right to vote ...

In the beginning of what is now the United States, we each had a vote in a democracy.

Not exactly true I realize, because women and others were not allowed, but stay with me.

When there were "too many" of us for that to be practical, we decided to elect a "representative" ...

Someone to speak for a group of us, and the same in the next county or whatever division.

... after a while our "representatives" figured out how to represent their own interests ahead of ours.

If you follow what I am saying, and I think you do well enough, you likely know that by now what our "elected representation" does has almost nothing to do with the Will of The People.

Now we continue to play this polished game of "electing" those who cannot be in a position to BE elected except they have already been bought by someone who will "help" them BE in office, or ...

... in the off chance someone does get to office another way, he or she will be owned soon enough, or not survive.

"Tampered computer voting" and stolen elections and all that menagerie is another area designed to subvert people acting in their own best interest - in essence more conspiracy theory if you will.

In the Information Age where hardly anyone now does not have access to a computer, why do we continue to trudge to the POLLING PLACE ?
Well, because we have that right - right?
Because we FOUGHT for it. Because some segments of society had to STRUGGLE so their descendants could vote with the rest of the population. Many reasons, and yet ...

Holding elections, even computerized, is still the same as a century ago, or two centuries ... Differences - yes - but basically the same. Only the Amish still drive horse and carriage, but our election process is stuck in a muddy track.

Since we have these computers, since I am accosted by at least a dozen surveys every time I go online, since it is so easy to gather and store information digitally, since there areways to verify source and accuracy of information; ie. MY VOTE ...

Why the hell do we even need *elected representatives* now ?

When there is an issue, we can each of us have our say, tally up all the INDIVIDUAL votes ... and there it is. No need to pay some jackass to accept a bribe to have enough $$ to get himself reelected when you sensibly want him gone, so he can continue to ignore you and me who pay him even more $$ he does not need anyway.

Executive by consensus. If Khofi does not like it, he can come knock on my door and we can have a nice chat about Rwanda ... : )

compacting ...

A particular personal difficulty might be demonstrated by an inability to focus on the instructor's introduction of Maszlow's hierarchies ( no suprise - it was in the syllabus ) on a morning when I am preoccupied with my wife's coldness because she cannot purchase the car she wants. At home, study helps me little more while in the same room within what meager accomodations we can afford, my dearest is also balancing her checkbook *out loud* as I try to read and absorb. Her action may be innocent ( no more than a habit ) or I may take it as a comment pointed at me directly ( we do not have enough $$ ) - either way, a challenge to my effectiveness.

If I am not getting enough to eat of a day, sleeping under cardboard, I am unlikely to compose a paragraph such as the one above - except perhaps in a state of "tranquility" induced by something for which possession would lead to my incarceration ( in which I would have more to eat and a better place to sleep - go figure ).

Maszlow is "borrowed" to support a convincing argument of why the U.S. cannot win against ME guerrila warfare:
http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/2004/12/legitimacy_101.html

John O'Brien got me thinking about Maszlow in his response to Jesse's request to ideas toward his paper on how to "better protect the country from Terrorism" ...
http://www.ryze.com/posttopic.php?topicid=682389&confid=1031
... and me, being keeper of so many other people's "unmet needs" now respond totally *untimely* to be of any assistance - assuming I could have contributed anything of value to begin with ... : )

For which John responded: "Start at home...restore integrity...get real...accept that this is not a one term issue, but a transformation that will have cause heart wrenching adjustments as people who have vigourously defended certain views come to face that they are mistaken--worse--fooled and feeling foolish...maybe angry. That's not a political statement--works on all sides."

... but is "protection from Terrorism" what is most needed to bring us, as a society, to "Self-actualization" ... or better, to those higher "hidden hierarchies":
6 - "Know & Understand", and
7 - Aesthetic

http://www.xenodochy.org/ex/lists/maslow.html

... or is being stuck on "protection from Terrorism" merely to keep us from
"3. Love/Belonging" ... ?
... not yet ready for concern of "4. Esteem"

... or are Maszlow's theories in total no more than rubbish ?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow's_hierarchy_of_needs

Heresy and Treason ...

