Saturday, April 30, 2011

Veneration Of The Blood

More wonders from the church of Rome.

From the Guardian, we get this headline.

Pope John Paul's blood to go on display at Vatican

Blood will be available for veneration at John Paul II's beatification
after being taken from pontiff as he lay dying



"A phial filled with the blood of the late pope John Paul II will go on display at his beatification on Sunday and become available for veneration by the faithful.
The Vatican said the blood, which had been stored in a Rome hospital, had been kept in a liquid state by an anti-coagulant that was added when it was taken from him.
The Polish pontiff is to be beatified at a service celebrated by his successor, Benedict XVI. More than 50 heads of state and several hundred thousand pilgrims are expected in Rome for the occasion."     
More than 50 heads of state will attend??

Papal Beatification Party Treats?

I'm wondering about HEADS OF STATE that would participate in this blood worship ceremony! Maybe this is why our world is in a constant state of war, man-made famine and designer diseases.

Power in the blood is an ancient theme, echoed throughout history and religions. Blood sacrifice, blood money, bloodlines, pureblood, etc.

The fascination of blood by the temporal powers of this world leads one to believe that there is something to be gained from blood, or more specifically........the shedding of blood. This would explain why the Elites of this generation are so consumed with population reduction. The Club of Rome is an  interesting group that ties in nicely with the Church of Rome.

What is this power from blood? Even the common people seek this power as demonstrated by the exponential rise in homicides and bloodletting in even the safest suburbs. Just try to find a front page of a newspaper that is not trumpeting yet another homicidal spree!

The legends of vampires ties into this power of blood theme also.....from Wikipedia,

Vampires are mythological or folkloric beings who subsist by feeding on the life essence (generally in the form of blood) of living creatures, regardless of whether they are undead or a living person.[1][2][3][4][5][6] Although vampiric entities have been recorded in many cultures and in spite of speculation by literary historian Brian Frost that the "belief in vampires and bloodsucking demons is as old as man himself", and may go back to "prehistoric times",[7] the term vampire was not popularized until the early 18th century, after an influx of vampire superstition into Western Europe from areas where vampire legends were frequent, such as the Balkans and Eastern Europe,[8] although local variants were also known by different names, such as vrykolakas in Greece and strigoi in Romania. This increased level of vampire superstition in Europe led to mass hysteria and in some cases resulted in corpses actually being staked and people being accused of vampirism.


While even folkloric vampires of the Balkans and Eastern Europe had a wide range of appearance ranging from nearly human to bloated rotting corpses, it was the success of John Polidori's 1819 novella The Vampyre that established the archetype of charismatic and sophisticated vampire; it is arguably the most influential vampire work of the early 19th century,[9] inspiring such works as Varney the Vampire and eventually Dracula.[10]

However, it is Bram Stoker's 1897 novel Dracula that is remembered as the quintessential vampire novel and which provided the basis of modern vampire fiction. Dracula drew on earlier mythologies of werewolves and similar legendary demons and "was to voice the anxieties of an age", and the "fears of late Victorian patriarchy".[11] The success of this book spawned a distinctive vampire genre, still popular in the 21st century, with books, films, video games, and television shows. The vampire is such a dominant figure in the horror genre that literary historian Susan Sellers places the current vampire myth in the "comparative safety of nightmare fantasy".[11]
From tvtropes comes this...


The Power Of Blood

"For the soul of every sort of flesh is its blood by the soul in it. Consequently I said to the sons of Israel: 'You must not eat the blood of any sort of flesh, because the soul of every sort of flesh is its blood. Anyone eating it will be cut off.'" — God, Leviticus 17:14

"Blood is life, lackbrain. Why do you think we eat it? It's what keeps you going. Makes you warm. Makes you hard. Makes you other than dead." — Spike, a vampire from Buffy: The Vampire Slayer

Blood. Animals have it, humans have it, even aliens have it. There's just something about the red liquid that flows through our veins that makes it seem important. Probably something to do with that whole... "keeping us alive" thing it does so well. As such, in fiction, it tends to have one or more of these properties.

• A) Blood is Binding — Any Magically Binding Contracts made in blood must be honored, on pain of death, even if the contract was only written in blood because you Couldn't Find A Pen. If you make a Blood Oath, and swear that "if you break your word, may the earth drink your blood!", and break your word anyway, you may find yourself six feet under.

• B) Blood is symbolic — Blood may be used as a stand-in, or weaker form of souls, life force, what have you. Alternatively, other things may be used to symbolize it. The latter applies to things like an android's oil being sprayed out like it's High Pressure Blood. ◦ For examples of the latter, see Alien Blood or Symbolic Blood.

• AB) Blood is magical — Any spells that require blood as a reagent will probably be either extremely powerful, Black Magic, or both. Since blood is basically Life Force, anything using it will work similarly to things Cast From HP. The blood of especially powerful or arcane creatures may even become gems.

• O) Most importantly, Blood is disturbing — There's just something about blood leaving the body that generally freaks people out, either from fear or disgust. For obvious reasons, it's directly associated with pain, injury and death. Horror and Slasher stories rely on this. A further division of this, often connected to A, B, or AB, are messages written in blood, which are used primarily to scare the bejeezus out of people, but may also have magical, symbolic, or binding properties. This is sometimes combined with Room Full Of Crazy for the extra creepy. Properly used, blood can turn fear into Primal Fear - as per the shower scene in Psycho: the sight of Janet Leigh's hand trailing slowly down the shower curtain - scary. The blood (actually just chocolate syrup) smearing under her fingers - PSYCHO! Many movies overdo this, resulting in mere Squick - Silent Hill pours on the tension until your heart threatens to explode from your chest - scary. Then Pyramid Head shows up and tears the skin from a woman in a single tug - not that scary, just your basic Gorn.
Anyway.........just some food for thought (pun intended)!

"add a side of plasma with your McBloodbag today for the special price of just one soul!"


Avops

Tuesday, April 26, 2011

And Your Old Men Shall Dream Dreams!

There seems to be a lot of prophecy going on in today's world!

Maybe it's due to the ease of putting out words on the internet, or maybe, just maybe there is an actual increase in spirituality amongst the inhabitants of this blue marble on which we reside.

Either way, I've seen much more spiritual awakening lately from many sources. Countless visions of  apocalyptic futures have been scribed from countless sources. Some are believable, some are downright humorous!

This awakening has been manifesting itself in a multitude of ways. It seems that those who were of a spiritual nature have been growing in spirit. Those who are of a material nature have been growing in materialism. Those who are of a kind heart have increased their kindness and those of a cold heart have been getting colder!

My observation is that no one  will change the path they are on at this point in time. No matter how much they hear or read, they are not about to change from their chosen path. Those who will do good, let them continue doing good, those who would do evil, let them continue to do evil!

Much spiritual energy is misspent trying to change one creature into another. The only change we can successfully make is change within ourselves.

Smoking Mirrors has a good post on spirituality today, well worth the read ( if you are inclined to such things), Visible also has a link to a "prophecy" called "Has Jesus Christ Spoken?" which is also an interesting read, although for me, it has little merit. Nonetheless, there are some good tidbits in it you may store up for times of need!

Now, dear reader, as for the title of this post........

As of late, I have been having some strangely vivid dreams. I'm not about to say they are prophetic in any sense of the word, but they do have a message of future events (at least for me!).

The latest dream involved being out on what appeared to be a normal day. A sudden flash of light appeared and instinctively I dove for cover behind some debris that was near by. As I peered over the debris I witnessed a mushroom cloud rising on the horizon at what I guessed was 50 miles from my location!

Immediately there was much chaos (and I'm sure much death and destruction at ground zero of the explosion) but strangely, there was an almost immediate sense of camaraderie and oneness of purpose with those people that were around me. These were complete strangers to me, but nonetheless there was a unity that I have never experienced in my waking world.

The short of this is, I came away from this dream with the knowledge that even though apocalyptic catastrophes are going to be made manifest, much good will also be bestowed upon those whose spiritual foundations are firm.

Another dream involved me being chased by a group of men, dressed in black, with strange hats upon their heads! The overwhelming feeling was that they were out to cause severe spiritual damage to me, if not death itself.

As I was running from these men, I ran straight into the arms of the most grotesque, hideous creature imaginable. My words to this creature were "I am food" it's reply was "No, you are not!". Strangely though, instead of feeling fear of this creature, I was overcome by a feeling of peace and tranquility and safety. I came away from this dream feeling that I should not judge by appearance..........but trust that inner voice! Help can come from the place or person you least expect!

Other dreams have been showing my weakness to temptations.......these were apparently just warnings on areas in my life that need improvement. Warnings that I may not be as strong as I think I am in spiritual matters.

