So … I was just sitting here at my computer, in this second month (already!) of the new year, wondering how many of you happened to catch my prime-time television debut? It wasn’t network television, of course, but merely basic cable, and I only had a couple seconds of actual screen time, but even so, it was kind of a big event here in the McGowan household – or at least it would have been if I had been notified ahead of time that the damn thing was going to air.

For the record, on a Saturday evening (I’ve forgotten which one) in late December, at a few minutes before 10:00 PM, the Discovery Channel aired a short film trailer (of sorts) for one of Hollywood’s recent blockbuster flicks, “National Treasure: Book of Secrets.” In that trailer, some clearly delusional ‘conspiracy theorist’ can be seen and heard offering cryptic remarks on John Wilkes Booth and the Lincoln assassination. That kook, as it turns out, was none other than your favorite Internet scribe.

Needless to say, you are all now undoubtedly kicking yourselves in the ass for missing out on this unprecedented event. And since I feel sorry for all of you – and since I am, after all, a giver – I’m going to give each and every one of you the opportunity to relive this incredible experience. All you have to do is navigate your way to the movie’s official website (at http://disney.go.com/disneypictures/nationaltreasure/), and then click on “Enter Site.” Once the page has loaded, click on “Features” and then scroll down to the first entry, “Missing 18 Pages.”

If you watch the short video clip very closely, you will notice several things:

1. I am, as it turns out, a real flesh-and-blood person and not just some ethereal Internet presence, as some have suggested.

2. Although my site has been inactive for a good many months now, I appear to be very much alive and well.

3. I will probably never be able to earn a decent living doing voice-over work in Hollywood.

4. I should probably stop getting my hair cut at Supercuts.

And how, I can hear you wondering aloud, did Dave McGowan, of all people, end up in a promotional clip for a major Hollywood film? I’m not really sure myself, but as best I can remember, it went something like this: a production company hired by Disney to put together documentary material that could be used to help promote the film was trolling about for ‘conspiracy theorists’ when they stumbled upon one Robert Sterling, the former editor of the now-cobwebbed Konformist.com website. Due to the fact that Mr. Sterling no longer resides in the Los Angeles area, where the interviews were to be conducted, he had to decline the interview request that he received, but in doing so, he provided the filmmakers with a short list of local cranks and crackpots that they might want to talk to. My name, alas, was on that list.

The production company promptly contacted me via e-mail to see if I might be interested in coming in to talk with them about various ‘conspiracy theories.’ And since I tend to spend a good deal of time talking about such things anyway, usually to people who would rather be doing almost anything else, including watching an entire episode of “Dance War: Bruno vs. Carrie Ann,” I wrote back that I would most definitely be interested. And they, in turn, wrote back to provide me with a time and place to report for duty, so to speak.

Having never met or even spoken with these people, and lacking any clear idea of what it was that they wanted to talk about, I showed up at their production offices in North Hollywood (city motto: “we’re not just about porn anymore”) expecting nothing more than a brief preliminary interview that would determine if I was the kind of guy that they were looking for. Instead, they put me in front of their camera and interviewed me on tape for something like 80 minutes. But that was only after I spent the better part of the day loitering around their offices while enjoying a delicious catered lunch, listening in on two other interviews, slipping out for frequent smoke breaks, and sharing occasional eye-rolls and hushed chuckles with what I believe is called in Hollywood a “PA,” or production assistant.

As it turned out, I was apparently the low man on the ‘conspiracy theorist’ totem pole. This was due, I presume, to the fact that the other two gents had more impressive résumés and a larger audience. I, therefore, had to essentially wait in line behind them. First up was a guy by the name of Greg Bishop, who has apparently written or co-written a few books and who used to be the editor of some ‘zine called “The Excluded Middle.” I was vaguely aware him by name, but knew very little about him. As it turned out, Mr. Bishop seemed to spend a lot of time discussing such things as cryptozoology and UFOs. Unable to decide whether I was more bored or amused, I found myself taking a lot of smoke breaks during his interview.

Once he had finished, it looked like it was going to be my turn – until, that is, a certain Mr. Anthony Hilder arrived on the scene, full of bluster, and immediately began inquiring about where he might find the ‘Green Room’ so that he could prep for his interview. I had no idea who he was, but it was quite obvious that he fancied himself to be rather important, which meant, of course, that he was probably going to move ahead of me in line. Apparently feeling bad about the fact that I had already been loitering around for a fair amount of time, the guy conducting the interviews pulled me aside and quickly inquired whether I might be interested in doing a joint interview with Mr. Hilder, rather than waiting until Hilder had finished. I agreed, though I did so rather reluctantly as I had no idea where this Hilder fellow might want to take the conversation.

The joint interview, however, never transpired, and the next thing I knew, Hilder was taking his seat in front of the camera while shuffling through the three suit coats that he brought along to insure that he would look good in front of whatever backdrop was used. Soon after, he was chattering away while occasionally displaying props that seemed to have little relevance to the discussion, but that I guess he felt he might as well use since he had gone to the trouble of bringing them along. I fully expected him to be hawking DVDs before his time was up. Actually, he may have, though I can’t say for sure since I, once again, found myself taking plenty of smoke breaks.

Though no one ever told me so, it was kind of obvious that Hilder had vetoed the idea of doing a joint interview with a virtual unknown – especially one who hadn’t thought to bring wardrobe changes. Actually, to be fair to Hilder, he probably had the same reservations that I had in that he had no idea what direction I might want to go. And to be honest, my t-shirt would have clashed horribly with his coat and tie. In any event, that veto turned out to be a good thing, because unbeknownst to me, Mr. Hilder is, as it turns out, a … … I was going to say something really nasty here, like “self-important blowhard,” but I have decided, for the new year, to pursue a kinder and gentler approach, so let me just say, instead, that he is an egotistical buffoon the likes of which I haven’t encountered since … you know, I think I might have to go all the way back to Mike Ruppert on this one.

I was not, by the way, the only person in the room who appeared to view Hilder as an overblown asswipe, though no one actually expressed that opinion verbally. Anyway, to make a long story short, or at least shorter, Hilder eventually wrapped up his props-laden presentation and, with suit coats in hand, exited the building. Now, at long last, it was my turn to rant, and, surprisingly enough, once we got going, the folks working on the other side of the camera seemed to think that I actually had some interesting insights and ideas to share and that I presented them well. At least I think they did, based on my reading of their body language and the fact that the interview seemed to run longer than the previous two had.

A good many months have passed since the interview was taped, and I can’t really recall everything that we discussed, but I have to say that, to his credit, the guy conducting the interviews (along with his assistant and the two guys running the camera and sound equipment) was refreshingly open-minded about just about every avenue I attempted to take him down, with the notable exception of that most unmentionable of conspiracy theories – you know, the one about the U.S. government having planned and carried out the attacks of September 11, 2001. This was, after all, a Disney-controlled production, and there was no way, I was assured, that Disney was going to touch 9-11 ‘conspiracy theories.’ That did not, of course, deter me from trying a few times to venture off in that direction, albeit without much success.

We did, I recall, discuss the moon landings of the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, and my scoffing at the notion that we could have done such a thing forty years ago when we lack the technology to do so even today was awarded a covert thumbs-up from the freelance cameraman. But while he seemed to be pleased with the direction that the conversation had taken, I was decidedly less so. I am keenly aware, you see, that faked moon landing theories are viewed by many as being far beyond the boundaries of acceptable conspiracy theories – on par, perhaps, with Elvis sightings and la chupacabra attacks. With that in mind, I began my comments with a lengthy disclaimer that may or may not have contained a reference to the classic film “The Ghost and Mr. Chicken,” and specifically to the courtroom scene where a witness appearing on behalf of Don Knott’s character delivers seemingly credible evidence that is damaging to the other side. In the very next scene, of course, we find the very same witness explaining how the last meeting of the UFO club that he presides over was held on the planet Mars, much to the amusement of courtroom spectators.

This was, of course, a pathetic plea on my part that roughly translated as follows: “please don’t edit this footage to make me look like a complete loon.”

My interview footage, and that of my fellow interviewees, was primarily intended for use in a documentary feature that is, I believe, scheduled for inclusion as a ‘bonus feature’ on the DVD release of “National Treasure: Book of Secrets.” As such, I had not expected any of the footage to surface until that time, which I assume will be sometime in the spring. Truth be told, I was pretty well convinced that that my footage would likely end up on the proverbial cutting-room floor. I was quite surprised, therefore, when I received a somewhat angry phone call from my eldest daughter, who, feeling slighted, demanded to know why I had not bothered to inform her that I would be making my small-screen debut on the Discovery Channel.

As it turns out, her uncle – my ex-wife’s younger brother – just happened to be watching the Discovery Channel in his home in rural Illinois, probably while nursing a few beers, when his television screen was suddenly and inexplicably filled with the image of his former brother-in-law. He promptly picked up the phone and called his sister to inform her that he had just seen her ex-husband on TV. She, as confused as he, just as quickly called my daughter to get to the bottom of this mystery. And she, as we have already seen, then called me, thus becoming the first and only person to alert me to the fact that the spot had aired. Following that, my enterprising wife (the current one) made quick work of locating the promotional video on-line.

What remains to be seen is how much of my interview footage makes the final cut when the DVD is released, and how that footage will be edited. I should probably note here that after the interview had wrapped, I readily signed a release form that, had I actually bothered to read it, would have, I am fairly certain, informed me that I was giving the filmmakers the right to use the footage of my interview in any way they saw fit. And yes, even over the vast expanse of cyberspace, I can hear some of you thinking out loud: “what a fucking dumbass!”

But here is my response to that: even if the filmmakers were the most malicious bastards on the planet (which they didn’t, for the record, appear to be), and even if they took the absolute worst of the footage and edited it in the most deceptive, manipulative, discrediting way possible, I would still come off sounding infinitely more sane and rational than Tom “seven shades of crazy” Cruise does in his latest video offering (and if you haven’t seen it, you’re really missing out; it’s far more entertaining than his big screen forays).

