The history of mankind is basically a timeline of war, from the first empires to the present. Many great civilizations, cultures, histories and knowledge down through the centuries have been lost to war. There are many examples of the victors erasing a peoples existence and replacing it with their concept of national identity. For example, The Old Testament is full of war, genocide and slaughter. History books are chronicles of war with intermittent smatterings of peace and prosperity. How much knowledge has been lost to the scourge of war? We will never know what the world has missed or how different it may have been because of the antiquities that were conquered and lost forever.

If the victor rewrites history in its favor, how can we trust anything that has been handed down to us, considering the possibility that the other side of the story may have been lost or altered for all of posterity? How much knowledge has been lost due to war, and the rewriting of history. The Library of Alexandria is just one example of ancient histories and knowledge lost to conflict. What knowledge and wisdom was lost forever in that fire of conflict? We'll never know.

Empires are parasites.

Impirium Parasitus (U.S. Empire) lives upon two hosts, the internal host and the external host. The citizens as the internal hosts and the victim as the external host country or state. Sometimes the relationship is symbiotic, but most times it's only beneficial for the parasite. In end stages when the host/s are no longer to be found or have been depleted, the Impirium Parasitus may turn exclusively on its citizens.

Impirium Parasitus has learned and adapted from past hosts. The Vietnam War or The War in Southeast Asian taught the parasite many valuable lessons that are presently applied to contemporary conflicts.

• The hoi polloi (common people, the masses) must not discern caskets draped in American flags.
• The hoi polloi must not hear anti-empirical words that emanate from the popular music of the day.
• Protest must be hidden from the citizens as much as possible.
• The use of censorship and propaganda to obfuscate the motivation for parasitical exploitation.
• The use of political intimidation to keep the hoi polloi in line.
• The use of a proxy army.

Does your mind feel like a pin cushion, similar to being stuck like a voodoo doll by invisible forces intent on stealing your free will? Does it feel like every day there's a new assault on your sanity, a new way to divide yourself against yourself and against each other? Do you feel confused about what is right and what is wrong, like old sociological taboos are now acceptable and what was once unthinkable is now subliminally admissible? Do you feel like you're being led down a menacing alleyway in the dead of night, in the midst of an archetypal dream where you need to run from some danger yet your legs don't work no matter how hard you try. Do you feel intimidated about saying the wrong thing to the point where you don't even want to think those thoughts? Do you feel like you have three legs of which only one can go forward but two will then step back? Do you pine for the old world order of just a few short years ago, that was chaotic in and of itself but now seems idyllic and much more manageable compared to the mass confusion of this nascent new world order being thrust upon us?

Do you feel helpless and hopeless? Do you want it all to just stop? If so that is exactly the raison d'etre for the incessant and ubiquitous propaganda and gaslighting we've been bombarded with by the media for many years now. It's been ever present in our lives since birth but has recently been taken to a whole new level of full spectrum mind control.

Why? Why have the societal paradigms shifted so much in the near term and what may the consequences be in the long term?

The following video was produced back in 2016 by c99 member, Ranting Rooster.

Its focus is climate change as evidenced by its title, Humanity is at Stake.

Is we learning yet?

Occasionally while surfing the internet I'll run across this hair on fire exclamation: "I'll see you in the re-education camp". Re-education? I thought that's what schools were for? Take that as you may, or not. I believe there is an effort afoot to thoughtscape your mind for you, as though you aren't intelligent enough to think for yourself.

To my mind, there's no need for a re-education camp, the camp has already been built, it's all around us. Like an ubiquitous schoolmarm, everywhere and nowhere at the same time. Like an insidious rehabilitation program, not of the physical world, but of the mental realm. Fences built around the mind are as effective as a barrier of razor edged concertina wire, maybe more so, because once the fences are accepted then there's no need for escape.

Once fore the light, before time started,
The Big Bang blew, a new universe was charted.

Matter congealed, solar system comparted.
Life sprang forth, man and nature soon parted.

Language was cast, the sonnets were Barded,
The Enlightenment arose, and philosophy Descarted.

Now to the present, with deadline regarded,
The Open Thread awaits, and my mind bombarded.

Hencewhile I sat, deeply broken hearted,
I tried to write, but my brain just f***ed.

Wit and wisdom long since, forlorn and departed,
Neurons and glia, so easily outsmarted.

Then out of the ether, came a thought so unguarded,
It left foreheads unfrowned, and knickers unwadded.

I hope that now, since muse has jumpstarted,
My own mind and words, be forever unparted.

~JtC

The next shoe to drop hangs by a shoestring over our heads like the Sword of Damocles. And the shoestring is fraying.

Dear citizen, it matters not that you live your life trying to do what's right. You go to work, pay your taxes, obey the laws, save your money only to have it stolen in the form of inflation. The banks don't play by those rules. They have different rules, as do the very wealthy. If you get in financial trouble that's on you. If the banks get in financial trouble that's on you as well.

The recent Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) failure is a perfect example of balance of justice weighed in favor of the wealthy. You did everything by the rules, they play fast and loose with the rules. They broke the rules, you didn't, who pays?

The term artificial intelligence (AI) is being bandied about with regularity nowadays, especially in regards to chatbots, with ChatGPT being the most prolific. Hopefully this piece will help explain the concept of AI in context of its current applications and what that may portend for the future. Included, at the end, I'll let my mind run wild in a thought experiment regarding AI's potential abuse.

Authors note: The Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse. What is that? Greed. [1]

One may wax philosophically about that which ails man, especially in this day and age of policrises. An argument can be made that our current dilemma is caused by a myriad of causes, such as dwindling resources, or overpopulation, or climate change, or war, or economic collapse, or global health. Any one of these can be considered existential. Here we are in the third decade of the new millennium, confronted with all of these crises at the same time. Is it by chance that this has happened or is there an underlying causal phenomenon at work? It is tempting to lay blame at the feet of overpopulation as the root of all our current emergencies. That may very well be true. This piece is not about the temporal aspects of the policrisis, but more about the philosophical tenets of the existential fork(s) in the road. In other words, that component of the human psyche that has brought us the point of no return.

In my simplistic and humble opinion it all boils down to one human trait: greed.

These old tired eyes have seen a lot. Never did I dream I'd see the things that I've seen the last three years. You know what I mean? I bet you do. The crazy has no limit, so it seems. It's as if the matrix software has been toggled to insane mode and we're living in some crazed oligarch's head.

We, the people, have been divided on so many levels, by design. If we agree on one thing, there's dozens of other things to disagree about. The dividers have had centuries to hone their skills. Divide and conquer has always been the tactic of those that wish to rule you and I and with the advances in technology and psychological manipulation it's a wonder that we still have any modicum of civility left in us. The division has gone much deeper than the left/right dichotomy with both sides being subdivided into multiple facets of hatred, diverging from the macro, to the molecular, to the atomic and sub-atomic. The divisions run deep. It seems like every day a new way to divide us is contrived.