Anyway, this old man has been having some dreams lately.......................maybe if we listen closely, we just might learn something in these end days!

Peace!

Avops

Monday, April 25, 2011

Water Power

I took a drive through some very rural areas this weekend. All farmland and old farmhouses, some of which have probably been in use for at least a hundred years.

What caught my attention was the newly installed municipal water system that is being installed along these country roads. Fire hydrants every 500 feet, marker flags showing the routing to install water to these old homes.

These rural areas have used their own wells and septic systems forever! Why, now of all times, would millions of dollars be spent to hook these folks up to a centralized water system?

All the headlines scream of deficit spending and a general lack of funding for everything, and now they are able to spend on a project like this! I'm sure there is more to this than meets the eye.

In this part of the country, when municipal water is run by your home you are REQUIRED to connect to it, regardless of the condition of your well or septic system. It is also required that your well be sealed and made unusable. The municipality will hook up the water, with or without your permission, install a meter, and then bill you for the costs of installation. Failure to use this water source will result in your property being condemned and eventually confiscated by the local government!

Besides taking away the ability to be off the grid for these folks, I'm thinking there must be some other reasoning behind this confiscation of another freedom from the citizens.

Maybe this is behind the constant expansion of a centralized water supply. Section 817 of the Patriot Act!

This section deals with  domestic delivery of biological agents to the citizens of the USA. Here is another link that goes into some more detail about this.

So apparently they need the ability to get the flourides into all homes in this country! As if Amerika is not already dumbed down enough!

But wait, there is more! Apparently with many of these new water systems being installed there is a dual line with remote valving ability to be able to switch out one source of water for another. Interesting article on that here.

Just more examples of the collaboration between "local" goverments and the NWO gang!

Can you see the dark clouds rolling in yet?

Just wondering!

Friday, April 22, 2011

Friday 22 April, 2011



Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.

Thursday, April 21, 2011

Joe - HOPELESS!

Information used in this blog is reproduced in accordance with Section 107 of title 17 of the Copyright Law of the United States relating to fair-use and is for the purposes of criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research.

Gloom, Despair and Agony On Me!

"Every day is a good day to break the cattle's spirit"

Hymie Goldfieker, JTO


Endless news reporting from the machine. Let's all stay focused on the lowest possible state of humanity that we can! Repeat after me..........mankind is doomed.......mankind is doomed..........mankind is doomed......

Headlines from April 21, 2011:








That's enough for me.

Monday, April 18, 2011

The Divine Sherpa And The Journey Of A Lifetime

Imagine, if you will.

You are on an unavoidable and unending journey.

When your journey began, you stumbled, you fell regularly. You had no map, and the only guidance you were given was from fellow travelers that had taken different roads and by chance, had arrived at your location at the same time that you had.

These fellow travelers were full of stories and warnings. Tales of precarious paths, dangerous creatures, and villainous foes. As you began to travel with them, you learned much of how to survive the rigors and dangers of a journey.

After years of traveling with your companion guides, it occurred to you, that you had never asked where your little caravan was headed. The conversations had been fun, you had learned much from them. You had also learned quite a few things just by traveling and experiencing the road yourself.

So curiosity finally got the best of you, and you asked your companions where the destination of this trip was to be. The answers shocked and confused you! For though they they had given you much advice, and many admonitions of what to avoid, and what to pursue, each of your travel companions had a different destination! As you listened to the places your fellow travelers intended to arrive at, you were dismayed that most of these destinations did not offer what you were seeking in your heart.

So the days passed, and you began to think more and more on what your own destination would be. In fact, the destination became the entire reason you continued on the journey. Your imagination was reeling with the possibilities of where you could go. With all of the places you had passed thus far, and all of the things you had experienced in your travels, you had a vision of the places you didn't want to be, but still, because there was no map available, the path was not clear.

Now years had passed, and many of your fellows had turned off onto one of the many side roads that intersected the path you had been traveling. One day, your last companion / guide said his time had come to depart down the path he believed led to his destination. Dismayed and fearful, you asked where he was heading to. His answer was vague, but he believed this path was the one that would lead him to his chosen destination. You asked if you should follow him, but his reply was that it would have to be your choice, because each path has it's own unknown dangers and rewards, and that since he had no map or guidebook, he could not be responsible for your well being.

You said your goodbyes and wished each other well. He headed down his chosen path, and you continued on the road you had traveled for all these years. This road had served you well, and you were familiar with most of the dangers and knew where to find the things that sustained you. Still, you knew that the day would come that you would have to find a path that you believed would take you to your own destination. If only there was a map or another traveller that had been to the place you were seeking, your fears could be calmed.

Years passed, and your travels continued. You met a few people on the road, but most were too busy to help, and they turned down the side paths too quickly to get much information from. You were lonely, and still had no real sense of which path you should make the turn on.

One day, as you were walking, you spotted a man on the side of the road. The unusual thing about him was that he was not traveling. He was just sitting there under a tree by the road. This was kind of scary, because everyone travelled, no one just sat! His appearance was neither old, nor young, but he had a look of satisfaction and peace that you had never encountered before. As you approached, he waved and motioned for you to come sit by him. Being tired, and having never seen anyone just sitting before, you decide to stop and see if this man knew something that could help you find your way.

So you sat. By the man on the side of the road.

You exchanged pleasantries, and asked him who he was. He said he had been called many things, but in essence he was a Sherpa! Never having heard this word before, you ask him to explain it to you.

With a smile on his face, he explains that a Sherpa is a guide, one who has been down all the paths and to all the destinations that exist!

His destination was your destination.

All you had to do was ask the Sherpa, and he would guide you down the correct path, he even had a guidebook, one that showed the dangers on all the paths that you could ever cross. What luck!! After all these years of lonely travel, finally someone who knew the way!

So you asked the Sherpa, and he gladly arose from his spot beneath the tree and began to walk with you. You walked together for many, many miles and talked of many things. You talked of your desires and what you believed regarding your destination. It was good to have a knowledgeable companion to travel with again. You learned much.

One day, the Sherpa stopped. He pointed to the most ragged, narrow path you had ever seen. Though you could not see far down this path, what you could see looked very inhospitable, and dangerous, it appeared that nothing good could come from taking this path. The path was dark and you were scared of what might lurk in the shadows. you had heard stories about paths like this! Stories of destruction and utter despair.

"My friend" says the Sherpa. "How many miles have we travelled together, have I ever led you astray? Have I not shown you The Guidebook of which you had only dreamed that existed? Did you not request me to accompany you on your Journey?"

"Sir, all these things are as you say, but this path does not make sense to me!"

"It is your choice My friend, I have done all that you have requested. You have told me your desires, and this is the path that will lead to your ultimate fulfillment. I cannot force you to take this path. Of your own free will you requested that I guide you, of your own free will you can ignore my guidance."

And so your journey continues. With the Sherpa by your side.

To follow the Sherpa is a question we must all ask.

The answer is ours to decide.

Thursday, April 14, 2011

The Politics of Hurt

By martin mcnamara

opednews.com

You are a middleclass republican. You probably think you're in a higher class and talk like you're in a higher class, but deep down you know the three jobs you and your wife work, the maxed-out credit cards, the twice re-financed house one of your parents left you really only make you look like you are in a higher class.

And that's all that matters. How ya look. As long as your friends believe the perception you've worked so hard at creating. This is America, and you ARE what your neighbor thinks you are.

So you get the new BBQ ready for the summer, (The $700 Weber you put on your third Visa, minimum payments only!) and you and your friends talk politics. Tea Party politics. That's your team. Aren't all the successful (looking) people republicans? So the round table b*tch-a-thon about spending begins. You never lived on your own, and never more than a few miles from mommy and daddy, but your world view, in your mind, knows that every penny you are taxed goes to feed some lazy minority. Michelle Bachman told you so. Right there on Fox News and that's TV so it has to be true. And boy oh boy they cut some stuff!!

They cut taxes for the rich (not you)"again, and vital programs for the disadvantaged,(also not you). And with that smug self-righteous smirk, as you flip that 7lb. Steak (Costco card, also minimum payments only!) you soak up your latest victories. . . But. . .

Can it really feel that good? Can the satisfaction be so extreme? Is it like a drug?

The smooth rush of euphoria permeates every nerve, every cell basks in the warm glow of the knowledge. The knowing. The being" you. Right now. Is it like winning a football game on the last play? Are there the highest of fives and fist pumps for everyone? I wanna know. I gotta know! Can you see new colors never known before this moment? Can you share this feeling? I need to know! I have to know! Where do I go for a cup of the pride you're drinking down tonight? The poor got poorer and you swoon. The rich got richer and you could faint. You are neither, but your team won. And won big! T-E-A-M Yaayyy TEAM!

