Stern warnings from English political scientist and activist Nafeez Ahmed:

We’re not back in the 1930s, but structurally - systemically - we’re in a far worse condition. The problem is that the three main parties on offer today lack a fully-formed understanding of the real structural issues behind the concurrent crisis of world capitalism. They fail to realise that they’re in a catch-22. The symptom-led solution to the massive deficit is inevitably massive cuts in spending. The problem is that those cuts, structurally necessary within the given system to stabilise our credit rating and currency value so that the government can keep borrowing, will inevitably contract the real economy massively to such an extent that it will create a serious socio-political crisis in this country in the next 5-10 years. We’ve heard as much from the Bank of England.

From Jodi Dean @iCite

Perhaps the most pathetic attribute of the Left today is its vigorous defense of the Right’s most special treasure, liberal democracy. Even as the ‘coalition of the willing’ (a name whose multilateral pretense failed to disguise US militarism) wages aggressive, preemptive war in Iraq in the name of liberty, democracy, and human rights, so does the Left invoke precisely the same ideals in its attempted opposition. Likewise, key values in Left politics at the millennium—flexibility, multiplicity, diversity, participation, interconnectivity, and a creative, aesthetic relation to identity—are urged by globalized communicative capitalism as its fundamental prerequisites. It’s no wonder, then, that there is no coherent opposition to capitalism or to liberal democracy as its political form—nothing is opposed. One can therefore say without exaggeration that the Left today names precisely this nothing that opposes. It occupies the place of an absence, an absence of alternatives, an absence of vision, and, ultimately, an absence of opposition.

“You do not become a ‘dissident’ just because you decide one day to take up this most unusual career,” Vaclav Havel said when he battled the communist regime in Czechoslovakia. “You are thrown into it by your personal sense of responsibility, combined with a complex set of external circumstances. You are cast out of the existing structures and placed in a position of conflict with them. It begins as an attempt to do your work well, and ends with being branded an enemy of society. … The dissident does not operate in the realm of genuine power at all. He is not seeking power. He has no desire for office and does not gather votes. He does not attempt to charm the public. He offers nothing and promises nothing. He can offer, if anything, only his own skin-and he offers it solely because he has no other way of affirming the truth he stands for. His actions simply articulate his dignity as a citizen, regardless of the cost.”

Mr. Hedges is very pessimistic about our near future, don’t read his article if you are sensitive to negative forecasts or harsh critiques of our present situation. I believe that wrapped up in Mr. Hegde’s piece is a request that we all start taking more responsibility and not just let the fates push us into some dystopian future with out a fight.

Do you believe in progress when it comes to historical processes surrounding conflict?

No. Progress doesn’t exist. Time is not linear; time is cyclical. Societies mature, degenerate, and die. That’s history. The whole concept of linear progress is a myth. It doesn’t exist. And it’s what is used to anesthetize a population so that they just agree to everything the technocrats and those in power tell them. It’s not real. We don’t morally evolve. The tools change, but we don’t. The belief in moral progress is the great curse of the Enlightenment.

Via: POSTHUMAN DESTINIES
A six part video series produce for Dutch TV in January 2010. The show begins in Dutch but after the brief introduction the entire program is in English. The video makes for a good introduction to Zizek’s political views and takes it’s title from his new book Living in the End Times

From Andrew Sullivan:

The phrase “Verschärfte Vernehmung” is German for “enhanced interrogation”. Other translations include “intensified interrogation” or “sharpened interrogation”. It’s a phrase that appears to have been concocted in 1937, to describe a form of torture that would leave no marks, and hence save the embarrassment pre-war Nazi officials were experiencing as their wounded torture victims ended up in court. The methods, as you can see above, are indistinguishable from those described as “enhanced interrogation techniques” by the president. As you can see from the Gestapo memo, moreover, the Nazis were adamant that their “enhanced interrogation techniques” would be carefully restricted and controlled, monitored by an elite professional staff, of the kind recommended by Charles Krauthammer, and strictly reserved for certain categories of prisoner. At least, that was the original plan.

elvirtualista:

But who’s reading?

Matt Taibbi does an excellent job comparing the leaders of Wall Street to con artists. The interplay of government with Hedge Funds, Insurance Companies and Investment Banks is more evidence that our ‘Democracy” is at the service of the rich and powerful, the game is rigged, the trickle down theory is a sham and the working poor, small business and anyone not in on the con are going to suffer even more…. soon.

Expect a wicked backlash at the polls, the political climate is rotten and ripe for a populist style fascist revival.