The Dawning of the Age of Libertarius

Tear-streaked epistles continue to appear in our mailbox from distraught Riddled readers, curiosity piqued but not assuaged by previous posts about the "International Tribunal of Natural Justice", desperate to learn what we make of the backstory to that curious self-appointed Unseelie Court of judicial cosplayers. OK, not really.

This fabricated lede aside, the ITNJ is a fascinating window into a kind of intellectual aquarium. Sometimes you want to tap on the glass and get their attention but the sign says not to. It is an aquarium, or subculture, occupied by some delightful personalities who appear to have escaped from an unpublished Thomas Pynchon novel -- personalities such as Supreme Court Judge Anna von Reitz, and 14th-Amendment Constitutional Bounty Hunter, Private Attorney-General Rod Class... those last two words are not another title or qualification, they're his name, though Rod Class also styles himself sometimes as Judge Dale. Just saying, "14th-Amendment Constitutional Bounty Hunter" would be the worst Reality-TV series EVAH.

In this aquarium one encounters questions in the rhetorical mode such as

Did One People's Public Trust legally foreclose the banks and corporate governments worldwide in 2012?
Did Anna von Reitz liquidate us with a bond in January 2017?

This may make it clearer

For these people have devised their own jurisprudence that puts them outside the reach of mere nation-state laws, so Betteridge's Law holds no fear for them. This is the subculture of Sovereign Citizens and Freemen-on-the-Land, who view themselves as a blend of Ayn Rand and Timothy Leary (in his late exopolitics / Starchildren brain-damage phase), the epitomes of transcendental self-sufficiency... which is why they also devised their own eccentric school of economics in which Corporations / Govt / Banks owe them $10 billion each; and their own physics, entitling them to unlimited free energy from the zero-point of the Quantum Vacuum [they read about it in a John Campbell story so it must be true]. 'Sovereign Citizenship' is what happens when young impressionable minds are allowed to read "Farnham's Freehold" without supervision and without parental guidance. For some reason, "Freeman on the Land" always puts me in mind of Rambling Syd Rumpo, and if that is wrong then I don't want to be right.

I have tried to write this post several times, with different ledes, but each time it turned out that the RationalWiki entry on the One People's Public Trust (OPPT) was funnier and more succinct, so go read that, OK?

From this FotL milieu, first there sprang the Paradigm Project, and then in late 2012 the OPPT -- a Libertarian / Hippie translation of the Prosperity Gospel, adorned with rhetorical tropes filched from Philip K. Dick about 'breaking the Matrix' and 'escaping the Iron Prison'. Attend the deep thoughts of Anna von Reitz (Supreme Court Judge):

During the 1990s alert financial analysts working for the Department of Defense discovered an odd thing. Numbers weren’t adding up. A vast amount of public money was being embezzled. As the members of what came to be known as “The Paradigm Project” dug deeper, something even more astonishing appeared. Almost all of the governments on Earth were being run as private, for-profit governmental services corporations chartered under the auspices of the UNITED STATES, INC.

[...]

Now, stripping the onion another layer, the Paradigm Project discovered that not only had nearly all the traditional governments on earth been reduced to mere governmental services corporations owned and operated by the UNITED STATES, INC., but the states and people being served by these new corporations had been similarly unlawfully converted into corporate franchises. For example, Wisconsin had been reduced to a State of Wisconsin and then to a STATE OF WISCONSIN belonging to the UNITED STATES, INC.
Worst of all, living people had been reduced down to corporate entities. An innocent American man operating under the Trade Name: Joseph Allen Smith, was reduced to a Foreign Situs Trust also named Joseph Allen Smith belonging to the State of Wisconsin: after that, Joseph Allen Smith (the Territorial Foreign Situs Trust) was declared “missing, presumed lost at sea” and a Cestui Que Vie ESTATE trust doing business as “JOSEPH ALLEN SMITH” was created “in his name” as a franchise of the UNITED STATES, INC.

Free money from zero-point
fluctuations in the quantum vacuum

That "alert financial analysts for the DoD" is all my bum [said Brinsley]; in fact the OPPT was a core troika of Heather Ann Tucci-Jarraf, Hollis Randall Hillner and Caleb Skinner, who spake the magic words that LEGALLY FORECLOSED the Old World Order and made it all dissolve in a puff of logic. I cannot be arsed inquiring further into these barmpots for the details of their prior histories in fraud and home-schooled entitlement. In this LEGAL FORECLOSURE, the troika were encouraged and publicised by the 5D Media Network, an alt-media Faceborg group of bloggers and Youtuber channellers. "5D" being loosely synonymous with 'woke', and denoting a higher level of consciousness than mere 3D and 4D cognition.

The RationalWiki entry describes the ensuing OPAL Tour of 2013. The 5D medianauts took to the road to proclaim the vanishment of the OWO, in a caravan of motorhomes running on water and powered by Free Energy, reincarnations of Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters. Although Kesey's activities were limited to a single FURTHER bus by the absence of the Intertubes and PayPal as a fundraising infrastructure... he could not appeal for donations to pay for non-watery fuel, spare parts for the Tesla Technology generator, and drugs. This is ALL TRUE: RW did not make it up and everything can be documented.