Home heating oil assistance has been de-funded and somehow you know your life just got better. Oil. Funny little word oil. It touches EVERYTHING you touch.
Home, ah home, it's where we hang our hats and things. Well, some of our less fortunate won't be hanging their hats this winter at home, they'll be wearing them.

W.I.C.- Women Infants Children. . .To safeguard the health of low-income women, infants, and children up to age 5 who are at nutrition risk by providing nutritious foods to supplement diets, information on healthy eating, and referrals to health care. This is what WIC does.
Actually, this is their mission statement. It is administered by t he U.S. dept. of Agriculture. Makes me think of farmers. Makes me think of farm subsidies.

Now, kids 5 and under, that are at nutritional risk, may not be worth subsidizing anymore, but it makes you feel soooo good to know these factory farms are. Not that you're a farmer, but that's your team. And these kids? You don't actually know any anyway, right?

The EPA? When on earth would you ever need the EPA? No one's dumping toxic waste on your finely manicured lawn (will the landscaper take a post dated check for Friday?). All you know is that the EPA affects profits, not yours, but your teams. So nobody is gonna get in the way of the fracking now.
Yea team!! Besides they don't frack in the "burbs, do they?

And you use real hospitals with a real HMO (don't get sick!), not community health centers. "That money needs to go to people that hire, at least that's what Hannity told you. All you know is that things the Tea party deems irrelevant and wasteful were dumped by our leaders and you have never felt so good about people feeling so bad.

You and your people slapped around some of our most vulnerable, and like most bullies it was easy finding these soft targets. Even though you are a layoff away from losing everything, and the bill collectors are getting louder and louder, you know you'll be rich rich rich someday soon! It's the politics of winning. It's the politics of the delusional.

Welcome, my friends, to the politics of hurt.

darkness before the dawn

A most excellent post from Deep Into Artlife West! Well worth the read............

There used to be an amusement park ride called the Mad Mouse. There were bright colored two person mouse cars, someone belted in front and someone belted in back, on a roller coaster-style track, high up, sliding waaay down, the whole experience at breakneck speed. The Apocalypse kind of reminds me of this ride. We paid with our lives and we can't get off once it's started. This ride will jerk you around, take you to the top and dump you on a downhill race to the bottom only to careen sideways into a detour where the track abruptly ends, you back up and then you're gone again, faster, higher, twirling into a downward spiral, slamming into another detour, yanking back suddenly to the main track and so forth. It made a lot of people sick and sometimes pretty angry. I didn't really care for it either and went once to see what all the shouting was about and again, to confirm it was as bad as I remembered.

We are in a little lull right now, while one Apocalyptic disaster unfolds planet wide another is brewing, poised to shrink Fukushima as we exhaust ourselves racing ahead of simultaneous eruptions, i.e.; the crises of corruptions gone wrong, miscalculated, underestimated, excused, weakly justified, but lucrative and layered with complex levels of extreme profit. I am shell shocked, not about anything you would assume, but about the stunning, spectacular, overwhelming stupidity and lack of foresight which has created a world of in your face greeeeeeeeed. The hypocrisy knows no bounds and Iran has a lot of oil.

Who in their right mind celebrates the 150 year anniversary of the Civil War for example? Oh, yes, let's make a parade, bring on the fireworks, let's tear down the drapes and make velvet frocks with corsets laced tightly by our beaten, whipped, raped and Stockholm syndromed human possessions and then let's drink the fruited wines they made us and lie in rows upon the railroad tracks of ancient Terminus, now a gentrified shopping mall turned tourist attraction. A century and a half after the ugly facts, we come to find the same Wetikos hangin' round, still, working the same old stories of hate and paranoia. Its all too much for the love people, I can't imagine how the rest of you are handling the latest developments. I can barely open the plastic box anymore. To visit news sites or hear the pundits screeching in the background between grotesque, high pressure come-ons must be what it is to be insane, all of it mashed together as one long monotonous vision of obsequious fakery. Who do they think they're fooling? The burger set? Maybe as that set gorges its way to the recruitment hooks and perhaps a short half-life is a better life than the life of victims, children, elders, ordinary shack dwellers who never knew the land upon which the dust twists daily is Terminus all over again. At some point, lies backfire bringing on karma, Bring it on. The wait for love people is agonizing because we feel it coming, in spite of the decrees and altruistic covers designed to keep us in rags so our pockets have irreparable holes through which every penny dribbles out as if the single copper cent lying in our tracks is a sign around our necks "Take it, take it all, and take me too." Whenever I check in with the little box, its amazing to see everyone at it still. I ask why? What are you looking for that you don't already know? Perhaps you are looking for something you don't know, something impossible and suddenly, sigh, there it is. Hmmm.

Read the rest here..........

Sunday, April 10, 2011

A Taste Of Summer And The Breath Of God!

What an absolutely wonderful day in the Great Lakes of Michigan!

No thanks to Rick "the nerd" Snyder. But him, and his evil minions are another story for another day!

80 degrees, sunshine, and wind. What a wonder it is to watch God's hand in nature. Puddles of what once was snow, are drying into what will be another fertile field  in which to sow the seeds of my choice!

Last years remnants of crops and various trimmings, have been reduced to a small pile of white ash.

I had sat down to explain the wonder that I felt while watching this take place, but I think words will fail me.

Of all the creatures on earth, we are the only ones that can control fire! We can start it at will, we can control what it burns, we can decide when it has completed it's task. We are the only one's allowed to cook our food, we are the only ones that can provide heat against winter's chill!

What an awesome ability we possess, what an awesome responsibility comes with that power!

I sat on a stump today, watching the fire burn and studying the process! With the proper mix of wind and fuel, the wet brush can be coaxed into a quite a hot fire!

Now, I can provide the fuel ( in a manner of speaking), and I can provide the source of ignition, but the wind.............now that is very visible proof of the power of God! Even my dogs are in awe of the power of wind!

As I sat on my stump, absorbing the day, washing down the last of my pint, I  had a vision of my place in the system!

By the Grace of God, I have been given power over a certain part of my life. The rest, is dependent on the grace and will of The Divine.

In order to maintain the balance that will guide me onward through my life, I must realize what is in my control, and what is controlled by The Divine. If I try to control what is not mine to control, the results will be catastrophic! I need to remember my place in the order of this life.

If only I could put together the  words to explain what I am feeling this day, but alas, it is not meant to be.
My wish is that if there is any wisdom in this writing, that you can find it! If there is any wisdom that you lack, ask the Divine to reveal it to you!

The Creator is more than willing to share, if only you will take the time to listen!

Time is NOT money, time is FREE!

Friday, April 8, 2011

Peace In A Radioactive Wasteland!

Ok.

I'll admit that I may have finally went over the edge!

But then again, maybe not.

With all the certainty of life being removed at such a rapid pace, I'm not sure that my perceptions are all that accurate anymore. It may be that the GM foodstuffs I consume have caused some type of  subtle DNA change in my brain function, it may be the cumulative effects of 50+ years of fluoride ingestion, hell, it may be some kind of electromagnetic jamming by the JPTB causing my synapses to misfire and creating an alternate reality between my ears that only I can enjoy!

Whatever!

There are a few things in my life that I am still completely convinced of that are true.
My days in this life are numbered. They have been since the day I was born.
No matter what I do, I will die at some point and I am completely at peace with that truth! Actually just the knowledge that my days are numbered bring me a great amount of peace. I would really dread having to go through all the crappy stuff going on in this world forever!

Which brings me to the title of today's post.

Gudrun over at Endwell Road,  has a post up today with a video of a tour into the exclusion zone surrounding the Fukushima nuclear facility. You can check it out over at his site or here, I found it quite awesome.

The area shown in the video has a beautiful, yet desolate aura to it. The lack of people and cars and the general hub-bub of daily life is charmingly absent. Cattle are roaming the streets freely, dogs are doing their doggy things without the threats of modern civilization to hinder them. The video shows garden plots that seem to be very healthy, providing a source of food for those in the area. ( If there is anyone still around)

View from an abandoned apartment in Pripyat
This video of the Fukushima area gives me the same feeling that the pictures of Pripyat (Chernobyl) give me.

My soul wells up with a longing to live in an area like that! To have access to shelter, land to grow crops on, no taxes to pay, no government or law enforcement to hassle me about every aspect of my life.
To be able to hunt for my meat without restrictions imposed by government, to have my only job be providing for my day to day needs. This seems like a "heaven on earth" scenario to me.

