The report was that he offered to pardon him in exchange for saying "who" the emails were from. They already had the emails - that's what Stone and Assange were doing together
For all reasonable sizes of black holes, the flux due to Hawking radiation would be _so ridiculously low_ that it wouldn't change anything about our usage of the term "dark matter".
In fact most dark matter models do assume some form of extremely weak interactions with normal matter or dark matter decay, which is how we try to detect dark matter. The effective flux from such interactions is a lot larger than Hawking radiation would be.
You aren't (or shouldn't be) put under general anesthesia for a colonoscopy. They use "conscious sedation", in the USA typically achieved with intravenous propofol. You are technically conscious, but very sleepy and unable to form memories while sedated.
But yes, general anesthesia is really wild stuff. Even more wild when you learn that we don't know how they actually work, other than that they work.
They gave me a "sedative" for my colonoscopy. They just said it will make me really relaxed and maybe sleepy. I wasn't sleepy at all but boy was I relaxed! I remember laying on my left side, the doctor behind me controlling the scope, and the nurse in front of me but not obstructing the views of the monitors that were also in front of me. I was getting an awesome inside view of my guts! At one point I was feeling some pain and making some noises about it and the nurse told the doctor to hold on, apparently there was a pretty tight turn and she kneaded my guts so they could negotiate it. They did find a polyp and showed it to me on the monitor, TBH you have to have a trained eye to recognize those, so they biopsied it right then an there. The results came back a few days later saying it was benign. Unfortunately since they found a polyp they have me on a five year colonoscopy schedule instead of ten.
For those fretting about getting a colonoscopy, like I was, let me tell you it's no big deal. I've had dental cleanings that were more uncomfortable. In fact, there was nothing about my colonoscopy that was uncomfortable. Getting your guts cleaned out in preparation for the colonoscopy? Yeah that's a different story but the actual procedure itself is a big nothing burger.
I don't know how common the different methods are but in my case I was certainly out and that was the intent. They did use propofol and it was like the time I was out just didn't happen. I have memory issues that seem to be related to sleep issues but they were not affected by the sedation any way I could tell.
It could still be sedation only. Sedation for colonoscopy is usually done with propofol.
Patients don't always notice they're semi-awake, and most don't remember the procedure. It's perfectly normal. I you had an airway in place and were mechanically ventilated, then that's general anesthesia.
While my memory isn't 100% clear, I'm fairly sure I had a mask and I clearly remember the anesthesia person saying I would be out in a few seconds (which is what happened). There were three people doing the procedure, one just on the anesthesia (nurse anesthesist I think), and it was done in a hospital complex. When they woke me up I first thought they must want me to move to a different position before they start but it was done (I don't remember how long it took but it wasn't that quick even though they didn't find any issues). While convenient to not feel any pain (not even any discomfort that I can recall), it is unsettling to have a hole in my life like that. I can see how those drugs could be misused, although at least I can remember everything before I was out and after I woke up at least as well as I can remember anything (maybe better since I was worried about what they might find). The time I was out didn't feel at all like sleep. And the haze managed to fully clear not long before I went to bed that night so it didn't even help me get to sleep faster :/.
They use conscious sedation for both. It's unlikely you got general because there are significantly greater risks involved with administering and recovering from general anesthesia. For conscious sedation, all they have to do is give you an oxygen mask (or the tube that sits under your nose, aka "nasal cannula").
My takeaway from general anesthesia is that I think I know what it feels like to die now. When you go to sleep and wake up, it feels like there was some passage of time. You can tell if you've been asleep for 1 hour or 8, or really just that some time has passed. Maybe the whole night wasn't filled with dreams, or you don't remember them, but something was there. With anesthesia, there is absolutely nothing. You wake up and you know that time has passed because someone told you it did, but it feels like you just came out of a black hole. There is just pure nothing in between going under and coming back out. I found it really weird and somewhat enlightening.
> I once worked somewhere that had an employee who took notes during every meeting, to what seemed like an annoying level. After every meeting, he emailed everyone who attended the meeting a copy of his notes.