My inclusion in the film promo, by the way, should in no way be taken as an endorsement of the movie, which I haven’t seen and therefore can’t comment on. And in case anyone was wondering what sort of lucrative financial compensation there was for providing the filmmakers with such invaluable raw footage, the answer, as it turns out, is none.

But enough about that. While I have your attention, I should probably comment on other burning issues of the day. Like, for example, the fact that, like so many child stars before her, Britney Spears’ programming seems to be running amok and various attempts at reprogramminghab don’t seem to be working out so well. Speaking of which, my wife, who I love dearly in spite of her television viewing habits, happened to be watching “Celebrity Rehab” the other day, and, despite the fact that I avoid this show like the plague – if for no other reason than because Dr. Drew seems determined to dethrone Dr. Phil from his perch as the most overexposed, overbearing, and just downright fucking annoying TV pseudo-doctor – I couldn’t help listening in as actor-from-the-age-of-two Jeff Conaway (best known for his roles in “Taxi” and “Grease”) dredged up some very heavy baggage from his past. Like how he was, at the age of three, routinely taken by older boys/men (his relationship to them was left a mystery) and subjected to various forms of torture. And how, at the age of seven, he was abused by pedophiles while performing some sort of work for – hang on for this; it’s a real shocker! – the Catholic Church. And how he fairly recently recalled that there were cameras present during these sessions, and it suddenly dawned on him that, even while working as a mainstream child actor (though he didn’t mention that), he had also had a starring role in the production of child pornography.

Following these revelations, Dr. Drew confided to the camera that he was surprised that some of his other hideously exploited ex-celebrities patients didn’t participate in the soul-baring with similar stories of their own, since such stories are, you know, a dime-a-dozen in the big city, particularly if that city is Hollywood, CA. And that, dear readers, is the true nature of the not-so-glamorous Hollywood dream machine. If you don’t believe me, just ask Brad Renfro … oh, wait a minute … it may be a little too late for that. On second thought, ask the grandmother who raised Brad and guided his early career … oh wait another minute … she seems to have died just days after Brad was lowered into the ground. Never mind. Let’s just move on.

That’s not really what you want to hear about anyway. You want me to talk about the election. I know this because some of you have written to me to solicit my opinion on the stage-show in progress. Some of you, bizarrely enough, have even written to inquire as to whether I will be voicing my support for – are you ready for this? – Ron Paul! Do I really need to answer that question?

I’m not exactly sure what it is that I am supposed to say about this mockery of a democratic election campaign. I could mention that it has already been underway for a very, very, very long time. And there is, of course, a reason for that: the brain trust in Washington wanted to shift attention away from Bush and onto his presumed successor, the not-so-subtle message being, of course, “don’t worry about those assholes in the White House; their days are numbered anyway and – hey! –  look over here at all these awesome choices we have for a replacement!”

Of course, we are expected to ignore the fact that, for the entire two years that we drag out this sordid spectacle of winnowing down some two dozen contenders into one winner – your new American Idol … err, President, tens of thousands of bodies will continue to pile up in Iraq and Afghanistan (well, if you count the dark-skinned bodies that is, but we usually don’t), your human, civil, due-process and privacy rights will continue to be stripped away at an alarming rate, abhorrent judicial appointments will continue to be made, and the economy will continue its artificially delayed implosion (because, let’s face reality here, people: the U.S. economy has, for a very long time now, been kept afloat on a massive sea of debt – federal debt, state debt, local debt, and an unprecedented amount of ‘consumer’ – that means you and I – debt in the form of massively over-leveraged homes, sky-high credit card balances, and ever-lengthening auto loans. All of this consumer debt has, of course, been actively encouraged by, and aided and abetted by, corporate America, the banking establishment and the mainstream media. But such an illusory prosperity cannot last forever, nor was it designed to, and now the time has come to pay the piper – which is to say, the time has come for a massive rip-off of the American people.)

“But don’t worry about any of that, because relief is on its way soon. Why, just take a look at this stellar line-up of candidates we have for you – a guitar-slinging fire-and-brimstone preacher, a resuscitated corpse cum ‘war hero,’ America’s Mayor, a guy who can’t decide whether he wants to be an actor or a politician (and isn’t very good at either), a mousy little guy who sometimes seems to be almost telling the truth, a couple of well-coiffed gazillionaires, an icon of sorts for Patriot types, and, if none of those options appeal to you, we even have one candidate who has no penis (well, maybe a strap-on model) and another who is best described as a whitish black guy. Surely there is someone in that diverse pack who appeals to you … right? (and when we say ‘diverse,’ it is understood that we mean that out of the original field of some two dozen candidates, fully two of them were not rich white guys between the ages of 50 and 70). So let’s stop this (very muted) talk of impeachment and let the lame duck serve out his term. What harm can he do now?”

I guess I need to pause here briefly to fend off a barrage of e-mails railing against my ‘racist’ reference to Barack Obama as a “whitish black guy.” For the record, I am not suggesting here that a black man cannot be articulate and well groomed. No, what I am suggesting is that what is fundamentally racist here is the fact that Mr. Obama is universally referred to as “Black” or “African-American” despite the fact that, according to my exacting mathematical calculations, he is actually precisely ½ black and ½ white. Wouldn’t it then be just as accurate to refer to Obama as “White” or “European-American”? Why is he disqualified from inclusion in the Caucasian ‘race’ even though he is every bit as white as he is black? In labeling him as “black,” aren’t we really saying that his bloodline is tainted? Aren’t we saying that, even though he has Caucasian blood, it isn’t pure enough for inclusion in the Master Race?

Anyway … I guess the real question here is: which one of these nut-sacks is going to be pretending to run the show for the next four years? And the most obvious answer, of course, is Hillary Clinton. After all, that has been the program that has been followed now for pretty much my entire adult life, so there is little reason to expect a different outcome this time around. Last time I checked, one of the definitions of “insanity” was performing the same task the same way over and over and expecting a different outcome. So far, the outcome of this task has always been the same, so to expect something different this time around would be textbook insanity.

Allow me to briefly explain: I acquired the right to vote exactly thirty years ago. Since then, there have been seven presidential elections. Every one of them, without exception, has been ‘won’ by a ticket containing either the name “Bush” or the name “Clinton” (for the memory-impaired, there was Reagan/Bush in 1980 and 1984, Bush/Quayle in 1988, Clinton/Gore in 1992 and 1996, and Bush/Cheney in 2000 and 2004). Therefore, logic dictates that since there is currently no Bush in the running, the victory will go to Clinton this year. Assuming, that is, that George Bush abdicates the throne, and further assuming that the Republican nominee doesn’t add, say, Jeb Bush as his running-mate.

At this time, a Clinton presidency is, I believe, the most likely scenario. It has been obvious for quite some time now that Hillary is the anointed one on the ‘Democratic’ side. If there were any doubt before, then surely it was erased when the vote was so obviously spiked in New Hampshire (and likely in California as well) to derail the growing momentum of the Obama campaign. After all, if Obama had scored a decisive victory in New Hampshire after taking Iowa, and had then quickly followed that up, as he did, with a win in South Carolina, the Chosen One would have been left in the dust. And nobody (nobody important, that is) wanted to see that happen.

Of course, there were obvious clues even before New Hampshire. One of the hardest-to-miss clues was the sudden prominence of so-called Super Delegates, who are set to play a major role in the Democratic convention this year, and who, before a single vote was cast in any of the state primaries, were apparently already overwhelmingly committed to Hillary Clinton. And what exactly, you may be wondering, is this Super Delegate business all about? As it turns out, what the Democratic Party did was to take a profoundly antidemocratic institution known as the Electoral College and ‘reform’ it, as it were, by making it even more deeply undemocratic. And that, I suppose, is why it’s called the ‘Democratic’ Party.

Yet another clue came right before SuperDuperFantastic Tuesday, when John Edwards quickly and seemingly inexplicably dropped out of the race virtually on the eve of the first real contests, after spending an entire year pouring time and money into his campaign. The media, of course, had virtually nothing to say about that curious development, but, seriously folks, did that make any sense to anyone? The money had already been spent, the ads had already run, the appearances had already been made – what the hell was the point of bailing out then and pissing in the faces of thousands of volunteers and financial supporters rather than waiting a few days for the outcome of the primaries? I can only interpret such a move as a ploy to throw votes to Hillary Clinton. My guess is that it was either a pre-planned strategy, or else someone made Mr. Edwards “an offer he couldn’t refuse.”

I know what you’re thinking: all the buzz right now seems to be about the Obama campaign – the polls show him surging, he’s picked up high-profile political and media endorsements all over town, his campaign coffers are overflowing, his appearances are reportedly drawing wildly enthusiastic crowds, and he has solidly trounced Clinton in pretty much every match-up since SuperDuperBowl Tuesday. But the buzz we hear now sounds a whole lot like the buzz we heard heading into the New Hampshire primary, where we all saw that a few tears and a whole bunch of compromised Diebold voting machines can easily swing an election by as much as 15-20 points.

In all seriousness, the only way that I can see Obama taking this thing all the way is if the powers-that-be have decided, in their infinite wisdom, that they need someone who is, uhmm, shall we say, ‘expendable.’ Surely it hasn’t escaped anyone’s attention that the media and the Washington political establishment have been working overtime to create a Kennedyesque aura around Senator Obama – and not always in the most subtle of ways: Obama can rarely be seen these days, for example, without some random member of the Kennedy clan either at his side or singing his praises.

The Obama-as-second-coming-of-JFK campaign, not surprisingly, seems to be working. The youth of America, in particular, seem to have caught Obama fever. They see in him a new hope, a new future, a fresh start for America. For many in this country, Barack Obama has made it okay to hope and to dream once again. And that is all very Kennedyesque. As is, of course, Mr. Obama’s youth and charisma and physical attractiveness and oratorical skills. All very New Camelotish. But the problem with that, of course, is that I think we all remember what happened the last time a Kennedy occupied the Oval Office and the American people dared to dream (which was also, by the way, the last time that anyone moved directly from the U.S. Senate into the White House).

