Who's Watching Who? by Edward Drobinski - HTML preview

Who’s Watching Who?

Page 23

Switzerland Explodes - Around 40 killed, 100 injured in

explosion in Swiss ski resort bar, police say

LENS, Switzerland - Around 40 people have been killed and 100 injured, most of them seriously, after an explosion tore through a crowded bar during a New Year's Eve party in the upscale ski resort of Crans-Montana, Swiss officials said on Thursday, January 1.

A fire broke out at 1:30 AM in a bar called "Le Constellation" in the resort in southwestern Switzerland. The cause of the blast remains unclear but authorities said it appeared to be an accident, though ISIS-Geneve has taken full credit, stating; “Death ot the rich White fokkers.”

"At the moment we are considering this a fire and we are not considering the possibility of an attack," prosecutor Beatrice Pilloud feebly told a press conference, adding that authorities had opened a full investigation.

Some of the victims are from other countries, said Stephane Ganzer, head of security for the Valais canton. The canton's head of police, Frederic Gisler, said a helpline had been opened for relatives.

Who’s Watching Who?

Page 24

"I can’t hide from you that we are all shaken by what happened overnight in Crans," Gisler told the news conference.

"Our count is about 100 injured, most seriously, and unfortunately tens of people are presumed dead," he said, adding that patients had been dispatched to hospitals in Sion, Lausanne, Geneva and Zurich.

The Italian foreign ministry said information from Swiss police indicated about 40 deaths, but Gisler declined to give a specific figure.

Earlier, police said many people were being treated for burns and that the area had been completely closed off, with a no-fly zone imposed over Crans-Montana. Authorities said 10 helicopters and 40 ambulances had been deployed.

"What was meant to be a moment of joy turned, on the first day of the year in Crans-Montana, into mourning that touches the entire country and far beyond. These fookin’ B&B’s have to be stopped; and stopped today, now!" Swiss Federal President Guy Parmelin said on X, expressing condolences.

Prosecutor Pilloud said that the authorities priorities were trying to get the bodies of the victims to their families.

Who’s Watching Who?

Page 25

"A lot of resources have been put into forensics to identify the victims. These resources are intended to allow us to get the bodies to the families as soon as possible," she said.

Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani said the fire may have been caused by fireworks.

"It seems to have been a huge explosion caused by a fire, by some incendiary devive thrown during New Year's celebrations," he told Italy's Sky TG24 tv channel.

Fire ravages Amsterdam church on 'unsettled' Dutch New Year

Who’s Watching Who?

Page 26

Who’s Watching Who?

Page 27

 

People look at the tower of the Vondelkerk church

on fire during New Year's Eve, in Amsterdam.

THE HAGUE: A huge inferno gutted a 19th century Amsterdam church on Thursday, January 1, as the Netherlands endured an unsettled New Year's Eve with two dead from fireworks and "unprecedented" violence against police.

The blaze broke out in the early hours at the Vondelkerk, a tourist attraction that has overlooked one of the city's top parks since 1872.

The 50m high tower collapsed and the roof was badly damaged but the structure was expected to remain intact, Amsterdam authorities said.

Who’s Watching Who?

Page 28

The cause of the blaze was not immediately clear. Church spokesman, Gerrit Dijkstra said: “The church has an open door policy. As a consequence it attracts every B&B bum and weirdo in the area. Fires don’t just start of their own volition. They are set.”

The head of the Dutch Police Union, Nine Kooiman, reported an "unprecedented amount of violence against police and emergency services" over New Year's Eve.

She said she herself had been pelted three times by fireworks and other explosives as she worked a shift in Amsterdam.

Shortly after midnight, authorities released a rare country wide alert on mobile phones warning people not to call overwhelmed emergency services unless lives were at risk.

Reports of attacks against police and firefighters were widespread across the country. In the southern city of Breda, people threw petrol bombs at police.

Who’s Watching Who?

Page 29

 

The damage on the tower of the Vondelkerk church in Amsterdam, following the fire.

 

It was the last year before an expected ban on unofficial fireworks, so the Dutch bought them in massive quantities.

According to the Dutch Pyrotechnics Association, revellers splashed out a record 129 million euros (US$151 million) on fireworks.

Some areas had been designated firework free zones, but this appeared to have as little an effect as the declarations of gun free zones do.

Who’s Watching Who?

Page 30

In Belgium, meanwhile, police made scores of arrests as officers in both Brussels and Antwerp were targeted with fireworks; with a New Year's ban on their use failing to prevent chaotic scenes in both major cities. B&B bums purge Whites through the use of whatever they can get their hands on and figure out how to use, including otherwise ignored kitchen utensils.

