Newsgroup: it.fan.culo
Titolo: Run, Ralph, run!

Dedicato a chi fa la politica come i conti della serva:
http://www.yellowtimes.org/article.php?sid=1794&mode=thread&order=0
"Ralph Nader: An enemy of the people"
Ossia: "meglio perdere conservando la propria integrità sociale e culturale
che vincere asservendosi ai corrotti e ai voltagabbana opportunisti".
Se mi fate incavolare, ve lo posto tutto on-line (12KB).

che vincere asservendosi ai corrotti e ai voltagabbana opportunisti".
Ole'...ma vai in curva con Layos anche tu?
Potreste organizzarvi in un nuovo club, basta con "Grifoni" adesso
c'e' il temibile:  "Commando Tafazzi"
MMAX

c'e' il temibile:  "Commando Tafazzi"
Riprovaci, sarai meno sfigato.

Riprovaci, sarai meno sfigato.
Non prendertela dai..è cosi'...il risultato della tua pretesa volonta'
di mantenimento dell' integrità sociale e culturale è autolesionismo e
lo è nell'evidenza dei fatti [Berlusconi al governo, Bush al governo].
Non sei Nisciuno...ma sul serio.
MMAX

Non sei Nisciuno...ma sul serio.
  Mi hai fatto arrabbiare.
"Ralph Nader: An enemy of the people"
Printed on Sunday, February 29, 2004 @ 16:12:31 CST   ( )
By John Chuckman
YellowTimes.org Columnist (Canada)
(YellowTimes.org)  Ralph Nader has defined a perfect moral dilemma for
thinking Americans.
He finds himself in a situation resembling that of Dr. Stockmann in Ibsen's
drama, "An Enemy of the People." Dr. Stockmann discovered the municipal baths
were contaminated, but good burghers worried about the destructive effects of
the truth on the town did not want the doctor revealing it.
A number of America's good burghers, fearing the effect of Nader's candidacy
on the Democratic candidate's prospects, have warned him against running for
office; some are reported to have stopped supporting the many worthy
public-service organizations he founded, and some are writing nasty little
pieces calling him names.
The Democrats are, of course, part of what Nader is concerned about. Quite
apart from the oily-establishment and war-friendly Kerry, the Democratic Party
itself has come to stand for very little. You might call it America's
parlor-polite alternative to the selfish stench of the Republicans. Putting up
Kerry to replace Bush is like putting up Rutherford B. Hayes to replace Calvin
Coolidge. It may be possible for Kerry to win, but, really, what difference to
anything would his victory make... Bullwinkle the moose miming John Kennedy at
the next State of the Union?
Nader sees the fundamental problems of American society as few other national
figures do. His focus is different than my own, being, naturally enough, more
concerned about domestic results than international ones. Still, these things
are related.
Nader is not likely to win, and, if he were somehow able to win, he would
quickly find himself up against the most entrenched, retrogressive legislative
system in the advanced world. Still, he represents some hope for the birth of
a new dynamic in American politics, something important to Americans and to
the world.
Nader's focus is on "corporatism" having taken over civil institutions in
America. This is true. Americans are no longer citizens, they are consumers --
language adopted even by their politicians. The reason for this is simple:
America is well along with building a set of monster corporations intent on
supplying most of the world's goods and services. The corporations must be
monstrously big to achieve this, because it is through economies of scale that
they can undercut the costs of companies in other nations. Companies that
dominate markets for nearly three-hundred million Americans are in a position
to muscle out the companies in most other countries. Size is also important as
a means of gaining concessions from governments, including, as it turns out,
their own.
The growth of American monster-corporations does not threaten only
international harmony; it rapidly is changing American domestic life.
These corporations adopt bizarre, almost anonymous identities. Many of them
have had their names reduced to sets of three letters exhibiting little
connection with their original business or birthplace, but they go well beyond
this symbolism.
The relationships these corporations have with those to whom they market can
perhaps best be compared to the relationships you have with the people who
send spam to your computer. You can place an order from the spam you receive,
but you can't respond otherwise, and the mechanism for deleting your e-mail
address often is extremely slow or defective.
The corporate marketers reach you when they please through direct mail or
calling centers, and they have a lot of personal information about you (much
of it obtained from local governments without your permission) on their
computers enabling them efficiently to hunt you down for their schemes. You
may have noticed the marketing letters you receive often have no return postal
address, only a toll-free telephone number that reaches a boiler room
order-taker unable to deal with any other matter.
These particulars are small points, but they suggest a sinister character. The
scale of a thing always changes its very nature. A small cyclonic wind, a dust
devil, moving harmlessly across a patch of earth shares fundamental structural
characteristics with a tornado, but what a difference the difference in size
makes.
Bear with me if you think my next statement a great exaggeration, but George
Orwell's fictitious world of 1984 seems to me no more sinister than what is
gradually emerging in America. What Orwell emphasized about human freedom was
conditioned by his living through a period when various forms of totalitarian
government darkened Europe, but there are subtler methods of control than
jack-booted tyranny. The continued advance of technology will assure a
bountiful choice of tools to the corporations which invest in them, own them,
and are best placed to fully exploit them.
America is becoming a society where huge, almost anonymous, corporations own
virtually every scrap of your personal information and own patents on many
aspects of the natural world around you, perhaps even on some of the genes of
your body or those of your neighbors. Their manufacturing and other needs
effectively control the quality of the air you breathe and the water you
drink. Their adventures abroad influence whether your son or daughter is sent
to war, although I am sure this will one day be limited by automated killing
machines which will be so much more dependable than soldiers, cause less
stress over interventions on the home front, and cost far less than
maintaining all those pesky military dependents and pensions over the long
term.