Woman living in "dead zone" of Chernobyl
Granted, I may have a shorter lifespan living in one of these areas, but the freedom would more than make up for that! I would gladly sit down to a meal of radioactive vegetables (freshly harvested, no chemical fertilizers), freshly killed, albeit radioactive, wild game. Everything in these areas that have been declared as "exclusion zones" seems to be filled with lush vegetation and and a cornucopia of wildlife! All "organically" grown and nurtured without the assistance of man's chemical and biological enhancements.

Here is one of the better collections of photos from the "dead zone" of Pripyat. Note: Image heavy content, may take a few minutes to load the page!

Maybe Ann Coulter's blathering about radiation being good for you have some merit. In doing some research on this matter of radiation, I came across something called the "radiation paradox" the theory of which explains how plant and animal life are able to thrive in relatively high radiation areas.

I just keep wondering if these exclusion zones are being created by the elite, for the elite! Maybe they are setting aside areas that will be untouched by mankind for decades, using scare tactics to keep us huddled in misery in the overcrowded polluted cities they are condemning us to.
These areas will be allowed to return to a clean and organic state so that the "Chosen" and their families will have a place to live in, free from the chemical and genetic poisons they are filling our planet with!

Maybe this radiation scare is just another lie being fed to the masses, piled upon the thousands of other lies we have believed!

Rooms with a view, tax free!
Maybe my desire for freedom has grown stronger than my desire to live without freedom!

Maybe what the Powers That Be want us to be afraid of are the very things that will make us free.

Maybe we should all just stop for a minute, and quit playing our part in this game "They" are pushing on us.

Maybe.



This last link is a MUST READ!


Thursday, April 7, 2011

Why The West Intervened in Libya: Was This A Surprise?

By John Graham

Via Steve Sailer, I learn that prominent French Jew Bernard-Henri Levy is claiming credit for having persuaded President Sarkozy to press successfully for Western intervention in Libya.


In the New York Times story to which Sailer links, By His Own Reckoning, One Man Made Libya a French Cause By Steve Erlanger April 1, 2011, Levy is quoted saying:
“I’m proud of my country, which I haven’t felt for many years.”
In a well-conducted interview by Der Spiegel ”We Lost a Great Deal of Time in Libya Because of the Germans“ 03/30/2011 he reveals his activism stems from
“the moral and spiritual tradition in which I grew up. For me, it’s the definition of Judaism. Being Jewish means having more obligations than rights.”
Although generally described as a “Philosopher” Bernard-Henri Levy appears to be more of a loud-mouthed domineering ideologue of the stripe of Norman Podhoretz. He was actually born in Algeria. Steve Sailer does a perfectly good job of supplying perspective, but The Lies of Bernard-Henri LĂ©vy by Doug Ireland In These Times March 3 2006 is a draught of exquisitely refined vitriol.

Levy has a history of demanding Western military intervention in such places as Bosnia and Darfur. With America’s Neocons clearly quite up to the task of making the Iraq venture happen, he chose to posture against its legality.

Why would President Sarkozy pay any attention to Levy, who said to Der Spiegel
"I am an opponent of Sarkozy and his policies. I did not vote for him and I will not vote for him. But it’s no secret that we know each other well"
and who is obviously an arrogant and conceited hysteric?

While Levy told Der Spiegel

"I told him that there would be a massacre if Gadhafi made it to Benghazi, and that the French flag that had been flying above the Corniche since the previous evening would also be soiled with blood in this massacre. He was very moved by these words. There are emotional moments in which even statesmen react in a very normal and human way."
when we consider who Sarkozy is, we may surmise something other than the French flag moved him.


Sarkozy’s father, who was born and raised in Hungary (where the family were minor — Christian — aristocrats) but emigrated to France, deserted his family in 1959 when his son was 4. His mother was the daughter of a Sephardic Jew from Salonika in Greece who converted to Catholicism on marrying a French Catholic, taking the Christian name Benedict. According to Nicolas Sarkozy, new President of France: Past and Future Ranaan Eliaz European Jewish Press 06/May/2007

Sarkozy’s grandfather, Aron Mallah, nicknamed Benkio, was born in 1890. Beniko’s uncle Moshe was a well-known Rabbi and a devoted Zionist who, in 1898 published and edited “El Avenir”, the leading paper of the Zionist national movement in Greece at the time. His cousin, Asher…was elected as the first President of the Zionist Federation of Greece and he headed the Zionist Council for several years.

Although Benedict integrated fully into French society, he remained close to his Jewish family, origin and culture.…Nicolas was especially close to Benedict, who was like a father to him. In his biography Sarkozy tells he admired his grandfather, and through hours spent of listening to his stories of the Nazi occupation, the “Maquis” (French resistance), De Gaulle and the D-day, Benedict bequeathed to Nicolas his political convictions.

The article opens with a very pro-Zionist quotation by Sarkozy.

Sarkozy’s son married the daughter of a wealthy French Jewish family – and for what it is worth, his second wife remarried to a Moroccan Jew.

So the critical impulse to involve America and the West in yet another Middle Eastern morass came from a Jew and an intense philo-Semite – politically one might even say a crypto-Jew.

Having the West in full scale military collision with the Muslim world – especially in nearby countries – is clearly helpful to Israel.

Few non-Zionists would see any benefit to those countries actually doing the fighting.

When these adventures are proposed, it is imperative to ask not why but who?

Occidental Observer

Tuesday, April 5, 2011

WHO WILL CRY FOR YOU, AMERICA ?

WHO WILL CRY FOR YOU, AMERICA ?

I, will cry you a river

And much much more

My dear dear America,

Once so beautiful !

You sold your soul

To a bunch of mercenaries

Which entered your sheep-fold

As wolves and goats

You sold your skin

To the highest bidder

You resemble a harlot

The new Babylon

Eating and drinking

With the rich of this world

Prostituting yourself

For money and power

And became a den

Of thieves and murderers

You forgot all about

The One Who blessed

You so abundantly

Biting the Hand of the Blesser

Embarrassed to mention His Name !

Did He not teach you

To be wise as a serpent

And harmless as a dove

Why then do you behave

As a silly goose ??

He invited you to His dinner Table

He so diligently prepared

But, you made light of it

And went your worldly, haughty ways

One to his farm,

Another to his business.

But as the Father of Fathers

He waits for your return

The return of His prodigal daughter

WAKE UP, AMERICA !!!

Humble your pride

And follow the Way, the Life and the Truth !!!

Or, I SHALL cry you a river

A river of bloody tears

And much much more !!!


Rita B 02/17/03 Copyrighted

Monday, April 4, 2011

When Pigs Rule

By David Michael Green

OpEdNews.com

 


Imagine you were a pig.


As a pig, you would care about nothing besides getting fat.

If you could get fat by eating the food shares of other animals, you would readily do so.

If you could get fat by eating up your own little piglet children's future, you would do so.

If you could get fat by eating your whole farm into ruin, you'd munch right through it without another thought.

Indeed, if you could get fat by scarfing up so much food that you literally imperiled the entire planet, you would not only do so, but you would criticize and mock those who had the temerity merely to point out the consequences of your actions and thereby interfere with the conquering of your global comestible empire.

For those of you, like me, who too often find themselves aghast at the state of our nation, jaws dropped to the floor in wonder at the astonishing capacity for American self-destruction, befuddled by the acquiescence of the victims of this pillaging, there's your answer: If you can imagine what it would be like to be an amoral, sociopathic, singularly focused, devoted consumption machine -- that is, to be a pig -- then you get it. And then you get our America, too.

I can't tell you how it pains me to write these words.

It pains me in two senses, in fact. First, as a matter of personal character and conduct. I think it's fair to say that the people who know me would report that I am a fairly gentle soul. I don't prefer conflict, I almost never seek it out, and I will even sometimes avoid it when it's stuck in my face -- at least under certain conditions and in the short term. I'm not, that is, the kind of person who feels at all comfortable referring to other people as pigs.

But I do so because I believe emphatically that it needs to be done. I do so because of the second sense of how I am pained -- for my country and for the world. I do so, with regret for having to, and yet with even more regret that we all aren't doing the same thing, and doing it with a fierce urgency. For, is there any question of what has become of us? Is there any question that the pigs now rule?

No, there is not. Indeed, the only serious question is why we are so severely detached from reality that this society is really not even conscious of what has happened in any serious respect. But happened it has.

The top one percent in this country used to, before the regressive onslaught that began with the Reagan election thirty years ago, account for twelve percent of all national income. Today, they pull down more than twice that, 25 percent. They used to control a third of all national wealth. Today they control forty percent. That's just one percent of us, one person out of one hundred.

How could this have happened? Is it possible, for example, that the wealthiest amongst us are working twice as hard as they used to? Is it possible that all the rest of us have grown vastly lazier over the course of this past generation? Yeah, it's possible. Just like it's possible that Newt Gingrich is not a sick sociopath, or that Sarah Palin speaks for Jesus. It's possible, in the technical sense of the term, it's just -- how can one say this gently? -- um, not real, real probable.

