Threads 2.5

Threads 2.5 11/06/08

Threads Contents Editorial -A Note From My Desk Page One -It all comes tumblin’ down Page Two -tumblin’ down continued -Quote of the Month Page Three -The Powers That Be Page Four -QR Codes -In The News A NOTE FROM MY DESK: hat a rollercoaster this past week has been. Everything is so up and down I’m not sure which way to turn right now.

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I am currently trying to get a supervisor position at work. The job itself won’t be difficult, getting it will. I’ve been slightly stressed lately (– well, actually I’ve been quite stressed for the past 6 or so months), stress often throws me into a big bought of depression. I’ve been worrying a bit about this issue and A LOT about other things. So, in short, as I prepare this issue, I’ll do my best, (even if my mind will be elsewhere most of the time). And please give me FEEDBACK, I beg of you – it would help a lot. I’ll try to implement what I can! Kudos.

2.5 “…and within him was a heart of gold”

It All Comes Tumblin' Down Nineteen years ago one of the greatest barriers in modern human progress was torn down. A barrier that came about as the result of the defeat of one of humanities greatest struggles; the spread of national socialism (Nazism) in Europe. This barrier was the Berlin Wall. On November 9, 1989, after twenty-eight years and one day, the citizens of Germany, who, half were under the tyranny of the Soviet Union and the other, under the rule of the US Government were finally able to reunite. After World War Two, when Hitler's armies were defeated, four countries took control over Germany, following the Potsdam Agreement. Germany, along with the capital city Berlin, was divided amongst the American's, British, French and Soviets.

Above: Construction of the Berlin Wall. Below: newspaper headline reporting the walls fall.

The wall was created due to the contrasting forms of government between East and West Germany. East Germany fell under an authoritarian government overseen by the Soviet Union, while West Germany was under a much more progressive government which was over seen by the United States. Many people in East Germany wanted to enjoy the much better life offered to the citizens of West Germany. After disagreements arose between the democratic allies (America, Britain and France) and the communist Soviet Union over how to govern the city of Berlin, the Soviet Union erected a barbwire fence on its border. Over 3 million people left East Germany before the original border fence was erected, seeking out a better life in West Germany. This exodus of the people caught the attention of the communist government and lead to the belief that if a

Threads 2.5 11/06/08 barrier were built, the citizens under communist rule would not be subjected to what they considered to be dangerous capitalist philosophies. "The demarcation line between East and West Germany should be considered a border - and not just any border; but a dangerous one … The Germans will guard the line of defense with their lives," said the leader of the Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin. The original border was constructed out of barb-wire fence at 2.00am on August 13, in 1961 and it immediately isolated the citizens in East Germany from their families and jobs that were located in West Germany. From 1962 to 1965 the wire fence was improved and was heavily guarded. In 1965 the wire fence was replaced with a concrete wall, and in 1975 the "Grenzmaur 75" (border wall 75) was built. In total there were four different versions of the wall. The last version, known as the "Stützwandelement UL 12.11" was the most severe and designed to prevent as many escapes as possible. The wall was surrounded with a small strip of land known as the “death strip” in which anyone caught in it would be shot, with no chance of a rescue. In every manifestation of the border fence, the border was more heavily guarded each time. The wall stood as a symbol of what Winston Churchill described as communism's "Iron Curtain" in his speech in March 1946 at Westminster College in Fulton Missouri.

QUOTE OF THE MONTH

"From Stetting in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe. Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest and Sofia, all these famous cities and the populations around them lie in what I must call the Soviet sphere, and all are subject in one form or another, not only to Soviet influence but to very high and, in many cases, increasing measure of control from Moscow."

Just as Churchill described, well before the wall was even fathomed, the Soviet Union would do all it could to control the people within its boundaries of East Germany. The wall dividing the city resembled prison walls more than it did border walls. Being heavily guarded, close to 150 people were killed in their attempts to escape East Germany, over 5,000 however were successful in their escapes. Despite proclamations by the leader of East Germany, Erich Honecker that the wall would stand for "hundred more years" in January of 1989, to, perhaps his dismay this would not be true. The Berlin Wall was not met with much protest from the democratic governments. Due to the Potsdam Agreement, it was thought that the Soviet Union had the right to erect the wall. It wasn't until 1987 when Ronald Reagan gave his famous speech at the wall, and later the resignation of Erich Honecker that a move towards the removal of the wall began to truly occur. "General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization. Come to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" As the wall was being dismantled on November 9, 1989, it not only opened up an entirely new world for Germany, it symbolically marked the spread of democracy throughout the world. The fall of the Berlin wall was, as some allege, the first step into a world of progress and globalization, especially with the rise of the internet. The Iron Curtain that Churchill warned against was breached on November 9, 1989. It would be eleven years and nine months later that this progress symbolized by the destruction of the Berlin Wall would be attacked by another leader who embraces a tyranny of an entirely different variety. In three days, it will be the nineteenth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall. A wall such as this should never be built again, and on the anniversary it is important to remember this.

