Bill Brower's judiaciary Committee Hearing (Full testimony)

While Scaramucci played the distracting court jester Bill Browder was testifying about the corruption of Putin's Russia and the lawyers that pulled in Donald Trump Jr and Jared Kushner:

Chairman Grassley, Ranking Member Feinstein, and members of the committee, thank you for giving me the opportunity to testify today on the Russian government’s attempts to repeal the Magnitsky Act in Washington in 2016, and the enablers who conducted this campaign in violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act, by not disclosing their roles as agents for foreign interests.Before I get into the actions of the agents who conducted the anti-Magnitsky campaign in Washington for the benefit of the Russian state, let me share a bit of background about Sergei Magnitsky and myself.I am the founder and CEO of Hermitage Capital Management. I grew up in Chicago, but for the last 28 years I’ve lived in Moscow and London, and am now a British citizen. From 1996 to 2005, my firm, Hermitage Capital, was one of the largest investment advisers in Russia with more than $4 billion invested in Russian stocks.Russia has a well-known reputation for corruption; unfortunately, I discovered that it was far worse than many had thought. While working in Moscow I learned that Russian oligarchs stole from shareholders, which included the fund I advised. Consequently, I had an interest in fighting this endemic corruption, so my firm started doing detailed research on exactly how the oligarchs stole the vast amounts of money that they did. When we were finished with our research we would share it with the domestic and international media.

For a time, this naming and shaming campaign worked remarkably well and led to less corruption and increased share prices in the companies we invested in. Why? Because President Vladimir Putin and I shared the same set of enemies. When Putin was first elected in 2000, he found that the oligarchs had misappropriated much of the president’s power as well. They stole power from him while stealing money from my investors. In Russia, your enemy’s enemy is your friend, and even though I’ve never met Putin, he would often step into my battles with the oligarchs and crack down on them.

That all changed in July 2003, when Putin arrested Russia’s biggest oligarch and richest man, Mikhail Khodorkovsky. Putin grabbed Khodorkovsky off his private jet, took him back to Moscow, put him on trial, and allowed television cameras to film Khodorkovsky sitting in a cage right in the middle of the courtroom. That image was extremely powerful, because none of the other oligarchs wanted to be in the same position. After Khodorkovsky’s conviction, the other oligarchs went to Putin and asked him what they needed to do to avoid sitting in the same cage as Khodorkovsky. From what followed, it appeared that Putin’s answer was, “Fifty percent.” He wasn’t saying 50 percent for the Russian government or the presidential administration of Russia, but 50 percent for Vladimir Putin personally. From that moment on, Putin became the biggest oligarch in Russia and the richest man in the world, and my anti-corruption activities would no longer be tolerated.

The results of this change came very quickly. On November 13, 2005, as I was flying into Moscow from a weekend away, I was stopped at Sheremetyevo airport, detained for 15 hours, deported, and declared a threat to national security.

Eighteen months after my expulsion a pair of simultaneous raids took place in Moscow. Over 25 Interior Ministry officials barged into my Moscow office and the office of the American law firm that represented me. The officials seized all the corporate documents connected to the investment holding companies of the funds that I advised. I didn’t know the purpose of these raids so I hired the smartest Russian lawyer I knew, a 35-year-old named Sergei Magnitsky. I asked Sergei to investigate the purpose of the raids and try to stop whatever illegal plans these officials had.Sergei went out and investigated. He came back with the most astounding conclusion of corporate identity theft: The documents seized by the Interior Ministry were used to fraudulently re-register our Russian investment holding companies to a man named Viktor Markelov, a known criminal convicted of manslaughter. After more digging, Sergei discovered that the stolen companies were used by the perpetrators to misappropriate $230 million of taxes that our companies had paid to the Russian government in the previous year.I had always thought Putin was a nationalist. It seemed inconceivable that he would approve of his officials stealing $230 million from the Russian state. Sergei and I were sure that this was a rogue operation and if we just brought it to the attention of the Russian authorities, the “good guys” would get the “bad guys” and that would be the end of the story.

We filed criminal complaints with every law enforcement agency in Russia, and Sergei gave sworn testimony to the Russian State Investigative Committee (Russia’s FBI) about the involvement of officials in this crime.

However, instead of arresting the people who committed the crime, Sergei was arrested. Who took him? The same officials he had testified against. On November 24, 2008, they came to his home, handcuffed him in front of his family, and threw him into pre-trial detention.Sergei’s captors immediately started putting pressure on him to withdraw his testimony. They put him in cells with 14 inmates and eight beds, leaving the lights on 24 hours a day to impose sleep deprivation. They put him in cells with no heat and no windowpanes, and he nearly froze to death. They put him in cells with no toilet, just a hole in the floor and sewage bubbling up. They moved him from cell to cell in the middle of the night without any warning. During his 358 days in detention he was forcibly moved multiple times.They did all of this because they wanted him to withdraw his testimony against the corrupt Interior Ministry officials, and to sign a false statement that he was the one who stole the $230 million—and that he had done so on my instruction.Sergei refused. In spite of the grave pain they inflicted upon him, he would not perjure himself or bear false witness.After six months of this mistreatment, Sergei’s health seriously deteriorated. He developed severe abdominal pains, he lost 40 pounds, and he was diagnosed with pancreatitis and gallstones and prescribed an operation for August 2009. However, the operation never occurred. A week before he was due to have surgery, he was moved to a maximum security prison called Butyrka, which is considered to be one of the harshest prisons in Russia. Most significantly for Sergei, there were no medical facilities there to treat his medical conditions.

At Butyrka, his health completely broke down. He was in agonizing pain. He and his lawyers wrote 20 desperate requests for medical attention, filing them with every branch of the Russian criminal justice system. All of those requests were either ignored or explicitly denied in writing.

After more than three months of untreated pancreatitis and gallstones, Sergei Magnitsky went into critical condition. The Butyrka authorities did not want to have responsibility for him, so they put him in an ambulance and sent him to another prison that had medical facilities. But when he arrived there, instead of putting him in the emergency room, they put him in an isolation cell, chained him to a bed, and eight riot guards came in and beat him with rubber batons.That night he was found dead on the cell floor.Sergei Magnitsky died on November 16, 2009, at the age of 37, leaving a wife and two children.I received the news of his death early the next morning. It was by far the most shocking, heart-breaking, and life-changing news I’ve ever received.Sergei Magnitsky was murdered as my proxy. If Sergei had not been my lawyer, he would still be alive today.That morning I made a vow to Sergei’s memory, to his family, and to myself that I would seek justice and create consequences for the people who murdered him. For the last seven and a half years, I’ve devoted my life to this cause.Even though this case was characterized by injustice all the way through, the circumstances of Sergei’s torture and death were so extreme that I was sure some people would be prosecuted. Unlike other deaths in Russian prisons, which are largely undocumented, Sergei had written everything down. In his 358 days in detention, Sergei wrote over 400 complaints detailing his abuse. In those complaints he described who did what to him, as well as where, how, when, and why. He was able to pass his hand-written complaints to his lawyers, who dutifully filed them with the Russian authorities. Although his complaints were either ignored or rejected, copies of them were retained. As a result, we have the most well-documented case of human rights abuse coming out of Russia in the last 35 years.

When I began the campaign for justice with this evidence, I thought that the Russian authorities would have no choice but to prosecute at least some of the officials involved in Sergei Magnitsky’s torture and murder. It turns out I could not have been more wrong. Instead of prosecuting, the Russian authorities circled the wagons and exonerated everybody involved. They even went so far as to offer promotions and state honors to those most complicit in Sergei’s persecution.

