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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. 9538. vonKreedon - 7/3/2013 2:26:02 AM Yes, thus its "turnkey" nature. 9539. arkymalarky - 7/3/2013 2:39:01 AM as a long time employee of the NSA as a cryptanalyst, my dad had an interesting take on the whole situation. So, interestingly, did Wanda Sykes, who spoke about her employment with NSA on Jay Leno. Dad's point was that the NSA has always gathered the maximum amount of information they possibly could, and that it's kind of the nature of the beast--that it's been called No Such Agency virtually from its inception. Wanda Sykes had no support for Snowden.
I've been concerned about corporate control and corporate contracts for a long time before this came about. The corporatization of almost everything and the increased privatization of crucial government services is IMO the most dangerous threat to the US. But who protests that? It took decades of repression and a host of converging factors to result in the recent revolutions and the new governments are going to be vulnerable. But Americans day to day enjoy free speech and a sense of opportunity and control of their own destinies. It's the boiling frog here. Arkansas' legislature is brought to us by the Koch brothers and IMO Citizens United is just one aspect of a huge crisis. And I don't think crisis is hyperbole. 9540. arkymalarky - 7/3/2013 2:40:53 AM Vk the spell check is probably coming from your browser. My spelling sure isn't being checked. 9541. arkymalarky - 7/3/2013 2:53:09 AM as a long time employee of the NSA as a cryptanalyst, my dad had an interesting take on the whole situation. So, interestingly, did Wanda Sykes, who spoke about her employment with NSA on Jay Leno. Dad's point was that the NSA has always gathered the maximum amount of information they possibly could, and that it's kind of the nature of the beast--that it's been called No Such Agency virtually from its inception. Wanda Sykes had no support for Snowden.
I've been concerned about corporate control and corporate contracts for a long time before this came about. The corporatization of almost everything and the increased privatization of crucial government services is IMO the most dangerous threat to the US. But who protests that? It took decades of repression and a host of converging factors to result in the recent revolutions and the new governments are going to be vulnerable. But Americans day to day enjoy free speech and a sense of opportunity and control of their own destinies. It's the boiling frog here. Arkansas' legislature is brought to us by the Koch brothers and IMO Citizens United is just one aspect of a huge crisis. And I don't think crisis is hyperbole. 9542. arkymalarky - 7/3/2013 2:53:09 AM I've done a lot of research on corporate influence on public education, but when you try to address it you feel like Chicken Little. And they keep people so busy chasing individual issues while they haul everything away that no one gains any ground. It's like a burglar setting off all your smoke detectors and robbing you blind while you look for fires. I frantically bombarded poor Spudboy with all this when I first became aware of it, but it's hard to know where to even start with such a pervasive trend. Even people who mean well like Bill Gates are risking some of our most successful and important institutions. And you won't find liberal politicians and journalists very helpful. And even mass protests don't help because the powers that be don't have anything to lose by being non responsive. 9543. bhelpuri - 7/3/2013 8:07:39 AM are you as concerned with private entities holding the same data and using it with no oversight or accountability for their own ends
It's a dissimilar concern, which I don't buy as a mitigating factor.
Speaking only for myself, I am not surprised that this had been going on or even the full extent of its (extraordinary) scale. What does raise my eyebrows is the degree of complicity between the US-based corporations and the intelligence infrastructure. Turns out they've been fully in cahoots from the beginning. Turns out that companies like Facebook + Google would never have become as big and pervasive as they have without co-operation, and probably the specific backing of the security state. In this and many other ways, the US is revealed to be very much like China after all!
And that last is a blow. You will definitely see a surge away from this giant US-based multinationals in the coming year, without a doubt, it's just that most of this will happen with their clients outside the US. I suspect this will add up to a rare investment opportunity in Internet and telecom companies in Europe, Asia...
9544. bhelpuri - 7/3/2013 8:18:34 AM The corporatization of almost everything and the increased privatization of crucial government services is IMO the most dangerous threat to the US.
I definitely agree it is the biggest threat to the oft-touted American "way of life", and "American values." It's crazy how docile and sheeplike this once-robust democratic polity has become.
And even mass protests don't help because the powers that be don't have anything to lose by being non responsive.
Here I don't agree, at all. In fact mass protests, civil disobedience, do help, and in the end are probably the only way that the United States can start to beat back their own highly predatory, extraordinarily selfish elites. A million people on the streets every day in just one American city would shake the government to its foundations, possibly permanently strip the layer of legitimacy that is given to the status quo. It has happened before, it happens that way all over the world (see Egypt for reference), and you just can't expect any real change in the US unless it happens again. 9545. bhelpuri - 7/3/2013 8:21:59 AM An interesting thought - once the Latino-ization of the US reaches truly substantial critical mass, let's say 40% of the electorate, then you could well see a different kind of politics being pursued than the current two-parties-one-voice shadow boxing. Veneceremos!
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