Bonus Rambling Syd Rumpo, because why not?

Nor did they invent the "Convergence in Morocco" part of the story, where the 5D crowd relocated to Morocco to embark on an exercise in communal living, transcendental existence and drug consumption... following in the footsteps of Heather Ann Tucci-Jarraf and Caleb Skinner, though without hospitality from those two on account of 'Fuck Off, Useless Losers'.¹

Caleb wants to create what he calls “Caleb’s House of Nerds”, a community of programmers who create great software and earn the rewards of their hard work. Heather also plans to create a unique community, blending in harmonic use of land, technology, agriculture, aquaculture, craftsmanship, and a possible alternative healing center.

[...]

We are getting a lot of inquiries from people wanting to come to Morocco and stay with us at Caleb’s villa. We frankly don’t have any room. Caleb and Heather have projects they are working on which are not complete, in fact they are very much in infancy. We have no facilities to house visitors (or feed them) at this time. Caleb’s villa serves as his working office. It cannot be the center of any sort of large gathering. There are no spare rooms.

The Morocco colony was joined by sundry OPPT believers (apart from such believers as had attempted to access their $10 Billion entitlement and were in jail by then). They were also joined by 'HopeGirl' (a.k.a. Hope Moore a.k.a. Naima Dawn Feagin) of the "Fix The World" foundation, bringing a different Free-Energy Quantum Generator that would power the community and indeed the entire village, and usher in the Millennium of Abundance,
as soon as Wandsworth the skool dog outside supporters donated enough $$ for the spare parts.* In one account, FtW "has always been a service-to-others organization focused on humanitarian projects to help bring about change on our planet that would work to end human suffering" but the judges would also have accepted "Old-fashioned wholesome family of grifters who glimpsed a new scam and wanted in on the ground floor".**

[Source: Hoaxtead]

Our interest, though, centres here on Caleb Skinner from that OPPT triumvirate, who is actually more of a character from an abandoned subplot of Cryptonomicon than from Pynchon. Even as the OPAL roadtrip and the Morocco migration was happening, Caleb was reinventing himself as a Software Boy-Genius, and switching his energies to 'Project XIII'... a multifaceted app that would topple Faceborg, luring users with the promise of data anonymity and hard encryption and a gateway to that $10 Billion of credit units to which we are all entitled; all for a nominal monthly fee. Despite sporadic release announcements, five years later 'project xiii' is just a shiny webpage, inspiring doubts that Caleb's forte is more in promises than in software.

But in fairness to Caleb, there were other calls on his time to distract him, e.g. co-opting the ITNJ. For the International Tribunal was meanwhile sprouting from the same rich intellectual loam -- initially as a "People's Grand Jury Initiative", in the recollection of its co-founder -- and Caleb was contracted to write "case-management software".

If we are to believe a series of slightly embittered posts at "Claims of the Living" from co-founder Rebecca Cope, a little band of US SovCits were putting together the underpinnings for a People's Court that would lay bar the machinations of the Matrix, with assistance from like-minded eedjits in South Africa.² These bare-bones-budget volunteers were glad of an offer of collaboration from Simon "Sacha" Stone, impresario of a portfolio of mandala-logoed New Earth websites. For he seemed to be a kindred spirit, interviewing the OPAL road-trippers if not actively joining them, eager to learn from the Grand Jury initiative, in much the same way that a magpie is eager to learn from a collection of shiny valuables. Caleb came as part of the package:

I next presented the timelines to Sir John and team. Caleb was in on that meeting because he was living with Sacha at the time. It was here I discovered the alteration in the intent of the Tribunal.
Sir John tipped his hand when he said he could call up a Grand Jury from the phone book, should he ever need one. Caleb said we could hold the Tribunal next week, since all we needed was a judge. It was stupid to waste time on Juries, etc, etc.

Calls himself Judge, which by Speech Act
Magic makes him a Judge; also 'ad the Latin
to get through the rigorous judging exams

Cope's trust in the SovCit belief-system is sincere if delusive (often citing Supreme Court Judge Anna von Reitz and Private Attorney-General Rod Class as the ultimate constitutional authorities) so imagine her surprise to find grifting in progress. She had received one bill from Sacha's mate Chief Justice Sir John Walsh of Branagh for his advice, another for his presence in London along with his entourage for the Tribunal's inauguration, while the vast bulk of the budget of the ITNJ was assigned for paying Mr Walsh's monthly retainer. A priority for the Tribunal would be cases from which Walsh stood most to profit.***

...massive fraud that would be perfect for exposure of many corrupt corporations. In the letter, the Law Commissioner stated 1/3 of any financial judgment in her favor would be paid to the Australian team for their efforts and requested a call be had as soon as possible between the parties to discuss.

Sovereign Citizens are such easy prey

And there were recriminations and drama, and the ITNJ charter changed unilaterally so as to no longer involve US input. Letters of Resignation were followed by Letters of She-was-never-really-on-the-team. My first draft included lengthy quotes from Claims of the Living, but it's all funnier in context so read the original.

