SHADOWS OF THE PAST (a very long rant)

I was pretty downcast when we left Germany for Nova Scotia back in 1971. I was 17 and the drinking age was 19, say nothing of alcohol only being served in bars and liquor stores. After having worked in pubs and discos in Germany, this was pretty condescending. Social life was nil until I got back into high school, which was also odd to say the least. I was still into cannabis and LSD until I gave up the latter in 1973. The only reason I had started it was on a premonition of some spooky shit heading my way. I knew I needed to condition myself against some serious psychoterror, but don’t ask me why. I just knew it was coming my way regardless of where or when. One night I was fixing some clothing when a strange feeling of being watched overcame me.  

I found my mother’s binoculars and chanced a look at a boarding house across the way. There was a small red light I could see in that window, and at a closer look, I discovered it was a video camera pointed my way. I quickly dropped the binoculars and closed the curtains, completely baffled by this. Over time I learned this was some military spook with alleged connections to the RCMP. These shenanigans carried on the entire time I was stuck in NS. Every job I applied for got sabotaged by this git telling them whatever nonsense about me most likely to put them off.

The bastard even followed me to British Columbia when my father dragged me there for four months. Fortunately, I spend most of my time in the wilds of the Soowali reserve with native friends. I also got to know the chief narcotics agent of the region (working undercover), who assured me I wasn’t a person of interest, but he did warn me there were other elements on my case, though he wasn’t sure what. Either way, it wasn’t about drugs, which puzzled me even more. Unfortunately, my stalker must have got wind of this and told the local junkies at the lake park that I was in cahoots with this undercover guy. I had nothing to do with these cretins, but they were always around making threats when I was passing through on my way to Vedder Crossing. I told my father what was happening, and that I needed to get out of there pronto. I managed to get as far as Winnipeg until my flight got bumped by a bunch of politicians. That’s when I encountered a man who would later prove to be my next stalker. While I was bunkered down there, my baggage was definitely searched.

When I finally returned to NS, the creep was back with a vengeance. We wound up on the base quarters while the creep lodged his trailer in the neighbouring park, instigating the children there to taunt me and my brother wherever they could. When I attended free school on the Dalhousie campus, several friends got encroached to no avail and they informed me. At the time some weirdo from Brunswick Towers in Halifax got involved with close friends also living there. This guy was some ex-hell’s angels type rehabilitated from prison time for armed robbery. He had some secret plan to make off with a bunch of gold coins, him and his cohorts had fished out some cove. It didn’t take long before I started having the most lucid premonitions about the whole affair, and withdrew all contact for fear he would realize how much I could see. He knew about my abilities, unfortunately everyone knew, even my school teachers, because of so many incidents where I unwittingly let the cat out of the bag, answering questions before they were asked, or asking about things before they even happened. I felt so time warped, it was all like some recurring nightmare, and I just wanted to get as far away from it all as possible...but no, this weirdo just wouldn’t back off. He hitched up with my friend Anne, taking up some courses in Dalhousie. Whenever I stopped for a coffee and a sandwich, there they were trying to embroil me in their plans. I knew well not to accept that invite to his boat. Nor was I convinced of it being lost at sea, despite Anne’s insistence that all those visions were just wishful thinking. Needless to say, he pitched up at a party some six months later looking for me, but I knew better than be there. At the same time I knew a guy from Halifax Transit, also on my case about some alleged meeting with aliens in the remote outback of New Brunswick. Yeah right.

I swear this guy was under some kind of hypnotic suggestion. When he spoke, it was like something else was speaking behind that cold blank stare. There wasn’t even an eye twitch when I waved my hand before his face. I knew in an instant it wasn’t aliens just itching to get their hands on me.

I talked to my father again, summing up the odds of shit happening if I don’t leave the country soonest. We had already my mother and brother over in Germany, so I pulled my bank account, quit my job and high-tailed it across the Atlantic.