In my lifetime, there have been two political events that have had a profound impact on the American psyche: the assassination of John Kennedy and the events of September 11, 2001. Both events resulted in a fundamental shift in American society. And a repeat of either could do so again.

We haven’t experienced a presidential assassination in this country in 45 years, which means that the majority of Americans alive today have no memory of such an event. Perhaps the powers-that-be have decided that we are due for one now. Perhaps Barack Obama is being lionized now so that he may be cut down in the near future, taking with him the misplaced hopes and dreams of millions of Americans. Perhaps while the Internet community busies itself with guessing which American city will fall victim to the next staged terrorist attack, the script actually calls for an entirely different type of ‘terrorist’ attack: a political assassination.

Such a scenario would kill two birds with one stone, so to speak: it would not only crush the nation’s spirit, particularly that of the country’s politically awakened youth, but it would also justify increased police-state measures here at home and an even more militaristic stance abroad.

Perhaps that is indeed the scenario that has been scripted, but I still believe that, one way or another, this will be Hillary’s year, due to the undeniable fact that the ruse has worked so damn well now for so long that there doesn’t appear to be any compelling reason to change course. By maintaining the illusion of a political rivalry between the Bush and Clinton clans – two families supposedly from opposite ends of the political spectrum, with wildly divergent political ideologies – the vast majority of Americans have been left in the dark as the Bush/Clinton cabal has maintained a continuous hold on the White House for some 28 years now. So why rock the boat?

How thoroughly have the American people bought into this entirely manufactured ‘rivalry’? So much so that countless progressive-minded Democrats, who have been screaming for seven years now about the fraudulent elections that brought George Bush to power and extended his stay, said nothing about the equally fraudulent election in New Hampshire that awarded Hilary Clinton her front-runner status. And why is that? Is it because they feel that cheating is okay as long as it favors ‘their’ candidate? There might be a little of that at play, but I think the real problem here is that a lot of folks just can’t wrap their heads around what to them is an entirely foreign concept: that the very same political operatives and political machinery that engineered the elections that brought Bush and company to power have now performed the very same service for Clinton.

Has anyone other than me noticed, by the way, that you never really see Bill Clinton with his former erstwhile sidekick, George the elder, anymore? I mean, for a while there, they seemed to be having quite a blossoming bro-mance. But now, I suppose, it’s far more important for Bill to reassert the mythical rivalry than it is to provide damage control for George the dumber.

Speaking of things that no one else seems to notice, why is it that you never hear any mention of the fact that Hillary – the Democratic Party’s alleged consummate ‘liberal,’ who is routinely described by the likes of Bill O’Liery, Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh as being well to the left of Fidel Castro – was, in her college years (when most folks tend to be more left-leaning than they will be later in life), an extreme right-wing ideologue? So much so that, while serving as president of the Young Republicans on her college campus, her political idol and mentor was a man by the name of Barry Goldwater – a man so extreme in his views during that period of time that the Republican Party all but disowned him.

Come to think of it, there is yet another thing that no one seems to want to talk about: Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, purportedly the most powerful Democrat in the country, is every bit as much of a fervent Mormon as Mitt Romney. Why is this unpleasant fact never discussed in polite company? Why is it that Romney’s religious leanings are such a crucial indicator of his ability to serve as president, yet those very same leanings apparently have no bearing on Reid’s ability to lead the Senate?

Truth be told, Reid’s Mormonism has far more significance than does Romney’s, since Romney doesn’t really pretend to be something he is not, while Mr. Reid, on the other hand, is supposed to be a liberal Democrat and one of the American people’s top watchdogs tasked with keeping the Bush administration in check. And the problem here, in case you haven’t figured it out yet, is that there is no such animal as a liberal Democratic Mormon. I know this because my wife happens to hail from a virulently Mormon family (although she has distanced herself from the cult church).

* By the way, honey, you can stop reading this newsletter now as there isn’t really going to be much of interest to you. And in case I haven’t told you lately, I sure do love you. *

So as I was saying, Mormons are, by and large, about the most reactionary bunch of ultraconservative whack-jobs you are ever likely to meet. Shockingly enough, a religion that requires its members to adorn themselves 24/7 with long underwear last in fashion at the turn of the last century does not tend to draw in too many progressive or liberal-minded members. Hard to believe, I know, but it appears to be true. So how is it then, I ask you, that arguably the most powerful ‘liberal’ in the country was proudly standing front-and-center the other day for the funeral of the Mormon church’s modern-day ‘prophet’?

One thing that I have noticed, by the way, is that Mormons don’t seem to be too keen on discussing the fact that the founder of their religion and its original prophet, Joseph Smith, was a high-ranking Freemason, and they seem to be even less eager to discuss the possibility that Mormonism itself is grounded in Masonic principles. I’m guessing that they probably also shy away from discussions concerning the church’s propensity for generating allegations of child abuse and pedophilia, though I have never actually brought that up for discussion, probably because I was, as I have mentioned previously, baptized Catholic, which – let’s be honest here – doesn’t really give me a lot of moral high ground to stand on.

So now, having pissed off both Mormons and Catholics, along with Scientologists, African-Americans (though I do have to ask all my readers who consider themselves to be African-American the following question: after seeing him dance on Ellen’s show, do you really want to claim him?), and probably a few women as well (that strap-on joke probably was a little out of line), we now turn our attention to the next burning question: how in the hell did the puppet-masters manage to reanimate the corpse of John McCain?

That was, I have to say, a pretty impressive feat, and one that I will readily admit I did not see coming. It has been fairly obvious for some time now that the playing field on the Republican side was being cleared for someone. Mike Huckabee’s role, in particular, has clearly been to siphon off the Christian Fundy vote from Mitt “I didn’t even have to campaign in Utah and I got 90% of the Republican votes” Romney, thus creating an opening for someone else to capture the ‘front-runner’ position with nowhere near the majority support of the party’s voters.

And by the way, that 90% tally for Romney in Utah? That pretty much tells you all you need to know about the mindset of your average Mormon. Is that an almost surreal example of knee-jerk voting, or what? The rest of the crowded Republican field walked away with about 1 or 2% of the vote apiece, while Romney took a full 90%, presumably based primarily on the fact that he is, you know, one of ‘them.’ I like to think that most people realize that there are good and bad people in all walks of life: good and bad Christians, good and bad Muslims, good and bad Jews, good and bad atheists, good and bad Republicans, good and bad Democrats (among rank and file Democrats and Republicans, that is; in Washington, they are all bad), and, yes, good and bad Mormons as well. And yet, in the state of Utah, there doesn’t appear to be a single Mormon who broke ranks to cast a non-Mormon vote. Not that there’s anything wrong with that … actually, there is a lot that is wrong with that, but let’s just move on.

I had initially thought that the beneficiary of the split-the-Republican-base scheme was to be Mr. Rudy Giuliani, or possibly even the late-arriving Mr. Fred Thompson. And maybe that was the initial plan and both men just proved to be much too difficult to sell to the American people. Or maybe McCain was the anointed one all along, quietly waiting in the wings feigning political death. All that can be said with certainty is that he is clearly now on the path to the Republican nomination, with the full support of the Washington establishment (in spite of his alleged status as a “maverick” and a “renegade”). And don’t pay too much attention to the staged opposition from the likes of Rush Limbaugh; he and his ilk are well aware that to the vast majority of the population, a non-endorsement from them is actually a good thing.

We next turn our attention, naturally enough, to the question of running-mates. For John McCain, of course, the most obvious choice is Joe Lieberman, who is running neck-and-neck with McCain for the title of “most aggressive warmonger in all of Washington.” Such a pairing would be billed, of course, as a ‘bipartisan’ ticket, since Lieberman is supposed to still be a Democrat, more or less. According to their media-crafted images, which bear no resemblance to reality, John McCain is a ‘moderate,’ or slightly left-leaning Republican, while Lieberman is a ‘moderate,’ or slightly right-leaning Democrat. This ticket then would be presented as having broad appeal across the much-coveted political ‘center.’

I have a quick question, by the way, for all of those who now tend to view Al Gore as some sort of heroic figure fighting the good fight to save the planet: what does it say about this man that, of all the choices that he could have made, he selected a figure as appalling as Joseph Lieberman to serve as his second-in-command? I’m just sayin’ …

A McCain/Lieberman ticket would be sold to the American people primarily on the basis of the duo’s supposedly progressive views on social issues. But if McCain were to prevail, with or without Lieberman in tow, the victory would immediately be spun as – guess what? – a clear mandate from the American people for endless, and ever-expanding, war. Because, make no mistake about it, no one has been a more unapologetic supporter of wanton warmongering than John McCain.

Speaking of John McCain, by the way, I have to offer some commentary here on the notion of McCain as ‘war hero.’ Try to imagine, if you can, that you and several generations of your family live a simple, agrarian life. Like all your neighbors in the village in which you reside, you work the land just as your family has done for as long as anyone can remember. To an outsider, it seems a harsh and rather primitive existence. But to you, it is the only life you know – one based on history and tradition and a love and respect for the land that nurtures your crops and feeds your livestock.

Now imagine that that demanding yet bucolic life is under fierce attack from an enemy that you cannot see, for reasons that you cannot begin to comprehend. The faceless enemy attacks only from high in the air, safe from any form of retaliation that you may be able to muster. He is relentless in his pursuit to annihilate you, raining toxic chemicals like Agent Orange and white phosphorous down upon your land and your livestock, unleashing incendiary devices that burn your children alive, and routinely dumping high explosives that indiscriminately maim and kill. For years you endure this, completely powerless to protect your family or avenge your losses.

And then one day, quite unexpectedly, one of the enemy’s death ships falls to the ground. And suddenly, the enemy that has taken so much from you – your loved ones, your livelihood, your very way of life – has a face: the face of John McCain. What do you suppose, given those conditions, the fate of that enemy would be? It is claimed that John McCain was tortured while in captivity. I don’t know how much truth there is to that, but I do know that, under the circumstances, it seems to me that the Vietnamese people exhibited a considerable amount of restraint.