What is far more likely -- and, indeed, what is precisely the case -- is that the rich bought off lawmakers to make laws that favored their interests. At precisely the same time that the rich got infinitely richer and the rest of us got steadily poorer, darned if a whole boatload of regressive-backed public policies didn't change in exactly the way that would lead to just that outcome. Tax burdens have been shifted from rich to poor. Services provided by the government have been slashed. Trade policies that undermine the bargaining power of American workers have been adopted. Labor relations policies have decimated unions, such that where a third of workers used to be represented by organized labor, now about seven percent are. Privatization has given away publicly-owned assets. The well-connected have written into law gigantic subsidies, creating corporate welfare on a massive scale. Wars based on lies have enriched the few while saddling the rest of us with trillions of dollars in debt. Deregulation followed by taxpayer-financed bailouts have allowed any plugged-in economic actor to do just about anything, including crash the global economy in the raw pursuit of unfathomable greed, and never pay a penalty for their actions.

If you were asked to predict, thirty years ago, just what the adoption of such policies would produce, the American political economy of 2011 is exactly what you would have predicted. It's a complete no-brainer. Anyone could guess the effect from this cause. Throw a rock at a window. Toss a match on gasoline. Adopt these policies. You know what will happen.

People can think, if they want, that it's all a random coincidence that all these policy changes just happened to happen at exactly the same time the rich were growing vastly richer and the rest of us have been struggling. I'm sure many do think that way, and that is precisely why so many fools also play their state lottos. But that don't make it so.

Incomes for the top one percent have risen 18 percent over the last decade, while for all the rest of us, they've been falling. The United States today has a Gini coefficient -- the standard measure of national income inequality, where zero is perfectly equal and 100 is perfectly unequal -- clocking in at 40.8. That means we're tied with Turkmenistan and Ghana when it comes to the inequality of the distribution of wealth in America. I'm not sh*tting you about this. These are real numbers. The good news is that we came in (just slightly) ahead of Senegal and Cambodia. Whew! There's a relief! We wouldn't want to be like some sort of banana republic or anything, would we? The bad news? There is less income inequality today in Mali, Malawi and Burkina Faso than in the good old US of A. Oh, and about 70 other countries in the world (out of about 195 or so, total), too. How's that for your American exceptionalism, eh pal?!

I don't know if the rich are working twice as much as than they used to (just a wild hunch, but I suspect not), but what I do know is that the non-rich are working a lot more than they used to. It takes two incomes today to support a middle class family that could be supported by one back when "Leave It To Beaver" was on the air. And many people are working more than forty hours a week -- indeed, a lot of people, working a lot more hours -- in an increasingly desperate attempt to stay one step ahead of their creditors, one step ahead of medical insolvency, one step ahead of (the new, draconian) bankruptcy laws, one step ahead of foreclosure, one step ahead of eviction, one step ahead of living out of their cars, presuming they're lucky enough to be one step ahead of repossession, and one step ahead of all the damage these horrible strains do to marriages and families.

In short, there is a massive, protracted, patent crime taking place, right before our eyes. It's the crime of the millennium, a crime that literally produces death and destruction on a grand scale, a crime with victims beyond count.

And no one in our political class is talking about it.

Certainly not the worst offenders on the right. We'd be shocked were that otherwise. Indeed, almost all of what defines them as the worst offenders on the right is precisely this issue. Don't kid yourself, brother. John Boehner doesn't give a sh*t about aborted fetuses. Dick "Dick" Cheney couldn't care less about WMD. George W. Bush is no more a genuine Christian than I am, and I assure you that's the last thing I am. No. It's all about the freakin' money, man.

But neither are the so-called liberals of the Democratic Party talking about this issue, nor our socialist president, who, according to Rush "Dick" Limbauchery and Glenn "Dick" Pecker, et al., is reportedly seeking to sneak up on poor unsuspecting America, in a foreigner sort of way, and drive it into the ruin that has befallen Western Europe. (Don't worry that you can't actually see that ruin in actual Western European places like Germany or France or Sweden. Our friends on the right are glad to assure us that it's there -- it's just cleverly hiding under the peace, prosperity, extended longevity, world-class healthcare, and humane standards of living people have long enjoyed in these countries.)

No one in our political class is saying these things. You almost literally have to resort to comics like Bill Maher and Jon Stewart to hear this most urgent and fundamental critique. And, really, how screwed is your country when only the comedians tell the truth?

I am willing to use ugly words and to name names, not because I want to -- far from it -- but because I am sickened by the fact and the scale of this crime. The wonder is not that jerks like me are throwing around inflammatory terms. The wonder is that lots more people aren't doing so. But the real wonder is that we've stood by, and continue to do so -- watching this crime unfold, watching it crush our friends, family and neighbors, watching it harm us and our children personally, watching it produce the first generation of Americans to be worse off than their parents. And there we are just staring in silence.

Silence is far too generous a label of contempt to apply to the Democratic Party. We are well past the point of acknowledging their complete complicity in the crime. Hardly anyone noticed in the 1990s, when New Democrats (a euphemism for old Republicans) stopped talking about the plight of the poor, even before Bill Clinton finished the job by killing welfare, reaching into the mouths of America's impoverished and removing the food that was once there, all for purposes of guaranteeing his second term as president (and, boy wasn't it worth it, too -- look at all he achieved!). If you weren't alive in the 1960s and 70s, you might never have realized that there was once a party in America that was rather seriously devoted to fighting a war against poverty. By the 1990s the poor became an embarrassment, and among slick New Democrats in Washington only gauche political retreads continued to remind us of their existence and plight, becoming every bit as welcome among the elites as Grandpa's incessant flatulence at a formal dinner party.

Ah, but that was the golden age, when only the poor were forgotten about. And who cares about them, anyhow? Nowadays we're not noticing as "the party of the people' gives the same treatment to the middle class as well. I'm sorry, have I fallen through the looking glass, or are we not in the middle of an economic crisis of vast proportions? And where is the Democratic Party's program for creating jobs? It would too generous to say that it is nowhere. More accurately, it just isn't. The reason that you don't know what the president's plan to create jobs in America is, isn't because you're ignorant. It's because he doesn't have one. And no one seems to care or notice.

Instead, as usual, as is the case in all political "debates' these days, the question is not will Republicans win on this issue, but rather merely by how much. Even that is not really the question, however, since that formulation presumes that Democrats are actually fighting Republicans, and since it conveniently omits mention of the fact that all such "debates' always happen on Republican (more accurately, Republican/Democratic) turf. Our whores in Washington are not, for example, fighting right now over whether we should spend money to create jobs, versus slashing spending to reduce the deficit. No, rather, they are simply disagreeing over how much social spending should be slashed. The real ideological war over policy was lost before it was ever even engaged, because that's precisely what Democrats do nowadays.

Since 1980 (or perhaps 1972), they retreat, they deceive, and they sell out their constituents. That is the case in almost every policy domain, from Middle East foreign policy to global warming to civil liberties to health care. If that latter claim sounds ridiculous, remember that Barack Obama's much derided health care plan was essentially the same one proposed by Bob Dole in 1996, and virtually the same one implemented by Ken Doll "Dick" Romney in Massachusetts just a few years back. And remember that the president began the process by cutting a secret deal behind closed doors with the insurance and pharmaceutical industries. And remember that that deal called for them to profit massively, for the president to renounce single payer, and for him to lie outright (as was documented by his pal, Tom Daschle) to his liberal base, pretending to favor a public option while actually scuttling it from the get-go.

And so our political class today is comprised of two types: vicious predatory marionettes, on the one hand, and vicious predatory marionettes who smile a bit more than the first batch, on the other. Really, increasingly, you can hardly tell the difference. New York is one of the bluest states to be found in the country. It has a Democratic governor. He is the son of a former Democratic governor, a man who could well have been president had he run, and one of the outstanding liberal figures of the twentieth century. And yet this governor is running a program that might make Ronald Reagan blush, for all its ugly draconian regressivism. The state has a fiscal problem. He is solving it by slashing funding to education and health care, and laying off state employees. He refuses to raise taxes. The wealthy in New York will actually be getting a tax cut next year under the terms of Governor Cuomo's new budget.

Then there's Barack Obama, the man hated by the right for his evil socialist policies. Newsweek magazine -- not exactly widely known for its Trotskyist political commitments, is currently running an article entitled thusly: "Obama's War on Schools: The No Child Left Behind Act has been deadly to public education. So why has the president embraced it?" I dunno, Newsweek. Because Bush was a socialist too, maybe?