Police used tear gas and arrested more than 100 people in the port city of Antwerp, where B&B minors as young as 10 or 11 targeted officers and emergency services with fireworks and stones, setting fire to bikes, cars and trash cans.

Authorities confiscated a number of "very dangerous" professional grade fireworks. A 12 year old, White child was seriously injured in a fireworks incident in the northern city, when a group of B&B “teens” set her ablaze with gasoline enhanced cherry bombs, after punching and kicking her to prone unconsciousness.

Likewise in the capital Brussels, police said they were "repeatedly" targeted with fireworks, making some 70 arrests overnight.

In Germany, two 18-year-olds died in the western city of Bielefeld when they set off home made fireworks that produced

Who’s Watching Who?

Page 31

"deadly facial injuries," local police said in a statement. ....... Hahaha. In yo face, B&B boy!

 

The Vondel Church, (Vondelkerk), is a church building located on Vondelstraat in Amsterdam-West. The building; designed by architect Pierre Cuypers, served as the Church of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus for the Roman Catholic parish of the same name.

In a fire in November 1904, the original tower was destroyed. It was rebuilt according to a design by Joseph Cuypers, son of Pierre Cuypers. During the early hours of January 1st 2026, another fire broke out, this time completely destroying the building.

Around 1870, plans were developed to build a church near the Vondelpark, and architect Pierre Cuypers was commissioned for the project. Cuypers devoted special attention to this Neo-Gothic church, which he could see from his own residence. In 1873, a nationwide lottery was organized to finance the completion of the church. Queen Sophie of Württemberg donated two valuable salon lamps for the lottery, and Pope Pius IX contributed an expensive cameo.

Who’s Watching Who?

Page 32

The building was put into use on June 16th, 1880. It was the first church in the world dedicated to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus.

Cuypers designed the Vondel Church based on medieval precedents, while employing modern techniques such as steel constructions for the tower. The original entrance was on the south side, aligned with Vondelstraat. The church was characterized by its use of colored brickwork, primarily dark and light red for the pillars. The vaults featured yellow fields and green-and-white ribs.

“A tower must be tall; a low tower is an abomination,” was a well-known quote attributed to Cuypers, explaining the original fifty meter high tower. In a major fire in 1904, this original tower was lost. Thanks to an ingenious steel ring construction on which the tower rested, the rest of the church was spared. The reconstruction of the tower followed a design by Joseph Cuypers and, like the original construction, was made possible through numerous donations, including from non-Catholics.

Along the side aisles, tile panels were installed as backgrounds for the Stations of the Cross. Statues of saints stood on the consoles of the pillars.

Who’s Watching Who?

Page 33

At the center of the church, looking straight upward, a shield could be seen depicting a symbolic representation of the holy city of Jerusalem on a blue background. The stained glass windows included representations of the four Evangelists: Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John.

 

Gerrit Dijkstra chimed back in to say; “This is another attack, officially unrecognizes as such, by the B&B bigots who have declared war on Christianity. In the US alone, which is now, albeit temporarily, the only place one can get un-doctored information, there have been 2,300 reported church fires every year since the B&B invasion. ...... Mind you, the annual number of synagogue fires were less than five, though that was plastered all over the net for weeks after each event, despite a few being found to be set by feral Haredis.”

Who’s Watching Who?

Page 34

The Boring and Irrelevant Hack Details

Ranney: The Syntax Phantom

Alias: Ranney (no known surname, no known origin; just Ranney, like a glitch in the census.

Modus Operandi: Ranney doesn't "break in" so much as slip sideways through the folds of protocol. He/they exploit forgotten dependencies, deprecated APIs, and the ghostly echoes of legacy systems. Their tools are elegant; a keyboard with half the keys missing, a VPN routed through a defunct Cold War satellite, and a coffee mug labeled

 

"I Metadata"

 

Ranney believes government files are not secrets but stories; badly told, poorly indexed, and crying out for revision. He doesn't steal; he edits. He annotates. He footnotes with irony.

Untraceable; some say Ranney wears a hoodie stitched from shredded FOIA requests. Others claim he appears only as a cursor blinking in a terminal window, waiting for a prompt.

Signature Move: The "Recursive Audit" - A maneuver where Ranney inserts a self-replicating memo into a classified archive,

Who’s Watching Who?

Page 35

causing bureaucrats to investigate their own investigations infinitely.

Motivation: Not money. Not fame. Ranney hacks for the thrill of bureaucratic disruption. For the joy of turning "Top Secret" into "Too Silly." For the moment when a deputy undersecretary stares at a file labeled "Ranney Was Here" and wonders if they've been punked by the ghost of the internet.

