Expect more walls, barriers and checkpoints along the information highway, where everything you type or download is considered a potential unexploded roadside device requiring a three million spook ordnance disposal team to pre-emptively detonate your thought bombs. The internet is being transformed into a military-occupied space, warns Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, commenting on NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden’s revelations that the US government had every one of its internet connected citizens under surveillance with the cooperation of the telecom and tech giants who store and organize your data. Iraq and Afghani civilians have known for decades what it’s like to be considered an “enemy combatant” on their own turf – guilty until proven dead. Every man, woman and child in Palestine could also tell you what it’s like to live under a military occupation on your own land, forced to navigate a maze of heavily armed checkpoints, making a 15 minute trip to your olive grove a seven hour ordeal involving interrogations and strip searches.

If internet giants have their way, netizens will have to confront prepaid toll booths along a classified information highway to gain access to selected sites able to afford the increased bandwidth fees that will be imposed upon them, while low-paying users will be diverted to a potholed cattle path to reach a slow loading site whose accessibility will be determined by how much you pay in fees to your internet carrier. In this world, cyber ‘haves’ are waved through fiber optic checkpoints, while the ‘have nots’ endlessly navigate obstacles and barricades put in place by the gatekeepers of information. This may explain Microsoft, Verizon, Google, et al’s willingness to hand over your data to the government. It’s cheaper than paying lobbyists to make the case for dismantling existing regulatory frameworks that provide equal access to all users. Even under existing laws, broadband has been almost completely deregulated in the USA, resulting in sub-par, extremely expensive internet access compared to any other industrialized country. Companies on the list of firms revealed to have complied with government demands for customers’ data (Comcast, AT&T, Time Warner, etc.) have done so willingly in exchange for favorable treatment from the FCC. The government can easily get what it wants from these companies already unencumbered by federal oversight, merely by muttering “FCC” under its breath at high level meetings in boardroom bunkers where attendees slip in and out of non-existent (really!) ‘back doors’.

Repeated attempts to ‘gentrify’, so to speak, cyberspace and transform it into a wholly commercial real estate zone have now given way to a full-blown military occupation implemented in part by the tech firms working in tandem with the government as private contractors, helping to root out “insurgents”.

We shouldn’t be surprised that our Imperial overlords have finally trained their sights on us and quietly declared us enemies of the state. Predator drones, like chickens, have a boomerang-like tendency to come home to roost. So you’re not bothered by a lack of privacy – good little lickspittle grunt that you are in the Brave New World Order of liberal cruise missiles raining down on evil-doers overseas who have crossed “red lines”. Perhaps you still believe that President Sparkle Pony is helpless against the predations of his own government, which he “inherited from Bush”. Perhaps you consider his unmanned flying machines vague and distant abstractions – a “better, less messy option” than more “boots on the ground”, while erasing the term “kill list” and the name ‘Bradley Manning’ (who?) from your mental hard drive, coz nothing harshes the mellow of a capital ‘O’ believer than the possibility their hero actually has authority. But maybe you should be concerned that the internet has been declared a military zone, because even good little lickspittle grunts could find themselves in a Homeland Security dragnet when they become expendable as surplus labor in the global sweatshop. Don’t believe me? Just ask a Mexican.

You have to wonder if tech giants like Google, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, Verizon et al were so willing to hand over their customer’s data to the NSA, and comply so eagerly with other shady government surveillance programs like PRISM for one simple reason: Taxes. As in “Give us what we want (everything that has ever been digitally or electronically recorded in your data bases) or we will audit you”. Apple’s willingness to hand over its user’s private data just might have something to do with its alleged tax evasion scams that concealed $74 billion in profits. Something tells me they will pay a few hundred million in fines and behind the scenes celebratory champagne swilling will occur as Wall Street shills publicly bemoan ‘Big Government’s hatred of free markets and entrepreneurs. “Do no evil” will be the raucous toast, followed by the boisterous laughter of the assembled tech giants as they let rip streams of still bubbling urine into ice-buckets.

