This Ain't Your Daddy's Pizza

"Let all the poisons that lurk in the mud hatch out!"

Thus declared Claudius, at both the beginning and end of Robert Graves' brilliant I, Claudius.

At the end of empires, the foul rot that lies at the heart of power is always revealed.  Ultimately, the revelation is at least a proximal cause of the collapse, but equally is it the moral and ethical decay it represents a reason for implosion.

Whether historically or contemporaneously, all centers of power and wealth rot out.  The debauchery of power always eats itself like a parasite until the host dies.  It is as inevitable as sunset.

Throughout history, one of the primal signals that an empire was about to collapse has been the complete abandonment of propriety and moral standards.  Rome, of course, serves as an iconic symbol of such decay.  That empire only survived past the first century anno domini because of the mass conversion of the empire to Christianity and the return of some moral compass.  That was enough to keep the empire going for another three centuries, until even the Roman Church had corrupted.

Only one thing is more sure than the decay of empire, and it is that the decay is commensurate with the scale of wealth and power that the empire wields.  The greater the pile of gold on which the emperor sits, the more fetid and debased will be the spirits that dwell at the seat of power.

At its lowest point, the heart of the empire resorts to sacrificing innocents lives, drinking their blood and sexual practices that would make even the most liberal mind reel in shock and horror.  At this point, there are no longer factions or divisions; you are either in or out.

Empires also work like secret societies: in order to ensure the absolute fealty of its members, they must commit the most heinous crimes in front of witnesses who will use it to destroy any member who steps out of line.  The lure of unending riches and plate-fulls of the most forbidden fruits is more than even the most resolute of minds can resist.  No matter how idealistic one's initial state, unbridled power will drag one down.  After all, who of us would not eventually taste the fruit if all consequences of law and shame were removed?  Once tasted, then there could be no turning back.

At which point we come to PizzaGate.

Back during the waning days of the US presidential election, WikiLeaks began dumping thousands of email, most especially that of John Podesta, Hillary Clinton's campaign manager.  Researchers began noticing a patter of odd pizza references that were strangely out of context.  It was a police investigator in New York City who mentioned that pizza references were common code among pedophiles, which he had investigated for several years.

At that time, I noted on the Farcebook feed that folks should keep an eye on PizzaGate.  It was going to become a major story, and indeed it is, with at least one major news story per week cropping up in various parts of the US.  There are a lot of dogged private investigators out there, some who have been at this story since at least the early 1980s, who needed just that bit of information to finally pry the lid off the rotten core of empire.

The story broke a couple of years ago with the revelations concerning Jimmy Seville, a UK celebrity who happened to be known for his "charity" work for children.  Despite fierce resistance, that investigation has already ensnared a number of the elite, including now a former Prime Minister.

Americans have blissfully ignored the story until now, and even in the face of mounting evidence and even several arrests, most continue to ignore or deny that such a thing could exist at the heart of their empire.  When faced with information too horrible to contemplate, the mind will default to the "everything is just fine" position in protection mode.

The fact is, though, that pedophilia and human sacrifice have appeared repeatedly throughout recorded history wherever wealth and power condense.  As if under some spell from outside, those at the centers of power come to believe that having sex with, drinking the blood of and sacrificing the lives of innocents will transfer even more power and perhaps even eternal life to their blackened hearts.

Throughout the Western world, so-called Child Protective Services (CPS) have been set up to procure children for the elite.  In the Middle East, especially Afghanistan, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, Bacha Bazi boys have been around for at least as long as Islam, and probably much longer.  In Asia, Thailand is notable for providing children for sex.  Institutions like the Roman Church have long been seething cesspools of child abuse, but most major European churches are involved in the system.

Most of the children are street urchins or orphans.  They would not be missed if they disappeared.  The Western CPS systems evolved to identify abandoned and abused children who could vanish without much fuss, and the legal system was adjusted to allow these organizations the right to take children from their families under an entire spectrum of sanctioned conditions.  They identify potential sources of fresh meat, then literally prey on them until they can find some means to take the children into custody and place them with "foster" families, where they are conditioned for the elite "market".

PizzaGate and its various related scandals around the world, threaten to expose one of the oldest and best kept secrets of the global elite.  This practice is one of the most vital sources of power that the elite have, and they will do virtually anything to protect themselves and their sicknesses.  It is their most vulnerable point, but also the source of their cohesiveness.  It binds them together more tightly than social institution, like marriage.

There is a literal war being carries out before our collective eyes.  Some factions of the elite are still human and find the practice revolting, but they have their own vulnerabilities that can be exposed.  It is a stalemate of mutual destruction: sociopath versus sociopath.