This time peace prevailed about a year and a half until the next vision came. It was the man in Winnipeg, he was coming to Germany to take over where the last creep left off. When I was called in to renew my visa, they told me I was entitled to German citizenship due to my mother’s refugee status but because of my father’s NATO status it would be postponed until his service expired. Well, in 1977 my father insisted I take up a job on base. That lasted until a captain at the AMU referred me to a graphic job in HQ. I applied and got it, although the contentions from all sides were pretty heavy. Still. I thought what the hell, I’m just doing time until I finally see the end of this cold war and all that my family lost through it before assuming my German citizenship in a free Europe.

It certainly proved to be an uphill battle, and god only knows why these spooks were still on my case. I was heading back from lunch when I saw that creep one last time, driving past in that ugly yellow Pontiac. Then as I sat back in my office, I remember the cold chill that came over me as I looked to that window of the next building and saw his replacement watching over me, very much intent.

It was 1980 when all hell escalated. So many pitfalls at work trying to put me in a compromising situation, like I was some kind of threat to who knows what. My circle of private friends was very small, and they were encroached in much the same manner as before, even run off the road at night. Interestingly it only happened on the civilian side, never whenever I had to attend military functions. The daily harassment on the job came from all sides, often trying to interfere with priority jobs from the senior staff and beyond. By April I was on the verge of a collapse. My brain just shut down so I went on a month’s medical leave. I don’t know what the doctor found in the blood tests, but he tried to raise a stink with some undisclosed military authority. I can only guess what that was about but he was silenced with threats to have his GP’s license revoked. I was finally able to work through May and then in July, then the help of a colleague in admin enabled me to take a few weeks Sabbatical in Iceland. Of course a number of people in HQ got all hyped about that. “Why Iceland, why not Tenerifa or the Riviera?”. Sorry, but I never was North American enough to be inspired by such tourist traps. “You’re talking to somebody who was in Czechoslovakia at 14, just months before Prague Spring invasion and traveled much of Europe alone at the age of 16.” No, they never understood that. They never understood that my grandfather spent 5 years in the dreaded political labour camp outside Hameln for shaking his fist and shouting “Hitler verrecke” at the Gestapo. False senses of nationalism were never our venue.

Well, the strangest thing happened in Keflavik when I passed through customs. The customs officer came over and told me he had received a phone call from certain authorities asking about me. He said don’t worry it’s none of their business anyway, so enjoy your time in Iceland. I just smiled and thanked him kindly, knowing I would somehow find out who it was when I got back. Indeed the vacation was enjoyable and quite the learned experience I had hoped it would be. No surprise though that I spotted my new stalker passing by in a car as I was on my way back to the guesthouse. Of course they encroached the one friend that I made, trying to lure me back to Canada with immigration promises to him, but I was not bent on marrying. In fact, whatever their profile on me, they clearly had it all wrong.

When I got back, a friend from the AMU dropped by. I asked her if anything strange happened while I was away. She said yeah, the Base Commander was all up in arms about someone and wanted booking info on commercial flights from Frankfurt to London. Someone by the name of Kate May...I laughed. That’s my legal name, I told her. The name Giesela was adopted in school by my parents screwing up the records. “Oh shit, but why? “ “Your guess is as good as mine”, I replied and told her to forget it. Aside from frequent visits from the major of AMU, things finally died down and I carried on as usual. Then the stalker started getting ever more reproachful with his weird requests, eventually pushing some young corporal at me that was a real head case. To make matters worse, she became romantically involved with my brother, trying to embroil me with other cretins that were less than savoury while the stalker kept lurking around our house in his car.

