The TRUTH about Belgium is making headlines -- or is it?

On the eve of 100 days of not having a proper government since the country's general election, Belgium appears to be on the brink of division as so-called "Flemings" demand autonomy from so-called "Walloons" -- a recently released poll claims 43% support for succession in Flanders; debates rage in the mainstream press about the current "Belgian Crisis"; even regular "Belgians" are beginning to voice doubt (mediated through the Media, of course) about the existence of "Belgium":

Willy the florist has had enough of his kingdom. He is an unwilling subject of an unloved country. A middle-class father of 12-year-old twins running a thriving flower business in this small Dutch-speaking town on the eastern fringe of Brussels, Willy is reduced to obscene gesturing by the very mention of his country.

"Belgium?" he splutters. "That's something that doesn't exist. The national anthem? Nobody knows it. Nobody can sing it. The king? A parvenu. A dysfunctional family. We're not going to take it any more."

And it's not just angry florists speaking out; even the prime minister designate has said that Belgians have nothing in common except "the king, the football team, some beers" (of course he still keeps up the pretense that Belgium was an "accident of history" and not a carefully plotted conspiracy by a faction of the NWO who wanted to bring all of Europe under their Bureaucratic regime.) The "Crisis" is even forcing the King to get up before noon and go to work!

But does all this really mean that the Belgian Conspiracy is losing control of its fabricated nation, that the citizen nodes are waking up from their Atomium cyberdreams to the reality of their false identities, that the TRUTH about Belgium is finally being revealed? Sadly, I think not.

As I reported last year, the Conspiracy has been testing the waters with separatism in preparation for a new server and vault location in China, to which roughly half of the population of kidnapped "Belgians" will be transferred. The need for this move has become increasingly dire as more and more "citizens" succumb to the black mold that has made parts of the pod vault under Euro-Disneyland uninhabitable.

The current public brouhaha that we are seeing is all a performance intentionally contrived by the Conspiracy for two purposes: 1) it sets the stage for the eventual split of the Brussels Beast's organic processing clusters to two separate locations by providing a explanation within the context of their false narrative for any resulting changes in server connectivity performance, and 2) it allows the Conspiracy to undermine those of us working to expose the TRUTH about Belgium by tying in the public mind the phrase "Belgium does not exist" to esoteric political differences as opposed to the literal, geographic TRUTH that it should represent.

Meanwhile, someone within the Belgian Simulation put the "country" up for sale on EBay for a mere 10 million Euros (the King and his court included for free). However, EBay quickly put a stop to the sale. Interestingly, Ebay spokesman Peter Burin unintentionally let the TRUTH slip when he said that EBay "could not host the sale of anything virtual or 'unrealistic'", both of which certainly describe Belgium.

Seattleite Goodspaceguy Nelson is a politician with a very forward-looking agenda: he wants humanity to colonize orbital space. Besides being his passion, orbital colonization was the major platform plank in his unsuccessful 2006 bid for US Senate.

Now that Goodspaceguy is running for King County Council, he has apparently had to put aside that big dream for the time being (there's only so much a Councilman can do in the arena of space colonization, after all,) and is instead focusing on removing restrictions on building height so the people of King County can live in "beautiful, high density communities filled with sky homes" -- slyly encouraging citizens to take baby steps into orbital space.

Intrigued by his bold vision of an orbital future, I wondered what he thought of that other ostensibly futuristic vision that has gripped the region since 1910: the monorail. While monorail fever has become somewhat dormant as of late, there's always the threat that it may flare up again (figuratively and literally) and as a Councilman he may have to address the monorail issue.

I emailed him and the other two contenders for the District No. 8 race to see what are their official positions on monorails. John Potter (R) and Dow Constantine (whom Nelson is running against in the Democratic primary) never bothered to respond, not even with a form letter.