Can you share what company was that? If not the company name, at least the industry?
Not the person you responded to, but when I worked at State Farm they had 'Organizational Support Specialists' who did this and other clerical odd jobs. Unfortunately they were pretty high turnover, it was rare to have one at the start of the project and still have the same person at the end.
Can someone clarify for a layman what this means in practice? I still want to use uMatrix on Firefox. Does this mean that over time, uMatrix will eventually stop working?
Separate question, is there somewhere can we can read from the author about this decision to archive uMatrix?
> The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) confirmed nine years after that El Masri was “severely beaten, sodomized, shackled, and hooded, and subjected total sensory deprivation—carried out in the presence of state officials of Macedonia and within its jurisdiction.”
> Macedonia’s “government was consequently responsible for those acts performed by foreign officials…Those measures had been used with premeditation, the aim being to cause Mr. Masri severe pain and suffering in order to obtain information,” the ECHR additionally found.
> (...)
> “The U.S. diplomatic cables revealed the extent of pressure brought upon the German authorities (and in parallel, relevant Spanish authorities) not to act upon the clear evidence of criminal acts by the USA even though by then exposed,” Goetz added.
Then some Americans are confused that many in the western world don't like American influence. I find it outrageous that these things happen, and I wouldn't want my government to consider such a country an ally.
I totally agree. First, many Americans don't support these acts, it's just beyond their control. And others do support them but either minimize them or believe they are justified for a greater good.
And a lot are totally clueless and just have no idea of what's going on.
There's a lot of propaganda, poor education and lack of information in the US. Just watch a presidential debate, it's a joke.
Thats the problem with democracy: the people own the mistakes of those they elect. Dont like what they do? Vote them out of office. Arrest them. Jail them. If the system fails, fix the system.
No the problem with democracy, we’ll the USAs in particular is there exists no department or task force whose sole duty is to enforce the constitution at every level and to imprison those in government positions who abuse their powers for personal gain or immoral purposes.
This is America dude. If you don't like our Founding Fathers and you don't like the Union Army, you might consider relocating to some mythical land whose history isn't soaked in blood.
Would you please stop using HN primarily for political and ideological battle? We ban accounts that do that, regardless of which politics they're battling for or against, because it's against the intended spirit of the site and actually destroys it.
(You've also repeatedly been posting flamebait comments and breaking HN's rules in other ways too. Would you mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and sticking to them?)
Just to be clear here, are you saying that you're more disgusted by the idea of violent, direct action against those committing human rights atrocities?
Rather than by those committing the human rights atrocities?
Are you going to offer any supporting evidence at least like the post you are rebuking? All of human history seems to suggest violence is the most available resource for achieving any sort of change.
"Violence is the foundation of law" is something I read in some philosophy of law books. I think it is in HLA Hart's or someones. While parroting the rule of law to the submissive, the rulers (or the beneficiaries of the current law regime) will hide the foundations of the existing law regime.
While you're correct that historically, violence is very often required to redress these atrocities, and you're very correct that this is an uncomfortable fact that we like to ignore, the time for violence is when there is absolutely, positively, no other option. And we're not there yet. Very far from it, and there is still hope that it won't be needed.
When a hundred million people will be on the street, and fire is opened on protesters, then is the time. Starting violence as a popular movement for human rights is not a good option.
The reason why it works in China is because, by and large, the people see their life improving and will support the government until there will be prolonged stagnation, if at all.
But yes, I meant it as a figure of speech more than anything.
Take an inspiration from countries that get proper democracy right - like Switzerland. You can have public vote on anything, just gather enough signatures and it will happen. Result will be binding to government, whatever it means.
This of course relies on population to be at least slightly smart and not dumb herd of easy to manipulate sheeps, but that's a basic premise of democracy in general.
Direct democracy always beats representative democracy. In the representative democracy, people have not voted for the content of the laws that the law makers pass. That's why Rousseau calls "representative democracy" slavery.
