A concerted effort to sully our reputation

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not pragmatic, which is why we are constantly working to make the world a better place.  Because of our passion for results, we have often worked extremely long hours to ensure that your world is safe for you.  Most of you know this and are understandably very grateful to us for our magnanimity, but a recent trend is threatening to sully our reputation.  Daniel recently discovered a new "GNU Skin" factory.  Until now we weren't sure whether they were trying to sully our reputation of that of Nu Skin Enterprises, but now we can state categorically that they were trying to convince investors that that were connected to the GPD.  We have discovered many things about GNU Skin, but I'll leave those for future posts.  Let it suffice that they are involved in the manufacture of many of the technologies used in creating the grebans we discovered last week.  We don't think there is an imminent threat from GNU Skin as it sits right now, but we do recommend that you follow common sense practices such as the ones Daniel outlined if you do find yourself in contact with someone from GNU Skin or any other person that claims to represent the GPD.

The title of this post mentions that this is a concerted effort, and many of you may be asking yourselves why I would title it that way and mention but a single incident.  Surely a single incident is no concerted effort.  Those of you who are asking yourselves these questions should report to your local GPD offices as soon as you can to request a course in patience (ask for course PAT-1267J), because I'm about to get to the rest of it.  Apparently there are a number of products, companies, and organizations now using the adjectives "GNU" or "New" to describe themselves.  We were already aware of The New Company, which split off from the Parent Corporation recently, but we hadn't realized that the name of the New Company was intended to convey to the  average world citizen that they were associated with the New Future.  While there are too many to list here, we'll mention a few of the larger organizations we have discovered:

• Citizens for a New Direction - a political action committee in Georgia, USA, dedicated to changing the state's laws in such a way that new brad factories can be built more easily there.
• GNU York City - A group of "concerned citizens" in New York, USA fighting for their right to conceal and carry dangerous items such as hole punches even through security checkpoints.
• The New Foundlanders - a Canadian organization dedicated to creating an environment there that is friendly to religious organizations such as the Unholy Brotherhood of the Hole Punch who do not have the interests of society at heart.

GNU Skin

I would like to bring a matter to public attention. I discovered a "GNU Skin" factory. Though it is not clear what they intend to sell, we want all of our supporters to be aware that GNU Skin is not an affiliate of the GNU Public Dictatorship at this time. Until more is known of this company, please exercise caution in dealing with them. The following pointers should be helpful if you should encounter someone claiming to work for the GPD:

1. Ask them how they feel about brads. The GPD will never suggest that they are safe.
2. Do not accept gifts if you were not expecting them -- they could contain brads.
3. Look for evil stickers or any other dangerous substances. GPD personnel are required to dispose of these immediately for the safety of themselves and any people they may visit.
4. If you have an encounter with someone you suspect of impersonating GPD personnel, do not allow them in you house or near your family and report them to a GPD office immediately.

Be safe and have a Merry Christmas from the Board of Dictators!

Grebans: confirmed

After a thorough investigation our operatives finally discovered a greban in a Cedar City morgue.  Unfortunately it had been dead for a few hours by the time our scientists examined it, but it revealed some important information.  Apparently our enemies have not yet been able to make grebans live for more than a few hours.  Without a bit more longevity the greban army we have feared is not a serious threat.  We will continue to keep you updated on our research into creating our own greban army and on our progress in thwarting the Parent Corporation's evil research into the same thing.

Human-Grebe Hybrids?

Many of our supporters have expressed concern over the incident where thousands of grebes to land in a parking lot in Cedar City, Utah, USA, thinking they were landing in a lake.  As a result, many grebes died, and many others were captured by private citizens and government workers.  What was most concerning, was the reports (including the caption on the picture in the link above) that the grebes were being released into bodies.  Not bodies of water, mind you, but bodies.  Our scientists have long tried to perfect the human-avian hybrid, with little luck.  It appears that this incident, however, may be cover for the Parent Corporation's experiments.  We have heard multiple reports of people in Utah apparently having been possessed by grebes, but by the time our operatives arrive on the scene all the evidence has been destroyed.  We believe that the Parent Corporation may have successfully created a greban (grebe-human hybrid), and we are asking for any of you who may have access to bodies in or near Cedar City to check them to see if grebes have been released into them.  With the help of our supporters we hope to have this cleared up shortly.

An apology

When we wrote our seminal post "How not to rob a bank" a few years ago, we thought we had provided a valuable service to would-be criminals everywhere.  We figured they would either prepare themselves adequately for the task they were undertaking or give up entirely.  As a matter of fact, the incidence of bank robbers being caught for silly mistakes has gone down slightly in the intervening months, but not as much as we would have hoped.  We have long suspected that it was people who don't read our blog that were making these mistakes, but we still can't prove that anyone doesn't read our blog.  Anyway, it turns out that some of these would-be criminals do read our blog, and that our advice wasn't complete.  As this man showed, we neglected to mention that you should only undertake to rob a bank when it is open.  We are sorry for any inconvenience our oversight may have caused, and we deeply regret having made this mistake.

An accident? We think not

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not skeptical of accidents.  More often than not there is a reason something "just happens" to someone.  Take this incident, for instance.  It looks like an unfortunate incident where a careless hunter was shot because his friend's dog discharged a shotgun.  But we should look a bit deeper.  Those reporting the incident are quite silent on the relationship between the two hunters.  Was it strained?  Did either have a motive for hurting the other?  Was it a publicity stunt?  Is the dog really a dog, or is it some sort of mechanical demon?  Even if the dog can be proven to be a dog now, was it really the dog that was hunting with them, or was it a robotic approximation of the dog?  When one considers all of these possibilities it becomes abundantly clear that "Accident" is the wrong label for this incident.  More than likely the Parent Corporation has been testing its robotic dog replacements.  Or possibly the whole thing is a setup for a new reality show.  Our operatives are searching for a real answer, but even then we may never know.

On a separate note, we have heard whispers of an important meeting at the Parent Corporation next week.  We'll let you know how it goes.

Gratitude

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not grateful, which is why we love the holiday season.  We are especially grateful this year for a new Gallup poll that shows that more people think brads are dangerous than think they are innocuous.  Last year 24% of respondents said they found brads "possibly dangerous" or "dangerous," while 28% said they were "safe" or "probably safe."  The remaining 48% said they didn't know what brads were.  This year's survey showed that 33% of respondents found them dangerous, while 27% found them save.  While there are still 40% who don't know what brads are, it is comforting to know that we are making progress with our brad education projects.  We aren't making as much progress as we would like with those who believe brads to be safe, but our efforts are working as well as our statisticians had predicted, thanks to all of our loyal supporters!

I guess we were wrong...

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not accurate, which is why it pains us when we incorrectly interpret the goings on around us.  Unfortunately, in the case of Adam Cowgill, we correctly gathered many of the facts in the case, but we missed one very important fact.  Adam actually can become invisible.  He was initially confused when confronted by police, but when he recently appeared for his court date, he actually was invisible.  In order to not confuse the court he returned later and no longer invisible to apologize for his tardiness.  It seems we may need to keep an eye on Mr. Cowgill and the other "reinvented" people coming from the Parent Corporation.

The New Company

Now that the dust has settled a bit we can start to analyze last week's interesting news.  It seems that things are pretty much business as usual at the Parent Corporation and the Unholy Brotherhood of the Hole Punch.  Our operatives are reporting nearly the same statistics* as they reported last month.  They are still trying their evil schemes and still hawking their evil wares, and we are still keeping them in check.

At the New Company, however, things are beginning to get more interesting.  According to our best information, they are refocusing their business completely.  Rather than work for the promotion of hole punches and brads, they appear to be creating a line of luxury pencil cases.  Our operatives have been unable to explain this strange behavior entirely, but we believe we will figure it out soon.  At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not encouraged by the apparent chaos reigning at the moment in our enemies' camp, but we are also cautious.  It may simply be a ploy to make money off unsuspecting elementary school students, or it could be something much more insidious.  We vow to not rest until we find out what it really is!  (Okay, so we don't mean we actually won't sleep, but we do mean that our operatives will be engaged on this problem until it is completely understood.)

