George Bush may well be the most thoughtless President in American history. Under his Administration, all of America has fallen apart. It is without any sort of reflection that he may well also put an end to this idea of American history, et al. At the G8 Summit, our President, the “leader of the free world”, whose known for sharp wit, powerful wielding of the English language, and infinite charm and savvy, went ahead and showed exactly how concerned he is about the environment; he joked about it. So, to all my friends out there who voted for Mr. Bush: thanks.

I want to tip my hat to you (in that now almost Daily-Show-famous, ‘drunken-presidential’ way) and say with all the sarcasm in my black little heart “Ahahahaha, Yes! Lets Wreck the Planet… So We Along With All Other Life Can Die A Horrifyingly Slow, Painful, Human-Engineered Death… Wheeee!!!!” Now, isn’t that something wonderful to laugh about?

Bush thought so; Goodbye, from the world’s biggest polluter!

I love to paint myself as a sober minded person, one that would not very easily fall in with the crowded world of conspiracy theories. Some people go on believing everything that they read. You shouldn’t (thats right, *evil grin* not even I). This idea begs the question, who can you believe? An interesting paradox presents itself though similarly here: Who’s watching the watchmen?  But first, the details…

Buying into this next idea isn’t joining the crazy club at all, no matter how many of those kinds of alarms this might immediately set off in your head. Give it a chance — I did, and was surprised. If you do, this will find you as far from that group as possible and in a world that makes a bit more sense, about why for so long, the Internet has been able to remain this “open” bastion of communication. Because none of this is a conspiracy theory, its not a theory at all, its a simple to understand fact. Infrastructure, especially something as revolutionary as the Internet, must be protected, in other words, watched.

For a long time now, the United States government has been monitoring Internet usage going directly against all constitutional forms protecting individual civil liberty. How would I know? Besides the video below, and the myriad trustworthy Americans who’ve worked in telecom I’ve known, and what I’ve heard from them for years, I too have had my own personal experience.

In the late 90s, a person representing the FBI offered me a job tracking hackers as part of a project at that time, I was told, was called Phoenix (a re-vision of Project: Sun Devil). Now, it is known publicly by the same name as at least one of the software tools that resulted from the current instance of the project, called Carnivore.

While the video shown below is aging, dated 03/02/2007, the latest on the FISA decision brought all this to the front of my mind, and caused me to want to re-highlight all of this, as well as my experience (if not for my own personal reflection, for your review). I mean, if its just a conspiracy theory and no one’s watching, why would telecommunication companies even require legislation providing immunity, right?

No friends, its not some far fetched circumstance at all unfortunately, or something hidden under a deep brow of secrets and codes. Essentially, the government has been doing this since it was possible, and since experts could tell there would be a mass exodus of our culture (but especially an explosion in media on) to the Internet. And because everyone was so busy eating up their new technological toy, no one bothered to notice. And if they had, like back in 03/2007, what could they do? Watch the video and ask yourself: Who’s watching the watchmen?

http://abcnews.go.com/video/playerIndex?id=2930944

Pray: To ask that the laws of the universe be annulled on behalf of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy.

– Ambrose Bierce

His art has been linked here always as a staple on the sites blog roll. In this video though, Chris Jordan, is in his own words able to bring new life to his work (from TED, Chris Jordan: Picturing excess).