A short story by Steve Cook
Once upon a time the world was ruled by wise men who knew what was best for everyone, although in those far-off days “wise” meant “owning big shiny rockets” and what was best for everyone was generally considered to be what was good for really rich people.
One is not after all entitled to Good Things unless one is in a position to pay for them and Good Things just happened to be so expensive that only really rich people could afford them. Those who were less than really rich had to settle for more modest and pragmatic aspirations such as being regularly shafted and donating their children to the latest war effort, which is only fair when you think about it.
But then one day all that was ruined when the ship of state sprung leaks and began to flounder. This was due to a curse that was laid down in a parallel universe known as The Internet and sometimes The Blogosphere. The source of The Curse was the The Wicked Witch of the Leaks, which became shortened in time to Wickedleaks and then Wikidleaks.
The Curse more often than not took the form of Facts and sometimes Truths, whose laser-sharp barbs began to fill the aforementioned ship of state as full of holes as a colander or Hillary Clinton’s memory.
One US Senator described the shock release of facts ‘an act of terrorism’ when a resultant serious spin breakdown prompted fears that an epidemic of truth could endanger the thousands of politicians whose names could not be released for security reasons.
The senator’s outrage was ignited by the controversial release of damning top secret US government documents by the Wikidleaks website. The documents revealed, as if by magic, what government officials and elected representatives were really thinking and saying behind other people’s backs, provoking a furious reaction from various humanitarian organisations the world over, such as the Department of Information Management and Worldwide Institutionalized Terrorism (DIMWIT).
Wikidleaks rapidly became famous the world over for viciously publishing information that people might want to know, despite having been told not to by the DTL (Department of Truth Limitation) and SHUTIT (The Secret Homeland Unit for Tacit Intimidation and Threats). It had been founded in 2005 by Dave Nuisance and Tom Blabb (Wikidleaks that is, not SHUTIT). Our two unlikely heroes (for indeed they were extremely nerdy) were famous for suffering from OCCD (Obsessive Compulsive Candidness Disorder) a mental illness discovered only last weekend by psychiatric researchers at MuchCon, (the MK Ultra Centre for Health Control).
OCCD afflicts people who have a compulsion to publish things the government would rather keep quiet about. It is thought to only be treatable by removal of the sufferer’s reputation or freedom and some experts say that torture or removal of the brain have also been known to have beneficial effects, at least in managing the illness.
Blabb and Nuisance and their website hit the headlines shortly after the birth of Wikidleaks when they published leaked documents provided by a whistle-blower employed by Sinister-Shyster a drug corporation that produces magical pills and potions, most of which make people manageable and/or dead (preferably). The documents, mainly internal memos, revealed that laboratories employed by the company to test their new drug Craveit, a cure for OSD (Odd Sock Disorder) had doctored the trials to show that Craveit was 2% less addictive than placebo and had 10% fewer long-term detrimental side effects than goat’s milk.
On the strength of the trial results, Craveit had received FDA approval but the leaked documents proved that the results were engineered by using a placebo containing heroin, crack cocaine and anti-freeze.
The FDA - the so-called Food Destruction Agency - was galvanised to speak out in its own defence in case people started to think of it as a criminal organisation. This was understandable as people have been known to jump to all sorts of reasonable conclusions when presented with things such as proof and jumping to reasonable conclusions had been scientifically proven to have no place in a modern state-of-the-art artificial democracy. So the FDA’s Great Minds were quick to issue a statement denying everything and wrapping the public up in a warm cocoon of blandishments. It explained that they never look too closely at what is in the placebo in any drug trials and it would have been prejudicial to violate that strict policy in the case of Craveit. This is consistent, they explained, with the Agency’s long-term policy of trusting the drug companies completely. Besides, to be completely fair, the Agency had been rather busy at the time, its resources stretched to breaking point by efforts to ban the sale of ginseng after someone in Belgium reported contracting a headache after putting some in his tea.