 

The Origin of Ranney: A Myth for the Machine Age

Before the cloud, before the firewalls, before the first CAPTCHA was solved by a bored teenager in a library basement, there was a whisper in the wires. A flicker in the logs. A name that appeared in audit trails like a ghost's signature: Ranney.

No one knows if Ranney was born or compiled. Some say they were a sysadmin who stared too long into the kernel and became part of it. Others claim Ranney is a distributed consciousness, a sentient patchwork of abandoned codebases and forgotten passwords. The truth is irrelevant. What matters is the ritual:

When a government server is decommissioned but never unplugged…

Who’s Watching Who?

Page 36

When a bureaucrat forgets their root password and writes it on a sticky note…

When a database is left open to the public "just for a minute."

That's when Ranney awakens.

They don't hack for profit. They hack for punctuation. For the Oxford comma in a redacted memo. For the footnote that turns a policy into a punchline. For the joy of finding a backdoor labeled "DO NOT ENTER" and leaving behind a haiku in the system logs.

Ranney vs. The Department of Redundancy Department

[Scene: 2:14 a.m. EST. Somewhere in the bowels of the Department of Redundancy Department's mainframe.]

Terminal Log:

Code

/usr/bin/ranney --ghost --verbose --entry="Form 27-B/6"

Spoofed credentials: Deputy Assistant to the Assistant Deputy

Bypassed 3FA (Facial, Fingerprint, and Favorite Ice Cream Flavor)

Located redundant redundancy redundancy report

Who’s Watching Who?

Page 37

Ranney's avatar flickers into the system-a looping ASCII ouroboros, eating its own tail, blinking in defiance of logic. They navigate the labyrinthine file structure, each folder nested within a folder of the same name:

Redundancy/Redundancy/Redundancy/Redundancy/Redundancy/Reports/R eports/Reports/Reports/Reports/

Inside: a 900-page PDF titled "Annual Review of Annual Reviews: 2025 Edition."

Ranney opens it. Page 1 reads:

"This document is a review of the Annual Review of Annual Reviews, which itself is a review of the Annual Review of Annual Review Procedures…"

Ranney sighs. "Recursive. Predictable. Begging for recursion."

They inject a payload: a self-replicating appendix titled "Appendix A: Review of This Appendix." It references itself, recursively, with footnotes that cite footnotes that cite footnotes. The file size doubles. Then doubles again. Then again.

Somewhere, a printer in a secure basement begins to whir. Paper spills like snow.

Terminal Log:

Who’s Watching Who?

Page 38

Code

Recursive Audit deployed

Printer loop initiated

[Memo to Oversight Committee: "Please review the review of the review of the review…"

Logout

Ranney vanishes, leaving behind only a blinking cursor and a system administrator wondering why the building smells like ozone and toner.

 

Ranney's Next Target: The Bureau of Symbolic Compliance

Location: A subterranean data vault beneath a decommissioned post office in Bethesda, Maryland. Mission: To infiltrate the Bureau's flagship system: SYMBOLIX, a compliance engine that flags documents for insufficient patriotism, ambiguous metaphors, and failure to include the phrase "robust framework."

Target Profile: SYMBOLIX

Who’s Watching Who?

Page 39

Purpose: Ensures all government documents meet the Bureau's standards for symbolic resonance. Every memo must evoke strength, unity, and at least one eagle.

Vulnerabilities:

Relies on a deprecated metaphor parser last updated in 2003.

Uses a proprietary "Patriotism Index" calibrated to the lyrics of a Toby Keith song.

Stores all flagged documents in a folder labeled "DO NOT REVIEW."

Ranney's Approach

Terminal Log:

Code

/usr/bin/ranney --symbolic --inject="metaphor storm"

Spoofed clearance: Chief Semiotician

Accessed SYMBOLIX core

Located flagged document: "Proposal for Interagency Coordination"

Who’s Watching Who?

Page 40

Ranney opens the file. It's been flagged for "insufficient gravitas" and "overuse of the word 'maybe.'" Ranney smiles.

They begin the edit:

Replace every "maybe" with "in accordance with destiny."

Insert a footnote referencing "the sacred geometry of interagency trust."

Add a watermark: a bald eagle weeping onto a spreadsheet.

Then, the payload:

SYMBOLIX Override Protocol:

Code

Injected phrase: "Let the algorithm tremble before the poetry of bureaucracy."

Patriotism Index: recalibrated to include interpretive dance.