You could ask the same question, however, about Afghanistan, Iraq, defense spending, GuantĂ¡namo and civil liberties, tax policy, health care (yes, health care), global warming, government spending, Wall Street bailouts, and really just about anything government does. Like just about every other Democrat running around these days, Obama is almost entirely as regressive as the monsters of the Republican Party. There's the answer to your question, Newsweek. It's about time that you figured out what the rest of us have learned the hard way over the last two years: that, policy-wise, Barack Obama is George W. Bush.

The reduction of the American voter's choices down to two options -- catastrophic or catastrophic with nice words -- has very real consequences. This game is played for keeps. People are not making it anymore. The middle class has been shrinking for three decades. Foreclosures are off the charts. People are literally dying from lack of health care. Children are literally dying from lack of health care. And every day, we in the richest polity that ever existed on the planet not only fail to address those crimes, we exacerbate them with the actions of the Walkers and Christies and Cuomos and Obamas of this country. It's no longer a question of whether we'll adopt the destructive policies of the regressive oligarchy, merely a question of how fast we do it.

A recent report entitled "The Basic Economic Security Tables for the United States" finds, according to the New York Times, that a single worker (no partner, no dependents) "needs an income of $30,012 a year -- or just above $14 an hour -- to cover basic expenses and save for retirement and emergencies. That is close to three times the 2010 national poverty level of $10,830 for a single person, and nearly twice the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour. ... [But] The most recent data from the Census Bureau found that 14.3 percent of Americans were living below the poverty line in 2009." Imagine how many were living below the real minimum threshold three times higher than the official poverty level.

Fortunately, however, there is still some good news out there. The number of billionaires in the world grew by 199 in the past year, according to Forbes magazine's annual survey. Now there are 1,210 of them. And they possess a combined wealth of $4.5 trillion. Awesome, dude! The even better news is that that figure is up from $3.6 trillion -- a mere 25 percent growth -- in just one year's time. And what a year, too! Who says there's a massive, devastating, killer recession going on? Sounds to me like it's nothing more than a boatload of whining from a bunch of lazy, low-achiever, can't-cut-it, non-billionaires!

What amazes me the most about this disaster is that it is the biggest single political story of our era, and simultaneously the tiniest. Of course, that's not a coincidence either. You hardly want the media or social critics covering you when you're in the midst of committing the crime of the millennium. We have witnessed what is undoubtedly the greatest redistribution of wealth in all of human history. As importantly, the public face taken for the process facilitating this mass rape has been a lie. Oligarchs didn't tell us they were buying our politicians in order to take our money. They told us instead that "free" trade is good, but that unions, queers and Middle Eastern bogeymen are bad. Very bad. They told us they were lowering our taxes, when in fact they were simply transferring their tax burden onto us and onto our children. They're telling us now that it is fiscally irresponsible to properly fund public education, health care and pensions, yet humongous corporate subsidies and a military the size of the entire rest of the world combined are completely necessary.

You don't dare call them out on it, either. If you mention any of this, you get accused of engaging in class warfare. Even though, as Warren Buffett has pointed out, that war is already over, and his side won. And even though such an accusation is tantamount to accusing Martin Luther King of having engaged in race warfare for pointing out the perfectly obvious moral crimes that whites had long been committing against blacks, with the full blessing of the law, no less.

Telling the truth is the worst crime you can commit, as an incident in New Hampshire this week well proves. The Catholic church has, by all appearances, been little short of a rape factory for decades if not centuries now, and yet conservatives can hardly run fast enough to defend it against the slightest attempt by its victims to gain some meager measure of justice in compensation for the damage done to them. They'll defend it, that is, unless anyone in the church should make the foolish mistake of speaking truthfully about the effects of regressive policymaking upon the poor and downtrodden. Bishop John McCormack did just that with respect to draconian Republican-proposed state budget cuts in New Hampshire. That caused D.J. Bettencourt, the House Majority Leader there, to call the good bishop a "pedophile pimp".

Which is probably precisely what he is, but just the same -- wow. In case you were wondering what's really sacred amongst regressives, now you know, pal. Ca-ching, ca-ching.

We must face it. These are the pigs in our society, and they are doing what pigs do. They grow fatter each day, and they do so by nothing less than removing food from the mouths of babes and stuffing it into their own, even though it can hardly fit there anymore, so overflowingly full have those orifices and bellies become.

This is a crime against humanity, and it will not end.

Until we end it.

Saturday, April 2, 2011

Scroogled

( This short story is from the October 2007 issue of Radar magazine. )




Scroogled
by Cory Doctorow



"Give me six lines written by the most honorable of men, and I

will find an excuse in them to hang him." —Cardinal Richelieu

"We don't know enough about you." —Google CEO Eric Schmidt



Greg landed at San Francisco International Airport at 8 p.m., but by the time he'd made it to the front of the customs line, it was after midnight. He'd emerged from first class, brown as a nut, unshaven, and loose-limbed after a month on the beach in Cabo (scuba diving three days a week, seducing French college girls the rest of the time). When he'd left the city a month before, he'd been a stoop-shouldered, potbellied wreck. Now he was a bronze god, drawing admiring glances from the stews at the front of the cabin.

Four hours later in the customs line, he'd slid from god back to man. His slight buzz had worn off, sweat ran down the crack of his ass, and his shoulders and neck were so tense his upper back felt like a tennis racket. The batteries on his iPod had long since died, leaving him with nothing to do except eavesdrop on the middle-age couple ahead of him.

"The marvels of modern technology," said the woman, shrugging at a nearby sign: Immigration — Powered by Google.

"I thought that didn't start until next month?" The man was alternately wearing and holding a large sombrero.

Googling at the border. Christ. Greg had vested out of Google six months before, cashing in his options and "taking some me time" — which turned out to be less rewarding than he'd expected. What he mostly did over the five months that followed was fix his friends' PCs, watch daytime TV, and gain 10 pounds, which he blamed on being at home instead of in the Googleplex, with its well-appointed 24-hour gym.

He should have seen it coming, of course. The U.S. government had lavished $15 billion on a program to fingerprint and photograph visitors at the border, and hadn't caught a single terrorist. Clearly, the public sector was not equipped to Do Search Right.

The DHS officer had bags under his eyes and squinted at his screen, prodding at his keyboard with sausage fingers. No wonder it was taking four hours to get out of the god damned airport.

"Evening," Greg said, handing the man his sweaty passport. The officer grunted and swiped it, then stared at his screen, tapping. A lot. He had a little bit of dried food at the corner of his mouth and his tongue crept out and licked at it.

"Want to tell me about June 1998?"

Greg looked up from his Departures. "I'm sorry?"

"You posted a message to alt.burningman on June 17, 1998, about your plan to attend a festival. You asked, 'Are shrooms really such a bad idea?'"

The interrogator in the secondary screening room was an older man, so skinny he looked like he'd been carved out of wood. His questions went a lot deeper than shrooms.

"Tell me about your hobbies. Are you into model rocketry?"

"What?"

"Model rocketry."

"No," Greg said, "No, I'm not." He sensed where this was going.

The man made a note, did some clicking. "You see, I ask because I see a heavy spike in ads for rocketry supplies showing up alongside your search results and Google mail."

Greg felt a spasm in his guts. "You're looking at my searches and e-mail?" He hadn't touched a keyboard in a month, but he knew what he put into that search bar was likely more revealing than what he told his shrink.

"Sir, calm down, please. No, I'm not looking at your searches," the man said in a mocking whine. "That would be unconstitutional. We see only the ads that show up when you read your mail and do your searching. I have a brochure explaining it. I'll give it to you when we're through here."

"But the ads don't mean anything," Greg sputtered. "I get ads for Ann Coulter ring tones whenever I get e-mail from my friend in Coulter, Iowa!"

The man nodded. "I understand, sir. And that's just why I'm here talking to you. Why do you suppose model rocket ads show up so frequently?"

Greg racked his brain. "Okay, just do this. Search for 'coffee fanatics.'" He'd been very active in the group, helping them build out the site for their coffee-of-the-month subscription service. The blend they were going to launch with was called Jet Fuel. "Jet Fuel" and "Launch" — that would probably make Google barf up some model rocket ads.

They were in the home stretch when the carved man found the Halloween photos. They were buried three screens deep in the search results for "Greg Lupinski."

"It was a Gulf War-themed party," he said. "In the Castro."

"And you're dressed as...?"

"A suicide bomber," he replied sheepishly. Just saying the words made him wince.

"Come with me, Mr. Lupinski," the man said.

By the time he was released, it was past 3 a.m. His suitcases stood forlornly by the baggage carousel. He picked them up and saw they had been opened and carelessly closed. Clothes stuck out from around the edges.