Returning now to our rambling narrative-in-progress, I have to say that it is difficult to imagine John McCain, or any other Republican candidate for that matter, riding this wave all the way to the White House. That could change, however, were there to be a ‘terrorist’ attack of some kind between now and the general election. If such a thing were to occur, a McCain/Lieberman, or, say, a McCain/Giuliani ticket – a ‘tough guy’ ticket, as it were – would suddenly look pretty good to a lot of shell-shocked and scared Americans. However, if such a thing does occur, there is a good chance that the election will be cancelled anyway, rendering it a moot point who the Democratic and Republican nominees are.

Turning our attention now to the Democratic side, my best guess for Hillary Clinton’s choice of a running-mate would have to be Wesley Clark. He is, after all, very close to the Clinton camp, and more importantly, he is a decorated former military commander. As such, he would be the Clinton camp’s best weapon to defend against the inevitable attacks on Clinton’s fitness to serve as commander-in-chief and deal with national security issues. Running a distant second on the running-mate list would probably be John Edwards. I doubt that Mr. Obama’s name appears anywhere on the Clinton cabal’s list of potential second bananas.

If, on the other hand, Obama prevails at the Democratic convention, then we could very well see Hillary emerge as his running-mate, particularly if the pair go into the convention fairly evenly matched in delegates. Keep in mind here, of course, that if the scenario presented herein is accurate, then Obama’s choice of a running-mate would be the most important choice made by any of the candidates, since his VP choice would at some point be elevated to the office of the President.

Come to think of it, an Obama/Clinton ticket actually makes a lot of sense on several levels. It would provide the hidden puppet-masters with a sacrificial lamb with which to engineer the next dastardly ‘terrorist’ act, while Bush’s real successor, Hillary Clinton, waited patiently in the wings, ready to assume the throne under conditions that, conveniently enough, would allow her to shed any pretense of being a ‘liberal’ – because we would, of course, have to ruthlessly avenge the death of our beloved president, as well as protect the American people from the ‘domestic terrorists’ in our midst. It is also worth noting here that, should this scenario come to pass, we will quickly see the emergence of a ‘cottage industry’ as fake conspiracy theorists all across the Internet busy themselves with promoting theories that have Bill and Hillary Clinton personally planning and executing the hit on Obama in their ruthless quest for power. This will keep the cyber-community distracted with inanities for many years to come.

As I write these words, I am becoming increasingly convinced that, if this isn’t the script that has been written, then it is only because, with the writers’ strike and all, the Washington elite probably had to bring in some no-talent hacks to do the final rewrites.

You have likely already read, by the way, about how some of Hillary’s top financial backers and campaign advisers have close ties to the Bush cabal, through such repellant figures as Karl Rove and Dick Morris. When you read these stories, of course, you are invariably assured that the reason for this is that Hillary is being, for lack of a better term, set up. The Republicans, you see, want Hillary to win the Democratic nomination, but only because they know that she can be beat to a pulp in the general election. That is why, so the story goes, Republican Party operatives rigged the election for Hillary in New Hampshire, and why they are bankrolling and guiding her campaign.

The goal of the people who write such rubbish is to preserve, at any cost, the illusion that Bush and Clinton are playing on different teams. They know that the fact that Clinton is being funded and feted by some of the very same people who nurtured George Bush’s candidacy eight years ago can’t be kept completely concealed, so they seek to spin it away with claims that Clinton is essentially the unwitting victim of yet another Republican dirty trick.

There are, I hasten to point out, a couple of major problems with the version of reality that some are trying to sell. The first is that the Clintons are a lot of things, but stupid definitely isn’t one of them. When the right-wing advisers started showing up applying for work, did Bill and Hillary just assume that they all just really wanted to help them advance their ‘liberal’ agenda? When the hard-right money began flowing into the campaign coffers, did they just figure that a lot of longtime reactionaries had suddenly had a change of heart? When primary returns came in that were wildly at odds with pre-election and exit polls, did they say, “Karl Rove really fucked up this time! He tried to rig the election and accidentally gave it to us!”?

My guess is that what was actually said was more along the lines of: “Karl said he would deliver New Hampshire for us and damned if he didn’t do it! Shit howdy, we should celebrate! Let’s call over a couple of hookers! I left my black book at home – did you bring yours?”

The second major problem with this little fable is that, while it is true that Hillary Clinton and George W. Bush have shared some of the same advisers and backers, it is equally true that these same behind-the-scenes movers and shakers were also instrumental in propelling William Jefferson Clinton into the national limelight and ultimately into the White House. And they didn’t, needless to say, secure his position as the Democratic nominee back in 1992 because they wanted him to lose. They did it because they knew that he would do exactly what he did: faithfully advance their agenda for eight years, just as Hillary will do if elevated to the office of the presidency.

You are also likely to read, if you haven’t already, various attacks on Hillary that contain claims about her alleged past history as a radical leftist, which purportedly included such actions as offering aid and comfort to the Black Panthers and affiliating with the Communist Party. These alleged actions were taken, curiously enough, at the same time that Hillary Rodham was unabashedly embracing a far-right political ideology. In other words, Clinton was, at the very same time, both a right-wing ideologue and a left-wing extremist. Kind of like, it bears mentioning, that Lee Harvey Oswald guy, who was both a stridently anti-Castro, right-wing agitator, and a passionately pro-Castro activist.

This may seem a bit mystifying to the political novice, but it really poses no great mystery. The not-so-complicated reality is that Oswald was in fact a right-wing operative whose ‘cover’ was that of a lefty activist. And the same, I’m sorry to have to tell you, is true of Hillary Clinton, both then and now.

That is not to say, of course, that it’s inconceivable that Clinton will take a fall sometime between now and November. But if she does, it will not be because others conspired against her without her knowledge; it will be because she is faithfully playing the role that has been written for her. Not unlike, I might add, that Al Gore chap, who managed to go down for the count against a guy who couldn’t even throw a punch.

Making predictions about future political events is largely a fool’s game. I can’t even remember how many bullshit predictions I have read from the likes of Wayne Madsen, Alex Jones, and numerous others. So rather than a specific prediction, let us just, instead, review the most likely possibilities that we are faced with. One possibility, which would require a combination of Republican dirty tricks, complicity of the Democratic candidate, and massive vote theft, is a McCain presidency. This would not be a good thing. If the country seems a wee bit militaristic to you now, then you probably will not like living under a McCain administration. I have to wonder though whether the powers-that-be really want John McCain in the White House. He appears to be, if we’re being honest here, a little unstable. I’m not sure if he could hold it together for a full term. They might need to install electroshock equipment right there in the Lincoln Bedroom so they can tune him up on a regular basis.

Another possibility is a Clinton presidency. This would also not be a good thing. What we would get, of course, is more of the same. America under Hillary Clinton would look a whole lot like America under George Bush. The right-wing media, of course, will rant and rave and rip into her on a daily basis, but it will all just be a game to convince you that she is something that she clearly is not. And some of the world leaders who have posed as critics of the U.S. will once again warmly embrace us. But all that will have really changed in the White House is the window dressing.

A third possibility, and the one that I am now leaning towards, is an Obama presidency that is preempted to become a Clinton presidency. This would also not be a good thing. In fact, this is probably the worst option of all, which is yet another reason to suspect that it will indeed be the ultimate outcome. I have found that the best strategy is to expect the worst; that way, you will never be disappointed, and rarely will you be pleasantly surprised. If what comes out of the Democratic Convention in August is an Obama/Clinton ticket, my advice would be to not get too attached to that Obama fellow.

One final note here: once the general election rolls around, we may get a clue as to what the final outcome is to be in November. As more alert readers will recall, he last two presidents we have been blessed with were boosted into office with considerable assistance from a ‘third party’ spoiler. Bill Clinton, of course, benefited from the votes that Ross Perot siphoned away from George Sr., while little George got some help from Ralph Nader (not enough help, as it turned out, thus requiring a more heavy-handed approach down in Florida).

We shouldn’t be at all surprised, therefore, to see an entry into the race by a ‘third’ party candidate. The most likely person to drop their hat into the ring would be Michael Bloomberg, who has been the subject of endless speculation. It remains unclear though who would benefit from a Bloomberg candidacy. He has, at various times, masqueraded as a Democrat, a Republican, and now as an Independent. While his views are, overall, decidedly right-wing, he is routinely portrayed by the media as being ‘liberal’ on social issues, so he would not be any more appealing to the Republican ‘base’ than John McCain. Most likely, he would draw a smattering of votes from both parties with a largely negligible effect on the election outcome.

Ralph Nader, needless to say, will likely toss his hat in the ring as well, but no one really gives a shit about Ralph Nader anymore.

For there to be a true spoiler effect on this election, what will be needed is for, say, someone like Mike Huckabee to decide to continue his campaign beyond the conventions under the ‘Independent’ banner. Such a move would, needless to say, insure an easy victory for the Democratic candidate. However, given the mood of the country, such a move would be entirely unnecessary. All that is really needed to insure a Democratic landslide is to hold an actual free and fair election. It is unclear though whether anyone in Washington remembers how to do that. And even if they did, it wouldn’t make the outcome any more palatable.

So it appears as though the word “burglary,” though commonly understood to mean a break-in for the purpose of committing a theft, is actually defined as a break-in for the purpose of engaging in any criminal activity, so the incident at Ruppert’s FTBoffices does qualify, from a legal perspective, as a burglary. My bad. Sorry about that.

Also, before moving on to other things, I have to note here that several people wrote me to ask, confidentially, who the mystery dissident journalist was. *Sigh* I’m going to give you all the benefit of the doubt here and just assume that these were probably new readers who can, I suppose, be forgiven for failing to appreciate my rather demented sense of humor.

Now then, by a quick show of hands, how many of you read the title of this newsletter and got all excited thinking that I was going to be writing about alien abductions, shape-shifting reptilians and anal probes? I see a few hands up in the back of the room, which means that some of you are probably going to be disappointed. But that’s okay, because there is always a certain percentage of you that are disappointed with anything that I choose to write about.

