Uponnothing.co.uk

Possibly the best blonde joke ever?

If the average person starts work aged 18, and retires at 65 (47 years), working the average UK working week of 40 hours, then minus 25 days a year for holidays/bank holidays they will spend around 91,080 hours at work. During the same time the average person will sleep 8 hours a night, 136,864 hours, and will spend 4 hours a day watching TV, a further 68,432 hours. So in those 47 years taking into account just 3 factors we have already accounted for 296,376 hours of that time – around 24% of the total hours (410,592) spent at work. So, during our 47 years of work we have just 114,216 hours to spend doing something other than working, sleeping or watching TV. So what else have we got to do? Well we have to eat, say breakfast is 20 minutes, lunch we’ll assume is taken during work, whilst evening meal - cooking, eating and subsequent cleaning - say 1 hour 40 minute to keep it simple. So at just 2 hours a day that takes care of another 34,216 hours. What about getting to and from work everyday? Some lucky sods work from home, but the rest of us must spend at least an hour a day commuting, that’s another 11,385 hours gone. If we are eating and working that means we must also be shopping: food, clothes, furniture, gadgets, tat, that’s another 6 hours a week or 14,664 hours gone. If we are buying stuff then we are also making mess, how many hours of our lives do we spend tidying up? I reckon at least 7 hours a week are spent just tidying stuff, 17,108 hours gone.

That means we have used a total of 359,085 hours of our 47-year working life, and have just 51,507hours left. So, what do we do with the rest of our time? It would be fair to say that the average person goes out twice, maybe three times a week, that’s probably 14 hours a week spent in pubs/clubs (as a conservative estimate), so that would get rid of another 34,216 hours, leaving just 17,291 hours remaining. Imagine all the things you have or want to do in that time: you have to wash, dress, shave, go to the toilet, travel, attend funerals, weddings, christenings, stag/hen nights, talk, read, go to the cinema, go to the beach, have hobbies, run, exercise. You may want to: have kids, relationships, write a book, paint, see the world, play sports, go to the gym etc…

You have just 17,291 hours or 720 days to do all this.

However, do we really need to go through all this hassle? Given that we choose to spend over 68,000 of those hours watching TV, and are forced to waste a further 136,864 at work, then why bother? In the UK only 37% of men and 25% of women take the recommended 30 minutes of moderate exercise at least five times a week, 88% of men and 83% of women consume too much saturated fat. And salt intake is excessive in 85% of men and 69% of women. The UK has the fastest growing rate of obesity in the developed world; we have the money and greed to eat ourselves to an early grave.

So, can we really be responsible enough to even live with the slightest degree of freedom? I don’t think so. Remember the Matrix, the fictional world where people lived life in a computer generated reality, they were simply plugged into a cocoon supplying energy to the robots running the world; in exchange the robots gave them a false reality. It was has since led to many people questioning the reality of our own lives, as if we really look at the way in which we live we have far more in common with the Matrix than we would want. Our freedom of thought is controlled by ‘education’, work and the media, who are all controlled and centralised bodies that together operate much as the Matrix does. In the US 99.5% of the population own a TV, whilst 95% of the population watches it everyday.

Ours is the first generation to have essentially moved its life inside television; to have replaced direct contact with people and nature with simulated edited recreated versions. Television is the original ‘virtual reality’.

The vast majority of global television imagery, as well as film, books, newspapers, entertainment imagery, and Internet outlets are owned by a tiny handful of corporations. Aol/Time Warner, Disney, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, and a couple of others, are controlling most of the world’s broadcast, publishing and entertainment industry. They are ‘directly assisted by the rules of the WTO and other global institutions that grease the pathways for their investments, takeovers and mergers.’ These are the people who control us; they don’t need to plug us into a computer system, we willingly obey their message and live in their world. Billions of people all across the globe in darkened rooms sit staring, blankly, passively, brainlessly at the TV, night after night, year after year. They are told what to wear, what to desire, what to buy and from whom.

Between school, work, and sleep most of our precious time on earth is accounted for, most of it by corrupt systems of repression, the rest we choose to waste sitting in front of a box. So why not save time, why waste money on weapons (over £546 billion worldwide last year), when we should be constructing a Matrix system. When the Matrix system is complete we can all just be plugged in, we can obey the same gods, live in the same repression, but at least they could control our diet.

