The Totalitarian Dystopia Was Predicted

From Point / Counterpoint, 17 May, 2000:

Timothy Geist, Point: The Future Will Be A Totalitarian Government Dystopia:

I am sad to say that for all our efforts in the name of freedom, the future shall be a bleak one, indeed. Such visionary authors as George Orwell and Robert Heinlein have mapped out the hellish future that awaits.

By the end of this century, the Earth will be controlled by a single unified world government–a government solely dedicated to perpetuating itself and keeping the populace under control. The first and greatest casualty of this New World Order shall be personal liberty.
Humans will live in identical, low-ceilinged, one-roomed concrete dwellings, outfitted with little more than a bed and a telescreen, arranged in endless grid patterns stretching to the horizon. 

Our bleary-eyed descendants 100 years hence shall shuffle between their assigned tasks in gray, one-piece coveralls. What few possessions they enjoy will be meted out by the government, and even these spare trinkets will be small and inexpensive–a plastic comb, a morsel of chocolate, a new pair of shoes when the old ones have worn to unwearability.

[ ... ]

Trent Schlictmann, Counterpoint: The Future Will Be A Privatized Corporate Dystopia

I beg to differ with my colleague. Having read the futuristic accounts of William Gibson, Neal Stephenson, and Philip K. Dick, the path our future shall take will be bleak, indeed–but in a much different way.

When the ongoing trend of corporate mergers reaches critical mass in 2030, the scant handful of corporations that remain will be too powerful to resist and will ultimately supplant all government. National borders will crumble, replaced by warring corporate armies who deploy vat-grown Yakuza assassins to take down enemy CEOs in the name of commerce.

The future will be every color but gray–not that the future will be worth living in. Giant videoscreen billboards will cover the exposed surface of every skyscraper, bombarding our consciousness with advertising for anything and everything. Looking up will expose us to giant orbiting mylar superscreens bearing more logos and slogans. A citizen will be unable to walk down the street without encountering roving clouds made up of billions of microscopic nanoprobes that form corporate logos right before their very eyes.

~ more... ~

George Soros and the Muslim Brotherhood

By Mark Tapson, Frontpage Magazine / AINA

"...But there may be more in play here than simple fairness and wishful thinking on Muasher's part. He happens to oversee research for the Middle East at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, funded by leftist multi-billionaire George Soros, one of the world's most politically influential men. Soros is waging his own personal ideological war against America by shoveling seemingly limitless funds into organizations giving life to his “progressive” vision of social justice.

That vision, like the Muslim Brotherhood's, identifies America and Israel as the "Great Satan" and "Little Satan" respectively, who must be demolished to pave the way for a purifying, redemptive utopia. These common enemies unite progressives and Islamic fundamentalists in what David Horowitz has coined an “unholy alliance.” As Andrew C. McCarthy writes in The Grand Jihad, "With their collectivist philosophy, transnational outlook, totalitarian demands, and revolutionary designs, Islamists are natural allies of the radical Left."

Thus Soros and his spokesmen like Muasher see opportunity in the unrest roiling the Middle East and North Africa -- opportunity to support the enemy of their enemy. The numerous ties of Soros and his Shadow Party cohorts have been documented; they include the master puppeteer's own Open Society Institute and various anti-Western Islamist groups in the revolutions. It has been confirmed, for instance, that the International Crisis Group (ICG), led in part by Soros, has long petitioned for the Egyptian government to "normalize" ties with the previously banned Brotherhood -- for example, in a June 2008 report called “Egypt’s Muslim Brothers: Confrontation or Integration?” And this talking point is echoed by Brian Katulis, senior fellow at the Soros-funded Center for American Progress: "Any real democratic opening would lead to greater participation of groups like the Muslim Brotherhood in a future Egyptian government." ..."

~ more... ~

State of sousveillance

By Mark Pesce, ABC

This is the future of urban life, of civic life.  No longer anonymous, no longer unbounded.  Moving to the big city no longer means you are just a face in the crowd.  You are known, thoroughly known.

This isn't the Orwellian dystopia of ubiquitous CCTV cameras and a pervasive surveillance state.  Rather, this is the world of 'sousveillance', the bottom-up universe where six billion people are all taking photos that automatically get uploaded to Facebook and Google+, shared around, identified, tagged, indexed, and continually referenced.