It became obvious that if I was going to get any justice for Sergei Magnitsky, I was going to have to find it outside of Russia.But how does one get justice in the West for a murder that took place in Russia? Criminal justice is based on jurisdiction: One cannot prosecute someone in New York for a murder committed in Moscow. As I thought about it, the murder of Sergei Magnitsky was done to cover up the theft of $230 million from the Russian Treasury. I knew that the people who stole that money wouldn’t keep it in Russia. As easily as they stole the money, it could be stolen from them. These people keep their ill-gotten gains in the West, where property rights and rule of law exist. This led to the idea of freezing their assets and banning their visas here in the West. It would not be true justice but it would be much better than the total impunity they enjoyed.In 2010, I traveled to Washington and told Sergei Magnitsky’s story to Senators Benjamin Cardin and John McCain. They were both shocked and appalled and proposed a new piece of legislation called The Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act. This would freeze assets and ban visas for those who killed Sergei as well as other Russians involved in serious human rights abuse.

Despite the White House’s desire to reset relations with Russia at the time, this case shined a bright light on the criminality and impunity of the Putin regime and persuaded Congress that something needed to be done. In November 2012 the Magnitsky Act passed the House of Representatives by 364 to 43 votes and later the Senate 92 to 4 votes. On December 14, 2012, President Obama signed the Sergei Magnitsky Act into law.

Putin was furious. Looking for ways to retaliate against American interests, he settled on the most sadistic and evil option of all: banning the adoption of Russian orphans by American families.This was particularly heinous because of the effect it had on the orphans. Russia did not allow the adoption of healthy children, just sick ones. In spite of this, American families came with big hearts and open arms, taking in children with HIV, Down syndrome, Spina Bifida and other serious ailments. They brought them to America, nursed them, cared for them and loved them. Since the Russian orphanage system did not have the resources to look after these children, many of those unlucky enough to remain in Russia would die before their 18th birthday. In practical terms, this meant that Vladimir Putin sentenced his own, most vulnerable and sick Russian orphans to death in order to protect corrupt officials in his regime.Why did Vladimir Putin take such a drastic and malicious step?

For two reasons. First, since 2012 it’s emerged that Vladimir Putin was a beneficiary of the stolen $230 million that Sergei Magnitsky exposed. Recent revelations from the Panama Papers have shown that Putin’s closest childhood friend, Sergei Roldugin, a famous cellist, received $2 billion of funds from Russian oligarchs and the Russian state. It’s commonly understood that Mr. Roldugin received this money as an agent of Vladimir Putin. Information from the Panama Papers also links some money from the crime that Sergei Magnitsky discovered and exposed to Sergei Roldugin. Based on the language of the Magnitsky Act, this would make Putin personally subject to Magnitsky sanctions.

This is particularly worrying for Putin, because he is one of the richest men in the world. I estimate that he has accumulated $200 billion of ill-gotten gains from these types of operations over his 17 years in power. He keeps his money in the West and all of his money in the West is potentially exposed to asset freezes and confiscation. Therefore, he has a significant and very personal interest in finding a way to get rid of the Magnitsky sanctions.The second reason why Putin reacted so badly to the passage of the Magnitsky Act is that it destroys the promise of impunity he’s given to all of his corrupt officials.There are approximately ten thousand officials in Russia working for Putin who are given instructions to kill, torture, kidnap, extort money from people, and seize their property. Before the Magnitsky Act, Putin could guarantee them impunity and this system of illegal wealth accumulation worked smoothly. However, after the passage of the Magnitsky Act, Putin’s guarantee disappeared. The Magnitsky Act created real consequences outside of Russia and this created a real problem for Putin and his system of kleptocracy.

For these reasons, Putin has stated publicly that it was among his top foreign policy priorities to repeal the Magnitsky Act and to prevent it from spreading to other countries. Since its passage in 2012, the Putin regime has gone after everybody who has been advocating for the Magnitsky Act.

One of my main partners in this effort was Boris Nemtsov. Boris testified in front of the U.S. Congress, the European Parliament, the Canadian Parliament, and others to make the point that the Magnitsky Act was a “pro-Russian” piece of legislation because it narrowly targeted corrupt officials and not the Russian people. In 2015, Boris Nemtsov was murdered on the bridge in front of the Kremlin.Boris Nemtsov’s protégé, Vladimir Kara-Murza, also traveled to law-making bodies around the world to make a similar case. After Alexander Bastrykin, the head of the Russian Investigative Committee, was added to the Magnitsky List in December of 2016, Vladimir was poisoned. He suffered multiple organ failure, went into a coma and barely survived.The lawyer who represented Sergei Magnitsky’s mother, Nikolai Gorokhov, has spent the last six years fighting for justice. This spring, the night before he was due in court to testify about the state cover up of Sergei Magnitsky’s murder, he was thrown off the fourth floor of his apartment building. Thankfully he survived and has carried on in the fight for justice.

I’ve received many death threats from Russia. The most notable one came from Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in 2013. When asked by a group of journalists about the death of Sergei Magnitsky, Medvedev replied, “It’s too bad that Sergei Magnitsky is dead and Bill Browder is still alive and free.” I’ve received numerous other death threats from Russian sources through text messages, emails, and voicemails. U.S. government sources have warned me about a planned Russian rendition against me. These threats were in addition to numerous unsuccessful attempts that the Russian government has made to arrest me using Interpol or other formal legal assistance channels.

The Russian government has also used its resources and assets to try to repeal the Magnitsky Act. One of the most shocking attempts took place in the spring and summer of last year when a group of Russians went on a lobbying campaign in Washington to try to repeal the Magnitsky Act by changing the narrative of what had happened to Sergei. According to them, Sergei wasn’t murdered and he wasn’t a whistle-blower, and the Magnitsky Act was based on a false set of facts. They used this story to try to have Sergei’s name taken off of the Global Magnitsky Act that passed in December 2016. They were unsuccessful.Who was this group of Russians acting on behalf of the Russian state? Two men named Pyotr and Denis Katsyv, a woman named Natalia Veselnitskaya, and a large group of American lobbyists, all of whom are described below.

Pyotr Katsyv, father to Denis Katsyv, is a senior Russian government official and well-placed member of the Putin regime; Denis Katsyv was caught by U.S. law enforcement using proceeds from the crime that Sergei Magnitsky uncovered to purchase high-end Manhattan real estate (the case recently settled with the Katsyv’s paying $6 million to the U.S. government). Natalia Veselnitskaya was their lawyer.

In addition to working on the Katsyv’ s money laundering defense, Ms. Veselnitskaya also headed the aforementioned lobbying campaign to repeal the Magnitsky Act. She hired a number of lobbyists, public relations executives, lawyers, and investigators to assist her in this task.Her first step was to set up a fake NGO that would ostensibly promote Russian adoptions, although it quickly became clear that the NGO’s sole purpose was to repeal the Magnitsky Act. This NGO was called the Human Rights Accountability Global Initiative Foundation (HRAGI). It was registered as a corporation in Delaware with two employees on February 18, 2016. HRAGI was used to pay Washington lobbyists and other agents for the anti-Magnitsky campaign. (HRAGI now seems to be defunct, with taxes due.)Through HRAGI, Rinat Akhmetshin, a former Soviet intelligence officer naturalised as an American citizen, was hired to lead the Magnitsky repeal effort. Mr. Akhmetshin has been involved in a number of similar campaigns where he’s been accused of various unethical and potentially illegal actions like computer hacking.

Veselnitskaya also instructed U.S. law firm Baker Hostetler and their Washington, D.C.-based partner Marc Cymrot to lobby members of Congress to support an amendment taking Sergei Magnitsky’s name off the Global Magnitsky Act. Mr. Cymrot was in contact with Paul Behrends, a congressional staffer on the House Foreign Affairs Committee at the time, as part of the anti-Magnitsky lobbying campaign.