" In that spirit [ sixteenth century deliberate and decisive break with the institutional and spiritual continuity of the old Church; ie. Luther ], we anticipate " a deliberate and decisive break " with the institutional and ideological continuity of the nation-state. By the end of the first quarter of the next century [2025], millions of upright individuals will have committed the secular equivalent of sixteenth-century heresy - a kind of low treason. They will have withdrawn allegiance from the faltering nation-state to assert their own sovereignty, their right to choose not their bishops or their house of worship but their form of governance as customers. The privatization of sovereignty will parallel the privatization of conscience of five centuries earlier. Both are the mass defection of former supporters of dominant institutions. As Albert O. Hirschman, an expert of "responses to decline in firms, organizations and states," has written, this type of exit is difficult because " exit has often been branded as *criminal* for it has been labelled desertion, defection and treason. "

" Sovereign Individuals will no longer merely accede to what is imposed upon them as human resources of the state. Millions will shed the obligations of citizenship to become customers for the useful services governments provide. Indeed, they will create and patronize parallel institutions that will place most of the services associated with citizenship on an entirely commercial basis. For most of the twentieth century, the productive have been treated as assets by the state, in much the same way that the dairy farmer treats milk cows. They have been squeezed ever more vigorously.
Now the cows will sprout wings. "
- "The Sovereign Individual" p. 245, 1997
_

When no one votes, who will be the "elected" ... ?

Who will *obey* such "elected" *leaders* ... ?

When there are no longer "customers" for government-provided
services, who will pay for such services ... ?

When government can no longer exert sufficient violence to extort
"protection" payments in order to provide services, what services
will be provided ?

Q. What if "they gave a government and nobody participated" ... ?

A. Envisage an Oval Office behind glass
- a sort of "moving wax museum" - a tourist attraction for show
- under a sign reading:

" This is how American government operated. "

not in America ...

Fresh on my mind as I begin writing this post is a story about local pastors across America being invited by FEMA for an "orientation" - participating in "discussions" centered around controlling the "cowboy mentality" which will crop up painfully and perilously when FEMA decides it is time to take over farms in a local area, whether due to natural disaster, outbreak of disease, or some other "unforeseen" and perhaps contrived event ...

Is that story truth or yet another flaming fiction ?

... for which FEMA already has decided which roads to close as it begins taking forceful possession of area farms, of equipment and crops, stores of grain and seed and fuel, livestock and facilities - commandeering all local resources for redistribution to those in need - victims, survivors, obedient citizens, conquerors ... whoever qualifies among whoever is left. Point of distribution is almost always predetermined to be the local Walmart store - there being nothing else big enough for marshalling forces, vehicles, supplies, and accomodating distribution ...

Every day, seems like every hour even, there is some new "insurgent" attack we must refocus all our attention toward ... or if not, there is some left-over "celebrity" news - Lay and Skilling expressing surprise ten years later that anyone might actually even think anything they did could have been wrong ...

An apparently kidnapped six-year-old girl turns up in the company of a married couple turning themselves in because they are being hunted for the rape-torture murder of a 41-year-old woman they videotaped in their home bedroom. Religion seems to hold little sway for convincing anyone that "hell awaits" when so many are not able to imagine there being any worse existence than the one in which they presently find themselves.

... or we learn what is more likely to be truth about something that happened months or even years ago - or is it ? ... while atrocities rivalling anything that happened in a "world war" go relatively unnoticed by many Americans who are caught in a mostly nationalistic backlash to an invasion of immigrants who entered the United States outside the laws established by the United States - something which has been happening for decades, but is suddenly recognized as a crisis.

A tipping point.

At least fifty percent of Americans do not believe they know the truth about what happened September 11 - something with which I agree, yet see that "oversight" as just one more distraction to us as a "national" population keeping us from doing anything effectively about anything significant - wasting our time and energy arguing over who has the better theory while truth eludes all of us.