This door swings both ways; not all mobs are the elemental embodiment of the forces of order.  What would happen if, for example, the rioters themselves had the kinds of tools enjoyed by Vancouver's bloggers?

We saw this during the London riots of early 2011.  To avoid being 'kettled' by the London Metropolitan Police, protesters turned to Sukey, a smartphone app that allowed them to report on, then share, the location and activities of police involved in protest management.  This gave the protesters broader situational awareness than the police, which meant they could simply outmanoeuvre the police - making themselves absent where the police were, making themselves present where the police were not - thus there was never much of a mob to kettle.  For several hours, rioters had their way in London's West End, around Trafalgar Square, and the Cenotaph.

The forces of order and the forces of chaos both gain incredible empowerment, but at the cost of anonymity.  Those unlucky enough to be targeted by Vancouver's mob-of-order could have turned the tables on those persecuting them, using those same tools to harass the harassers. That will happen, next time, whether in London or Cairo or Beijing.  Force will meet force, both sides fully revealed for the first time, each attempting to strike the soft underbelly of the other while shoring up its own weaker points.  Bellum omnium contra omnes.

~ more... ~

From Clive Thompson on Establishing Rules in the Videocam Age by Clive Thompson, Wired

During the Arab Spring, pro-democracy activists discovered that Bambuser let them thwart the Egyptian secret police. If a protester filmed an incident of police brutality, it didn’t matter whether they were arrested and their phone confiscated: The footage had already streamed to the world, where it catalyzed political energy against the Mubarak regime.

“The police thought, if we take all the phones, we can control the information. But they didn’t,” Adler notes. “The message still got out.”

The Arab uprisings showed that the use of video as a monitoring tool has shifted decisively. Throughout the ’90s and ’00s, civil libertarians worried about governments and corporations slapping up surveillance cameras all over the place. The fear was that they’d be used as tools of oppression. But now those tools are being democratized, and we are witnessing an emerging culture of “sousveillance.”

Sousveillance is the monitoring of events not by those above (surveiller in French) but by citizens, from below (sous-). The neologism was coined by Steve Mann, a pioneer in wearable computing at the University of Toronto. In the ’90s, Mann rigged a head-mounted camera to broadcast images online and found that it was great for documenting everyday malfeasance, like electrical-code violations. He also discovered that it made security guards uneasy. They’d ask him to remove the camera—and when he wouldn’t, they’d escort him away or even tackle him.

“I realized, this is the inverse of surveillance,” he said.

Sousveillance

Sousveillance Panel Discussion: Panopticon

Why Save the Euro?

Mark Weisbrot: Euro was and is a right-wing project.

~ The Real News ~

Without bosses: the process of recovering companies by their workers in Argentina, 2001-2009

By Red Libertaria de Buenos Aires, anarkismo.net

Introduction

From late 2001 and the beginning of 2002, sectors of the Argentine working class staged an extraordinary experience of struggle. The occupation of companies and the commencing of production without bosses. In the context of an economic crisis, high levels of unemployment, bankruptcy of companies and massive retrenchments, thousands of workers organised themselves to keep their jobs.

Economic and Political Crisis

Between 1997 and 2001 there was a severe economic crisis in Argentina that impacted heavily on the bloc in power. This crisis was surmounted by a popular rebellion on the 19th and 20th of December that, facing a state of siege, forced the resignation of President Fernando De la Rúa and the opening of a process of leaderlessness in the executive branch of the Republic [1], and an advancement of popular struggle. This rebellion put an end to a series of neoliberal governments in the country, while there was a breakthrough in popular struggle: neighborhood assemblies, movements of unemployed workers and the recovery of factories and businesses by workers.

During the '90s an economic model based on the "convertibility" of the currency was imposed in Argentina. This meant that 1 peso was equivalent to 1 U.S. dollar. Clearly, the only way of maintaining this parity was through external credit. When, from 1997, credit became more expensive, Argentina's economy went into a severe recession. While the economic model had generated a high rate of unemployment (over 10%), the crisis of unemployment now soared to over 25%. Many businesses went bankrupt, pushing more workers onto the streets. The government's response, following the advice of the IMF and World Bank, was to implement national budget cuts, which worsened the people’s situation. By 2001, Argentina had ceased to be a haven for financial investments, with much capital having left the country. The government's response was to freeze savers' bank deposits, a situation that eventually constituted an expropriation of the workers and middle class to save the banking system.