Reality is a direct reflection of ourselves, so if we choose to live in the Matrix, lets at least do it properly.

The above article uses some quotations from Who Benefits Most? By Jerry Mander. I strongly recommend you read it.

Courtesy of The Devil’s Kitchen comes some great lines from this year’s fringe, including:

There were some fat kids at my school. One girl had to get cut out of a hula hoop.
Alan Carr

Growing up it was difficult for me to chat up teenage girls. Now I’m 35, it’s a little uncomfortable.
Will Smith

They say the Meek shall inherit the Earth but don’t worry, we’ll just beat the hell out of them and get it back again.
Howard Read

If a child dies every time Bono clicks his fingers then maybe he should stop clicking.
Colin & Fergus

All of the call centres in Scotland are being outsourced to India. Bloody foreigners - staying over there, taking our jobs…
Bruce Morton

Read the full list here…

As demonstrated by Tim Ireland, who tangles with a prospective Tory MP, who may or may not be an idiot, who may or may not be pandering to racism, and who may or may not take legal action against any smears to his good name.

Should you be tempted to dismiss all this as esoteric or merely mad, travel to any Muslim community in Britain, especially in the northwest, and sense the state of siege and fear. On July 15, Blair’s Britain of the future was glimpsed when the police raided the Iqra Learning Center and bookstore near Leeds. The Iqra Trust is a well-known charity that promotes Islam worldwide as “a peaceful religion which covers every walk of life.” The police smashed down the door, wrecked the shop and took away antiwar literature which they described as “anti-Western.”

Once again this is a must read article.

The Rise of the Democratic Police State - by John Pilger

I am a manipulated stooge who sold his soul to exploit the ignorant with the proud lies our own leaders.

I am told on a regular basis “The Army is not like it used to be.” Most of the lifers think that the military lacks discipline and blame the new “Nintendo generation” soldiers for the weakness.

However, I think a hard look should be given at the uses of America’s advanced military in the modern era. Due to the operations the military has been tasked in the last forty years, the nobility of the professional soldier has been destroyed.

From Vietnam to Iraq the Armed Forces has been a chess piece in a game for money and power by elite Americans. Back in the world wars the military represented every citizen’s will. Today the people are duped with lies and phony values to support imperial progress.

Weapons of mass destruction, links to the two towers tragedy, and the ousting of an oppressive dictatorship are all bait for a revenge hungry over-patriotic American.

A very powerful article written by an American soldier in Iraq, it really does make powerful reading.

Read the full article here

The Unfeeling President - By E.L. Doctorow

Came across this article over on Backword, and thought it is well worth reading, really cuts through the hollow, vacuous, morally bankrupt character of George Bush.

Talk Politics - Playing Dice with the Universe

A quick look at the evolutionary challenged Bush and his introduction of God back into creation, coming to a school near you (that is if you are unfortunate to be subject to an American ‘education’).

The US has the largest military capability in the world, its department of defence has an annual budget larger than the gross domestic product of Russia, it has bases all over the world; yet they would like us to believe that they are simply a global policeman. However, it is not peace or democracy that they seek, the extreme paranoia that drives the US militarism does not allow for any potential opposition. Instead complete military domination of the planet, and the next step as previously mentioned is to dominate space as the final frontier. The Asia Times has a very interesting article on how the US are bringing on board other countries to raise funds for their star wars program, and also how the US is stepping up its military forces around China.
Read the article here…

I just want you to know that, when we talk about war, we’re really talking about peace.
George W Bush

Reading this quotation reminds me of how the notion of peace has been completely inversed by world leaders. Only yesterday 4 protestors were arrested during a nuclear protest at the home of the UK’s Trident Nuclear Submarines, protesting against the weapons of mass destruction held by the supposed peacemaking nations of the G8. The protesting Tommy Sheridan (SSP) succintly summed up the madness of possessing nuclear arms:

These weapons are the most expensive scrap metal in the world because they won’t be used. If they were used, the planet itself would be destroyed

So how can we justify championing peace through the threat of mutual destruction? To do so is the very definition of terror, against which George Bush and Tony Blair are supposedly fighting an expensive war. How is demanding peace through possession of a nuclear arsenal any different to someone holding a grenade in a room full of people, threatening them with mutual destruction unless their desires are met? Why is it that governments deem themselves above common law, and that we should do as they say, not as they do? Is it simply because we know if goverments felt they had to create a nuclear holocaust for political reasons, then they would, whereas we would tend to doubt an individual’s will to go through with it.

