The Canadian sci-fi show (shown on the SyFi channel in the US), Continuum, has as a future a world where the corporations make the fascism of the past look trivial by comparison. The police are primarily there to stop people who commit “crimes” against corporations. At its core, beyond the time travel part of it, it is about the difference between a terrorist and a “freedom fighter” where you aren’t entirely sure who, despite tactics, ultimately are the bad guys.
Support the Blog — Buy This Book!
For Kindle and with free ePub version. Only $9.49 Great reading.
Here is what Gary Shapiro CEO of the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) said: Dvorak's writing sings with insight and clarity. Whether or not you agree with John's views, he will get you thinking and is never boring. These essays are worth the read!
Put this ad on your blog!
Syndicate
Subscribe to Main Blog feed here:
Subscribe to Comments too (below):
Junk Email Filter
Barking under a wrong tree, distraction from a real fascism danger: BigGovernment dictating BigCorporations dictating WeakCitizens. That is inevitable order of fascism. Without BigGovernment, there ain’t any winning for BigCorporations. With BigGovernment BigCorporations do the bidding of it and yes, get benefits in exchange. Without BigGovernment, there are no possible benefits.
Hey dusanmal–nice short pile of nonsense. Thats good for a change. You haven’t changed your cant no matter how challenged. How deep is your rut?
Yes–the issue of “Big.” A DOG WHISTLE to the unthinking. Calling forth the knee jerk brain dead zombie ditto head voters.
BIG = FATALLY AMBIGUOUS and meaningless.
My take on the word: it is a dog whistle for the 1% to lower taxes which makes government weak. Weak so that regulations are not enforced and the 1% can continue to risk OPM to make their fortunes. THAT is what a criticism of government being “Big” means.
For the form of your analysis above to be somewhat accurate, meaningful, and helpful I think what you should identify as Big is: CORRUPT.
Yes–a CORRUPT gubment bought and in the pocket of CORRUPT Big Business does turn the citizenry into a sad sack of humanity. These corporations are not powerful “per se” but what they do have is MONEY and in a gubment system that is CORRUPTED BY MONEY, then the corps can have their influence.
You see every element of this right now on the issue of ObamaCare. Imagine the 99% who vote against healtcare for themselves because of the various dog whistles being blown.
Just Look.
So Duce–if you are a shill and a zombie, keep using “BIG” when big has nothing to do with the issue except as a poorly chosen synonym for what you might be thinking of. Shill or Thoughtful?
Your choice.
After a crash, Big benevolent government has become immobilized, being racked with sorrow because it failed to hold onto bobbo —
http://youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=RUBaRqY_NqA&t=110
BIG = FATALLY AMBIGUOUS and meaningless.
Make up your fucking mind! First you say that you want MORE BIG GOVERNMENT by implementing MORE GOVERNMENT PROGRAMS designed to help groups of people you can’t even identify (and despite sage old wisdom where we are warned that the road to hell is paved with good intentions). Now, you say you think big government is bad?!
What happened? Did you get an offer to be part of Hillary’s entourage or something? (That same group of idiots who helped her husband run the country and flip so often that they now can’t even make a right turn at a street corner simply because the direction is “right”!)
Poverty is always sad to look at. And this building is a symbol of poor government and politics!
It is a symbol of a weak government too eroded by greed to do it’s one and only job of serving the citizenry.
Just look. There’s no building authority to make sure the structure is safe, no police presence to make sure the inhabitants are safe, and no taxes to make sure everyone else is safe. Taxes that might go towards some sort of a military industrial complex or even a domestic authority such as a judicial system charged with fair enforcement of any sort of laws. After all, you get what you PAY for!
Hmmm. Seems there’s a theme here. Safety! And despite what our own government tells us — that they can’t be 100-percent effective at always protecting us — you just have to wonder WHO’S safety they’re really talking about. However, try looking at what Hurricane Katrina did or even what happened in New York if you need any clues.
So believe what you want. I still say that a smaller government taking less money just might be more effective than a large lumbering bureaucratic mess. But then, that’s the other lesson here that no one seems to see.
You could say that building is akin to something of a micro nation and seems to be working quite well for all those who are living there. Of course, I say “seems to” since I never heard anything about any gangs who might be stealing/extorting items of value from the residents in order to make sure they are all safe!
We are already there. Detroit estimates it has 78,000 “abandoned and blighted” structures and it’s not alone.
Change is indeed the only constant in life. However, change does seem to be quite hard to accept for those who have grown fat relying on the same old thing. Detroit is a PERFECT EXAMPLE!
Sorry if I was OT. I was speaking about the Tower of David.
Nope. It’s kind of a two topic post with one responsible for the other.