Veselnitskaya, through Baker Hostetler, hired Glenn Simpson of the firm Fusion GPS to conduct a smear campaign against me and Sergei Magnitsky in advance of congressional hearings on the Global Magnitsky Act. He contacted a number of major newspapers and other publications to spread false information that Sergei Magnitsky was not murdered, was not a whistle-blower, and was instead a criminal. They also spread false information that my presentations to lawmakers around the world were untrue.As part of Veselnitskaya’s lobbying, a former Wall Street Journal reporter, Chris Cooper of the Potomac Group, was hired to organize the Washington, D.C.-based premiere of a fake documentary about Sergei Magnitsky and myself. This was one the best examples of Putin’s propaganda.They hired Howard Schweitzer of Cozzen O’Connor Public Strategies and former Congressman Ronald Dellums to lobby members of Congress on Capitol Hill to repeal the Magnitsky Act and to remove Sergei’s name from the Global Magnitsky bill.On June 13, 2016, they funded a major event at the Newseum to show their fake documentary, inviting representatives of Congress and the State Department to attend. While they were conducting these operations in Washington, D.C., at no time did they indicate that they were acting on behalf of Russian government interests, nor did they file disclosures under the Foreign Agent Registration Act.United States law is very explicit that those acting on behalf of foreign governments and their interests must register under FARA so that there is transparency about their interests and their motives.Since none of these people registered, my firm wrote to the Department of Justice in July 2016 and presented the facts.I hope that my story will help you understand the methods of Russian operatives in Washington and how they use U.S. enablers to achieve major foreign policy goals without disclosing those interests. I also hope that this story and others like it may lead to a change in the FARA enforcement regime in the future. 

Thank you.

High Calorie Killers

Well May was quite the month for killers. First we had Rudy Eugene eat Ronald Poppo’s face off in a drug induced naked zombie attack. Then Alexander Kinyua killed his roommate and proceeded to cut him open and eat his heart and brain. But the guy getting all the attention is the narcissistic, bisexual, cross dressing, Scientologist porn actor Luka Magnotta. If that sounds like a made up name that’s because it is. His real name is Eric Newman. Newman. Like the fat nerd on Seinfeld. This guy takes the cake. And far be it from me to speculate, but I will.

At first when so quickly after the ‘Foot in the Mail’ story broke they announced the name of this psycho, I thought, what an amateur. But once the full story came out it occurred to me that Magnotta had set all this up intentionally. Because within days he murders his gay lover, eats part of the victim, sexually molests the dead body and films all of this, uploads it to a gore site, mails off body parts to the most attention grabbing recipient he can possibly send it to and immediately jets out of the country. That in turn immediately involves Interpol and his face is suddenly all over global international headlines. He’s and international super star killer. I believe that is exactly the way he wanted it. A person has to wonder too if there isn’t some psycho friend who he arranged to take him in somewhere in Europe until things cool a little. He’s probably holed up in someone’s basement in Europe with the news on 24/7 eating popcorn and slurping soda watching his fame unfold before his eyes with a big fucking psychotic grin on his face basking in his twisted glory. This guy isn’t like most psychos. He wanted to be known. He wants the notoriety. He just didn’t want the prison sentence attached to it. So he made a plan and stuck to it. It’s known he wrote an entire essay on how to disappear forever. I mean, somebody please tell me the cops have thought of this. The truly frightening part is if this guy does get caught and brought to trial in Canada would he get the same pampered treatment as Vince Li. Remember him? He murdered Tim McLean on a Greyhound bus then beheaded him and ate him back in 2008. Yeah. Found not guilty on the grounds of insanity. Well obviously he’s insane! Anybody who murders someone and eats them is fucking crazy. Doesn’t mean they should found not guilty. But he’s no less insane than Luka Magnotta. Guess what, Vince Li’s out on “Escorted Day Passes” now. Can you believe that shit? Apparently he’s found god. Isn’t that reassuring?

Anyhow, it’s really this rash of cannibalism that’s attracted everyone’s fascination. It’s not like this is new. Jeffery Dahmer was eating people before it was cool. But now it’s like the thing to do if you kill somebody. You have to wonder if there’s some kind of peer pressure involved with these psychos. Like they’re watching the news and they’re thinking, ‘Oh fuck me, he ate the guy? Shit. Thanks a lot asshole.’

Next time they kill someone they’re saying to themselves, ‘Fuck, I have to eat this one. I have to do it. I can’t just say I did. I mean, I would know. I would know. Damn this is disgusting even for me. I don’t even like meat. This tastes like ass. Oh wait a minute this is ass.’

One maddening thing is all these people saying how much more horrible society is becoming. What is the world coming to? Religionists say it’s a sign of the times. Certainly 2012ers must think this is an early byproduct of their impending apocalypse. But seriously all you have to do is remind them of Jack the Ripper. That was the 1800’s. He wasn't exactly a kinder gentler serial killer. Or educate them on the details of the Spanish Inquisition. Yes they made inquiries…while impaling a stick through your asshole and out your mouth.

But you have to admit. The world does feel like it’s spinning a little faster than usual right now. And it has to make you wonder about who’s living next door.

The Beast That Ate Itself

There was a time when owning something that came from some distant place was exotic and unique. There was a time when ‘Fine China’ meant something special. These days, everything you own is from China. Years ago, way back in the day, a person had to go to a boutique destination shop in order to get an item from India or Asia. Now you just have to go to your local corner store. These days it’s shocking if you look at the tag on a new item and it reads Made in the USA or Made in Canada.

This is not a racist rant. Neither am I insinuating that if an item is made in some foreign land than it must be inferior. That is a simple untruth. Mainly because those manufacturing companies, in whatever far flung land they are, only follow the guidelines stipulated by the corporations contracting them to produce their goods. As a side point there are some unscrupulous and opportunistic business men in those same countries who are creating counterfeit products often right out of the same manufacturing plants of the corporations they are contracted to. I’m pretty sure that’s what’s known as Karma. But the real issue at stake here is that corporations are causing a mass migration of employment to any “Third World” or “Developing” Nation that they can. I am not telling you anything new here. This is not breaking news. We aren’t uncovering some hidden conspiracy here. This is a very old story. In fact it’s so old that it seems we’ve grown desensitized to the whole concept. And we will continue to do so until it inevitably affects us on a personal level. And as much as we think this is not possible, it is.

Putting it plainly, if you do a job that any individual can do in a Developing Nation, you are guaranteed to lose that job. And it will happen much sooner than you can even imagine. Start preparing now. No matter how menial or how little you think you’re being paid, it’s too much for any corporation when they can pay pennies a day to some poor slob over seas with twelve kids and nothing but a shack with a dirt floor. You don’t know from slave wages. No matter how specially talented or educated you are, there are a hundred thousand people lining up for your job at an interview on the other side of the world as you read this. And they’ll do it for the same amount of money you spend on toilet paper each month. For just the price of a cup of coffee a day, you could lose your job.

It’s also no secret that there is an ever widening chasm between the rich and the poor happening in all so-called First World Nations. And it’s only getting wider every day. Yes the banks played horrible gambles with our money and lost. Yes the governments are mismanaging our tax money and destroying our public sector. But all these things are compounded by the fact that corporations are happily outsourcing our jobs to struggling nations faster than we can keep up.

People are resourceful and resilient. Many will find other employment. The problem is the jobs that are left. There’s always the service industry, or entry level labor jobs. The issue is that people won’t be able to afford their mortgage and car payments. The wages from those jobs don’t exactly enable anyone to save for their family’s future or education for their children. And the obvious problem is that the less money we have the less we have to spend anyway, so no one is buying homes or cars or anything for that matters. They will buy what they need to survive. So our society will gradually eat itself alive until it unavoidably implodes and turns us into the very nations corporations are outsourcing our jobs too.