When my brother married her, she of course got transferred to the base orderly room. When it came time for her posting to Maritime Command, somebody tried to delete me and my brothers’s records from the computer. That set off an alert in Heidelberg, and all hell broke loose when that part of the network shut down on the ruse of flood damage. You don’t try to mess with anyone’s files in Wiesbaden, especially if they have a high clearance. It was yet another case of WTF were you thinking. Fortunately I was in Iceland again at the time, and when I got back, the culprit got himself fired. Still, I had a bitch of a time getting my brother on that flight when the time came, even though the legalities of the marriage were international. With the help of the command social worker, we finally got my brother through the ordeal. In Halifax, however, he wound up in the hospital with some mystery disease that had him in isolation for near a month. She finally got discharged from the military on a medical release and they wound up on her father’s farm in Hamstead, NB. Meanwhile on the home front, shit had escalated to the point of break with the stalker’s new cohort that took Ruth’s place in the base orderly room. I actually foresaw that arrangement in a series of waking visions, even the blighter in NDHQ he was answering to. Needless to say, he freaked out when I passed that on to the rumour gallery. This sent him on drunken driving binges around my house until he crashed into that street sign at the end of the village.

There was other weird shit also going on, like regular visits from an SIU plonker giving courses in “telepathic hypnosis”. After his friends failed to lure me into seeking employment in Ottawa, he returned to Edmonton where he continued to give courses to the RCMP. What a load of spook and humbug. One look into my eyes and he ran off scared shitless. The lassitude of those who should have been protecting me from such obvious coercion, instead acted in contempt of whatever my failure to reciprocate their social expectations, or simply denied it all as some allegedly paranoid delusion. Naturally, it became clear to me just how much the system had become subverted by this curse out of shear blatant ignorance. No doubt it would have been easier for them to throw us expendable civilians to the wolves than rock the boat at the risk of falling down the ranks. To this day it annoys me to no end just what a sham it was all turning into.

That’s when I decided to discuss the matter with friends in the liaison office of the local German territorial command. We were not only being spied upon, but psychogens et al were involved, very much in violation of the Geneva Convention. Unlike my Canadian colleagues, they did not try to pass this off as some paranoid figment, but forthwith contacted the Militärische Aussendienst to investigate. In the weeks that followed, I watched as the white mercedes with government plates closed in on these blighters. Foolishly enough, my stalker and his cohort paid an unsolicited visit while I was asleep, just to interrogate me as to what was going on. Whatever that drug was, they got nothing but a bunch of drivel that would have paled the likes of Stephen King. I told them I represented some secret organization of psychics scattered across the planet to keep an eye on things. “They know all about you. Hear that car driving past? Well they’re onto you, so you better run.” (sardonic laugh), That’s when the two freaked and left in quite a frenzy. Indeed that Mercedes was driving down that farm road next to the house and must have caught them in the act of leaving. I could have thought I was dreaming if it wasn’t for that itching needle mark on my arm, but then my unconscious mind is so hard wired, I’ve even been able to wake myself out of a synthetic coma. I guess all that LSD conditioning finally paid off.

Suddenly, about 50 people got a 48 hour posting notice to leave the country, no questions asked. I was assured by a couple of intelligence guys, that it was over, and if anything like this should happen again, to contact them. Of course they couldn’t tell me what any of that shite was really about. Like I'm really supposed to trust that. It was 1984, which is a tad ironic. Trudeau was finally done as Prime Minister, and it was as if a great weight was lifted. In the years that followed, some degree of normality seemed to prevail despite all power struggles in the Ottawa political scene.

That all ended when defense decided to buy the F-18 instead of the more reliable modified F-15. The technology was much too advanced for the usual standards of fighter training. After 5 of them crashed due to pilot error, the national budget went out the window. I knew it would be downhill from there. Finally the wall came down, and what does some jerk from intelligence tell me; "Oh they'll disband NATO and the Russians will take over, and blah and blah and blah". In all these years I worked with these blighters, I don't think any of them ever had a clue how allegiances work in the real world...but it didn't matter. As far as I was concerned, my job was done. Germany became one again and family reunited. At the time too many people I dreaded, had found their way into higher command and certainly as a German, I would never hear the end of it. Relatives in Canada had already branded me a traitor for leaving their beloved country, as clueless as they were to the privy council and the 21 families that ran the whole show. I don't know what it is about North Americans in general, but they never could identify with anything beyond that white picket fence mentality.