However, Goodspaceguy not only responded, he responded with a fragment-of-fiction, titled "Life in the Colony: Space Sonja and Monorails". Set in the Boeing Blue District of the orbiting space colony at the dawn of orbital colonization, it comprises a Socratic dialog between himself, as a newly elected colony councilor, and Sonja, a "state approved, professional tease" who does performances imitating the spirit of Cher:

To prove that she had been reading, Sonja asked, "When our Boeing orbiting space colony becomes really, really large, do you think that our descendants ... of both we, the current space colonists, and of the new colonists still to be sent up by Boeing and Microsoft and the other space companies of King County ... I mean, do you think they will build space monorails or will they continue to float and glide themselves and their equipment through the zero gravity of space, as we do now?"

Goodspaceguy's position is that monorails are not cost-effective: "To be profitable, monorails require a huge number of people who use them regularly and around the clock ... The government transit systems turn out to be real money losers. The tax payers end up paying for the loss." Instead, as I mentioned above, he proposes high density communities and "24 hour, never-stop, go-go cities" that would get rid of rush hours. As to monorails in the orbital colonies (which I asked him about) he downplays them (and presumably other forms of transit) and suggests that colonists should get exercise by walking in "gravity corridors" to compensate for all their time floating weightlessly.

At the end he includes a poem which sums up his position on monorails nicely:

Monorails, Like Sonja, Can Be Fun!

by Goodspaceguy

Bodaciously beautiful call girls
Are expensively fun like monorails,
But Sonja finds that many would-be riders
Are without sufficient money pails!

The would-be-riders ask, "Oh, who will
Pay for our fun and frenzied riding times?"
Look to the sleeping tax payers. Their pockets
Are filled with dollars and dimes."

Some taxpayers shout, "Please, please stop.
Our dollars and dimes will not be enough!
Let us avoid frenzied transit monorails,
Paying for transit trips will be too tough."

Let us build more homes up in our sky,
And continue to walk under our Sun.
We want sky homes near our work, but we agree
That monorails, like Sonja, would be fun!

Bodaciously beautiful call girls
Are expensively fun like monorails,
But Sonja finds that many would-be riders
Are without sufficient money pails!

(While he may get flack from some for the subject matter, the correspondence of monorails to prostitutes is not undocumented.)

Given his sensible position on monorails (and the rude non-response of his opponents,) we here at ZPi are proud to endorse Goodspaceguy Nelson for King County Council to the people of District 8. I look forward to the day when the mile-high and monorail-free condos of Cascadia are serenaded from orbit with Cher's "Believe."

UPDATE (2006-08-26): Sad to report that Goodspaceguy Nelson lost the Democratic primary to water-taxi proponent Dow Constantine, 8.89% to 90.84%. Just more proof of the inordinate sway that the powerful Water Taxi Lobby holds over the primaries. Remember King Countyites, you can still write-in Goodspaceguy in the general election.

Yucca Mountain Johnny is a blue-collar worker at the Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository project in Nevada. At his "Yucca Mountain Youth Zone", Johnny just wants to teach the youths about nuclear physics, hydrology, and engineering, while dispelling myths about the repository (such as the nuclear waste could explode or that the facility is really a military base for the NWO's fungoid allies).

But now the mean, ol' Congress wants to silence Yucca Mountain Johnny:

A measure by Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., to cut off funding for the Energy Department's Yucca Mountain Youth Zone Web site that's home to the smiling, hard-hatted cartoon character was approved by lawmakers by a voice vote and without debate.

...

"Regardless of how you feel about Yucca Mountain, we should all agree that the Department of Energy's use of a Joe Camel look-alike to influence children is an inappropriate use of taxpayer money," [Berkley] wrote [in a letter to colleagues].

Could this move portend trouble for the hundreds of other Propaganda Mascots serving the US Government? Thanks to a 1997 mandate by President Clinton, nearly every US government agency's website has a kids' section, many with "Joe Camel look-alikes" influencing children in various ways. Are they all in jeopardy of becoming pawns in political fights?