Nearly every major news story right now has at its core this elite perversion.  Middle Eastern wars on "terror" are an ideal means of creating orphans and displaced children.  The children are shipped around under the guise of "refugee relocation" programs, where they can disappear into "social services" networks with almost no oversight or accountability.  Once the elite are done with them, they are simply killed off in ritual murders and no one is the wiser.

Those who think Trump will champion an investigation have not considered the significance of the so-called "Russian prostitute" dossier that made the rounds.  It was most likely fake, but it served notice on Trump that he is vulnerable regardless of his innocence in any given accusation. Even if the elite have no substantial charge (highly unlikely), they have the means to fabricate evidence and disseminate it within hours to their media blow-hards.

The die is cast.  The poisons in the mud will hatch out.  It is the nature of crumbling empires to have their darkest secrets brought to light.  It will not be simple or without collateral damage, though.  Deep secrets, like the elite pedophile system, will cause widespread injury and death as they struggle to keep their most vile practices under wraps.

This is by far not the only scandal that is coming to light, but it is the most visceral.  Economic manipulation, vast deception and wars for profits are horrible, but at least comprehensible to most people.  The elite pedophilia is something that cannot be repaired or covered up.  Once made common knowledge, the vast majority of normal people will demand blood.  Once the lid is off this can of worms, there is no going back.

Stay alert.  Not only has PizzaGate just begun, the depth and breadth of its revelations will shock even the most jaded mind.

As Claudius Caesar admonished, "Let all he poisons that lurk in the mud hatch out."

Fear, The Root Of Evil

Here's a question for you: Why do "refugees" spend so much time trying to change other countries and cultures into something they are trying to leave?

Here's the deal: if you truly want to emigrate to another country because you think the life there is, for some reason, better or different or offers more opportunities than the one you are leaving, then why would you refuse to integrate and rather bring all the worst aspects of the culture you are leaving?  Doesn't that seem to defeat the purpose?

I do not, nor have I ever agreed with mass immigration.  This is not true immigration, it is an invasion.  Invasions are forceful take-over of other countries and cultures, replacing them with something foreign.  In my humble opinion, when this happens it is an act of war and the existing population is fully within their rights to fight back violently.  They have the right to round up and forcefully expel the invaders and to do everything possible to eradicate the invaders, and to prosecute to the fullest extent of the law any of their own who aid and abet the invaders.

It astounds me to no end that the EU and US populations have reacted with such passivity to the forced invasions of millions of foreigners with incompatible legal and social mores.  To my mind, this demonstrates the profound extent to which Western civilization has declined, in that there is no longer enough people with moral and physical fortitude to stand up to this literal take-over that supplanting millennia-old cultures practically overnight.

Some readers might argue that Brexit and Trump and upcoming "leaders" like Marine Le Pen and Janos Ader are the reaction, but I say this may be too little too late.  First, what can one say about the mentality of the masses who rolled over and accepted the invasion in the first place, or allowed "leaders" to fling open the doors years ago?  Second, there are sufficient numbers of apathetic or mind-controlled idiots who still fight to destroy their own cultures and still have a significant voice.

In a matter such as this, there should be no polite tolerance.  There should be no compassion or passivity.  When one witnesses the wholesale destruction of one's nation and culture.  It is one thing to accept incoming individuals who want to contribute to the general well-being and merge into extant society, but when waves of faceless masses swarm into a nation, absorb irrational amounts of the economy as a "right" and immediately demand that thousands of years of development be thrown out in favor of a wholly incompatible system, that is an invasion and should be repelled with all available force.

It is perhaps instructive to note that this exact situation, though far slower, was the primary cause of the fall of Rome.  By the time Alaric I and the Visigoths sacked Rome in AD410, the social and cultural core had eroded to such a degree that what was once the greatest force on Earth could not repel, nor really gave much effort to it, the invading hordes.

These invaders do not deserve tolerance because they are not tolerant.  They do not deserve compassion because they are not compassionate.  They have as their primary motivation to destroy the existing order and supplant it with their own.  They don't seek to contribute to the general welfare, but to loot it and like locusts leave nothing but barren earth behind them.  The hordes are not educated, thinking people, they are blank slates upon which ideologues can write any program they choose.

If these hordes were truly motivated to change things for the better, they would stay home and reform their own countries.  That is not their goal.  They are exporting their error in a way that is destructive to the invaded lands.

At this point, many readers will take issue with me, having not made it this far and thinking that somehow I am singling out certain peoples over another.  However, I castigate ANY invading culture, whether it be my own or any other.

