New job, SOS.

My first couple of days on my new job was filled with surprises.  First the owner and director of the small high tech firm was gone from the site and would not be back for a couple of weeks.  Before he left, he gave me an assignment and gave me six weeks to complete the project.  Imagine my surprise when on the first day at work, the head of the two person tech service lab told me the the work the owner had given me to do was now to be completed in one week.  Going from six weeks to complete a project to one week in called generating stress and pressure.

Not only was the timetable drastically reduced, but now I was told that Jim would be competing with me for the successful completion of the work.  It was totally unrealistic because of the huge advantages Jim had.  First, Jim had been with the company for over a year which meant he was familiar with the equipment, procedures and personnel,  Second, he was the "manager" of the processing lab which meant he had a technician to do the laboratory work for him.  Third, the manufacturing area prepared samples for him in an effort to expedite the work.  In comparison, I was on my first day at the job and did not even have a designated work area in the lab.  Maybe it was me, but it sure looked like a no-win situation to me!

As the week progressed, Jim would occasionally stop by my office to learn about my latest results.  If I mention something of interest to him, he would appear to grab and ball and run.  And while everyone else in the area contributed in some way to help Jim, I was left to plod along on my own.

I began to wonder about the validity of the whole project since there was so much hype associated with it.  If I asked Jim for some data on his work, he would put me off and assure me that the results which had be described to me were accurate and real.  But I never saw any actual data.  When I went to his technician, Shelly who was reported to have done the work, I got the same response - no data.

OSEventually I found some data in a former graduate student's notebook and two production sheets from when manufacturing had made small batches of the product a couple of months earlier.  However, none of the date gave me any processing information which meant I was still in the dark about the material in question.  The entire situation was deliberately absurd.  I ended up drawing up my own plans and trying to work in a goal  oriented manner.

After my first week at work, I left my job feeling defeated and depressed.  Besides that, I still had to deal with the daily harassment outside of work from John Potts and his friends, and of course the constant harassment from fascist gestapo agents who still came in my apartment when I was gone.  There is no way to describe to another person what "living" like that is like.  It is hell.

What do you expect?!

About the shootings in Colorado -  There will be stories about those who survived, about those who died and those escaped unharmed.  Then there will be endless debates about more gun control and more gun proliferation ad nauseam.   Finally there will some great conclusions about what this all means.  In other words, more bullshit.

What do you expect?  This is amerika – a very violent nation -  A nation that spends most of its budget on the military to carry out wars in countries 8, 10, 12 thousand miles away in order to destroy the target country and to kill untold number of innocent victims in the process.  This is a country with the highest murder rate of any comparable nation.  This is a country with more guns per capita that any other nation.  This is a country that sells more weapons to other countries than any other nation.  This is a nation with one law – MIGHT IS RIGHT!  So I ask you again, what do you really expect?

The only difference to the man who did the shooting in Colorado and the people who tried to torture me to death is that my captors have the power to hide their crimes against humanity.   My captors like to think they are better than the shooter but the reality is they just appear different, more socially acceptable, more affluent and live better lives.  Take a look at the personalities and descriptions of Hitler’s men like  Eichman, Mengele, Himmler, Goebbles and  see how they looked and acted. Those men acted in their society the same way as the power brokers in the present day fascist empire do.

Back to my story:

My new job in Rolla did not last long as I was subjected to harassment and terrorism through conditioning from the moment I started on the job.  The first day I walked into the office, the receptionist greeted me and signed me in.  When she saw my name was Russell, she said that they had another person named Russell working there and that she would call me by my nickname “Chip”.  I quickly informed her that Chip was not my  nickname.  She repeatedly insisted that my nickname was “Chip” and then continued to call me “Chip” every time she addressed me.  Each time I corrected her and finally insisted that she stop calling me “Chip”.  Finally she said, “Oh, it must be the other Russell who has the nickname  “Chip”.  I headed for my new office feeling relieved that she had finally stopped calling me “Chip”.