When they started closing this place down, I made that decision I had promised myself long ago, and pulled the pin. I surely didn’t want to find myself in Ottawa or Geilenkirchen and for what? My father remained embroiled in that dilemma until he finally died in 2008. After my mother died in 2013, I was finally able to leave all traces of that past behind me and lead a relatively normal life. Still, sometimes I wonder, but then my so-called sixth sense tells me the answer is so stupid, it’s just as well I burned those bridges behind me. After all, I’m out of the gray zone, with all due democratic rights a citizen of Europe and treated with respect as such. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_MKUltra

When in Rome...

I don't care what anyone says, but Sharija has been a problem on the continent for some time, particularly France and Germany. France has an even harder time with it, mainly due to its dual nationality agreements with what was once their north African colonies. Basically, Sharija does not fare well with our constitutions, and as a result these communities tend to territorially isolate themselves from the rest, in the growing belief that we should owe them retributions for all the damage colonialism has done them. Naturally, that is exactly where fundamentalism finds its stronghold in the quest to overthrow the so-called "morally corrupt Western Infidels". This is clear in all the incidents that followed the attack on the offices of "Charlie Hebdo" and countless public markets, and now recently a history teacher in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, near Paris. I'm not talking about ethnicity here, rather, people who believe their ideology to be above the criminal code, so STFU you nazis. Neither of you should even be allowed in this country, regardless what double-talk on the premise of humanitarianism. There's nothing humanitarian about killing people just because you think your ideology has been humiliated...and that goes for all fundamentalists, Christian or otherwise.

End of Rant.

 https://www.dw.com/en/man-denied-german-citizenship-for-refusing-to-shake-womans-hand/a-55311947

Scapegoating and Other False Flag Deceptions

Since I first went online in 2005, I have watched the rapid decline of free expression, not so much through censorship but something much more insidious along the lines of mob psychology and emotional entrapment. While assuming a nick offers some degree of anonymity it also easily becomes a subterfuge of consensus manipulation through multiple identities. Given this, social networks readily degenerated into popularity contests, where anyone who didn't sycophant the consensus views of the wannabe gurus, soon found themselves either shunned or bullied in the most insidious ways. Nonetheless, the terror tactics are always the same. One sock puppet or minion tries to win your trust as an ally, while another tries to work you down psychologically with their disguised attacks. Never directly, so they can easily deny it all as some figment of your paranoid imagination. The only problem with that argument is their persistent urge to keep getting in your face, like the bully that blocks the door or the dog that pisses on your leg when you're trying to focus on more important things. There is no limit to the means of sabotage and public humiliation when it comes down to that....and all the while you're bleeding your heart out to that alleged ally, they're already setting you up for the next drop kick. Being quite fearlessly independent-minded, I've always been a target of such ploys, which I was more apt to see as an opportunity to develop my own counter-strategies. It was amazing how readily these blighters fell for their own fail traps, thinking they had me sold on their paltry. Still, for all their vain-glory, they could never accept they had been outwitted by something so far removed from that self-defeating paradox.



I've also had a great deal of professional experience with all levels of society in real life. Quite frankly, I find very little difference between the power struggles there and what you find in cyberspace, no matter how trivial or unreal the objectives. The bottom line is that humans are no less opportunistic than their simian cousins, when it comes to sexual displays, harem building and other territorialisms. So-called civilization has really only beguiled us into more elaborate charades, ever more inconsequent to the dangers of self-deception. Indeed it's wonderful to have the whole information highway at your finger tips, but without any real-life experience, how will you tell truth from lie? How many have been taken in by the cleverly worded congenialities of sexual predators? How many have been misled by the promises of an ideal world as if it were really that simple? Think again.