A recurring theme in Rebecca Cope's account is the central role of Caleb Skinner:

Those who insist that there is a "middle ground" failed to listen carefully to Sir John's dialogue on the Grand Jury last night. Nor did they follow Caleb's "logic" on Contracts and Ecclesiastical Law. According to Caleb, a person coming before the tribunal gives jurisdiction to the Judge. That's the only "authority" the Judge needs. If a person is stupid enough to allow a Judge to hear their case, (Caleb's explanation) then they should suffer the consequences.

[...]

It appears that Caleb's model has been allowed to hijack the Tribunal. We have just reversed direction from what we have worked all year to accomplish. We don't need a Grand Jury. Caleb says so. We no longer have a People's Tribunal. We have a Judge's chamber, and we have our first law commissioner ready to bring a case that is "financially lucrative" that can help pay Sir John and team’s hefty salary.

[...]

Then an email comes through that Sue and others are "circling back" by not getting with Caleb. Caleb has communicated to Sue that he will not do the software until the first case comes through.
Well, of course. Now I understand. Caleb is telling Sacha and Sir John how easy it is to run the Court. "We don't need to do any of the things that Rebecca's team has been working toward. We don't need Grand Juries. That's so NOT zero-point. Here's how we do things MY way."

Artist's impression of Cope (h/t OBS)

Rather than write code and wrangle a database, Caleb reframed the situation so that software was no longer required. Whatever his actual software capabilities, he has mastered the three core virtues of programming: laziness, impatience and hubris.

[Many tips of hats to the discussion boards at Quatloos!, and Fogbow, as well as RationalWiki and Hoaxtead
Original title was to be "Secret Treaties", so as to use the B.Ö.C. Lyrics tag]

-----------------------------------------------------

1. Caleb Skinner is described as a controlling arsehole but a wonderful easy-going personality as long as you believe his bullshit stories and do exactly what he says.
"Caleb, one of the other trustees from the former OPPT, is also quite an amazing personality. Caleb is a highly focused personality with an enormous work ethic and sense of purpose. Caleb loves computer programming, it is his greatest joy in life. Caleb is also a person with very defined boundaries. If you wish to be around Caleb you will abide by the rules of his house, which mostly are, being responsible for what you BE and DO, and being absolutely TRANSPARENT about it. He is however a very easy person to be around, and goes above and beyond to be a good neighbor.
"I understand why Heather and Caleb worked so well together, and I don't mean to leave out Randall Hillner, either, as he played an enormous role within the OPPT too.  I just don't know Randall - he's perhaps the most private of the three. 
"Caleb was the personality responsible for making sure the OPPT was closed once it had completed its task it was designed to fulfill.  Which turned out to be a very wise move given the smear machine was already gearing up to attack it like Occupy Wall Street.  What the contrast did know how to handle was millions of people who simple were will to BE and DO what was in their heart.  Nothing is more powerful than an individual willing to stand in their own personal power. 
"Caleb tends to be grounding force for Heather, and also tends to hold her feet to 3D deadlines.  Heather is a banker and a lawyer by training, but she is also a very spiritually aware person and tends not live by clocks and calendars but by events as they happen.  Caleb will pin her down when she would prefer to be imprecise and rely on your presumptions of the facts, that's just what good lawyers tend to do, and Caleb knows that.  So he insists on specificity.  Caleb's nature compliments Heather's nature in the mutual adventure they have embarked upon taking down the slavery systems on this planet. 
"Caleb is an autodidact, (a self taught person), as such he doesn't tend to be impressed by sheets of paper from institutions saying you know something when you really don't.  He is hugely intelligent with a very high IQ.  I've met few people as smart as he is.  Caleb's father was also a computer programmer. Caleb was raised on small farm in Oregon where he raised pure bred sheep with his family and brother. He was home schooled, and never got either a high school degree, GED or a college degree (he did go to college for a couple of years). That's not to belittle him, he's far more intelligent and educated than most college graduates I have encountered. He learned on his own which shows enormous initiative and work ethic.  He's very knowledgeable on the UCC law code and contract law.  He has operated his own software development house for many years and has a number of people around the world doing work for him."

* A perspective on this Convergence comes from Melani Vermay -- yet another 'Alt-Media journalist', i.e. a citizen-ranter with a "Freedom Central" Youtuba channel [also "Head of Media within the God Sky Earth Project", don't ask]. Mel was a passenger aboard OPAL and the QEG and the SwissIndo scamwagons -- the latter being another version of the Prosperity-Gospel grift. Mel is covered by the Hoaxtead beat so here she only warrants a footnote.

** Moroccan Aftermath:
I don't often read psychotherapeutic sessions but when I do, I read Wilfred Bion's attempts to psychoanalyse psychosis. Bion listens patiently to his client's word-stream, which he squeezes into Kleinian 'part-object theory' of fragmented Mother-Imagos and echoes back to see if that's what the patient meant. The resulting dialogs are completely condamine shuttlecock, but at least the patient has the satisfaction of knowing that he is not the craziest person in the room.

