http://www.alternet.org/media/146005/we_st... /


We will have to resist the temptation to fold in on ourselves and to ignore the cruelty outside our door.
March 18, 2010  |

Chris Hedges
 

We stand on the cusp of one of the bleakest periods in human history when the bright lights of a civilization blink out and we will descend for decades, if not centuries, into barbarity. The elites have successfully convinced us that we no longer have the capacity to understand the revealed truths presented before us or to fight back against the chaos caused by economic and environmental catastrophe. As long as the mass of bewildered and frightened people, fed images that permit them to perpetually hallucinate, exist in this state of barbarism, they may periodically strike out with a blind fury against increased state repression, widespread poverty and food shortages. But they will lack the ability and self-confidence to challenge in big and small ways the structures of control. The fantasy of widespread popular revolts and mass movements breaking the hegemony of the corporate state is just that – a fantasy.



When you ingest the poison of violence, even in a just cause, it corrupts, deforms and perverts you. Violence is a drug, indeed it is the most potent narcotic known to humankind. Those most addicted to violence are those who have access to weapons and a penchant for force. And these killers rise to the surface of any armed movement and contaminate it with the intoxicating and seductive power that comes with the ability to destroy. I have seen it in war after war. When you go down that road you end up pitting your monsters against their monsters. And the sensitive, the humane and the gentle, those who have a propensity to nurture and protect life, are marginalized and often killed. The romantic vision of war and violence is as prevalent among anarchists and the hard left as it is in the mainstream culture. Those who resist with force will not defeat the corporate state or sustain the cultural values that must be sustained if we are to have a future worth living. From my many years as a war correspondent in El Salvador, Guatemala, Gaza and Bosnia, I have seen that armed resistance movements are always mutations of the violence that spawned them. I am not naïve enough to think I could have avoided these armed movements had I been a landless Salvadoran or Guatemalan peasant, a Palestinian in Gaza or a Muslim in Sarajevo, but this violent response to repression is and always will be tragic. It must be avoided, although not at the expense of our own survival.



Too many resistance movements continue to buy into the facade of electoral politics, parliaments, constitutions, bills of rights, lobbying and the appearance of a rational economy. The levers of power have become so contaminated that the needs and voices of citizens have become irrelevant. The election of Barack Obama was yet another triumph of propaganda over substance and a skillful manipulation and betrayal of the public by the mass media. We mistook style and ethnicity – an advertising tactic pioneered by the United Colors of Benetton and Calvin Klein – for progressive politics and genuine change. We confused how we were made to feel with knowledge. But the goal, as with all brands, was to make passive consumers mistake a brand for an experience. Obama, now a global celebrity, is a brand. He had almost no experience besides two years in the senate, lacked any moral core and was sold as all things to all people. The Obama campaign was named Advertising Age’s marketer of the year for 2008 and edged out runners-up Apple and Zappos.com. Take it from the professionals. Brand Obama is a marketer’s dream. President Obama does one thing and Brand Obama gets you to believe another. This is the essence of successful advertising. You buy or do what the advertisers want because of how they can make you feel.




If we build self-contained structures, ones that do as little harm as possible to the environment, we can weather the coming collapse. This task will be accomplished through the existence of small, physical enclaves that have access to sustainable agriculture, are able to sever themselves as much as possible from commercial culture and can be largely self-sufficient. These communities will have to build walls against electronic propaganda and fear that will be pumped out over the airwaves. Canada will probably be a more hospitable place to do this than the United States, given America’s strong undercurrent of violence. But in any country, those who survive will need isolated areas of land as well as distance from urban areas, which will see the food deserts in the inner cities, as well as savage violence, leach out across the urban landscape as produce and goods become prohibitively expensive and state repression becomes harsher and harsher.




The indifference to the plight of others and the supreme elevation of the self is what the corporate state seeks to instill in us. It uses fear, as well as hedonism, to thwart human compassion. We will have to continue to battle the mechanisms of the dominant culture, if for no other reason than to preserve through small, even tiny acts, our common humanity. We will have to resist the temptation to fold in on ourselves and to ignore the cruelty outside our door. Hope endures in these often imperceptible acts of defiance. This defiance, this capacity to say no, is what the psychopathic forces in control of our power systems seek to eradicate. As long as we are willing to defy these forces we have a chance, if not for ourselves, then at least for those who follow. As long as we defy these forces we remain alive. And for now this is the only victory possible.

http://slatest.slate.com/id/2248353/?wpisr...

