TEN GOOD THINGS in DYSTOPIA

GOP Plan to Sink U.S.

Countdown w/ Keith Olbermann. The GOP War on Government: Gutting Public Employee Unions, Public Services, and Cutting Taxes for Wealthy. VIDEO LINK: http://www.commondreams.org/video/2010/12/28-0

 

Dick Cheney’s $250-Million ‘Get Out of Jail Free’ Card by John Nichols, December 28, 2010 by The Nation What’s the going rate for getting a former vice president off the hook in a major criminal case that involves charges of government corruption and raises concerns about violent wrongdoing and even murder?

If you’re Dick Cheney, it’s roughly $250 million. That’s the amount that Halliburton and its former subsidiary KBR Inc. are reported, by Nigerian officials and international observers, to have paid to get the government of the African country to drop bribery charges against the former corporate CEO and other Halliburton employees and operatives.

Top Nigerian lawyers and newspapers are objecting, and rightly so. The charges against Cheney and his colleagues go far beyond the usual corporate corruption.

Nigeria's Agony - The Deepwater Horizon disaster caused headlines around the world, yet the people who live in the Niger delta have had to live with environmental catastrophes for decades.

READ MORE: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/12/28-1

 

Daydreams and Power.

 

ABSTRACT: 2011: A Brave New Dystopia by Chris Hedges December 27, 2010 by TruthDig.com

The two greatest visions of a future dystopia were George Orwell’s “1984” and Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World.” Orwell [saw us] dominated by a repressive surveillance and security state that used crude and violent forms of control. Huxley envisioned us entranced by entertainment and spectacle, captivated by technology brave new dystopia, brave new world, 1984, and seduced by profligate consumption to embrace our own oppression. Orwell and Huxley were both right. Huxley saw the first stage of our enslavement. Orwell saw the second.

We have been gradually disempowered by a totalitarian corporate state that, as Huxley foresaw, seduced and manipulated us through sensual gratification, cheap mass-produced goods, boundless credit, political theater and amusement. While we were entertained, the regulations that once kept predatory corporate power in check were dismantled, the laws that once protected us were rewritten and we were impoverished. Now that credit is drying up, good jobs for the working class are gone forever and mass-produced goods are unaffordable, we find ourselves transported from “Brave New World” to “1984.” The state, crippled by massive deficits, endless war and corporate malfeasance, is sliding toward bankruptcy. It is time for Big Brother to take over from Huxley’s feelies, the orgy-porgy and the centrifugal bumble-puppy. We are moving from a society where we are skillfully manipulated by lies and illusions to one where we are overtly controlled. 

Orwell warned of a world where books were banned. Huxley warned of a world where no one wanted to read books. Orwell warned of a state of permanent war and fear. Huxley warned of a culture diverted by mindless pleasure. Orwell warned of a state where every conversation and thought was monitored and dissent was brutally punished. Huxley warned of a state where a population, preoccupied by trivia and gossip, no longer cared about truth or information. Orwell saw us frightened into submission. Huxley saw us seduced into submission. But Huxley, we are discovering, was merely the prelude to Orwell. Huxley understood the process by which we would corporatist totalitarian noose tightening on americans, american democracy smashed by corporatist elite, be complicit in our own enslavement. Orwell understood the enslavement. Now that the corporate coup is over, we stand naked and defenseless. We are beginning to understand, as Karl Marx knew, that unfettered and unregulated capitalism is a brutal and revolutionary force that exploits human beings and the natural world until exhaustion or collapse.

The noose is tightening. The era of amusement is being replaced by the era of repression. Tens of millions of citizens have had their e-mails and phone records turned over to the government. We are the most monitored and spied-on citizenry in human history. Many of us have our daily routine caught on dozens of security cameras. Our proclivities and habits are recorded on the Internet. Our profiles are electronically generated. Our bodies are patted down at airports and filmed by scanners. And public security state service announcements, car inspection stickers, and public transportation posters constantly urge us to report suspicious activity. The enemy is everywhere.

Those who do not comply with the dictates of the war on terror, a war which, as Orwell noted, is endless, are brutally silenced. The draconian security measures used to cripple protests at the G-20 gatherings in Pittsburgh and Toronto were wildly disproportionate for the level of street activity. But they sent a clear message—DO NOT TRY THIS. The FBI’s targeting of antiwar and Palestinian activists, which in late September saw agents raid homes in Minneapolis and Chicago, is a harbinger of what is to come for all who dare defy the state’s official Newspeak. The agents—our Thought Police—seized phones, computers, documents and other personal belongings. Subpoenas to appear before a grand jury have since been served on 26 people. The subpoenas cite federal law prohibiting “providing material support or resources to designated foreign terrorist organizations.” Terror, even for those who have nothing to do with terror, becomes the blunt instrument used by Big Brother to protect us from ourselves.

“Do you begin to see, then, what kind of world we are creating?” Orwell wrote. “It is the exact opposite of the stupid hedonistic Utopias that the old reformers imagined. A world of fear and treachery and torment, a world of trampling and being trampled upon, a world which will grow not less but more merciless as it refines itself.” Chris Hedges writes a regular column for Truthdig.com. and was for nearly two decades a foreign correspondent for The New York Times. His most recent book is Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle. READ MORE: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/12/27-1

 

Julian Assange

 

 More Than Ten Good Things to Celebrate in a Bad Year by Medea Benjamin

This year was marked by turmoil at home and abroad, including a deepening financial crisis that continues to leave millions jobless and homeless, as well as ongoing and expanding wars. But despite the setbacks and disappointments, here is a list of victories to be thankful for..

It’s an important reminder, as we go into what will be a very difficult new year, that people on all continents continue to struggle for a more peaceful, just, sustainable world. And as long as people keep organizing and mobilizing, there will be victories to celebrate. READ MORE: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/12/28-2

 

Cheers!

 

Tags: cheney pays 250 million to nigeria to drop criminal charges, dick cheney's get out of jail free card, GOP cutting public services, GOP gutting public unions, GOP plans to collapse the U.S., GOP war on government, Hallibruton and KCR bribe nigerian officials, halliburton and cheney behind nigerian environmental catastrophe, julian assange, pope benedict drinks beer, ten good things to celebrate in a bad year