I'll title this properly later or something

Too tired right now.

Notes To Self:
Do not piss of local law enforcement.
Dande is not good. Probably should investigate further.
Anyone who wears a suit in the jungle and does not seem to feel discomfort despite said conditions is probably not to be trusted. Outside of the obvious.

It's been a long week.

You never expect that you're going to get shot at when you visit a local charity. There's something in the word "charity" that makes you expect a helping hand, or assistance. Not a large man in a suit grinning at you with several heavily armed gunmen to each side. Luckily no tall men with no faces in suits. Just ones with gunmen. Actually, maybe not too lucky. Misfortune shouldn't be measured up to misfortune, it's all bad. It's a bit too hot to be typing but I gotta get this down on paper.

Simone and I broke into their building. I guess that was our first mistake-- my first mistake. There weren't any alarms, and at the time it wasn't well guarded. We were looking for some financial papers to corroborate what we learned about Dande's affiliation with the local and state governments. The headquarters seem to be the remains of a school that has been rebuilt for the purposes of a bureaucracy. After opening several locked doors we found a room filled with filing cabinets, assumed to be an office of some sort. I was looking through their returns and payments whilst Simone checked through the other papers that were in this desk area. We made several worrying discoveries. The papers being sent to the other aid agencies, NGO's, government agencies and the UN have been meddled with. The number of children in Dande's count doesn't match the information it has been sending to these organizations-- it says there are fewer children in the town than there actually are. This has been repeated within reports for several other townships. Unfortunately, after looking over these papers things went awry.

Okay, out of my lawyer voice. Who the fuck gave these bastards flamethrowers? Please. Someone tell me. Oh wait, I funded this entire goddamn system based on the trade of illegal weaponry in order to post on this blog that I keep incase I end up a corpse (likely due to the use of illegal weaponry.) Simone ran off, and I got set on fire (luckily just on the arm because I really don't think I could get good care for first degree burns out here). By the time managed to put out the fire I had been surrounded by the guards. I was taken by the boss. Picture one of those plastic dough bags squeezed into a suit, chewing a cigar. That's this boss. He looked like a melted snowman. The man told me "They'll be his by next month," and threw me out.



I've been trying to do something about it. But I have no idea what to do.

XXX, Democratic Republic of Congo, 3:20 PM

As you might be able to tell, I've survived my encounter with the border patrols. General checks, more money changing hands. Luckily dollars are worth quite a bit around here. I've stopped worrying about funding international crime, and at least I know faces and names for when I get back to my feet. Which may never happen, particularly when one glances at the number of people exposed to the MONSTER and survive for more than a couple of years.

We've been staying here for about a week, and already there are signs coming in through the edges that Africa isn't as free of the MONSTER as I'd wished. Mostly it's in the people, in the way they tell stories, the way they glance out of the corners of their eyes and in how they constantly look at the shadows. The way they warn you about the woods. I wonder how many thrill seeking tourists have wandered into the woods looking for a tiger and ended up finding a darker fate. Not that being eaten by a tiger isn't a dark fate.

Sorry about Simone's last post. She's not the most eloquent of translators. I guess I'm stuck with her. Bless. I don't think being shot did anything for her character, either. Also, well, she hates it here. I dunno what to do. I was never any good with girls. Or guys. Or people who aren't so embroiled in the legal process that they lose all humanity. First lawyer joke's out of the way, then.

Anyway, to business. We've been asking around about papers that I wish to have in my possession, mostly financial reports. This village is small by my standards, though I did live in New York so I may have a distorted perception of scale. It's a little over two thousand people, but it seems like less. There's a school set up, a relatively good market place, and a black market for illicit trading and information gathering. I've been incapable of finding too much about that. I have, however, come across some rather interesting facts about the aid agency stationed here. Mostly about the size of the donations they give to the local and state governments.

So I'm going to visit the aid organization's headquarters, this Dande group, tomorrow, and see if there's anything odd going on. I'll probably update soonish. Sooner than usual, in any case.

Yo.

Heya internet, this is Simone. The boss (which is what some of you lot call the ~monster~ [bossmanAd makes me use that because he hates synonyms and thinks lots o' words sound silly, but I digress]) but anyway he told me to write on here. He's so fucking anal about his system, you know. Total fucking one track minded OCD. And I don't give a fuck about being PC or polite or accurate because it's a description and I have a bullet hole in my leg so you aren't allowed to argue. So Adam is a total neurotic but I guess I'm stuck with him, but whateva. Anyway, I'm in the back of this van somewhere in central Africa whilst Ad goes out to negotiate with the tough looking armed militants who stopped us. All the locals seem nervous, which is a good sign. Sarcasm. Forget you can't type it. But swear to god, he comes back full of bullet holes and I'm going to kill him. Our confused Armenian friend keeps asking me what's going on since his grasp of English is-- well, it's not bad for three years work, but not good enough to keep up with bossman's fast talk. I have no idea what's going on actually.