Will Congress investigate the Crypto Kids for their role in domestic spying? Will hip-hopping health-advocate Power Panther be forced to resign when it's revealed he took part in illegal covert counterintelligence programs aimed at black nationalists during the '70s? Will secretive monkey energy scientist Dr. E be subpoenaed before the House Committee on Energy and Commerce and forced to explain exactly what he is doing with taxpayer money on his mysterious island? And just how will parents explain to their little children why Pat, their passport pal, can no longer be their pal since he's serving thirty months in a federal prison for leaking state secrets? Is this the beginning of the end of innocence for government propaganda aimed at children?

There's still hope for Yucca Mountain Johnny. Berkley's amendment has to make it past the Senate and President Bush, who, as a big Bob the Builder fan, is expected to veto. But if the veto is overridden and Yucca Mountain Johnny looses his cushy government job, he -- and other future ousted GPMs -- will be forced to find propaganda work in the private sector. Perhaps there's a car loan company in the market for a construction worker mascot who knows a lot about long-term thermal-hydrological-mechanical transport of radionuclides in fractured volcanic tuffs with varying degrees of welding.

(Via Bulldada Newsblog.)

According to The Walrus magazine, members of the Lau Lagoon clans of Solomon Islands are accusing Canadian anthropologist Pierre Maranda, recipient of the 1996 Canada Council Molson Prize and proponent of structuralism, of stealing the clans' sacred octopus, holding it captive in a swimming pool on his "faraway island" (Canada), and using its magic power to make himself rich and famous, thereby leaving the islanders vulnerable without its protection:

The [Lau people's] ancestors, who were descended from worms, lived on a mountain above the jungled folds of Malaita. One day, a hero named Golo'au ventured forth from the mountain to discover the promised land, which was not land at all but a vast, reef-protected lagoon fringing the island's northwest coast. Golo'au and his kin built rafts from bamboo and they paddled out onto that calm water. They pulled hunks of coral rock from the shallow bottom and piled them upon each other until they had created islands on which they could build thatch houses. The Lau raised their children on the water, safe from the headhunters and mosquitoes that populated the bush. Fish filled their nets. Life was good. When the ancestors died, their spirits did not leave the lagoon. Instead, they inhabited the bodies of sharks and birds and, together with other spirit creatures, they were able to protect their descendants with their magic.

For centuries the Lau people honoured the spirits by following their edicts and killing pigs for them. The priests of the Rere clan offered regular blood sacrifices to the speckled octopus that inhabited the reef near the island of Foueda, ensuring the octopus would protect them from the dangers of the sea. "The octopus took care of people," the man with the scarified cheeks told me. "If they were lost at sea, he would bring them home. If they were drowning, he would save them." Sometimes the octopus would crawl right up out of the sea into a priest's canoe to let him know it was time for a sacrifice. It would crawl onto land, too. If you left a basket of food outside your door, the octopus would plunk himself down on top of it and engulf it. He preferred pork to fruit.

The Rere priests had kept the octopus's name a secret so that lay people, fools, and enemies could not abuse its power. But, said my friend, all that changed half a lifetime ago. That's when Maranda tricked the priests into giving him the secret names of their ancestors. He used those words to beguile the octopus, lure it through the reefs and away across the Pacific. The creature did not go willingly. It used its power to strike Maranda with a terrible illness and it killed his wife. But still it did not return. The octopus had not been seen near its coral sanctuary in years. Now, with no spirit to protect them, the people of Foueda have become vulnerable, falling victim to mysterious diseases or drowning inexplicably in the empty and unforgiving sea.

Of course, Maranda has his own version of the events. And then there's the complicating factor of a custody dispute over the octopus (Seventh-day Adventist islanders apparently want it rebaptized with a proper Christian name, like John, or Paul, or Ringo).

Regardless, this incident does highlight the importance of teaching your sacred octopus about Stranger Danger: If a strange anthropologist approaches you and offers you tasty pork treats, do not go with him -- even if he knows your name. He could be leading you to a life of mytho-semiotic debauchery in Québec.