Imagine my surprise when latter in the day when talking to a new co-worker, I discovered that the other Russell with the company was the son of the receptionist and that his nickname was “Chip”.  I really couldn’t believe that the mother couldn’t tell me from her son.  But that was my introduction on my first day and it was typical of the confusing, misleading double-talk that I would experience during my short time at this job.

Meet John Brown

John Brown had grown up in the Rolla area and was an escaped prisoner who had been on the run for a couple of years.  One evening a police officer spotted a suspicious car in a motel parking lot and started check out the vehicle.  The car was in the possession of John Brown who was staying at the motel. When John Brown spotted the police officer he proceeded to shot the police officer in the leg and then made his escaped.  The manhunt was on.

John Brown was considered to be an experienced woodsman, survivalist, and an expert marksman.  Based on his reputation among the local residences, the consensus opinion was that John Brown could have killed the police officer if had wanted to and that after the shooting, he fled to the woods surrounding Rolla.  Whether that is true or not, I don't know, but from the pictures I saw of the crime scene, it would have been pretty easy for an expert marksman with a rifle to hit a policeman standing less that thirty yards away anywhere the shooter wanted.

The next day, the local police and state police were setting up roadblocks and canvassing the Rolla area for the elusive John Brown.  Within a couple of days, armed military troops numbering 300-400 had totally surrounded Rolla and had set up roadblocks on every road leaving the town.  That meant for me that every time I left or came back to my apartment, I had soldiers with automatic weapons stop me and inspect my car.  The were also helicopters flying overhead with heat seeking instruments and blood hounds on the ground searching for elusive John Brown.  Still he remained at large.

This massive manhunt went on for about a month.  Since John Brown apparently was well liked by some of the people in the area and had become a bit of a folk hero, I concluded the massive intimidating presence of the military troops and various police agencies was more for terrorizing the local population rather than a serious search for John Brown.  The fascist state loves to make examples of anyone who defies them and they use their victims as an example to terrorize anyone who might want to go against their dictates.  After all, anyone with half a brain knew that John Brown was long gone from the area.  So the massive show of force had to be to send a message to the local population much like the Kent State and Waco TX massacres were.

One morning while the lock down of Rolla was going on, I ventured into a local restaurant for breakfast.  There seated at a large table was my landlord John Potts and some of his friends.  Of course, their conversation was about how the military was going to capture John Brown.  Finally, Mr. Potts asked me what I thought.

"Well, John Brown is long gone from this area and he probably has been gone since day one.  And this manhunt here is not going to catch him."  I replied.  I continued, "Do you want to know how they will catch John Brown?   Someone on the street or in a store far from here will recognize him and they will turn him in to the police.  That is how they will catch John Brown."

About two months later, in Oklahoma City, a clerk in a bowling alley saw a man enter who looked suspicious to the clerk.  He called the police and they arrested John Brown!


Remember,  fascist state shows of force are to intimidate the weak and indoctrinated.

Hatred trumps indoctrination

Since 1998, three hundred and fifty two members of congress have left office.  Of those 352 members, 79% of them have worked as lobbyists.  That’s 4 out of 5.  That is called fascism where the members who run business and government are the same people.

Back to John Potts and Rolla, MO.  Apparently John felt comfortable telling me about the lynching of a black man since I was considered an outlaw and outsider by the fascist rulers.  Also John was very proud about the killing of a black man; it apparently made him feel amerikan.

The second incident in Rolla involving a black man occurred one evening in a local dive at the north end of town.  Even though the establishment wasn’t my kind of place, the limited choices in Rolla meant that if I wanted to be around people I had to go to what I referred to as “The Dive”.  Than particular evening I was standing around listening to the music when three soldiers in uniform walked in.  I assumed they were from the near-by Fort Leonard Wood and from their youthful appearance they probably had just completed their basic training.  Two of the soldiers were white and the third one was a young black man.