Sinister-Shyster backed this up with their own statement shortly thereafter, claiming that they did not mention what was in the placebo as they did not think it was important.
Luckily, the revelations came before more than a mere 30,000 Craveit users had had time to develop slightly worrying reactions such as severe weight loss, muscle atrophy, brittle bones, loss of teeth, sweats, cramps, social dysfunction, criminal tendencies, addiction and death, which was a stroke of luck because millions were saved from suffering more than mild symptoms such as paranoia and a fascination with guns, which dissipated after just a couple of decades.
The company meanwhile had to endure the full wrath of government health watchdogs over what was, however, eventually accepted as an innocent mistake any party-political benefactor such as a drugs cartel could, and often did, make. The company was given a year to withdraw Craveit from the market and replace it with another drug, Addictalot, and in a landmark ruling that was expected to put the fear of God in drug companies everywhere, were warned not to do it again.
Meanwhile the person responsible for all the unwarranted fuss, whistle-blower, Sam Conscience, of Godhelpus, Arizona, committed suicide by running himself over with his own car on the freeway. An inquest found that he had been distressed beyond endurance by having saved thousands of lives.
Yet the scandal elevated Wikidleaks to prominence, boosting the site’s traffic to 3,000,000 hits a day almost overnight. Would-be whistle-blowers offering to spill the beans on employers ranging from the government, the media, drug makers, arms manufacturers, food manufacturers and banking contacted Blab and Nuisance with documentation at a rate of 2,000 a day, which was as lot faster than they could be killed. This was so much so that the phenomenon was described as a pandemic, prompting the declaration of a State of Emergency and a complete ban on the truth until the hysteria died down, although the Society of Hitpersons in the States (SHITS) applauded the surge in employment opportunities for its members.
Such was the furore created by the public’s discovery of an organization willing to practice the constitutional right to free speech, even at great personal risk, a government spokesman went on record to warn that, "This obsession with accurate information could threaten the entire basis of our Democracy and undermine the government’s ability to carry out thought control, opinion management and other public duties. People will soon tire of not being kept in the dark and come to realise that ignorance is bliss. Knowledge is a terrible burden, whose weight the government in its unquestionable wisdom has worked hard to remove from their slender shoulders."
Unfortunately, the hysteria only mildly subsided. It began to appear that the public’s flirtation with knowing what was going on was turning into a full-blown love affair. Surveys revealed that the majority of people admitted to having a quiet smirk every time some corporate giant or smarmy politician was caught with their pants down (both literally and figuratively) and experienced a warm glow at the thought that they were getting their comeuppance.
After a few years things settled down a bit and people sank contentedly back into quiet unexpressed resentment, occasionally relieved by hurling abuse at the television.
But then, a few years later, Wikidleaks experienced a renewed surge in public interest after the attempted murder of Barak Obama. Secret FBI documents released by Wikidleaks revealed that the motive for the attempt on the ex-President’s life was revenge and investigators wanted to interview 250 million suspects.
And that brings this tale of woe to 2018, when Wikidleaks received from an undisclosed source in the White House, five truckloads of documents ranging from "wet paint" signs, luncheon menus and shopping lists to internal communications passed between various departments.
The more embarrassing of these documents have begun to find their way onto the Wikidleaks website, whipping up a storm of embarrassment that is widely regarded to have severely damaged the ability of the US State Department to look anybody in the eye - as well as crippling America’s ability to say one thing whilst doing something else entirely. Both of these are, as you know, traditional cornerstones of international diplomacy.
Such was the scale and shocking nature of those disclosures - a release of facts unprecedented in U.S. government history - that government agencies reeled and are still reeling from the shock of having to deal with a phenomenon with which they were never designed to cope: the leakage into the mainstream of raw, untreated and un-sanitized information.
The cleaning-up operation that will follow after the leak is capped is expected to cost tax payers billions of dollars each, while fears mount that several political species may become extinct.