What brought this to mind was the transcripts of Heather Ann Tucci-Jarraf's recent court appearances, where HAT-J tried to convince various judges to submit themselves to her Freeman theory and precedents of ontological jurisprudence (a conceptual framework in which there was no element of fraud or forgery or money-laundering in her previous activities). Rather then shout her down with bloody asides [Sellar & Yeatman 1938], the judges did their sympathetic best to understand, but the outcomes read like Ionescu scripts, all communicative misprision:

THE DEFENDANT: Okay. I am — I’m here as myself.
THE COURT: I didn’t ask that question.
THE DEFENDANT: No, I know. You’re asking if I’m representing myself.
THE COURT: We’re all here as ourself.
THE DEFENDANT: I’m not representing myself. I’m here as myself. I am myself. And I will —
THE COURT: I think I am myself too.

Speaking of mis-prison, HAT-J remains in custody for sentencing in June.

Ranter Media Network

The 5D Network numpties showed how much they had learned from the abject failure of every aspect of their Moroccan interlude by regrouping with an even new-ageier logo, with "The ONE Network" as the new name for their Youtuber interviews with one another. For instance, inviting Sacha Stone and Heather Ann T-J to tell the listeners about their wonderfulness:

"Hope-Girl" continues to solicit donations for Quantum Energy Generators, though the focus of her entrepreneurial zeal has shifted to warning her readers of the evils of 5th-Gen Electrosmog Toxicity (which fortunately can be blocked by Shungite water-structuring Charge Plates and Orgonite Neo-Crystal Pyramids, for sale through her site).

For a while she was distributing a diary of her globe-trotting adventures in bringing Free Energy to the masses, written in jocular style, where Dirt was Dished on the comical losers who had housed her along the way. Subsequently, alas, having thought better of saying the quiet part loud, she withdraw this memoir from circulation, citing the clash between its irreverent contents and her newly serious Born-Again-christian status. Just saying, Birth-Again often happens to grifters who want to cultivate intra-faith affinity and trust among dim suckers before fleecing

2. The South African contingent of Freemen-on-the-Land have realised their role in the ITNJ, i.e. as a moneyteat, and went all regretsy about their involvement in it. Their problem with the Tribunal is not because the cosplay Chief Justice is a mendacious humbug who must have trained a neural network on Debrett's Peerage so it could make up titles and honours for himself, but rather, because they accept Mr Walsh's litany of bad-fantasy-novel titles - in particular, "Regent of the Royal House of Anjou".

Thus, the ITNJ’s allegiance is to an Anglo-Saxon-Norman-Latinus feudal system of kingship and slavery; of masters, servants and slaves; the very yoke that we, the people are now throwing off; but, blood is thicker than water;
And, it is the ITNJ’s prerogative; after all, it is the people of England’s right to be subjects to a feudal system; but, Africa will never be subject to an imperial colonial BAR legal system; hence, we withdrew;

[and a lot more like that].

They have also deleted the blogposts that record their one-time enthusiasm for the OPPT, and would rather pretend that the whole regrettable episode never happened.

*** In happier days it was proclaimed that the first case to come before the ITNJ would be that of Kevin Galalae vs. Canada,

be tried openly and televised live so that the offending parties in Canada and beyond will be known to the world for their unlawful, malicious and immoral actions with respect to covert methods of depopulation and further acts of structural violence can be avoided.

So the Depopulation Agenda was to be the linchstone and the keypin (or perhaps vice versa) of the hearing, rather than Galalae's other grievances against Canada, such as his passport issues, or the inequity and iniquity of Canadian child-custody laws. Mr Galalae is a Canadian / Romanian and World Citizen; also "Civilization Builder, Tip of the Spear at Confronting Genocide, Founder of Center of Global Consciousness". He is known in the Alt-Reality Looniverse for the dogged one-man rearguard battle he has waged [like Rierson in "Sleeping Planet"] against the Forces of Genocide with their Depopulation Agenda of vaccines and chemtrails. His resistance took the form of scholarship-shaped advertisements in mockademic journals from predatory publishers, as documented at Respectful Insolence, and indeed here at Riddled. I do not link him to the Freemen-on-the-Land, for his thought processes do not reach that level of coherence.

A few years ago Galalae teamed up with some other muppet for a Roman Holiday, all about winning support for his campaign from the Vatican, though a cunning strategy of hunger strikes while being videoed and help-help-I'm-being-repressed by the Italian constabulary. The expedition did not end well, but he did get to be interviewed by our man Sacha Stone.



Alas, Galalae was dropped from the ITNJ's docket in favour of deeper-pocketed plaintiffs, and now he has nothing but contempt for the Tribunal and for Sacha Stone:

International Tribunal for Natural Justice (ITNJ) is phony
I can now state with certainty that the ITNJ is not a genuine organization. It was set up by the current system to obtain the legal files of people whose lives they have destroyed so as to deny them justice in courts at a later date should it come to that.

He has also wiped much of his presence on the Interweave, in the last few days: his communiques, posted on the LinkedIn platform; Faceborg; his Youtubr channel. He had sought donations and paid big $$$ to the OMICS garbage publishers to attend their scamferences and deliver presentations on DEPOP AGENDA CHEMCINES VACTRAILS, but even the videos documenting these prestigious events have gone.

