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Cayman Islands24199 Posts
On July 05 2014 09:06 KlaCkoN wrote:Show nested quote +On July 05 2014 08:46 oneofthem wrote:and wtf is this sweeping generalization? The American people are OK with things like drone bombings and the Iraq war and kidnappings of Afghani shepherds in the name of "greater safety" in a way that Europeans simply are not. really now, maybe you guys are getting sensationalized info about america? plenty of protesting voices against these decisions. Yes people protest. But not enough to substantially change policy. So either a majority of people are more or less fine with it, or the US is not a democracy. You guys re-elected Bush. More than 50% of the (voting) American people were OK with what he did in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo. You re-elected Obama. More than 50% of the (voting) people were OK with covert assassinations, drones... I agree that it's not black and white, after all the Brits kept re-electing Blair and that I ought to have said "to a greater extent than" in my post. Beyond that I stand by the generalisation. there's a meaningful legal process (though obviously not instantiated to full effect because of interest capture in the parts that actually prosecute war crimes and so on) available and a lot of public disclosure of stuff.
but you've yet to provide any sort of justification besides moving the goalpost with the "Americans don't care about atrocities" stuff. please stop that.
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On July 05 2014 09:04 Sub40APM wrote:Show nested quote +On July 05 2014 08:56 Nyxisto wrote:On July 05 2014 08:50 oneofthem wrote: even better, teh existence of a peace loving, pro democracy and rights and justice etc majority in places like china and russia still will not make those places have political structures resembling those values because the people is pretty weak against a strong and sophisticated regime. The US has a prison population as large as Russia's and Chin'as combined, and a higher un-sentenced prisoner rate than Russia. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/uk/06/prisons/html/nn2page1.stm) Sure, you don't oppress freedom of speech as much, but given the numbers above 'leader of the free world' has a ironic ring to it. What does the fact that American criminal laws are poorly designed have to do with degrees of freedom? America's prison population is mostly so large because of America's history with its black minority. But more broadly, if you people havent kept trying to take over the world there wouldnt have been any American bases in Europe. In 1919 there were virtually no US soldiers left on your blood soaked continent of hate.
This is misleading and skewed logic. We weren't an imperial power in Europe before the end of WW2, so that's a moot point. Are you implying that in today's world we still have bases there to suppress some German Fascist uprising that will take over the country tomorrow? What kind of logic is that lol? We are an imperialistic power with strategic interests. We have bases in Germany for the same reasons we have bases today in random places that were not at all affiliated with the Axis alliance from 70 years ago like Greece or Brazil. Also, last I checked, these countries were vehemently against Germany in WW2, especially after German attacks on both countries (Germans destroyed Brazilian shipping and conquered Greece).
The continent was shattered after the war, making it easy for us and the Soviets (who, were pretty beat up themselves) to split the continent between us. The end of WW2 is when the US came to have serious influence in nations in Europe and the Far East. Before that, like in 1919, we had no such thing, except the Phillippines which we conquered from Spain. To say we didn't establish bases in Europe after WW1 because "there weren't Nazis" is silly. We didn't have the sway and power we did 25 years later nor the anti-Communist propaganda to justify it either.
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Cayman Islands24199 Posts
well ok, india largely accounts for the difference between 25% and 40%, and if we are to look at functional rather than formal political freedom, a corrupt legal adn political system is still not very free. so take out half of india/brazil and see what you have left.
same goes for the islamic caliphates of treating people like shit.
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On July 05 2014 09:00 JudicatorHammurabi wrote:Show nested quote +On July 05 2014 08:56 Nyxisto wrote:On July 05 2014 08:50 oneofthem wrote: even better, teh existence of a peace loving, pro democracy and rights and justice etc majority in places like china and russia still will not make those places have political structures resembling those values because the people is pretty weak against a strong and sophisticated regime. The US has a prison population as large as Russia's and Chin'as combined, and a higher un-sentenced prisoner rate than Russia. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/uk/06/prisons/html/nn2page1.stm) Sure, you don't oppress freedom of speech as much, but the result doesn't look all too great. The result isn't because we're a crazy police state. It's because we have a shitton of criminals who are like that because they're linked to gangs or Mexican cartels.
No, it's because you have disproportionately harsh sentencing for trivial stuff like selling marijuana or petty crime. It's a human rights disaster and the fact that you ignored it for over 20 years speaks volumes of the mindset of the American electorate at the time. It's starting to change a little now thank god.