Fortunately, I don't think the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus has much to fear from being lured away from the Republic of Cascadia since we have a system in place to keep just such a thing from happening: Should the tree octopuses be reported missing, an Octopus Alert will be howled to the Sasquatch Militia, who'll place the borders on lockdown until they are recovered. In the unlikely event that the abductor manages to escape Cascadia to Canada, interhominoidal agreements ensure that the Royal Canadian Mounted Wendigos will be waiting to recover the tree octopuses and extradite the abductor back for delimbing. So don't get any funny ideas, Pierre.

Dear Washington State Legislature,

I am writing to ask you to approve $100 of Washington State funds to help offset the $250 price of buying me a Nintendo Wii.

Before you decide, consider the positive impact on the local economy of my having a Wii: Not only would the state generate 6.5% sales-tax on every game I purchase (with additional tax revenue of upwards of 2.3% going to county and city tax districts), but a portion of the profits from those games would go to Redmond-based Nintendo of America, which employs over a thousand Washington State citizens. Could you honestly say to the voters that you were acting in the public interest if you turned down a plan that would increase both tax revenue and job opportunities for a mere c-note? I think not.

My request is very reasonable. Most of the purchase cost for the Wii will be covered by me or through other private funding, as will all costs associated with utilities, maintenance, and insuring against flying-controller damage. Please understand that I am not being greedy with this request; I could have pressed for the more lavish option of a Microsoft Xbox 360, which would do even more for the local economy (given the larger portion of profits remaining in the state and the 20% greater tax revenue from games), but would require my asking for more money upfront. Out of fairness to the taxpayers, I am willing to settle for the economically prudent option of a Wii.

While I understand that some short-sighted people will counsel you against diverting public funds to pay for my frivolous amusement, keep in mind that my proposal of $100 is significantly less than the $300 million you are already considering giving to Clay Bennett so he can build a facility in Renton in which to play games -- and not just in absolute terms, as he's asking you to cover three-fifths of his costs (plus another one-fifth from the city of Renton) whereas I'm only asking for two-fifths in total. The numbers do not lie; I am offering a much better deal here.

Furthermore, unlike Bennett I won't be using Washington State taxpayer's money to facilitate the exportation of millions of dollars of personal profits to Oklahoma. In fact, after the state has recouped its $100 -- through a combination of tax revenue from the games I buy and a lowering of public expenses attributable to the unemployment that I will have ameliorated -- I would be contributing to the state's common good at my own personal expense with no profit. Why would you deny the community this philanthropic act?

If you are unable to find $100 in the budget, Seattle has proved the fiscal viability of using eminent domain to forcibly buy land, waiting a few months, then selling it at a profit. I think a few square feet of Ray Allen's front yard should cover my requested funding.

I am reasonable, but my patience has its limits. If you do not act in a timely fashion to grant me the money to buy a Wii, I will be forced by economic conditions to take elsewhere the tax revenue and jobs that my gaming can create. While I can't comment on ongoing negotiations, let me just say that the Emperor of Japan has been very receptive to my proposal for $240 towards a Playstation 3.

Please, do what's best for the people of Washington and gimme $100.

Regards,
Lyle Zapato

Hans Delbruck (Scientist/Saint) asks in the guestbook:

Lyle, now that you've mentioned it in your blog, just what is the legal relationship between Cascadia and Norton I, Emperor of the United States and Protector of Mexico? For example, does the Republic of Cascadia intend to bolster the confidence of investors by guarantying payment of imperial bonds issued during the reign of his late majesty?

All legal and diplomatic relationships with Emperor Norton I ended when the true Nortonian Empire ceased to be on January 8, 1880 following Norton's untimely death in the streets while heading to a speaking engagement at the Academy of Science. Since then, his dominions have been taken over by the Bohemian Grove Cabal, which is based in his former Imperial Seat of San Francisco, in the currently disputed territory of NoCal.

