Out of curiosity, how does this:

The last British Empire had dealt with local resistance before. That wasn't the problem. The cost of WWI, millions of troops demobilised, (which could have been deployed throughout the empire), and the ascendency of the Labour party and British socialism had more to do with it than anything. Britain chose to go that way, but they were always up front about the fact that they were an empire, unlike America.

in any way dispute the true, simple points I made?

If I note that the British in charge of British West Africa noted the increasing costs of the export industries there and the increasing and increasingly organized resistance there, does this have to be in the absence of any other factors?

Similarly, how does the growth of the Labour Party in England become disconnected from concerns about the costs and burdens of the Empire? (Which, whatever Ferguson may suggest it could be called, is what it was being called then.)

For that matter, do you think that the West Africans who had just fought alongside the British in WWI -- an experience which helped lead to a new form of independence movements -- were also unaware of the degree to which WWI had weakened the Great Powers?

scamp?

I'll light a beeswax candle wick!

Ahh! O, scramble some eggs. Candight in the right company with

some good sweet,

peppermint tea?

sumptious. sip.

slowly.

Empire can't be done the old fashioned way. That became clear in the 20th century.

As Gen. Odom said of our "empire" or hegemon earlier this year:

"It is ideological, not territorial; it's a money-making empire, not money losing; countries fight to get into this empire, not out; and it provides economic, legal and miltary guidance through supranational organizations."

By CHARLES BABINGTON, Associated Press Writer 42 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - Congressional Democrats will have plenty to ponder during the Christmas-New Year recess. For instance, why did things go so badly this fall, and how well did their leaders serve them? Partisan players will quarrel for months, but objective analysts say the debate must start here: An embattled president made extraordinary use of his veto power and he was backed by GOP lawmakers who may have put their political fortunes at risk.

Also, a new Democratic leadership team overestimated the impact of the Iraq war and the 2006 elections, learning too late they had no tools to force Bush and his allies to compromise on bitterly contested issues.

Both parties seem convinced that voters will reward them 11 months from now. And they agree that Congress' gridlock and frustration are likely to continue until then — and possibly beyond — unless the narrow party margins in the House and Senate change appreciably.

In a string of setbacks last week, Democratic leaders in Congress yielded to Bush and his GOP allies on Iraqi war funding, tax and health policies, energy policy and spending decisions affecting billions of dollars throughout the government.

The concessions stunned many House and Senate Democrats, who saw the 2006 elections as a mandate to redirect the war and Bush's domestic priorities. Instead, they found his goals unchanged and his clout barely diminished.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071216/ap_on_go_co/congress_democrats

That's what a surveillance and torture state is all about. It doesn't mean that the Stasi necessarily breaks down your door in the middle of the night and drags you away to nameless (not to mention lawless) "detention." But they are most definitely doing it to someone, somewhere. Right now. And you're next.

...and they don't always even bother with the surveillance part either. A relative of mine has had her life destroyed, and my family was turned upside down, when the local-yokel swat team invaded her home one night and shot her fiancee to death. This "raid" was based solely on the testimony of "confidential informants", who had a beef against her fiancee over a custody issue, feeding the police a pack of lies they didn't bother to confirm.

Che's right. They are out there breaking down doors. They are out there detaining (and killing with impunity) people. And they aren't even bothering with surveillance while creating these scenarios wherein they can destroy lives then hide behind the so-called law. And if you think they won't bother with you, well, neither did my relative.

The quickest way to make me explode these days is to say to me, "Well, if you aren't doing anything wrong, then you have nothing to worry about." Pardon me for calling bullshit.

Encrypting email is already supported in major email packages, like MS Exchange or Eureka. PGP (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pretty_Good_Privacy) is open source, is the standard and is not readily cracked. I strongly doubt that the NSA can crack 128 bit keys; that's why key lengths longer than 40 bits were made illegal for a time. And, of course, one can always lengthen the key.

The problem of a trusted 3rd party to issue keys is one that must be resolved. But these exist already in the private sector and have not posed a problem for people who use encryption.

Implementation is not particularly difficult. The public key simply would be another data element in your contact information. If corporate executives in the banking industry, or traditionally technophobic doctors can manage to use encrypted email, anybody can. And they do.

Telephones are not equipped in this way by default, so represent a more difficult problem. The difficulty is not technical but one of adoption. A device to encrypt and decrypt telephone conversations would not be expensive, but would have to use a standard encryption technique and key length that was universally adopted.

The fact that this is no happening speaks to broad lack of concern on the part of the public wrt eavesdropping. In fact, people show a very remarkable lack of concern about their privacy, carrying devices which track their every movement, signing up for discount programs at their pharmacies, where all their purchases are tracked.

This broad lack of concern is what really permits the telecoms to buy their way out of this. As the head of Oracle famously said, there is no more privacy. And Americans seem not to cre.