Still, the big question remains, why IS the US government concerning itself with the minutiae of its citizens daily lives, rather than focusing on . . . oh say, looking into alternative, sustainable energy sources, repairing crumbling, neglected infrastructure, fighting poverty and unemployment, ensuring the safety of food and medicine, regulating banks and other predatory lending institutions, collecting taxes from the highest earners . . . In other words, the dreamy, unrealistic, pie-in-the-sky, overly optimistic, hopelessly naive fixations of people who are inadequately informed about the encroaching threat of Sharia law in the nation’s playgrounds and drinking fountains.

Chicago is closing down 50 schools because “the money just isn’t there”. Amazingly, those “non-existent” funds seem to appear whenever a Bedouin thousands of miles away needs drone-murdering from an underground bunker in Nevada. It even paid for the golden platter that the presidential kill list is delivered on and held aloft by a coterie of ermine-draped minions in the Oval Office during the president’s daily briefings with his Grim Reaper advisors. And now we discover untold billions of taxpayer money is being spent to find out where citizens stand on the Brangelina/Aniston divide, and how often they enter “grumpy cat butt plug whore cam” into Google search engines and whether or not their ‘like’ of Bacon-themed Instagrams is indicative of a well-rounded personality, unencumbered by terrorist thoughts. Arguably, the Boston Marathon bombing could have been thwarted if NSA wiretappers had more resources at their disposal to analyze a 12 year old Belieber’s Twitter feed, and everyone who ever shared a delicious Dagistani pressure cooker recipe on Pinterest.

When the Berlin Wall collapsed, East Germans discovered that every mundane aspect of their lives were fodder for STASI record keepers, who painstakingly documented every perceived slight a neighbor/co-worker/boss/parent/child/teacher/employer/spouse/lover could level against a fellow citizen in a written dossier, and to what end, we shall never know. Certainly Fraulein Braun’s perverse habit of hanging out her fancy knickers on even rainy days, while Herr Schmidt’s noted tendency to gaze too long and too lovingly at the pigeons outside his window fire escape was hardly the stuff of national security urgency. Still, loyal STASI stenographers documented these ‘transgressions’ in much the same way secret US government agents are compiling your data. Are they merely trying to monetize fear and paranoia in the absence of dwindling, extractable fossil fuels? Or are they cognizant of their own declining power, and mounting a digitized defense to insulate themselves from the inevitable fall-out when the inmates escape the PRISM?

In South Africa, big game “hunters” can enjoy the experience of slaughtering wild animals who are bred for the purpose of being within easy shooting distance of wealthy tourists. Canada has similar resorts for rich killers hoping to bag a drugged wild cat or grizzly bear, strategically placed where they can just be blown away by old guys bored with underage sex tourism in SE Asia. Meanwhile, in the occupied territories, bloodthirsty “adventurers” can experience the ‘thrill’ of shooting Palestinians in specialized camps led by IDF counterterrorism experts – places where the entire family can participate in ethnic cleansing – one keffiyeh-patterned target at a time. This is our world in a nutshell: An increasingly barricaded enclosure that provides a chimeric backdrop of open space, permits the inmates “freedom of movement” within a confined area, but in reality, a hunting ground for the wealthy individuals who set the boundaries according to their depraved whims.

If incarcerating “wild” and expendable populations for blood sport weren’t enough to satisfy our cowardly overlords, they’ve now crafted a constitutional loophole that allows them to gather DNA samples from the ever-growing prison population on their own doorstep. Carry that cancer-carrying gene? Visa/Green Card/insurance denied. Does your helix strand spell out a propensity for dissent? Or an ancestor named ‘Mohammed’? Don’t be surprised if you suddenly find yourself on a ‘no fly’ list, or are pre-emptively arrested the next time the G20 comes to town.

Not content to violate us at the cellular level, the Obwana administration is now scouring our digital footprints with telecommunication giant Verizon providing them with the proof they need to implicate you in an al-Qaeda sexting scandal in the form of millions of subpoenaed phone records. (Somewhere in Texas George Bush the Lesser is putting down his finger paints to ponder the irony of his successor outdoing him in creating a national security gulag state). If you think you and your law-abiding, tax paying, non-terrorist ass can avoid being probed by the long, hairy arms of law enforcement, think again. (On second thought, thinking is just as likely to land you in hot water as googling pressure cooker recipes from Dagistan, as thoughts become the next frontier for Homeland Safari Security. You can only run as far as a drugged lion in a safari theme park. If some oligarch/hedge funder dressed as Elmer Fudd doesn’t get you in his crosshairs, some domestic drone program from the very near future will count you as collateral damage, suitable for mounting over the fireplace.