When he returned home, he discovered that all of his fake pre-Columbian statues had been broken, and his brand-new white cotton Mexican shirt had an ominous boot print in the middle of it. His clothes no longer smelled of Mexico. They smelled like airport.

He wasn't going to sleep. No way. He needed to talk about this. There was only one person who would get it. Luckily, she was usually awake around this hour.

Maya had started working at Google two years after Greg had. It was she who'd convinced him to go to Mexico after he cashed out: Anywhere, she'd said, that he could reboot his existence.

Maya had two giant chocolate labs and a very, very patient girlfriend named Laurie who'd put up with anything except being dragged around Dolores Park at 6 a.m. by 350 pounds of drooling canine.

Maya reached for her Mace as Greg jogged toward her, then did a double take and threw her arms open, dropping the leashes and trapping them under her sneaker. "Where's the rest of you? Dude, you look hot!"

He hugged her back, suddenly conscious of the way he smelled after a night of invasive Googling. "Maya," he said, "what do you know about Google and the DHS?"

She stiffened as soon as he asked the question. One of the dogs began to whine. She looked around, then nodded up at the tennis courts. "Top of the light pole there; don't look," she said. "That's one of our muni WiFi access points. Wide-angle webcam. Face away from it when you talk."

In the grand scheme of things, it hadn't cost Google much to wire the city with webcams. Especially when measured against the ability to serve ads to people based on where they were sitting. Greg hadn't paid much attention when the cameras on all those access points went public — there'd been a day's worth of blogstorm while people played with the new all-seeing toy, zooming in on various prostitute cruising areas, but after a while the excitement blew over.

Feeling silly, Greg mumbled, "You're joking."

"Come with me," she said, turning away from the pole.

The dogs weren't happy about cutting their walk short, and expressed their displeasure in the kitchen as Maya made coffee.

"We brokered a compromise with the DHS," she said, reaching for the milk. "They agreed to stop fishing through our search records, and we agreed to let them see what ads got displayed for users."

Greg felt sick. "Why? Don't tell me Yahoo was doing it already..."

"No, no. Well, yes. Sure. Yahoo was doing it. But that wasn't the reason Google went along. You know, Republicans hate Google. We're overwhelmingly registered Democratic, so we're doing what we can to make peace with them before they clobber us. This isn't P.I.I." — Personally Identifying Information, the toxic smog of the information age — "It's just metadata. So it's only slightly evil."

"Why all the intrigue, then?"

Maya sighed and hugged the lab that was butting her knee with its huge head. "The spooks are like lice. They get everywhere. They show up at our meetings. It's like being in some Soviet ministry. And the security clearance — we're divided into these two camps: the cleared and the suspect. We all know who isn't cleared, but no one knows why. I'm cleared. Lucky for me, being a dyke no longer disqualifies you. No cleared person would deign to eat lunch with an unclearable."

Greg felt very tired. "So I guess I'm lucky I got out of the airport alive. I might have ended up 'disappeared' if it had gone badly, huh?"

Maya stared at him intently. He waited for an answer.

"What?"

"I'm about to tell you something, but you can't ever repeat it, okay?"

"Um...you're not in a terrorist cell, are you?

"Nothing so simple. Here's the deal: Airport DHS scrutiny is a gating function. It lets the spooks narrow down their search criteria. Once you get pulled aside for secondary at the border, you become a 'person of interest' — and they never, ever let up. They'll scan webcams for your face and gait. Read your mail. Monitor your searches."

"I thought you said the courts wouldn't let them..."

"The courts won't let them indiscriminately Google you. But after you're in the system, it becomes a selective search. All legal. And once they start Googling you, they always find something. All your data is fed into a big hopper that checks for 'suspicious patterns,' using deviation from statistical norms to nail you."

Greg felt like he was going to throw up. "How the hell did this happen? Google was a good place. 'Don't be evil,' right?" That was the corporate motto, and for Greg, it had been a huge part of why he'd taken his computer science Ph.D. from Stanford directly to Mountain View.

Maya replied with a hard-edged laugh. "Don't be evil? Come on, Greg. Our lobbying group is that same bunch of crypto-fascists that tried to Swift-Boat Kerry. We popped our evil cherry a long time ago."

They were quiet for a minute.

"It started in China," she went on, finally. "Once we moved our servers onto the mainland, they went under Chinese jurisdiction."

Greg sighed. He knew Google's reach all too well: Every time you visited a page with Google ads on it, or used Google maps or Google mail — even if you sent mail to a Gmail account — the company diligently collected your info. Recently, the site's search-optimization software had begun using the data to tailor Web searches to individual users. It proved to be a revolutionary tool for advertisers. An authoritarian government would have other purposes in mind.

"They were using us to build profiles of people," she went on. "When they had someone they wanted to arrest, they'd come to us and find a reason to bust them. There's hardly anything you can do on the Net that isn't illegal in China."

Greg shook his head. "Why did they have to put the servers in China?"

"The government said they'd block us otherwise. And Yahoo was there." They both made faces. Somewhere along the way, employees at Google had become obsessed with Yahoo, more concerned with what the competition was doing than how their own company was performing. "So we did it. But a lot of us didn't like the idea."

Maya sipped her coffee and lowered her voice. One of her dogs sniffed insistently under Greg's chair.

"Almost immediately, the Chinese asked us to start censoring search results," Maya said. "Google agreed. The company line was hilarious: 'We're not doing evil — we're giving consumers access to a better search tool! If we showed them search results they couldn't get to, that would just frustrate them. It would be a bad user experience.'"

"Now what?" Greg pushed a dog away from him. Maya looked hurt.

"Now you're a person of interest, Greg.

You're Googlestalked. Now you live your life with someone constantly looking over your shoulder. You know the mission statement, right? 'Organize the World's Information.' Everything. Give it five years, we'll know how many turds were in the bowl before you flushed. Combine that with automated suspicion of anyone who matches a statistical picture of a bad guy and you're — "

"Scroogled."

"Totally." She nodded.

Maya took both labs down the hall to the bedroom. He heard a muffled argument with her girlfriend, and she came back alone.

"I can fix this," she said in an urgent whisper. "After the Chinese started rounding up people, my podmates and I made it our 20 percent project to fuck with them." (Among Google's business innovations was a rule that required every employee to devote 20 percent of his or her time to high-minded pet projects.) "We call it the Googlecleaner. It goes deep into the database and statistically normalizes you. Your searches, your Gmail histograms, your browsing patterns. All of it. Greg, I can Googleclean you. It's the only way."

"I don't want you to get into trouble."

She shook her head. "I'm already doomed. Every day since I built the damn thing has been borrowed time — now it's just a matter of waiting for someone to point out my expertise and history to the DHS and, oh, I don't know. Whatever it is they do to people like me in the war on abstract nouns."

Greg remembered the airport. The search. His shirt, the boot print in the middle of it.

"Do it," he said.

The Googlecleaner worked wonders. Greg could tell by the ads that popped up alongside his searches, ads clearly meant for someone else: Intelligent Design Facts, Online Seminary Degree, Terror Free Tomorrow, Porn Blocker Software, the Homosexual Agenda, Cheap Toby Keith Tickets. This was Maya's program at work. Clearly Google's new personalized search had him pegged as someone else entirely, a God-fearing right winger with a thing for hat acts.

Which was fine by him.

Then he clicked on his address book, and found that half of his contacts were missing. His Gmail in-box was hollowed out like a termite-ridden stump. His Orkut profile, normalized. His calendar, family photos, bookmarks: all empty. He hadn't quite realized before how much of him had migrated onto the Web and worked its way into Google's server farms — his entire online identity. Maya had scrubbed him to a high gloss; he'd become the invisible man.

Greg sleepily mashed the keys on the laptop next to his bed, bringing the screen to life. He squinted at the flashing toolbar clock: 4:13 a.m.! Christ, who was pounding on his door at this hour?

He shouted, "Coming!" in a muzzy voice and pulled on a robe and slippers. He shuffled down the hallway, turning on lights as he went. At the door, he squinted through the peephole to find Maya staring glumly back at him.

He undid the chains and dead bolt and yanked the door open. Maya rushed in past him, followed by the dogs and her girlfriend.

She was sheened in sweat, her usually combed hair clinging in clumps to her forehead. She rubbed at her eyes, which were red and lined.

"Pack a bag," she croaked hoarsely.

"What?"

She took him by the shoulders. "Do it," she said.

"Where do you want to...?"

"Mexico, probably. Don't know yet. Pack, dammit." She pushed past him into his bedroom and started yanking open drawers.

"Maya," he said sharply, "I'm not going anywhere until you tell me what's going on."