Democrats Introduce Legislation To Increase Pell Grants

New legislation introduced by congressional Democrats on Thursday would raise the maximum annual Pell grant to $5,975. Thirty-six billion dollars in new financing would help to cover the increase as well as cover a $13.5 billion shortfall created this past year when an overwhelming number of Americans went back to school during the recession. "Congress would pay for the larger grants by ending subsidies to private banks that make student loans and shifting to direct federal lending," the New York Times reported. "But the amount going to education spending and aid for college students is far less than the Obama administration had hoped, largely because the savings from the switch to direct federal lending is now estimated to be $61 billion, rather than $87 billion." Additionally, some of those savings will go toward offsetting the cost of a health care overhaul and toward deficit reduction. "This legislation offers the most sweeping changes to the federal student loan program in a generation," said Rep. George Miller, chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee.

http://slatest.slate.com/id/2247826/?wpisr...

Details have started to emerge about the bill to overhaul the country's financial regulations that Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd will introduce Monday, and it looks like it will be worse for banks than many predicted even a few days ago. Although the Federal Reserve would lose oversight of thousands of banks it still comes out as the "biggest winner in the bill," says the Wall Street Journal. The Fed would have the authority to supervise any bank or financial company with more than $50 billion in assets, meaning that it would still be able to watch over the largest companies, even if they aren't banks. The New York Times hears word that the bill would include measures that would open the door for shareholders to have "advisory votes" on executive pay as well as nominate directors for the boards of public companies. The bill would also create a council to study systemic risks to the economy that could order that certain companies be overseen by the Fed as well as make it easier for the government to take control and dismantle a large, failing financial company. In what is bound to be one of the most controversial aspects of the legislation, a new consumer protection division would be created under the Federal Reserve. It's still unclear whether the bill stands much of a chance seeing as though no Republicans are expected to support it initially, although Democrats are confident they'll be able to win some over.

It was a great success. Everyone bought as many hearts as they could and awarded them to themselves in a grand display of self-centered conspicuous consumption.

I think this could be HUGH!!!!. I mean, WOW, think of the implications of legislating natural laws and scientific outcomes. Perhaps they could now pass a bill rounding pi off to an even 3. Think how much simpler math would then be in Utah.

They could become a Mecca for technological development and a veritabe Camelot in the desert. Like, next they could alter the gravitational constant to make things lighter there and save a lot of money on transportation costs. And they could end that nasty old evolution debate forever by outlawing natural selection and genetic drift.

They live in the realm of Misspellheim.



There are two varieties, who differ on the choice of material that should be used in the white sheets with which they attire themselves. One group is the Satinists, and the other group is the Muslins.



And then there's this guy:

literature
languages
philosophy
history
mathematics
science

Modern conservative arts
Psychopathy
Denial
Deception
Greed
Flat-earth theory

Lookit. None of them can even afford sheets and hoods. Maybe we should take up a collection.

(And note which direction he is facing)

The Supreme Court appears poised to permit a massive relaxation of the rules on political contributions. I applaud this trend, but fear that it doesn’t go nearly far enough in cleaning up the tangle of rules and regulations governing our electoral process. Therefore, I would like to propose some simple reforms to make government more responsive and efficient. My grand scheme is predicated on the well-documented fact that political outcomes are decided by money, and upon the apparent intention of the Supreme Court to accelerate this trend. The genius of plan I am about to propose is that it turns what is often perceived as a flaw or failure of the system into a virtue.

The first step in my plan is to permit unlimited contributions to politicians. Any politician will be allowed to take any amount of money from any source at any time.

Second, the cumbersome electoral apparatus will be junked. Instead, all political offices will be put up for bid. Anyone who wants to be a Senator, for example, will submit a bid of so many dollars for the job, and the job will be awarded to the highest bidder. Once in office, the politician will receive no salary; instead, each will be expected to support him/herself on a fee-for-service basis, by selling individual votes on proposed legislation, charging a substantial fee to introduce proposed legislation written by corporate lawyers, etc.

This plan is startling in its elegant simplicity and cost-effectiveness. It can be made to work at all levels of government, from the local city council to the Presidency. In a single stroke it converts the government from a financial drag on society into a center of profit. Furthermore, in the same stroke, it restores honesty to the system. No longer will politicians have to maintain a pretense of serving the interests of people without money. No longer will we be plagued with financial scandals. And no longer will the public need to be distracted from Nintendo, celebrity news, and reality television by so-called “electoral politics.”

