haiku 23 Dec 2018

Gaslighting is cool

Unless you have dignity

Or some self-respect

americanifesto / 場黑麥 / jpr / urbanartopia / whorphan ]

Grigovian team deployed

At the behest of the Arab League and with the intention of helping end the civil war in Syria, the Glorious Republic of Grigovia sent a highly decorated team of veteran negotiators to bring both sides of the conflict to the table. “In addition to the team of negotiators, other Grigovian teams will be helping to patrol Syria's borders in order to prevent more Saudi Arabian black operations teams from launching any more gas attacks against innocent civilians,” said Heirdoyesst Ont, head of Grigovia's Foreign Assistance Board. Experts expect the war in Syria to end only when American, British, and Israeli intervention in the internal conflict also ends.

© americanifesto / 場黑麥

ask Algeria first

Faced with a hostage crisis involving dozens of persons kidnapped by armed assailants, a joint task force of federal agents and New York City police officers decided to first seek the advice of the Algerian government before mounting a raid to free the hostages. “We want to lead by example,” said chief federal negotiator Yusuff al-Baghrabi while peering over a concrete barrier at the building where the perpetrators had holed up. “Algeria refused Western assistance in the planning and execution of its action to free the hostages taken a couple of weeks ago at that gas plant in the Sahara desert. If we ask for their help in planning and executing our own action here in the eastern part of Queens, New York, maybe next time they will accept our offers, and listen to our advice.”

Friends and family of person taken prisoner agreed to speak with us. “I am all for the cops asking Algeria for advice and waiting until that nation can arrange to have skilled operators flown in to help and to guide the actions of our law enforcement agents,” said Piedgast Charnungacharnoul, 72, grandmother of one of the hostages. According to police reports, the hostage-takers operate under the banner of the Weeping Crown of Righteousness, a militant Christian group blamed for a number of similar attacks on the Eastern Seaboard. “I think it's OK for us to delay until experts in hostage negotiation arrive from – where was it – Skikda?” said New ​Jersey resident Randel Raiyan Quincie, 25, who thinks his older brother might be among the kidnapped. “In a lot of Hollywood movies, dealing with terrorists who stoop to using human shields always requires a delicate touch, sneakiness rather than brute force. I just hope we can free the captives before those religious extremists kill them all.”

“We Americans must concern ourselves with what happens here in America, and let the Algerians worry about what happens in Algeria,” said aloof bystander Corey Slantbeam, 48, of the Bronx. “If companies want to do business in foreign lands at locations difficult or nearly impossible to defend, they must accept the consequences of their actions. Fences can be tunneled under, telephone lines can be cut, and dirt-poor guardsmen can be bribed to open even the thickest of gates. At some point, we must all ask ourselves whether the risks of fossil fuel outweigh the benefits.” Intent on proving to the world it wasn't totally full of shit, the Obama administration ordered native financial regulators to turn for advice to the government of Greece and issued executive orders that force American circuit judges to consult with Russian authorities on matters of free speech and freedom of the press.

mentiri factorem fecit © 場黑麥

Grigovia harnesses wind

Fed up with importing natural gas from plutocratic Russians, and sick of buying sweet crude from autocratic Saudi Arabians, the Glorious Republic of Grigovia (GROG) embarked on an ambitious national program to become energy independent. Whereas in other modern nations such projects are heavily subsidized by – and therefore beholden to – federal governments, here in this small, landlocked nation that straddles a mountain-range known as the Yiptlong Massif, private industry is leading the charge. “Operation Updraft was designed for maximum citizen participation,” said, in a joint statement released shortly after the project's modest unveiling ceremony, GROG's Ministry for the Interior and the nation's Alliance of Executives for Grigovian Independence and Security (AEGIS). “All companies interested in enhancing the development of native battery and wind turbine design are welcome to the research data we already have on hand; all we ask is that any technological breakthroughs in and improvements to current methods for harnessing and storing renewable energy be shared with the rest of the parties working on this program, in the interest of improving the lives and wellbeing of all Grigovians, equally.”