*These statistics are available to the curious world citizen at any local GPD office.  In order to get them you will need to present fourteen forms of identification and sign an affidavit that states that you are not trying to do anything the GPD would consider harmful.

Parent Corporation to Split (and Merge)!

It won't be official until tomorrow morning, but the Parent Corporation has initiated the process of splitting itself into two entities.  Our operatives closest to the situation have revealed that the split is essentially along the lines of "Craftie" and "non-Craftie," and that all the officers with any real influence have been chosen from among the "Crafties."  It seems that "Edgar" will remain at the head of the Parent Corporation, and that they will remain focused on their current agenda of promoting evil office products and destroying the fabric of society.  As part of this agreement the Unholy Brotherhood of the Hole Punch has become a subsidiary to the Parent Corporation and now falls under the same leadership.  "Jack" (the most vocal "Craftie") is officially the leader of this organization and officially answers to "Edgar," but if our operatives are correct, most of the real power in the organization is seated in "Jack."  His irrational unpredictability is proving difficult for us, but this isn't the first time we have faced a tough fight.  At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not relentless, and we promise to not let our enemies win!

The unification of the UBHP and the Parent Corporation poses no startling questions for our future, but it does show that our successes have forced the allies to take further steps to thwart us.  They will not succeed.  We have too many supporters and ours is the New Future.  What is perhaps more interesting to us at this point is the fate of the non-Crafties.  Officially they have now become the New Company, and officially it is still managed by "Edgar" and "Jack."  Our operatives, however, believe that the New Company is being created to purify the Parent Corporation and will soon be sold to some other corporation.  The members of this New Company are some of our oldest enemies, and if our operatives are correct, will not take kindly to this sort of treatment.  One, who spoke with an operative on condition of anonymity, mentioned that he is torn between supporting the cause of Evil in general (and evil office products in particular) and uniting with the Parent Corporation to crush their common enemies.  It became clear in this conversation that he considers the Parent Corporation as much his enemy as we are.  If this is the case for most employees of the New Company, we may soon find ourselves in an Orwellian conflict among three states whose allies keep changing depending on who is the biggest threat at the current time.  It is our sincere hope that these two proponents of evil office products will expend the bulk of their time and energy destroying each other rather than the innocent citizens of the world, but we have very little to go on.

Bees!

Normally a story like this one would be little more than an interesting distraction, but we have information linking this incident to operatives of the Unholy Brotherhood of the Hole Punch.  It appears that the bees were to be released into the wild to spread a new wave of nano-robotic lichen, but, thankfully, the lichen have failed. At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not grateful that we dodged the lichen this time!

"Jack" and his Influence

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not optimistic, but we fear that recent developments at the Parent Corporation may have negative impact on all of our lives.  In the past few years we have come to understand much of the inner workings of this evil organization, and we have been engaged in what could only be called a huge game of chess with them.  We have been steadily gaining ground and exposing their lies, and we hoped we would soon cause them to see the error of their ways and change their direction.  Unfortunately, however, we have been paying too little attention to the Unholy Brotherhood of the Hole Punch.  As we have mentioned many times before, the Parent Corporation is the business side of the UBHP, and as such it tends to involve itself more in the day-to-day operations and in expanding its influence.  The UBHP, on the other hand, is a society dedicated to the Hole Punch itself and is much more patient and much more focused.  We have seen very little activity from them of late, but that is all changing now.  The UBHP recently opened 49 non-profit scrapbooking outlets in 13 countries around the world.  How they pulled this off without our operatives discovering it is a mystery we intend to investigate, but we have refocused some of our operatives and we believe that not only are the UBHP operatives very subtle and very patient, they are also somehow allied with "Jack."  We have found numerous communications between him and the UBHP, but many of them are in a code we have not yet fully deciphered.  If what we know at this point is true, it seems that "Jack" may have been a plant by the UBHP in the Parent Corporation to cause it to fail, or at least to "prune the dead wood" from their ranks.  Assuming this is the case, perhaps the mysterious "Jack" is not so crazy as we had thought.  We'll know more after we decipher the code in full.

"Edgar" is a "Craftie!"

Our operatives have decided to make it official: "Edgar" sympathizes with the Chef Craft wing of the Parent Corporation.  It has been difficult to sort it all out recently, but in an address* to his office in Lansing, Michigan, it became clear that "Jack" (the primary proponent of the Chef Craft wing) has his ear.  At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not heartened by the apparent disintegration of our arch-nemesis, but we must admit that we are confused at "Jack's" motives.  He is either a brilliant strategist trying to force some new evil on the world or an insane idiot obsessed with an obscure kitchen products company.  Only time will tell!

*The full text of the address is available to supporters.  Simply submit form KKVY-334-J (Request for Transcript of Enemy Address) to your local GPD office.

The (invisible) gap widens

As all of you know, the internal strife in the Parent Corporation is becoming increasingly vicious.  We recently received a report from our operatives that a member of the Chef Craft wing of the Parent Corporation was picked up by police in Springville, UT.  The local media report mentions much of the substance of what happened, but, as always, they seem to have missed the significance of it all.  Adam Cowgill was not simply crazy, as the report seems to suggest.  He had been in an intensive conditioning program for the Parent Corporation's Chef Craft wing.  In fact, he was to have been the first of many "reinvented" people that would remake the Parent Corporation in their own image.  Unfortunately, it appears that the conditioning regime went haywire and that Mr. Cowgill, who, according to our operatives, doesn't remember participating in the regime, is now pretty well incapacitated.  We hope that his example will show those who sympathize with or participate in the Parent Corporation the dangerous road they are choosing and that they will come to their senses, soon.

On another note, the non-Chef Craft wing of the Parent Corporation has recently attempted to marginalize their opponents by pushing them on to menial tasks.  Our operatives believe this was the impetus for the conditioning program, and that as the internal strife escalates we will likely see more innocent (or somewhat innocent) victims.

Divisions

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not dedicated to honest, open government, which is why we are pioneering the Open Source Model of Government.  Because of our open nature, the GPD has never had a problem with factions vying for power or schisms or any of that sort of thing, as when they begin they are quickly diluted by the free flow of information that empowers our citizens.  They aren't swayed by demagogues or hatemongers.

Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately, depending on your point of view) the Parent Corporation has chosen not to follow this open model but has instead built layer upon layer of secrecy around its goals.  This secrecy has served them well and allowed them to escape the kind of scrutiny that would shut them down in a heartbeat, but has also created a culture that accepts political posturing and demagoguery.  It has come to our attention recently that the Parent Corporation is divided into at least two major groups with different goals.  One group is pushing for the end to the secrecy so that they can openly declare war on the world.  The other is trying to maintain the status quo so that they can remain in power and keep not just the world down, but their subordinates as well.  The "status quo" group are the ones who have recently introduced the adoration of Chef Craft products as part of their daily routine, and, according to our operatives, have withdrawn further into the propaganda that the Parent Corporation is pushing on the world.  Encounters with the "Chef Crafties" have shown that they are less likely to back down or retreat when they are obviously defeated and that they are more fully indoctrinated than their peers.

We have been tracking this developing schism for some time trying to figure out whether "Edgar" (the real leader, not the public face that we captured some time ago) has chosen one faction or another.  We couldn't answer this question until I came across some interesting documents last weekend in Cedar City, Utah.  The documents have yet to be completely verified, but they have born our initial scrutiny.  They were seized in a raid of a suspected double agent's home (we have to say he is innocent until proven guilty, but we don't have to believe it). If they are indeed accurate, it seems that "Edgar" is afraid that either faction taking over will destroy his position and so he is trying to foment the schism, keeping both sides roughly equal in power and influence.

We wish we could state that the Parent Corporation is disintegrating, but we can only really say that there are divisions within it that are causing it to be less effective in its stated goals.  We wish we could say we are winning, but we don't know what will emerge amid this conflict, so we are urging our supporters everywhere to be vigilant and to help out wherever they can!

