Oh, but the new version is sooo much better.  Tanks and nukes made unambiguous targets.  Spy satellites could count them and assess the risk with some degree of accuracy.  The new existential threat to our Way of Life(TM) is mysterious and unclear.  They could be anywhere.  Why even that nice man with the funny accent who runs the quick stop on the corner could be secretly building underwear bombs in his basement.  I mean, you never can tell with those people.  Be afraid, be very afraid.

Somewhere in cyberspace, the ghost of de Chardin is smiling.

Richard Lyon:

Is it really going to be possible to create an all new and improved version of European cold war paranoia over the Islamic world?

certainly it's possible, it's happening in front of our eyes.

and if it weren't, the investment of our taxes in pulverizing their civilians constantly in their own countries will create it, so...

and to add more profits, give ordinary peasants lots of guns, that 'investment' can be an efficient loss leader, leading to orders for much more pricey hardware later.

fear paralyzes action, and when that doesn't work, flog them hope. the better the first tactic works, the better the second one does too.

quite the little lesson in symbiotic evil.

"Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do." Jim Hightower

Indeed:

Daily Kos: Afghanistan: winning the war of perceptions

While European leaders stand ready to condemn Israel for assassinating a single Hamas operative without any civilian loss of life, the death of another dozen Pakistani farmers during an attempt to take out some midlevel Taliban functionary will only draw a faint hiccup of concern from Islamabad, one which might have had been reported by the Western press back when this was Bush's dumb war, but will be entirely ignored now that it is the centerpiece of Obama's new smart war.

Europeans think a hundred miles is a long way. Americans think a hundred years is a long time.

Would there be any serious problem with inviting the authors of quality diaries on relevant topics worthy of discussion to cross post here?  I know several here Kos readers, and if nobody else has an account I could do the inviting.

I dunno. Drone technology has come on in leaps and bounds. Battlefield comms gets a big kick start.

But given that most of it is secret I don't see it feeding into anything. At least during the 60s you had tons of stuff in the space race so there was cross fertilization. Now it's just wasted.

so there's no real export. After all, anyone who the US deems worthy of getting fighters (eg Israel) gets 'em free anyway. American engineering doesn't exist anymore. It's partly why British industry crashed was the only part of it the govt cared about was military and it just isn't that big a money spinner for the economy.

Anglo america is fixated on military power, and our economies are tanking as a result.

keep to the Fen Causeway

Rowlocks to you, sir ;-)

You can't be me, I'm taken

While a nice theory, it still is only a theory based on circumstantial evidence and conjecture.

At least 10 Israelis share names of new Dubai hit squad suspects - Haaretz - Israel News

Dubai police also released credit card details of some of the suspects. At least 13 credit cards used to book hotel rooms and pay for air travel were issued by the same small U.S. bank.

Jesus died for somebody's sins but not mine - Patti Smith

Thanks for your answer - but now I think I do not understand what neologism means - you seem to use it differently than it is described in the wiki, where I looked it up and now also found the answer to my question about time.

Neologism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A neologism (pronounced niˈɒlədʒɪzəm); from Greek νέος (neos 'new') + λόγος (logos 'word') is a newly coined word that may be in the process of entering common use, but has not yet been accepted into mainstream language.

When a word or phrase is no longer "new", it is no longer a neologism. Neologisms may take decades to become "old", however. Opinions differ on exactly how old a word must be to cease being considered a neologism.

In psychiatry, the term neologism is used to describe the use of words that only have meaning to the person who uses them, independent of their common meaning.

Well, anyway I learned a new word. :-)

Yup.

And there are some days I wish he'd invented a guillotine.

Jesus died for somebody's sins but not mine - Patti Smith

I think if there is any major reason, this is more likely to be it than any Greenwald surmised. I admire Greenwald a lot and his knowledge of constitutional law is possibly unequalled in the blogos, but here his exasperation got the better of him.

Politicians are not just beneficiaries of the system, their worldview is conditioned by it and it's very hard for them to go against the grain. They need to collect money for re-election, hundreds and thousands of dollars, which is not chump change. Collecting money is a 24/7 obsession for them and so courting rich powerful interests who will make that collecting of vast sums of money easier is a part of the game. Equally, upsetting people, people who might be prepared to pony up money is not part of the ball game.

so going off piste with strange ideas about changing the system, removing money (which is how vested interests buy influence) from the game, prmoting environmentalism, introducing justice, promoting peace. these are "unpopular", ie potentially impoverishing, ideas. you'd have to be pretty sure of your financial sources and your popularity to run against that.

keep to the Fen Causeway

ATinNM:

the system must be beyond reproach.

...and anyone questioning it too forcefully be bludgeoned, bribed or drugged into compliance.

the precious middle class whose loss we so bemoan, as it gave us life, is also the buffer and servant for the ones who believe any means dandy to maintain the ends of no-change.

joe says it best:

Joe Bageant: Round Midnight

Enter the reign of the bourgeoisie, self appointed and self-interested middlemen to anything and everything. The sheer complexity of the industrial revolution and associated finance was a dog that could fatten many fleas.

When the bourgeoisie did not get what it felt was a good cut of the action from the monarchies, it raised hell, sometimes enough to cause revolutions. If they won, as they did in America, they took credit for establishing democracy. If they lost, they fobbed it off as a "people's revolution," leaving the working slobs, the actual producers of wealth, to face the king's hangmen.

Even when "the people" occasionally win one of those "people's revolutions", we never really win. Not in the end. For instance, here in Mexico, contrary to what we've seen in Zapata movies, there has never been a successful people's revolution in terms of lasting and real egalitarian reform. Just armed struggle, and many promises of reform, always to be abandoned after the revolution. They were subsequently wiped out by the politically potent urban middle class, in league with traditional elites, such as the haciendados and corporatists. The bourgeoisie never gives up its profitable connections to the elites. Same as in America. The bourgeoisie lives at the pleasure of the elites.

this causes another huge split in our (social) consciousness, these mixed feelings about class sympathetic resonance and identification.

contradictions that turn cognition inside out!

religion, philosophy, and now PNI emphasise one-mindedness to try and focus in on what is sure and holistic in life, but this has been fragmented to a degree that seems beyond recall or remedy, in our 'first world'.

such a huge hat, we needz a mighty wabbit!

"Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do." Jim Hightower

Excellent pin down.

Our knowledge has surpassed our wisdom. -Charu Saxena.