While the Republic of Cascadia had a friendly relationship with the United States when it was under the benevolent rule of Norton I, the Republic does not recognize this false continuation of the Nortonian Empire by forces aligned with the New World Order.

These pretenders to the throne, the Bohemian Grove Cabal, began life in 1872 as the Bohemian Club (and still use that name as a front). The Club was originally founded by San Franciscan newspaper men, led by an editorial writer for the Chronicle, who had conspired throughout Norton's reign to misappropriate his authority for their own ends by publishing false decrees and proclamations under his Imperial name.

The Emperor was aware of these imposters and in 1872 issued the following proclamation:

WHEREAS, there is every now and then a street report that the Emperor has received a telegram, or that he has done so and so, and on investigation found to be without foundation or fact;

WHEREAS, we are anxious that there should be no deception, and also that no imposter should make use of our authority;

KNOW, THEREFORE, all whom it may concern that no act is legal unless it has our imperial signature.

But the Bohemian Club's control over the Media was too great and the forgeries continued.

It's no coincidence that after Norton's death in 1880 the Bohemian Club underwent a coup that ousted the local newspaper men and put into power NWO-aligned Industrialists who sought to expand the Club's subversion of Norton's power on a grander scale, engineering the transformation of the local Club into the geopolitical Cabal that it is today. (This was also when they started using the Bohemian Grove compound to conduct their secret rites.)

The Cabal's first official act was to install Emperor-Norton-impersonator James A. Garfield as the US President. Shortly there after, their second official act was to have President Garfield ritually assassinated (possibly their first "Dull Care"), thus symbolically establishing their overthrow of the Nortonian Empire.

There is much suspiciousness surrounding Norton's demise and this shadowy transfer of power. When the Emperor's apartment (which was under the control of Masons) was searched after his death, all trace of his vast wealth was found mysteriously absent. With the expenses of a proper funeral befitting someone of Norton's stature unable to be covered from his unexpectedly bereft estate, the Pacific Club (an older secret society, now known as the Pacific-Union Club, that was involved in the Bohemian coup) conveniently stepped in at the last moment to pay for a coffin and interment in the Masonic Cemetery.

Were they trying to hide something in that rosewood coffin? Could it have been related to the telegram found on Norton's person from Czar Alexander II congratulating Norton on his betrothment to Queen Victoria? If there was the means to detect polonium assassination in 1880, there certainly wasn't a desire to look, and the Emperor's death was quickly ruled "sanguineous apoplexy" by Dr. William A. Douglass, who stole the only supposed evidence for this diagnosis -- Norton's brain -- during the autopsy.

Unfortunately, Emperor Norton's sad fate doesn't end there. It is rumored that, during the 1934 reinterment of Norton's remains, the Cabalists absconded with his bones (much like Yale's Skull & Bones Society -- now a Cabalist youth-recruitment organization -- did with Geronimo's skull) and that his skeleton to this day resides in the Pacific-Union's Flood Mansion clubhouse, propped up in full Imperial regalia at a table in the dining hall where it goes unnoticed among the club's geriatric members.

As to the Imperial Bonds: They're worth more on the collector's market than their stated value, so even if Cascadia were to assume the Imperial debts, it's unlikely that bond owners would wish to part with them.

Micronations: The Lonely Planet Guide to Home-Made Nations by John Ryan, George Dunford, and Simon Sellars.

(My apologies to the authors for not getting to this sooner, like in time for the Year End Consumer Orgy. Also, book-review-reader beware: I am a very minor subject of this book -- three paragraphs and a flag worth -- and was sent a free copy by the publisher.)

Micronations is a colorful look -- both in the full-color photos and illustrations that appear on nearly every of its 156 pages and in the variety of colorful characters introduced -- at various nations that haven't yet been recognized by those bastards at the UN (not that it's any of their business).