When you entered this bar, if you walked straight ahead, you walked past a series of booths on your right and small tables on your left.  If you made a left after entering, which the three soldiers did, you walked past the bar on the left and some individual tables on the right.  As the three men started to walk past the bar, a man seated in the first booth with three friends, jumped up, rushed up behind the trailing black soldier and with his foot, he clipped the back of the soldiers foot which caused him to stumble and fall.  The culprit in this case raced back to his booth and quickly sat down before the black soldier could recover.  The culprit and his three friends sat their laughing and slapping hands.  Apparently I had missed the humor in all of this because the four people in the booth thought it was really funny.  No one else in the place said or did anything.

After the black man regained his composure, the three soldiers looked around the place briefly and then turned around and exited the bar.

I was really surprised because amerikans are so indoctrinated to worship the military that I would have thought that there would have been some conflict in the man who caused the fall.  There should have been the love of the military versus his hatred of Blacks.  But this perpetrator showed no signs of conflict.  He reacted almost instantly at the sight of the black soldier and then he rejoiced at the fall of the man.  And no one said a word.  In defense of the people there, probably at least half of them didn’t even see what had happened prior to the soldier falling.  But it appeared John was right, Blacks may come into Rolla, but they never leave.

Meet John Potts

John Potts was my new landlord in Rolla.  John was born and raised in the area and apparently had inherited some land and money from his father.  John (and perhaps his father) had built small cabin like duplexes and triplexes on the forested hillsides and then rented them out as apartments.  The small complex was north of downtown Rolla and could only be reach by one pass-through dirt/gravel road which intersected with a looping main paved road much the way a diameter of a circle cuts through and interests with two sides of a circle.  The apartments were rather isolated and provided little more that basic necessities.

Shortly after I moved into an apartment, I had the opportunity to talk with John as we walked down the dirt road.  Suddenly John said "I want to show you something.  It is just a little ways off the road here in the woods."

Given my situation I was a little reluctant to go, but I followed him as we walked about 20 yards into the woods.  There we came upon a headstone of what was obviously a grave.

"This is a grave of a black man (he used the n... word).  He did some work for my father and then got into an altercation with my father because he claimed my father didn't pay him for work he had done."  Imagine a slave expecting to be paid!  Apparently the confrontation became violent, so some of the locals lynched the black man and buried him at that grave site.

John proudly went on the explain,  "A black person may come into Rolla, but they never leave."

My first thoughts was the John was just an isolated wacko, but as I was to learn, John's attitude toward blacks was the prevailing opinion of blacks in the Rolla area.  I will give you another real-life, what was then a present day example in my next post.

Of course John hated the government and all the liberal things it was doing to ruin the country.  Finally, after listening to one of John's rants I said to him,  "And how you any different from those in power.? It seems to me what really bothers you is that "they" have the power and you don't.  You don't offer anything different; you just want their power."

John really didn't have an answer for that.

Free At Last

Headlines from today's paper:  Scandal! Ripoffs! Stupidity!  Welcome to banking today!  Then I turned on the TV and there was a paid "infomercial/documentary/political" show about the "Fast and Furious" gun program.  In it, there were clips of Congressmen questioning Eric Holder and the head of the ATF about the program, how much they knew and WHO was responsible for it.  Repeatedly, the Congressment would express disbelief, amazement and bewilderment that anyone could be stupid enough to institute such a program without considering the consequences.  Maybe this is a possible breakthrough where some people in power are beginning to question the idiotic schemes of other power brokers in the ruling fascist class.

It is thirty five years later and every time I think about what happened to me I am still absolutely amazed that any group would be stupid enough to create the plan that I was involved in.  I still am unable to think of another word to describe it.  When these people were sitting in an office or around a table discussing the plan, it seem unfathomable to me that someone didn't say "Why this is insane; how can you do this?"  I just can't comprehend anyone setting out on such a plan that ended up destroying my life, causing untold pain and suffering to people around me and creating so much corruption in the system.  Unfortunately, I am just a slave so no one will ever have to face an interrogating panel of other members of the ruling fascist party.  I'm sure the psychopaths in charge of the plan claim that the end results weren't intended, but then the road to hell (their road) is paved with "good" intentions!

Happy independence day!  As a slave, I really don't know what that means, but as Martin Luther King said, "Free At Last, Free At Last.   Thank God Almighty, We are Free At Last."