All this erasure, it seems, stems from a fit of pique at the apathetic masses who failed to support his campaign over all these years. He realised that the Forces of Genocide were right all along, the masses deserve extermination, and he wants to switch to the winning side. Of course here at the Mad Scientist Anti-Defamation League we applaud this move (Welcome, brother! We have cake), and we understand his need to efface his earlier footsteps. Still, an earlier version of this post was organised around Galalae's apostasy as the lede, forcing me to rewrite it when his announcement of that apostasy disappeared, so I am not well-pleased with him.

Non Angeli, sed Angli

By way of an update to the previous post, I have made the acquaintance of Bryan Emerson -- ecological-impact-minimising money manager -- and perforce I must share it with you, for he appears to have escaped from the notebooks of a crap satirical novelist. Conceivably Tom Wolfe, although I am open to correction on that point, for Riddled is all about the factual accuracy.

The power of Ira Dei
the Dragon-onna-stick
COMPELS me to share

Bryan is a seasoned entrepreneur, low carbon footprint living proponent, involved angel investor, mentor and board member for early-stage companies.
He is a Major in the Civil Air Patrol and an Extra class amateur radio licensee. He remains President of Starlight Capital, Inc. which, until sold in 2015, hosted approximately five private equity conferences each year at The Yale Club New York since 2001 (see: www.equityforum.com). Bryan works a portion of the year from his off-grid, solar and wind powered log cabin.

It would be wrong to speculate about the number of human heads stored in the log cabin's freezer.

As is the way of successful venture capitalists / investment advisors, Mr Emerson also touts for contract gigs through LinkedIn and Upwork (I am unable to find Warren Buffet's Upwork entry but it is sure to be there somewhere). He is also available for wedding receptions and children's parties, although there is a dry-cleaning fee in the event of cake- or ice-cream-spillage on his costume.

Mr Emerson comes to Riddled attention as an erstwhile part-owner of the 'Equity Forum' operation, before selling his share to OMICS for whom he now works.

Starlight Capital, Inc. sold its interest in New York Private Equity Forums to a large conference organizer and publisher (www.equityforum.com). Mr. Emerson implements a marketing optimization program for it in India approximately four weeks each year. He uses Starlight Capital to identify promising angel investment, mentoring and board membership opportunities.

That is, the gombeens at OMICS did not themselves devise the ingenious rort of soliciting $$$$ from business-plan-possessing but moneyless would-be entrepreneurs, promising to provide an assignation with investors to whom they might strut their stuff and and pitch their elevators.* I am disappoint. Still, kudos to OMICS for recognising the similarity between this scheme and their core activity (i.e. beguiling similarly-desperate academics with the promise of publication through production-line scamferences and mockademic journals).

OMICS are keen to capitalise on the concept's full potential, taking their "one-of-a-kind" opportunity out of New York and onto the road, advertising tickets to fast-approaching 2017 play-date encounters in Los Angeles,

San Franciso and Las Vegas,

Orlando, Atlanta and Chicago. In comparison the original operators are left looking visionless and unambitious. Sadly, the absence of dates and venues for any of these not-at-all-vaporware Equity Fora (not to mention 'organising committees' and 'scientific programs') makes it difficult to plan one's attendance. It also fosters the unfortunate impression that OMICS' expansive ambitions have outstretched their intentions. Here at Riddled Sugar Daddies we are experts on professional appearance and we urge OMICS to attend our next workshop on "Authenticity and How to Fake It: Selling your Vision to the Suckers", only $6500. There they will learn to avoid the look that they are flinging shit at the walls to see which kind attracts most flies.

This manifestation or symptom of late-stage capitalism is not as novel as I had thought. The Great Gazoogle tells of agitation against start-up exploitation, in a long-vanished epoch of nobility and chivalrous values (e.g. here, here and over there), that is to say 2009-2010. Before the ideas of extracting unpaid work from job applicants (a chance to display their capability) and making would-be entrepreneurs compete for venture capital (for Reality-TV entertainment) became taken for granted.

The name of Mike Segal featured in that disturbance in the Force, on account of the volume and tone-deafness of his solicitory spamming. Also, shaming and blaming for the use of a Verizon e-address. To everyone's surprise, M.J.Segal Associates reappear as the other founder of PrivateEquityForums (along with Bryan Emerson) -- the description being dutifully copy-pasted as "Founding Sponsors" of the OMICS version of the brand, on account of the gravitas conferred by the names. A warning is in order: the former website is all garish and shouty, enough to make the average predatory-journal web design look like a model of understated elegance.

But that was a whole paragraph without a joke, so here's an instance of Segal's spammed Invitations to a Shakedown. His insistence that email spam is in fact targetted correspondence is another commonality between start-up meat-market grifters and predatory publishers (who never send spam either).

Although we have not had a chance to speak about this event or your company's funding requirements, kindly note that this correspondence is not part of a bulk mailing being delivered to you by a commercial e-mailing service and I have sent it to you personally on the basis of general research that our staff has undertaken on your company - based upon its industry sector and stage of operations. Of course, we do not know the expansion plans of your company or its need for capital, but are always on the lookout for companies with strong growth prospects which may resonate with our investors. 

The joke is that the recipient of this passive-aggressively insistent series of messages -- the struggling little company identified as in need of a capital injection, and open to paying Mike Segal $$$$ for a discreet consenting-adults introduction to investors -- was Sony Pictures.

