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!

Maybe this will get things moving

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not committed to keeping you safe, which is why we have taken up the cause of changing the packaging of glues and nail glues to bottles that won't be mistaken for eye drops. We have not been able to get any governments to legislate the changes we want, but some manufacturers have expressed their willingness to make the changes. Until they do, however, more people will continue to be victimized by their carelessness. When it occurs to people such as Zsa Zsa Gabor's husband the world takes notice, so perhaps if we can all contact our favorite manufacturers of glues we can finally get them to stop the insanity!

An update on "Nikolai"

As many of our supporters have been pointing out but we have been neglecting to mention here for reasons that will become clear as you continue reading, all of the evidence against our operative "Nikolai" has been coming from our operative "Boris." To some of our supporters this has seemed rather fishy, and it seemed so to our senior operative "Viktor" as well. At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not hard to dupe, which is why we have had "Viktor" working closely with "Boris" for several months now. We have also led "Boris" along and let him believe he was one of the top candidates for membership in the Board of Dictators. Our real motivation for letting him through to the final round was to let him expose himself as the double agent he really is.

Anyway, to make a long story slightly shorter, "Boris" has been sympathizing with the Parent Corporation since before he joined us, and although we were aware of his sympathies we did get a lot of good work out of him by letting him prove his "loyalty" to us. He also provided a nice way for us to understand the minds and motivations of our enemies, but ultimately he proved that he couldn't keep the charade up for very long. In the early morning hours of July 28, 2010, "Boris" received a call apparently from our arch nemesis "Edgar." While we didn't have a full wiretap in place, we have reconstructed the timing of the audio packets using the data stored at the phone companies' exchanges and have, with high probability, ascertained that they hatched a plan to get "Boris" promoted to the Board of Dictators. He made good on this plan and tried his best to simultaneously appear to be squeaky clean and to malign one of our beloved operatives.

Some have criticized us for allowing the charade to continue, suggesting that perhaps we didn't know he was working against us, but to them we merely suggest that our actions speak for themselves. Anyone familiar with our records will be able to reconstruct the events that apparently cast doubt on the trustworthiness of "Nikolai" and see that "Boris" was involved in each and every investigation, and that in cases where other operatives had previously responded the evidence never pointed to "Nikolai" until after "Boris" had been there. What's more, at some scenes we planted evidence pointing to another of our operatives and "Boris" still managed to modify it to point at "Nikolai."

While it may not have been a brilliant idea to let "Boris" write in our forum as a guest writer, especially as he tends to alienate the Allies and others, we think the benefits of exposing not just him but an entire Unholy Brotherhood of the Hole Punch cell with ties to some very high levels of leadership. Because of our choice the world is now a better place, regardless of how many people we may have irked with "Boris" and his not quite correct remarks.

So, to summarize, "Nikolai" has been exonerated completely while "Boris" has condemned himself to life in prison. Or should we say condemned herself as "Boris" was really a woman whose full name is Angelina Potter of Cincinatti, Arkansas.