But corporations don’t care about that. They could care less about you and your kids and how you will live and eat, never mind pay for an education to better yourself. Their only concern is the bottom line, even though it means the inevitable self destruction of the capitalist society they love so much. But it won’t die. It will leave a bloody trail of helpless victims. It will evolve and take on other forms like a disease or a virus. We only have to look at Greece to know this is true. The events happening in Greece are the beginnings of a Global Social Cancer that is malignant and growing at an alarming rate. They talk of austerity but austerity is only for the little people. You and me and the rest of the 99 Percenters.

And it goes deeper than that. There’s a book you should read. And if you don’t have time to read because you’re already working too many hours at too many jobs there’s a documentary version of it. It’s by a brilliant and brave investigative journalist named Naomi Klein and its called The Shock Doctrine.

There is only one way to beat anyone at their game. That’s by playing the game.

The Idealist Revolution

If you vote partisan, loyally showing allegiance to one party, then you are a blind fool. Actually you’re worse. You’re a pig at the trough being fed pig bits and parts. And eventually your brain will begin to eat itself and you will become the perfect little subservient zombie every politician would want you to be. And since you stubbornly insist on it, despite that party’s horrible failures and their cancerous corruption, then you deserve everything you get. So eat away piggypiggy.

Every party and every politician will fail you. This is a guaranteed time proven fact of life. And yet people fall into line to exercise their political party loyalty when it comes to debates or time to vote. And they will do this despite how much shit they have on their face because of their favored political party’s failures. And the politicians love it. Watching their little drones do their work for them. Once in a while they stir those little worker bees up into a frenzy when something special needs to be done. A special interest needs to be filled, or a war needs to be fought, or a run for power becomes tangible. They’ll spoon feed you lies and misinformation and you’ll gobble it down and like greedy little idiots.

When Lord John Dalberg-Acton said that absolute power corrupts absolutely, he wasn’t fucking kidding. That quote has become so famous it’s overshadowed countless insights and gems he had to share. For starters his preamble to that comment was “Where you have a concentration of power in a few hands, all too frequently men with the mentality of gangsters get control. History has proven that." He said once that “The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern. Every class is unfit to govern.” And regarding the danger of voting one individual into ruling power he said two things. First he said “Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority: still more when you superadd the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority.” Then he said “There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it.” He also advised to put conscience above both political system and success.

Partisanship is prejudice. And prejudice is a social cancer. And as long as we insist on pursuing this path that is a vertical freefall it will be our inevitable undoing.

It all boils down to this: Any person who is in the depths of their heart a right wing conservative Christian will never be convinced to abandon all their beliefs and become a left wing liberal atheist. No more than that same liberal will be convinced to switch to conservatism. There is a fundamental core that drives an individual and that core will never change. You are what you are, and as long as you are not trampling underfoot the rights and liberty of anyone or anything else no one should suggest you change or impose their ideals onto you as if they are right and you are wrong. At the same time we have to coexist. And the only way to do that successfully and happily is if we manage to respect and tolerate one another. Which is were the usual speech about Liberty and Justice and Freedom comes in and is typically abused as some form of manipulation. But in its truest sense and in the purest form of democracy we would not be voting in favor of or in the best interests of some political stripe so we can celebrate in the streets for gloating and bragging rights. Really it should be about whatever is in the best interest for everyone.

So can somebody please fucking explain to me why we’re voting for politicians and not for Ideas? Can someone please explain to me what the fucking point is of a politician where a simple public servant couldn't suffice? Since we know that it doesn’t matter what party or politician we vote in because they’re all power mad and corrupt, why do we keep giving them the power that they turn around and fuck us with? Because as much as we may not like the fundamental mentality of a particular party, they may have an Idea or two we’d actually quite like to have implemented. Which is of course the first thing to suffer at the hands of a political defeat, those good Ideas that would actually serve us well. Those good Ideas, they also become the carrots that get dangled before our voting noses. If the party loses, so do all of us because the Idea gets killed.

So what if we were to vote on Ideas instead. We’d be empowering ourselves. It would be the ultimate form of a bloodless and peaceful coup. It would have a twofold effect. Politics would suddenly lose its appeal to the power hungry, because the power would be stripped away from the position. Which would leave the humanitarians and philanthropists at the helm. To be an Idealist would be a political social movement and no longer considered a naïve and mocked mindset. And instead of dividing and polarizing us we'd actually be working together. Imagine that.

The Idealist Revolution. Got a nice ring to it.

We Are All Cyber Slaves

More reasons to hate Facebook. Like you needed them.

Guess what, somebody just bought and sold you online. You weren’t worth much as an individual. 25 cents to be exact. But when you’re sold as a bundle with a bunch of other slaves you make someone a tidy profit. Especially Mark Zuckerberg, but we’ll get to that later.

There’s a woman named Rochelle Peachy, she’s the founder of a dating website, and she recently admitted in an interview that she was approached by a company. This company goes around buying and selling peoples profiles from various websites. Flipping them for a profit. This company wanted to buy member profiles from her. She said they offered her 250 bucks for 1,000 profiles and 1,250 bucks for 5,000. Now she could have made some easy money. She said she has 10,000 members and is growing every day. But this woman’s wouldn’t have it. She says the people on her site are genuinely looking for real love and she just wouldn’t do it. But she added just how amazed and afraid we would all be if we knew where our pictures could turn up. She used the word afraid.

Facebook, not so honorable. They’ll sell your information to a Mexican crime lord if they’re the highest bidder.

There are sucker pulls on Facebook as well. These pull on your greatest weaknesses and curiosities and lure you in like there was pig ring in your nose. The latest one came after Osama bin Laden was killed. What some company did was use fake shots and still frames claiming to be from a video of bin Laden’s death. If a person clicked on the link, instead of taking them to a video, it directed them to a survey they were instructed to complete before viewing. And guess what, after you finished the survey there was no video. And of course the scammer who set all this up made money every time some morbidly curious and gullible dipshit fell for this crap. Making money off of people’s stupidity has got to be the easiest money of all. Because there’s just so many stupid people out there.

Also, do you know what EXIF data is? Didn’t think so. EXIF data is a hidden pocket of metadata that includes information about the type of camera used to take the photo, the settings for the imager and sometimes even exact GPS coordinates on where the photograph was taken. And it’s embedded in every photo you post online. I know this because Gregory Perry knows this. He’s the Chief Executive Officer for a company that provides VMware certification and training. According to Gregory Perry, if you combine that technology with facial recognition, Facebook has more power than any intelligence agency existing. It provides Facebook, and anyone they provide the data to, an extremely accurate and comprehensive imagery intelligence. Gregory Perry has went on the record to refer to Facebook as “Dangerous”. By the way, because you should know, Facebook has already implemented facial recognition on your account without telling you. It automates photo tagging. What that means is the machine of Facebook can determine which of your friends' photos you are featured in even before they do. Even if they didn’t tag you themselves. If the thought of that makes you uncomfortable, and I surely hope it does, here’s a quick tutorial on how to turn it off:

- Click on Account in the upper right corner of your Facebook page.

- Choose “Account Settings” in the menu that drops down.

- Click on “Manage” in the “Privacy” field of your Account Settings page.

- At the bottom of the page, click on “Customize Settings” and once there, look for an option called “Suggest photos of me to friends”.

- Under that option, click on “Edit Settings” and turn the feature from Enabled to Disabled.

Oh but it gets thicker. Because of people being insidious, scrupulous, greedy mother fuckers it will always get thicker.