Direct democracy can work in small countries. Will it work in a country with 150M or 300M people? Will it work? Maybe, one has to schedule voting every 6 months, just like a train schedule.
Yea, except direct democracy leads to government scope creep, if you want that, move to Europe and get nannied.
I don’t see us anywhere near a failed experiment and until anyone can make that case strongly, changing our fundamental structure is off the table. 3rd highest GDP per capita, most innovative country by far, extremely high tourism rate, most diverse country in multiple ways, consistently expanding healthcare / best cancer treatment the world / most innovative drug research, hugely successful progressive social movements, most philanthropic, cities that give the highest amounts of social welfare in per capita terms, you can go on.
Of course you can point out many bad things, but that doesn’t invalidate that it’s not failing, just that it’s not perfect - and to be honest, much of the failures to me look like local ones, not Federal ones. Take Chicago for example.
We need diversity of governance so we can find out what rule of law works best in the long run. Let Europe experiment with more direct democracy. Look at Singapore, Rwanda for the other side. Let the experiments run so long as they don’t trample on basic human rights. America is flawed, but for the same reason Google Chrome shouldn’t win out the browser wars, Representative Democracy should stay, it matches up well on the stats I care about, and it tends not to trample on freedoms nearly as much (something something three lions and a zebra).
"Scope creep" is orthogonal to the issue Rousseau raised: representative democracy is a form of slavery. And in this slavery, masters are law makers; slaves are 99% of the population. The beneficiaries are K-street people, the elite from media, c-suites, politicians, the super wealthy, etc.
The representatives are the slaves, if anything. Look how they can’t even keep their own opinions, they are forced to change to appease their base. Obama was against gay marriage. He wasn’t “free” to keep believing that: if he didn’t stop believing it, he was out. Period. Who is the slave? And it isn’t just rhetoric. If they don’t pass laws the people want, they’re out. Sure, they can enrich their cronies along the way. But you’re painting it way too black and white.
I do agree that K street holds too much power, not politicians. And politicians aren’t totally corrupt, just about half or so.
That's a rather childish erosion of a topic discussed, I presume you don't have anything substantial to add. Currently its the most free country in the world on many levels, and it shows in many aspects like people happiness, low criminality etc.
As for WWII, try to come up with something deeper than parroting this, ie how Swiss took tons of refugees that would face deportation and death, while being surrounded by Axis from all directions. How they decided to stop at one point because they didn't have enough food to feed their population, but Geneva canton kept taking refugees in regardless. They helped Allies' secret services with undermining axis in numerous ways, ie keeping the post in Campione d'Italia to subvert Duce's regime.
Its way more than many other 'neutral' countries done during WWII. And mistakes they made, they owned them, admitted them and paid compensations. What more do you want?
Talking about someone having 'been beaten' by US while China literally puts 100's of thousands in concentration camps merely for being of a specific ethnicity ... as their organs are nabbed by the elite via 'body part' black markets.
All these issues have to be put in context: the scale, the type of abuses, the proportionality, the context, the risk etc..
9/11 was a 'very scary' moment in history, the likelihood that others were planning to do the same was very high, and legit terrorist organizations were operating around the world.
The response to 'non-uniformed irregular attack' was necessarily going to have to be equally as asymmetric, i.e. getting at bad people in the locations they were working form, as opposed to a battle field.
It gets a little bit pedantic to discuss 'human rights' when in conflict, people are exterminated 'in accordance with all UN/International laws and rules' sometimes pretty arbitrarily. For example, the teenager Omar Khadr who killed a US Medic on the battlefield was injured, and about to die. It was US special forces who them saved him, ironically so he could spend a long time in Guantanamo.
The paradox of the fact that were he not of 'special interest' - he would be 100% dead, and nobody, not 'Amnesty International' or the UN would put up a fuss, as he was shot lobbing grenades at medics.
US and EU laws are not designed for acute, wartime scenarios, the only real question is how rational and reasonable the management of force can be applied without breaking too many humane boundaries, and, how many 'mistakes' we are willing to make.