It's about time a travel guide publisher has addressed these overlooked and underappreciated nations. While the unfairly diminutive prefix micro- has caused many to dismiss them as unimportant or even fictional, each and every one stands tall as a testament to the human desire for self determination (and they're all certainly more real than Belgium).

The guide's presentation is a mix of in-depth, 3-to-6-page articles on specific micronations -- going into their histories, personalities, and political intrigues (where applicable), as well as such travel-guide staples as things-to-do, driving directions, shopping and dining options, and accommodations (again, where applicable) -- with shorter boxed texts highlighting broader movements (Cascadian independence, mad Aussies, off-world colonies), topics of interest to micronationals (issuing stamps), and tidbits on micronations/micronationals that either can't sustain a fuller article (but whose presence is none the less welcome) or would require an entire book to do them true justice (Emperor Norton). The writing is light-hearted and entertaining while still being respectful of the subjects.

The micronations are divided into three loose chapters: "Serious Business", which includes those nations with compelling claims of legitimacy within the rules of the Establishment (or, barring that, their own television series); "My Backyard, My Nation", which mostly includes those who have exercised their Natural Right to seceded from their previous governments and plot their own destinies (here you would find Cascadia); and "Grand Dreams", for those nations fighting righteous causes in the face of Establishment opposition.

It's difficult to review a book like this beyond what I've already done since its topic is rather scatter-shot by nature and it can't really be judged on its practical utility as an actual travel guide (how many tourists can fit in Danny Wallace's Lovely apartment anyway?), so I'll just leave you with a smattering of the micronations included to whet your appetite:

• Sealand, which has gotten a lot of mainstream press in years past (and continues to do so), is of course covered (it's the very first article).
• The Republic of Molossia, an island nation adrift in a sea of Nevada whose currency is pegged to the price of Pillsbury cookie dough. They recently annexed some wetlands near Mexico.
• The Principality of Trumania is sort of Cascadia's version of San Marino, located in the Puget Sound on Vashon Island (home of the bicycle-eating tree and the first modern incident involving a UFO and the Men in Black).
• Whangamomona seceded from New Zealand in 1989 after a dispute over rugby league redistricting. Its most cherished former leader was a goat named Billy (or "Gumboots" to his inner circle of friends) whom some believe was assassinated.
• The Republic of Kugelmugel consists of a 7.68m diameter wooden sphere covered in zinc-sheet that originally appeared in a vision to artist Edwin Lipburger. Tragically, control of this surface-area-minimizing nation was wrest away from Edwin when it was invaded and annexed by Austria -- if only he had covered it in aluminum!

You may not be familiar with the Iranian Space Agency (ISA). They haven't yet launched anything into space themselves (perhaps because the President of Iran is more interested in wasting resources on dangerous transportation boondoggles). However, they do have one reconnaissance satellite, the Sinah-1, launched in 2005 by the Russians and capable of imaging the Middle East at 3-meter resolution (sample images can be seen on their site). They have plans for two more satellites and hope to one day launch satellites themselves using their Shahab family of vehicles (more, more, and more). (They also have a space tourist, but not everyone in the government is happy about that.)

In the mean time, not to be outdone by their American counterparts at the NRO and the NGA, the ISA has their own* kids' propaganda site called Space Kids (or rather, the URL is called that; the actual title is in Persian, as is everything else inside):

The presumably titular Space Kids appear in a series of excessively large Flash cartoons that tell the story of two little Teletubbyesque paraterrestrials who visit two Iranian children -- apparently drawn by Margaret Keane during her monobrows-and-arthropodic-hairstyle phase -- and take them on a flying saucer trip to tour the Solar System and learn fun facts about the planets. (Note: Persian is read right-to-left, so the icon on the top right is the first episode.)

There's lots of talking in these 'toons -- seriously, they spend over two millidays on the roof of the human kids' house wistfully discussing the stars and looking at the paraterrestrials psychically project images of telescopes and Space Shuttles before they ever get off the planet -- and since it's all in Persian, I don't know if any of it is interesting.

