.
Michael Payne writes “It’s time for Americans to face this grim reality; that government of the people, by the people, for the people is no more, it has perished.”
For the rest of us the story is much the same. Private banks dump their enormous debts onto the public and the Government-Banking Cartel talks about “honoring obligations”. – Just Not Theirs.
I have long envied the Swiss for their tradition of direct Democracy, we however, with no such tradition, can we vote Yes or No to save us from a Systemic failure ?
By Systemic I mean all the components in a society where, the government, parliament, legal-, financial-, public-, private-, educational institutions, the media, and the voters have failed in their duties.
Can we put our trust in an all but a bankrupt corporation with a history of public relations stunts, to provide the technical environment for this vote ? By technical environment I mean proprietary software with no known public auditing, pair-reviews, version control or public controls of any kind?
Has there been a serious debate on the consequences of the result? Is the international financial empire just a Paper tiger or will they send in the jackals ?
This all smells of politicians wanting to score cheep points in a very serious affair in which we apparently have learned nothing, and while we are distracted over questions of no importance, our own jackals continue their scavenging for the spills.
Electronic voting
Black Box Voting
E-Democracy
Sur le e-vote à Genève ..1.. ..2..
E-stonia’s m-voting
Simpson (_8(|)
Opinion Makers are preparing a “National Assembly” (whole 0.3%) to flash out ideas of how we should mark our future after the horrific failure in our past.
At first look this appears to be a grand idea, Democracy at Work, – finally.
The selection process has been trumpeted as random sample out of the National Registry, i.e “having no definite aim or purpose; not sent or guided in a particular direction; made, done, occurring, etc., without method or conscious choice; haphazard”.
To start off, large sections of people have opted out of being included in ‘samples’ of any kind and the rest just don’t bother or have no knowledge of the possibility. People of foreign nationality although legible to vote in local elections automatically drop out, a primitive ‘random’ record collector is used, and there are many more limitations on the ‘randomness’.
Then there is the simple question of the organizers, who are they (Chamber of Commerce?), and the question who decided on those, who are the specially preselected representatives of special interests, and who decided on the general framework of the meting (consumer panels)?
So we are back to the “Propaganda model”, Agenda Setting by Predetermine, Select, Shape, Control and Restrict by: Selection of Topics, Distribution of Concerns, Emphasis, Framing of Issues, Filtering of Information and Bounding of Debate
The latest trend in our ‘democratic’ and ‘crime free’ society is the hostility expressed towards bloggers / reporters. The self appointed ‘elite’, financial or otherwise, id est those who have acceptable opinions are mightily indignant over inappropriate comments and leaks in the blogger sphere and want it stopped. The old tools they are so grief-stricken for are the mass media, proper academics and of course their legal technicians (as they are now called).
I my self find Chomsky’s explanations illuminating when he writes: “The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum – even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there’s free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate.”
The Icelandic nation is thunderstruck. The much acclaimed experiment in neocon-free-market-capitalist -governance has collapsed. People in this long-standing parliamentary democracy are now asking; Who knew? Who was informed? Who gave the permission for this to go on to its inevitable conclusion?
I for one would want to ask every single member of parliament these two questions.
Did you know that Private Corporations where operating abroad backed by state guaranties?
Did you ever inform your electorate of this fact? *
The only information I’ve got is that these are the rules of the EU and the European Free Trade Association (EFTA). – Which justifies it?
It seams to me that we as a nation have lost our reputation much like a rape victim, that “we the people” have been led into debt slavery for generations to come, and finally, to sweeten the blow will be the first ‘developed’ nation in years, having to ask the IMF for ‘help’.
Is this a prime example: of shock doctrine and disaster capitalism, of corrupt politicians in bed with corporations, of idiot ideologues, of marginalized public, or are the answers to be found in the sacred texts of the Chicago School of Economics (…which of course were not followed to the Marxist letter)?
If you are living in a privileged country like we were, maybe it’s time to come out of the hypnotic trance so lovingly catered for by the mass media. – After all, the bursting of the ‘fractional reserve’ and/or derivative bubble’s is waiting for all of us.
* Deep (legal) Thought is already hard at work disputing the nature of reality in general and of facts in particular.