But anyways; I have to angst about my life or sommat. I'm not going to ramble too much because I am trying my best not to turn into the boss, who never stops talking. Ever. Lawyer magic, I think. There's not much to talk about that hasn't been said a million times before by much more eloquent people than me. Dad was killed in a mysterious fire when I was twoish, we lived in a house by the woods, I have memories of a tall, dark, faceless, be-tentacled imaginary friend. Forgot about him for a few years, grew up, got a life, good grades, un degré dans les longues, minoring in International Relations, got a dull temp job courtesy of my mom. Yeah, not very ethical, but I don't have half the ethics of the bossman. Who is worryingly straight edged. Bet he didn't even sip wine before he hit twenty one. T'was good right up to the point where some guy woke me up from a nap by handcuffing me and putting a bag over my head, which is a privilege reserved for my boyfriend and not some random black ops guy.

I'm kinda sick of being away from home. Yeah, it's cool to be in Africa, and yeah I wanted to be here after graduation anyway. But... why. And that's not a pretentious why either, it's a "so many better places to put ex-illegally collected prisoners" why. I want to go home. Now I'm sounding like a three year old and there are gunshots outside, so yes. Going to stop typing. Laters, internet.

Victim/Perpetrator

xxxx, Angola, 9:29AM


Fuck.

Seriously. I'd do that thing I see in a lot of the blogs, where people go "FUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCK" but honestly that's more a cry for attention. Since I just spent the last twenty minutes swearing at Simone, after which she spent twice as long speculating about the gender and profession of my mother, I think I'm done venting. It's not been a good couple of days. Nothing related to the MONSTER, the Perpetrators, the Victims, or the Victim/Perpetrators. Simple bureaucracy, mitigated with human error and issues with our criminal friends.

To elaborate, Jesus Godchrist too many guns. You may remember that Simone and I were last writing from a warehouse in Angola. You may also remember that we had plans to move from Angola to another country rather soon. Well, problems came up. Those problems being police, both military and civilian. Say what you will, the Angolans are getting rather adept at policing their criminal markets, proving my earlier analysis wrong. That or the criminals here are supernaturally incompetent, pathetic, or incapable of sight. The warehouse Simone and I had been staying in was a storehouse for drugs and illegal weaponry, and the night we were supposed to be traveling to Namibia with a shipment of various illegal things all hell broke loose. Never thought I'd hate the police, but I guess that's where we are.

We're currently inland, which is bad, and Simone's laid up with a gunshot wound, which is really very bad, and there's definitely a storm coming. I'm getting a bad feeling, like there are Victim/Perpetrators in this country just waiting to come out. So far, though, my preoccupation has been with renegotiating the terms of my informal contract with the underground-- and getting Simone the attention she needs for her shoulder. If that doesn't get enough attention, I hate to think what could happen. Okay, enough ominous foreshadowing.

I'd like to thank those who have commented so far. I think I might have to attempt to avoid the persecution of Refugees, since most of you have already had your lives ruined. The information about larger structures was intriguing, however, and I'll have to read more into it. Compiling evidence is of the utmost importance, and what I've been told and what I've read are leading to some very interesting conclusions indeed. Unfortunately I can't get the information I want, at least not in Angola. Maybe not even in Africa, which would suck. Maybe at one of the embassies...

But I digress. We're alive, and fairly safe. Simone is still cursing, as am I. No signs of the MONSTER, Victim/Perpetrators, regular Perpetrators, or other law enforcement officials. I just hope we can get out of this country before the storm hits.

XXXX, Angola, 11:03 PM

Angola is currently one of Africa's fastest growing economies. It's got a good oil market, it's recovering from a quarter century civil war, and it's started having proper elections again. It's also got a lot of ports, which makes the illicit and illegal trades much easier. Illegal markets also make transportation pretty simple for people like me. I don't need papers or identification and I can get almost anywhere I want. Currently it's warm, dark, and a little cloudy here, but the light's poking through. Hopefully I'll be out of the country by the end of the week. Angola has nothing to offer me except a quick ride to any continent I want, and at the moment I'm fine in Africa.

Simone's asleep already, but it's pretty damn late right now. Simone's my translator, nice kid with a degree in languages from Brown. She's smart and sarcastic as hell and willing to club the skull of anyone who does her wrong, so we get along well. We're staying in a warehouse with an internet connection, since I was willing to shell out for it. When you know the dynamics of illegal trade you can get what you want wherever you are.