Just imagine how ludicrious it would be if we all tried pursuing goals through the threat of mutual destruction…

- School teachers could easily control a class if they were wearing 60 pounds of semtex and scraping the detonator down the blackboard before lessons started.

- Promotion at work would be a case of do or die, promote me else i’ll launch missiles at the offices. But it would also be much more challenging to stay ahead, like when the smart new guy has somehow got hold of a jet plane at starts strafing the offices upset at his starting salary.

- Play ground disputes are now settled by the ‘my dad has a bigger bomb than your dad’ debate.

- The farming population of the UK is wiped out in weeks as sheep just do not appreciate that the farmer really means it when he yells ‘get in the other field else i’ll fucking kill us all’, whilst jumping up and down on a pile of landmines.

These situations may seem absurd, but they are no more absurd than the above nugget of wisdom from George Bush, and no more absurd than governments saying that everyone should behave according to their rules otherwise they’ll kill us all. This is particularly prelevant when Blair and Bush produce so much propaganda over their moral fight for peace, and Blair is planning the next big wave of military spending on a new trident arsenal. Such weapons cost millions of pounds, and if fired would lead to the destruction of mankind; yet somehow they are classed as weapons of peace, by men of war.

War. A three letter word that carries the weight of untold deaths, a word that best describes the 20th century madness. As a civilian there can be nothing that compares to the experience of going into combat, to realise that there are people who you have never met - and will in all likelihood never know - wanting to kill you. Before they can kill you, you have to kill them, anyway you could, there are no rules in warfare, morality simply vanishes in the face of imminent death. It is estimated that around 188 million people died during the wars of the 20th century, a great deal of those in the two wars that shaped the century; the First and Second World Wars. They have left a legacy of experience that allows us almost complete insight into the tragedy of how wars are created, and how they are fought and by whom. Generations of young have had themselves sacrificed by governments, and have known horrors that very few people will ever experience.

Each generation involved in major conflicts learn the reality of war, and they try to impart the tragedy of war on the next generation, but the lessons are never learned until they to have suffered the follies of war. The bloodiest century in the history of the world has now passed, but already the 21st Century has been plunged into war by another generation that believes violence is the only answer to social problems. The 21st Century has heralded the beginning of a new era of warfare, a new crusade in the pursuit of a flawed ideology. No lessons have been learnt from the millions of war dead, instead a new generation are being told that violence and warfare is the way to spread peace and prosperity. Once again the young are being killed because of the foolish pursuits of government, once again bloodshed proves that it is not - nor will it ever be - the answer to the worlds problems.

America and Britain dish out ‘democracy’ at gunpoint, whilst selling the victim arms to fight back with, perpetuating a new century of conflict. The lies of governments serve to send thousands of people - civilians and soldiers alike - to an early grave, in the purest pursuit of power and wealth. In the cases of America and Britain the reality is that war is being waged by a few elite people, for whom the reality of war would never reach - namely George Bush and Tony Blair, along with their elite circle. Once again whole continents are being classed as enemies of the Western World, needing to be conquered by the civilised West with bombs and bullets. The war on terror is designed to provide a new excuse for the pursuit of national interest through state terror - in this case the war on terror will create the very terror it is supposed to be fighting. So the new century took just one year - September 11 2001 - to take a tragedy and create an eternal conflict.

The examples of war solving nothing can be laid before us, the lessons of those that lived and died in wars are all around us - in print, in film, in our very conscience, yet we repress them in order to pursue a ‘better war’. War has now become sanitised and acceptable, a myth perpetuates through modern warfare that civilians are no longer at threat from the war itself, they are merely injured as collateral damages by ‘accidents’. However, the media cannot hide the truth, just because the American public are not shown the coffins being flown back to America, does not mean it does not exist. In the same way the lack of coverage of modern conflicts does not mean that the suffering has decreased, it is just not discussed, the media rarely has the courage to pursue suffering in times of conflict, and instead has become statistical rather than humanitarian in their reporting.

