I have returned.

Apologies for my extended absence, I had to deal with a long period of unemployment.

Which actually brings me to today's topic:

Did you know that this year, American companies created less than one million jobs in The United States. Interestingly enough, they creates over 1.5 million jobs in other countries. If you wanna know why most of us can't find work, now you know. I'm not one to generally adopt the "They're takin' our jobs" mentality...but dammit, how are us people on the bottom of the ladder supposed to survive.

Obligatory:

So here's a theory.

A few years back, when 9/11 occurred, it was used as a catalyst to put several laws into play that never would have stood a chance at passing in the first place. Laws that allow law enforcement to arrest, search, wiretap, and detain you (among other fun things) without a proper warrant. This was called The Patriot Act and it was only meant to last for a year or two, and was supposedly instated to help flush out potential terrorists. The law is still in effect today, approx 9 years after it was passed. I'm not going to start the inside job argument here, you can believe what you will as far as that goes, but I will say that this was a very large and complex bill and I highly doubt that somebody didn't have this puppy sitting in their filing cabinet somewhere waiting for the right opportunity to get it passed way before the incident that acted as its catalyst.

I bring this up because we're now looking at an interesting situation right here on the internet. The cablegate document leak has the media and world governments abuzz and obviously steps are going to be taken to prevent such incidents in the future. I find it rather odd that this incident fell so close to the congressional debates over bills like COICA which allows drastic censorship of the internet at the whim of the US government.

Now, I see a lot of drama regarding Julian Assange, but I've seen very little in the way of trying to find his source, which makes me wonder. Given that, in all honesty, the documents in question aren't really all that damaging: Would it be so much of a stretch to believe that these were intentionally leaked to cause all this buzz. I think congress will have a far easier time getting an internet censorship bill through now, especially with the massive violent backlash many hacker organizations are bringing in retaliation for Assange's arrest. Many people have feared a "cyber-9/11", but maybe it won't even be anything that drastic that draws the curtain on net-neutrality.

Also, I'm sure getting rid of a particularly annoying fly like Wikileaks would be a wonderful added bonus to the people who want secrets kept.

So, for those of you in the tl;dr crowd, brace yourselves...I have a feeling that the proverbial shitstorm is gathering strength, or maybe (hopefully) I'm just over thinking things.

Is it just me...

...or is all hell breaking loose lately. There's a mess with Korea (which could easily turn into a mess with China if not dealt with very carefully), the republican party refusing to let any bills pass unless a tax break for the wealthy is voted on, and this Wikileaks fiasco that proves that Interpol can invent charges to bring you in when they feel you've crossed a line that hasn't been defined (which is something I'm quite surprised that more people aren't outraged over).

Grab a helmet and strap in boys and girls, I think we're in for quite a ride.