The episode is consequently being labelled a PEE (Political Extinction-Level Event) and plans are currently being mobilized to evacuate key Government personnel to luxury fallout shelters in the Seychelles.
On the other, posher, side of the Atlantic meanwhile a British spokeperson, the ashen-faced Joe Stalin (Con, Debtslavery) said: "Seems to me this wilful, un-democratic publication of evidence is cynically designed to bring down civilization as we know it and deliver us all into the hands of the North Korean Empire.”
North Korea is, as you know, an international Goliath almost as big as Wales, which outguns the Western nuclear arsenal using two sinister short-range missiles powered by revolutionary rubber band technology.
Stalin added, "What would happen to our beloved democracy if government was continually hampered in its service of the ruling Oligarchy by everybody knowing what we were saying and doing in private? If we are to defend civilization from barbarism, we must maintain our free hand to lie to, sneer at, betray and torture anyone we see fit, especially the citizen upon whose apathy we depend.”
As all efforts to stop him talking failed, he went on to say, "In my book, Blab and Nuisance are traitors and it is the duty of every God-fearing hit-person to hunt the bastards down and blow their friggin’ brains out. My God, give me a friggin’ .44 magnum and I’ll happily do the job myself!"
It was pointed out that Mr Stalin’s remarks, whilst being decidedly un-British also appeared to constitute incitement to murder, which whilst being the lesser of the two offences is nevertheless illegal, except in special circumstances, such as cover-ups or warmongering. This could theoretically have triggered the issuance of a warrant for his arrest, but luckily the local forces of law and order were inclined to let important people off the hook.
The MP’s press secretary, Jane Gaff-Smother, quickly told the media: "Mr Stalin was obviously joking around. You should know by now that while he was saying one thing, he was actually thinking something else entirely. Whatever happened to the renowned British sense of humour?"
Meanwhile another politician, US Senator, Phil Mywallet (Totalitarian) of Slymaneuver, Wyoming was more measured in his response to the scandal.
He told reporters, "Clearly Wikidleaks has overstepped the proverbial line in the quicksand. Blab and Nuisance have demonstrated a reckless disregard for the safety of Americans abroad. From Texas to Toronto, Moscow to Massachusetts and other hotbeds of anti-American feeling, no American agent or official will be safe to walk anywhere without being blanked in the street or given funny looks and that’s just by Prime Ministers and other foreign officials. From the ordinary citizens of our allies and other enemies the response is likely to be much worse. We are facing a furious backlash of sarcasm and satirical articles the world over. Everyone from the President on up is going to need counselling and (preferably) drugs to get over this."
Senator Mywallet went on to say: "Wikidleaks should be treated as what it is: a terrorist organization no better than Facebook."
When asked whether a terrorist organization was a group that ordered people to shoot people or blow people up so as to intimidate other people into compliance, the Senator was scathing,
"For the love of God, get your definitions straight!" he retorted, "You have just described the foreign policy of half the governments on the planet. A terrorist is someone who blows people up without using a plane or a tank to deliver the payload - specifically someone who blows people up when it is not in our interests, otherwise they would be a freedom fighter."
It was then pointed out that Wikidleaks had not yet actually blown anybody up or, worse, damaged any real estate.
"Not yet," the Senator replied, knowingly. "But it is, as everybody knows, just a short step from publishing an annoying website to outright genocide as many governments have proven. In any case, what messrs Blab and Nuisance have done is in my book far worse than blowing people up. And they have terrorized a great number of innocent victims, especially in Washington D.C."
The consensus in the aforementioned Washington DC, among the politicians and officials named in the leaked papers, was that the fallout would be even more grave were this epidemic of informing people to spread to other governments, a probability that terrified everybody. No government would be safe. Their ability to act freely in executing their primary duty of keeping their populations compliant would be severely compromised. Indeed, it was feared that the ancient tradition of war might come to an abrupt end, as all wars depended upon the ability to lie to one population about another and thus upset them enough so that they would travel half across the planet in order to kill perfect strangers in a mindless rampage of murderous enthusiasm.
