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9518. alistairconnor - 7/1/2013 1:30:52 PM Ha! A lot of water has passed under the bridge in the past ten years or so, the world is a different place, and I have a sneaky feeling you saw a lot of it coming before I did, Bhel. It would indeed be good to do a panorama of interesting subjects... the emergence of the middle class in the "developing" world, and the concomitant (and totally unexpected!) demands for good governance and individual freedoms (turkey, brazil...) The decline of the middle class in the "developed" world, which has been staring us in the face for a while now...
Just as long as we don't talk about Europe. Too painful (only joking...) 9519. alistairconnor - 7/1/2013 1:52:58 PM For laughs, we could talk about the outrage building in the European Union over the fact that the US has been bugging our federal institutions, with the help of the UK and probably other EU secret services.
This is apparently a shocking revelation. Excuse me? Where have the shocked people been living in the past few decades? I remember demonstrations in New Zealand in the early 1970s against the "Echelon" listening system : NZ has been a partner, but mostly a host to technical installations which have been snooping on all accessible international communications traffic since at least that time.
Basically, if you've got something to communicate that you don't want the NSA to see, write it down on a piece of paper and deliver it by hand. Nothing changes. 9520. alistairconnor - 7/1/2013 1:53:46 PM html laziness. 9521. bhelpuri - 7/1/2013 1:58:14 PM Well, the tearful comments by PMS in the other thread (meant as a slur) did have me casting my mind back to what we talked about here, especially post 9/11. I am pretty certain I complained quite a lot in the Mote about absurd real estate prices at the time, and my perception of an incredibly unsustainable bubble, etc. And now we know I was right.
The cool thing (which I definitely congratulate myself about in retrospect) is that I did not merely grumble, but made huge life decisions and financial gambles based on my analysis, almost all of which paid off big time (exiting Google stock at $104 was not one!) 9522. bhelpuri - 7/1/2013 2:18:55 PM I left the USA on the day after Dubya was re-elected, which was awesome timing. Couple months later I liquidated from almost all US assets, shifted my funds from dollars to rupees, and invested almost everything in Asia markets + real estate. Returns went from 10-12% to 70-80%. But right now happens to be a different ballgame, and some of my gains being wiped out by currency woes. The US now looks an attractive bargain in many ways - Europe too. In the next few years (as my kids filter to college) I will venture back... 9523. alistairconnor - 7/1/2013 3:46:47 PM Yes, there are times and places for bringing up children. 9524. arkymalarky - 7/1/2013 8:31:49 PM any speculation on where things are headed in Egypt? 9525. arkymalarky - 7/1/2013 8:32:45 PM Oh, and I just read at TPM that Soledad O'Brien is going to work for al Jazeera America. 9526. arkymalarky - 7/1/2013 8:33:58 PM and where is Wombat? I'm interested in his take on what's happening right now. 9527. judithathome - 7/1/2013 8:38:46 PM Al Jazeera owns Current TV and has some of the best political reporting going. I watch two shows from there 4 nights a week: The War Room with Michael Shure and Viewpoint with John Fugelsang. Both are very good and they have geusts that aren't the "usual suspects" doing the rotation from cable TV 9528. judithathome - 7/1/2013 8:39:06 PM ..cable TV news. 9529. bhelpuri - 7/2/2013 4:28:42 AM Egypt seems set for a leadership change , which is another victory for the mass demonstrations that have guided change in that country the past year. It's a big deal, a stunning reversal for the Muslim Brotherhood after it had played all its cards right to get into power in the first place.
But will merely replacing Morsi or the leadership make any difference? I suspect that Egypt, like Turkey, like Iran and several other countries in the region are going to have a very difficult time coping with the demands, needs and aspirations of their populations for at least a decade to come. We are likely to see entrenched Occupy-type demonstrations, and a lot of unexpected turnover in the top echelons of leadership including regime changes. 9530. judithathome - 7/2/2013 5:30:25 AM The scenes of the demonstrations look amazing.
Something like that in this country would never happen...apathy rules the day. 9531. bhelpuri - 7/2/2013 7:11:24 AM I have been thinking about that question the past few weeks. In many other countries - including European ones - I think revelation of massive surveillance on its own population would have resulted in angry mass demonstrations, and quite possible a resignation of the chief executive in fairly short order.
But nothing like that is likely in the US, where the companies colluding in the surveillance all experienced slight rises in stock prices - not a mass exodus - and where the vast majority of people have clearly demonstrated they really don't care about the issue at all.
Some of this is clearly the issue itself - privacy is nowhere nearly as valued as it once was - and also the continued post 9/11 atmosphere makes it easy for the government to sell the public such snooping is necessary to prevent terrorist acts.
But another part really is the dumbed-down, disengaged and distracted nature of the contemporary American electorate.
Marches and demonstrations and dissent all require a level of commitment that is hard to detect almost anywhere but the far fringes of the US polity now. The existing system has become so all-powerful and entrenched that it is pretty much impervious to any threat of correction or significant change. Obama's regime has been a perfect illustration of this, and I think the message has now strongly been internalized in young Americans that you can't change the bedrock of the socio-economic realities of the country except in superficial, mostly symbolic ways (gay marriage, a mixed-race man in the White House, a Latina on the Supreme Court) etc.
In my opinion this is a dangerous transition period for American democracy, with signs not very positive for its future. 9532. bhelpuri - 7/2/2013 1:48:02 PM 
9533. bhelpuri - 7/2/2013 1:52:44 PM FYI, that is the Muslim Brotherhood logo. Extraordinary failure in politics in just a few short months... 9534. vonKreedon - 7/2/2013 5:52:05 PM As Bhel says, the failure of US citizens to respond to the ongoing revelations about government surveillance, political IRS scrutiny, and lying about same is really depressing. I'm particularly stunned that Clapper still has a job as DNI after baldly lying to the Senate in response to a question from Sen. Wyden, answer that both Clapper and Wyden knew at the time to be a lie.
9535. Wombat - 7/3/2013 12:58:29 AM Boy, go away for a few weeks and miss the return of Pincher Martin. I've always respected his debating skills (compared to Concerned and Acey, anyway). Like many, he seems to have become embittered.
With the advent of the Internet and the propagation of sites such as facebook, most Americans have become complicit in the loss of their privacy. For those who are upset with the NSA holding telephone metadata with the capacity to access internet data, are you as concerned with private entities holding the same data and using it with no oversight or accountability for their own ends?
Updating privacy and surveillance legislation to reflect the massive increase and propagation of personal information would be a good thing (although unlikely to happen, since one political party seems to have degenerated to Concerned-like poo-flinging as their political strategy).
So too would be a debate on whether the risks of a major terrorist incident outweighs costs to privacy and potential for abuse. That too is unlikely to happen any time soon. 9536. vonKreedon - 7/3/2013 1:02:32 AM The Snowden affair surfaced a chilling phrase that I'm afraid neatly summarizes our danger: Turnkey Tyranny.
And another thing, when did The Mote implement spell checking? 9537. Wombat - 7/3/2013 1:19:02 AM It's only "tyranny" if the government actually abuses its legislatively-arrived-at capability (which it probably will at some point). Until then we have the soft tyranny of cookies and other forms of consumer data tracking, car rental agencies using GPS data, etc.
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