msb-0272 Another Ending

msb-0272 Another Ending

intro

Disclaimer! Disclaimer! Disclaimer!

MSBPodcast is "not" any kind of a medical podcast.

It is by and for MSers.

Its purpose is to keep us entertained, to explain our symptoms, to remark on our discoveries, and to raise the general consciousness about our disease.

The path to illness is shadowy, murky and rough strewn.

The path to wellness is lit by the lamp of knowledge.

----

Feedback comes first, so...

..

I've been reading "The End of America" [ http://www.amazon.com/End-America-Letter-Warning-Patriot/dp/1933392797/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1204028888&sr=8-1 ] by Naomi Wolf ISBN: 978-1933392790 and although I reach the same conclusion, I am more optimistic that she is about the ultimate fate of United States of America.

She assumes that the coming dark age of the adherents of the Bush/Cheney doctrine of "Endless War" against an ill defined ideology, that of terrorism, (unlike a person, an ideology can never be defeated, it can only be "obsolesced") will turn out like Winston Smith's battle with the minions of "Big Brother".

While it will feel like this. if it ever comes to pass, she is ignoring the internets' effect on society.

The very concept of inter networking everything on the planet, and the fact that it is happening even as I write this, (and it will have progressed even further and faster as I write/say this,) is more seductively transformative than trying to rule through control and the imposition of limitations. (To be a real SOB, I'd point out that, barring a permanent enforced return to a pre-industrial age lifestyle, [one where things no longer work and where people no longer dream, {where nobody uses any technology and everybody's pig ignorant, }] the world "will" keep on turning.)

Political power is usually defined as the ability to say "no". All our law books are filled with things you "can't" do.

But economic power is usually defined as the ability to say "yes". All of our economic rules are designed to make it easier to do things.

People of power in one arena need people in the other, otherwise everything breaks down.

The dance "will" go on because nobody actually "wants" to live in a dung heap of their own making.

Ms. Wolf is right, but she didn't see enough or far enough.

Change is an organic thing and we're organisms. We all die. Its just that for most people, the actual date is uncertain until it happens.

Nothing can change that.

The pace of change might slow down, and then again, it might speed up, out pacing our ability to keep up...

---- "I Crush Everything" by: "Jonathan Coulton" http://www.jonathancoulton.com/

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Say "your" piece on this segment.

Share with other MSers whatever "you" want to share.

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Here's a tip from a reader/audience member who just wants me to tell you that he found a site about "Living with Multiple Sclerosis" and sent me a link to pass onto you.
[ http://www2.healthtalk.com/go/multiple-sclerosis?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=Link&utm_term=MS ]

I went and checked it out and its a nice media rich site. Very informative.

They also have a podcast (I was already subscribed. :-)

This is clickable the iTunes link. [ http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewArtist?id=256738013 ].

"Et je remarque qu'il y a plus de visiteurs de pays Francophones. C'est un debut, quoi?
Voulez vous vous aider et prendre la direction de ce petit vehicule?"

---- "Break Everything" by: "Patty Hurst Shifter" http://www.myspace.com/pattyhurstshifter

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---- "Everyday Fades Away" by: "The Bulldogs" http://www.bulldogsinet.com/

"Thesis:"

Ms Wolf is absolutely right in her list of the ten steps that a despot takes to secure his position in history.

She is also correct in the amount of damage that could be done to the populace of the United States, who, lets face it, by their ignorant and jingoistic attitudes only seem to invite this kind of abuse from the official they elect.

She is also correct in laying the blame squarely at the feet of the current administration, since the actions undertaken by that current administration, (one might say crimes committed against the American populace,) on its own and at the behest of certain advisors, (I'm looking straight at "you" in particular Mr. Rove,) are unprecedented and without parallel in all of recorded in history.

(Face it Mr. Bush, no one else has been able to do the kind of fear mongering and intimidation of the our elected officials that you have. Not even during the Civil War. [I'm reminded of a video of Saddam Hussein, rousing his follower to a kind of pitiful frenzy where they were condemning each other to death to appear loyal to him.] [Not the general populace mind you. They've barely looked up from the through while you and your "friends" have stolen their future by indebting them for generations to come under your economic regime.])

---- "Everybody Loves A Loser" by: "Morcheeba" http://worlds-fair.net/morcheeba/

"Synthesis:"

The "Ten Steps To Dominance" are:

1. Invoke an External and an Internal Threat. (I have seen Osama's handiwork first hand and, all in all, as a piece of Arab Street Theater, I was not impressed. [And I fully expect Osama, or a reasonable facsimile thereof, to resurface in November of this election year;] as a terror threat, the internal combustion engines automobile was far more devastating [and unchecked until Ralph Nader's "exposé" of the car industry in "Unsafe at Any Speed" { http://www.amazon.com/Unsafe-Any-Speed-Ralph-Nader/dp/1561290505 } and the Corvair { http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevrolet_Corvair } in particular, which shone a light on the heartless cockroach accountants of that particular world.])

2. Establish Secret Prisons. (Guantanamo is "not" one, but there are several in the world where people were caught were send, including a "Canadian citizen" who was just flying home one day and got caught up in the net.)

