another. They're only really experts at making themselves massive short-term profits. They don't care about the damage they've done to the economy, which affects all of us.

The whole affair is depressing and maddening, but if you want to learn more, visit the Market Oracle.

As for me, I'll be learning to hunt small suburban mammals.

935 Lies in 24 months, eh? So, uh.... when do the impeachment hearings start?

So yeah, I know this isn't a big shocker to anybody with a functioning brain stem, but the Bush administration systematically lied its way into the Iraq War. A new study by the Center For Public Integrity has analyzed the public statements of administration officials in the run-up to the war and come up with 935 lies in a two-year span.

The study counted 935 false statements in the two-year period. It found that in speeches, briefings, interviews and other venues, Bush and administration officials stated unequivocally on at least 532 occasions that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction or was trying to produce or obtain them or had links to al-Qaida or both.

Everybody makes mistakes. Accidents happen and people do stupid things... but 935 mistakes? No fucking way.

So Many Lies, So Little Time
This was an organized campaign of deception. It was a fraud perpetrated on the American people and, most especially, on the people of Iraq.

935 LIES! That's 1.28 lies per day for 24 months straight by my calculations.

Take a look at the chart below (click for a larger version). You can see that the lies are concentrated around the pre-war and immediate post-invasion period. The peak lying period was the February before the invasion (which began on March 19, 2003). This was no accident.


This is not just a bunch of anonymous interns leaking statements to the press. The study concentrated on just 8 top officials:

President Bush, for example, made 232 false statements about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and another 28 false statements about Iraq's links to Al Qaeda. Secretary of State Powell had the second-highest total in the two-year period, with 244 false statements about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and 10 about Iraq's links to Al Qaeda. Rumsfeld and Fleischer each made 109 false statements, followed by Wolfowitz (with 85), Rice (with 56), Cheney (with 48), and McClellan (with 14).

The study can only look at public statements, so we have no way of counting the many lies whispered into the ears of journalists. It's interesting that Karl Rove was not included in this study, but he's more of a behind-the-scenes operator. Also missing are gobs of military men, mid-level staffers, the whole pundit class on TV and many more folks who are not directly connected to the administration. These 935 lies are just a drop in the bucket, but they all originate from very high-ranking officials.

The Impeachment Fantasy
So now that we've got a study in the mainstream press clearly delineating the fact that George W. Bush made at least 260 false statements in just 24 months, that means the impeachment hearings are just around the corner, right?

Wrong.

The Democrats will wag their fingers and cluck their tongues and do.... nothing. The Republicans have long since sold their souls, but it's the Democrats' betrayal that really hurts America. We need a true opposition party more than ever, but we don't have one.

If you've been reading this blog you probably know by now how Washington really works. Democracy, hearings, investigations, intelligence estimates, blah, blah, blah. It's all just for show. The real power resides behind the scenes. The oligarchy, the establishment, the powers that be -- whatever you want to call them -- have decided that there will be no impeachment hearings. So there won't be.

I don't know what else to tell you. "Write your congressperson"? Fat lotta good that will do, but it doesn't hurt to keep the pressure on.

The Oligarchs' Dilemma
Just try not get too depressed. Yes, American "democracy" makes Pakistan look like an oasis of liberty, but it's not all bad. I've got a feeling that there are some people in the establishment who want to change things. No doubt they're biding their time, waiting for things to fall into place. But we don't have much time. I don't think the Bush team plans to leave office, 'cause if they do they'll have to leave the country, too. Even the oligarchy can't stop a limited investigation into the Bush regime by any successive Democratic administration. They have to continue the illusion of democracy, even if it hurts them in the short term. And that could mean a war crimes tribunal for Bush and crew.

Cheney knows this so it's more likely that there will be another terrorist attack before or shortly after the elections (before inaugeration). Bush will declare martial law, lock down the nation, suspend the constitution and retain power "temporarily" until the emergency has passed. Of course, just like in Musharraf's Pakistan, the emergency will never pass.

If there are any oligarchs still loyal to the constitution, they will have to move quickly. There's a very small window (less than a year now) to execute their counter-coup. Bush will move to arrest the constitutional loyalists on trumped-up charges. Impeachment is the only remedy. We'll need to take to the streets and camp out in every single senator's office and demand justice.

If and when it does happen we'll have to be ready. We need to stand up for democracy, no matter what the cost. The future of America hangs in the balance.