“It is curious, but till that moment I had never realized what it means to destroy

a healthy, conscious man. When I saw the prisoner step aside to avoid the puddle, I saw the mystery, the unspeakable wrongness, of cutting a life short when it is in full tide. This man was not dying, he was alive just as we were alive. All the organs of his body were working --bowels digesting food, skin renewing itself, nails growing, tissues forming--all toiling away in solemn foolery. His nails would still be growing when he stood on the drop, when he was falling through the air with a tenth of a second to live. His eyes saw the yellow gravel and the grey walls, and his brain still remembered, foresaw, reasoned--reasoned even about puddles. He and we were a party of men walking together, seeing, hearing, feeling, understanding the same world; and in two minutes, with a sudden snap, one of us would be gone--one mind less, one world less.” -George Orwell (excerpt from the essay, “A Hanging”)

Threads 2.5 11/06/08 OPINION

The powers that be By Chadwick Heller

To be perfectly blunt, I am a skeptic, I'll admit much of this has to do with my Post-American Objectivist philosophy that I've been developing, and the fact that human behavior, I believe, is much more dangerous than mysticism. So it shouldn't come as much of a surprise that when a friend of mine sent me a link to a website about the illuminati, freemasons and skull and bones and how these groups, among others, have been controlling the world, I found it to be quite amusing but nothing more. Apparently, according to the website, there are thirteen bloodlines that rule the world - they are all associated with these secret organizations who worship Lucifer and want to establish a New World Order. “Those people are the top players on the International playground, basically belonging to the thirteen of the wealthiest families in the world, and they are the men who really rule the world from behind the scene (yes, they are mostly men, with a few exceptions). They are the "Black Nobility", the Decision Makers, who make up the rules for presidents and governments to follow, and they are often held from public scrutiny, as their action can't stand being scrutinized. Their bloodlines go back thousands and thousands of years, and they are very careful with keeping those bloodlines pure from generation to generation. The only way to do so is by interbreeding,” says the website. According to the site, there are a lot of huge corporations and governments organizations in on this scheme as well - and for proof, the site displayed images of the various companies and organizations logos and showed their similarities to images of the occult and the illuminati. [Shapes in these symbols include triangles, eyes, sunshapes, circles, five and six pointed stars, and apparently the numbers 6 or 13 - depending on what secret society these groups happen to be part of. There are basic shapes with basic meanings and interpretations, if you want to

convince me something is really going on, show me a symbol that can't be interpreted in any other way than to be evil, but I digress.] “Out of the original Brotherhood came Freemasonry, the Rosicrucians, The Knight Templars, Ordo Templi Orientis, Knights of Malta, Skull & Bones and more. Some people may object and say that Freemasonry, for example, is a charity organization and even a Christian society. Yes, that's what we're told and that is what most members of the secret society believe. The vast majority of people involved are good people, who are ignorant of what is practiced on the highest levels; unaware of that up there is Satanism and worship of the dark forces. They don't serve God, they serve Satan or Lucifer, and this is the key to what is happening in the world of today. There is a totally different struggle going on above people's heads, and this struggle affects our lives every day, and not in a good way, I may add,” says the website. I don't doubt these organizations did exist or do exist, what I have trouble believing is how much power they allegedly have. Sure, they may have some influence on the designs on our money, but the structure of our society and government, come on, that's a bit more difficult to accept. To me, all this talk of secret organizations seems to be the result of someone who had a little too much time on their hands. If the big worry is the abundance of symbols that can be construed as references to these big, bad groups, what is the panic? Symbols, to my knowledge, don't hurt people, despite their alleged connections to this or that. The people on the site apparently ran out of ideas of the strange power of these groups near the end and simply started to make things up. Showing how the letters in various Presidents names add up to the number 6, no matter what alphabet to number conversion they used. The funny thing about symbols and numbers this site didn't seem to acknowledge though, is that you can construe them to mean almost anything you like. But I must run to my mailbox right now, I think my Freemason membership packet just arrived….

Threads 2.5 11/06/08

The Quick Response Code Revolution The age of the traditional barcode may be over as we know it. A new type of barcode, known as the QR code (or Quick Response Code) is currently superseding the more traditional barcode in Japan, and it is starting to make it's appearance in the U.S. The code (as appears below, with a secret message within it) is a matrix code, or a two-dimensional bar code that was created by the Japanese corporation, Denso-Wave in 1994. The QR codes hold a lot more information than a barcode that can be read using a cell-phone with a camera that has a simple add-on application. A QR code can hold with in it, text, links to websites, that when scanned by a phone will take your phone to that website, pictures, and other forms of information that can be digitized. In order to read a QR code, a person only has to go to www.kawya.com , download the application to their phone, and they can start reading these new codes where ever they may appear.

IN THE NEWS • • • •

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Texas has record number of deportations last year Bush warns of vulnerability in Presidential transition Retailers report a sales collapse Tensions between McCain and Palin camps begin to come to light o Palin didn't know what NAFTA is, and thought Africa was a country Obama's chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, has White House experience US to hold arms talks with Russians Tropical Storm Paloma reaches hurricane strength Both Obama and McCains campaign computers were hacked into to gain future policy information November 4 had a steep increase in firearm purchases President Bush's dog Barney bites a reporter Irans leader, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad congratulates Obama's win Gears of War 2 receiving favorable reviews o Customers at Walmart still pissed that we haven't received more copies of Fable 2

Suggestions? Critiques? Submissions? The program for the cell phone isn’t compatible with every model of phone yet, so if you can decode this special message with your phone and send that message back to me, you may just win… something. You can also create your own special code on the site provided if you like.

Send them to: [email protected] Thank you.