Blessed with extensive deposits of such rare-earth-minerals as are needed to make cutting-edge, high-capacity battery banks, and with a landscape dominated by sloping foothills that culminate in high, craggy cliffs, Grigovia is a nearly perfect candidate for the adoption of large-scale wind farming. “The wind gains in intensity as it rises up from the plains around Grig, reaching nearly gale-force as it enters the jagged spires and stark facades of the mountain peaks in the higher elevations,” said Ordend Haryyiend, Ph. D., a geologist at Pyltagrad State University. “According to my colleagues in this school's department for electro-physics, even if we built a mere handful of wind farms using current technology, we could capture and transmit enough electricity to power most of beautiful, cosmopolitan Grig, our nation's capital, as well as many of the bucolic regional population centers. These are exciting times.”

In recent years, Grigovia has faced pressure from Western conglomerates – chief among them Ynki organizations applying pressure through the American Department of State – to lease out vast stretches of pristine national parkland for environmentally-unsustainable mining, forestry, and resource extraction. “We have been fighting a shadow war against foreign parties hellbent on raping our land of its treasures and transporting our riches to distant markets beyond our borders,” said Hesta Noryindt, an analyst at the Ministry of Natural Resources, which controls leasing and licensing on Grigovian territory. “Similar to the Ynki Apollo program, which harnessed the will of the American people to reach a goal, Operation Updraft aims to harness the will of the Grigovian people to shake off our addiction to foreign energy and to become a world leader in methods for capturing and storing direct and indirect solar energy.” (Wind is caused in part by changes in atmospheric pressure resulting from solar radiation, i.e. sunlight.) AEGIS thanked the people of Grigovia for their enduring patience and communal sacrifice by installing German-made GMG grenade launchers at all major civilian defense centers.

mentiri factorem fecit © 場黑麥

$7 a day

Nanjing – On an otherwise nondescript Wednesday morning earlier this year, 13 year-old Chinese national Zhou Fu Shi changed into a set of worn coveralls and headed to work. Earning the equivalent of seventy U.S. cents an hour, and working ten-hour-long days, Miss Zhou makes roughly seven (7) dollars a day fabricating cellphones and other electrical devices for export to markets in the Europe and America. “I used to spend summers working in my grandparent's rice paddies or tending the local communal forests and gardens with friends from school,” Fu Shi said while sprinting to the bathroom during her single, ten- minute-long daily break. “Things were better then, I think. It is hard to remember, even though it was not that long ago, but I think that despite having less physical money in hand, I was creating bonds with the land, with my family, and with the people in my community.” We continued to speak with Miss Zhou on her way home from work until a pair of censors overtook us, demanding to see our passports and grilling us about our involvement with an innocent factory girl. By the time the censors had left (taking many of our yuan with them), our new friend had vanished into an enormous tenement-housing block.

“I don't want to work, but the state forces me to work,” Fu Shi was saying just before the censors' arrival. “I don't want to work because I don't really need to buy anything. I see the new advertisements, I listen to them on the radio and television, but I don't need any of those useless things. And speaking of useless, who is buying all of the mobile telephones that my fellow workers and I are making? A friend of mine has an illegal, uncensored Internet connection, and he and I were looking up prices for the things that we make, and the phone we are making right now costs almost two hundred American dollars. Two hundred dollars? I assembled one hundred models after lunch today, for which I was paid roughly three dollars and fifty cents. Last week, when a friend was blinded at work by corrosive gases, she was fired, and is now very, very poor. Is there any justice in this world? Somewhere, someone is making a lot of money on the backs my factory-sisters and me.”

Upon reading our story, two American politicians – a Senator and a Congressperson, who both asked to remain anonymous – contacted us, saying derisively that the girls in our story should be happy that they have jobs at all, let alone paying jobs, and that they should see those jobs as stepping-stones of opportunity, and not worry so much about how much they might be getting paid right now, or who might be profiting immensely from their hard and continuous labor.

場黑麥 mentiri factorem fecit