It seems only when the conflict is over does humanity have the nerve to assess exactly what it is that they had participated in, it is only then that the realities of suffering can become known. This is the importance of the forgotten dead, for they have left their testimonies against war, they have provided us with all the horror of warfare in order that we learn from it, not glorify or repeat it. When we consider the lies that brought about the war in Iraq, and the lies that permeate the war against terror, we should consider those that died before in conflict, and understand the cost of war in human terms. People across the world are dying the same death as thousands have before them; the result of ignoring the past, and the lessons that the dead tried to teach us. Ours is a new century, begun with new hope, destroyed by the same ignorant belief as the last that war was a solution to problems, not the main contributory factor. We have 95 years to avoid making the new century a repeat of the last, and with each year past thousands more will add their names to the list of the war dead.

Why, against all hope, do people write against the system? People have always rebelled against corrupt systems of control; have always made good arguments, often with the justification of truth and history with them, yet the system remains. Not only does the system still exist, it is today more powerful than ever. The rise of globalisation - taken to mean in this instance the communication revolution that has lessened the significance of physical borders, and enabled global systems of control and influence to flourish outside of traditional Nation states - has enabled this. Corporations are able to spread their influence across the globe through various forms of virtually instantaneous media, gaining vast power and wealth in the process as effectively they have become bigger than the nations in which they physically operate.

Governments have been careful to ensure they are not trapped within their own borders when large businesses can act outside of them, so they to have increased their influence outside of their own borders. British security forces have been undergoing a revolution, no longer are they concerned with defence of the realm, they are now designed to be a quick reaction task force, able to be deployed around the world on short notice, and in multiple locations. This is the most important part of Tony Blair’s ‘New Britain’, the ability to spread political will more effectively by having a better-designed army to enforce that will. Britain has always been a nation to promote influence through the real fear of violence (’Rule Britannia, Britannia rules the waves’) but in modern society it is not deemed polite or acceptable to use force unless you have justification for doing so, so this is the second main part of New Labour: concerted propaganda concerning the New Labour crusade against ‘terror’.

That is the beauty of being a government, if you need a justification, you can just create one, the public do not need to know the truth, they just need to know enough to endorse their policy. The UK have used their close relationship with the US to use 9/11 as the new justification for using violence to spread policy and influence. After the difficulties posed by the end of the Cold War, a new easy to roll out excuse is available to lazy governments who want to embark on violence to pursue elite interests. Who better to take advantage of this situation than New Labour, the ‘Sultans of Spin’, so successful are they that people have renamed the fear-inducing word ‘propaganda’ with the innocent connotations of ’spin’. New Labour have used spin to have us believe that the way they handle the media is not lying, or concerted propaganda, but merely spin - merely a polished form of the truth.

New Labour have a long and distinguished track record of the lying, and their desperate attempts to control the media (which has sadly been very successful) speaks volumes of how far from the truth Tony Blair’s utopian statements of a New Britain really are. Yet through it all little has changed, New Labour lie, a few voices speak out, uncovering the truth, ridiculing the lies, but the rest of the world is too busy watching TV and listening to the drivel fed to the media by the New Labour PR machine to care, or believe.

But is this a reason to stop? Should truth be abandoned because the majority like to believe in myths, rather than face the changes that need to be made in the world? Or should people continue to write, to speak out, to protest, to record truth against all the odds? Even if it takes a hundred years before a historian uncovers the truth about British politics 1997-2020, the truth will out, and it will vindicate those brave enough to speak out, and will uncover those who lied, those who manipulated the media to pursue elite aims, those who started wars based on lies. Tony Blair will have his wish, he will be recorded in the annuls of history, but only as a delusional fraud who lied to a nation in pursuit of a fatally flawed dream.

During the last election Tony Blair - thanks to the ‘first past the post’ electoral system - secured 55% of the seats in parliament, a majority reduced from 161 seats to 67. New Labour achieved this with the lowest share of the vote in modern times, holding only 35% of the vote, with the Conservatives holding 32%, and the Liberal Democrats 22%. Therefore considering that only around 61% of the electorate voted, New Labour’s victorious 35% share of the vote equates to only around 22% of the total electorate. In the 2001 election around 50% of young people under 25 in the UK voted, yet 10 million people, mostly under 25, managed to vote in the Big Brother reality TV show. How has voting for people in ‘reality’ TV programs become more pressing than the election of our governments?