-------------------

* $6500 to attend as a non-presenting entrepreneur; the fee for actual lordosis presentation is too delicate to be placed on the record, so must remain a matter for speculation.

Pooparazzi n.

An individual (or the class of individuals) who gains clandestine access to the toilets of the rich or famous or successful, in order to acquire stool samples to sell in the market for Celebrity Fecal Transplants.

See also "stool pigeon"; "latrine sloth"; "Going through the motions".

News from Nowhere Oslo

The alien slave raids grow more brazen every day.

No-one is safe from being sucked up in their mass tractor-beam abductions.

A wodge of it

"What is going on in the great water problem in NZ, the Watergate" I hopefully do not hear you ask. Well, me buckos, it can be summarised as bugger all.
Various people have gone on various media and said various things. The Prime Mincer (Hoban 1982) explained that the government was only the government and shouldn't be getting in the way of local government in dealing with all those sick people. "Ewww" he did not add.
The local gubblement people are all flappy hands about it still but good progress is being made in moving toward a scoping committee to look at various options for issuing a statement on the possibility of a statement being issued in the very near future. As soon as they get a handle on what the central government would like them to say.
However all is not lost for the denizens of Sickcity as the Central government has put some money where it's feeding orifice usually is and stumped up funds... for marketing... for businesses negatively impacted by the crisis (WHICH IS NOT A CRISIS BECAUSE WE DON'T HAVE CRISES IN THE HAPPIEST KINGDOM).
Yes, for those business people who can prove that they have had financial hardship, the G-men are gonna front up with $100,000 dollars...for the whole town... like the 100 businesses affected might get $1,000 each to buy a page in the local newspaper.
"Now with less Campylobacter" perhaps.
This was only announced yesterday (hmmm 5pm on a Friday night, what a funny time to announce such a thing) so there are no details available yet but I'm sure that the government who could not be arsed dealing with the NOT A CRISIS in the housing market of the largest city in NZ whose every action directly affects the whole country, will be pouring aid and advice into the area.
LOL
In Getting-Lost-In-The-Wilderness-News, a Polish woman has survived a month in the mountains of NZ after her partner fell off a cliff and died. She walked for two days through waist deep snow to find a mountain hut and after seeing that there was no food there, broke into the next door government workers hut where there was food and firewood. After a month her family contacted the NZ cops and within a day they had her back to safety. Good result. Except if you are an NZ conservative, of course. Readers of and scribblers to the National Party mouthpiece blog that says (HAHAHA)it is independent have been aghast at the money spent to rescue this person of a feminine disposition who had the affrontery to not be killed like her so-called partner was. Also, they have been full of how much better they would have handled it and why did she stay in the hut for a month? They would have cut down a  very large tree and built a snowplough which they would have used to fetch a doctor to bring her partner back to life since he had been in the snow, he wouldn't have been really dead argle blargle blargle. Dispiriting stuff, even from the crowd who would ban burkas but think young woman are asking for it.

Alvin and the problem with steel.

In a vastly troubled world where every man and his dog is eating every other man and his dog and telling them it's for their own good and "whattsa matter you don't like hotdogs??", what pray tell of New Zild? Shining bacon of hope and whatsit. Personally I mistrust shining bacon but it's an ill wind that blows on all rising boats equally.
Well we have a housing crisis that has been avoided only by the brave actions of our spectator government paying 12 families about $5000 each to leave Auckland. We do not know the identities of the 12 Families of the Houspocalypse but no doubt we shall as soon the expert kerners and amateur defectives of talkback radio get on the case. Thus we shall have it proven that ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ.
If the government can have a large enough lever inserted underneath its arse maybe they will get off the couch and start building houses for people. Call me a naive and sentimental fool but I thought that if there was not enough houses for the number of people in a country, the country could build more. But then I am not a "government that listens to people and gets things done"
One of the things the guvnors could use to build building would be Chinese steel. Why Chinese steel you might well ask, all the while knowing that the answer will be "because it's cheaper". Which is, indeed, the very answer.
Of course such steel would have to be tested to make sure that it does the supporting work inherent in the name supporting structures, and that testing would be more rigorous than a bloke signing a form to get the bloody steel out of the yard before Mr Poopy Dragon's Breath comes and shouts at me. But sadly this appears not to be the case. So New Zilders can rest assured that if they want non-falling down houses, bridges and other large structures, bricks look good and you don't have to paint them.
This prompted alarm in the higher levels of our Guvvermint which was, as usual, caught on the hop and this time it was one of the least glowing lightbulbs in the chandelier of Democracy that is the New Zild government, Mr Todd McClay

 

Mr McClay (From his own webpage)

Mr. McClay was told that the Chinese were preparing to slap tariff restrictions on Kiwifruit exports from these sceptred isles if there were investigations into the Amazing Elastic Steel incident. This was a serious "How's Your Father?" from Beijing and would be very much unappreciated by Mr. McClay's constituency who actually have never liked the Chinese since their Great-Great-Grandfather shot a Chinese goldminer and stole his claim. But McClay said nuthin' to no one and kept right on doing Chipmunk impersonations.