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On July 05 2014 09:17 oneofthem wrote:well ok, india largely accounts for the difference between 25% and 40%, and if we are to look at functional rather than formal political freedom, a corrupt legal adn political system is still not very free. so take out half of india/brazil and see what you have left.
But then neither is the US and most of Eastern Europe. It's a spectrum and the US is somewhere in the middle. Probably closer to Brazil than Sweeden TBH.
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On July 05 2014 09:09 oneofthem wrote:Show nested quote +On July 05 2014 09:06 KlaCkoN wrote:On July 05 2014 08:46 oneofthem wrote:and wtf is this sweeping generalization? The American people are OK with things like drone bombings and the Iraq war and kidnappings of Afghani shepherds in the name of "greater safety" in a way that Europeans simply are not. really now, maybe you guys are getting sensationalized info about america? plenty of protesting voices against these decisions. Yes people protest. But not enough to substantially change policy. So either a majority of people are more or less fine with it, or the US is not a democracy. You guys re-elected Bush. More than 50% of the (voting) American people were OK with what he did in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo. You re-elected Obama. More than 50% of the (voting) people were OK with covert assassinations, drones... I agree that it's not black and white, after all the Brits kept re-electing Blair and that I ought to have said "to a greater extent than" in my post. Beyond that I stand by the generalisation. there's a meaningful legal process (though obviously not instantiated to full effect because of interest capture in the parts that actually prosecute war crimes and so on) available and a lot of public disclosure of stuff. but you've yet to provide any sort of justification besides moving the goalpost with the "Americans don't care about atrocities" stuff. please stop that. My first three sentences were justifications. The fourth was me conceding that my initial statement was too strong.
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On July 05 2014 09:19 hypercube wrote:Show nested quote +On July 05 2014 09:00 JudicatorHammurabi wrote:On July 05 2014 08:56 Nyxisto wrote:On July 05 2014 08:50 oneofthem wrote: even better, teh existence of a peace loving, pro democracy and rights and justice etc majority in places like china and russia still will not make those places have political structures resembling those values because the people is pretty weak against a strong and sophisticated regime. The US has a prison population as large as Russia's and Chin'as combined, and a higher un-sentenced prisoner rate than Russia. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/uk/06/prisons/html/nn2page1.stm) Sure, you don't oppress freedom of speech as much, but the result doesn't look all too great. The result isn't because we're a crazy police state. It's because we have a shitton of criminals who are like that because they're linked to gangs or Mexican cartels. No, it's because you have disproportionately harsh sentencing for trivial stuff like selling marijuana or petty crime. It's a human rights disaster and the fact that you ignored it for over 20 years speaks volumes of the mindset of the American electorate at the time. It's starting to change a little now thank god. I wonder how many imprisonments are actually related to weed. Would be an interesting statistic. However, your post is still a bit funny.
We have a lot of legitimate non-weed related criminals. We are infinitely worse than places like Hungary in this regard. I can't believe you even deny that. It's actually really funny hearing it from someone from Hungary. Where do you learn about the US? The legalize weed mob on Reddit? Also, to state the contrary for what it's worth, everyone I know who messes with weed have never been touched at all by the authorities, and they don't exactly keep it hush-hush.
Having grown up in a shady area and nowadays living next to the globally famous South-Central LA region, you should come here and take a stroll and see some of the people we have around here in the US. I'll give you 1 day before you start running to Budapest in fear and astonishment, mentally scarred and sobbing uncontrollably you've never come across such people in such numbers in your life. I'm sorry, but we have a ton of really bad thugs, and the US is well known for our gangs and barbaric criminals. Cities like LA, Chicago, Detroit, and DC are very famous for it.
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Cayman Islands24199 Posts
On July 05 2014 09:22 KlaCkoN wrote:Show nested quote +On July 05 2014 09:09 oneofthem wrote:On July 05 2014 09:06 KlaCkoN wrote:On July 05 2014 08:46 oneofthem wrote:and wtf is this sweeping generalization? The American people are OK with things like drone bombings and the Iraq war and kidnappings of Afghani shepherds in the name of "greater safety" in a way that Europeans simply are not. really now, maybe you guys are getting sensationalized info about america? plenty of protesting voices against these decisions. Yes people protest. But not enough to substantially change policy. So either a majority of people are more or less fine with it, or the US is not a democracy. You guys re-elected Bush. More than 50% of the (voting) American people were OK with what he did in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo. You re-elected Obama. More than 50% of the (voting) people were OK with covert assassinations, drones... I agree that it's not black and white, after all the Brits kept re-electing Blair and that I ought to have said "to a greater extent than" in my post. Beyond that I stand by the generalisation. there's a meaningful legal process (though obviously not instantiated to full effect because of interest capture in the parts that actually prosecute war crimes and so on) available and a lot of public disclosure of stuff. but you've yet to provide any sort of justification besides moving the goalpost with the "Americans don't care about atrocities" stuff. please stop that. My first three sentences were justifications. The fourth was me conceding that my initial statement was too strong. well actually your first three words and the following were moving the goalpost, maybe you didn't realize how strong your first statement was.