There are organized online extortionists that seduce men, women and children alike on Facebook. Through the site they seduce people to follow links to child pornography, pay for solicited prostitution or simply engage them into incriminating carnal behavior in a recorded video call. Then they turn around and blackmail your sorry ass. And in the likelihood you weren’t aware, there’s a website called Tineye. In their own words, TinEye is a reverse image search engine. It finds out where an image came from, how it is being used, if modified versions of the image exist, or if there is a higher resolution version. Well apparently these blackmailers and extortionists crawl Facebook downloading as many pics as possible, run them through Tineye or a similar program, and look for results that come from dating/swinger sites. If one of their targets is married or a celebrity or holds a public office it makes them vulnerable to blackmail. The word being used to describe this activity is Epidemic.

Never mind that fact that there are literally thousands of profiles created every week that are actually links to human trafficking websites featuring the sale of men, women and children. Or the fact that countless pedophiles creep around Facebook luring children for their own desires or to entrap them into the sex trade.

And to think the governments and politicians are worried about Wikileaks…

The sad part is you agreed to all this. That terms of agreement you didn’t even so much as gloss over before you agreed to it so you could have the privilege of having a profile on Facebook, it says you gave up the rights to your privacy and that ultimately they can do with your information as they wish. By the way, when Facebook sells their stockpile of profiles repeatedly to various customers, they make a hundred million dollars…over and over again.

Now some will argue that Facebook helped facilitate the revolutions in the Middle East. Well guess what, any social website could have done that. They just happen to be the one right now because we’ve allowed it to be the dominant site. But Facebook is not the answer. All it is now is a marketing tool. We need something different. In fact the ideal thing to do would be to open several sister websites solely for the purpose of social and global solidarity and creating an online community for individuals around the world. For keeping one another informed and up to date. A place people can post current and immediate events by text posts or video. Fuck politics. Fuck the advertisements. No bullshit.

A website for the people, by the people.

All Your Base Are Belong To Us

There seems to be a bubble pattern for pretty much every popular website. They trend, they supertrend and this wave can last a while. It becomes overwhelming. Everyone you know is somehow attached to this website and somehow you feel like a social misfit if you don’t have an account on that website. Like you’re missing out on something. You see adverts and references to this site everywhere you look. It’s in movies. Movies are made about the website. News stories center around the site. Friendships develop there. Some relationships start there and others are ended. On social websites, status reports are like virtual nukes.

So you follow the trend. You jump on the bandwagon and you sign up an account. You start uploading pictures or videos and making comments and before you know it you’re embedded in the social and political aspect of that site. And there are politics. Last year according to North American divorce statistics Facebook was listed as responsible for 1 in 5 divorces. There’s no saying how many non marital relationships its responsible for breaking up. But, like it or not, you stay despite your feelings. For a while anyway. And then, eventually, it begins to fade. You give less and less of a shit about the whole thing for a variety of reasons. Perhaps you see it as the colossal narcissistic time waster that it is. Perhaps you’re tired of allowing people to see what’s going on in your life that you don’t otherwise care for. Or maybe your fed up and exhausted dealing with the emotional fallout over some comment you made, or even erased from your profile that someone wrote that you simply didn’t want there. You stop making comments. You stop uploading pictures and videos. Your daily visits to the site decrease to a weekly event and eventually monthly. You may even almost forget about it altogether if it weren’t for the odd email you receive from it. And you’re not the only one this is happening to. You notice some people have taken a stand and deleted their accounts completely. And perhaps you go so far as to do the same.

And just like that…the website slowly loses popularity and fizzles away, it may even die altogether. And then the pattern inevitably starts all over again at another trending website.

The problem is that we all become so distracted by each other and, let’s face it, ourselves that most of us don’t realize what’s going on around the site. And by that I mean advertising. Commercialization. Sure everyone’s entitled to make a buck, but anymore it seems that, unless you’re sleeping, you’re getting advertised at. Most have noticed that on Facebook, by far the most popular social website, if you have an email exchange you will see advertising banners and text ads on your profile dealing with the content of that email. I find that a little creepy. And this isn’t just isolated to social websites, it’s also trending on email providers as well. Gmail in particular. Call me paranoid, but doesn’t that indicate that our every email is being monitored? Even if it’s some bot program that picks up on key words and uses that information to market at you, you’re being watched. And only a complete fool would deny the possibility and absolute likelihood that this program is being used to flag and monitor emails for a variety of subject matters.

So this is the new grey line they’ve created. They’re telling us, “We can’t exactly legally get away with looking into your email accounts without a warrant to do so, but we’re coyly going to have a program in place that literally scans your emails for key words.”

I can prove it. Better yet, if you have a Gmail account you can prove it to yourself. What I did was write a test email to myself. I wrote about how I wanted to buy a watch, I wrote about loving watches, about how I’m a bit of a watch whore…that’s right, I used the word whore. I saved it to a draft, went to my draft file and opened it up. And sure enough down the right side of my page there were ads for watches and, get this, a documentary movie called Babylon is Rising, a piece of religious tripe about biblical prophecy. And there was a third ad for becoming a pastor. It’s a safe and educated guess to say that these came up because I went and used the word whore. Babylon the Great is depicted in the bible and universally by Christianity as a self-indulgent prostitute. Now mix it up. Write a number of email drafts on a variety of subjects, save them as drafts and see what comes up as ads when you open them up. Next time you write an email and can’t fight the nagging feeling that somebody is watching, it’s because somebody’s watching. Now I could be wrong but, isn’t that a serious invasion of privacy? You don’t need a crystal ball to see a Class Action lawsuit coming. As if that isn’t enough, now when you log into an account you will periodically get sent to a page where it asks you to input more info in fear that you may forget your password. The backup plan they suggest is to give them, get this, your cell number. That’s right, your personal cell number so they can text you the info in case you some day have an aneurysm and forget your password. I don’t know a person in their right mind who gives out that kind of information. Then again, look at the crap people post on Facebook. So there is obviously no short supply of naïve suckers.

My attention recently has been focused on Youtube. This is a site we take for granted. It’s supposed to be the peoples website for uploading videos of pretty much anything we like barring anything of sexual content. Not general explicit content mind you, just nudity. If you don’t believe me just go to Youtube and search “live killing captured on video”. The advertising level on Youtube is unbearable. Random videos that show any sign of trending will have an ad on it quicker than you can imagine. Also, like Google, Youtube tracks your views and the subject matter of what you’ve been watching so that when you go back to the home page there is a list of videos “Recommended for You” that are all in the same vein as your recent views. The excuse used is that it enhances your Youtube experience and enables you to effortlessly watch content you’re interested in. However what this coincidentally means is they are tracking your viewing and your own personal trends. Also Youtube is now in the practice of censoring comments. Comments on various videos with a variety of sensitive or controversial content. And the censorship makes little sense. It seems someone is going out of there way to muddle opinions of people on select videos of political nature, meanwhile Youtube does nothing about things like disgustingly racist comments on videos showing the recent tsunamis in Japan or lewd and foul language left on comments for children’s videos from Sesame Street.

Mostly it’s about watching your web habits and what they call your Consumer Behaviour. Because they want you to buy their shit so bad. The Wall Street Journal did a study about the whole thing and discovered that the nation's 50 top websites on average installed 64 pieces of tracking technology onto computers per visitor, usually with no warning. A dozen sites each installed more than a hundred. They discovered that tracking technology is getting smarter and more intrusive. Monitoring used to be limited mainly to "cookie" files that record websites people visit. But the Journal found new tools that scan in real time what people are doing on a Web page, then instantly assess location, income, shopping interests and even medical conditions. Did you get that? Were you paying attention? “Tools that scan in real time”. Apparently some scanning tools surreptitiously re-spawn themselves even after users try to delete them. Which is just fucking insidious. Your profile, your Consumption and Web Browsing Behavior, it’s constantly being refreshed and bought and sold on stock-market-like exchanges.