The CIA black cells are definitely a stain, but in the grand scheme of history, it's nothing. Civil, lawful and humane order was otherwise broadly maintained.
I agree with what you said, yet can't help but think that everyone who knows about this kind of thing and still doesn't think twice about which party to vote for, is responsible in some way.
Every american is given a voice, to vote for the best party, the best candidate, based on what they know and believe. Voting is anonymous. You dont have to tell anyone what you voted for. Vote for a third party, or for whatever you think is best.
John Adams and George Washington believed a two-party state was a major threat to democracy, and it's pretty easy to see why.
The reality is Democrats and Republicans are about 6 inches apart on every single major issue. Compare the platforms of the "left" and "right" here to other major democracies worldwide, and you'll see.
Things are a little different with the current administration, but even that, the concrete policy and substance issues aren't all that far apart.
- Neither side supports socialized medicine.
- Neither side supports free or cheap college or doing anything about student debt.
- Neither side supports decriminalization or legalization of narcotics.
- Neither side is interested in reducing defense spending.
- Neither side is interested in immigration reform (as evidenced by the Obama administration having, for a long time, controlled both houses and the presidency and changing literally nothing).
- Neither side is interested in reforming the intelligence services or closing GITMO -- remember that?
- Neither side is interested in prison reform or policing reform. Police in America kill 10X as many people per capita as Canadian police kill. The only leader to actually implement any form of prison reform in decades was Donald Trump, credit where due. And that's likely only because he's not really a Democrat or a Republican.
- Both sides persecuted and prosecuted Asange and Snowden.
Really, what are the major points of policy differentiation? A 2% tax hike on the wealthy?
Until our governmental system is overhauled to allow for more democracy and less powerful individuals then the citizens really don't bare much responsibility for the actions of our masters. I live in a gerrymandered district with no real way to vote for my preferences and it doesn't look like it will get better anytime soon.
I have a really hard time with that answer. In a democracy each individual is directly and personally responsible for their government. That's the power and the responsibility associated with picking your leadership. You get credit for the good and the blame for the bad.
I haven't really picked many of my leaders. Most of the government is appointed by the president so I have no say in that. I only get two choices for president neither of which represent me much at all. My congressional district is gerrymandered so I don't get a say there. I have objectively close to 0 influence in how my government works or the decisions it makes.
If we ever fix our government to add more democracy or operate more on the opinions of the citizens then I might feel connected to what my government does but as it stands now there's very little connection between me and others around me and the government that takes actions on the world stage.
the gerrymandering is a really important issue. my city is split into n districts (where 10 < n < 15), each of which elects a representative to the city council. the city votes overwhelmingly blue, but there are clusters of people who mostly vote red in the more affluent neighborhoods. there are enough red voters (roughly 10% of total) that, if they were concentrated in one or two districts, they would actually have a chance of winning a couple council seats. but the democrats have been very careful to slice all red-leaning neighborhoods right down the middle to nullify their votes.
I'm not arguing the city would be better off with more republicans in office, but it's a good example to show how even affluent people can be totally disenfranchised in a political system. no matter how effectively these people mobilize, they will never win an election, even at the most local level, in the foreseeable future.
Sortition with incumbency: if an incumbent wants to “run” again, flip a coin. All empty seats are filled by randomly choosing from a pool of volunteers.
Has the nice property of being well-nigh incorruptible, cheap to implement, and perfectly representative of the population interested in serving.
I also like the fact that it provides direct agency as a “voter” (volunteer to serve), rather than indirect agency (vote for a volunteer).
A single district electing say 20 people via a single transferable vote would be far more representive. The problem isn’t district boundaries, it’s first past the post.
America isn't a pure Democracy in the sense of Plato's Republic.