So then someone else heard about the Chinese threat and asked the Todd about it to which he gave the standard answer for this governemnt "I don't remember" and then "Nah, no one told me."

This came as a shock to the officials who had told Mr McClay and who did vouchsafe "We did so!!" and pointed out the relevant briefing notes.

"Oh" said Mr Macca, "THOSE briefing notes! I thought you meant....have you ever seen a Chipmunk eating airline food?" Then the actual Chinese government got in on the act and said "We didn't actually make the threat, WTF is wrong with you people?" and went home to drink whiskey and listen to Jazz music.
Fevered clumping around in search of an answer or Machiavellian politician? We report you decide. (No, that's an actual Chipmunk)

All of which is yet more reason for unalloyed happiness to continue to reign in The Happiest Kingdom of Them All and the latest poll results, showing the gubblement more popularer then ever were produced right on cue.

And only two scant weeks until the Olympics when the NZ rowing team will trounce all the weakling teams who can't take a bit of sewage in their drinking water like brave kiwis can. It's gonna be kiwiproud all month, mate. Unless other teams turn up, whereupon we will be all Creditable Effort Folks.

Backdate: NZ government says "Who us, investigate? Ha ha, no way Jose" 

Post truth, post hole

It seems that we live in the era of "post truth" politicians. An interesting take on the matter, considering the amount of lying that has gone on in recorded history. Perhaps a more accurate description would be the Couldn't Give a Bugger About the Truth era? It would certainly enliven future textbooks about the early 21st Century.
 "At this point it became obvious just how few buggers were actually given by politicians as it was conclusively proven that Trump was of an alien species but his voters continued to say he connected with real heartland Americans".
 New Zild has had its own share of non-fact-connected politicians but the current Prime Minister must be in the top 5 in the top No Buggers Given list. In the past he has opined about all and sundry with no scraps of credibility or knowledge to impede his decision making. For instance we know he has peed in the shower but not masturbated, he thinks Iraq is a safe place and he would not have shot the Gorilla. Many of his National party colleagues breathed a little easier after that one.
But he doesn't just limit himself to shower antics or zoo animal preservation, he also comments upon things that are central to the modern, go ahead Conservative government he leads.
Conservative governments have a bit of a checklist of things they will do, a comment I have made on this blog before, hopping into the poor people, lowering taxes for rich people and helping businesses to oppress their workers etcetera, etcetera.
This government has ticked all of those boxes and made a special point of Great Specialnesss about how they had "reformed" employment laws with the introduction of the 90 day rule. After they realised that this not a relaxation of the 4 second, dropping food on the floor rule, many New Zilders reacted with "Wahhht... my...did...rugby on". Unbeknownst to them the government had introduced legislation that allowed people to be employed for 90 days at low pay rates and even more excitingly dismissed with no reason and no backsies at any time in the 90 days.
At the time this was greeted by government spinners and lackies as a Great Leap Forward for industrial relations and the benefits would flow to all and young folks would get jobs and possibly everyone would get a panda to keep as a pet.  
Of course, it did no such things.
Five years on from the introduction of the 90 days rules a Treasury report has concluded that the introduction of the 90 day rule has had little to no affect on NZ employment issues. This is the Treasury, mind you, Friedmanites to the core and paid for by the Gubblement to find shit out when the troooooth is needed.
So the PM was in a bind, since his fairytale did not have the right ending and the people collecting the data are his inquisitorial shocktroops. Brilliantly he ignored that dumb ole report. People, he said, talked to him all the time as he went around NZ  and they said it had gone swimmingly and everyone was happy as two clams in whatever place would make clams happy. So there! To make sure that The Base would get what he was on about he noted.

"You can have a piece of academic research but it's quite different from the small cafe owner whose money is on the line, who is taking the risks and who actually rely on this kind of policy.

Academics amirite?

Still, quite brave of him to bring up small cafes after the ponytail pulling incidents of last year. But he is nothing if not something or other.

Please swallow your Blue Dreamer And place the helmet on your head Three Men in Black Said "Don't Report This!" #2

Crisis actors (may include infants)

The upside of residing in a country where pundits and politicians are currently exercised with a 'Change-the-Flag' national-nonentity mocktroversy is that we have no False-Flag operations, all flags being equally fictitious. Thus we are spared the unseemly phenomenon of Alex Jones wannabees procrustenating every disaster and mass murder into their narrative of "Stage-managed spectacle, scripted by the dramaturges and puppet-masters of the reality studio and performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton a troupe of Crisis Actors, to distract the Sheeple from The Truth©."

The conspiracy is ruthless
when dealing with traitors

It has come to our attention, however, here at the Riddled Research Laboratory and Sheepdip Mixing Dispensary, that other countries have more than their fair share of dot-connecting, pattern-matching, Sheeple-waking histrionic griefers collectively calling themselves Truthers. Variously convinced that the Fall of the Towers was faked, and that the last seven years of the Obama presidency has been a mass hallucination or an illegitimate time-line, which will retrospectively never have happened as soon as the true birth certificate comes to light. Also chemtrails, and Lyme disease, and Red Pills.