And while we’re on the subject of electronic tracking we should discuss Radio Frequency Identification chips. Or RFID’s as they call them. These tags, all but invisible, require no batteries and can use the radio waves of a nearby RFID reader to send a signal back to that reader. It offers the convenience of skipping the checkout lane at the supermarket entirely. A RFID reader will automatically scan your shopping cart and charge your credit card. It’s disguised and presented to us as a convenience, more importantly it offers to corporations an open and unabated voyeuristic view into your entire life. And they never die. So not only can they tell what kind of underwear you wear, if they wanted to they could track where you like to wear them.

Just so you know, in case you haven’t figured it out yet, so-called “Rewards” programs are designed for the same purpose.

There’s a term for all this. It’s called it Micromarketing. And its all about dissecting your consumer habits and behavior so that you are so barraged with ads, so smothered and drowned in marketing of products and services, that you don’t even have time to surface and take a breath to take stock of what’s going on around you. If they could inject a chip in your ass to read your every movement they would do it without hesitation.

But even more disturbing is the Big Brother aspect to all this. Did you know that, should a court decide, everything you do electronically can be subpoenaed? It’s not just phone records anymore. It’s email, Skype, chats, texts, comments on websites and even your Facebook or Myspace page activity.

So be warned. You are definitely being watched. By machines. Which I think is even scarier.

Welcome to the Vaccine

Welcome to the Vaccine

The fact that I recognize a conspiracy when one is afoot does not necessarily qualify me as a conspiracy theorist. The success of a conspiracy depends, by its very nature on an individuals ignorance and willingness to be guided by their emotions alone. So educate yourself.

Currently, nearly everyone in the western world and especially those with children are thinking about the H1N1 flu virus. Many are lining up to assure their health for a vaccine being produced by the Baxter Pharmaceutical corporation. This particular organization being the one anointed by the World Health Organization in recognition of Baxter's fast tracking a vaccine into production. Interestingly, the patent on the H1N1 virus was purchased last year (2008) by AstraZeneca a global bio-tech giant. AstraZeneca's american subsidary has been awarded 90 million dollars to assist in the creation of a new anti-flu medicine targeting the H1N1 variant to be used in concert with FluMist (a pre-existing medication that was released in 2007 with very poor market results.)

For perspective, the CDC (Center for Disease Control) 36,000 flu related deaths a year. The number of deaths caused directly by the flu itself being much lower figure, less than a thousand annually. The influenza virus proliferates easily in a host with a weakened immune system making it more dangerous for those with pre-existing conditions. The human immune system uses the D vitamin in particular to combat viral contagions, which the body harvests naturally from the sun and in very few foods (fish, liver, egg yolk). The fact that few westerners get enough sun to offset the shortage of vitamin D in their diets has given rise to the 'flu season' during seasonal changes involving prolonged cloud cover (some contend the atmospheric particulates in general have robbed natural sunlight of much of its nourishing qualities). The primary concern with the H1N1 virus is not that it is particularly deadly but rather that it is highly communicable. Anyone who has had the flu this year has probably already contracted the virus and defeated it.

American legislators leaned heavily on the CDC in 2005, making them financially responsible for vaccines unsold "through routine market mechanisms" and requiring a "public awareness campaign" emphasizing "the safety and benefit of recommended vaccines for the public good."

AstraZeneca will be responsible for the first round of vaccines available to the American public though several other bio-med giants have been tapped to fill the CDC's 200 million unit order. Baxter is manufacturing the vaccine for most of Europe and Glaxo has reported over 150 million units produced on behalf of Canadian Health Care. All for H1N1, a flu with a higher survival rate than most conventional variants. Interestingly, the only pharmacuetical manufacturer represented on the CDC Foundation's Board of Directors is AstraZeneca, Michele J. Hooper sitting on the Board of Directors for both organizations. No surprise then that the CDC awarded AstraZeneca the first round of vaccinations. A priviledged position for Ms. Hooper. Especially in light of the annual use of flu vaccines in the US rarely topping 100 million units.

The real race was between Novaris and Baxter because the WHO's Board of Directors is comprised of execs from these two pharmaceutical giants. The fact that the WHO anointed Baxter came as a surprise to many because of the company's horrifying track record. Baxter is currently under investigation for recalling an anti-coagulant drug for hemophiliac's from N. American trials when it was revealed that it had become contaminated with HIV-2 and then selling it to Britain and Europe instead, it is estimated that upwards of 10,000 men, women and children in Britain alone were infected with HIV-2 (a more resistant form of the disease requiring more medications to keep in check). Also, Baxter is also responsible for the worldwide distribution of a swine flu vaccine tainted with the living H5N1 Avain flu virus just two months ago. The fact that Baxter has a facility just outside Mexico City where the first known cases surfaced is most assuredly circumstantial but given their track record it has quite rightly raised a few eyebrows.

Interestingly, Ms. Hooper had an illustrious career with Baxter, eventually becoming President of Baxter Canada. Her move to AstraZeneca corresponds conveniently with the first lawsuits regarding the HIV-2 polluted anti-coagulant in the mid-nineties. I am sure that there are others like Ms. Hooper. She was just the first one I identified and pursued to illustrate my point. I start out emphasizing these aspects so that I do not need to justify my questioning of the validity of the current "public awareness campaign".

Its difficult to map out all the problems with the fast tracked vaccine because their is a whole bunch of them. A common concern among physicians is the mercury levels, an issue which is resolved with the use of Squalene in doses intended for children. The mercury level is toxic not lethal and it is impossible to project the long term impact of the mock-up vaccines because they do not need to meet the usual FDA requirements. Squalene is derived from Shark liver oil and is being harvested from an endangered species. These are just a couple of the more problematic aspects of the vaccines themselves. Many more are presenting themselves as proper study is conducted. Then there are the greater questions regarding the use of vaccination as a cure-all for immuno-deficiency that can be easily righted with proper diet and exercise. Large seasonal doses of Vitamin K are a far less contraversial method of preventing sickness from the flu.

Baxter refrained from publicly disclosing what it was charging for a dose of the vaccine, but the UK awarded Glaxo over Baxter (one might think they had a grudge against Baxter for that whole giving everyone HIV) and they publicly announced the cost per unit of their vaccine at roughly $10.20. If we assume that as roughly standard then Baxter, AstraZeneca and Glaxo stand to gain .. hang on this is a fucking huge number, $19,140,228,661 and believe it or not that is a conservative figure. Both Baxter and AstraZeneca are already face lawsuits for over-charging for thier vaccines in several States among other places. A minimum of 20 billion dollars made off of a "public awareness campaign" regarding a flu epidemic possibly caused by the pharmaceutical company it awarded the vaccination campaign too.

Thats just too fucked up for me.

A Cut Up of Jaw Dropping Truths

So I’ve been away. The press has been shut down for a while I’ll admit. But I’ve been busy people. Busy working my way down the rabbit hole. So far, no rabbit yet, but I’ve found some motherfuckin’ weird shit that’s for sure. You dig anywhere and down far enough you’re going to find shit. Because people, they like to bury their secrets. And their crafty about it. And the reason is because now there’s so much exposure out there. There’s media watching everything. Cameras on every corner, in every store, staring back at you from bank machines. Audio recorders and cameras that fit inside a button hole. I mean Jesus, have you seen how many television screens Wolf Blitzer has on the Situation Room? And damn is that public thirsty. They demand to know what’s going on at every moment. They are desperate for every tidbit of dumbed down, homespun piece of news no matter how deep the slant is or how misconstrued and misleading it may be because of the inconvenient truths that have been lopped off.

