If you like Malcom Gladwell, Howard Bloom, people that write like that you will like it. Bobbit takes you through history and shows how civilization has evolved.

Its just that the language of conspiracy is one of the only ways we have to talk about emergent phenomenon in our own culture.

I was thinking of something like ‘confluency theory’, historical events happen due to a confluence of interests and circumstances, not necessarily coordinated or even aware of each other. (a ‘confluent’ means the same thing as a ‘tributary’, a small stream of water that feeds a bigger one.)

Certainly there are plenty of conspirators who conspire, but in almost no case can we ever say a major event happened ‘because’ of the conspiracy. The conspirators’ operations are only instances or examples of greater trends.

If Hitler hadn’t burned the Reichstag, say that plan failed, the eco-socio-political environment that allowed the Nazis to come to power would still be there. There were conspirators at work, but they didn’t ’cause’ the rise of the Nazis so much as contributed to the trends that they themselves were born into.

I can’t recommend this book highly enough. The front is a little bumpy, since it is her first foray into science fiction, but there were so many gems in this book, I just wanted to underline the whole thing.

Its just that the language of conspiracy is one of the only ways we have to talk about emergent phenomenon in our own culture.

Yes, and this needs to be rectified quickly. One of the only other language frameworks we have seems to be stuff like “trend-casting” and other think-tank style speak. What’s *good* about conspiracy theory in that regard is that it becomes a layman’s language for analyzing these questions and issues, but it has SO MUCH BAGGAGE that it becomes emotionally draining and therefore inhibits its real usability.

have you read “the Shield of Achilles” by Phillip whatshisname?

No, but I’m looking at it on Amazon now and it looks interesting. Is it worth checking out?

have you read “the Shield of Achilles” by Phillip whatshisname?

Why are they doing this?

Its just a change, one system winning out over another one. Of course the active players in this don’t sit around saying “I know, lets weaken the American nation-state!” they say “I know, lets facilitate an interconnected global market where we all depend on each other so we can eradicate war and make lots of money!” But its the same diff, for something to live something else often has to die.

It comes with some good and some bad. One tough part is moving away from the WWII era defense model, where we all band together and contribute and sacrifice for the war effort, to the “defense provider/consumer” model, where we have a war and we aren’t asked to contribute to it at all, but rather let the corporations take care of it while we get photographed naked at airports and have our phones tapped…But its all part of the shrinking America model, where we learn that “America” is something that applies to troops and contractors and supporters of certain policies, but not commoners like us, who are merely citizens of the world.

Its got its good too. I’m learning spanish, kind of looking forward to our new Latin American back yard. I would love to score some nice south American property in the coming years before the dollar gets too devalued and we are on a totally even keel with them…

Immediate comments:

The forces that have been in control in America have been working to strategically weaken the American Nation-state on several fronts

Why are they doing this? And pretty please (not directed at you), let’s not allow this to devolve into a pointless (by that I mean replayed ad nauseum already online) conspiracy tirade about the New World Order.

By the way, this dovetails perfectly into the reasoning behind why I posted these AT&T ads:

http://www.timboucher.com/journal/2007...paign-your-seamless-world-all-videos/

It seems to be part of a larger effort to push the idea of “placeless living”… which is it’s own sub-topic. As someone who is professionally semi-nomadic, I fit perfectly into their demographic, and yet I don’t fully *buy* the reasoning they probably have behind this.

More soon… I have a hell of a lot on my plate right now offline.

I think a really important part of the dollar brand comes from the Fed. They’ve sold this idea that the forces that control the dollar transcend the government, and thus the Fed is not part of the government proper…this protects the dollar somewhat from perceived incompetance from government.

In reality, it is like in the clip. You’ve got international finance on one hand, and the idea of nation-states on the other. Chompksy says the success of nations depends on strong nation state policies and identity, and I am sure he is right. Nation states are like unions, they help the people in them, but to some extent they are artificial constructs which keep market forces from acting within. Its like this whole thing where we can fly to India and live for 2 months off $200. Why is our money (labor) worth so much more than theirs? Its not market forces, we are not that much more innately productive than indians, its an artificial construct not based on market forces.

This is what lies behind the devaluation of the dollar. The forces that have been in control in America have been working to strategically weaken the American Nation-state on several fronts: Creating economic dependence on China for goods, sending jobs overseas, keeping borders open to promote widescale cultural integration with Mexico and reduce national identity, aquiring mass debt with China to bind the dollar to their production, and strategically losing a war in Iraq to devalue the brand of the American military, and doing this by sending military funds en masse to private corporations (security contractors) which are actually working to destablize the region, as has been shown through many, many incidents from random murders to selling arms to insurgents, something of which the Iraqi government is now well aware:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,,-7021382,00.html

The funniest part of it all is how they are using nationalism to gain support for it all. Take fox news with its pundits screaming about “America haters” being owned and tightly controlled by Australian Rupert Murdoch. I can’t wait for them to use that term to describe opponents of Arnie when they push to ammend the constitution so foriegn born citizens can be prez. “Real Americans have austrian accents too, only a RACIST couldn’t see that!” hee hee. It will be fun.

Anyway the bottom line is that the dollar is coming down in the long term, that’s my take. The current excuse why they are happy about it is that it helps reduce the burden of the trade deficit, but I believe its part of a much larger plan which has nothing to do with mom and pop “liberals” or “conservatives”, and it will continue under Clinton II under the guise of the pro NAFTA pro WTO “neo-liberalism” that characterized Clinton I, rather than the “neo-conservatism” that Characterized Bush I and II…But it will continue.

And it just is what it is. We will lose the spectacular priviledge that we enjoyed for a long time as Americans, but it may be good for much poorer nations, as we will be absorbing much of their poverty in the name of leveling the global playing field.

That’s my political rant of the day.