Some blame Post-modernism. Or Twitter. Jerome Lamb suggests that over-consumption of whacky-baccy contributes to the determination that Truthers bring to their deconstruction of every headline. Our own working hypothesis is that this is Neo-Gnosticism -- a revival or continuation of an intellectual tradition that began in the late-Hellenistic Levantine cultural arena, and continued into Roman Mithraism. People mashed up Greek initiation-mystery cults and Kabbalah (with a generous helping of Hindu/Buddhist notions about Samsara and the Veil of Maya)... concluding that there is an ultimate reality, and a cheap no-frills own- brand reality cobbled together by an inept and derivative Demiurge; and that we have been duped into occupying (or thinking we occupy) the imitation. Philip K. Dick was well-versed in this style of thinking, although he had the excuse of access to fine pharmaceuticals.

Our other, not-so-working hypothesis -- on vacation, easing gently into retirement -- is that there is money to be made here. Hence the Riddled Truther Cruise* -- a cafeteria of conspiracy, an all-you-can-eat buffet of belief. Passengers will be introduced to the literature and cinematography of fabricated realities, and there will be writing workshops, on the theory that they are basically trying to write science-fiction scenarios, so they might as well learn to do it properly.

Beguiling advertisements for Riddled cruise

Actual conditions not quite so attractive

The entertainment program so far includes

13th Floor..... World on a Wire..... The Congress

They Live..... Night Watch..... Men in Black.... Island

Dark City..... Matrix..... ExistenZ

Inception..... Vanilla Sky, Open your Eyes

Truman Show..... Adjustment Bureau..... Capricorn 1

Wayward Pines..... Man in the High Castle

I do not count that whole Death-dream genre from Carnival of Souls on through Jacob's Ladder where the protagonist is dead but reluctant to come to terms with the new dispensation. Nor that 1970s fashion for paranoia movies like Parallax View where the brainwashing conspiracy is content with pulling the strings from behind the scenes but is not creating those scenes and substituting its stage-management for reality. The President's Analyst is a borderline case. Reader contributions are welcome but the judges' decision is final and no correspondence will be entered into for any bribe less than $80.

There have still been no movie adaptations of Valis or of Penultimate Truth; nor of Colin Kapp's Manalone. Or if there were, then the Conspiracy successfully suppressed them.

---------------------------

* COMPLETELY NOT INSPIRED by the Conspira-Sea Cruise around the Mexican Riviera, as reported at Respectful Insolence. Conspiracy-curious passengers can become part of the captive audience for impresarios of paranoia, presenting a smorgasbord of alternative realities -- all equally valid, all equally plausible, and all for the purpose of ludic entertainment. Once you have believed six impossible things before as part of breakfast, their mutual incompossibility is not a concern.

During this incredible, mind-blowing, truth-telling, spiritually enriching event, we will do our best to uncover the truth about things conspiratorial, including:
GMOs, Monsanto, bee colony collapse, ecology, global warming, climate change, fracking, HIV, autism, big pharma, medical suppression, vaccinations, flouridation, political corruption, government corruption, forbidden archeology, forbidden religion, Federal Reserve, truth about money, World Bank, IRS, strawman, property title, admiralty law, martial law, Bohemian Grove, Skull and Bones, JFK, cover-ups, September 11, Star Wars agenda, nuclear plants, chemtrails, HAARP, crop circles, IRS, MK-Ultra, Fukashima, NASA, NSA, Bilderbergs, sustainability, military industrial complex, pentagon, Waco, Malaysia 370, Pan Am 103, TWA 800, Gulf Oil Spill, Halliburton, Obama, Ruby Ridge, OK City, Vatican, New World Order, false flags, Montauk, privacy, surveillance, Area 51, Dulce, Project Rainbow, Nazi Bell, Vrill, U.S.S. Eldridge, Iron Mountain, psyops, population mangement, subliminal ads, Nibiru / Planet X, Cointel Pro, technology suppression, entity possession, electoral fraud, identity chips, 2nd amendment, and so much more.

No-one seems particularly concerned about the potential conspiracy to lure everyone who knows the truth into a single location, where they can't get away, beyond the reach of national jurisdictions.

Ny Sjælland

My contribution to the New Zild Alternative Flag Debaclete was 15 years ago, when we dragged young Doktorling Sonja around Europe, and I made her a t-shirt:

Referendumb

This 'flag referendum' is a thing. Employees of NZ Corp have the opportunity to choose a new logo to emblazon our exports and backpacks. A short-list of four options was drawn up by a committee who invited submissions from the public, ignored them all, and proposed clipart variations on the Pry Minster's fondness for ferns (the committee was bypassed by a last-minute legislative addition of the fifth option in an attempt to reduce the ridicule).

None of the options on offer appear to be fuligin deepest black, so you know what you can do with them.

What are we wearing to celebrate H.P. Lovecraft's 125th birthday?

In my day we couldn't just go on-line to order a "Sexy Cthulhu Costume" and we had to make it ourselves, with some glitter and tentacles and PVA glue.

The results were sometimes less than ideal.

It remains to be seen if Another Kiwi will bring out his usual costume and come to HPL night at the Old Entomologist dressed as Wilbur Whatley, as is his wont (I hope it's a costume).

Happy birthday HPL!