I was shocked to find, for example, that some of you were not the least bit interested in reading about Dick Cheney’s penis. One of you actually wrote to tell me that not only is the subject of little interest, but that, in any event, Cheney’s penis “couldn’t possibly be any bigger then my husband’s.” Information sharing can be a good thing, to be sure, but for future reference, that was probably a little more information than I really needed.

Moving on then, I know that I have beat this particular horse before, on more than one occasion, but bear with me here because I feel that I need to point out once again, for the benefit of the slow learners in the crowd, that the basic principle by which this country’s political establishment operates is – now pay attention! – control through fear.

Everyone understands that … right?

I mean, it’s pretty basic stuff – scare the hell out of people and they’ll obediently follow whatever path they are told is the safe path to follow. Of course, it probably won’t really be the safe path to follow, and there probably won’t really be anything to fear – other than the motives and intentions of those directing you down the path. But if you really scare the bejesus out of somebody, none of that is going to matter to them at the time.

There is, to be sure, a whole lot of stuff to be scared of in the world today – or at least a whole lot of stuff that we are conditioned to fear: terr’ists; immigrants; emerging viruses; natural disasters; violent criminals; Peak Oil; Iran; Iraq; North Korea; Osama bin Laden; Saddam Hussein; Hezbollah; water bottles on airplanes. All in all, it’s a very scary world out there.

I was reminded of this recently when I was called upon, for the first time in my life, to serve jury duty. Actually, that’s not quite true; I have been called upon before, but I was never able to serve because of, if I remember correctly, financial hardships and medical conditions. But this recent jury notice happened to find me in good health and financially sound – which is another way of saying that getting out of jury service has become much more difficult – so I diligently reported for duty, showing due respect for the sanctity of the courthouse by arriving only slightly late and with my “Fuck the LAPD” t-shirt only partly exposed, and then proceeded to sit idly by for several hours with little to do other than mentally calculate the odds that any prosecutor would actually seat me on any jury.

Midway through a very long day, I was sent to a courtroom along with about forty other potential jurors. Before entering the courtroom, a random draw was held and I happened to pick a fairly high number, so my fate, it appeared, would be determined by how many of the hapless souls ahead of me in line were accepted as jurors. It soon became clear that more than a few of them were going to make a play for rejection, so I figured that, if nothing else, I might sneak in as an alternate juror.

There seemed to be two different strategies employed by those seeking dismissal, by the way, one that we will call the “good strategy” and one that we will call the “really bad strategy.” The opposing attorneys, you see, are basically on a fishing expedition during the jury selection process, and what they are fishing for is bias. The defense attorney is basically looking for bias against his or her client, and the prosecutor is looking for bias against pretty much any form of authority. Toward that end, each side will ask a series of questions. It’s pretty obvious what they are fishing for, which makes it pretty easy to make a play for dismissal.

The really bad strategy, employed by more than one potential juror that day, is to reflexively snap at every piece of bait that is dangled out there, even if doing so requires you to directly contradict a position that you took just a couple of questions ago. This strategy will likely provide some invaluable entertainment, but revealing to everyone in the room that you will go to hilarious lengths to avoid jury service will not necessarily get you booted.

The better strategy, by far, is to zero in on a single area of bias that the attorneys are looking for and then sell it as best you can. To greatly increase your odds of success, I would suggest playing to the prosecutor rather than the defense attorney, who is likely a public defender with little interest in actually defending his or her client. From what I observed, an anti-police bias will get you kicked loose in time for lunch, but a pro-police bias probably will not. Compare these two examples (which may or may not be exaggerated to some extent):

Prosecutor: Have you ever had any personal encounters with the police, and, if so, would you describe those encounters as positive or negative experiences?
Potential Juror #1: Well, I was pulled over once a long time ago by a cop who seemed like he might have had a little bit of an attitude, but overall …
Prosecutor: Judge, I move that this juror be dismissed and then immediately taken to lock-up.

Public Defender: Have you ever had any personal encounters with the police, and, if so, would you describe those encounters as positive or negative experiences?
Potential Juror #2: Well, my brother is a cop, and my brother-in-law is with the highway patrol, and my dad is retired FBI, and my wife works part-time down at the station as a dispatcher, and I know from talking to all of them that the police have a really hard job, what with having to deal with all the scumbags out there, and with the ACLU-types crying every time one of the scumbags goes and gets himself shot. Speaking of shooting, by the way, did I mention that I’ve been the president of my local NRA chapter for the last ten years? And Grand Dragon of my KKK chapter? By the way, is that nigger over there the defendant in this case? ‘Cuz I’ll tell you what, that sumbitch looks guilty as all hell to me.

Public Defender: Your Honor, I think we may have found our jury foreman.

As a potential juror, you are not told what charges the defendant is facing. But if you pay attention to the questions that are asked, it’s not that hard to figure out. In this case, a young boy, likely the son of the defendant, was apparently seriously injured or even killed while riding a small dirt bike. The boy was too young to ride legally, and so the state was charging the man with something along the lines of reckless child endangerment.

For the record, some of the potential jurors seemed horrified at the thought of a child possibly maimed or killed as a result of the negligence of an adult. Others seemed just as horrified that the state was prosecuting a grieving father who had likely already punished himself far more than the state ever could. Or maybe that was just me.

All of the prospective jurors were asked whether they had ever let their own children do something that was potentially dangerous, or whether they themselves had been allowed, as children, to do things that others would consider dangerous – possibly even reckless. A few of the jurors allowed that they had ridden dirt bikes and/or that they had allowed their own kids to ride dirt bikes or ATVs. None of the jurors’ answers ventured much beyond that. My number, alas, never came up, and that’s kind of a shame, because I sat there for several hours with nothing better to do than mentally compose my answer to that particular question. It would have gone something like this:

Was I ever allowed to do anything dangerous as a child?! Is that what you’re asking me? Are you serious?! EVERYTHING I did as a child was dangerous. EVERYTHING!! If I allowed my own kids to do half of what I was allowed to do as a kid, the Department of Child Services would have taken them away from me years ago and I’d probably be locked away in prison. Negligence?! You want to talk about negligence? My parents must take the friggin’ cake when it comes to negligence! As just one example, our family logged thousands of miles driving all over Hell’s half-acre in the family car and never once – not once! – did they strap me into a child safety seat. Come to think of it, most of the time I didn’t even wear a seatbelt. Here’s another example: for most of my formative years, my primary mode of transportation was a bicycle, and never once did my parents insist that I wear a helmet! I didn’t even own one (which is probably a good thing, because I’m thinking that if I had tooled around town on my bike sporting a helmet in the 1960s and 1970s, I would have gotten my ass kicked on a pretty regular basis). And get this: every year, on the Fourth of July, I was allowed to set off explosive devices and burn shit up right in front of our house! And my parents, if you can believe this, watched me do it and even cheered me on! And on Halloween, I was allowed to go out at night with no adult supervision to solicit candy from complete fucking strangers. Oops … sorry there, judge … am I allowed to say ‘fucking’ in this courtroom? Anyway, as I was saying, I was also allowed to ride a small dirt bike, or at least I would have been if my dumbass older brother hadn’t crashed the damn thing into a chain-link fence before I got my chance to ride, deeply cutting his finger in the process. Oh shit! Maybe I shouldn’t have mentioned that, since the prosecutor over there seems a little overzealous. Is there a statute of limitations on this child endangerment stuff? I mean, you’re not going to extradite my dad from Arizona to answer for letting my brother ride that dirt bike back in 1970, are you? Anyway, like I was saying, when I was a kid I was actually allowed – forced, really – to walk to school, which is shameful, when you think about it, since everybody knows that any reasonably responsible parent lines up with all the other SUV-driving parents to drop off and pick up their kids, so that the little ones can be safely transported to their respective homes where they can interact with their peers in safe, modern ways such as with text messaging and instant messaging, rather than in the dangerous ways of the past, which generally involved leaving the house to play in the great outdoors. Believe it or not, we were allowed to do that. We were allowed to freely roam the neighborhood from a very young age, sometimes on bikes, sometimes on skateboards (with hard clay wheels that would stop cold if there happened to be a microscopic particle of sand on the sidewalk, hence the scar on my chin), and sometimes on foot. And do you know why we were allowed to freely roam the neighborhood? Because we actually HAD a neighborhood! Believe it or not, there was a real sense of neighborhood and community in those days of yore. I don’t live in a neighborhood today, your honor. Oh sure, I have ‘neighbors,’ I suppose, in the sense that there are other people who live all around me. But none of them know one another. We all live in our own little safehouses, shielded from the scary world. But in the old days, everyone knew each other and everyone’s kids ran the streets together. And the school, well, that was the center of it all. There was always something to do at the school. There were bike safety classes and an annual bike rodeo. There was the wildly popular annual fair. There were various after-school programs. There were bake sales. There were paper drives. There was a very active PTA. There were people staffing the school on weekends who would gladly provide you with a carom table, or a basketball, or a football, or all the gear needed to put together a baseball game. And finding enough people to field a team was never a problem. But if you go by a school now on the weekend, or even fifteen minutes after the final bell rings on any given weekday, do you know what you’ll find? Padlocked fences and barren asphalt. You won’t see any kids playing. And you won’t see any kids on the streets either. Where the hell are all the kids? And what happened, by the way, to the paperboys? When I was a kid, we were all paperboys. We were out riding the streets after school delivering the evening newspaper, and then once a month going up to the doors of the homes of random strangers, demanding money for providing a service, and being careful to always ‘porch’ the paper during the month of December in the hopes of collecting those big Christmas tips, and then returning to the usual erratic delivery pattern in January, while forever hoping that the one guy who never answers the door when you come to collect even when you can see him through the window sitting there watching TV and drinking a beer will eventually pay you for the last three months of service, so that maybe there will be some kind of financial reward for getting up every Sunday morning before dawn and overloading the handlebars of your bike with heavy Sunday editions of the local newspaper so that you can pedal around town alone and cold in the pre-dawn hours, because your parents – and I bet you were wondering where I was going with this, weren’t you? – have no concern for the way they recklessly endanger your life on pretty much a daily basis. Can you imagine allowing a child to ride a bike with dangerously overloaded handlebars, with no helmet or other safety gear, alone and a couple miles from home at 5:00 in the morning in a neighborhood full of strangers, possibly sex offenders? But you know what, Judge? We kind of liked doing it, most of the time. And you know what else? While my kids have every goddamn electronic gadget imaginable – from I-Pods to cell phones to laptop computers to portable DVD players – they don’t have what I had as a kid. They don’t have it because it has been stolen from them and it can’t be replaced with e-mail and digital cameras. What they don’t have, your honor, is a sense of neighborhood. They don’t have a sense of community. They have been deprived of meaningful human interaction. They have been conditioned to live in a world where trust in others has been replaced by fear of everyone and everything. Their world is a world built entirely on fear. But here I may have digressed a bit. What the hell was the question again?

