Book Club: The Coming Insurrection

[the last yatto]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-11992034

Adding Italy to the list...

[BadBeast]

Even now, the BBC are trying to play down just how crooked this old Lizard really is. In a "Oh, he's just a lovable old rogue" type way.

"The Italian prime minister, 74, is halfway through a five-year term but his position has been weakened by a series of scandals, largely involving his relationships with women"

Don't they mean "Largely involving his relationships with Criminals, P2, and numerous Mafiosi"?
His dubious business transactions, his buying of Votes, his bullying and blackmailing Political opponents, and his ever encroaching senility make him more like some kind of Italian version of Robert Mugabe, than a credible Head of State. What between him and that new Pope, I'm surprised that Italy hasn't had at least one of them swinging from a lamp post, doing the "Mussilini Waltz" by now.

[the last yatto]

http://www.csmonitor.com/World/terrorism-security/2011/0124/Tunisia-faces-teacher-strike-protests-against-new-government

La Presse de Tunisie, along with other Tunisian media, is itself reporting freely for the first time in decades after journalists staged their own newsroom revolution and gave the paper's leaders their marching orders, according to the Los Angeles Times.

"We called the managing director and told him not to come in," said Samira Dami, a film critic who has just become one of the editors in chief of La Presse, Tunisia's 75-year-old French-language newspaper. "He represents the old regime, the one who writes good things for the regime and says everything is beautiful. He was a shoeshine boy."

Formerly, La Presse and other Tunisian media featured photos of Ben Ali on their front pages every day and ran fawning coverage of the ruling family.

[Prince Glittersnatch III]

None of these worrisome subjects should appear insurmountable in an era whose predominant mode of government is precisely the management of crises.

This has a point to it, as well.  Governments seem to enjoy disorder, in the sense that it gives them something to attempt to control and to exert more than the usual amount of power over.  Tony Blair was very fond of this style of governance, as was Bush.  The reason is of course pretty obvious, "the crisis isn't real".  By creating the climate of crisis, you can more effectively ram through legislation and exert force with fewer questions and restraints.  A crisis allows for the potential of government power to be unleashed, something which is fairly rare in our otherwise regimented and bureaucratic political systems (our societies do not require force to hold them together, therefore there are less chances to actually exert force.  If the exertion of force is a pathological desire, then government must by necessity turn to governance via crisis to give this an outlet).

Im reminded of:

"As I have heard Bush say, only a wartime president is likely to achieve greatness, in part because the epochal upheavals of war provide the opportunit­y for transforma­tive change of the kind Bush hoped to achieve. In Iraq, Bush saw his opportunit­y to create a legacy of greatness.­"