America is a Representative Democracy. we vote, but we are powerless to change what our Representatives do on our behalf.
by the way, this is really where the root idea of a "Deep State" existing comes from. We vote for Obama to close Gitmo, then he doesn't do it and we never know why. We never voted for illegal NSA domestic mass surveillance, yet here we are and it's normalized. We never voted for CIA renditions, black sites, torture and political assassinations, yet here we are. We never voted for the Federal Reserve to give trillions of dollars to the richest megabillionaires to park that wealth in real estate and price ordinary people out of affordable housing, yet here we are.
it's no longer a crazy conspiracy theory to look at the catastrophic effects of FedGov and how nothing ever improves and conclude the reason is because the govt we think we have is not really in control, but rather a secret State-Within-a-State is in control. a Shadow Govt, a permanent class of faceless bureaucrats wearing dark suits who operate the machinery of Govt and who flaunt the efforts of our elected Representatives and who ignore the will of the voters.
if there ever was an entity that called for extravagent levels of hyperviolence unseen in history to overthrow it, the Deep State is that entity.
Yeah, that's true, gerrymandering is problematic and does stifle people's ability to express their political voice. Does gerrymandering make the US less of a democracy, then? I don't have an answer to that question, so curious your thoughts.
I don't think it makes it less of a democracy, per se. after all, officials are still elected through a public vote, and the gerrymandering is carried out by democratically elected leaders. tbh I'm not even sure how you would get rid of it. political boundaries have to be drawn somewhere to begin with, and sometimes they may need to move if the population shifts over time. I dunno how you could make the current party in power redraw the lines in a way in a way that's fair to the opposition.
I do think your claim about citizens in a democracy ultimately being responsible for the actions of their government is a bit much though, or at least not very useful. individual voters may have opposed the victor in the election, or they may have grudgingly voted them in to avoid an even worse candidate.
The criteria is simple. Does gerrymandering spread power to the people or does it concentrate it in the hands of the few? If the latter, then it makes for less of a democracy.
I think it does, yes. Voting in a gerrymandered region is pretty much just maliciously cargo-culted democracy. It might look like people engaging in a democratic action on the surface, but it doesn't have any effect.
It reminds me of the 'literacy tests' given to black voters, back in the Jim Crow era. We're doing this to help them participate in our democracy, the racists would say. But the reality was in fact the complete opposite.
The structure of the political system itself matters too - for example, this concentration of so much power into a single person, that the US and other countries have with the presidential model, gives them some very autocratic attributes as well.
"There is only one party in the United States, the Property Party … and it has two right wings: Republican and Democrat. Republicans are a bit stupider, more rigid, more doctrinaire in their laissez-faire capitalism than the Democrats, who are cuter, prettier, a bit more corrupt — until recently … and more willing than the Republicans to make small adjustments when the poor, the black, the anti-imperialists get out of hand. But, essentially, there is no difference between the two parties."
Chomsky was dead wrong about his heirarchy of languages and he set back computing by 50 years. He has also been wrong about geopolitics, since he ends up supporting the very Western Imperialism that he rails against.
You seem to think that if a party does not accomplish its policy objectives (closing gitmo, DACA) because the other party prevented it from accomplishing those objectives, it does not support them? interesting take :)
In 2009, 2010 and 2011, Obama was President and the House and Senate were both Democratic. Who was stopping Obama from closing GITMO during those three years? This was a campaign promise after all. Did DREAM'ers not exist at this time?
GITMO never closed because the US didn't find countries super willing to take in the detainees, and felt it would be "too distasteful" to let them stay in the US proper. Not a good case for violating human rights law, IMO, but to quote POTUS "it is what it is."
1993, 1994, 1995, Clinton was President and the House and Senate were both Democratic. Clinton's big immigration reform bill was the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996. It's purpose was to "[strengthen] the rule of law by cracking down on illegal immigration at the border, in the workplace, and in the criminal justice system — without punishing those living in the United States legally."
Clinton created the mass-deportation machine in use today. Clinton's bill made it harder to immigrate to the US. Clinton created the 3-year and 10-year re-entry bars that continue to separate loved ones to this day. If an unlawful resident marries a US citizen, they're entitled to a green card but they can't apply for it from within the US but as the minute they leave they get a 10-year re-entry bar.