This general philosophical approach can be extended beyond the Executive and Legislative branches to the Judicial branch as well. The whole expensive edifice of the Court system, at all its levels, can simply be replaced by a simple system in which court decisions will be determined by a fair and honest bidding process. This can be made to work handily in both civil and criminal matters. If a poor person steals from a rich person, the rich person can pay to have the criminal convicted and punished. As a side benefit, I predict that our jail and prison systems would fall into disuse, at a great cost savings to society, as offended rich people opt to use cheaper means, such as fines, floggings and hangings, to punish those who have offended against them. As a second side benefit, I predict that the whole apparatus of appellate courts could be eliminated--if a person can’t afford to buy a verdict in a lower court, they will also no doubt be too poor to buy an appellate decision.

The more I think about this system, the fewer flaws I can find in it.

If we’re not careful, we could end up with Sarah Palin, and then God alone knows what we’d be in for!

The woman would probably get us into a Forever War in some bleak middle-Eastern land she can’t even find on a map.

She’d probably just let the insurance companies design their own version of “health care reform.” Like, forget single payer or even a public option. It would just be Corporations all the way. And forget about insurance coverage for abortions. No way she’d go for that.

And it would be purely disgusting watching her cozy up to the right-wing religious fanatics. She’d probably even have some goofball evangelist of intolerance give the invocation at her inauguration.

And you can bet she’d be demonizing the liberals and progressives. There wouldn’t be anybody like THAT in her Cabinet. Just old Republican warhawks, Wall Street kingpins and supply-side economists.

A Green Revolution? Put people to work building a new infrastructure of high-speed rail, renewable energy and super Internet bandwidth? Hah. No way. Only a good Democrat would have the vision to do something like that.

And I bet she would just hand the Treasury over to her fatcat banker friends. Not a dime to help poor people with their mortgages or food bills.

No, folks, it’s Obama all the way.
We can’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good
...uh, We can’t let the good be the enemy of the mediocre
…umm, We can’t let the mediocre be the enemy of the not quite as disgusting as it might be

I believe in bailing out the banking system so that the rich people won’t lose out just because they made risky and stupid investments.

I believe in privatizing the school system.

I believe in forcing the public to buy private health insurance plans without regulating the insurers.

I believe in endless Asian wars.

I…Huh? Hey, where am I?

are the only things that arise in my mind to counter my growing suspicion that I should maybe have ridden the Kucinich train all the way into the wall in 2008. I knew Dennis couldn’t win; in fact, his intransigence may have made him a poor and ineffective President. But casting a vote for him would at least have informed the world that I didn’t think anyone else in the candidate field was sufficiently progressive for me.

So instead I gritted my teeth and worked for Barack Obama, my second-to-last choice for the nomination. I grew to like him more and more, to foolishly start projecting my hopes upon him. He promised things. Not everything I might have wanted, but enough. I believed him. “Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good,” I told myself. In a very large room full of other Democrats, I watched him win. We were ecstatic. I was on a natural high for a week.

I had hoped for an FDR-style commitment to the people and the infrastructure of the nation. Here is our great chance to turn an impending disaster into a grand opportunity to put the nation to work building ourselves a modern infrastructure for the new millenium. High-speed rail, a new power grid charged with green energy, a fiber-optic network, universal internet, universal health care to lift that terrible burden from the people and revitalize our small businesses…

Now it’s 13 months later. The American Empire is doing well under the new management.

Maybe we have a few less troops and mercenaries in Iraq, but we’re building up and digging in for the long haul in Afghanistan. We have twice as many mercenaries of various stripes in our national defense system as we do government troops.

The criminals of the last administration are at large, doing their part for the new gang by raging and raving against them, helping to maintain the illusion that we now have something fundamentally different.

The banks are bailed out and doing nicely. They have successfully bought off any feeble attempts to re-regulate them. They are busily engaging in the same shady gambling schemes that brought the crisis down on our heads in the first place. Small local banks are folding, and people are losing their homes to foreclosure.

Foreign sweatshops continue to pour their plastic trash into our big-box stores, where we line up to buy that trash and drag it home. Our labor unions continue to fail.

Our privacy rights have evaporated virtually unnoticed.

We have become ever more deeply embedded in our role as serfs in the service of corporate America, and, ever increasingly, the corporations have life-and-death power over us. Whether you live or die will be decided, to a degree even greater than before the Health Care Deform debacle, by how much money you have to feed into the maw of the machine. The IRS will be there to exact the punishments for those who resist.

And who are the villains, the obstructionists, the social saboteurs in the view of la Regime Nouveau? None other than lunatic-fringe moonbats like Howard Dean, Russ Feingold and Bernie Sanders. And St. Dennis, of course.

http://truthjihadradio.blogspot.com/2009/1...