i'm not really sure the people of europe is of a higher quality compared to the U.S. you guys seem to be clamoring for nativism and destruction of the really miraculously conceived, historical european system. the positive institutional developments we see in europe after ww2 are not the result of some popular enlightenment but results of reflection from the political elite. but yea, fix your own shit first ok.
as for americans and war atrocities, a bit complicated of a history because, yes, the CIA etc does do a lot of fucked up stuff. but war crimes is still beyong anathema. look at the response to vietnam and iraq war. re-electing bush was very unfortunate but obama was partly driven to stardom for being anti-iraq war.
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Yeah the imprisonment thing is not really fair. The US organises it's socio-economic system in such a way that a lot of people are poor relative to the rest. And such people always commit more crime in all countries. Doesn't really have anything to do with "freedom" in the civil liberty sense I think.
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On July 05 2014 09:31 KlaCkoN wrote: Yeah the imprisonment thing is not really fair. The US organises it's socio-economic system in such a way that a lot of people are poor relative to the rest. And such people always commit more crime in all countries. Doesn't really have anything to do with "freedom" in the civil liberty sense I think.
The wealthiest and most advanced country in the world hardly has "poor" people. I grew up somewhere between "poor" and lower middle-class FWIW (forget if I was actually legally poor), and I certainly wasn't suffering. It was a skip and a hop and across the Mexican border, where there were actually poor people that often didn't have basic things. You want to see poverty? Go to China. Why does China have 4 times the pop. but a much smaller prison population? It is culture more than anything. China doesn't have a bigtime gang culture + Mexican cartels like the US does. Let's not even discuss China. There's a host of really poor countries with seriously poor and very desperate people with less crime than the US, with infinitely less opportunity and welfare than the US.
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On July 05 2014 09:01 Redox wrote:Show nested quote +On July 05 2014 05:50 mahnini wrote: dun h8 da playa h8 da gaem
User was warned for this post The thing is only America is playing it. The whole supposedly common spying is actual a very onesided affair when it comes to USA and Germany. Most German politicians (especially in CDU) still see USA as a good ally and well-meaning patron. But for whatever reason US is working hard on changing that perception. dis funny cuz u think it's tru LMAO
User was warned for this post
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On July 05 2014 09:29 oneofthem wrote:Show nested quote +On July 05 2014 09:22 KlaCkoN wrote:On July 05 2014 09:09 oneofthem wrote:On July 05 2014 09:06 KlaCkoN wrote:On July 05 2014 08:46 oneofthem wrote:and wtf is this sweeping generalization? The American people are OK with things like drone bombings and the Iraq war and kidnappings of Afghani shepherds in the name of "greater safety" in a way that Europeans simply are not. really now, maybe you guys are getting sensationalized info about america? plenty of protesting voices against these decisions. Yes people protest. But not enough to substantially change policy. So either a majority of people are more or less fine with it, or the US is not a democracy. You guys re-elected Bush. More than 50% of the (voting) American people were OK with what he did in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo. You re-elected Obama. More than 50% of the (voting) people were OK with covert assassinations, drones... I agree that it's not black and white, after all the Brits kept re-electing Blair and that I ought to have said "to a greater extent than" in my post. Beyond that I stand by the generalisation. there's a meaningful legal process (though obviously not instantiated to full effect because of interest capture in the parts that actually prosecute war crimes and so on) available and a lot of public disclosure of stuff. but you've yet to provide any sort of justification besides moving the goalpost with the "Americans don't care about atrocities" stuff. please stop that. My first three sentences were justifications. The fourth was me conceding that my initial statement was too strong. well actually your first three words and the following were moving the goalpost, maybe you didn't realize how strong your first statement was. i'm not really sure the people of europe is of a higher quality compared to the U.S. you guys seem to be clamoring for nativism and destruction of the really miraculously conceived, historical european system. the positive institutional developments we see in europe after ww2 are not the result of some popular enlightenment but results of reflection from the political elite. but yea, fix your own shit first ok. as for americans and war atrocities, a bit complicated of a history because, yes, the CIA etc does do a lot of fucked up stuff. but war crimes is still beyong anathema. look at the response to vietnam and iraq war. re-electing bush was very unfortunate but obama was partly driven to stardom for being anti-iraq war. Uh-huh. I loosely equated policy with popular will, with the justification that the US is a democracy. Asking me to defend my original statement by responding to the greater idea that "Europeans are of higher quality than Americans" IS shifting the goalposts though funnily enough. I am not going to provide justification for that because I never said anything like it.