So, the very real threat hung over bankers, arms manufacturers and other public servants and the governments that manage nations on their behalf, that in a climate of honesty, the dangerous notion of human kinship might raise its seditious head.
Such heresy would then inhibit the divide-and-rule tactic used by the global oligarchy to engineer the chaos that is so good for business. And by “business” everyone understood specifically: banking, arms manufacturing, drugs manufacturing and psychiatry - and of course the making of artificial limbs.
"Think of the job losses,” Senator Mywallet remarked, "that all this irresponsible promotion of facts will bring about! Wikidleaks has established in no uncertain terms that it is the avowed enemy of all American workers. If a fall in demand for weapons and drugs were ever to occur, millions would be thrown out of work overnight. It is impossible for anyone, especially those in arms and drugs manufacturing, to think of anything useful we could have people produce instead. These Wikidleaks criminals should be hunted down, rounded up, placed against the wall and shot for crimes against the state. But we should do it democratically, of course. And within the law."
Senator Mywallet was himself chairman of the committee that oversaw DIMWIT and a majority shareholder in PWP (Psychokiller Weapons of Peace), the arms manufacturing company founded by his father-in-law, J.Morgan Rockabilly III. the banker. He was also known as "Father of the Smug Bomb," which only killed people and left valuable real estate intact. He pointed out that such traditional responses to a threat to state security were tried and trusted traditions pioneered by Lenin, Mussolini, Milosevic and other great political thinkers.
Meanwhile, the heat was suddenly on messrs Blab and Nuisance. The company hosting their website, Amoralzone, suddenly withdrew its services, and Wikidleaks was offline for several days while another host was found. Amoralzone issued a statement saying, "Our courageous decision to terminate our association with the un-American bastards at Wikidleaks was completely disrelated to any pressure brought to bear on us by SHUTIT or indeed any of the three hundred-and-forty-one government agencies that have left messages on our mobiles over the past 24 hours. Their sincere but nevertheless intensely fair threats concerning our as yet untroubled relationship with the Internal Revenue Service (which no right-thinking citizen could be expected to jeopardize for the mere sake of keeping our fellow citizens in the loop) were never a part of the equation and it is entirely coincidental that our decision has come at this time. The truth of the matter is that our servers needed the spare capacity so that we could expand into other markets such as providing instruction manuals for paedophiles and thus honour the consumer’s right to make his (or her) own choices."
Wikidleaks, however, bounced back quickly and was on line again within days, having found a host based in Skarper, Sweden. Their subsequent vengeance came swiftly with the release of more top secret government documents, unleashing a new maelstrom of embarrassment.
The epidemic of truth escalated to a scale never before witnessed since the Sermon on the Mount or the Life of Brian, becoming a pandemic or even, as some have claimed, a cosmodemic or armageddonodemic on a scale of the Bird Flu outbreak that nearly wiped out three people last year.
The Bird Flu Pandemic, as you will recall, caused the President to panic and flustered drugs companies into accidentally sell three hundred billion dollars’ worth of dangerous flu vaccines to the general public - which resulted in the DSE (Deadly Side-Effects) epidemic - nicknamed ‘Lemming Flu’ - six months later.
The so-called “Wikidleaks Affair" was likened by the Department of Hysteria to a catastrophe on a similar scale as the aforementioned pandemic, although not at all accurately. Amazingly - perhaps a first in politics – it did not actually kill anybody or make anybody unwell apart from causing a few politicians to up their medications.
Blab and Nuisance however were forced to flee the country on Friday as rumours circulated that they were hiding in South East England. From their secret hideout in the Hilton Hotel, Park Lane, London, they held a top secret press conference in which they told the world’s press things which, for democratic security reasons, I have been advised not to mention in this or any other story pretending to be a work of fiction. I can however mention that the secret press conference came in the wake of more astounding and entirely coincidental developments.