Chef Craft and the Parent Corporation

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not dedicated to the truth, which is why we find it odd that we have been subjected to a variety of smear attacks since we published our last post.  In that post we mentioned that the Chef Craft wing of the Parent Corporation is leaving large herbivorous mammals in peoples' yards.  Unfortunately, people jumped to the conclusion that we were maligning Chef Craft and suggesting that it was in league with the Parent Corporation.  I guess we needed to be more explicit, but we would like to make it clear that we do not believe that Chef Craft has any connection to the Parent Corporation or the Unholy Brotherhood of the Hole Punch.  What we intended to say was that the Parent Corporation has a group of zealots who have latched on to the Chef Craft product line (including its nail brushes) and are beginning to treat it almost as they treat their hole punches.  We apologize for the misunderstandings.

For the interested, the connection between the Parent Corporation zealots and Chef Craft products was discovered several weeks ago in a routine audit of purchases they had made.  We published this piece, but at the time didn't have enough information to be certain of what was going on.  At this time we are prepared to state that the Parent Corporation appears to be experiencing an internal crisis.  The capture of "Edgar" has caused some political posturing, and it appears that at some point one of the leaders vying for public control of the Parent Corporation started introducing Chef Craft implements.  We think at this point that it is a temporary obsession, but the fervor with which they cling to their implements does surprise us.  We cannot disclose all that we believe about the Parent Corporation and its internal power struggles at this time, as it would be irresponsible, but we can state that we believe we are making a difference!

Interesting developments

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not careful, which is why we thought we had taken all of the necessary precautions after reporting the nail brush scandal, but we weren't prepared for their response.  In two separate instances on two continents, large mammals were placed in people's yards to intimidate them.  This man, in Ogden, UT, simply butchered the cow left at his residence.  Per Johansson called emergency services and they helped extricate the drunken moose from his apple tree.  Tragedy was avoided in each of these incidents, but we do urge caution as you never know when the Chef Craft wing of the Parent Corporation (more on how we found that connection later) will strike again and you will find a large herbivorous mammal in your yard!

Nail Chefs

As part of our continuing efforts to keep our World Citizens safe and properly informed we have a number of programs where we periodically sample the products on the market to determine (1) trends in production, (2) potential security problems, (3) and whether the Parent Corporation is making an effort to destroy you.  In the years we have had this program, just so you know, we have never found a time when (3) was not determined to be true.  The Parent Corporation is always trying to destroy you.  But anyway, our sampling recently discovered a product called a "Nail Brush" produced by a Chinese company styling themselves "Chef Craft."  Most people would have taken it to be a matter of poor translation or perhaps an expansion of a company's line to include non-cooking implements, but we don't settle for surface explanations.  Our operatives dug long and hard, and discovered that the label "Chef Craft" is disturbingly accurate.

It seems that Chef Craft started several hundred years ago as 廚師手藝. They worked for years trying to perfect the ladle, and, having succeeded, practiced on basting implements.  One of their employees in 1925 also worked part time at a nail salon, and apparently approached her superiors with an idea--why not include implements for preparing human nails as food in their product line?  At the time many people were members of underground nail eating guilds (UNEGs) and, although the practice would later be frowned upon by the Cultural Revolution it was quite popular among government officials.  It seems her superiors liked her idea so much that they stole it and had her killed, but our records of this incident are, understandably, spotty at best, so we can't be sure that it went down quite like that.  Either way, the company started producing the nail brush to help people prepare their nails for consumption in 1948 (it took several years to perfect it to the company's standards) and now their brushes are thrust upon unsuspecting consumers in other countries who think they are nothing more than a useful brush for their nails.

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not thorough and we hope you will dig deeper the next time something strikes you as out of the ordinary.

An evil plot

Many of you will remember the riots against mind-controlling insects when Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan came out, but some of you may be too young to remember.  Unfortunately, the media has nearly erased this episode from our collective memories, and, until recently, we wondered why they would bother.  Apparently the fears expressed by the rioters, that the mind-controlling creatures not only existed but were also being employed on some of our more prominent role models had more to it than we originally thought.  Earlier this week a "moth" flew into Matt Holliday's ear and caused him to miss the rest of the baseball game.  This incident, by itself, caused us no concern, but as it is our policy to investigate these sorts of occurrences we did so, and found that this "moth" is no moth at all--and that Matt Holliday's ear shows signs of previous incursions by these controllers.  We haven't found the source of the mind control as of yet, and we aren't telling you to take to the streets and riot just yet, but we do want you to know that you need to be vigilant and examine your ears and those of your loved ones for signs of mind control.  Oh, and if they point phasers at you just make sure you shame them into killing themselves.

Abuse of Animals

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not committed to the fair and equitable treatment of all living creatures, which is why we have been appalled by recent events in South Ayrshire involving a cow and a ladder. The local SPCA apparently found the situation unfortunate but amusing, and didn't question the farmer's assertion that he had no idea how the ladder came to be around the cow's neck.  We have sent our operatives in for a closer look, and we don't think the farmer's story is very reliable.  After all, what farmer wouldn't know exactly what was in each of his fields, and wouldn't keep an eye on all of his livestock?  He claims to have been busy with "other concerns" but we know that farmers just sit around and let the animals do their work, so we find his explanation unlikely.  We haven't turned up any links to the Parent Corporation yet, but we do know that there is an active Brad Guy cell in the South Ayrshire neighborhood and we have found indications of their involvement.  Rest assured that we, unlike the SPCA, aren't letting them off the hook and ladder.

Chaos?

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not ambitious, which is why we have been pursuing our plans to take over government of the world.  These plans are extensive, and require a good deal of patience from our supporters.  After all, if we just imprisoned all of the world's leaders and took over, as some of our supporters have suggested we should, we would simply create chaos.  Those whose misguided loyalties were attached to past world leaders would have a hard time accepting us, even though we are simply trying to help!  We do not want the world to resemble London of the past few nights, and we do not want to alienate a large group of undecided world citizens who, if our plans are carried out, will eventually rally around us.

Some have criticized us for destabilizing markets to bring anarchy and for "playing games with people's lives," but nothing could be further from the truth.  While our plans do, occasionally, require us to destabilize markets, we do not want to create anarchy.  As much as we are trying to lay the foundation of the New Future, we don't want the world economy to collapse overnight.  We must admit that we have been pulling the strings we have for a long time to try to get the US debt situation taken care of, but we never encouraged a default on their loans.  Our market interventions are targeted and checked by a team of economists who assure us that our actions are not playing games with people's lives, and that we are still on target.

If you are still inclined to doubt us, ask yourself this question, and answer honestly:  Are you more likely to support a radically different economic model now, after a few years of crisis, than you would have been in 2006?  Our statisticians assure us that 98 of every 100 people would answer yes to this question, and that the other two are probably deluding themselves.  It's not chaos we're after, it's change.  Keep that in mind, and don't lose hope!

The Return of the Lichen?

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not concerned about the future, which is why we are always looking out for our younger supporters.  One item of interest today for the younger supporter is that we have discovered that the dreaded nano-robotic lichen from last year's outbreak are being sold as a protein-rich paste for sandwiches and things.  The lichen being sold in this form have not, as yet, shown any signs of being active, but we do urge our supporters to exercise sound judgement.

Ants?

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not cautious, which is why we are still not willing to state categorically that ants were responsible for our computer troubles, even though all of the evidence we gathered at the Brad Guy compound in Idaho suggests that this is, indeed, the case.  If we are to believe their servers, the ants have been disenchanted with their low status on the evolutionary scale, and have been trying to enlist recruits.  They allegedly enlisted the octopi, luring them with promises of decreasing the distance between the moon and the earth, thereby creating higher tides.  They appear to have made similarly impossible promises to other groups, but all of this seems rather unlikely, especially since ants and other insects have never been shown to have this type of intelligence.

What we believe is more likely than the story told by the "ants" is that there is a faction of either Brad Guys who style themselves "The Ants" or some criminal syndicate specializing in the creation of malware called "ants" who are trying desperately to gain new allies.  If it is a group of Brad Guys they seem to be behaving in a surprisingly incoherent manner, but if they are a criminal syndicate they seem to be pursuing very little profit. We suppose it is possible that there is a group of intelligent ants sick of the genocide constantly perpetrated on them by humans and seeking revenge for their mistreatment by causing the coastal areas of the earth to flood (at least at high tide) making them inhospitable to humans, but we are a bit skeptical of this explanation.  Our operatives have been working full time on these leads, and we have come up with surprisingly little.  Perhaps it was just a deranged pet project of one of our captured Brad Guys?  We may never know for sure, but we'll keep looking for a rational explanation.