While the first episode is on Earth, the second takes place on the Moon, where they levitate amidst wafting Moon Smog as they talk talk talk talk. Then an alarm goes off, they evaporate, reappear in the flying saucer, and begin their loquacious interplanetary tour.

I didn't watch the following episodes since they're so large and apparently each one just gives facts about each planet in turn (in Persian). I did watch the last (twelfth) episode though, which starts with something about satellites and space stations around Earth then has some trippy images of what first seems to be a nuclear explosion that scares one of the kids, but turns out to be just a volcano (I believe this is a bit of propaganda to emphasize the Iranian government's stated position that their satellite program is purely for the peaceful monitoring of natural disasters; but then again, it's all in Persian, so for all I know they could be threatening to unleash volcanoes on their enemies via satellite nukes).

At the very end, in a pointless twist that would make Jennifer Lynch proud, we learn it was all a dream. Great! But then the beginning makes no sense.

As is obvious to anyone paranoid enough to know what's going on, this lengthy propaganda of Iranian-paraterrestrial friendship is really meant to curry favor with paraterrestrial forces observing our planet and her Internetting. Perhaps Ahmadinejad hopes this treacly display of Iranian innocence will encourage some overly sentimental faction of the paraterrestrials to foolishly give Iran advanced monorail technology with which to threaten the world.

*(I'm not actually sure if Space Kids is directly produced by the Iranian government or by some private organization -- there's another section on the Space Kids site with ungovernmental-looking stuff like a message board, foreign news articles, and an additional propaganda mascot with an unwholesome attraction to the Moon -- but considering that it's prominently linked to at the top of the ISA site and has more substantive content than anything else there, at the very least there's a conspiracy between them.)

UPDATE (2007-04-18): I've been contacted by someone associated with the Space Kids site with some clarifying details: The site was designed, with ISA sponsorship, by a private organization called the Farda Institute, which works on public understanding of science and technology. They also have another kids' site (in Persian) called (in English) Nano Club, which teaches kids about nanotechnology and includes a series of comics about a character who buys an indestructible Bucky tube and later gets shrunken down and rides a red blood cell like a raft after visiting the Nano Club site (so take care when clicking that link). Since the site's in Persian, I have no idea what their stance is on the nanobiotechnological menace of Black Helicopters.

Dear Dr. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad,

It was with great interest that I read your recent reaffirmation of your stirring call for Iran to join the elite group of nations who embrace that most significant and world-changing invention wrought by Man's ingenuity: the Monorail.

When you became Mayor of Tehran you championed Monorailism over various polyrailistic heresies and the perniciousness of Arailism. While timid Luddites like Ali-Asghar Ardakanian of the Transport Engineering Society -- that sad little nest of errant orthodoxy! -- were disparaging the Iranian people by saying that they did not have the advanced knowledge necessary to operate and maintain a system of Monorails, you proudly proclaimed that Iran had within her the strength of will to gain that knowledge. If you, born to a family of lowly blacksmiths mindlessly hammering away at the wheel-hubs of paleotransportation, could uplift yourself to Monorail Consciousness by becoming a doctor of Transport Engineering, then surely the Iranian people could similarly be uplifted into the Ultramodern World of the Monorail!

Unlike your mayoral predecessor Shahrestani, who 30 years ago succumbed to the cramped negativity of the so-called "experts" and gave up his dream of a monorailed Tehran, you boldly denounced those who opposed that dream as being engaged in "political and press games" and vowed to "continue to implement this modern project in cooperation with the private sector". And implement it you did!

This singular boldness that is the defining trait of we Monorailists was undoubtedly the key to your winning the Presidency of Iran, and with it a popular mandate to expand the Iranian Monorail System from its humble beginnings running between the Mehrabad International Airport and Sadeghieh Square to an all-encompassing railwork binding together Iran in the concrete embrace of the Future.