When you look at Big Brother it is classed as ‘reality’ TV as it deals with ‘real’ people, put in ‘real’ situations, reacting naturally with complete exposure to the public. With Big Brother people have their voyeurism rewarded with a kind of truth, they have access to the people on screen for 24 hours a day, and can view their every action and hear their every word. When people have this access they are able to untangle the motives behind the people in the show, and are even spoon-fed such information by psychologists who frequent the show, analysing what the actions and interactions mean. Through personal perception, and professional analysis, viewers are able to make an informed choice as to whom they want to win, and because they have done so, they will vote in support of that person.

Politics has similarities, but with crucial differences. With politics we have the same kind of interaction - albeit perhaps reduced to election campaigns - where politicians will try and convince viewers that they are the ones to vote for. Like Big Brother analysis of politicians will be made, motives examined (ironically not usually in as much detail as the house mates are), and people will be asked to vote for whom they believe in (or believe full stop). Politicians and contestants alike are out to win; they each form alliances, produce manifestos, and generally try to convince the public to like them. However, politicians will never become accountable in the way that Big Brother contestants are.

Politicians offer nothing more than front, the public have become unconvinced by spin, lies, propaganda, PR, and personal assaults on opposition campaigners - all the things employed by politicians during election campaigns. What the public want is to know who is lying, what people really mean, what the truth is behind that public front - who is worthy of their vote? Big Brother gives them this, it gives them unparalleled access to the reality of those they vote for, the contestants are accountable to the public, and can be caught out on live TV by the public. This interaction makes voting on Big Brother a more powerful experience than voting in an election, and a more pressing issue for the public in many cases. To be motivated to do something people have to believe in it, they have to be sure of what they are voting for. In politics the public know that they are voting for whoever has hired the best PR company, or the person who has lied the most convincingly. More importantly they are aware that the reality of whom they have actually voted for will only become apparent once the time to vote has past - as it has with phoney Tony. The truth will eventually out, but they are powerless until the next round of PR begins at the start of the next election - four years after they cast the initial vote. This is the perfect recipe for apathy.

Big Brother motivates people because they can view the spin and the reality simultaneously - and in many ways subconsciously - and are empowered by the experience of knowing the truth. Even politicians on TV for 24 hours a day would slip-up, especially when dealing with the isolated sensation within the house and the provision of alcohol. Imagine if Tony Blair was on TV 24 hours a day, the public would be in no doubt then what the truth is behind the war in Iraq, and there would have been a lot more people voting during the last election if that was the case. So in order to get people politically motivated again requires accountability from the government, in England the government are barely held to account on any matter. To be a politician is to purposely avoid answering any direct question, how can this be allowed to happen? It is now blindingly obvious that Tony Blair lied consistently over Iraq, yet he has denied it completely ever since, he knows he is lying, and we know he is lying, and it is a damning indictment of British society that the prime minister is unaccountable to truth and the word of law. He lies, but it is of no consequence, other than mild embarrassment.

If anyone else was in the same situation then they would be in court and prosecuted, they would not be able to simply deny the accusations and make those lies truth merely by their utterance. How can anyone in this country possibly take any word of British law seriously when the prime minister of the country can break any laws he wishes, be discovered, yet still deny the truth? It is an insult to everybody who has to live in the UK and abide by the rule of law set down by the government - particularly when you consider the new anti-terror laws rushed through by Tony Blair. How can we abide by rules set out by a collection of frauds acting outside of the law? Or more importantly why should we?

If I commit murder I would be facing life imprisonment, if a prime minister commits mass murder he faces re-election and a lifetime of after dinner speeches and titles. Tony Blair is the epitome of hypocrisy, a murderer so mentally disillusioned that he thinks his actions are actually saving life, and saving humanity. His very existence makes a mockery of any idea that we live in a country of law, or moral values; it makes a mockery of any lingering hope that we actually live in a democracy. It is an insult that this ignorant, corrupt, power-hungry fraud can stand in public and lie repeatedly to his electorate, and will never face a jury simply because he is a politician.

It is Tony Blair’s biggest worry that he will not be remembered in the history books of the future; what he does not seem to realise is that eventually history only records facts, not propaganda, and he will be remembered as Britain’s Mussolini; a murdering fraud who believed his own propaganda, when everyone else knew it to be false.