You guys-- runners, bloggers, fighters, Victims-- have offered a lot of information to the internet. God, you're trusting. You don't expect anyone to be watching and taking notes. It's not just me doing it either. There are men out there, big men with big cheques and big armies to back them up, who are taking notes in bigger notebooks than I have. You haven't put the whole story in the blogs, though, have you. Most of you are smarter than that. You've all got things you haven't told anyone.

All I'm asking for is information. I wouldn't expect anyone to give me information without knowing anything about me, though, but I'm not willing to give up all my information until I have all the gaps filled in. I'm a lawyer, with a Harvard degree would you believe it, and my focus has always been international and corporate law. I moved to New York a few years ago, and that's when I started seeing the MONSTER. My partner never saw it, but I did. The MONSTER never came close, though, too busy preying on feral inner New York kids. I thought I was going crazy, and tried to ignore it. Everything would have been fine if it weren't for what happened on April 24th. I was abducted from my bed by a group of government spooks and locked up in a small room with a bunch of other people. We had some pretty specific things in common-- we all had a loved one who'd been kidnapped as well, we'd all done various degrees of nothing wrong, and we'd all seen the MONSTER. And we were all there for three years. Then, at the end of April of this year, we were tossed out onto the shores of an unknown country, and told we weren't welcome back in the states. Ever again.

I'm an outlaw, now, and I can use their networks. The group of prisoners mostly went their separate ways, though we're all staying in touch. I want to know what happened to the loved ones that got abducted. I want to know why we were arrested illegally from our beds in the middle of the night. I want to know what's going to happen next, and I want to know what the MONSTER has to do with any of this. We're all Victims, you see. Victims of the MONSTER, but also of a system that works against our efforts to survive and is only interested in information about the MONSTER. That's why I'm appealing to you, the bloggers, the Victims. Because I want to know the crimes. I want to know the Perpetrators. I want to bundle all this information together as tight as possible to put forth in front of the worlds courts, and I want to show the world the truth. I want to find the truth. And I want justice.

I'm your lawyer, so tell me the crimes.

This is

It's about them. The ones who aren't protecting us, who are working against us, who are helping the monsters, being the monsters. The corporations, the firms, the governments, the churches, the policemen, the armies, the organizations that were supposed to build upon one another to fight back and help us, to do the right thing and aid us in our times of need.  This is about them, the groups that let us down and failed at every duty they were created to succeed at. We are supposed to be able to trust our government to come out with the answers or at least pursue the answers, but that's not what has happened here. Not in this case, not in this lifetime, not ever. People are dying all around us, and the states of the world are not only hindering the efforts of the people trying to survive for their own vile interests, but are occasionally actively aiding the MONSTER in its efforts to destroy the Refugees. It's about the governments, corporations and NGO's who believe that the continuation of their own interests instead of the survival of people. It's about them.

It's about them. The ones who aren't being protected, who are dying all around us, who are being killed because nobody is helping, not even the people who are supposed to help. This isn't just about the individuals, but it is about the individuals. It's about getting them, those who have been tortured, and killed, and hounded and unjustly arrested and embittered, all of them, Victims, justice. These ambivalent government agents, these Perpetrators, have not only allowed the MONSTER to get away time and time again, but they've aided him, whether they are aware of it or not. You know them, if you're reading this, you know who I am speaking of. The corrupt cop, the politician who is just a little too happy to give to that new children's home, the army unit who goes about their destruction just a little too gleefully, the church that washes the blood from their hands before a fundraiser, the government that experiments on the helpless and mad. The Perpetrators are everywhere, they're staining everything, and they need to be brought to justice. It's about them.

This isn't about cowboy cop vigilante tit for tat. These people broke promises and contracts and the law, and that's what needs to be in the spotlight. It's not a mission of vengeance, it's not a vendetta. This is about coldly, calmly and carefully bringing down those who have brought us down. This is about the law, and using the law as a tool, to break the ice around us and free us from lies and hatred and heresy and pain. This is about truth, and bringing to light what is happening and has happened and will happen with cold, hard facts, each case utterly airtight, ready to be brought before a court of law. This is about reconciliation, about allowing those who run back into the society that rejected them, and about forcing those who serve the MONSTER out into his arms, or wherever their foul thoughts take them. This is about the truth, and you have it, whether you know it or not. It's about reconciliation, and you need it, whether you know it or not. It's about justice, and that is needed, and everyone knows it. It's not about revenge.

It's not about me.