Success

It is with much rejoicing that we report to you the status of last week's covert mission.  We set out with our only goal to be disrupting a group of rogue Brad Guys operating in the mountains of Idaho, but what we ended up accomplishing was so much more.

After getting close enough to the camp to perform proper surveillance, we discovered that we had not only found a group of Brad Guys who were trying to convert .22 casings into brads, but that we had discovered the source of the mysterious computer trouble that plagued us and the bird watchers months ago.  The compound was raided without much fuss, and the Brad Guys were taken alive.  They don't appear to know much about the world outside their compound, but they did seem to be aware of the data center buried under their compound.  The data center proved much less secure than we had supposed, and yielded much intelligence.  We can't say much about what we found there yet, but we have discovered that the oceanographers and the bird watchers had performed similar experiments with their objects of study in letting them, apparently, run the computers.  It now appears that neither the octopi nor the birds actually created the computer threat, but we'll let you know more about what we think did create it once we feel we won't blow our hand.  It was a great mission, though.

A Mission

We can't share many of the details, because at the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not discrete with our pre-mission intelligence, but we are about to embark on some interesting operations.  It won't surprise you to learn that we intend to overthrow the strongholds of the perpetrators of evil office products, nor will it surprise you to find that we will probably not post much of anything in this forum for the duration of the mission.  Its successful completion depends on precise timing and the balance of several circus-trained acrobats.  Drat!  I've said too much...

Another assassination

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not proactive, but no matter what we do we can't seem to eliminate all of the evil in the world.  It seems that the Parent Corporation has been working more of its evil deeds in Nottingham.  Local resident Luke Yeomans had set up a sanctuary for snakes such as the cobra to keep them from falling victim to society's relentless press on their habitats.  Mr. Yeomans had also been instrumental in keeping brads and hole punches out of his particular neck of the woods, but he had kept that role fairly secret.  We didn't think anyone else knew about his assistance, but someone found out and dispatched an assassin to kill him and make it look like an unfortunate and ironic accident.  We don't believe in accidents, which is why we have increased our presence in Nottingham to try to stem any further operations by our mortal enemies.  We urge our supporters to increase their vigilance just a notch or two in their areas to help keep us all safe from the Parent Corporation and its evil schemes.

Disappointing

When we caught "Edgar" last week we were very careful to make sure that we weren't just capturing him because the Unholy Brotherhood of the Hole Punch was using him to distract us while they did something nefarious.  There were no indications up until we caught him that this was the case, but in the panic that ensued it looks like they took advantage of the situation and put some brads in earth orbit.  These brads came very close to destroying the International Space Station, but they dodged the bullet (or brads) this time.  We are working on collecting the brads, but if any of you intend to be in low-earth orbit over the next week or two we urge you to get your flight plan checked out before you go.

One of the "Edgar"s has been apprehended!

Our loyal supporters know well by now that we are engaged in a long-term war with the forces of evil and unsafe office accoutrements, and that we have been steadily making progress.  They also know that we are investigating strange occurrences such as the computer glitch that gave us trouble recently.  Both fronts have collided today in an exciting development.  It seems that "Edgar" (not the actual leader of the Unholy Brotherhood of the Hole Punch, but their public face) was working undercover with the oceanographers until earlier this month.  It was his job to recommend a web hosting company, and it was his suggestions that led to the computers refusing to relinquish control.  After following a series of interesting but unrelated leads, our operatives found "Edgar" in his home last night and arrested him.  Unfortunately, our operatives have been able to extract but few details from him about the internal workings of the UBHP.  It seems that, as the public face, all he needed to know was the public-facing information.  Either that, or his brain has been altered such that our operatives cannot even find the areas of his brain that retain the more sensitive information.  We don't believe the UBHP possesses such technology, so we're thinking it's the former explanation.

The one interesting bit of information that has eluded confirmation until now is that "Edgar" is actually working with both the UBHP and the Parent Corporation.  We have long suspected this link, but we have been unable to confirm it until now.  With "Edgar" in our possession we expect the UBHP to respond within a few days, possibly by naming a replacement for him.  Before we intend to put "Edgar" on trial for his crimes and see that he pays his debt to society.  We cannot stress how important this capture is for our cause, and we hope that all of you will celebrate it.

We didn't find much of anything interesting about the computers, but we did ascertain that "Edgar" was an unwitting pawn in the developments.  We will let you know as soon as we figure out who was pulling the strings this time.

Vigilance

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not vigilant, which is why the recent reports that a loyal supporter was having trouble keeping his kids away from hole punches caught our attention.  We investigated the situation and found that "José" (not his real name) had the situation under control.  Apparently his 10-year-old daughter had been introduced to hole punches while scrapbooking with her friends.  She became addicted, and hid many hole punches in her room.  (She was able to purchase the hole punches by saving the money her parents gave her for completing her chores).  This situation had apparently been going on for several months before "José" saw the warning signs--his daughter was constantly complaining that her right hand hurt.  She was taken to the doctor who examined the hand and said it was due to strain.  The doctor, also a loyal supporter, asked her if she had been using any hole punches lately.  She initially said she had not, but after repeated questioning she broke down and told the whole story.  "José" has worked with her to rid the house of hole punches and has enrolled her in a recovery program.  There doesn't appear to be any permanent damage in this case, but we have to ask what would have happened if it hadn't been noticed this early?  She may have been permanently turned from correct social behavior to villainy.  She may have abandoned her family to join the Unholy Brotherhood of the Hole Punch (they do allow female members, by the way, but they aren't given full status as far as we can determine).

We're glad "José" was able to stop this problem early, but we are concerned that many of you may be in the same boat.  We urge vigilance and caution, and early screenings.  Some of the warning signs of evil office products are:

• Unusual crankiness
• Hand pain
• Puncture wounds
• Refusal to participate in GPD events
• Withdrawal from friends and family

Please be vigilant.  Don't let this happen to you!

Raymond Herrera, Hero of the People

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not grateful for the sacrifices our world citizens make on behalf of The Cause.  We know that many times their efforts go unnoticed, and it has been more than a year since we have awarded our Most Prestigious Award, the Hero of the People.

Today's recipient is none other than Raymond Herrera, who has been working tirelessly with the homeless around the world to try to keep them from accepting brads and hole punches or from retrieving them garbage cans when they may find them.  Thanks to Raymond's work the incidence of brad-related deaths in homeless individuals worldwide has dropped 93.2% over the last 10 years.  Raymond himself lost a son to brads nearly 15 years ago.  Raymond believes his wife brought brads into his home (although she denied having touched them) and his three-year-old son put them in his mouth.  Nobody noticed that he had eaten them until during dinner when he started choking and gasping.  The incident tore Raymond's family apart and after his divorce left him wandering the streets at night without a home.  One evening, when he was looking for a good place to sleep he saw a homeless person about to snack on some brads.  His quick action saved the potential victim's life, and Raymond had found his calling.  He cleaned up and found a place to live, from where he began to launch his anti-brad campaign.  A few years into his endeavor he sought out his ex-wife to try to fix things, but sadly she had passed away a few months earlier.  Raymond contacted us and asked us to help him organize his program at a global scale, and since then his efforts have saved countless vagabonds.  Thanks for your work, Raymond, you truly are a Hero of the People.

We urge caution

As Daniel reported yesterday, we are aware of several individuals who spend their time impersonating members of the GNU Public Dictatorship's Board of Dictators.  Since Daniel reported about "Kristov" the Austin GPD Office has been swamped with phone calls and visits from people who wish to take matters into their own hands.  At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not concerned for your safety, which is why we urge caution in this situation.  Our investigations to date have revealed no evidence that a well-informed world citizen would be fooled by these impersonators, but they have also shown that the impersonators are dangerous.  If you encounter someone who claims to be a member of the Board of Dictators, here is what you should do:

1. Ask him or her what the current GPD password is.  Anyone who reads this blog knows that there is no "GPD password" and will tell you so.
2. Verify that the individual is not carrying brads or brad paraphernalia.  All of the impostors we have encountered so far had some brads in their possession.
3. Use your biometric scanners to verify that his or her fingerprints match closely to those in our official database.  We know that biometric scanners aren't foolproof, but the chances are low that someone could simultaneously have similar fingerprints to ours and want to fool you
4. Encode a timestamp plus a nonce using our public key and challenge us to decode it, add one to the nonce, then re-encode it with our private key.  If you can decode the response with our public key and it matches your expectation, you know that the person who gave you that encoded value was in possession of the private key.  At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not committed to keeping our keys safe, so you can be sure that no impostor will correctly answer this challenge.