I’ve always wondered where these corporations get their power. They can employ armed gangs, like the government does, but if people don’t give them legitimacy as they do government, from where do they get the ability to regulate the activities of human beings? Given how ruthless and profit oriented these people supposed to be, how does one corporation not go rogue and provide security, at a price, to counteract the security for the other corporations? Either corporate leaders are low down and ruthless, or they are honorable. Somehow, in the minds of the boobus, they are both.
Corporations get their power from lobbies being allowed to influence politics with money.
If you want to pick one thing that can make the biggest positive change in the least amount of time, then make it illegal for lobbies to donate a lunch, a dime, a pen, or anything of value to any politician or political group.
Lobbies can still exist, but their method of coercion needs to be soley that they are able to convince a politician that their cause is the most good for the most people.
Corporations get their power from lobbies being allowed to influence politics with money.
Correct!
Depending on how much influence and power they have bought, they go from only being able to suggest a change to legislation which would favor the corporation, to telling the power elite that such an such a government needs to be overthrown because they’re getting uppity*.
Our 12,400 family strong oligarchy is definitely in the second category. (And that includes everybody on the Forbes list of the world’s richest.)
It doesn’t matter wether its a foreign government or not.
What the people actually encumbering the place want doesn’t matter either.
The profits of the corporation must be maximized. (Read The Arms of Krupp to see how far the dynastic corruption of wealth really extends.)
Corporations really aren’t people because they have no brain, nor any heart and never have any trouble getting to sleep because of a guilty conscience.
The rise of baronial power families in American politics (The Kennedys, the Bushes and a host of petty state and local dynasties, coming after the Roosevelts etc.) tells me that the country is degenerating into an anti-democratic morass.
If Chelsey Clinton can’t find some proper way to earn a living, we’re screwed.
*) Google General Smedley Butler for a domestic example. He was almost involved in the plot by the bankers of the time to overthrow F.D.R. (He was a general when there was very little difference between being an economic hitman and a real one.) The bankers didn’t quite have enough power.
“…from where do they get the ability to regulate the activities of human beings?” Are you fucking kidding me?! Try TV, MOVIES or anything which involves HOLLYWOOD!
You seem to fail to realize that people are like SHEEP! They are mindless eating machines that only differ when it comes to any sort of brain stimuli. Both are always on the move and always looking to be led even if it’s to slaughter! That’s about the only thing Bulbous-oh ever got right.
People don’t exactly give up their rights to self governance since most never really realize that they ever had it. Some truly don’t. But for those who were given a chance at real freedom(s) are usually the ones who whine the most at their inability to obtain the shiniest new bauble. If they whine enough, these sheep will eventually get their shepherd to get that bauble for them. Never mind what it COSTS either!
Too damn many people! Every government and every corporation should provide free contraception to every citizen and every employee and every contractor.
ZPG!!!
It would probably be more cost effective to offer free Google Glass to let them chop your dick off.
I’ll meet you and raise you 5. Contraception should be put into the water supply, along with the flouride. After we reduce to about 3 billion, and the planet starts to heal, we can ease up a little. And we’ll have good teeth.
Meanwhile, beware of all corporations.
sarcasm on:
Except of course, Soylent Corp.
Guess what runs corporations?
Care to take a guess?
The answer is people like YOU! Only difference is those who run corporations are just a bit smarter and quite likely more motivated.
So yes. I agree! They ARE more corrupt! But let me see if I understand you correctly. You want to chop their nuts off?
Did you happen to get stabbed in the head by one of those trees you were hugging?
Why, yes; Paint them paisley and have a hacky-sack sale on the concourse.
Is this where we are headed? //// No. We are already half arrived.
1. Tower of David. /// USA still rich enough to bulldoze the wreckage of our CORRUPTED capitalist elements. No Towers for the USA–that is what JAILS are for. See the parallel?? Just look.
2. Continuum. /// Damn!==I’ve been watching that show and didn’t realize it was “that deep.” While I constantly multi-task so that my attention is not focused on the boob tube, my clever plan is to watch it once now to gain a rough opinion as to whether it is worth keeping and then later in life sit down with popcorn and beer to actually pay attention. So far, I thought it was about that babe trying to find the tightest fitting spandex body suit she could. Ha, ha—more than skin deep eh??? The notion of a police state formed to protect crimes against corporations is just what I think of with most RIAA and copyright enforcement BS. The “market” for such would not even exist in a free market. The exception comes from government and is enforced by CORRUPTED gubment. Yes, we are half way arrived.
Seed, bitches!
That figures! WORK means nothing to you unless YOU DO IT!