I have watched closely as the American Way has infiltrated by stealth or force into dozens of other cultures.  I have walked through the wastes of many unique and fascinating cultures now supplanted with McDonald's, KFC and Starbucks.  I have seen what passes for American entertainment muscle out homegrown forms.  I have witnessed American greed literally rape other nations for profit.

To a certain extent, I see the poetic justice embedded in the waves of humanity pouring over US and EU borders.  I have experienced first-hand the effects of British, French, Dutch, Spanish, and Portuguese colonialism.  I have seen the same effects of Arabic and Chinese domination of unsuspecting lands.

I do not care what color or background the invaders have.  To me it is sufficient to revile the invaders who seek to destroy, plunder and replace any other culture.  I don't care what ISIS believes, and they are free to attempt to convert others, but when they blowup and bulldoze ancient monuments because the culture that created them is not their own, then they deserve to be eradicated with prejudice.

In history, we have seen great art and wisdom wiped out by invaders.  The European powers that colonized Asia and the Americas should be sufficient warning to the world that this type of behavior is not acceptable, and it doesn't matter who is invading whom.  We cannot change the past, but we can certainly change the future, and the the extent possible, we can seek to preserve as much of the cultures that were destroyed, if for no other reason than to serve as a lesson for the future of humanity.

Trump will not fix the problem.  Brexit, Le Pen and Ader will not fix the problem.  The problem in buried in the core of the individual and no amount of "leaders" can change it.  It is a flaw in human nature that we accept leaders in the first place.  Humans are programmed to roll over and beg whenever confronted with power of any kind.  It is our lack of faith in our own characters and abilities to control our lives that is at fault.  That humans can be herded so easily is our fundamental weakness.

By the same token, when an invader is successful, it is the individual's personal responsibility for that success.  It is our lack of conviction and strength to resist that is to blame, not "leaders."

In short, it is our fear that is our defeat.

Five Easy Pieces

With all the hooplah over illegal immigration into the US and EU -- especially with the overnight attacks in Paris and Trump's "humane" deportation plan -- it occurs to me that most Americans are probably ignorant of what it takes to legally enter the US.  As it happens, my wife is currently applying for a US tourist visa so we can visit family at Christmas, so I presumably have become an expert on the subject.

The US has a class of visas called "Non-Immigrant Visas," which include business travel (Class B1) and tourists (Class B2).  We want the B2 visa, so naturally we click over to the US Embassy website here in Jakarta, and after a little poking and prodding, we find the NIV (non-immigrant visa) page, and the fun begins.  It lists 5 steps to apply (notice I didn't use the word obtain) for an NIV.

Step 1: Pay
The first thing you are told to do is pay the visa application fee.  Scanning down the left-hand column, we find the link called "Fees."  Ooh, this is easy, we think.  Clicking on it gives us lots of information about non-refundability and lost or stolen visas, but -- and I challenge you to find it -- not one line giving the AMOUNT of the fee.  To get that, we googled "US NIV fees" to find a State Department page giving the fee amount as USD160.  If you poke around, it tells you that all fees must be paid in the local currency, even though they are all listed in dollars, so a second google session converts the fee to whatever coin of the realm you use.

Back to the Embassy page to find out which banks we can use.  If you follow the link from the Embassy page, you may note that the site is a .com, not a .gov site.  We choose CIMB for no particular reason, except maybe there is a branch relatively close to the house.  Though the site lists an option to pay by electronic transfer (a relatively new option), we opt for the physical payment in order to receive a hand-written receipt, just so there are no 'complications' leading to the non-refundable part of the deal.

Step 2: Complete the  Nonimmigrant Visa Electronic Application (DS-160)
At this point, if you are a foreigner with basic tourist English skills, you may want your lawyer and a certified translator at your side.

So, now we are ready to start the application form.  The site tells us that the form is online and provides a link.  Here we find a handy checklist of everything you will need to do to complete the DS-160, which is not a hopeful sign, as we were hoping we would be able to fill out the form with just the information in our heads, and maybe cheating to look at the passport number.

We gather all the necessary data and prepare for the Big Moment.  Back to the .gov site, where we select the "Tooltip Language - Indonesia, Jakarta" on the handy drop-down menu, which gives us another page, still in English, but now indicates at the top of the page that we are applying in Indonesia.  OK, so at least our point of origin is acknowledged, even if we don't speak English.  Scanning the page, we find links to Overviews, Guidelines and Information -- all in English -- and a handy tool to see if the online form will accept our photo, which has it's own set of Overviews, Guidelines and Information.

After multiple adjustments for file size, type, perspective, percentage, colors, and other fun stuff, it finally is happy with our photo.  Now we are ready to start the application, so Click on Start Application.

