What will it be like, in the future?

Assuming that the collapse of the American experiment in democratic republicanism is indeed just around the corner, what can we expect in the world of the future?

It's said that only fools and charlatans - or neoconservatives - predict the future ("We will be welcomed as liberators!"), but we're going to run the risk of being called as such, and hazard a guess as to the general outlines of an American society in perhaps as little as twenty years (a mere single generation) in the future.

The War with Oceana on Terror will be proceeding apace, with lots of bombs, death and general mayhem on all continents and in every village and town. American cities will be a mess, with checkpoints, roadblocks and traffic re-routing everywhere ("Threat Level Elmo: Expect massive incoherence" the sole message on every highway electronic signboard).

Able-bodied citizens, but only those with National Defense-related jobs, will pass relatively unhindered, while constantly monitored by the millions of scanning devices of all types everywhere, including constant GPS monitoring of mandatory cell phones. The rich 1% will also pass freely in their heavily-armored but luxuriously appointed Humvee Escalades, including CEOs of Debt Collection Agencies, Armaments Industries, Oil Executives and their servants, the Appointed Politicians.

There will be a DHS camera - or four - on every street corner, public transit vehicle and all public and virtually every private building on the planet. We will be watched, listened to, x-rayed, retina-scanned, sniffed for radioactive or biological weapons materials, and subject to rendition on suspicion; not of anything in particular - just plain suspicion.

Remember always: there is no appeal, because there are no courts, just military commissions.

Those without the subdermal electronic implants of National Defense Workers will be stopped, not in any racially-profiled way or even randomly, but systematically, regularly and often; forced to submit to full-body searches when attempting to venture out of their assigned sector, zone, or grid before or after curfew, due to the increasingly frequent use of body-cavity suicide bombs, developed - ironically enough - by our very own US of A Department of Homeland Security in a typically bureaucratic ass-backward retaliation for the Tamil Tigers' use of prepubescent girls as bait for otherwise loyal rich American eco-tourists fearful of sexual contact with Ebola-carrying Nigerian-Chinese agents provocateurs.

Foreign nationals must be accompanied by at least three heavily-armed members of Homeland Security at all times, including bathroom visits.

American society will be divided into the following classes, each (except for the last) with their own heavily guarded residential zones: The Owners, Corporate Executives, Appointed Politicians, National Defense Workers (includes members of the only remaining labor union, United Prison Guards), Citizen Mercenaries, non-National Defense-related employed Free Corporate Citizens, and the unemployed and socially useless Great Unwashed, who make up 80% of the population. This last group may actually be able to beg, steal or rob enough to afford to live in tarpaper shacks with roofs but no plumbing; failing that, discarded HDTV shipping cartons under America's few remaining intact bridges.

Your DHS-issued cell phone will be permanently tapped as a matter of course; your Internet surfing and HDTV watching monitored and dutifully reported, assuming you can afford the rates charged by The Communications Company after the 111th Coors Extra Lite Corporate Congress opted to eliminate Net Neutrality and allowed the sole remaining telecommunications company to charge what its Free Market Division dictated as just and reasonable users' fees, including, but not limited to interest owed on late fees, unto the seventh generation.

And no 2 year service contracts: Lifetime. Early termination of your contract means just that: your termination.

Deaths by heart attacks as a result of TASER use by security personnel will exceed deaths caused by drunken drivers, but MADD will not change its name to MAT.

All former Third World natives will be employed in the following occupations only: the tourist sex trade; bartenders and wait-staff for same; the cultivation, harvesting and processing of psychotropic drugs for the zombification of non-National Defense Workers; painting and other maintainence of the Rio Grande Anti-Illegal Immigration Great Wall; as Third World internal security forces, or their victims.

All financial transactions will be carried out electronically, and each and every transaction monitored by the DHS for possible connections to terrorist fund-raising organizations, the names of which will fill a DeepBlue-class data bank.

There will be no portable cash and the possession of precious metals - gold, platinum, and silver - will subject the owner to immediate alternative methods of interrogation, including waterboarding, but not to the point of crushing vital internal organs, and just short of actual death from asphyxiation. Remember: there is no appeal.

There will be no "death tax," as Americans will no longer die; they will simply be disappeared, and their public records expunged or stamped Top Secret in the Interest of National Security.

For the good news, China will be owned by Google.

This article is an original Reality Frame Reprint, first published Nov 20, 2006

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Octupy to March In Pasadena Rose Parade

 Octupy participants practice at Pasadena's Singer Park in preparation for 

  their appearance in the world-famous Pasadena New Year's Rose Parade. 

Photo credit: gpfoto

The at least 160 or so Occupy camps around the country may be abandoned and the thousands of Occupants dispersed hither and yon (to the no doubt immense relief of the financial 1% being protested against), perhaps even forgotten by distracted Americans as they party in the New Year, but the Occupy movement is not taking a winter's nap.

If America and the estimated 425 million worldwide viewers stay glued to their wide screens come Monday morning, many will be in for a rude shock as they observe a rough and tumble, ever-eager crew of pissed-off citizens bringing Occupy Wall Street and its call for economic justice back front and center to the world's attention.

Pasadena police have issued permits for Occupy the Rose Parade.Org to camp (no tents, sleeping bags only) in Pasadena's Singer Park the Sunday night before the parade in order to allow the Octopy members an early start and time to strategically position themselves in the traditional after parade.

Peter Thottam, an Octupy spokeperson, has said that hundreds - and hopefully thousands - of Occupiers from all over the country have indicated that they will be joining the people-powered octopus float and its entourage, which  includes a giant copy of the United States Constitution as well as at least a minimum of 75 to 250 local activists with props, signs and in various costumes.

