Ei Felix ---
and shocking, scandalous information simply leads to cynicism. Ah,
Obama is just another Bush.
my old friend Frieder Nake reminded me in an email before the election ended in
2008 that:
"The anarchists have this beautiful principal line: If elections were capable of
changing anything, they would long have been forbidden."
As someone who worked for an (unsuccessful) national (independent party)
candidate in the 1980 campaign -- John Anderson (yet another Harvard Law grad
from Illinois) -- it was at the moment when Reagan won 489/538 electoral college
votes that I realized that nothing will change. Reagan became president on the
vote of only 19% of the population ...!
The systems of power/energy collection and projection of the kind showcased in
the US are quite immune to political difference or "change." They have been
for, say, 40-50 years perhaps? Once the basic structures of the post-war
military-industrial-economic machine were put in place, the relations of power
have hardly changed at all except in the details of sourcing of foundational
energy sources ('foreign' oil being a primary driver among a handful of other
strategic materials -- see http://tinyurl.com/5sjgl9o for example).
The only solid hope for a future is a world where there are no central
(super-power) points for the concentration of energy resources: for without
large concentrations, there can be no subsequent directed/projected expressions
of (military) power. Thermodynamics rules all these complex social systems,
regardless of the ideology used to paper the surface of the system: without
constant influxes of energy, the systems will tend to disorder.
A disordered (less ordered) world may perhaps be more or less safe for any
particular individual, who knows, as it will hold more potential for change (as
in less stability). But an increased flux of change has no moral imperative nor
any ideology...
and on today's news...
"With the growth of industry comes the possibility of a predatory life; and if
the groups of savages crowd one another in the struggle for subsistence, there
is a provocation to hostilities, and a predatory habit of life ensues. There is
a consequent growth of a predatory culture, which may for the present purpose be
treated as the beginning of the barbarian culture. This predatory culture shows
itself in a growth of suitable institutions. The group divides itself
conventionally into a fighting and a peace-keeping class, with a corresponding
division of labor. Fighting, together with other work that involves a serious
element of exploit, becomes the employment of the able-bodied men; the
uneventful everyday work of the group falls to the women and the infirm. —
Thorstein Veblen"
http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/archives/16611
cheers,
jh
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