BBC News has reported that the UK has stopped aid to Ethiopia due to the recent widespread violence during the elections - during which 36 people died. Tony Blair was so concerned by the shootings that he made a phone call to Mr Meles - a member of Blair’s African commission - on Sunday. I wonder if Tony Blair is as keen to stop the sale of arms to Ethiopia, as they are the supply of aid. Currently there are no specific arms sanctions against Ethiopia, so only the general ‘export control restrictions’ apply - which looking at the horrendous records of arms exports made by the UK are not worth the paper they are written on.

A few days previously the Observer reported that the UK arms sales to Africa have reached the £1 billion mark, analysis of official figures shows annual weapons sales almost quadrupled between 1999 and 2004. The exports included licences for military exports granted to Ethiopia. This was reported on Sunday, and has received relatively little attention in the light of Tony Blair’s recent crusade on Africa in the build up to the G8 summit. It highlights the reality behind the propaganda produced by New Labour on their moral intentions; any kind of debt relief in Africa is futile without addressing the bigger problems.

New Labour have not addressed the problem of bloody conflicts in the regions, but have instead actively facilitated them. The £1.5 billion BAE-South African Air Force deal (12 Hawk fighter trainer jets at £0.5 billion and a £1 billion partnership with SAAB over Gripen fighters) for instance was arranged when Tony Blair led a delegation to South Africa to lobby for the BAE bid, shortly before it was awarded in 1999. Not long after this deal was struck the 2000 UK defence exhibition was described by Maj. Gen. Julius Kriel (South African Air Force) as ‘very much a show for Africa.’

So it is hardly surprising that arms exports have quadrupled in just 5 years under the careful stewardship of New Labour - demonstrating the combination of New Labour’s two biggest interests: military development and pandering to big business. When we continue to be saturated by New Labour propaganda regarding Tony Blair’s obsession to be remembered in history for doing something worthwhile which - after his lies in Iraq have been exposed, and the war has been another humanitarian disaster - has now turned towards the Africa ‘problem’. Tony Blair believes that he can drive forward a program to eliminate poverty in Africa, and he is now relying on this to rescue his tattered reputation in the history books.

He is not promoting the African agenda for the good of Africans, but only to promote and distort his own position in world history. He must not be allowed to gloss over the truth about New Labour’s real policy pursued in Africa - under his direct leadership - and the blood that is on his hands. It’s OK to take action in Ethiopia, as long at it is only aid, but no doubt the New Labour warmongers will be licking their lips at the chance to pump more arms into a poor and troubled country. Who knows, with a little luck and the right weapons they could even turn it into a lucrative civil war.

So, Michael Jackson has escaped prison, he remains free but the result of the trial has hardly left him innocent in the eyes of millions who have been subjected to the media hype that surrounded the trial - which made hearing the verdict almost impossible to avoid. So what did proving his innocence really achieve? He has now been blighted throughout his life by very serious allegations of child molestation, allegations of almost complete facial reconstruction, and being in ridiculous debt despite being insanely rich. Rumours circulate and conclude that Jackson has a severe detachment from reality, enabling him to believe that he is Peter Pan in Never land, and because of this he sees no harm in forging close relationships with young boys, including sharing a bed with them.

The result of his trial has supposedly put to rest any accusations that anything untoward happened with the children he slept with, but it wont stop the public perception that there is no smoke without fire. Reading the comment page in the Independent it is almost impossible not to snigger at certain phrases: ‘When Jackson returned home he went straight to bed’ - we presume he was at least alone this time. This is the easy route to take, as a celebrity he is seen as someone to be ridiculed. So people either ridicule him, or take him for a ride by making supposedly false accusations in order to get a slice of his wealth. Surely if Michael Jackson was an ordinary person, he would be locked up as clinically insane, rather than being classed as merely rich and eccentric. Instead he remains surrounded by people who seem to be unable to point out to him that perhaps he needs to seek professional help, he needs a slap around the face, not a collection of sycophants cynically sucking up the last of his credit.

America locks up people without trial for being dark-skinned and in the wrong place at the wrong time, yet Michael Jackson exists beyond all help despite his quite public displays of disturbing behaviour, surely the jury could have at least forced him to seek counselling? Perhaps the fact that Jackson is ‘rich’, suffers severe illusions, and has made himself white enables him to join the same elite club as the other rich madmen currently running (ruining) America.