This takes you to a page written in the glorious dialect of Governese, wherein we find more of those Overviews, Guidelines and Information links, and a novella telling us how we should proceed.  I draw the reader's attention to the bottom, where you will find a drop down box containing a series of security challenge questions.  Fans of Monty Python will note the distinct similarities to the Pilgrim's Challenge when crossing the Bridge of Death.  I nearly shorted out my computer laughing to tears.  Naturally, we answered "European Swallow."

After several days starting, downloading, saving, accessing, and collecting data to enter into the form, we were finally ready for the Next Big Step (NBS).

Step 3: Scheduling Your Appointment
We now return to the .com site, after a week of frolicking on the .gov site.  WARNING: the link crashed our browser several times and required a reboot to get out of whatever mess they have made here, so caveat emptor.

Here we discover that every single person applying for a visa that is over 14 and under 80, must come down to the Embassy for a face-to-face interview.  A family of four with a couple of older teenagers could end up spending a week or two on this step.  Fortunately, we only need one visa, though.  

After reading about waivers and necessary supporting documents and procedures for changing appointments, we found the link at the bottom of the page to actually schedule the appointment and find out if we will be Group A or B.  It's at this stage that we learn that we must complete an online profile in order to proceed.  We must give a delivery address for the completed visa, a screen name, and various other information so that we can track our passport, and THEY can track us.  Note that we are still on the .com site, and not the .gov, meaning that none of the information we enter is protected and will probably be sold to advertisers, not to mention used against you in a court of law.

Steps 4 and 5: The Appointment
Finally, my wife was scheduled for her appointment.  She was in Group B, meaning her appointment time was 9a. on a Wednesday.

We arrived at the embassy at 7:30a, and got in the cattle chute outside the Wall.

Now, I've been in most of the embassies for major countries here in Jakarta.  I had meetings at the Russian and Chinese consulates, been to several functions at the Italian, German, Austrian, and Fujian consulates.  I've been in the Phillipines, Singapore and Australian consulates.  For the most part, the security is minimally invasive and the embassies look like stately manners or large houses.

The US embassy looks like a high-security prison.  There is a 12-foot high security opaque security fence lined with cameras around the compound.  The entrance looks like a hardened bunker with 3-inch thick glass, steel doors and angles concrete walls to deflect blast waves.  Getting into the compound is rather like trying to board a plane in the US: strip to your skivvies, no electronic devices allowed, etc.  Once through, you are herded across the basketball and tennis courts in a cordoned walkway to another hardened bunker near the center of the compound.

I wasn't allowing inside (my own embassy!).  My wife was herded in with a group of people and I would be called if needed.  About an hour and a half later, she emerged, having been approved for her B-1 tourist visa.  For all the trouble, it was at least good for 5 years with multiple in-out privileges.  Within two days, her passport arrived at the house with a big, officious decal all over one page, that had her photo and details neatly emblazoned on it.

The interview consisted mostly of checking to make sure my wife wasn't going to stay in the US, at least not on the "cheap" visa.  She was asked about her reasons for going there, what my plans were (would I stay or would I go?) and double-checking the details on the application form.  While her approval seems rather smooth and easy, she reports that a number of people before and around her were not approved, and I could tell outside who had gotten theirs and who had not by the looks on faces.

An example of things that can keep you from getting a visa is a blank passport.  If your passport is new and never used before, that is one sure way to get denied.  Fortunately, my wife had done some travelling over the past few years and had stamps from 9 different countries.  Other friends of mine have not been so lucky when applying to bring their spouses to the States.  Some have spent upward of $500 trying to get tourist visas and most were denied for this reason.

In any event, this should be enough to show that the current visa system is not easy and by no means convenient.  There is a "vetting" process in place, and when followed and enforced, it seems quite sufficient to screen out most undesirables.

The problem with the current immigration system is that it is not enforced at the actual borders (not the soft airport borders) and there are far too many 'exceptions' being made for 'refugees' and other unknowns with most likely loose documentation who haven't gone through the above process.

One would think that it is a no-brainer to simply enforce the current system evenly across all access points to the nation's interior.  For God's sake, the embassy entrance is better protected than the 1,000-mile Texas border.  I know, I've been there.  I've walked across the Rio Grande in some places multiple times and even straddled the imaginary line known as the 'border'.

Every other country on Earth, outside the US and Europe, seems to have no problem controlling their borders, with less complex and intimidating systems than are currently in place in the US.  I know.  I have spent eight years strictly adhering to the Indonesian laws.  I pay $800/year to stay here, complete with annual check-ins, fingerprinting, photographing and signing.  And Indonesia has a much more complex border than anything the US has to deal with.

Just enforce the current law.  Problem solved.