Thanks for the downer Askan.
Seriously, I agree with you in that a combination of gov/ corporate spin and public apathy is leading the world to the point where Big Brother can get away with anything and tell us the opposite is true.
However I think everything comes and goes in cycles. I think this authoritarianism will trigger a libertarian backlash. With comms technology (ie the internet) making it easier and easier to distribute the truth and hegemony internationally and a concurrent trend back towards locally produced goods and government (a trend beginning now) there will come a kind of revolution where people simply begin to cut the gov/ corp out of their lives.
Authority will have to evolve out of these monolithic, top-down structures or find itself left out in the cold. Kind of like what is happening to the music industry right now with mp3s etc.
You could be right about colonisation, for a while at least. Eventually though it will become either so cheap that it would be silly not to, or utterly vital to our continued way of life.
[ March 26, 2003, 15:00: Message edited by: dogscoff ]