Powers That Be

I'm reading the Christian Science Monitor's story about Obama Versus Aliens from other planets, and I suddenly realized that while democracy is a powerful force, it isn't the only force loose on this planet, or even in this country. I also started reading John Le Carre's Single & Single last night, which includes this little bit:

so that might have something to do with my revelation as well. The book dates from 1999, so the figures are a little obsolete. There are many areas that "public opinion" does not pay any mind, and when nobody is minding the store all kinds of criminal activity can flourish.


Hat tip to Tam for the Obama link.


A note about typographay: I used my camera to photograph the above passage, then Picassa and MSPaint to create the final image. I also found the passage using Google Books, but the typeface they used was funny:

I suppose it is readable, but I didn't like it, so I went with my hand cobbled version. I wonder if Google's choice of typeface is an attempt to foil OCR (Optical Character Recognition) programs.