The Fate of Branch 4

Altruism is a selfish mistress that comes in the guise of charity. I still can’t quite understand what my father was thinking. Perhaps they had become too dependent on the parental guidance and support they had in military life. Either way, they usually came across like the hapless victims of a Steinbeck novel. As much as I tried to get away from that scene, my father had his way of undermining that with secret plans of his own. It was bad enough that I had to answer to the authorities whenever my mother went off on a tantrum. Of course he was always conveniently absent whenever shit hit the fan. I was unemployed and they did their best not to inform me of any offers that came by mail or phone. My drunken sister-in-law also made an ugly habit of phoning prospective employers, covertly pretending to be me. This was a time before affordable mobile phones so I was pretty well sunk. Conversely, there was no end to constant calls asking for information on my father’s arrangements; things he never discussed except to leave with that suitcase and not a word at all. This would send my mother off in another tantrum, starting the whole cycle of police nuisance over again. In 2002 he started a new legion branch, for all the refugees of branch 2 that came in odds with the dubious activities going on there. Needless to say, I was coerced into taking over as secretary, without a clue as to what the job exactly entailed. Just the usual threat to throw me out on the street if I didn’t comply. Well, that turned out to be a right idiot farm. The president and co. had their own dubious schemes; some shooting club in Mahlberg that had gone bust because of them drinking up the assets. They actually thought I had some kind of cash stashed away, and should get them a grant from the VA through my father. Naturally my father said no, but did nothing about this lot trying encroach me at every opportunity. Did they even care when I shattered my ankle? My father didn’t even have the decency to tell them when I was in the hospital, nor did anyone help me try to get around without expecting my complicity in return. When push came to shove, I tried to get the instigator banned from the premises, but of course the committee couldn’t get it through their heads that I was literally being stalked, and for what? Some shooting club locked down by court order that wasn’t going to be opened without someone paying a few hundred thou up front, say nothing of the licensing costs and all...and certainly far removed from anything the Veterans Association would endorse. Not even my father tried to understand the abuse I went through at that job in Mahlberg thanks to their hate campaign.



When my father finally had that stroke trying to open a branch in Holland, they didn’t have the common decency to rush him to a hospital, at least via ADAC. The only help I had caring for him was his partner Reg. When Reg saw just how messed up the situation had become, he too made enemies in branch 4. When election time came I threw them my resignation while making sure the president’s rival took over. I knew his rival was just as dogged to dictate his own regime. These guys definitely have a problem taking anything a woman says seriously, so I though I’d even the score. Mind you, instead of putting up a good fight against each other and learn something, they hid their tails and fled, which is just well. These sheeple just want to be led to their familiar pastures, even if it meant giving up their charter for some branch in Quebec. I just don’t get what makes some think I should be so obliged as to give their pipe dreams precedence over my own responsibilities. Either way, I just didn’t have the time for such tomfoolery while having to home care two seriously damaged parents. Now that all is over and done, it’s not like I miss any of it, let alone have any regrets.

Some people are just not your friend at all

I remember one who married when she was 15 and spent most of her life sheltered, raising 4 kids while her husband worked 60 hour weeks to afford such an existence. Well, when the kids grew up and left home, I guess the husband became the focus of her matriarchal fixation. It’s not uncommon that such relationships wear out at that point, especially if both partners take too much for granted. She came home one night to find him in bed with another woman. Needless to say it ended in a fist fight and immediate divorce.

I got to know her after she collected around 70 thou for half of the property. I intended it to be a casual acquaintance, nothing too involved, as it was apparent she never really learned how to interact with people outside her domestic life. She had looked me up to read her cards, but before long, it became obsessive. It was very hit and run, throwing money at me, though I refused to take it. Her attempts to make new friends never ended well because of that ugly habit of giving what SHE liked as a form of emotional blackmail, practically trying to take over your life, albeit, what you wear, eat or drink, where you should go and what to do. I would get calls in the middle of the night, demanding I do a reading because some person in her life just couldn’t take it anymore and had to tell her where to get off. When she’d come on with that “people abuse my generosity” I’d warn her that it’s not something you can enforce on people to see things your way. It is the right of every responsible adult to make their own choices, but she not only missed that lesson in life, but absolutely refused to learn it.