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On July 05 2014 09:01 Redox wrote:Show nested quote +On July 05 2014 05:50 mahnini wrote: dun h8 da playa h8 da gaem
User was warned for this post The thing is only America is playing it. The whole supposedly common spying is actual a very onesided affair when it comes to USA and Germany. Most German politicians (especially in CDU) still see USA as a good ally and well-meaning patron. But for whatever reason US is working hard on changing that perception. You're so cute. Allies spy on allies all the time.
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Cayman Islands24199 Posts
On July 05 2014 09:21 hypercube wrote:Show nested quote +On July 05 2014 09:17 oneofthem wrote:well ok, india largely accounts for the difference between 25% and 40%, and if we are to look at functional rather than formal political freedom, a corrupt legal adn political system is still not very free. so take out half of india/brazil and see what you have left. But then neither is the US and most of Eastern Europe. It's a spectrum and the US is somewhere in the middle. Probably closer to Brazil than Sweeden TBH. have you lived in america and dealt with the everyday legal processes? it's quite different from pay as you go corruption you see in brazil and elsewhere.
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On July 05 2014 09:36 JudicatorHammurabi wrote:Show nested quote +On July 05 2014 09:31 KlaCkoN wrote: Yeah the imprisonment thing is not really fair. The US organises it's socio-economic system in such a way that a lot of people are poor relative to the rest. And such people always commit more crime in all countries. Doesn't really have anything to do with "freedom" in the civil liberty sense I think. The wealthiest and most advanced country in the world hardly has "poor" people. Are you still talking about the United states? Because the US has a homeless population of 600k, and nearly one out of five Americans struggle to afford all the food they need. (http://frac.org/pdf/food_hardship_2011_report.pdf)
Every fucking country has a ton of poor people, come on this isn't r/murica here.
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On July 05 2014 09:26 JudicatorHammurabi wrote:Show nested quote +On July 05 2014 09:19 hypercube wrote:On July 05 2014 09:00 JudicatorHammurabi wrote:On July 05 2014 08:56 Nyxisto wrote:On July 05 2014 08:50 oneofthem wrote: even better, teh existence of a peace loving, pro democracy and rights and justice etc majority in places like china and russia still will not make those places have political structures resembling those values because the people is pretty weak against a strong and sophisticated regime. The US has a prison population as large as Russia's and Chin'as combined, and a higher un-sentenced prisoner rate than Russia. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/uk/06/prisons/html/nn2page1.stm) Sure, you don't oppress freedom of speech as much, but the result doesn't look all too great. The result isn't because we're a crazy police state. It's because we have a shitton of criminals who are like that because they're linked to gangs or Mexican cartels. No, it's because you have disproportionately harsh sentencing for trivial stuff like selling marijuana or petty crime. It's a human rights disaster and the fact that you ignored it for over 20 years speaks volumes of the mindset of the American electorate at the time. It's starting to change a little now thank god. I wonder how many imprisonments are actually related to weed. Would be an interesting statistic. However, your post is still a bit funny. We have a lot of legitimate non-weed related criminals. We are infinitely worse than places like Hungary in this regard. I can't believe you even deny that. It's actually really funny hearing it from someone from Hungary. Where do you learn about the US? The legalize weed mob on Reddit? Also, to state the contrary for what it's worth, everyone I know who messes with weed have never been touched at all by the authorities, and they don't exactly keep it hush-hush. Having grown up in a shady area and nowadays living next to the globally famous South-Central LA region, you should come here and take a stroll and see some of the people we have around here in the US. I'll give you 1 day before you start running to Budapest in fear and astonishment, mentally scarred and sobbing uncontrollably you've never come across such people in such numbers in your life. I'm sorry, but we have a ton of really bad thugs, and the US is well known for our gangs and barbaric criminals. Cities like LA, Chicago, Detroit, and DC are very famous for it.
That's the only statistics I could find:
http://www.bop.gov/about/statistics/statistics_inmate_offenses.jsp
Half of the people in federal prisons are there for drug offences. No idea how much of that is for weed, maybe ~50%, so 25% of total? State prisons or jails should be the same or more?
