Word: powerized
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...cause? The worst-case scenario, according to experts, is that Zazi may represent an effort by the Taliban to expand its attacks on U.S. interests. Robert Grenier, a former CIA station chief in Pakistan, believes the Taliban's worldview has changed since the U.S.-led invasion ousted it from power in late 2001. "Many of the leaders now see themselves as part of the global jihad," says Grenier, who heads the consulting firm ERG Partners. "Lots of Afghans see the U.S. presence as an occupation, and I can easily see how some of them would be motivated to strike...
...keep money flowing than getting results on the ground. In one case, a firm that was contracted to provide special surgical lights and other advanced technology to hospitals and clinics in the country reportedly failed to take into account the fact that there was no source of electricity to power the new equipment. (See pictures of the Red Cross at work...
...Though the celebrations in Beijing look proudly toward the future, this sort of martial spectacle has deep roots in the past. Generations of rulers have projected their power through displays of strength and awe, going back to humanity's first civilizations. Ancient Mesopotamian kings lined their cities and citadels with friezes depicting glorious conquests - often using the common visual theme of a giant potentate in front of his army, literally stomping on the heads of his foes. The effect was to boost a monarch's prestige and cement his political authority. Through the sacred Gate of Ishtar in Babylon, returning...
...legacy of these Roman rites lingered for centuries in Europe. Every Easter in medieval Venice - the seat of what was then a powerful Mediterranean empire - regiments of soldiers, dignitaries and the clergy would file past the city's famous Basilica de San Marco toward the docks to watch Venice's ruler, the Doge, board a vessel, sail into the harbor and drop a gold ring into the waters. This very public act symbolized Venice's divine marriage to the Adriatic Sea, the key to its Doge's wealth and power...
...empires dissolved into nation-states, these spectacles of power swapped their air of mysticism for a more tangible tone of aggression. The military parade entered the modern era with the crack Prussian army, famed for its lockstep discipline. Armies around the world copied the German kingdom's methods of mustering and marching, its salutes and drills. Some of the strict measures applied to troops marching in Beijing on Oct. 1 - like the precisely prescribed distance between an infantryman's nose and that of his colleagues on either side - can be traced to the diktats of Prussian tacticians...