Conspiracy for World Domination Confirmed by David Rockefeller

I would like to sincerely thank David Rockefeller, chairman of every internationalist organization you can think of, for coming out and admiting that there is a global conspiracy to unite the world under a one world government.

It gets annoying, you know, constantly explaining this to people, only to receive blank stares or mockery in response. I've long wished the Establishment (or "Illuminati" if you prefer) would just come out and admit it. It's not like we're in a position to do anything about it anyway. Well David Rockefeller (or D-Rock, as his friends in the international finanace 'hood call him) has finally cleared the air:

"For more than a century, ideological extremists at either end of the political spectrum have seized upon well-publicized incidents such as my encounter with Castro to attack the Rockefeller family for the inordinate influence they claim we wield over American political and economic institutions. Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as 'internationalists' and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure - one world, if you will. If that is the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it." - From Rockefeller's "Memoirs", (p.405).

Uh, yes, that is the charge, Rockie, and what's more we charge you with using any and every means at your disposal to accomplish this, including bribery, murder, lying, fraud, coups, mind-control, and, ironically, belligerent nationalism.

He continues with an even more revealing passage:

"The anti-Rockefeller focus of these otherwise incompatible political positions owes much to Populism. 'Populists' believe in conspiracies, and one of the most enduring is that a secret group of international bankers and capitalists, and their minions, control the world's economy. Because of my name and prominence as the head of the Chase for many years, I have earned the distinction of 'conspirator in chief' from some of these people.

"Populists and isolationists ignore the tangible benefits that have resulted from our active international role during the past half-century. Not only was the very real threat posed by Soviet Communism overcome, but there have been fundamental improvements in societies around the world, particularly in the United States, as a result of global trade, improved communications, and the heightened interaction of people from different cultures. Populists rarely mention these positive consequences, nor can they cogently explain how they would have sustained American economic growth and the expansion of our political power without them."

You will notice that he does not deny it. If anything he has confirmed that their is a "secret group of international bankers and capitalists, and their minions, [who] control the world's economy". What more is there to say?

Just this: Certainly we all appreciate the many benefits of modern capitalism and the technological goodies we've gotten our hands on. But at what cost? Politically, economically and ecologically it's a loser for those of us who aren't moguls. Who is going to control the one-world government he so fervently desires? If past performance is any indication of future performance, we can expect these internationalists to keep all the power to themselves. Democracy is simply "incompatible" with his smooth, orderly, one-world utopia.

The scary thing here is the idea, now realized before our eyes, that not all people who want to conquer the world are madmen. Some of them, clearly, know exactly what they're doing; they plan decades ahead, carefully lay the groundwork and, with considerable patience, skill and cunning, achieve their goals through whatever methods required.

The whole affair is amazingly complex, but then again, so is collecting stamps, memorizing Tolkein or learning to program in C++. I suppose when you're the billionaire son of a billionaire you need to have a hobby to keep occupied.

It's 90 degrees out, so why am I freezing cold?

I wonder this every day around noon.

You see, I work in a fairly ritzy office building, but sometimes I start to hallucinate and think that I work at a hockey rink. Despite the fact that it is about 90 degrees outside at this very moment I am shivering cold. I have goosebumps and I'm rubbing myself for warmth. Hang on, before my fingers freeze off, let me put on a fleece pullover I keep in my office for this very reason.

Okay, that's a bit better. But I'm still pissed off that I have wear winter clothing inside during the summer. Can somebody tell me who decided office buildings should be kept at refrigerator temperatures in summer? I would like to shove that person into a walk-in freezer and lock the door.

Confession time: I am a skinny person. I have a runner's build (I had it before I started running) and I generally loathe the cold and winter. I'm shivering and uncomfortable all the time during the winter, and if I thought it would be reasonable, I'd crank the heat at my place to 80 degrees in January. However, the point is that I don't! I put on extra layers of clothing and work out or play drums to keep warm and get the blood flowing. I understand some people hate the heat and think 82 degrees is unbearably warm, but at this point I don't fucking care. I suffer all winter, why should I have to freeze all summer, too?! It doesn't make any sense!