Faced with this situation, the bourgeoisie was divided around two programmes to overcome the crisis. One side sought to abandon "convertibility", devaluing the currency, to make local production more competitive at a global level. The other side wanted to adopt the dollar as legal tender, making the local economy more dependent on the U.S. economy.

The social situation became intolerable in December 2001. The freezing of bank deposits prevented workers from having access to their wages. The lack of money supply accelerated the process of bankruptcy and unemployment increased. It was in this way that, on the 15th, the looting of shops began in the slums of the big cities. The government responded by declaring a state of siege (state of emergency), suspending the population’s constitutional rights on the night of 19th December. After transmission of the presidential message on national TV, the population of the large cities began to take to the streets, banging pots and pans, chanting "What jerks, what jerks! They can put the state of siege up their ass!" or "All of them must go – not one of them must remain!", demanding the resignation of the minister of finance, the president and all the politicians. Thus began the popular rebellion, of an insurrectional nature, that ended the presidency of Fernando De la Rúa.

Winner Take All Politics

The super-rich become richer and richer at the expense of the middle class 

By Lutz Lichtenberger, SF Bay Area IMC

[This summary of the political book “Winner Take All Politics” by Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson published 7/11/2011 is translated from the German on the Internet,http://www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/das-politische-buch-winner-take-all-politics-us-superreiche-werden-immer-reicher-auf-kosten-der-mittelklasse-1.1118614. 
Lutz Lichtenberger works for the German monthly “The Atlantic Times” in Berlin.] 

[Since Ronald Reagan’s term in office, the assets of the US have been systematically and massively redistributed from bottom to top. US political scientists Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson call this a “thirty-year war” in their powerful, myth-destroying book “Winner Take All Politics.”] 

Government buildings are in a state of siege. Thousands of protesters sing, drum and whistle. Representatives of the regime are yelled at and their houses watched. Supporters from all over the country donate food and money and show their solidarity. On the telephone, the governor talks with a super-rich supporter about whether troublemakers should be hired to mix among the people. 

The scenes come from Madison, not Tunisia, Egypt or Libya. Madison is the capitol of Wisconsin where public workers, teachers and union members rebel against a law that cuts their salaries and limits collective bargaining. 

~ more... ~

Mystery Death of Phone-Hacking Reporter

Mystery surrounds the death of the former News of the World reporter Sean Hoare. The 47 year old was found dead at his UK home on Monday evening.

Hoare was the first named journalist to allege that former tabloid editor Andy Coulson was aware of phone hacking by his staff.

In an interview with the BBC's Panorama he revealed: "If you've got to get a story, you've got to get it by whatever means." The interviewier then asked him if he was subject to that kind of pressure. "Yes of course I was. That is the culture of News International," he replied.
...
http://www.euronews.net/

Give Back in Guatemala

Give Back in Guatemala by Jonah_Reynolds

Earthship Biotecture and Long Way Home are teaming up to build a Michael Reynolds designed self sustaining and recycled home in San Juan de Comalapa.

Long Way Home has found a local Mayan women, Maria with five children who are all in need of help.

AnonyMous Press Release on Arrested : A crime against freedom and democracy

- On the 19th of July, 2011, The US, UK and dutch governments decided that they finally had enough of their citizens' rights to freedom. In true dystopian style, these governments have trounced upon not only the rights of these individuals, but the basic rights of all individuals: freedom of speech, freedom of expression, and freedom of association.

These actions should not go unanswered.

Those who were arrested believe in a cause, believe in an idea, believe in all of us. We must respond with a real and concentrated effort to redress these arrests. We, as Anonymous, have a very real responsibility to these people, who were jailed fighting for freedom, so we can continue to fight for theirs.

Have you ever joined a sit in, taken part in a strike, marched in the street, or attempted to block access to a building in protest? Anon's actions are the cyber equivalent of these traditional forms of protest, arresting our activists for doing this is a crime against freedom and democracy. But how could our actions be seen and accepted as real protests by governments, when we are shown daily, that they only tolerate demonstrations that serve their own purposes...