When I broke my ankle, she tried to exploit that in every way of imposing dependency. She dragged me to the mall in town, a place I preferred to avoid like the plague, especially on crutches. She insisted on breakfast on the gallery way up without an elevator, then argued with me over what I should eat, though I persistently warned her about my allergies. When I needed new underwear, she dragged me to the next city, parking in the middle of a huge parking lot and that in 35°C weather. She drags me into this shop that had nothing in the way of briefs. Failing that, she sits me on a stack of carpets then buggers off. After waiting a half an hour in the sweltering heat, my leg swelling up, I decided I better leave for the next store. There I found what I needed then went back to search for her but couldn’t find her, so I went back to the car. There I waited another 20 minutes in the burning sun. She finally arrives and gives me hell, though I told her I just couldn’t take the pain anymore.

At some point she realized I wasn’t buying into her dependency schemes, so she comes on to my close mate, complaining that I’m being difficult. Mind you, before long he began to feel just as cornered...and when that wasn’t enough she went and joined the Legion Branch where I was secretary, then tried to take over that show with her decorum and trinkets.

One day I had an appointment with the employment office and she insisted on driving me. I knew it would go wrong so I made alternate arrangements. It didn’t interest her that showing up late would have lost me my unemployment money. Needless to say, she went into a screaming tirade regardless, when she found out. Though we never spoke again, it didn’t stop her from trying to weave her web of influence around me.

Weeks later another friend phoned up utterly gob-smacked at the trail of hostilities this woman was leaving behind every broken relationship. I told my friend, forget it, just be glad she’s left you, because I don’t think she’ll stop until she’s landed in an institution. Not surprisingly, when I quit the legion, she disappeared into anonymity. As for the cards, I hid them away somewhere, never to be found again.

Let By-gones Be By-gones

My recent birthday fling brought back a few memories of some 30 years ago. The superficial peer-worshiping attitudes and their grand expectations of people like me. Sure, I was the best in my field but for quite different reasons, like most underdogs of the military community, hoping one day to reconnect with all that was lost in the political no-zone. All that braggery and posturing they called camaraderie, proved little more than a bad hangover. Always trying to feed me what I couldn’t eat, and all their lack of communication skills without massive amounts of alcohol. Always ruining every effort I tried to decently celebrate. They didn’t think that mindless hierarchy would ever come to an end, and when it did, they just couldn’t get over it. It was hell trying to lose that lot amid my father’s desperation to sustain it, and when he died, they actually thought I should carry on that legacy, as if I should have nothing better to do. After all these years of being coerced into the surrogacy of a brain damaged mother, I wasn’t about to take over that role either...and that is where the story ended, once and for all, thank fuck.

The Ratio of Gobshite to Fuckwit

As all things deem to escalate in the causality curve, this year is undoubtedly the epitome. Since Fasching the Corona virus has taken the gusto out of everything, thanks to the elitist plonkers and their holidays in Bergamo and the Italian Alps ski resorts. I’ve been trying to make ends meet by working for the neighbourhood help services until all the bus service in my locale got canned. Thankfully, some nice ladies took pity on me and gave me a fabulous bicycle to do my rounds, which is certainly improving my health. Fortunately our little municipality has been kept clear of this disease, but people are shit scared. Nobody wants to deliver groceries to the needy. At least little shops and the border is opening up again to the Alsace, but us locals are leery just the same, thanks to some fools who took part in some big evangelical gathering in Mulhouse without the necessary precautions.


Susan’s slow suicide through alcohol and pills had finally landed her in the funeral home while her pet peeve is making arrangements for marriage with his overweening island queen coming November. At least Wolfgang has finally decided to sell the lot so we can find some peace of mind. The question is, just how long can I endure this circus before I jump this sinking delusional ship in a rage. Still, I hope it all goes so far away that I can’t even hear the screams.