The last guy to grant amnesty to the undocumented was Reagan in 1986, and he was, last I checked, a Republican.
At some point you've gotta stop blaming the other guy.
Democrats are not the party of immigration, legal or illegal.
Clinton was in fact a centrist "third-way" democrat who often compromised or coopted Republican issues, e.g. welfare reform.
Obama was not as much of a centrist but he was obstructed heavily by the opposition.
I'll continue to blame the people who vote 90% in one direction over the ones who vote 90% the other lol.
Edit: you added some specific comments about immigration. This is correct, Democrats are not very pro-immigration. They are more pro-immigration than the GOP, e.g. DACA order vs. DACA repeal, but the two parties are pretty close on immigration. There is a much bigger gap on issues like healthcare.
Even healthcare, though, what's the Biden playbook on healthcare?
"Instead of starting from scratch and getting rid of private insurance, he has a plan to build on the Affordable Care Act by giving Americans more choice, reducing health care costs, and making our health care system less complex to navigate." This is a quote from the Biden campaign site.
As though letting anyone enroll in Medicare is "starting from scratch."
Compared to the Trump plan on healthcare which roughly amounts to: "Leave the Affordable Care Act in place because there really is no other option that anyone can come up with."
So, the Democratic plan is to leave private insurers be, so long as they cover pre-existing conditions. Which is the Republican plan. The difference is one is framed positively and the other negatively? Bumping up vs ignoring Medicare and Medicaid financing? Maybe? Even that's not clear from the Biden site.
The issue is the system is broken entirely, and both sides plan to move the deck chairs around -- one six inches to the left, and one six inches to the right. This was equally true of DACA. Leaving people in a perpetual state of deferred action parole via executive order is not a solution to anything.
You’re arguing because modern Left positions haven’t successfully passed into law, that the parties are fundamentally the same?
A good half the county would strongly disagree with what you feel - and that they’ve blocked those from passing isn’t proof that the system is failing, it’s proof it’s working. Obama got his healthcare plan. Every president usually gets maybe one or two bigger things they want, not all. It’s a sign that it’s working. Remember, you’re in a democracy, and about half of the people don’t agree with DACA, increased immigration, single payer...
I’m arguing if you set the rhetoric aside the party platforms are largely the same. The Overton window is shifted so far to the right in the US the two parties are basically “right or center-right,” and “far right.” There is no left. From a purely policy perspective they’re very similar.
There are clear and obvious differences in how the party operates and which side is on team Science for instance, but the core policy issues just aren’t all that different.
Strong disagree. I don’t get this line of reasoning at all. First of all you have multiple factions within each party that strongly disagree - on the left it ranges from extreme socialists to populist liberals (in decline) to neolibs and hawks. You had Bernie almost winning the primaries this year. On the right you have tea party libertarians, you have evangelicals, you have national populists now, and you have your neocons.
Now you could say neocons and neolibs did dominate for a while, and yea that has some truth. But it’s not so true today.
The two party system is really interesting because within each party you really do have diversity, and then they all compromise with each other. The dems are doing that this year. They have to do that, or else they lose their electorate. The parties move around constantly. Ron Paul moved the needle. Al Gore brought forward environmentalism. The Liberals have changed wildly over the last 30 years from being more middle/low class focused to being the party of the rich, of tech, and shifting towards focusing on minorities. That they were more aligned for a bit doesn’t prove anything.
Look at how Trump is remaking the right. It’s been fascinating and he’s done a sort of garbage cleaning on their platform.
Look at how Bernie’s success has radically pushed the left.
This is what I mean by the Overton window being shifted so far right. There are no "extreme socialists" in the Democratic wing. AOC is center-left, Bernie is pretty much center.
"Extreme socialist" would be arguing that the state should own the means of production. Until AOC starts arguing for nationalizing Google as a means of making core internet infrastructure public, for instance, I wouldn't worry about the "extreme socialists."
