Here is some more data on the Orwellian State --Stew
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Big Neighbor is Watching
by Stew Albert
He's a friendly guy and you let him into your house because he is delivering
an
air conditioner on a sweltering day in August. And he makes some amiable
conversation, the guy loves your house and when you show him around, he's
blown
away by all those old 60's posters on the wall.
"Must have been a great time" he declares.
The delivery guy leaves and you forget him and concentrate on the air
conditioner
and getting cool. But the guy doesn't forget about you, on the contrary, he
makes a
full report about your posters to Homeland Security. It seems he has another
job,
that runs parallel to his deliveries and installations. The friendly man who
loves your
house is an informant volunteer for the Justice Department's new agency and
its
nationwide program of participatory dictatorship called TIPS.
All over America postmen, parcel deliverers and all kinds of repair people
and truck
drivers are being recruited and trained in the paranoic practice of reporting
on the
"suspicious" or "unusual" behavior of their fellow citizens. It is perhaps
the most
terrifying of the various tyranical measures that have been employed by
George
Bush since September 11 in order to insure the preservation of American
freedom.
Getting citizens to spy on their neighbors in large numbers, and FEMA plans
to beat
East Germany's record, involves the destruction of our civil society and the
replacement of communal sensibility with chilling paranoia. When Big
Neighbor is
watching, the necessary distance beteen society and state is pushed aside and
we
are left with massive mistrust, fear and a sense that 1984 wasn't just a
scary book.
Usually repression does not base itself on the mass recruiting of
proletarians. But in
this lazy consumerist age when so many people have their objects of desire
delivered
to their door and a multitude of workers get to see where you live, it makes
sense
that at least the most mobile members of the working class would be eagerly
sought
out for snooping and betrayals of trust and the old good neighbor policy.
Some
American workers will be taught how to parley a friendly smile into amateur
espionage.
To keep things fair, everyone in the country, even rich people, will be
encouraged to
spy on their nighbors. The TIPS informants will have stickers prominentlly
displayed
on their vehicles offering phone numbers where the stray snoop and gossip can
call
in information about any observed offbeat behavior and eccentric happenings.
And
of course, this will be a great way to settle a grudge. The US Post Office
under the
embarrassment of public exposure, has decided, for the moment, to drop out of
the
TIPS program. But possibly there are enough bored, restless and angry
Americans,
the kind that want to do things, that will be described as being significant
and of vital
importance, enough desperate homeland volunteers to turn TIPS into a smashing
success and a horrible new way to be an American.
Stew Albert
stewa@aol.com
Visit my web page: http://members.aol.com/stewa/stew.html
Stew Albert's Yippie Reading Room
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