Sadly, although invited, the local Tea Party has declined to join forces with Octupy to participate. Michael Alexander, president and founder of TEAPAC, a Pasadena-based tea party group, claims his members were outraged that Occupy would try to "politicize" the Rose Parade.

It may be winter, but Occupy is not hibernating and the work goes on.

Happy New Year, everyone.

(Update: The post has been updated to reflect the fact that Octupy is the unofficial name of the  Occupy the Rose Parade group, as well as the official name of the handmade 70-foot-long octopus float.)

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Michael Moore - Where do we go from here?

Michael Moore reports:

his past weekend I participated in a four-hour meeting of Occupy Wall Street activists whose job it is to come up with the vision and goals of the movement. It was attended by 40+ people and the discussion was both inspiring and invigorating. Here is what we ended up proposing as the movement's "vision statement" to the General Assembly of Occupy Wall Street:

We Envision: [1] a truly free, democratic, and just society; [2] where we, the people, come together and solve our problems by consensus; [3] where people are encouraged to take personal and collective responsibility and participate in decision making; [4] where we learn to live in harmony and embrace principles of toleration and respect for diversity and the differing views of others; [5] where we secure the civil and human rights of all from violation by tyrannical forces and unjust governments; [6] where political and economic institutions work to benefit all, not just the privileged few; [7] where we provide full and free education to everyone, not merely to get jobs but to grow and flourish as human beings; [8] where we value human needs over monetary gain, to ensure decent standards of living without which effective democracy is impossible; [9] where we work together to protect the global environment to ensure that future generations will have safe and clean air, water and food supplies, and will be able to enjoy the beauty and bounty of nature that past generations have enjoyed.

The next step will be to develop a specific list of goals and demands. As one of the millions of people who are participating in the Occupy Wall Street movement, I would like to respectfully offer my suggestions of what we can all get behind now to wrestle the control of our country out of the hands of the 1% and place it squarely with the 99% majority.

Here is what I will propose to the General Assembly of Occupy Wall Street:

10 Things We Want
A Proposal for Occupy Wall Street
Submitted by Michael Moore 

1. Eradicate the Bush tax cuts for the rich and institute new taxes on the wealthiest Americans and on corporations, including a tax on all trading on Wall Street (where they currently pay 0%). 

2. Assess a penalty tax on any corporation that moves American jobs to other countries when that company is already making profits in America. Our jobs are the most important national treasure and they cannot be removed from the country simply because someone wants to make more money. 

3. Require that all Americans pay the same Social Security tax on all of their earnings (normally, the middle class pays about 6% of their income to Social Security; someone making $1 million a year pays about 0.6% (or 90% less than the average person). This law would simply make the rich pay what everyone else pays. 

4. Reinstate the Glass-Steagall Act, placing serious regulations on how business is conducted by Wall Street and the banks. 

5. Investigate the Crash of 2008, and bring to justice those who committed any crimes. 

6. Reorder our nation's spending priorities (including the ending of all foreign wars and their cost of over $2 billion a week). This will re-open libraries, reinstate band and art and civics classes in our schools, fix our roads and bridges and infrastructure, wire the entire country for 21st century internet, and support scientific research that improves our lives. 

7. Join the rest of the free world and create a single-payer, free and universal health care system that covers all Americans all of the time. 

8. Immediately reduce carbon emissions that are destroying the planet and discover ways to live without the oil that will be depleted and gone by the end of this century. 

9. Require corporations with more than 10,000 employees to restructure their board of directors so that 50% of its members are elected by the company’s workers. We can never have a real democracy as long as most people have no say in what happens at the place they spend most of their time: their job. (For any U.S. businesspeople freaking out at this idea because you think workers can't run a successful company: Germany has a law like this and it has helped to make Germany the world’s leading manufacturing exporter.) 

10. We, the people, must pass three constitutional amendments that will go a long way toward fixing the core problems we now have. These include:

a) A constitutional amendment that fixes our broken electoral system by 1) completely removing campaign contributions from the political process; 2) requiring all elections to be publicly financed; 3) moving election day to the weekend to increase voter turnout; 4) making all Americans registered voters at the moment of their birth; 5) banning computerized voting and requiring that all elections take place on paper ballots. 

b) A constitutional amendment declaring that corporations are not people and do not have the constitutional rights of citizens. This amendment should also state that the interests of the general public and society must always come before the interests of corporations. 

c) A constitutional amendment that will act as a "second bill of rights" as proposed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt: that every American has a human right to employment, to health care, to a free and full education, to breathe clean air, drink clean water and eat safe food, and to be cared for with dignity and respect in their old age.

Let me know what you think. Occupy Wall Street enjoys the support of millions. It is a movement that cannot be stopped. Become part of it by sharing your thoughts with me or online (at OccupyWallSt.org). Get involved in (or start!) your own local Occupy movement. Make some noise. You don't have to pitch a tent in lower Manhattan to be an Occupier. You are one just by saying you are. This movement has no singular leader or spokesperson; every participant is a leader in their neighborhood, their school, their place of work. Each of you is a spokesperson to those whom you encounter. There are no dues to pay, no permission to seek in order to create an action.

We are but ten weeks old, yet we have already changed the national conversation. This is our moment, the one we've been hoping for, waiting for. If it's going to happen it has to happen now. Don't sit this one out. This is the real deal. This is it.

Have a happy Thanksgiving!

Cross-posted from Open Mike Blog

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