China as a military threat is so far behind us, it's really not worth discussing. They are just trying to show off for their nationalist population.
The fact is even if they did catch up, we would still wipe the floor with them and any other potential threat. We own the world, there is no country on Earth that can stop us.
Unless you shoot yourself in the foot, like most past Empires...
This, this, a thousand times this! Why the fuck do the the talk radio assholes blather on ad nauseum excoriating Obama for Obamacare when they could be calling him a totalitarian traitor to the Constitution instead?
(The answer, of course, is that the Republicans (and Democrats) are perfectly okay with totalitarianism.)
Because it works as a diversion? Yeah, a bit of a stretch, but I don't trust ANYBODY these days.
Is this garden-variety schizophrenia or some other syndrome?
He is just an assficionado.
Whoops, billion.
I think you meant: $1.3 billion. Wow! Something is going on here, $13 billion damnit!
Can someone explain this to me in idiot? I don't see what the problem is, nor why I should care.
If you don't see a problem, then no amount of idiot will make you care.
Why shouldn't they use drones? They use surveillance helicopters. This is just another method of doing the same thing.
Because, as a citizen in this brave new world (therefore, as everyone else, an enemy of the state), I can't use my drones against them. The objetive of using drones (read spying with drones) is to know who I am, where I am, what I am doing and why I am doing it. They justify it with this: If you have not done anything wrong, you have nothing to fear. If you think superficially, you may find nothing wrong with that, since they say: to have 'security' you must sacrifice some liberty. But if you think carefully you will see the trojan horse that is this new surveillance state they are 'selling' to us:
Who says what is wrong? I'm sure it's the same people 'selling' the surveillance state to us.
And what is wrong? You may ask yourself: Is terrorism wrong? Is robbery wrong? Is rape wrong? Sure bet! But... is pointing at corruption wrong? Is disagreeing with the state wrong? Is reporting white collar crime wrong? Good luck for you if they think these things are wrong (surprise surprise, they already think it's worse than wrong, it's treason!).
And yet you still may think: well, at least I have my security! That's until the day you need security and realize they are too busy chasing the proper 'wrong doers' to help you.
The rest of Greece's commercial broadcast media belong to 3 publishing corporations which also have magazines, constructor companies etc etc. They usually use their media as a pressure for politicians in order to get large public sector construction sites and their idea of news is to terrorize people in order to accept austerity measures.
So, it's the same shit as Brazil's media. Small world!
"If you want to eat hippopatomus, you've got to pay the freight." -- attributed to an IBM guy, about why IBM software uses so much memory