As I have stressed before on these pages, one of the primary goals of the powers-that-be is the complete atomization of society – the destruction of all social, cultural, and familial bonds. It is the ultimate divide-and-conquer strategy: reduce the entire population to armies of one, each alone and isolated, unable to fight back against the rapidly encroaching police state. As I have also emphasized before, technology has played a major role in the process of atomizing Western society. Just as the egregiously misrepresented Luddites warned, the proliferation of advanced technology has led to a rapid process of depersonalization.

But just how successful have the puppet-masters been at fostering social isolation? I am sorry to have to report here that a landmark new study (all but ignored by the American media) provides chilling evidence that the psychological warfare campaign has been wildly successful. According to a Washington Post report:

Americans are far more socially isolated today than they were two decades ago, and a sharply growing number of people say they have no one in whom they can confide, according to a comprehensive new evaluation of the decline of social ties in the United States.

A quarter of Americans say they have no one with whom they can discuss personal troubles, more than double the number who were similarly isolated in 1985. Overall, the number of people Americans have in their closest circle of confidants has dropped from around three to about two.

The comprehensive new study paints a sobering picture of an increasingly fragmented America, where intimate social ties – once seen as an integral part of daily life and associated with a host of psychological and civic benefits – are shrinking or nonexistent. In bad times, far more people appear to suffer alone …

Compared with 1985, nearly 50 percent more people in 2004 reported that their spouse is the only person they can confide in …Whereas nearly three-quarters of people in 1985 reported they had a friend in whom they could confide, only half in 2004 said they could count on such support. The number of people who said they counted a neighbor as a confidant dropped by more than half, from about 19 percent to about 8 percent.

(Shankar Vedantam “Social Isolation Growing in U.S., Study Says,” Washington Post, June 23, 2006;
read the full report here: http://www.asanet.org/galleries/default-file/June06ASRFeature.pdf#search=%22Lynn%20Smith-Lovin%20%26%20social%20isolation%22)

The study found sharp declines in all non-kin relationships. In 1985, 29.4 percent of people reported a close relationship with at least one co-worker; by 2004, that figure had dropped to 18 percent. Even more alarmingly, the percentage of respondents enjoying a close relationship with a co-member of a group dropped from 26.1 all the way down to 11.8. Understating the obvious was the study’s lead author, Duke University Professor Lynn Smith-Lovin: “This is a big social change, and it indicates something that’s not good for our society.”

Let’s be a bit more blunt here and stipulate that a society in which 24.6 percent of the people do not have a single close confidant, and an astounding 53.4 percent have no close non-kin relationships, is a very, very sick society. It is debatable, in fact, whether it is actually a society at all, but rather an essentially random collection of strangers, unconnected to each other in any meaningful way, each going about their meaningless lives in conditioned isolation.

Just how sick is this society? That is difficult to say, since we don’t have any data from a healthy society to provide a baseline for comparison. It is regrettable, to say the least, that the data available to the researchers only covered changes in Americaover the last two decades. Lacking earlier data, 1985 serves as a baseline for evaluating the data from 2004, but there is little doubt that America was already a very sick society by the mid-1980s and that social isolation had already increased immensely from earlier decades.

What would we find if we had data dating back to the 1960s, or the 1940s, or the 1920s? Does anyone doubt that that data would reveal a marked pattern of steadily increasing social isolation extending back many decades? When was America last a healthy society? What do the social isolation statistics of a healthy society look like? If someone were to finance a comprehensive international study of social isolation, how sick would the figures from 2004 America look in relation to the figures from the rest of the world? Where would America rank among nations? I’m guessing we’d be dead last.

And what does the future hold? If the last twenty years have brought such significant change, through a process that appears to be accelerating, then what will we find twenty years from now, or even ten years from now? If one in every four Americans now have no close relationships, even within their own family, can we expect to see that rise to one in every two Americans by 2020? Is this the kind of society you want your kids to grow up in? Because this isn’t conjecture or ‘conspiracy theorizing,’ folks, this is the cold, hard reality of the society we live in. Take a look around as you go about your daily activities today; one of every four people you see have no one to turn to, no one to confide in, no one to really talk to. And fully half the people you see have no social network at all beyond their own family.

But fear not. A lot of them probably have I-pods and personal computers with high-speed internet access. So it’s all good, I suppose.

Technology has, to be sure, played a major role in the rise of social isolation. But so too has the selling of fear, for we live in a world, as I may have mentioned before, where control through fear is the basic operating principle of our allegedly democratic government. I am not suggesting here, of course, that this is something new. There was, if I recall correctly, a fair amount of fear-mongering going on when I was a kid. Everyone seemed to be convinced, for example, that it was only a matter of time before “The Bomb” came raining down on America’s cities. To insure that we never stopped thinking about the prospect of nuclear annihilation, public schools held regular “bomb drills” or “drop drills.” When the alarm sounded at my school, we were all expected to take cover under our desks, with our hands strategically placed over our heads. We held regular fire alarm drills as well, but those were a bit different in that they had a real purpose: acquainting students and staff with evacuation plans in the event that an actual emergency should arise. The drop drills, on the other hand, served no purpose other than to induce fear. And I say that because research that I have done as an adult has led me to the shocking conclusion that my hands and a wooden desk would not have offered ideal protection from a nuclear blast.

There were other things to fear in the ‘60s and ‘70s as well. Strangers bearing candy were a persistent problem, though I made it through my childhood without ever encountering one of these legendary figures – except on Halloween, when, for some unexplained reason, it was perfectly okay to accept candy from strangers, especially if they were strangers who passed out really good candy and not the shitty candy that some people handed out, almost as if they actually wanted someone to egg their house. And then, of course, there were the people who just left a bucket of candy on the front porch for trick-or-treaters to help themselves to, kind of on the honor system.

While we’re on that subject, I’d like to take this opportunity to say, to all the kids down in Torrance, California who got to those houses after my brothers and I did, that we are very sorry for our youthful indiscretions and we plan on making it up to you someday. Also, we would like all our former neighbors to know that we no longer see the humor in setting off smoke bombs from the local fireworks stand on your front porches and then ringing-and-running your house. At the time, I’ll admit, it seemed really damn funny, especially when you’d come stomping out through the cloud of colored smoke to try to find us, while we sat hiding in the bushes across the street struggling mightily to stifle our laughter. But now, looking back as a responsible adult, I find it only mildly amusing.

Anyway, let’s now move on and take a look at the question that I am sure is on everyone’s mind, which is: what the hell is your point here, Dave? Glad you asked. The point is that we are now in a better position to discuss the question posed in Newsletter #81 (April 7, 2006). As readers will no doubt recall, in that outing I basically asked what it was going to take to get a reaction from the American people. But as it turns out, I was asking the wrong question.

The problem, you see, is not that the American people are not waking up to the outrages committed by this administration. To the extent that they can be trusted, every public opinion poll in recent years – whether concerning the occupation of Iraq, the handling of Hurricane Katrina, the performance of the 9-11 Commission, or any number of other issues – has reflected the fact that the American people are indeed waking up. And among those who have woken up, there appears to be agreement that the problems we are facing require immediate action.

So the problem is not that the American people don’t know what’s going on. And it’s not that they are too apathetic to care about fixing the problems once they recognize what those problems are. No, the real problem is that what is required to correct the course of this ship-of-state is a massive and sustained social movement. And the real question that needs to be asked is: how does a massive social movement arise in a nation that is almost completely devoid of any meaningful social networks?

And the answer, it appears, is: it doesn’t.

We are all products of what is surely the most socially isolated society that this planet has ever seen (except for those of you who are reading this in other parts of the world). And the harsh reality of the sick society that we live in is that the obtaining of real knowledge may be more of a curse than a blessing. With real knowledge comes the ability to see more clearly through the fog of lies, but with that increased awareness comes an inevitable feeling of helplessness. For how is someone to act upon that which has been learned when said person has no social networks to call upon and acting alone is clearly not going to prove effective? Hence the gaining of knowledge often leads, ironically enough, to yet further social isolation.

If I had it to do over again, I don’t know that I would have burrowed down this rabbit hole as deeply as I have. Unfortunately, it’s a one-way path; once you have dug your way in, there’s no way back out. There’s no way to unlearn that which has been learned. There is a certain satisfaction that comes with being able to understand how the world really works, and being able to more accurately process new information as it becomes available. But if you are powerless to right the wrongs in the world, is it better not to know? Is it better to live life comfortably numb?

I often get messages from some of you asking why I don’t burrow deeper – why I don’t address issues like, for instance, those mentioned at the top of this post. And the answer is that I don’t find the evidence in support of these ideas very credible. Or maybe it’s just that I haven’t dug deep enough down all the various branches of the rabbit hole. Maybe the view from my current position is so unrelentingly bleak that I don’t want to find out what lies beneath.

But then again, maybe if you dig deep enough, there is another way out.