Those are things the base are demanding, but the party itself is rejecting. Or by "four" did you mean people in congress instead of four issues? Because it's more accurate to say about four fringe democrats are pushing those policies than to say the democrat party is endorsing those policies.
You’re exaggerating so much it’s just lying. The party is adopting them slowly and surely.
Tell me Bernie didn’t win a significant portion of the vote and all the early primaries twice now? Joe Biden doesn’t support universal healthcare and very high taxes including a huge raise on capital gains, he doesn’t have a running mate who calls for reparations? He hasn’t totally changed on policing? Elizabeth Warren is suddenly a minor player in the party when her and Bernie combined had a significant chunk of the debate time and raise as much money as anyone? When it’s convenient for your argument you suddenly claim they are minor, when they aren’t.
And yes all those positions are a big move left for American politics.
And I’m just sticking with the economic issues, socially we’ve moved much further left.
The general position that we’ve moved right is laughable, I’m still waiting on examples.
They are largely the same because the alternatives fail in various ways: they fail to finance their campaigns, i.e. they fail to get aristocratic backing, and/or they fail to appeal to the tiny minority of most motivated participants, i.e. primary voters.
Also, the two parties have conspired to put in all kinds of barriers, at the state and local level, to make it difficult to unseat their primacy.
But to say they just aren't all that different, ignoring the effect of consistency over time, is like suggesting the pressure differential above and below an airfoil isn't that different. It is true, but it's not a complete answer either.
> "Police in America are subject to 10x more violence per capita as Canadians."
Citation needed.
Especially as studies show that increasing militarization of the police force leads to more civilian deaths [1], and the trend towards militarization has been stark and pronounced in the US. [2] The issue is really that the US uses police as customer service for life and as front-line mental health treatment due to lack of proper socialized medicine. They are also trained to shoot first and ask questions later -- to treat everyone as a potential threat to their lives.
However, let's take what you say as fact. This points to a deep failure in society that needs to be addressed. People are products of their society, and if society is more violent in America then some serious introspection needs to be done. Looking at 10X per capita and shrugging it off as "well that's just America for you" is the problem.
You would be surprised. There is a strong vein of jingoism running through the US that wants to see this sort of stuff. They believe that, by being harsh against domestic and foreign enemies of the United States, we can assert our position of dominance on the world stage. Just check out bumper stickers on pickup trucks in Texas.
German here - I absolutely agree. I think the way Hitler rose to power is such an important piece of history.
Nazi germany wasnt the first country to act like that. They didnt invent torture or mass killings, genocide, etc. It had happened before, everyone knew it, everyone knew that it can happen.
And yet they voted blindly and thought "ah, well, it wont happen here". And low and behold, a few years later it does.
I cannot feel sorry for people who vote out of habit and are then surprised that the government they voted for doesn't do what they silently hoped for.
I personally feel that America SHOULD pull influence/military completely out of Europe as they are well recovered from WW2 and should now be able to afford to have full militaries to handle any bullies in the region. We should stop all our foreign wars and are more or less doing that under Obama and now Trump. Let the Europeans deal with the Middle East since it is their backyard and not ours. I do think we should keep influence in East Asia though provided that Japan, Taiwan, Korea would like us to stick around. That's a sane foreign policy. I'm sure the Europeans will be angels in maintaining their political sovereignty.
> Let the Europeans deal with the Middle East since it is their backyard and not ours.
You have to admit there's two sides to that, though. The fact that the EU doesn't _have_ to defend itself reduces the incentive to do so. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if we were to learn that the USA (pre-Trump) lobbies EU countries to keep their defense budget low, as that maintains dependence of EU on the USA.
But I 100% agree with you. Pull USA influence out of Europe - that's the best way to force Europe to take its self-defense seriously.
You might want to read about operation Gladio and the extent of activities. The pretense of defending Europe is apparently good enough to even run a secret military group, while also making sure no US unfriendly group takes power.