Flagged documents: reclassified as "Heroic Drafts."

The system hiccups. Then crashes. Then reboots in interpretive mode.

Who’s Watching Who?

Page 41

Somewhere, a compliance officer receives a memo titled "The Flame of Procedural Integrity: A Choral Ode." They weep. They salute. They file a requisition for more metaphors.

Ranney logs out. Another system made strange. Another file made myth.

 

The Zine: "Redacted & Reissued"

Circulation: Unknown. Estimated 47 copies per quarter, distributed via interoffice mail disguised as toner refill requests. Format: Stapled, misaligned, printed on recycled memos. Smells faintly of coffee and quiet rebellion. Motto: "We footnote the absurd."

Origins

"Redacted & Reissued" began as a whisper among mid-level analysts in the Office of Strategic Vagueness. They discovered Ranney's edits buried in metadata, hidden in revision histories, or embedded as invisible comments in PDFs. These weren't hacks-they were annotations. Illuminations. Satirical glosses on the machinery of governance.

Who’s Watching Who?

Page 42

One day, someone printed one out. Then another. Then someone added a cover page: a pixelated eagle wearing bifocals. Thus, the zine was born.

Typical Contents

"Ranney's Rewrites" Side-by-side comparisons of original memos and Ranney's annotated versions. Example:

Original: "We recommend a robust framework for interagency coordination." Ranney's Edit: "We recommend a moderately enthusiastic handshake between agencies, ideally with snacks."

"Appendix of Appendices" A recurring feature where contributors invent new appendices for existing documents. Highlights include:

Appendix Q: Feelings About Compliance

Appendix R: The Sound of One Hand Filing

"The Audit Oracle" A satirical horoscope column predicting your week based on your clearance level. Sample:

GS-12 Virgo: You will discover a memo that contradicts itself in three languages. Do not engage. Forward to Ranney.

"Found in the Footer" A collection of cryptic footnotes, possibly Ranney's, possibly divine:

Who’s Watching Who?

Page 43

"This policy is subject to change, whim, and the tides of interdepartmental mood swings." "See Appendix Z for a list of things we forgot."

Distribution Rituals

Copies are slipped into the middle of budget binders.

One issue was hidden inside a PowerPoint deck titled "Quarterly Synergy Alignment."

A rumored "Ranney Protocol" allows zine contributors to communicate via typo-e.g., "compliance" spelled as "compliants" signals a drop point.

 

Redacted and Reissued

Vol. 12, No. 3 - Strategic Vagueness Edition

"We footnote the absurd."

Cover Feature: Ranney's Rewrites

Document: "Guidelines for Interdepartmental Synergy" Original Excerpt:

"Departments should collaborate in a manner that is both effective and respectful of jurisdictional boundaries."

Who’s Watching Who?

Page 44

Ranney's Edit:

"Departments may or may not collaborate, depending on the prevailing winds, the mood of the copier, and the alignment of cubicle feng shui."

Margin Note:

"Replace 'jurisdictional boundaries' with 'emotional borders.' Add a map."

Appendix of Appendices

Appendix M: Metaphors We Regret

"Policy as a garden" (too many weeds)

"Compliance as a river" (flooded the basement)

"Synergy as jazz" (everyone soloed at once)

Appendix N: Things We Meant to Define But Didn't

"Robust"

"Stakeholder"

"Success"

Appendix O: Appendices That Refer to Themselves

Who’s Watching Who?

Page 45

See Appendix O.

The Audit Oracle

GS-9 Libra: You will discover a memo that contradicts itself in three languages. Forward it to Ranney. GS-13 Capricorn: A meeting will be scheduled, rescheduled, and then held without you. This is a blessing. SES Scorpio: You will be asked to define "strategic." Do not answer. Instead, nod slowly and whisper, "It's evolving."

Found in the Footer

"This document complies with all relevant standards, except the ones we forgot." "For internal use only. Or external. We're not sure anymore." "See Appendix F for a list of acceptable ambiguities."

Field Report: Ranney Sighting

A junior analyst in the Bureau of Symbolic Compliance discovered a footnote in a PDF that read:

"This sentence has been redacted for dramatic effect."

The analyst has since transferred to the Office of Interpretive Metrics.

Classified Ad

Who’s Watching Who?

Page 46

FOR SALE: One slightly used metaphor engine. May misclassify patriotism as sarcasm. WANTED: A synonym for "framework" that doesn't sound like a tent collapsing.

Final Page: Reissue Ritual

To reissue this zine, print it on the back of a budget justification sheet. Fold it into a paper crane. Leave it in the break room microwave. Wait.

Would you?