From a global warming perspective, the people who set the temp at 70 or 71 degrees in the summer are basically lighting our atmosphere on fire. Long-term, this obsession with air conditioning is totally counterproductive. You like it cool? Then don't turn the damn AC on, because every time you do you burn more coal and spew more CO2 into the atmosphere. The carbon dioxide causes the planet's temperature to rise.

Personally, I can go outside on a 90 degree day like today and feel totally comfortable as long as the humidity is not too high. The body naturally acclimates itself to the seasons, so my suggestion to set the thermostat at 80 or 82 degrees in the summer is not that crazy. If your body is sweating profusely at 80 degrees, the sad truth is that you're probably too fat.

This is a touchy subject, so I'll try to be kind, but I am getting fed up. It's one thing to be fat on your own time, but when it starts affecting me that's where I draw the line. If you are sweating like a pig while sitting in the office and using a mouse, it's probably time to lose some weight.

Clearly, it doesn't help matters that I sit all day and stare at a computer screen. I'm sure if I were doing hard physical labor the 72 degree air would be bliss. But if construction workers can construct buildings in this heat why can't you sit on your ass, in the shade and deal with a temp of 80 degrees? I don't think I'm being unreasonable, fellow office drones, but please let me know if I am.

Making matters worse, I swear the building temp is dropped a few degrees from 12 to 2 pm. Why? I think it's to counteract the after-lunch sleepiness that afflicts many workers (but which is actually a sign of sleep deprivation -- hell even the unemployed are sleep deprived in 2007). Gotta squeeze every last bit of productivity out of those serfs, right? Even if it's at the expense of the environment and their health.

Humans are so fucking stupid it blows my mind. Our planet is going down like the Titanic and we're not even re-arranging the deck chairs. In fact, we're not doing anything. We're sitting on our fat asses trying to figure out a way to get even more comfortable when it should be clear that we have only moments to live.

At this point, our dwindling time left on Earth is my only consolation.

Feds Train Clergy To "Quell Dissent" During Martial Law

A shocking KSLA news report has confirmed the story we first broke last year, that Clergy Response Teams are being trained by the federal government to "quell dissent" and pacify citizens to obey the government in the event of a declaration of martial law. Economic Collapse? Another mass-casualty, false-flag attack? [/digg]

This is incredibly disturbing. Here's the news clip for those who doubt:




Am I cynical to believe that something terrible will happen either right before or right after the elections (before inauguration)?

If it does, we've gotta stick together, organize and resist. This can't happen to America. It's like a nightmare you can't wake up from.

Idiocracy is Brilliant

I just saw Mike Judge's new movie, Idiocracy, and it's such a brilliant satire that I can see why Fox tried to bury it.

It's a potent look at our present, despite the fact that the movie is set in 2505. Intelligence declined precipitously over 5 centuries, leaving the people of 2505 incredibly stupid. Luke Wilson's character, Joe, is frozen cryogenically for 500 years and when he (implausibly) wakes up to discover this horrific fact he is arrested for not having a barcode like everyone else in the future. Though arrested, he simply talks his way out of jail and runs off to try and find a time machine to take him back.

Although Joe is the smartest man alive in the 2505 he certainly isn't very smart by 2007 standards. It is with this dark idea that Judge weaves his vicious comedy. If this idiot can solve the world's problems, why can't the rest of us?

The idiots of the future think Joe's intelligent points are actually the pompous ravings of a "fag". During Joe's speech to the nation at the end he says, "... And there was a time, a long time ago, when reading wasn't 'just for fags'." When was that, exactly? I'm afraid the idiocy Mike Judge is skewering is our own.

Idiocracy is very good, but Fox decided to release the movie the same way most of us release a monster piece of shit; quietly and discretely. (I hope that's how you take a dump anyway. It could be loud and with a huge PR campaign, but I'll be discrete and refrain from asking) The movie was quickly flushed away and won more praise from reviewers than it did from Fox's publicists. Surely, the world is upside-down and the idiots are in charge. There can be no doubt at the end of the movie that the decision to bury the movie was a political act. The movie's depiction of corporate and political life hits too close to home. And the best part is: it's funny! You might even learn something.

Welcome to 2007

Keep watch. A monk carries a torch this snowy winter night. Infinite dreams, this one. A nightly ritual with sweet noise awaits. Blessed be this dawn of man. Will 2007 be kind to our kind?

Trouble Ahead

Been awhile since I posted. I know, I know. But I've been busy - ...., shit! Always doin' something!

