Non-Violent Revolt

[ferrous]

Where's Howard Beal when we really need him?

Program Director: Take 2, cue Howard.

Beale: I don't have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It's a depression. Everybody's out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel's worth; banks are going bust; shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter; punks are running wild in the street, and there's nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there's no end to it.

We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat. And we sit watching our TVs while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that's the way it's supposed to be!

We all know things are bad -- worse than bad -- they're crazy.

It's like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don't go out any more. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we're living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, "Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials, and I won't say anything. Just leave us alone."

Well, I'm not going to leave you alone.

I want you to get mad!

I don't want you to protest. I don't want you to riot. I don't want you to write to your Congressman, because I wouldn't know what to tell you to write. I don't know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street.

All I know is that first, you've got to get mad.

You've gotta say, "I'm a human being, goddammit! My life has value!"

So, I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window, open it, and stick your head out and yell,

"I'm as mad as hell,

and I'm not going to take this anymore!!"

[The Big Dog]

Remembering, of course, what ultimately happened to Howard Beale....

[ferrous]

As Arthur Jensen (played by Ned Beatty put it;

"Howard Beal had meddled with the primal forces of nature"

Arthur Jensen: [bellowing] You have meddled with the primal forces of nature, Mr. Beale, and I won't have it! Is that clear? You think you've merely stopped a business deal. That is not the case! The Arabs have taken billions of dollars out of this country, and now they must put it back! It is ebb and flow, tidal gravity! It is ecological balance! You are an old man who thinks in terms of nations and peoples. There are no nations. There are no peoples. There are no Russians. There are no Arabs. There are no third worlds. There is no West. There is only one holistic system of systems, one vast and immane, interwoven, interacting, multivariate, multinational dominion of dollars. Petro-dollars, electro-dollars, multi-dollars, reichmarks, rins, rubles, pounds, and shekels. It is the international system of currency which determines the totality of life on this planet. That is the natural order of things today. That is the atomic and subatomic and galactic structure of things today! And YOU have meddled with the primal forces of nature, and YOU...WILL...ATONE!

Arthur Jensen: [calmly] Am I getting through to you, Mr. Beale? You get up on your little twenty-one inch screen and howl about America and democracy. There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM, and ITT, and AT&T, and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon. Those *are* the nations of the world today. What do you think the Russians talk about in their councils of state, Karl Marx? They get out their linear programming charts, statistical decision theories, minimax solutions, and compute the price-cost probabilities of their transactions and investments, just like we do. We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies, Mr. Beale. The world is a college of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable bylaws of business. The world is a business, Mr. Beale. It has been since man crawled out of the slime. And our children will live, Mr. Beale, to see that . . . perfect world . . . in which there's no war or famine, oppression or brutality. One vast and ecumenical holding company, for whom all men will work to serve a common profit, in which all men will hold a share of stock. All necessities provided, all anxieties tranquilized, all boredom amused. And I have chosen you, Mr. Beale, to preach this evangel.

Howard Beale: Why me?

Arthur Jensen: Because you're on television, dummy. Sixty million people watch you every night of the week, Monday through Friday.

Howard Beale: I have seen the face of God.

Arthur Jensen: You just might be right, Mr. Beale.
__________________________-

Remember, they broke Howard down before they took him down.

[mrbose]

Talk about a ststem of confusion read on




The Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is the legislative body of that nation. Formally, Parliament consists of the monarch, the House of Commons, and the House of Lords. In common usage, however, the term refers to Commons and Lords only. Virtually all power rests with the House of Commons. The power exercised by Parliament is unlimited, making it in fact the sovereign of the nation.

The House of Commons has 659 elected members. The maximum period between elections is five years, but the actual timing of an election is usually decided by the prime minister. The total membership of the Lords is about 1,200, but the majority of the nation's peers take no active part in the proceedings of the house. Members of the Lords traditionally included hereditary peers, life peers, the 10 senior judges, the archbishops of Canterbury and York, and 24 bishops of the Church of England. (The right of the 758 hereditary peers to sit in the House of Lords was abolished in 1999.) Both houses, and especially the Commons, are organized along party lines. Normally the largest party in Commons forms the government, and the leading members of this party are appointed to senior ministerial positions (the cabinet). They must explain and defend their policies and acts to Commons.

All important legislation is introduced into Parliament by the government. The House of Lords no longer has the power to kill a piece of legislation. It can initiate amendments on bills (except money bills) and delay legislation.

Because the government usually has a majority in Commons, it can normally ensure that its major policies are accepted by Parliament. Party loyalty and discipline in Commons are strong. When the government, however, does not have an actual majority in Commons (because of third-party members), it must enlist enough support from minority members to get legislation passed. When such coalitions fail on an important vote, the government falls. The prime minister and cabinet resign, and if no other party leader is able to form a government, Parliament is dissolved and a new election is called.

History
Parliament evolved from the Curia Regis, or Great Council of the Realm, which began in the Middle Ages as an advisory body to the monarch. Originally it comprised the great landholders, the chief nobles, and the church prelates. Beginning in the 13th century the monarch occasionally would call up representatives of the other classes, mainly the knights, the lower clergy, and the burgesses. The two bodies met separately, however, and eventually evolved into, respectively, the House of Lords and the House of Commons.

Parliament's history is one of long competition with the monarchy, and eventual supremacy. Important milestones in that competition include the early Commons' assertion of control over grants of revenue to the monarch; the English Civil War, during which Parliament ordered the beheading of the king; the Glorious Revolution of 1688, during which Parliament succeeded in establishing its sovereignty over the crown; the growing dependence of the prime minister on Parliament (instead of on the monarch) during the 18th century; the great reforms of the 19th century, which extended suffrage to most of the adult male population and established the secret ballot; the Parliament Act of 1911, which abolished the veto power of the Lords; and the Representation of the People Acts of 1918, 1928, 1948, and 1969, which extended the suffrage to women, established the principle of one person one vote, and lowered the voting age from 21 to 18.

In January 2000, after the exclusion of the hereditary peers, the Wakeham Royal Commission issued a plan for the reform of the House of Lords, calling for a chamber of 550 members, between 20% and 40% of whom would be elected by regional proportional representation. The remainder would be appointed by an independent commission. A certain number of seats would be reserved for women and ethnic minorities. A "spiritual bench" would have 16 seats for the Church of England, 10 seats for other Christian churches, and 5 for non-Christian religions. The plan was widely criticized as not going far enough in the direction of democratizing the Lords. In April 2001 the House of Lords appointments commission named the first 15 "people's peers," chosen from more than 3,000 applicants.

[The Big Dog]

Moving to the more European model would bring about what is the scourge of many of the nations that employ it... weak, coalition governments that struggle even harder to get things done than our government does. And those systems allow for the government to fall on political whim.

While it still isn't perfect, I believe I have to prefer our own well scheduled transferrances of power.

[subdjoe]

"weak, coalition governments that struggle even harder to get things done than our government does"

Hmm....more trouble trying to 'do something' about every problem. Sounds good to me. Seems to me that most of the problems we have now stem from the capons "doing something" about everything.

[bolverk]

You are correct subdjoe, along with most voters not knowing anything about what is going on with the capons and making them pay by ousting them in the next election. To many just vote party line, a problem that is equally to blame in our current state of affairs in this nation.