The very same day that Blab and Nuisance found their new web-host in Sweden, the Swedish government issued a warrant for their arrest, citing allegations that had suddenly and quite unexpectedly been provided to the Swedish police by Interplod - an agency completely unconnected to Western governments in any way, shape or form - that the two men were in fact guilty of crimes hitherto considered to have been not worth mentioning, namely instigating the ethnic cleansing in the Balkans and propping up the Communist government of North Korea.
The Swedish police and the police in Great Britain negotiated the extradition of the two men to Sweden where they were to face charges, although the negotiations were rumoured to have been hampered by delays in manufacturing evidence and were not expected to reach a conclusion until after everybody was dead.
Meanwhile in faraway Washington, a spokesperson for the Department of Truth Limitation issued a statement that was at pains to stress that developments in Sweden had nothing at all to do with events in the USA. The fact that allegations were made against Blab and Nuisance within days of their annoying the U.S. government were "yet another astounding coincidence" symptomatic of poor plotting by an amateurish author (sorry about that).
"However," the spokesperson added, "the alleged involvement of these two characters in war crimes just goes to show what kind of reprobates we are dealing with and that the U.S. government is the victim here."
The allegations against the two whistle-blowers are something of a mystery, particularly as neither man has ever set foot in the Balkans or North Korea and they were 13 and 16 years of age respectively when the alleged Balkans atrocities took place (and in the case of the Communist takeover of North Korea, not even born yet.)
Quite what Sweden has to do with it is also unexplained, beyond the fact that, coincidentally, it is the country where Wikidleaks’ new web host is based. To my knowledge, neither man has ever set foot in Sweden either.
When asked about the confusion surrounding these developments, British MP Mr Stalin said, "That’s what happens when you poke a hornet’s nest. You get stung."
In case you are wondering, here are a few brief samples of the 25,000 leaked comments and remarks I mentioned earlier in this tale that have caused such embarrassment to the US State Department and other humanitarian organizations. I have removed many of the names both to spare the blushes of specific real individuals and prevent myself running myself over with my own car, putting my head in the blender and so forth.
According to those documents, various senior politicians and government officials:
* referred to a Prime Minister of Israel as "a twat."
* referred to the British armed forces in Afghanistan as "a bunch of loony limey Neanderthals" and the incumbent CO of the British forces as a "supercilious ponce."
* discussed the possibility of carpet-bombing Paris - the plans were called off after reports were received that the war department did not have enough stockpiles of carpets.
* described the prime minister of a friendly Muslim state as a "turban-wearing, bearded git."
* made jokes about the Pope wearing trunks in the bath because he does not like to look down on the unemployed.
* flicked ‘v’ signs at a member of the Dutch royal family behind his/her back.
* broke wind at an embassy dinner in Brazil and blamed the ambassador for Peru.
* started a punch-up between the Prime Minister of Olagstan and Crown Prince Brian of Kazovia by telling the former that the latter was sleeping with the former’s wife.
* encouraged Tasmania to declare war on the Australian mainland.
* instructed the U.S. ambassador to Britain on the matter of then British Prime Minister Tony Blair to, "tell that grinning pinko limey cretin that either he’s with us on the Iraq thing or we instruct the banking cartels to call in all his country’s loans and drain his sad little island of money overnight."
* on innumerable occasions routinely referred to J.Morgan Rockabilly III as "His Majesty the Emperor."
* called a British Prince, "a chinless, inbred, cretinous turd."
* supplied cocaine to incumbent President "X"
* got drunk during official visits to Saudi Arabia and were responsible for the mysterious appearance of traffic cones on the heads of statues in the Royal Park in Riyadh
* wore women's underwear under their tuxedos at a gala dinner hosted by Queen Elizabeth "for a laugh."
* supplied anti-depressants to incumbent President "Y."
* held satanic rituals in the Whitehouse basement.
* collaborated with aliens from the planet Tharg over plans for the immanent invasion of Earth.
* planted news stories insinuating that the President of Iran is gay.
I think that’s enough embarrassment for now.