As an FYI, they utilize this glut of information overload. Just so you know, that’s where they bury their secrets. In time. Under layers upon layers of one heinous act of inhumanity after another. And most of us are just too tired to dig it up. Too emotionally exhausted to search anymore, just too beat down by the whole thing to face that monster anymore. Or so completely distracted by the preoccupation of trying to survive, and pinned down under the weight of this looming global economic meltdown that it’s just to fucking hard to really care about shit like the fact that there is a mercenary army operating out of the United States of America that is just as large and has access to all the same resources as the regular American Army.

But when you think about it we really should be addressing these dirty little secrets they hide right under our collective nose. Literally. Those little news tickers that scroll across the bottom of the screen, pay attention to those.

But there’s loads of secrets and they’re easy to find. Just for fun, for shits and giggles, do yourself a favor and google Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh. He's an ink smear on the scrolls of history now but he was likely one of the greatest forward thinking leaders of the world in the early 1950's who was elected in Iran. Democratically by the way. The problem was he was too good. He felt it was time that the Iranian people profited from Iranian oil and that that American government pay for the damages done to their country. America promptly disposed of him via a crafty CIA coup.

While your at it look up Guatamala's democratically elected leader of 1953. A guy named President Jacobo Arbenz Guzman.

And since you’re on a roll google Jaime Roldos Aguilera . You don’t have to be a genius to pick up on a pattern at this point. And since you’re in that deep, keep digging. Google Omar Efran Torrijos Herrara.

And just for kicks, google Economic Hitmen. Try going to Youtube and searching Jeremy Scahill and Blackwater, which is known as Xe now by the way. Just so you know, Michael Moore hasn't got shit to say compared to the things Jeremy Scahill has to tell you.

Hours of eye opening entertainment there folks. Movies and reading material that Robert Ludlum and Tom Clancy would never dream of. Mainly because they’ve yet to sell their souls to the Devil like the people you’re going to find out about when you search any of the subjects suggested above.

Follow this link and you’ll be sure to find a story and photos that quite possibly will make you want to shoot yourself in the face:

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2009/03/canadian-oil-sands/kunzig-text

Go ahead. I Dare you.

Blue Blood and Red Crosses

Don't say anything, but the lunatics are running the asylum. And none of them are taking their meds.

Make sure to speak with hushed voices in shadowed places about the way they fight and murder one another over religious beliefs and crusade for the spread of democracy.

Democracy. That pretty word they like to use as if it means something to them.

But whatever you do, don't call them on it. They'll label you a nonconformist. A malcontent. A counter-culture rebel. A terrorist even. After that they'll whip the masses up into a paranoid frenzy and have them lynch you as if you deserve it. As if you're a liar. As if you had it coming.

After all, you should be happy drowning in this sea of mediocrity like the rest of humanity. Ecstatic for simply being alive and struggling against this bureaucratic machine that sputters and kicks, that consumes and farts out life as if it were meaningless. We should be satisfied being good little sheep and grateful for our regular intellectual fleecing.

There is no questioning their authority. They've created perfectly good myths for us to believe in and fight for, so we should be satisfied. It only stands to reason. It goes without saying that, when they tell us they need our children to sacrifice their lives for their agendas, we offer up our sons and daughters like sacrificial lambs.

And for Christs sake, whatever you do, don't mention that you notice they have an agenda.

Don't speak up. Keep your head down. Play dumb. Stay under the radar. Pretend you don't notice their lies and manipulations. Otherwise you'll become a target for open ridicule. They'll make an example out of you. You'll find yourself swinging from their hypocritical gallows.

Pretend you share their spiritual faith and their hysterical sense of justice. Make like you believe they care, that you trust them and that everything is fine with their gods. Mouth the archaic dogmatic mantras of their prophets like you mean it. Like its engraved in your heart and ingrained in your psyche. Wear a cross around your neck and keep a bible in your pocket. Be sure to thank god publicly for all the things you've accomplished for yourself.

If you seek their approval act as if you feel noble living a life of impoverishment and selflessness. Make like you require their guidance and leadership, as if it's so much more than anything you could ever begin to understand. Stroke their fragile egos. And be sure to regurgitate their mantras of faith and politics. Use their vernacular like it's your own.

If you have no desire to be punished don't let them know you can think for yourself. Or that you've realized that they've made god in their own image.

Know your rights, but for your own sake don't try to exercise them.

For Sale

One planet. Looking to expand.

It seems anymore, that we’re no longer looking for intelligent life in the universe for answers to our own existence. Now we’re just looking for another planet to move to so we can trade in this old used jalopy, this old fixer upper we’ve done a less than stellar job of maintaining.

We’re trading it in like a used luxury car that now runs like a Lada…made on a bad day. Our lack of social conscience is staggering, we’re like a cancer victim who just doesn’t know enough to quit smoking. We don’t seem to really care unless it’s affecting us directly. Which of course it is, it’s just that we’ve been distracted so much we don’t even notice. After all, who can worry about trees in the Amazon when we’re fighting poverty or a perpetual war in the Middle East. We’ve left worrying about these concerns to the capable hands of those who can effectively solve the problem. Unfortunately those people have little more power than the rest of us. Besides, they can bring us the message but, as long as we’re not willing to do anything about it, we’re no better than the corporations bent on destroying the planet.

It took millions of years to reach the Industrial Age and only a hundred years for the Industrial Age to destroy this planet. Some legacy. How proud are you? We’ve been greedily sucking crude oil out of this old planet at an unprecedented rate. What were once the largest oil reserves in the world, fought over, besieged and soaked in bloodshed, are now on the verge of being abandoned. Why? Because they are running dry. The scary part? We have no idea whatsoever the long-term effects of draining the planet of oil. For all we know it’s the life source that keeps it going.

Lumber is quickly becoming the new Gold. Water is the new Oil.

We’re suspicious of our political leaders because politician’s methods haven’t changed, only their vocabulary. Anymore you can do anything you want as long as you use the correct vernacular. And besides, politician’s priorities are completely confusing to us.

Somehow guided missiles have become more important than guided people.

The concept of our ‘Global Village’ has been lost. Sure we run to the aid of the less fortunate in a crisis. The response to the tsunami in the South Pacific was heart warming and encouraging, but lets be honest for a moment here. Charitable donations turn into a bit of an international competition very quickly. What do we learn from this? We learn that when a global crisis arises our leaders ego’s are at stake and they respond in kind.

Well people, we have a global crisis on our hands. We’re perpetuating this crisis by sitting around doing nothing about it. So what action can we take? Do we protest? Do we hold international rallies to awaken our collective conscience? Anymore it seems to me that protests are commonplace and serve little more purpose than to pacify the masses. We get our angst out then go home, pat ourselves on the back for vocalizing our indignant attitude for the mistreatment of the planet, have a few drinks and then complacently forget about it until the next scheduled protest. And then there are those who will have nothing to do with an environmental protest because there is the perception that environmental activists are tree hugging, pot smoking hippy extremists. Too many derogatory labels on groups with legitimate concerns and good intentions have stifled awareness and change.

There was a time when mankind respected the earth. In fact we respected it so much we revered the elements as gods. Earth, Air, Water and Fire. There was a time when we were actually afraid of these elements. It seems that over time we’ve become so arrogant, so self-assured that we can harness the elements and survive them that we’ve actually forgotten they can overwhelm us at any moment. No matter how clever we become.

We need to remind ourselves, the Earth can open up and swallow a city if she wishes. Air can work itself up into a berserker frenzy and exact a path of destruction beyond our imaginations. Water can defeat the greatest sailors the world has to offer, or can move inland and simply power-wash an entire landscape. Fire is the all-consumer, the final death. And when these elemental gods conspire together the outcome can be so devastating entire civilizations can be lost. Wiped off the earth forever.

