A Waste of Freedom

Posted on January 8, 2005 in Geocaching Paranoids

Trust in your wingnut to pollute anyplace he enters, regardless of the focus. I’ve ignored the political mutterings of more than a few people at Southern California geocachers — or I’ve kept my comments off that board. Most of the rages can be classed as differences of opinion: whether it is an onus for Big Government to keep Big Wheels out of certain sections of the desert or if it is better to see GPS as a military or a civilian application.

This time, however, the matter is sheer disinformation brought to the board by an outright true believer from Arizona who has waded the Colorado to squat for the purpose of spreading the Devilspel of fear. The story this time is of secret caches of fissionable materials left in the United States by the KGB (right out of A Beautiful Mind) channeled from an eminently uncredible source called Ultra-Paranoid.

Observe how he introduces the story by referring to a long forgotten UPI article — a trial balloon sent up and forgotten by Rep. Curt Weldon who seems to glory in scare stories. Weldon is now on a junket to North Korea where he will undoubtably be told where to stick it as far as cooling their nuclear program. Weldon is also involved in setting up a new Homeland Security oversight committee which has been described as “a confusing mess”, which isn’t too surprising considering that it comes from the same people who squandered a $2 billion surplus and a Himalayas of good will in under two years. Then there is this tidbit about Weldon’s own family serving terrorist interests of a different sort:

Karen Weldon, the 29-year-old daughter of Rep. Curt Weldon , R-Pa. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported that despite her lack of foreign-policy experience, Karen was given a lobbyist contract of a quarter-million dollars from Serbian interests allied with accused war criminal Slobodan Milosevic, as well as a $20,000-a-month contract with a Russian aerospace manufacturer. Rep. Weldon later pushed to get visas for the Serbians and deals for the Russian company.

Massachusetts officials scoffed at another example of Weldon grandstanding: his claim that Seabrook was a certain terrorist target. Then there are Weldon’s links with one John “Digger” Dolan. According to the Philadelphia Inquirer:

U.S. Rep. Curt Weldon (R., Delaware County) has twice asked House committees to allot $5 million for Dolan’s software company. In June, Weldon asked the CIA’s chief of clandestine services to meet with Dolan.

The Congressman has a strange sense of national security: Dolan has been caught using false identities and trying to get out of traffic tickets by mentioning the names of Pennsylvania Republican cronies who not only include Weldon but also Tom Ridge. Such activities would certainly deny him any kind of security clearance but Weldon has gladly fattened Dolan’s coffers.

And that’s the news just from the month of December 2004!

It was quite easy for me to dismiss this rant, but a poll at the site suggests that there remain a healthy number of people who believe in the phantom KGB bomb caches. Of course, it was not at all wise for the wingnut to mention the source of his one article or the shady history of Representative Weldon. Nor does he want to consider the way that while Weldon was oh so eager to rail against Clinton on the matter of the “secret caches”, mum has been the word when it comes to the Bush Administration. Wouldn’t he want to assure us that the caches had been found and secured? His silence betrays that he is nothing more than a manufacturer of Big Lies.

So, I can safely shelve this along with the story about the Mexican Army’s invasions across the Rio Grande and the incursions of Red Chinese troops. The reaction to the story at SCG suggests that the Gullible Army has successfully infiltrated even hobbies which have no reason to be politicized. In their quest for confirmation of their own peculiar beliefs, some people keep turning in circles and never noticing that they’ve become so dizzy that they’ve fallen on their faces and are sucking mud through their nostrils.

All I can say about these processed cheese stories is what a waste of freedom!