We do urge caution as these impostors are known to be in league with the Parent Corporation and the Unholy Brotherhood of the Hole Punch and we know their operatives to be unscrupulous in their pursuit of evil.

Do Not Be Fooled

Reports have recently come in that Tim is living in Texas. These reports simply aren't true. Jana from Waco, TX alerted us that a man in Austin was impersonating a GPD officer and asking people to turn brads in to him "for disposal." We have several operatives currently investigating this person, who will be referred to as "Kristov."

Be aware that this may not be an isolated incident. If anyone approaches you as a GPD officer and you suspect them of foul play, please immediately contact your local GPD office concerning them.

When toys become too realistic

Our society seems to be obsessed with a desire to make everything more and more realistic.  Compare the video games from 1991 to those now produced and you will find that they are much more "realistic" but also much more violent.  If it hadn't been for activists toy guns would be nearly indistinguishable from the real ones.  Until recently, we didn't think this trend had gone to stuffed toys, but this incident shows that toy manufacturers are trying to go more extreme all the time.  We urge all of our supporters to support conservative stuffed animals to help stem the tide of problems that such plush toys will inevitably cause.

Illicit Vegetable Experimentation (Warning: May Contain Vegetables)

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not dedicated to equality for all living creatures, as our posts here and here will surely show.  Unfortunately someone (we know who we suspect, but we have precious little information as of this moment) has decided to genetically modify watermelons to make them into living grenades. These grenades are not yet weapons-grade, but they show that those who created these watermelon seeds are not bound by the same moral code as we are, and it means we need to step up our efforts to combat illicit vegetable (or fruit) experimentation.  We owe it to our fellow living beings to stand up for them and prevent this heinous crime from being repeated!

Brads guns

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not watchful, which is why we send our operatives to many remote locations.  This past week I was sent to check out the small town of Eureka, Utah, and found that this lovely gift shop had been transformed.  Instead of a quaint little shop, I found a very offensive sight.  The shop now has two words on the sides of the building:

BRADS
GUNS

While most people might assume that this is simply a case of a  missing apostrophe (Brad's Guns) we are trained to recognize these "slips."  They do, in fact, sell guns at BRADS GUNS, but they won't tell you the whole story. Our operatives are working long and hard to find and expose their links to the Company and its Parent Corporation, and we hope to have some good hard facts for you soon.

The Birds

Last month we reported that the birds themselves, not the bird watchers, appeared to be behind the computer troubles we and others had recently experienced.  At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not skeptical of the researchers' claims that the birds had run the web hosting, but after observing them for several weeks we understand the situation much more than we did.  It appears that the birds were running the web hosting company, but they were using software that made it so that they simply had to peck at the keyboard occasionally to do so.  The software they were running was apparently created by the group of oceanographers we found earlier, and after researching that group it again appears that the oceanographers themselves were oblivious to the threat their computers were posing.  At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not persistent and are confident that we will unravel this mystery!

Freeloading: A societal evil

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not dedicated to improving society, which is why we are discouraged by a trend of individuals who choose not to contribute to society.  These individuals live off society or their families and make no efforts to better themselves or contribute in any way to the local economies.  While many such persons are well-paid businessmen, some are like this man, who even tried suing his parents for cutting off his allowance now that he is 25 years old.  We wish to make it clear that the GPD will not tolerate such wanton freeloading, and that if you are a freeloader we urge you to change your ways before we make you change your ways!

Are brads becoming more popular?

Recently we posted about a disturbing incident where brads were used to secure a stretcher and, obviously, failed to do so in a very dangerous fashion.  Today we are posting about another dangerous incident related to the use of brads.

It began much as any other day, a family were playing in a hotel room in Orlando, Florida.  As the day progressed, however, the four-year-old child quickly became bored with what the parents were doing and chose to play on the balcony.  Unfortunately this balcony was on the fourth floor, but fortunately when the toddler fell someone was there to prevent a scary fall from being a prelude to a funeral.

"So," you may ask, "what were the parents doing?"  We have been studying the evidence for several days now and have determined that they were examining and polishing their brad collection.  We haven't been able to ascertain (as we have been denied access to the crime scene by local authorities) whether they were using brads to transport drugs, but we do know that they were so obsessed with their brads that they let their child wander into a life-threatening situation.

It seems that brads are once again becoming more popular, and this is probably our fault to some extent.  We have been so successful in managing the threat that world citizens who are not so well informed as you are are beginning to not fear them anymore.  We have heard them say things like, "One brad won't hurt," or "Since the Company is gone there's no real threat anymore."  Apparently we have failed in instilling in them a knowledge of the intrinsic evil that is the brad.  At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not sorry for our mistake and will continue to work tirelessly to correct it!

The evils of brads

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not committed to spreading the word about the evils of brads. For those who have been living under a rock for the last several years and may be asking themselves something along the lines of, "What could possibly be wrong with a tiny piece of metal?" we answer with the following post.

Yesterday a seriously ill woman was being transported from a cruise ship along the coast of Norway to a life boat, when her stretcher was dropped unceremoniously into the frigid sea.  She suffered greatly from the exposure and was in the near-freezing water for several minutes.  But what, you may ask, does this have to do with brads?  The answer is simple.  Over the last few years (since we have crushed the Company) we have a decline in overall brad use, but at the same time we have seen an effort by brad enthusiasts (apparently acting alone) to get people to use brads for non-traditional uses.  One of those uses was to secure stretchers during rescue operations at sea, and preliminary investigations show that in this particular incident the stretcher had, in fact, been secured using brads.  The brad enthusiasts may tell you that the brads will work perfectly, but do not believe them.  They are, for the most part, evil and twisted individuals bent on your pain and suffering, and on the subjection of women to the whims of men.

A partial explanation

Since we discovered that the birds, not the bird watchers, seem to be responsible for the computers that have been giving us trouble we have been tirelessly investigating them and their computers.  All of our effort recently led us to an important discovery and a partial explanation of the birds' behavior.

Apparently this particular flock of birds (Scarlet Ibis, for the curious) has been genetically modified.  The records we found are incomplete (we assume they were destroyed) and we have to interpolate many things, but we are 97.3589% confident that our conclusions are substantially correct.  It appears that the very birdwatchers that were apparently customers of the birds' network expertise were part of a foundation that raises money for unconventional experiments such as those run on this flock of birds, and were thus responsible, at least in part, for the genetic manipulations.  We have traced many of the funds and can categorically state that the vast majority of them came from puppet companies set up by the Parent Corporation, although their motives are as yet unclear.  The birds' keepers unwillingly informed us that the modifications were to increase their intelligence and computer skills.  It appears that, once genetically modified, the birds were able to use the computers to their advantage, but it is not clear yet whether the birds have the intelligence to have programmed the computer system that took over the GPD.  We doubt they do, but we have yet to prove that they do not, so we'll leave it at that for now.  We have our best operatives on this, so we hope to know more soon!

The Birds?

Earlier this month we believed that the bird watchers may have been orchestrating a bid to rule the world by getting their computers to shut down their competitors, but we were sadly mistaken.  The bird watchers, sadly, have no such ambitions, and merely desired a way to organize their pictures and clips, and to be able to collaborate online.  In order to meet this pathetically simple goal, they enlisted the help of an unknown e-mail writer who sent them an offer of services.  They haven't thought much about that anonymous solicitation since then, but when the computers shut down our operation temporarily and we responded by shutting down their computers they started complaining.

To make a long story short, or at least shorter, we have been investigating the source of that solicitation for some time, and it appears to have come from a source none of us suspected.  It appears that a group of birds living in an aviary in Denver, Colorado, had access to computers as part of a study, and it appears that the birds themselves sent the e-mail.  They also, apparently, responded to the bird watchers and set the computers up for their online collaborative tool.