She glared at him and pushed her hair away from her face. "The Googlecleaner lives. After I cleaned you, I shut it down and walked away. It was too dangerous to use anymore. But it's still set to send me e-mail confirmations whenever it runs. Someone's used it six times to scrub three very specific accounts — all of which happen to belong to members of the Senate Commerce Committee up for reelection."

"Googlers are blackwashing senators?"

"Not Googlers. This is coming from off-site. The IP block is registered in D.C. And the IPs are all used by Gmail users. Guess who the accounts belong to?"

"You spied on Gmail accounts?"

"Okay. Yes. I did look through their e-mail. Everyone does it, now and again, and for a lot worse reasons than I did. But check it out — turns out all this activity is being directed by our lobbying firm. Just doing their job, defending the company's interests."

Greg felt his pulse beating in his temples. "We should tell someone."

"It won't do any good. They know everything about us. They can see every search. Every e-mail. Every time we've been caught on the webcams. Who is in our social network...did you know if you have 15 Orkut buddies, it's statistically certain that you're no more than three steps to someone who's contributed money to a 'terrorist' cause? Remember the airport? You'll be in for a lot more of that."

"Maya," Greg said, getting his bearings. "Isn't heading to Mexico overreacting? Just quit. We can do a start-up or something. This is crazy."

"They came to see me today," she said. "Two of the political officers from DHS. They didn't leave for hours. And they asked me a lot of very heavy questions."

"About the Googlecleaner?"

"About my friends and family. My search history. My personal history."

"Jesus."

"They were sending a message to me. They're watching every click and every search. It's time to go. Time to get out of range."

"There's a Google office in Mexico, you know."

"We've got to go," she said, firmly.

"Laurie, what do you think of this?" Greg asked.

Laurie thumped the dogs between the shoulders. "My parents left East Germany in '65. They used to tell me about the Stasi. The secret police would put everything about you in your file, if you told an unpatriotic joke, whatever. Whether they meant it or not, what Google has created is no different."

"Greg, are you coming?"

He looked at the dogs and shook his head. "I've got some pesos left over," he said. "You take them. Be careful, okay?"

Maya looked like she was going to slug him. Softening, she gave him a ferocious hug.

"Be careful, yourself," she whispered in his ear.

They came for him a week later. At home, in the middle of the night, just as he'd imagined they would.

Two men arrived on his doorstep shortly after 2 a.m. One stood silently by the door. The other was a smiler, short and rumpled, in a sport coat with a stain on one lapel and a American flag on the other. "Greg Lupinski, we have reason to believe you're in violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act," he said, by way of introduction. "Specifically, exceeding authorized access, and by means of such conduct having obtained information. Ten years for a first offense. Turns out that what you and your friend did to your Google records qualifies as a felony. And oh, what will come out in the trial...all the stuff you whitewashed out of your profile, for starters."

Greg had played this scene in his head for a week. He'd planned all kinds of brave things to say. It had given him something to do while he waited to hear from Maya. She never called.

"I'd like to get in touch with a lawyer," is all he mustered.

"You can do that," the small man said. "But maybe we can come to a better arrangement."

Greg found his voice. "I'd like to see your badge," he stammered.

The man's basset-hound face lit up as he let out a bemused chuckle. "Buddy, I'm not a cop," he replied. "I'm a consultant. Google hired me — my firm represents their interests in Washington — to build relationships. Of course, we wouldn't get the police involved without talking to you first. You're part of the family. Actually, there's an offer I'd like to make."

Greg turned to the coffeemaker, dumped the old filter.

"I'll go to the press," he said.

The man nodded as if thinking it over. "Well, sure. You could walk into the Chronicle's office in the morning and spill everything. They'd look for a confirming source. They won't find one. And when they try searching for it, we'll find them. So, buddy, why don't you hear me out, okay? I'm in the win-win business. I'm very good at it." He paused. "By the way, those are excellent beans, but you want to give them a little rinse first? Takes some of the bitterness out and brings up the oils. Here, pass me a colander?"

Greg watched as the man silently took off his jacket and hung it over a kitchen chair, then undid his cuffs and carefully rolled them up, slipping a cheap digital watch into his pocket. He poured the beans out of the grinder and into Greg's colander, and rinsed them in the sink.

He was a little pudgy and very pale, with the social grace of an electrical engineer. He seemed like a real Googler, actually, obsessed with the minutiae. He knew his way around a coffee grinder, too.

"We're drafting a team for Building 49..."

"There is no Building 49," Greg said automatically.

"Of course," the guy said, flashing a tight smile. "There's no Building 49. But we're putting together a team to revamp the Googlecleaner. Maya's code wasn't very efficient, you know. It's full of bugs. We need an upgrade. You'd be the right guy, and it wouldn't matter what you knew if you were back inside."

"Unbelievable," Greg said, laughing. "If you think I'm going to help you smear political candidates in exchange for favors, you're crazier than I thought."

"Greg," the man said, "we're not smearing anyone. We're just going to clean things up a bit. For some select people. You know what I mean? Everyone's Google profile is a little scary under close inspection. Close inspection is the order of the day in politics. Standing for office is like a public colonoscopy." He loaded the cafetière and depressed the plunger, his face screwed up in solemn concentration. Greg retrieved two coffee cups — Google mugs, of course — and passed them over.

"We're going to do for our friends what Maya did for you. Just a little cleanup. All we want to do is preserve their privacy. That's all."

Greg sipped his coffee. "What happens to the candidates you don't clean?"

"Yeah," the guy said, flashing Greg a weak grin. "Yeah, you're right. It'll be kind of tough for them." He searched the inside pocket of his jacket and produced several folded sheets of paper.

He smoothed out the pages and put them on the table. "Here's one of the good guys who needs our help." It was a printout of a search history belonging to a candidate whose campaign Greg had contributed to in the past three elections.

"Fella gets back to his hotel room after a brutal day of campaigning door to door, fires up his laptop, and types 'hot asses' into his search bar. Big deal, right? The way we see it, for that to disqualify a good man from continuing to serve his country is just un-American."

Greg nodded slowly.

"So you'll help the guy out?" the man asked.

"Yes."

"Good. There's one more thing. We need you to help us find Maya. She didn't understand our goals at all, and now she seems to have flown the coop. Once she hears us out, I have no doubt she'll come around."

He glanced at the candidate's search history.

"I guess she might," Greg replied.

The new Congress took 11 working days to pass the Securing and Enumerating America's Communications and Hypertext Act, which authorized the DHS and NSA to outsource up to 80 percent of intelligence and analysis work to private contractors. Theoretically, the contracts were open to competitive bidding, but within the secure confines of Google's Building 49, there was no question of who would win. If Google had spent $15 billion on a program to catch bad guys at the border, you can bet they would have caught them — governments just aren't equipped to Do Search Right.

The next morning Greg scrutinized himself carefully as he shaved (the security minders didn't like hacker stubble and weren't shy about telling him so), realizing that today was his first day as a de facto intelligence agent for the U.S. government. How bad would it be? Wasn't it better to have Google doing this stuff than some ham-fisted DHS desk jockey?

By the time he parked at the Googleplex, among the hybrid cars and bulging bike racks, he had convinced himself. He was mulling over which organic smoothie to order at the canteen when his key card failed to open the door to Building 49. The red LED flashed dumbly every time he swiped his card. Any other building, and there'd be someone to tailgate on, people trickling in and out all day. But the Googlers in 49 only emerged for meals, and sometimes not even that.

Swipe, swipe, swipe. Suddenly he heard a voice at his side.

"Greg, can I see you, please?"

The rumpled man put an arm around his shoulders, and Greg smelled his citrusy aftershave. It smelled like what his divemaster in Baja had worn when they went out to the bars in the evening. Greg couldn't remember his name. Juan Carlos? Juan Luis?

The man's arm around his shoulders was firm, steering him away from the door, out onto the immaculate lawn, past the herb garden outside the kitchen. "We're giving you a couple of days off," he said.

Greg felt a sudden stab of anxiety. "Why?" Had he done something wrong? Was he going to jail?

"It's Maya." The man turned him around, met his eyes with his bottomless gaze. "She killed herself. In Guatemala. I'm sorry, Greg."

Greg seemed to hurtle away, to a place miles above, a Google Earth view of the Googleplex, where he looked down on himself and the rumpled man as a pair of dots, two pixels, tiny and insignificant. He willed himself to tear at his hair, to drop to his knees and weep.

From a long way away, he heard himself say, "I don't need any time off. I'm okay."

From a long way away, he heard the rumpled man insist.

The argument persisted for a long time, and then the two pixels moved into Building 49, and the door swung shut behind them.

Avops Note: In case you haven't tried the search engine "Scroogle" , they are a proxy server that bypasses Googles cookies and tracking software! Give them a try! Follow the simple instructions here... http://scroogle.org/
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