A growing number of you have written to inquire whether I will be commenting on the dramatic ‘flight to freedom’ by the rather constipated looking gentleman to the left. (You can find Ruppert’s rant posted here http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/081606_burning_bridge.shtml, and re-posted at just about every fake dissident site on the ‘net, including:

http://vancouver.indymedia.org/?q=node/2235,http://www.federalobserver.com/archive.php?aid=10848, http://www.progressiveindependent.com/dc/dcboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=103&topic_id=22660&mesg_id=22660,http://www.fourwinds10.com/NewsServer/ArticleFunctions/ArticleDetails.php?ArticleID=10497, http://www.axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/printer_22797.shtml, http://www.radicalpress.com/?p=110,http://www.pscelebrities.com/alice/2006/08/by-light-of-burning-bridge-permanent.html, http://forums.ariannaonline.com/showthread.php?t=45794, http://plutonium-page.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/8/20/175819/646, http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=103×229778, http://www.rense.com/general73/ces.htm,http://www.uncommonthought.com/mtblog/archives/2006/08/18/by_the_light_of.php, http://www.axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/article_22797.shtml, http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0608/S00201.htm,http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2006/08/344643.shtml, http://www.conspiracyplanet.com/channel.cfm?channelid=2&contentid=3862, and http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_1120.shtml,)

And the answer, of course, is how could I not comment on it? It’s obviously a huge story, threatening to eclipse even the Jon-Benet Ramsey/John Karr saga. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if Karr was ultimately charged with the vandalism of the From the Bilderbergs offices. “But wait a minute,” you say, “Karr was in Thailand at the time of the alleged break-in at the From the Bilderbergs offices. I doubt if he could even find Ashland, Oregon on a map. They can’t possibly pin it on him. That would be ridiculous.”

Oh, dear readers, you have so much to learn. Anyway, as I started to say, Ruppert’s “Goodbye, cruel nation” rant is, without question, the funniest thing that he has ever written. In fact, it is the funniest thing I can remember reading for quite some time. I would add that it is also the most paranoid and delusional thing he has ever written, but I don’t believe for a second that Ruppert actually believes the bullshit that he feeds to his readers.

So the buzz on the streets is that the real reason for Ruppert’s sudden exodus from the country was not that staying here “would surely mean death,” but that he was being investigated on suspicion of having staged the ‘burglary’ at his new offices in Ashland and he was facing possible arrest and, with that arrest, full exposure as the complete asshat and fraud that he is now and has always been.

The word is that Ruppert’s From the Bilderbergs empire has not been faring so well of late: subscribers, no longer duped by Ruppert’s obvious lies, are dropping like flies; book and DVD sales are down; and the constant pleas for donations just aren’t bringing in the truckloads of cash like they used to. So the prevailing theory is that Ruppert, in a desperate attempt to keep his empire afloat, staged the ‘burglary’ of his offices to raise some cash, possibly through insurance payouts and, most obviously, by portraying Ruppert as a victim once again in yet another craven attempt to pry more money loose from his ever-shrinking base of followers. His next trick, I hear, will be to inform his readers that he needs to raise a million dollars by the end of the year or God will call him home.

In addition to generating sympathy (and therefore money) for Ruppert, the staged “burglary” also serves to further bolster his ‘street cred,’ so to speak. After all, if the government has been working so hard for so many years to silence this man, then what he has to say must surely be of supreme importance … right? That is what Ruppert would have you believe, which is precisely why he routinely rolls out a laundry list of sins allegedly committed against himself and his organization, and why he has, at various times, accused virtually everyone he has ever employed of being a government agent (that part, by the way, is probably true; it would hardly be surprising to find that a covert government operation that is currently housed in a government building is staffed by government agents).

Ruppert does not own the exclusive rights, by the way, to the tactic of fabricating instances of government harassment for the purpose of bolstering one’s credibility. It is an all too common phenomenon out here in the cyberworld, though I have to say that no one seems to play that card as frequently, or with as much panache, as our boy Mike.

As far as I can determine at this time, it has not been verified that Ruppert is the prime suspect in the staged “burglary” (unfortunately, the Ashland Police Department declined to comment on the case, citing a department policy that forbids commenting on ongoing investigations), but that seems to be a far more plausible explanation for his abrupt departure than Mikey’s breathless claim that he was facing an “imminent threat of death.” Indeed, a careful reading of Ruppert’s rambling, melodramatic diatribe yields clues that seem to support the theory that Sir Mike did indeed stage the scene at his offices.

For example, he writes that it “is almost certain that the burglary [Editor’s note: nothing was actually stolen, so it is unclear why Ruppert always refers to the incident as a burglary] was perpetrated, at minimum, based upon inside information provided by recently fired or resigned FTW staff members.” It doesn’t take a Sherlock Holmes to deduce that this is little more than an attempt, albeit a rather pathetic one, to preemptively spin the coming revelation that the staged “burglary” was in fact an inside job – but one committed by disgruntled former employees, of course, and not the boss himself.

In what appears to be a further effort to exonerate himself, Ruppert tries to sell the idea that this crime had to have been committed by multiple perpetrators. Amazingly enough, he actually lays out the following laughably absurd claims: “There are between eight and twelve screws that need to be removed to take the cover off of each of our computers. There were seven computers, and every one had their covers removed before being smashed. This was not a one-man job. Someone with computer savvy was involved.”

Damn, Mike, you are quite the cut-up, aren’t you? Someone with computer savvy was involved? I think that what was probably involved was one guy with a cordless screwdriver. Even if the FTB computers had covers held in place by eight to twelve screws, unlike any computers that I have ever seen (my current computer has exactly one screw holding on the cover, and it is a thumb screw that can be quickly removed without the use of tools), it would take one person with a cordless driver and no computer savvy approximately 15 seconds to open each machine. With a manual screwdriver, it might take as long as a full minute.

Ruppert goes on to make additional claims that are, if anything, even more preposterous: “Each computer had been disconnected from its monitor and peripherals. That was three to six connections per computer. This feat would have taken one person hours, and it would have been physically exhausting.”

Please stop it, Mike! You’ve almost got me in tears here! Do you write all your own material? Have you considered auditioning for “Last Comic Standing”? Seriously, dude, you should think about it because you are one funny motherfucker.

Speaking hypothetically, if I am a vandal bent on sabotaging the offices of FTB, I’m probably not going to bother with the niceties of properly disconnecting all the computer peripherals; I’m just going to grab a handful of cables and give them a good yank. It’s probably going to take about, oh, two seconds to disconnect each machine. And come to think of it, that’s kind of irrelevant anyway, because I’m not going to even take the time to disconnect the peripherals, nor am I going to then transport the machines to a vacant portion of the office, nor am I going to carefully remove the outer covers. No, what I am going to do is trash as much stuff as I can in the shortest amount of time. And I’m going to do that by just whaling on the computers and all their peripherals right where they sit, because in the time that it would take me to disconnect, relocate and open the machines, I can pretty much trash everything – including the desks they sit on. And it wouldn’t take very long at all. I don’t know that I’d even bother with the sledge hammer, to tell you the truth. I’m thinking I could just pour a little gas or something on the computers and light them up. Hell, I might as well burn up everything. But if I did go to all the trouble of disconnecting and removing all the machines, and I am, according to Ruppert, a methamphetamine addict, then I’m sure as hell not going to carry the machines into an empty room and (pretend to) destroy them No, I’m going to carry them right out to my car, along with anything else of value that I can find, and I’m going to sell everything for drug money. Vandalizing local businesses for no financial gain? That doesn’t do much for me. Stealing stuff to pawn for drug money is what I’m all about.

Ruppert seems to realize that various parts of his story are inherently ridiculous, so he tosses out the claim that the computers were taken to a vacant portion of the building so that there would be “plenty of room to swing the hammers.” It is perfectly obvious, however, that you don’t need much room at all to swing a sledge hammer with enough force to destroy the delicate electronics of a computer. In fact, you don’t need a sledge hammer at all. You can achieve the same effect by just picking the thing up and hurling it down on the ground (try it at home with your own computer and then compare the end result with the photos on Ruppert’s site and you’ll see what I mean). The only reasonable explanation for the machines being carefully disconnected and transported to a vacant portion of the office was to avoid damage to the peripherals and the desks that they sat on, which seems to me to be a pretty clear indication that this “burglary” was not the work of outside actors.

Ruppert tosses out some more alleged facts that are clearly intended to direct suspicion away from himself. He claims, for example, while offering no supporting evidence, that he suspects “that a minimum of two sledge hammers were used.” He also claims that “one door to a storage area which held no computers at all was needlessly smashed,” the implication clearly being that he couldn’t possibly be the perpetrator since he would have obviously known that there was no point in breaking into that particular room. But so presumably would the ‘real’ perpetrators, since Ruppert has already told us that they were working with “insider information.”

Mikey also poses the question of “who could have missed my Blue and Gold, 1996 Ford Bronco? It stands out like a sore thumb. And I could hardly have walked a block or two with a sledge hammer over my shoulder without risking being noticed.” Now, I don’t know if Ruppert is really this stupid or if he just thinks that his readers are, but his rather bold proclamations are directly contradicted by what Mikey himself wrote in the very same paragraph, when he noted that his offices are in a “quiet business park that was always abandoned after sunset.” How then could Ruppert’s vehicle stand out like a sore thumb when, by his own account, there would have been no one there to see it?

There is so much more in Ruppert’s ten-page screed that is ripe for ridicule. For example, Iron Mike claims that three “mobile squatters” who regularly parked their mobile homes by his offices at night were potential witnesses to the crime. He further claims that, “About a week after the burglary, I noticed the Ashland Police Department towing away one of the mobile squatters.” But if Ruppert really believed this (fictional) person to be a potential witness, then why wouldn’t Mike himself have approached and questioned the potential witness during the week before he was allegedly towed away? Ruppert is, after all, a former police investigator himself, so he does have some experience with questioning witnesses.