But your lack of focus on the crucial monorail issue in your term as President has clearly hurt you, leading to the embarrassing rebuke in the polls that you suffered on Friday. Your administration has gone off the rail, squandering its mandate to Monorailize on unfruitful confrontations with the West. A change is unavoidable if there is any hope of seeing Iran's Monorail Destiny fulfilled.

The reaffirmation of your core principle was a good start, but you need to do more than just talk -- you need to take decisive action: Work to free the Tehran Monorail from the malaise of the current mayorship, which has seen it fall into a state of disuse. Nationalize it if you must, but by all means the monorail must run! Divert research efforts from mere nuclear energy to nuclear-powered maglev monorails. Take the cause of Monorailism to the streets and let those poor ground-traveling souls know that there is a higher form of transport that they could be experiencing. All these things and more are within your power if only you would will them.

Finally, tilt less at the windmills of Zionism and instead rally your people against the real shared threat to our world today: The Global Automobilist Conspiracy. I am certain that they are the ones behind the recent suspicious maglev accidents as well as the troubles with my own beloved Seattle Monorail. (FACT: nearly all of those responsible for tabulating the ballot measure in 2005 that doomed the Seattle Monorail Project were known Automotorists. As brutal dictator and automobile manufacturer Joseph Stalin once said: "It's not the people who vote that count. It's the people who count the votes.") Don't let Iran come under their smoggy sway.

It shames me to admit that we in the West have been embarrassingly slow to adopt the Monorail as our native mode of transportation. This is your chance to put Iran in the forefront of the Monorailist Revolution, and thereby spur a global race to monorailize all nations. Let us not bicker away our energies on zero-sum confrontations, but instead unite ourselves in mutually embettering competition to see who can build the fastest, the longest, the most transcendent monorails that have ever graced our planet. We welcome the challenge with all the good sportsmanship that befits this most civilized form of transport.

However, beyond mere rivalry, I firmly believe that the Monorail will bring Humanity closer together. Whether Western or Eastern, Muslim or Jew, Palestinian or Israeli, Electromagneticist or Permanent-Magneticist, when we ride on the monorail we are all of us on the same track heading together toward Unity.

With sincerest regards,
The Monorailist

UPDATE: Ahmadinejad Boldly Responds

News out of "Belgium":

RTBF reporter simulation as seen from within the Belgian construct.

An apparent glitch in the Brussels Beast on Wednesday briefly caused the Flanders and Wallonia servers to split, leaving many of the kidnap victims that are hooked into the massive Belgium simulation via the neural interfaces of their Citizen Pods to believe that Belgium had become two independent nations instead of one nonexistent one.

Belgium Conspiracy system administrators quickly reacted by first reestablishing the server connections, then blaming the whole incident on a media "spoof". Citizen memories have been revised to be consistent with this lie.

Some Belgium Conspiracy watchers suspect that this incident was actually a trial run for establishing a separate Belgium server location -- possibly under the new Disneyland being planned in Shanghai, a city with a mature infrastructure for kidnapping people and pressing them into service. This location would help expand the Conspiracy's activities in Asia, but because of the large bandwidth needed to maintain the Belgian illusion, latency between such distant servers would require limiting access across the two Belgian "regions" using a contrived "national border". (Latency considerations are suspected to be one of the main reasons for the language and cultural barriers originally built into the simulation back when the Brussels Beast ran on primitive Univac hardware.)

Investigators theorize that the incident may have been designed to test the citizens' implanted nationalistic subroutines, as many of those assigned to Flemish nodes spontaneously took to the streets waving flags. (During the Conspiracy's clean-up, these citizens were implanted with memories that they were merely actors hired by a public television station as part of the "spoof".)

Besides access to Asia, another reason the Conspiracy may be looking to establish a new server location is space. Insiders report that the vault under Euro-Disneyland where the Belgian citizens are being stored is quickly filling up with kidnapped anti-NWO agitators, kept in check only by the vault's dreaded black mold infestation, which has been consuming an estimated 5% of the pod-bound prisoners annually.