These are the gods we should be worried about offending. And yet it seems we’ve forgotten about them. It seems we’ve been pacified, lulled into a paralyzed and hypnotic state of amnesia. Completely sidetracked by the Ego Wars of our political leaders.

We’ve forgotten that Dissent is the Seed of Change. And we are in desperate need of change.

Gorgasm

This latest exposed terrorist plot to blow up ten airliners over the Atlantic using liquid explosives disguised as various carry-on items, they told us it was a 'dry run'.

The thought of this event actually happening is horrifying. Some may even say terrorizing. There are those who said the report of this insidious plot reminded them of 9/11. It didn't remind me of 9/11 at all. That's old news. Now the events of 9/11 seem almost archaic and primitive. What it reminded me was that, for every security measure that is designed, the human nature of adaptation forces these terrorists to develop even more sophisticated means to accomplish their goals. We're forcing them to become diabolical geniuses.

And they're stepping up to that challenge.

The disturbing thing is that this plot is actually based on an old idea. Back in 1995 a Pakistani man named Ramzi Ahmed Yousef not only designed this attack, he executed a successful 'dry run' on Philippene Airlines Flight 434. We're told he developed a liquid form of nitroglycerine stable enough to conceal in a contact lens solution container. The bomb was then assembled in the restroom of the plane and then deftly hidden beneath his seat. Here's the catch: the bomb was designed to detonate by a simple digital watch or a cell phone.

This is after the terrorist was off the plane.

There was no righteous martyrdom involved. No heavenly harem of virgins as a reward. The reward for Ramzi Ahmed Yousef was that he would still be alive to admire the rotten fruits of his labor. His reward would be the authority and respect he would no doubt reap from the extremists of the world that support his ideology. The reward for Yousef was 240 years in solitary confinement.

Which presents a whole new aspect creeping into terrorism. Now these extremists can have their proverbial cake and eat it too. Those diabolical minds who see no advantage in sacrificing their lives for their agendas may find their pursuits more attractive.

They've changed the game. These days, terrorists have no reason to even execute these plots. They've learnt they can oppress and paralyze the world with an idea. Now they can play a charade and fear and paranoia will take care of the rest. Afterwards they can sit around the television and get a good laugh at the mayhem they have manufactured.

Having said that, we know there are those still bent on destruction. It's all about the revenge for the for the hardcore martyr. There is no satisfaction until they've achieved gorgasm. Doing it all in the name of their angry God. They tell us all glory rests with him.

Whoever He is.

But God seems more of an excuse. A lame justification. Because we know it has more to do with good old-fashioned deep seeded hate. Old hate is like old money, it's very influential and it runs deep. These people have forgotten what it's like to live without hate and violence. They're blind with it. Consumed by it. Which is the reason, despite any security measures we take, these extremists will reach into their pool of hate-filled minds and discover new ways of teaching us all a lesson.

An associate of mine told me that now, when he gets on a plane, he can't help but scan the crowd of fellow passengers. He said he couldn't help but feel a little knot twist in his gut when he notices anyone of Middle Eastern appearance get onboard. He told me his mind runs rampant with worst-case scenarios. He says it's no big deal that we're not allowed carry-on luggage. He figures nothing stops one of these terrorists from stuffing a tube of plastic explosives with an active detonator up their anal cavity before they board a plane. He told me that he holds no prejudice against any people, but the cliches and stereotypes of terrorists and their religious and ethnic heritage hold true. And that he hates it.

I told him that I wish there were something to say that would ease his worry.

This is our generation's war. It's not cold and it's not hot. This is a war of convenient chances that comes in short bursts of dark angry violence. Anyone can be a casualty. We are all of us target objects and no one is considered innocent. All you armchair anarchists who quietly applaud and say the establishment has it coming, you're on the list too. Our enemy wears no uniform and is indistinguishable in an ocean of faces. Some of them even live among us, hiding behind neighborly masks.

And this war won't end until everyone can get past the hysterical demand for justice and revenge. Hatred is a blind desire. There will be no ceasefire until everyone soothes their hatred with education and awareness.

It will only come through faith in humankind.

My God Can Beat Up Your God

First of all this author is not taking sides.

To be frank, I'm tired of the propagandist rhetoric from all involved parties. We see the film footage and still photographs pouring out of the Middle East on a daily basis. We witness images of dead and battered civilians, which consist mostly of women, children and the elderly. We see people, covered in blood and dust, screaming and crying over dead loved ones.

These people want peace and they deserve it. They're human. They're like you and me and they believe in the sanctity of life. It's just hard to see this through the bomb clouds and gun smoke. It's difficult to detect through the flag burning demonstrations. It's impossible to hear their message of peace over the seething, hollering masses when they take to the streets proclaiming 'Death to the Infidels!' while firing their guns into the air.

And we find ourselves wondering what possible reason these people could have to hate us so much. Israel's Ambassador to the United Nations, Dan Gillerman, was quoted as saying, "There will be peace when they love their children more than they hate us". That's a steamy load of self-serving bull crap. It's apparent to anyone that the woman with the tear stained face, howling in emotional agony and pulling her hair out as she throws herself on her dead offspring, she loves her child very much.

There is a root cause. The creation of the State of Israel after World War II was not exactly an instant hit with the Arab nations in the Middle East. Even less popular was Israel's decision in 1967 to pre-preemptively strike out at their new neighbours and to go so far as to occupy those lands.

But still, why do they hate us?

Political Injustice and Failed Diplomacy. That's what we're told. Our politicians are accused of showing favoritism to Israel. These Arab and predominately Muslim nations feel their rights and religion are being not only ignored, but strangled. And they're very angry about the whole thing. The more they get punished for their opinion the angrier they become. The angrier they become, the more it deepens their resolve. The more resolved they become, the more desperate they become. The more desperate they are, the more dangerous they become.

There's a pattern here. It's spiral shaped and it's going downward.

There is no question that Israel has the right to defend herself. But so also does every sovereign nation. And now everyone is justifying their actions under the mantra of the war on terrorism. Palestine and Lebanon are democratic countries and have voted in their favoured parties, which happen to include Hamas and Hezbollah. There is an unspoken dialogue of debate as to whether Hamas and Hezbollah are terrorists organizations.

Israel has been told they have justification for a response. But they were also warned by the United Nations to keep that response proportionate to the issue. The international community seems to feel that Israel has failed in this regard. And yet Israel continues. But after the Bush administration openly and successfully defied the United Nations admonishment to not invade Iraq, it stands to reason that Israel feels it can do the same.

All that said, the Hezbollah have manipulated this conflict willingly. This War At All Costs. And the Lebanese people are paying that cost by the hundreds. So have eleven innocent Canadians. One a U.N. Peacekeeper. The Hezbollah's hysterical demand for justice has dictated that the loss of innocents is an acceptable loss in the name of their cause. No matter how many. After all, they seek revenge in honour of their God and their brothers and sisters that have sacrificed their lives for Him. War is what they want, and war is what they're getting. War in the name of God and religious heritage.

The same heritage Israel claims to have.

My God can beat up your God.

Now all involved nations in the Middle East are calling for international intervention. They wish for international forces to go in and manage their conflict. Like it's somehow our problem they can't put their differences aside and learn to co-exist peacefully. Israel has made demands for a buffer zone along the Lebanese border, but it's highly doubtful Israel has considered having that buffer zone inside their own border.

Both groups are stubbornly and knowingly forcing an international conflict. Both sides are demanding we choose a side. We know Iran and Syria have already made their choices. And America's choice is as good as made. But what of the rest of the world's leaders? So far it's like they're walking on rocks to cross a crocodile pond.

Here's a solution: We put Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Sheik Hassan Nasrallah in a ring and let them duke it out.