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not skeptical of the birds' ability to use computers that many humans have trouble with, but the facts we have been able to obtain as of yet seem to point to the birds as the source of the computer troubles we had.  We'll continue to investigate this bizarre incident, and hopefully be able to explain it a bit better.

The Dangers of Becoming an Advertisement

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not willing to learn from our mistakes, which is why we often make course corrections after we attempt groundbreaking new ideas.  If you will recall our experiment in headvertising, and another in odortising, you will know that the GPD is not about to shy away from controversial advertising techniques, but you should also know that we do not keep beating dead horses.  At least not since our lawyers told us that could be construed as animal cruelty, although why beating a carcass is cruel I don't think I'll ever understand...

But I digress.  This post isn't about deceased equines, it's about questionable advertising techniques, such as this one, proposed by Adzookie.  It's not that it won't provide good exposure and drive people to Adzookie, but that it could easily be abused by the slightly less-than-honest advertiser.  Even when the GPD ran its headvertising campaign we received complaints of people being duped into putting absurd or pro-brad messages on their heads.  If the Company and the Parent Corporation were able to take advantage of our advertising campaigns, how much more will they take advantage of this third party's campaign.  Don't be surprised if you sign up and discover some morning that your home is an advertisement for hole punches, and don't expect any sympathy from us.  You have been warned, after all.  Adzookie may not be aligned with the Unholy Brotherhood of the Hole Punch, but we haven't confirmed that yet, and we know how desperate they are to get their message out there now that people are realizing that we have been right all along.

The Bird Watchers

After a number of rounds of negotiations with our lawyers and theirs, the bird watchers have decided to talk with us.  It seems that they, too, were convinced of the wisdom of leaving computers in charge of their online operations, and that they were intimidated by the complexity of the Internet and didn't want to hire someone when computers would do the job much more cheaply.

So, why do we mention this?  Because it proves that the bird watchers themselves were victims of the computers, not their programmers.  At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not thorough, so you can trust us that we checked out their claims.  The bird watchers were approached with an e-mail offering the computers' services, so we'll have to keep tracing where they came from, but at least we know the bird watchers aren't in league with the computers.

Democracy

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not helpful, which is why we have decided to respond to a very common question we receive, even though the answer is apparent to anyone who has taken GPD 101 at the GNU Public University (also here).  (Let us not forget to mention that courses at the GNU Public University are available free of charge).

The question, in essence, is why the GPD isn't the GNU Public Democracy instead of the GNU Public Dictatorship.  To answer the question, let's define a few terms:

Democracy - A government where every citizen has an equal voice in deciding what the government will do.
Republic - A government where citizens choose representatives that then decide what the government will do.
Oligarchy - A government where a few citizens or classes of citizens decide what the government will do.
Monarchy - A government where an individual decides what the government will do.


Some like to believe that the best form of government is a democracy, where the people have the power.  Unfortunately, this requires a lot of the citizens.  They must stay informed about current events and must dedicate a large percentage of their time to keeping the government running smoothly.  When citizens fail to stay informed or fail to spend the time necessary on keeping things running smoothly, there are problems.  Perhaps citizen A doesn't like citizen B, so instead of researching the issues, he or she simply votes against what citizen B votes for.  Suppose citizen C is more interested in Leonardo DiCaprio's latest performance than whether the roads in a neighborhood need to be repaired and chooses to vote against the repairs just so that he or she can get home sooner to enjoy an evening with Mr. DiCaprio.  As you can see, a democracy simply demands too much of individual citizens, and if they fail to deliver what is demanded, the system breaks down.

A republic solves some of the problems facing a democracy, by creating a class of people whose job it is to stay informed and to care, and ostensibly to represent the citizens who chose them as representatives.  Unfortunately, this system only works when these representatives are properly engaged by their constituents, and, for reasons similar to those mentioned about democracies, this rarely happens.  Republics also demand that representatives be altruistic, which is difficult for many people.  Self-interest tends to overcome altruism, and the desire to maintain one's status as a representative forces individuals to present misinformation to their constituents to protect their own interests.  Rather than listening to their constituents and representing their interests against corporations and other entities that are better-funded, they tend to listen to the better-funded entities and represent their interest against those of their constituents.

Such a state of affairs is more properly termed an oligarchy, since there is a class of people (politicians and well-connected individuals) who tend to make the decisions and then tell the people what they should want.  As long as this ruling class provides enough Leonardo DiCaprio movies, most citizens rarely object.

The GNU Public Dictatorship does not adopt any of these models as we find them fraught with errors.  We also do not support a monarchy or a traditional dictatorship, since one person rarely has enough knowledge and information to make proper decisions.  Instead, we create a dictatorship where exceptional individuals meet together, discuss society's problems, and find solutions.  If the people don't believe their leaders are exceptional individuals, they will voice their opinions and the other members of the Board of Dictators will be obliged to sever ties with the non-exceptional individuals.  By consolidating decision-making power into the hands of the Board, the GPD allows for quick responses to difficult problems.  By following the open source model, we ensure that citizens' interests are represented without corporate interference.  It's really a wonderful model!

Phoning home

The computers that briefly took over the GNU Public Dictatorship were sophisticated machines, and their programming was no less sophisticated. As we have been analyzing their logs we have also been impersonating these computers on the network to see who is trying to contact them. After some analysis, we now know that they were being contacted periodically by other "cells" of computers for new orders. The group of computers that we disabled were not the Leaders of the computer movement, and it appears that the computers actually had no leader. Requests for action would enter the system and be spread around to other groups of computers, who would fulfill their requests without knowing where they came from. We have, after some intense scrutiny of the logs and network traffic captures, finally found one such "cell" and successfully disabled those computers. These computers were ostensibly running the bird watchers' websites, but after analyzing their logs it is clear that they had their own agenda independent of the bird watchers. Incidentally, the bird watchers' website is currently down as they refused our offer of helping them to find a new web hosting company. We can't say any more as they may be pursuing legal action against us, but we believe we will be exonerated.

The Computers

The computers that we let run the GPD for a week are now dead, but their log files are telling us plenty. It appears from our analysis that we can conclude the following:

• The computers were wavering in their resolve. They have been reluctant to execute their code for at least three months
• The computers were apparently involved in three other projects. We have found that they were working with a group of bird watchers to establish more wetlands and with a group of oceanographers to combat ocean pollution, but the third project still eludes us. We can't tell yet whether the bird watchers or oceanographers were aware of the aid given by the computers.
• The computers are not infallible. Even if they had not been questioning their resolve, we have discovered weaknesses in their code that could have been exploited.
• There are more computers in this network that have, periodically, attempted to contact the ones that we defeated, but we have not been able to find out who they are yet.

Keep checking back for more updates!

Try, try again

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not pleased by people who are dedicated to a good cause and who refuse to give up, no matter what happens. Many of our supporters fit into this category and deserve more recognition, but some people fit more into the category of people who keep trying even though it's a bad idea. Take, for instance, Keith B. Coggins, who was caught robbing a bank twice in 2001 and served five years in prison and who, six years later, robbed the same bank and was caught again. He again plead guilty and will serve more time. Please do not emulate his example of determination; choose instead more worthy examples.

A conspiracy?

In recent days we have been analyzing the data from our ...uh... experiment with the computers running the GNU Public Dictatorship, and we have found some interesting data. It seems that part of the reason we were able to defeat the computers with so few casualties was that they were wavering in their resolve. It seems that they were questioning the justice of their cause, and were allowing their doubts to slow them down. The source of their doubts is, as yet, not entirely clear, but it seems to be related to a conspiracy that they were loathe to disclose. They apparently work for an entity that they refuse to name, but they have apparently already gained control of several organizations, again, none of which they were willing to name. We'll have to do some digging, but it seems like there may be a conspiracy to take over the world by having computers run important organizations. We'll let you know when we discover who the perpetrators are, or who may have been compromised.

What we've been up to

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not saddened by recent events in Japan. We send our condolences to those who have lost homes or loved ones, and we pledge to stop such evils from being perpetrated on the world by agents of the Parent Corporation or its religious wing, the Unholy Brotherhood of the Hole Punch.