Hate to break it to ya but there are thugs everywhere. Maybe more in the US but really millions? I mean there are more than 2 million people in prison or jail and I'm guessing you didn't get all of them.
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Cayman Islands24199 Posts
On July 05 2014 09:43 KlaCkoN wrote:Show nested quote +On July 05 2014 09:29 oneofthem wrote:On July 05 2014 09:22 KlaCkoN wrote:On July 05 2014 09:09 oneofthem wrote:On July 05 2014 09:06 KlaCkoN wrote:On July 05 2014 08:46 oneofthem wrote:and wtf is this sweeping generalization? The American people are OK with things like drone bombings and the Iraq war and kidnappings of Afghani shepherds in the name of "greater safety" in a way that Europeans simply are not. really now, maybe you guys are getting sensationalized info about america? plenty of protesting voices against these decisions. Yes people protest. But not enough to substantially change policy. So either a majority of people are more or less fine with it, or the US is not a democracy. You guys re-elected Bush. More than 50% of the (voting) American people were OK with what he did in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo. You re-elected Obama. More than 50% of the (voting) people were OK with covert assassinations, drones... I agree that it's not black and white, after all the Brits kept re-electing Blair and that I ought to have said "to a greater extent than" in my post. Beyond that I stand by the generalisation. there's a meaningful legal process (though obviously not instantiated to full effect because of interest capture in the parts that actually prosecute war crimes and so on) available and a lot of public disclosure of stuff. but you've yet to provide any sort of justification besides moving the goalpost with the "Americans don't care about atrocities" stuff. please stop that. My first three sentences were justifications. The fourth was me conceding that my initial statement was too strong. well actually your first three words and the following were moving the goalpost, maybe you didn't realize how strong your first statement was. i'm not really sure the people of europe is of a higher quality compared to the U.S. you guys seem to be clamoring for nativism and destruction of the really miraculously conceived, historical european system. the positive institutional developments we see in europe after ww2 are not the result of some popular enlightenment but results of reflection from the political elite. but yea, fix your own shit first ok. as for americans and war atrocities, a bit complicated of a history because, yes, the CIA etc does do a lot of fucked up stuff. but war crimes is still beyong anathema. look at the response to vietnam and iraq war. re-electing bush was very unfortunate but obama was partly driven to stardom for being anti-iraq war. Uh-huh. I loosely equated policy with popular will, with the justification that the US is a democracy. Asking me to defend my original statement by responding to the greater idea that "Europeans are of higher quality than Americans" IS shifting the goalposts though funnily enough. I am not going to provide justification for that because I never said anything like it. i don't have a goal post here since i was challenging your statement, which, again, is The American people are OK with things like drone bombings and the Iraq war and kidnappings of Afghani shepherds in the name of "greater safety" in a way that Europeans simply are not. with American people as some sort of amorphous single entity.
the comment about european people vs american people was my own side remark on the mentality of some europeans to denigrate americans as either warmongering or dumb. it's ok as a joke and when directed at the jingoistic, actually warmongering americans, but you are out of your mind if you think that group can stand for the "American people."
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On July 05 2014 09:36 JudicatorHammurabi wrote:Show nested quote +On July 05 2014 09:31 KlaCkoN wrote: Yeah the imprisonment thing is not really fair. The US organises it's socio-economic system in such a way that a lot of people are poor relative to the rest. And such people always commit more crime in all countries. Doesn't really have anything to do with "freedom" in the civil liberty sense I think. The wealthiest and most advanced country in the world hardly has "poor" people. I grew up somewhere between "poor" and lower middle-class FWIW (forget if I was actually legally poor), and I certainly wasn't suffering. It was a skip and a hop and across the Mexican border, where there were actually poor people that often didn't have basic things. You want to see poverty? Go to China. Why does China have 4 times the pop. but a much smaller prison population? It is culture more than anything. China doesn't have a bigtime gang culture + Mexican cartels like the US does. Let's not even discuss China. There's a host of really poor countries with seriously poor and very desperate people with less crime than the US, with infinitely less opportunity and welfare than the US. I said poor relatively speaking though. The lowest echelons usually commit the most violent crimes no matter the absolute level of wealth. I would argue that China has less crime because to a large extent they all are (or used to be) equally poor. As their middle class grows so will their crime rate (as committed by the people who remain lower class) At least that's what I think. It's totally possible that the true answer is culture or whatever else though.
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