Stephen Hawking’s much vaunted presence at a scientific conference in Israel, hosted by Shimon Peres, would have added much needed sheen to the rogue state’s tarnished image. The esteemed physicist’s keynote address to his colleagues, and in particular, his host nation, would have branded Israel in the eyes of the world as a regional epicenter for cultural and intellectual pursuits, and bestowed it with the legitimacy it lacks as an international lawbreaker, operating the world’s largest open air prison. If the brainiest guy in the world saw fit to ignore a boycott, who was Elvis Costello, Stevie Wonder, Julianne Moore, Emma Thompson, Viggo Mortenson, Salma Hayek etc to take a moral stand against ‘The Only Democracy in the Middle East’? Who needs a bunch of “uppity has been” celebrities, when you’ve got Stephen Hawkings (and Justin Bieber!) on your side? “I’ll raise you one Gaga for your Tutu. Take that, H8terz”, seems to be Israel’s official response to growing international condemnation for its apartheid regime. It’s one thing to lose Lollapalooza, quite another to be publicly stood up by the most eminent intellectual on the planet. Perhaps confirmed attendees Barbra Streisand and Prince Albert of Monaco will step up to the vacant podium and share their thoughts on quantum physics.

Organizers of the now lackluster event were ecstatic to have someone of Hawking’s calibre to bolster a state-sponsored Science Fair, falling all over themselves to praise the renowned physicist. “Look at what we bagged”, these Hasbara trophy hunters were bragging just hours before Professor Hawkings cancelled his scheduled appearance at the conference, citing his conscience as the reason for bowing out.

“I accepted the invitation to the Presidential Conference with the intention that this would not only allow me to express my opinion on the prospects for a peace settlement but also because it would allow me to lecture on the West Bank. However, I have received a number of emails from Palestinian academics. They are unanimous that I should respect the boycott. In view of this, I must withdraw from the conference. Had I attended, I would have stated my opinion that the policy of the present Israeli government is likely to lead to disaster.”

And suddenly the soon-to-be fawned-over celebrity became a pariah within the pariah state when Israeli spin doctors were unable to excise politics from Professor Hawking’s statement – even going as far as releasing a statement on his behalf, citing non-existent “health concerns” as a reason for his very public no-show. Israeli bloggers and commenters, no longer restrained by state-sanctioned civility towards useful idiots (oops, I mean “visiting scholars”) in order to conceal the real face of their brutal military occupation of Palestinian land, gave themselves free rein to rage against Professor Hawkings and even the machines that keep him alive. Israel’s fearsome warriors trained in the deadly art of typo-riddled message board missives suddenly saw fit to mock his disability and his appearance, calling his intellect into question, while denouncing him as . . . wait for it . . . “anti-Semitic”.

Israel’s butt-hurt response to people who point out its failures is reminiscent of those guys who are involuntarily featured on the now defunct Tumblr called “The ‘Nice Guys’ of Craig’s List” where users could upload the profiles of self-described “nice guys” looking for women on free dating sites. Here you could read the screen grabs of conversations between “nice guys” and the women who “rejected” them. Should a date seeker decline a suitor’s offer to be “treated like a queen” she can expect a litany of threats and obscenities to follow her into a cat-filled, self-imposed, penis-free spinsterhood. This is Israel in a nutshell. It’s a nation dominated by “nice guys”. And by “nice guys”, I mean entitled, hypocritical, opportunistic, rageaholic predators with persecution complexes.