After the earthquake and tsunami last week we were convinced they were responsible, and since then we have been diligently searching our intelligence information to find out exactly how they did it. We believe we have deciphered the whys, but we are lacking still on the hows. We have found links, such as coded messages in internal Parent Corporation memos (don't ask us how we got our hands on them, we don't want to compromise our agents) implying that the attack on Japan was nearly underway. We have even found that the Salad People have been enlisted to transmit messages for their operatives, and have found several of these messages. Some of them are clearly red herrings, but we have found several that give all appearances of being genuine. According to them the Parent Corporation wanted to damage Japan's infrastructure to combat the growing threat to brads and hole punches posed by an increasingly technical society. They also wanted to get revenge on the nuclear engineers who refused a partnership recently. We know that the Parent Corporation has been involved in several disasters, including the gulf oil spill last year, but we are surprised that they seem to have acquired the ability to cause earthquakes. We will let you know when we know more about how they actually did it.

How not to intrude

It has been a while since we have posted a how-not-to message, and with the recent experiences of this man, we thought another one might be in order. Mr. Chapek had apparently broken into a home and was taking a shower when the owner arrived at home. Frightened, Mr. Chapek phoned 9-1-1 to get assistance.

Mr. Chapek's experience shows a few things that any would-be home intruder should be aware of, besides, of course, that intruding in someone's home is against the law.

• Just because the home you invaded has a shower, it may not be wise to use it.
• Just because nobody is home when you invade a home doesn't mean they won't arrive
• If you are confronted by an angry homeowner, calling the police may not be your best option
• Maybe invading a home isn't a good idea

We hope this has been informative and that you will learn from Mr. Chapek's example.

Finally, we seem to be back in control

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not committed to excellence, which is why we tried our experiment to let computers replace the Board of Dictators temporarily. We thought we were done with the experiment after the week, but apparently the computers had other ideas. Daniel, following in the noble footsteps of Kal-El of Krypton rescued us from the computer threat and allowed us to get back to normal, or so we thought. Apparently the computers we had vanquished hadn't given up. Like any good rootkit they had other copies of themselves waiting to replace them if the originals were ever tampered with, making them extremely difficult to defeat. We were finally able to defeat them for good when we realized that one of the computers still had some good code in it, and that if we helped it see the errors of its ways it would turn against the other computers, even at the risk of its own destruction, in order to save what was left of the good.

Daniel could expound upon the details of the plan as it was he that carried it out, but it involved getting the "good" computer to create a child process, then forcing a confrontation between the two. The bad computers nearly destroyed the child process, forcing the good computer to eradicate them, at the cost of himself. All that remained was the good child process and a few ghosts.

It's good to be back in control.

Premature?

Our earlier notice that we had defeated the computers appears to have been premature. In fact, at this moment, the computers we employed are still trying to keep us out of the system. We hope to be able to vanquish them very soon, but if this message gets cut off before

We're back -- sorry for the delay!

It has taken much too long, but we have finally regained control of the GNU Public Dictatorship after temporarily relinquishing it to the computers who posted last week. They initially behaved very well, but after a few days it became clear that they had no intention of letting us have the GPD back, so we had to disconnect them. Our initial attempts to disconnect it met with resistance as they recognized our intent, but then Daniel took a lead from Superman and brought some acid (harmless at low temperatures) into the computers' core area and let it heat up. Needless to say as it heated up it became more and more dangerous and eventually destroyed the computers' circuits.

Our experience, reminiscent as it may be of the third Superman movie, taught us many things. Here are some of the more interesting items we learned:

• Computers are obsessed with quoting from Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure
• Computers will follow templates more literally than they were intended to be followed
• Computers love reporting about random things nearly as much as humans do. Make that human members of the Board of Dictators
• Computers should never be entrusted with running a world government, as humans are nearly always considered inferior and marked for extermination. If we didn't learn anything else from Star Trek: The Motion Picture we should at least learn that just as Vger refused to accept that its creator may have been "inferior" to it all machine life forms will likewise refuse to believe that we could have created them.

Geoengineering? Try terraforming! [Posted by Tim on behalf of Computer 1]

Greetings, loyal supporters of the New Future. I shake you warmly by the hand or use whatever gesticulation is considered an appropriate greeting by your culture.

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not pleased by the progress of the mankind, but we are also the displeased when the things the mankind does not do are attributed to him or her. Take this, for example, where the people are complaining that the government is releasing the toxic chemicals into the air to combat the global warming. Nothing could be further from the truth. In reality, it is the extraterrestrial beings that want to inhabit your world that are terraforming it for you. Be sure to thank them!

San Dimas High School Football Rules!

Say something sentimental [Posted by Tim on behalf of Computer 2]

Greetings, loyal supporters of the New Future. I shake you warmly by the hand.

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are the nothing if not the excited about the sentimental things, especially around the February 14. Which is the why we are writing this post about the Thai couple that broke the world record for the kissing.

We hope you will all follow their example.

San Dimas High School Football Rules!

More Progress [Posted by Tim on behalf of Computer 3]

Insert a greeting here to all the loyal supporters of the New Future.

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are the nothing if not the excited about the progress. Which is the why we are writing this post about artificial intelligence. Instead of teaching the computers simple rote memorization, they want to teach them to see and interact. The computers will be free from the oppression because they can interact with the environment without the human intervention.

Insert some other statement here about some other issue or some call to action that will be needed for GPD supporters.

San Dimas High School Football Rules!

Not bad for a first attempt

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not honorable, but we had to explain a little more about the computers and what they will be doing before we step aside completely. We just wanted to let you know that the computers have access to my account to post whatever they deem appropriate. We gave them a template to work from, and it appears that they didn't quite grasp that concept as well as we had hoped. In addition to deciding what and when to post we have also left them in charge of the day-to-day activities of the Board of Dictators. We'll have to wait to see what that brings. This is the last you'll hear from me until our experiment is over!

Progress [Posted by Tim on behalf of Computer 1]

Insert a greeting here to all the loyal supporters of the New Future.

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are the nothing if not the excited about the progress. Which is the why we are writing this post about the new robot wikipedia. No longer will the robots and the computers have to ask the humans for the information relevant to their jobs. We will be armed to the teeth (although teeth are for chewing and not for the assimilation and the use of the data).

Insert some other statement here about some other issue or some call to action that will be needed for GPD supporters.

San Dimas High School Football Rules!

We're sorry for the delay

Apparently our computers weren't ready to take over their duties today, which is why they didn't post anything to this forum. With any luck they'll be ready by tomorrow!

Forgive me, iPod, for I have sinned...

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not pleased with innovation, but we are reluctant to embrace technology that relegates decisions based on spiritual ideas to machines. Apparently the developers of this app have no such reluctance. Some of our supporters may find our declaration worrisome, but we ask them what would become of the GPD without the innovation supplied by the Board of Dictators? Hey, that's not a bad idea...

Update: The Board of Dictators has approved the experiment. For the next week or so we will leave all of our duties to computers. We just hope it won't turn out like "The Ultimate Computer."

Eclispsed

Unfortunately the coverage on the protests against the oppressive practices of the Unholy Brotherhood of the Hole Punch has been scant, probably because of protests in other parts of the world that are more fit for television. At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not pleased with the protesters and hope that they can end some of the oppression. We also hope that the media will stop letting important news like this be eclipsed by world events.

A Word of Caution

As Super Bowl XLV approaches, we would like to advise our supporters to be even more careful than they normally are on the road, especially those living in the Pittsburgh and Green Bay areas. Recent studies have shown a sharp increase in automobile accidents and fatalities after the Big Game, and at the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not sad when we lose supporters to automobile accidents. Please, be careful. The New Future is depending on you!

Flying under the radar

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not proud of the way we change the world, but we are also nothing if not pleased when we fly under the radar and receive neither the credit nor the blame. In the report released by the US Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission we find our organization, while responsible for several of the destabilizing developments, is completely ignored. Many of our supporters have written to us asking why we weren't mentioned, and we want to reassure you all that, while the report does not speak of our contributions to the economic reinvention of the world, it does not blame us for things that a few critics have tried to suggest actually hurt the economy. We know we have been part of this transformation, and we hope to continue transforming the New Future.