The holidays are over and now I'm looking at the new year with some degree of trepidation. Currently, Ariel Sharon, Prime Minster of Israel (or "Hey, That guy is totally fat!!" as he is commonly known) is very ill, having suffered a life-threatening stroke. I think he will probably die. But we will see.

This can only mean more instability in the Middle East. I have a bad feeling about this year. I'm worried that something terrible will happen. I'm trying to keep chin up, but this doesn't look very good. Hopefully, I'm just freaking for no reason. But you know, maybe - just maybe - the coming war is a good thing. It'll free us of some dangerous illusions, that's for sure.

I'm afraid people in America have gotten lazy and are afraid to face the terrifying reality about our leaders. This is not a bunch of weak-kneed faggoty-ass bureaucrats talking about interests rates or some shit. No, this Bush crew is a bunch of hard-nosed, bad-ass muthafuckers. Seriously, I respect the game they throw, but make no mistake. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and those other bastards - they're fucking evil. Make no mistake.

I'm not talking about knockin'-over-a-store-evil, I'm talking about long E evil. Ya know:

Eeeeeeeeeeeeevil.

We clear? Never say you were not warned. If you follow this Bush motherfucker, you follow a demon on the path to hell.

I shouldn't even need to justify the above rant. I fear in the a few years I won't, but by then it'll be too late. It's already too late. But people are foolish and they're easily swayed by the slick news media. The news has given Bush such a free ride that he's even got about 38% of the population believing he's doing a good job as president when he - quite clearly - is not. And many of those who disapprove of his performance are woefully ignorant of his many hidden crimes and incompetence. Even some of the people who are accused of being mindless "Bush-haters" are unaware of just how evil he truly is.

America is in a dark place. This regime will not rollover easily. Certainly I believe that we need to impeach Bush. But I actually worry - would he surrender if arrested? Or would his people lead a Coup d'état? It honestly worries me; that's how little I trust this regime.

I do a lot of reading to keep up on current events. I have ever since I was a child. Sometimes I get so sick to my stomach I can barely continue. But I usually keep plowing on. The horrible truth is still the truth, and that's important. I know that a lot of other people don't read as much as I do. I think I have a compulsion or something, because I do it endlessly. But what about the rest of the (non-geeky) population? Are people keeping abreast of current events? Will whatever's coming next catch them by surprise? I suppose most of the rest of them already know that the governent is full of shit. Don't have to read no books to figure that out, son. But the other group will never blame the government, no matter what. The government could throw a big party on top of Lady Liberty wherein Bush would ceremonially rape a donkey and Cheney could narrate while Rumsfeld webcasts the whole thing out to a million PCs and the government apologist would still have some bullshit excuses like, "Oh well, that was just light from a weather balloon reflecting off some swamp gas and entering a nearby abandoned prism, which fell off a ledge and spontaneously refracted so as to form the image of George Bush fucking a donkey and beating it like it owed him money, which was transmitted to the internet by a camera that somebody had accidently left connected to a OC-13 uplink connection.... for a half hour."

Yeah. That's a believable scenario. I think the problem is that the government's excuses for its fuck-ups are sometimes even more fantastically unlikely than the conspiracy theories that pop up afterwards. Shit, that's probably why there's an eternal debate between the kooks and the skeptics. The "skeptics", unfortunately, side with the government instead of rationality all too often. And the kooks love to invent crazy shit about, well, George Bush fucking a donkey in a bizarre ritual. I suppose blog posts like this one are the reason many of those fucked up rumors get started. Oops. My apologies in advance.

Anyway, I'm still hoping that 2006 turns out okay and we don't all get annihilated in fiery nuclear death strike, or sent off to die in a widening middle eastern war that is starting to look more and more like World War III (and now introducing.... Iran!). I'm also hoping that no more hurricanes, earthquakes or tsunamis rip through our cities, here or anywhere. I pray that a horrible virus doesn't sweep the world and cripple cities across the globe in a gasping trail of hemorrhaging death.

Most importantly, I'm really hoping that no more of my friends or family die. Looking back at my posts, I see that I haven't posted anything at all since Jason died. I guess that I didn't know what to say. And I still don't.

Rest in Peace,
Jason VanBeck

For the rest of you, and anybody who stumbles upon this page - please don't you die, either.

I guess this is a shitty way to end this post, but....

Happy new year.