So perfect will be their marketing information, the companies' computers will
know exactly the extent to which you are even worth bothering about in each
and every aspect of their operations. There will be a large pool of people not
worth bothering about, the American losers in the globalization race for ever
cheaper or more capable substitutes in every aspect of manufacturing,
marketing, and distributing. This pool already is being created, but it likely
will become much larger. For example, when those Pentagon killing machines are
perfected, the armed forces will cease providing the jobs they have for
millions of young people with marginal skills.
The emerging social structure of the United States very much resembles that of
1984. There are the owners and senior managers of the vast corporations. Their
positions and privileges are in every respect comparable to Oceania's elite
Inner Party. Then there is a large pool of educated, middle-class people, the
types who stay at the office twelve hours a day to complete a project and have
the benefit of a corporate gym. They are sometimes exposed to very sensitive
material, but there is a well-developed ethic and some severe penalties for
ever revealing any of it. They are Orwell's Outer Party. Finally, there is the
large and growing pool of unskilled workers whose prospects become
increasingly dim. The "end of welfare as we know it" may well have reflected
expected growth prospects for this group rather than simply political
discontent. Orwell calls them the Proles.
America's Proles have virtually no role in politics. They have no money and no
influence. They generally do not vote, a fact which may reflect inertia more
than anything else, but it is also true that many local practices, as we saw
from the way polls were run in Florida, positively discourage their votes.
Ex-convicts, and this is a huge group in America, for example, cannot vote.
The Outer Party provides voters and campaign workers. The Inner Party endows
acceptable candidates with small fortunes to assure their prospects.
This structure is self-reinforcing and explains many domestic policies and
practices. One example suffices. America is the only advanced nation not to
have some form of national health insurance. Why? Because the existing
employer-pays-for-private-insurance system suits the political and economic
structure so well. Inner Party members and senior politicians receive the very
best of everything possible, often having their own elite hospitals. All the
Outer Party members receive good, and often excellent, insurance from their
employers. This keeps the politically active group satisfied about healthcare.
Indeed, it is only when benefits start dropping around the fringes of the
Outer Party, as during economic setbacks, that healthcare becomes a national
political issue. The Proles are uninsured or so poorly insured at meager jobs
that they may as well be uninsured.
There is no way to forecast a clear picture of where these trends lead, but
the prospects are discouraging to say the least. Powerful private companies
possessing information and resources and working hand-in-hand with government
to achieve their goals are capable of doing anything not specifically
regulated or forbidden. The revolution in technology is quickly changing even
what is or is not a crime or abuse, but with government as a full and intimate
partner, what impulse is there for new regulation and laws limiting
corporations?
Ordinary Americans have completely embraced the idea that whatever is good or
necessary for large corporations is somehow good for them. This may have been
true in 1949, but it is certainly not true now. Americans are remarkably
passive about everything from steaming toxic dumps left behind by closed
factories to bloody interventions abroad.
Corporations already have a tight grip on national politics, but their ability
to influence - with personal connections, information, financial resources,
and the discretion to shift investments - increases disproportionately as they
grow and absorb all former competitors. Corporations are, of course, the
training grounds for the many lawyers inhabiting Congress, and they provide
comfortable repositories for retired politicians who retain influence.
War is very much a reflection of this influence on government, as you would
expect when these companies are engaged in aggressive global campaigns, when
they enjoy supplying the bottomless pit needs of the Defense Department, and
when they are involved in the unbelievably profitable rebuilding of distant
places overrun by the military. It is true that stock markets don't like big
wars, but what Americans have learned since Vietnam is that stock markets
don't so much mind quick, dirty, little wars that come mixed with new
opportunities for profit.
The huge number of colonial wars the United States has fought since the end of
the Second World War demonstrates this conclusively. The name, Defense
Department, is outmoded. Not one war in which the U.S. has engaged since 1945
has involved defense, unless you are speaking of the defense of America's
corporate interests abroad.
Nader a political risk? If there is any chance of sparking a new political
movement that could even moderately alter America's course, isn't it worth
some political risk? If not, what is?
[John Chuckman is former chief economist for a large Canadian oil company. He
has many interests and is a lifelong student of history. He writes with a
passionate desire for honesty, the rule of reason, and concern for human
decency. He is a member of no political party and takes exception to what has
been called America's "culture of complaint" with its habit of reducing every
important issue to an unproductive argument between two simplistically defined
groups. John left the United States as a poor young man from the South Side of
Chicago when the government embarked on the murder of millions of Vietnamese
in their own land because they happened to embrace the wrong economic
loyalties. He lives in Canada, which he is fond of calling "the peaceable
kingdom."]
John Chuckman encourages your comments: chuc...@YellowTimes.org
YellowTimes.org is an international news and opinion publication.
YellowTimes.org encourages its material to be reproduced, reprinted, or
broadcast provided that any such reproduction identifies the original source,
http://www.YellowTimes.org
. Internet web links to 
http://www.YellowTimes.org
are appreciated.

 thinking Americans.
Quindi il problema non si pone.
-- 
New Magic Flash

Quindi il problema non si pone.
Ma secondo te quanti anni ha?
IMHO č un pischellino.
Oppure č scemo.
MMAX

Oppure č scemo.
A te hanno dato la cittadinanza americana honoris causa.