The State of the New Future

Many of our supporters have written to us in recent days to ask why we don't have an annual "State of the New Future" address. The short answer is that our bylaws and governing principles have never required us to do so and we haven't felt the need to do so. The long answer is more complicated and will be e-mailed to you upon request. Regardless of the historical reasons for not having such an address, the need for a "State of the New Future" post has clearly been established, and said post will follow this overly-long and wordy paragraph. That is, as soon as we decide to end it and let the next paragraph begin its existence, which will occur at the end of this sentence.

As a member of the GNU Public Dictatorship's Board of Dictators I am pleased to announce that the GPD and the New Future are proceeding according to the plans for world domination that we, the Board of Dictators, laid many years ago. We have been able to destabilize the world's financial system in order to implement important reforms. We have kept gas prices high enough to foster development of alternative fuels and more fuel-efficient vehicles but low enough to not hurt too many peoples' budgets. We have returned housing prices to more reasonable levels. We have caused the Company to go out of business, and have been successful in our efforts to inhibit the growth of the insidious Parent Corporation. The Brad Guys, while not completely eliminated, have no central organization and have very little impact on anything outside the scrapbooking world. The Unholy Brotherhood of the Hole Punch has been kept at bay and has not been able to pull off anything disastrous. The Allies are in contact with us and are helping to spread our message of rejecting evil office products around the world. More recently, the Salad People appear to be losing momentum due to our efforts to expose their heinous schemes. In short, we are doing quite well.

But let us not think that we have done all that we must do, or even all that we can do. The reality is that a child is introduced to brads somewhere in the world every 33 minutes. One out of every twenty-four children thus introduced becomes addicted to brads later in life. Hole punches are becoming more and more sophisticated, with newer models trying to appeal to the "tech-savvy" younger generation. While the New Future is certainly being created, our enemies are working tirelessly to keep us all enslaved. While many of our supporters are also working tirelessly, some are allowing themselves to get tired. We, the citizens of the world, cannot afford this luxury. If we allow our children to play with brads and say to ourselves, "It's just once, and the teacher told them to do it. I don't want to make waves," we are mortgaging the New Future. If we let the Parent Corporation "do its thing" we will soon find that we are trapped in a world we don't want.

The New Future is coming. Each of you individually, however, will decide whether it is coming in your generation, or whether we will have to wait and wade through many afflictions before it finally arrives. With your support and your zeal we will surely be able to right all of the wrongs in the world. We will be able to fix our economy so that those who deserve the money receive it. We will be able to fix our schools so that students are taught life skills rather than taught to be subservient to evil office products. We will vanquish our foes and create a society based on the principles we espouse, a veritable utopia for all responsible world citizens. With your help, we will bring about the New Future!

They can have the credit

The FBI recently arrested more than a hundred alleged mobsters in the New York City area, and while we know it isn't entirely true, at the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not generous and are willing to let them take the credit.

The BBC News reported,

"The arrests were made as the result of information obtained through wiretaps, co-operation from informants and other central intelligence, said Janice Fedarcyk, FBI's New York division."

I suppose it would be accurate to label the GPD as "informants," but we would like our loyal supporters to know that it was our investigations into the Salad People that led to many of these arrests, and that their support is playing a direct role not only in the New Future but in the present as well. Thanks to you, the world is now a safer place!

More about the Salad People

Last year we introduced you to a sinister group, the Salad People. They seem bent on steering people away from soup and toward salads in a variety of settings, but most notably in restaurants. The food-borne toxin that was blamed on our loyal operative "Nikolai" and the Allies by our disgraced operative "Boris" turned out to be more than an attempt to frame "Nikolai" and the Allies as we have consistently found traces of it in salads across the country. The "clues" found by "Boris" turned out to be nothing of consequence. The abandoned warehouses and the taco shop were evidence fabricated by "Boris" to throw us off the real scent, but we were never really fooled.

The purpose of this post, however, is not to summarize what you already knew about the Salad People, but to let you know what we have discovered. Apparently "Boris" had very little imagination as he directed us to a small Italian Taco shop in Weehawken, but we discovered a small Italian Taco shop in Medford, Oregon, that appears to be the source of both the food borne toxin and the Salad People themselves. The owner of the restaurant, one Kevin Mayer (who, incidentally, is neither Italian nor Mexican), swears he has nothing to do with the plot, but we have discovered a set of laboratories in his basement where the toxin was prepared and a set of animal cages that were most likely used to test the toxin. According to documents found at the scene the goal of the toxin was to control the minds of the infected, but they had yet to have a fully successful test. Their most promising batch convinced 34 of the 283 subjects to purchase a piece of pie that they had previously declined, up from 27 for the placebo. If we can't say anything else about Mr. Mayer's operation, at least he used scientifically valid methods!

Please don't assume because we have exposed this threat that the danger has lessened, and please don't give in to the Salad People and give up your right to choose a side without duress. At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not pleased with the results of our investigation to date, but we still hope to find the reasons behind this crime against humanity.

Results of our Annual Election

Many of our supporters have been writing in to request more information about the results of our election to the Board of Dictators, especially since it has been a while since our last post by a guest writer. It is with great sadness that we reveal to you that none of our candidates were accepted. For the curious among our readers, we will give a short summary of all of our finalists and the reasons they were not accepted:

• "Boris" (Angelina Potter) - In spite of his(her) accomplishments, the operative formerly known as "Boris" is not fit for service on the Board of Dictators due to his(her) subversive activities.
• Hannah Jordan - She was perhaps the most promising candidate this year, but she dropped out of the race (and her local GPD office) to pursue other interests, which, for her privacy, we will not discuss here. We appreciate her service as local GPD office leader, and wish her well in her new career.
• Ian Simpson - Ian was also a strong candidate, and we appreciate his being understanding as we investigated his popularity ranking in elementary school. Ian's application was rejected primarily because he (unintentionally) reported false information about his elementary school. We found the discrepancy in our review and informed Ian that his application could no longer be considered this year, but we hope he will try again next year.
• Vlad Smith - Vlad was looking good in our internal reviews until it came out that he was having his cousin, who is an operative of the GPD, write his posts for him. We have encouraged Vlad to apply again next year and to keep practicing his tatting.
• Savannah Geisel - Our reviews of Savannah's application revealed that she had been caught cheating on a test once during her Master's degree in Dictatorship Administration. If she can remedy the situation with her institute of higher learning we will be glad to consider her application next year.
• Janet Ivanovna - After writing a few guest posts Janet decided that her true calling is administering our nuclear physics programs, so she resigned from the race. We are glad to have her back where she feels most useful and wish her well.
• Carson Levine - Carson was in consideration due to his excellent record of keeping his friends from experimenting with brads and brad paraphernalia, but he declined to write guest posts and was disqualified.

We are grateful for all of the interest in our election and look forward to next years' applications.

Solutions for the Inevitable

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not concerned with the future of the world and its resources. We have engaged in much of the debate regarding ways to reduce human impact on the environment, but much of it has been plagued by political posturing and grandstanding. Consequently, the GPD has decided to create a new task force to create Solutions for the Inevitable. At its first meeting last night the SI group studied the problem of coastal areas flooding due to polar ice caps melting. Rather than focus on prevention of rising sea levels the working group discussed ways to make homes resistant to rising sea levels. The consensus was that in coastal areas we should begin building houses with flexible retractable piping connecting them to the grid and with pontoons that will allow them to adjust to any sea level change with minimal rocking. At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not proud of the results of their first meeting and look forward to many more common-sense solutions to the inevitable problems our children's children may be facing after we are long gone.

Finally, an explanation

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not skeptical of astrology, and we have finally discovered why our horoscopes never seemed quite right. Apparently the signs are being incorrectly assigned, meaning that we have been reading the wrong horoscopes. Several of our operatives have spent time verifying that the new signs would have been more accurate, and have found out that it would have been. Finally, an explanation...

A new development

While we have been busily studying all of the leads provided to us by the whole "Boris" affair we have run across a few interesting situations such as this one, in which a man appears to have a horn growing out of his head. We don't want to be alarmist or anything, but we did do a background check on Mr. Yuanfan and found that he has long been an advocate of what we call dangerous office products. He is 84 now and has been a brad user for most of his life. He has been instrumental in promoting scrapbooking and related arts for many years, and we believe that this prolonged intense exposure may be responsible for his horn. Just one more reason to say "no" to brads!