With SOPA and its evil twin PIPA dead in the water (or so it would seem) Congress is again using its powers of necromancy to unleash yet another internet killing bill.  If you thought government overreach at the behest of the corporations it serves had surpassed China and Iran in terms of surveillance, censorship and a downright contempt for freedom of speech and privacy, think again.  Just don’t put those thoughts in an e-mail, blog post or comment, Facebook update or Tweet because:

The Supreme Court ruled on Monday in a decision that could only be described in three letters starting with W and ending with F, to give police the final authority to authorize strip-searches of people arrested for any offense. Broken tail light? Bend over and spread ’em. That goes for you too, Deadbeat Dad, shoplifting cat food granny and the rest of you guilty-until-proven-innocent 99 percenters. Bend over, squat and cough. Your body is the new battleground in the “War on Terror” and the 13 million of you arrested each year are now dungeon fodder play things for uniformed goons on the public payroll. Where once we asked for your cooperation, we now demand your abject humiliation. So if you’re getting any funny ideas about venturing out of the unheated comfort of your soon to be foreclosed upon home, whether it’s to drive with an expired license to the food bank, or more criminally, decide to exercise your democratic right to assemble in the vicinity of a rich person, be prepared not just for water cannons and rubber bullets, but a full-on finger raping by the ever lengthening arms of the law, whose weapons now perform double duty as lethal sex toys.

Your government (or whatever you call the publicly funded entity that exists wholly and unabashedly to ensure the unimpeded transfer of the nation’s wealth into the select coffers of the gangsters on its payroll and their corporate cronies) wants to fuck you. There’s no other way of putting it. They want to fuck you in the worst possible way. Literally, lewdly and above all, painfully. Think joyless dungeon master/camp guard giving your genitals the taser treatment kind of painful. You realize, of course, under your tormenter’s pleather gimp suit is some blandly visaged, pot-bellied technocrat hoping to be home in time to watch NCIS with the wife while you are left to whimper in your restraints.

Once content to “screw” you, or just fuck you over, our “elected” oligarchs have now upped the bar on their depraved appetite for torture porn with a ready army of doctors, soldiers, law enforcement officials and airport screeners to carry out their perverse handiwork. We can now add the judiciary at its highest level to this motley mix of state-sanctioned sex offenders.

It’s bad enough that air travelers have to submit a XXX-Ray or a rough probing molestation by TSA officials to ensure the absence of explosive contraband in their hoo-hoos, or that abortion seekers in some states are forcibly raped with sonic dildos. You thought that Republican presidential candidates making misogyny and homophobia the centerpiece of their campaign trail hate speech was reason enough to fear for an encroaching Idiocracy ruled over by a posse of evil clowns. Now comes the crowning jewel of a full-blown gulag police state in the form of a rubber gloved, raised finger salute to the Bill of Rights and all the other shredder-ready old documents that once served to pre-empt the abuse of power and provide the checks and balances necessary to maintain a republic. The vigilance of The Founding Fathers is clearly no match for the brain trust who brought us the Gaza strip, Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay. That the puerile raunch one associates with ‘gonzo’ and straight-to-DVD ‘grindhouse’ porn now serves as blueprints for law enforcement and social engineering in the age of ‘Hope’ is just something else to choke on like a rubber gag ball restraint.

In the swinging, wife-swapping spirit of ‘bipartisanship’, five Republican and four Democratic appointees have proven they have bigger fish to fry than upholding some shredder-ready old document. By adding DWD (Driving While ‘Do-Able’) to the roster of punishable offenses like DWB (Driving While Black) law enforcement will have even further impetus to be discerning, heat packing meat graders deciding which ‘cuts’ to inspect for the mildest of infractions. Giving police free rein to play the Officer Frisky role in ‘Caged Cuties III’ is just one of the many (and hardly unintended) outcomes of a legal amendment meant to pre-empt civil strife in the event of more robust ‘Occupy’ or anti-war movements. Or should any of the “temporarily embarrassed millionaires” among the 99-ers finally realize that their humiliation will follow them to the grave and rise up, zombie style to snack on their former overlords as if they were delicious ‘pink slime’ school lunches. In which case, the Supreme Court is ready to rubber stamp into law anything to remove existing legal or constitutional impediments to a scorched-earth policy of zero tolerance to dissent. Constitutional safeguards like the 4th Amendment and all its blah-blah-blahing about unreasonable searches and seizures be damned.

What US leaders openly encourage overseas in the form of civil disobedience, they will not tolerate at home. An ‘Arab Spring’ for our colonial subjects overseas, whose dissent we can work into a neo-liberal framework and impose austerity and military rule later on. For American dissenters, even ones who express an anti-authoritarian bent with a broken bicycle bell, its a swift jack boot to the genitals.