Anonymous has now been falsely labeled as a "terrorist group"; people are getting arrested for this unjust accusation and it has become a dirty cat and mouse game with incalculable and uncontrollable consequences. All our actions can be directly compared to protesting on the street... is that terrorism? How could anyone know and prove that an individual belongs to this "group"? Governments can now arrest any activist under this "label" without a real charge and nothing to prove that they belong to or identify with Anonymous. Even though Anonymous is not a "group" it is an idea shared by all who value freedom and justice.

Governments can achieve nothing by attempting to silence participants in Anonymous, as for every one of us that falls, ten more will take their place.

People of the world... do not forget that Anonymous fights not for our own freedom, but for the freedom of everyone, including You.

"When injustice becomes law, rebellion becomes duty"
Thomas Jefferson

We are Anonymous.
We are Legion.
We do not forgive.
We do not forget.
Expect us.

Graffiti Men of the Syrian Uprising

Musical Innerlube: Nomad Spectrum - Horns of the Uprising

Interview from the Spanish Rebellion

An interview with one of the activists on the central spot of Puerto del sol from where the spanish rebellion is being orchestrated.
A strong european movement for real democracy. 1 million people are showing the government that the people cannot be ignored. Thank you Spain for showing all of us how it is done.

YOU ARE ANONYMOUS

A Message From Anonymous About....

Freedom, Hackers, Wikileaks, Law, Revenge, Corporations, Protest, Free Speech, Leaks, Cyber War, Mastercard, Visa, Operation Payback, Censorship, Websites, Government, HBGary, Security, Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Bradley Manning, Fear, Justice, Economic Collapse, Fighting Back, Direct Peaceful Resistance, Concealment, Lies, Conspiracy, Establishment, Global Banking System, Attack, IRC, Voting, Botnets, Democracy, Ethics, Knights In Shining Armour, Rising Up, Changing Our World, Internet Shutdown, The Plan, V, Spreading The Message, Graffiti, The Elite, Truth, Education, Self Sufficiency, Precious Metals, Fiat Currency, Legends, Intelligence, Confidence, Helping Spread, Focus.

United As One Divided By Zero.

We Are Anonymous.
We Are Legion.
We Do Not Forgive.
We Do Not Forget.

Expect Us.


http://www.youtube.com/theanonpress

Related:

Economics of Happiness

Robert Frank, Justin Wolfers, Daniel Gilbert

Architecture of Happiness

Proust CAN change your life

HOW PROUST CAN CHANGE YOUR LIFE 
by Alain de Botton 
read by Samuel West 
.
This witty combination of biography and literary criticism is an informative and amusing book about the celebrated French writer, imitating the style of present-day 'self-help' books.

~ See Also:

Unanimous Declaration of the Resistance

Unanimous Declaration of the Resistance by cveitch

Transcript of the video here:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/27828551/World-Declaration-of-Independence

Based on the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America. I changed a few sentences and words to update for 2010, and the challenges we face now. I believe the D of I is the most beautifully written philosophical tract proclaiming the rights of men to be free. 

New Court Filing Reveals How 2004 Ohio Presidential Election Was Hacked For Bush

From Alexander Higgins' Blog:

A new court filing reveals how the 2004 Ohio Presidential Election was hacked to help win the election for George Bush.

Free Press reports a new court filing reveals a high-tech system using a sophisticated man in the middle hacker attack that was used to steal the 2004 Ohio presidential election for George Bush.

The filing includes, among many other documents, the deposition of the IT guru, Michael Connell, who worked for the Bush Family and Karl Rove who created the controversial system which transferred the Ohio vote results to a Republican server site in Tennessee. After giving the revealing deposition on the inner workings of the system Micheal Connell dies soon afterward in a suspicious small plane crash.

The filing also includes correspondence with IT expert who stated the controversial system had the ability to modify input data and concluded the system acted as a man in the middle to hack the data as opposed to providing the functionality of creating a mirror copy of the data which the system was supposed to do.

The article further reveals the government officials have found that touch screen voting machines are more vulnerable to hacking than other systems yet continued to be used even in light of the 2004 election scandal during which the suspicious transfer to the Tennessee server occurred and there was a direct connection from the White House to the server during the election.