Also begging for ridicule is Ruppert’s audacious and wildly inappropriate claim that the staged “burglary” represented his own personal Kristalnacht. And then there is perhaps his most hilarious claim of all: “There were many poignant moments in the way we put together and executed a plan to get me out of the country in just 18 days, even as I noticed renewed and ominous surveillance around the office.”

Gee, Mike, overdramatic much? There is, as it turns out, an expedited procedure for getting out of the country. Though little known, it involves driving to the nearest airport, walking up to a ticketing agent at the airline of your choice, purchasing a ticket to your desired destination, and then boarding an airplane (after, of course, disposing of any potentially explosive water bottles). Perhaps Ruppert should try that technique next time. I’ve tried it myself and I can vouch for the fact that it really works. And by the way, that “renewed and ominous surveillance” that Mike mentioned? I’m guessing that if that wasn’t a figment of his imagination then it was probably the Ashland Police Department keeping tabs on their prime suspect.

While there is no shortage of material in Ruppert’s rant to mock and ridicule, there is also, alas, an aspect of this story that is not so funny, and that aspect, despite this lengthy intro, is the real focus of this newsletter.

Let me begin by stating that, except in the minds of a devoted few, there is little reasonable doubt that Michael Ruppert is, and always has been, a government agent. Everything about the man – from his family and employment history to his stand on numerous issues – points unwaveringly in that direction. His assigned mission for the last several years has been to unrelentingly push the lie of ‘Peak Oil,’ while occasionally taking a break from that to do such things as sabotage the 9-11 movement and run interference for the government after Gary Webb’s ‘suicide.’

It occurs to me, however, that Ruppert has lately become far more of a liability than an asset in his role of disinformation peddler. His own personal credibility is at such a low point that it seems very likely that a decision was made that the ‘Peak Oil’ scam was far too important a mission to be compromised by allowing a buffoon like Ruppert to continue to serve as the most vocal and visible spokesman. In other words, the staged burglary was really just the straw that broke the camel’s back; even before that, it was becoming clear that Ruppert needed to be shuffled off the stage and reassigned so that more credible spokesmen could take up the ‘Peak Oil’ battle cry.

Mikey claims that he doesn’t know where he will eventually take up residence, but for now he will be cooling his heels in Venezuela. This hardly seems a random choice. As readers are no doubt aware, Venezuela has been a hotbed of covert intelligence operations for many years now – election rigging, media manipulation, coup plotting, assassinations … all the usual “boys will be boys” kind of stuff. Funny then that a guy like Mike Ruppert would show up there, of all places, and at the very time that the CIA has announced the creation of a “new special CIA mission to oversee intelligence activities” in that particular country.  (http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=GOL20060820&articleId=3015)

If your primary goal, by the way, is to escape from CIA threats, harassment and intimidation, is it really a good idea to flee to a place that is absolutely teeming with CIA operatives? I’m not sure that would be my choice, but maybe that’s just me.

Anyway, I am reminded here of another time, some three-and-a-half decades ago, that a fake dissident journalist arrived in a South American country that was being targeted by the CIA. The last time I mentioned this gentleman’s name, several years ago on a radio show, I found my in-box filled with threats of legal action, so I will be using pseudonyms here that, unfortunately, will make it virtually impossible for readers to figure out who I am talking about.

So this other fake dissident, let’s call him “Marcooper,” arrived circa 1971 in a country that we will here refer to as “Chilly.” At that time, Chilly was being run by a democratically elected government that was at peace with its neighbors and working for the betterment of the country’s have-nots. As such, the decidedly left-leaning administration was widely admired throughout Latin America. But in North America? Not so much.

Providing a better life for the Chillyan people, you see, came at the expense of the profit margins of the American corporations that run the economies of our Latin American neighbors. So the CIA, as is its custom, sent in a whole bunch of operatives to stir up trouble, eventually culminating in a bloody coup that overthrew the democratically minded government and replaced it with a brutal military dictatorship that was more to Washington’s liking.

While the stage was being set for the coup, along came our dissident journalist to cozy up to the doomed administration. By posing as a harsh critic of US foreign policy, he was able to infiltrate the inner circles of the Chillyan government. Needless to say, this provided him with an ideal position from which to facilitate the coup, and then walk away unscathed, unlike some of the legitimate dissident Americans who were in the country at the time.

If someone were to attempt to play the role of Marcooper down in Venezuela, one of the first things they would probably want to do is firmly establish their status as a critic of US foreign policy and, more specifically, as a friend of Venezuela. And how would they do that? One way would be to show a sudden interest, some four years after the fact, in posting information about the US-backed coup that briefly toppled Chavez. And that, by sheer coincidence, is exactly what Michael Ruppert did, just three days after posting his farewell to America (http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/082106_proof_documents_summary.shtml). Another thing an aspiring Marcooper might want to do, upon arrival in Venezuela, is appeal for political asylum so as to get the attention of the Chavez government. And that, again purely by coincidence, appears to be exactly what Ruppert did (which would explain why he took a roundabout route to Venezuela to make it appear as though he was forced to sneak out of the US).

Only time will tell if Michael Ruppert is indeed in Venezuela as a man on a mission. It is possible, I suppose, that he simply needed to get the hell out of Dodge – due to the staged “burglary” incident, his ongoing financial woes, and the sexual harassment suit that he has responded to, from the safety of Venezuela, by viciously slandering and snitch-jacketing the complainant – and so he picked a place that is filled with friends from the intelligence community who can help him get reestablished.

All that can be said with certainty is that, as Richard Nixon once said, we won’t have Mike Ruppert to kick around anymore. But have no fear; there is no shortage of fake dissident writers waiting to fill the void.

It is now time, fearless readers, to revisit some of the events of 2004 – the year that a suspiciously well-organized band of ‘Peak Oil’ salesmen began cranking up the volume of their propaganda campaign while simultaneously attempting to shout down any dissenters in the crowd. Some of the events that will be covered here have been commented on before on these pages, but in a largely disjointed manner. With the benefit of hindsight, I now realize that what is needed is a timeline, which I now present, for the very first time, under an arbitrarily chosen title.

March 3, 2004: Philip Watts, CEO and former chief of exploration for Shell Oil, is asked to step down amidst a scandal involving allegedly inflated reserve estimates. Two months earlier, Shell had dramatically lowered its estimates of recoverable reserves, claiming that earlier figures had been faked. Both Watts and Walter van de Vijver, who had replaced Watts as chief of exploration when Watts became CEO, are forced to resign. Watts is the first CEO in the company’s century-long history to be forced from office.

April 19, 2004: Judy Boynton, Chief Financial Officer for Shell, is fired in the ongoing scandal over ‘faked’ reserve estimates. Boynton’s departure is accompanied by a further reduction in Shell’s estimated reserves.

April 28, 2004: Spokesmen for Saudi Arabia’s state-owned oil company announce that they are more than quadrupling their previous estimates of recoverable reserves, adding that the new estimate of 1.2 trillion barrels is “very conservative.”

May 1, 2004: Unidentified ‘terrorists’ strike out against key components of Saudi Arabia’s oil industry.

May 21, 2004: Saudi spokesmen again announce that the kingdom sits atop vast stockpiles of recoverable oil reserves.

May 29, 2004: ‘Terrorists’ again attack the Saudi oil industry. No further announcements are forthcoming from Saudi officials.

June 22, 2004: Professor Thomas Gold, the West’s most vocal and influential proponent of the abiotic origins of hydrocarbons, dies suddenly on the Summer Solstice.

July 2004: Russia’s Yukos Oil is charged by the Putin government with tax evasion.

August 3, 2004: Pemex, Mexico’s state-owned oil company, announces that it has mapped vast new oil fields in the Gulf of Mexico, enabling it to more than double the country’s estimated recoverable reserves.

August 20, 2004: Green Party activist Walter Sheasby, who six months earlier had penned a piece exposing the true backers of the ‘Peak Oil’ ruse, dies suddenly, reportedly from the West Nile Virus.

October 2004: Mikhail Khodorkovsky, CEO of Yukos Oil, is arrested and – appropriately enough – sent off to a cell in Siberia.

November 1, 2004: Raul Munoz Leos is forced out of his position as CEO of Pemex following a manufactured scandal. As the Los Angeles Times reported, Laos’ ouster came “a week after Mexican newspapers detailed how his wife, Hilda Ledezma Mayoral, billed the company for liposuction treatments costing a total of $12,000 last year and this April. Although Pemex insisted that any of its employees and their dependents were entitled to similar medical reimbursements and that Munoz Leos repaid the company, the damage was done.” (Chris Kraul “Mexico Replaces Oil Monopoly Boss,” Los Angeles Times, November 2, 2004)

I hope to expand upon this timeline in the coming months, possibly through tips sent in by alert readers, but already we can see that, in the span of just eight short months, two of the West’s leading critics of ‘Peak Oil’ theory turned up dead and the CEOs of three of the world’s major oil producers got axed. One of those three oil giants (Pemex) had just announced the discovery of  massive new oil fields, another (Shell) had just been ‘caught’ supposedly inflating reserve figures, and the third (Yukos) is the leading producer of oil in a country whose entire petroleum industry is based on the teachings of abiotic oil theory. In addition, a fourth major player in the oil industry, Saudi Arabia, saw some of its key oil installations attacked immediately after it had announced dramatically increased reserve figures.

The pattern here seems rather clear: contradict the lie that the world is running out of oil, and you end up either dead or exiled to Siberia.

There is one other thing that I need to add to my timeline: in October 2004, at the tail end of this extraordinary series of shameful events, all of which appear to have been aimed at preparing the playing field for the ‘Peak Oil’ scam, Michael Ruppert posted a piece on his From the Bilderbergswebsite in which he triumphantly declared, “We Did It!” Oh yes, Mr. Ruppert, you do indeed gotta lotta splainin’ to do. And when Mikey’s done explaining his position on ‘Peak Oil,’ maybe he can then explain something else that has been troubling me for the last several weeks: how is it that a seasoned police detective could do such an amateurish job of staging a crime scene? (http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/070506_offices_burglarized.shtml)