3. Develop a Paramilitary Force. (Can anyone say Blackwater. They're coming to a town near you. Count on it. They're already deploying around the country. [But they're for profit and the day the money runs out, the powers that deployed them are going to run into the same problems that have afflicted every tin pot dictator since the Romans up to the current situation with child soldiers in various African nations.])

4. Surveil Ordinary Citizens. (I've got a camera on a pole at the end of my street. How about you? [Its not necessarily a bad thing. It would be a requirement of a "compassionate state" as well.] But the "technology" [ http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2008/03/mri_vision# ] to surveil us is rapidly approaching the point of also being able to affect us as well. There are thickets of ethical considerations standing between us and our rights to our own selves! And it doesn't matter if we're being watched by humans [expensive and time consuming, just ask the former members of the Stasi { http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stasi }] or by cheap, tireless machines.)

5. Infiltrate Citizens Groups. (? So now my Jersey City MS Support Group might be harboring somebody who's going to report on me? I seriously doubt it, but for other groups, that could be a serious pain-in-the-butt®™.)

6. Arbitrarily Detain and Release Citizens. (See my example in #2. Hell, he wasn't even a citizen! He was just waiting in an airport line and got Hoovered into a camp.)

7. Target Key Individuals. (Well, if there's any opposition leader, he's a target. [Is Ron Paul, the deliberately much ignored candidate who's a strong constitutionalist, a target? Then why is he being so ignored? He "is" a presidential candidate. Is he being ignored because the current administration can't try to refute him without exposing themselves?])

8. Restrict the Press. (We're now stuck with Rupert Murdoch and his ilk. There's hardly any need to restrict "those" jingoistic airheads, but everybody else, from "Mother Jones'" to "The Wall Street Journal" had better watch their speech. It "ain't" free.)

9. Cast Criticism as "Espionage" and Dissent as "Treason". (Can anyone say "No Fly List"? Its here already and its already got potential to become a much worse pain, emphasis on pain.)

10. Subvert the Rule Of Law. (Did you notice "where" the district attorneys who were fired were from? Were they practicing law in electorally "disputed states" maybe?)

But by setting them up, you also set up their own inevitable demise.

Remember the "Ten Caesars"...

They were a pretty brutal bunch and they succeeded each other at an accelerating pace, didn't they?

The pattern of human venality was established long before any of these ten rules were crafted.

The last of the "Ten Ceasars" died over sixteen hundred years ago. "Sic Transit Gloria Mundi" indeed.

These rules all require the cooperation of an uncritical mass press. And it has already happened to a large extent.

But the critical press has moved away from mass media and onto the internet, which is also indispensable for business, (and is only becoming more so, [for the freedom to produce and to consume everything, "including information," is essential to life in the modern world.])

---- "Everything" by: "Nijole Sparkis" http://www.nijolesparkis.com/

"Conclusion:"

I am quietly proud of the American people and not at all cynical.

The damage done by the Bush doctrine "will" be undone.

Bush is, after all, another mere mortal.

Nothing created by anyone has ever lasted longer than a century.

The "Third Reich" was supposed to last for a thousand years. It barely lasted about twenty years. "L'Empire de Napoléon" lasted only slightly longer.

What ever Carl Rove wants with a eternal "Republican Majority" is likely to be much less long lasting as the Third Reich. (The Republicans are not as well armed as the Third Reich was, in defiance of the "Treaty of Versaille". [ http://net.lib.byu.edu/~rdh7/wwi/versa/chart1.gif ])

Nothing done since the middle ages has had any lasting power.

You start something and you're almost guaranted to see it to completion; unlike the medieval cathedrals where you started and maybe your grand children would walk in a completed structure.

The reason for this is that, as things get more unwieldy, they, uh, become more unwieldy.

You have to set up systems that can heal themselves or they eventually and very simply get crushed to death by their own very weight (and they take you and your "New World Order" with them! ["Pol Pot" sat in his jungle lair while his child warrior grew up and went away. "Kim Jong Il" is moving towards "détente" and "raprochement" because he realizes that the pile he's sitting on top of is rapidly becoming used up and the very concept of a "North" Korea is becoming irrelevant so he has got to make it viable.])

Sorry Mr Rove, but your dream of winning of an "Eternal Republican Majority" ... would in fact be losing.

Its unfortunate that you didn't study "Machiavelli" [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niccol%C3%B2_Machiavelli ].

You would have realized that Bush was never going to be a proper conqueror of Iraq.

He would have had to "move there."

He's just too parochial; a real mama's (or dadda's) boy.

The triumph of the founders of the United States is that they created a system of dynamic oppositional forces: the three legged stool of "the executive, the legislative and the judicial" [ http://bensguide.gpo.gov/3-5/government/branches.html ] branches; where each branch needs and uses the services of the other.

Now a three legged stool can stand much better than anything else. (Not one or more legs too few and not one or more legs too many. It doesn't tip over or become wobbly.)

---- "Everything That Hath Breath" by: "Dave Paris" http://www.daveparis.com/

Outro