The city of El Centro in a decade has become more like Tijuana as we used to know it than like a suburb of San Diego as we might think of it. Property values remain high somehow in spite of homes in upper-middle-class neighbourhoods having become mini-rancheros where 40 or more people live in tents as well as occupying the house itself. Hundreds of thousands of latino immigrants, perhaps mostly from Mexico, but not all - there being also present in El Centro tens of thousands of Iraqis who fled Gulf War I living in what is now known as "Little Babylon."

El Centro is another American city in which the established police department no longer serves functions it was set up for - protecting life and property now being lower in priority than preparing for some coming "civil-unrest" which can be ignited by no more than a spark in such a tinder-dry society - for which FEMA is dutifully mobilizing.

El Centro as a small town with population around 20,000 was severely damaged by a earthquake which lasted just 30 seconds on May 18, 1940. Near as El Centro is to San Andreas and other faults in the area, that could happen again at any time. Just three days ago a 5.4 quake was recorded at Guadalupe Victoria, Baja California, part of a series or swarm of 25 earthquakes ranging in magnitude from 1.9 to 5.4 over a period of 26 hours.

Last year hurricanes brought major destruction and a period of "civil-unrest" to a large area of our country, giving us just a glimpse of what our future may hold, not to mention a practice session for FEMA - yet we each must fend for self and family every day - no time to contemplate full ramifications of all these seemingly unrelated crises as they converge to affect more and more of us at the same time.

Even in war, most Americans alive today have known relative peace of which the majority of humans who ever lived have not even had much opportunity to think of, let alone experience ... but how much longer, I wonder. Most Americans alive today have never been to war, never been in a war zone, know nothing of war.

None of the great changes in history have come easily. As one person who does not like the "furniture rearranged" I understand why people resist change. Also begun to understand something of the difficulty - even the impossibility for some - to admit that anything can or will "become different" ... that systems of organization taken so much for granted may no longer be viable. Yet that is exactly where we are at this point in human history.

While Americans who have accumulated anything tend to wall themselves into some secluded fantasy paradise away from the "mean streets" of cities which no longer provide jobs to workers whose only claim to skill resided in the minds of their union bosses, others of us are a sort of "free range" American, most of whom will likely be rounded up, or killed if we resist. Will I see you again ... ?

I hope so, but maybe not in America ...

Tamiflu can reduce flu severity ...

Do you know that 'bird flu' was discovered in Vietnam 9 years ago?
Do you know that barely 100 people have died in the whole world in all that time?
Do you know that it was the Americans who alerted us to the efficacy of the human antiviral TAMIFLU as a preventative?
Do you know that TAMIFLU barely alleviates some symptoms of the common flu?
Do you know that its efficacy against the common flu is questioned by a great part of the scientific community?
Do you know that against a SUPPOSED mutant virus such as H5N1, TAMIFLU barely alleviates the illness?
Do you know that to date Avian Flu affects birds only?
Do you know who markets TAMIFLU?
ROCHE LABORATORIES.
Do you know who bought the patent for TAMIFLU from ROCHE LABORATORIES in 1996?
GILEAD SCIENCES INC.
Do you know who was the then president of GILEAD SCIENCES INC. and remains a major shareholder?
DONALD RUMSFELD, the present Secretary of Defence of the USA.
Do you know that the base of TAMIFLU is crushed aniseed?
Do you know who controls 90% of the world's production of this tree?
ROCHE.
Do you know that sales of TAMIFLU were over $254 million in 2004 and more than $1000 million in 2005?
Do you know how many more millions ROCHE can earn in the coming months if the business of fear continues?

So the summary of the story is as follows:
Bush's friends decide that the medicine TAMIFLU is the solution for a pandemic that has not yet occurred and that has caused a hundred deaths worldwide in 9 years.
This medicine doesn't so much as cure the common flu.
In normal conditions the virus does not affect humans.
Rumsfeld sells the patent for TAMIFLU to ROCHE for which they pay him a fortune.
Roche acquires 90% of the global production of crushed aniseed, the base for the antivirus.
The governments of the entire world threaten a pandemic and then buy industrial quantities of the product from Roche.


Snopes counters at:
http://www.snopes.com/politics/medical/tamiflu.asp