Slightly tangential but 100% on point. A must see on so many levels:
http://news.techeye.net/security/taiwans-nma-outdoes-itself-with-brilliant-obama-nsa-parody
I’ve posted several times I don’t care about the surveillance, but that I also think it does now and will lead to violations and excesses. Watching this video, I’m starting to see I focused too much on the technical legalistic presentation of the NSA program and not enough on the original “spirit” and purpose of the 4th Amendment, 1st as well.
I am willing to “risk” another 911 to guarantee our domestic freedom. MAKE our gubment figure out better ways.
It is all various continuums intertwined with one another……HAH!
That was truely horrid. I like it.
I’m gonna repost this because it just really hit me hard today:
Cage of freedom
That’s our prison
We’re the jailer and captive combined
Cage of freedom
Cast in power
All the trappings of our own design
Blind ambition
Steals our reason
We’re soon behind those invisible bars
On the inside
Looking outside
To make it safer we double the guard
Cage of freedom
There’s no escaping
We fabricated a world of our own…
Cage of freedom, growing smaller
‘Til every wall now touches the skin
Cage of freedom, filled with treason
Changing sides as the losses begin
Our suspicion tries escaping
But they step up the security
There’s no exit–there’s no entrance
Remember how we swallowed the key?
Cage of freedom, that’s our prison
We fabricated this world on our own…
Big brother
Is there a bigger one watching you
Or is there one smaller
Who I should be watching too
Infinite circles of
Snakes eating their own tails
For every one chasing
Another is on the trail
Is that a friend
Can you tell, is he on your side?
‘Cause I spy with my little eye
Yet another spy… — Jon Anderson/Pete Bellotte/Giorgio Morodore , Cage of Freedom
http://youtube.com/watch?v=QSbc0JpxA8w
http://youtube.com/watch?v=_C8MtzRK2ZY
Started as a powerful existential call to recognition but then jumped (changing “we” to “they”) to garbled pop lyrics chosen for their rhyme rather than their meaning.
Very few songs withstand any textual analysis. Sad, since books have no beat?
Ha, ha.
Well, meat’s meat and a man’s gotta eat; So there are all kinds of critters in Uncle Vincent fritters.
I made some deep fried corn fritters last week on my way to making apple fritters. Lots of different approaches there.
LUV to see how Uncle Vincent would do it.
Motel Hell’s farmer Vincent’s fritters:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=i-bRuSNSvcU
HAH!–I remembered the cabbage patch kids but not the cutesy jingle.
My my, your recall of movie clips is as extensive and useful as my word a day calendar.
What can we do with all this explanatory power?
IDK, I rather think Guy Murchies’ Music of the Spheres syncs pretty nicely with this Banshee Beat:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=jj-0vMrZJbo
Sounds just like the Cocteau Twins.
That must be because HAARP is transcranial fucking you up even as we type!
Well, it is old now so, I guess, it does not have much relevance. Yet, I was left with the feeling that the transition was intentional — Something ‘we’ built is now a ‘they’ that does not hold our self-interest in high esteem.
Anyone who chooses to ignore any ONE right as defined by our CONSTITUTION deserves NONE!
You, BOOB have said you don’t think the 2nd Amendment should even exist. You have given your reasoning some of which I even agree with. It doesn’t make a damn bit of sense to strap a cannon to your ass and then take a walk down main street USA nor does anyone “need” more than 15 bullets for hunting either. However, it’s STILL part of the Constitution!!! Never mind that “freedom of expression” thing or due process of law (even to those who violate the law) either!
So now you want me to stand with you on 1st and 4th amendment issues? WHO MADE YOU GOD?
FUCK YOU!
Not only do I think I did not say what you credit to me, I think I said just the opposite.
Is that even possible, or must I stand outside space and time?
Tall slum, labeled Barack H Obama Tower
It’s rather shabby looking, no? I bet if someone were to light a candle in there then it would collapse into it’s own footprint in 10.3 seconds.
http://youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=t1bHBthJN9w&t=244
It’s just like Max Payne in the Favela:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=efmwxLgldNY
We need Soylent Green.
Don’t be too sure we don’t already HAVE IT!
headed???america was founded on this! 🙂
Founded on what? Freedom?!
PS I watch Continuum every week. First thing I noticed about the second season is that she had skin tag or wart removed from under her right eye. I even went to the first season to be sure.
It’s fascinating that everybody is born with a life debt which the rich can at least afford to live with and that the governments simply turned over the reins of power to the corporations In the show.
That tower has to be the inspiration to the backdrop of the final act of Max Payne 3. (as Tim eluded to earlier…) … just finished the game… was on sale on steam… sorry to interrupt…