~ more... ~

She's Alive... Beautiful... Finite... Hurting... Worth Dying for

This is a non-commercial attempt to highlight the fact that world leaders, irresponsible corporates and mindless 'consumers' are combining to destroy life on earth. It is dedicated to all who died fighting for the planet and those whose lives are on the line today. The cut was put together by Vivek Chauhan, a young film maker, together with naturalists working with the Sanctuary Asia network (www.sanctuaryasia.com).

The Video Congress Does Not Want You To See

The Revolution will not be televised - Spot

The revolution will not be televised; is a Westminster 2nd year animation made by Taz Thomas, Jon Shaw Di-Doi, Martin Hill this animation is a look into the near twisted future!!! throw the eye of these talented animators join the revolution and stand up against the system!

Pentagon Seeks to Manipulate Social Media for Propaganda Purposes

By Washington's Blog, Global Research

Wired reported on Friday:

The Pentagon is looking to build a tool to sniff out social media propaganda campaigns and spit some counter-spin right back at it.

On Thursday, Defense Department extreme technology arm Darpa unveiled its Social Media in Strategic Communication (SMISC) program. It’s an attempt to get better at both detecting and conducting propaganda campaigns on social media. SMISC has two goals. First, the program needs to help the military better understand what’s going on in social media in real time — particularly in areas where troops are deployed. Second, Darpa wants SMISC to help the military play the social media propaganda game itself.

This is more than just checking the trending topics on Twitter. The Defense Department wants to deeply grok social media dynamics. So SMISC algorithms will be aimed at discovering and tracking the “formation, development and spread of ideas and concepts (memes)” on social media, according to Darpa’s announcement.

~ more... ~

The Debt Crisis and the War Cycle

Excerpt from Clif Droke's interview of Richard Hoskins for Green Faucet:

Q: In your book you talk about the intricate relationship between war and the economy.  Do you see the U.S. returning to war anytime soon?

 

Hoskins: When we run into a big problem with money, what do we always do in a usury system?  We go to war.  And what’s the reason for that?  We go to war to borrow money into existence, to force people to borrow money into existence.  And then they’ll have money to spend on ice cream cones and cars and boats and everything else after all the killing is done.  This time they built something we never heard of before – usury notes or IOUs that resulted from building houses.  Everybody had to have a house and everybody had to borrow money for the house and the banks were issuing bonds all over the place.  Well it just so happened that it all came to an end.  And when it came to an end all the money that it been borrowed into existence carried interest that must be paid, because if you don’t pay interest on an IOU what do they call it?  They call it default, bankruptcy, call it anything you want, but it came in a hurry and all these banks were up to their necks in IOUs that had no collateral worth speaking of. 

 

Now all of a sudden we had to have money and going to war is too slow. We’ve been fighting these brushfire wars ever since World War II and that keeps the money rolling and keeps a certain amount of money being borrowed into existence all the time.  It helps a lot but we had to do something and do it fast, so they did something that had never been done before.  They went up to Washington and voted a great big war debt overnight.  They called it a stimulus bill.  It was more than what World War I and World War II cost and they did it in one day!  And there they were with money all over the place. But it didn’t even wet the surface of the problem because so much money had been borrowed and there were so many bonds had been issued that it did little to pay for the IOUs that were coming due.  It still doesn’t. 

~ more... ~

Black humor from China's Hu Jintao

From On Hu Jintao's call for Marxist innovation by Heiko Khoo, China.org.cn

Hu Jintao argued that the key to fighting corruption is vigilance and forceful measures, and that leading officials at all levels must only exercise power as agents of the people. "We must serve the people, hold ourselves accountable to them, and readily subject ourselves to their oversight."

Hu placed great emphasis on Marxism and scientifically verified practice as the guiding ideology and method of the Chinese Communist Party. He reiterated one of the fundamental and oft forgotten principles of Marxism: "without democracy there can be no socialism" whilst recognising that the development of "China's socialist legal system has not fully met the need of expanding people's democracy" and that real socialism requires that "all state power belongs to the people".

The Flower

The Flower contrasts a utopian society that freely farms and consumes a pleasure giving flower with a society where the same flower is illegal and its consumption is prohibited. The animation is a meditation on the social and economic costs of marijuana prohibition.

Animation by Haik Hoisington
http://www.blackmustache.com

Music & Sound Design by Ion Furjanic
http://lavajumperstudios.bandcamp.com/