Seriously? A quarter million dead people and you don't see a problem? I'm going to hope that's just short hand for "oh it's terrible but it's worth the cost for the part of the country that's more free than before".

There's other ways to protect against that, principally not treating Russia like an enemy to contained.

The assumption was that it was safe to treat Russia like a potential enemy and surround then with NATO forces because they wouldn't dare thwart American power. Clearly that was not the case, Putin turned hostile, and Ukraine is now paying the price.

Possibly not get involved.

I admit it's not easy to see an atrocities and simply let it progress, I was partially in favour of a Libya intervention and I'd probably decide the same way over again, but helping is a lot harder than dropping some bombs so the "good guys" win and it's hard to see what the destabilization might do.

There's definitely antisemitism, though it's ironic that you're mentioning it after that response to 250k dead Afghanis.

But there's also a lot of very legitimate criticism of how the Israeli state came to exist and how it's acted over the last 40 years, especially with regards to the settlements, that has nothing to do with antisemitism.

Possibly, but so far I'm doubtful you have better insight into my motivations on this subject.

I'm not talking about the dead terrorists, I'm talking about all the innocent civilians getting killed around them.

Would you find it acceptable to kill ten Americans to kill one terrorist? There's a very clear message that the lives of those Muslims don't really matter, it's not hard to see how that message would create a lot more Muslim terrorists.

With so much moving to mobile devices and applications I wonder about the state of open source on those platforms and how developers can make a living while writing open source mobile apps.

The ads and sales that most mobile apps use to generate revenue aren't really an option for open source apps. Does that mean developers have to rely on a donations or are there other ways they can fund their work?

Ok weird thing, I thought I had sent the AC post but that was actually just some random AC. I got an email for your reply, it just brought up the thread, I saw your response to the AC and thought it was your response to me (I assumed I'd be logged out and posted AC).

Either way since you took time to respond to the AC I'll respond a bit on their behalf :)

Actually you did mostly talk to them. The US came very late to both world wars. (though you did pretty much all the fighting against the Japanese).

But with Iran you engaged in the talk and it worked, you get a less hostile Iran with a lower chance of Nukes, the alternative was likely a Middle Eastern North Korea.

Canada, and I don't claim it's a secret agenda, it's just an observation that the US is a very bossy and aggressive country and diplomacy looks a lot like a demands for capitulation.

And being a Canadian we asked politely and got our freedom without any bloodshed :)

Sure, toss out Iraq.

Afghanistan there's possibly in the range of 250K deaths, and a lot of the country is still under Taliban rule.

The mid-2000 NATO expansion pissed off the Russians and is likely responsible for Putin's invasions of Georgia and Ukraine.

The Libya intervention brought about a civil war.

The US overthrew the moderate democratic rulers in Iran to install a dictator (which led to the Iranian revolution).

The US supported dictators over South America, supplied rebel groups and taught them how to torture.

The US is currently supporting dictators in the Middle East.

Except in South America and the Middle East where the US supported the people who raped their neighbours

The lesson there is people are blind to their own misdeeds.

Generally not in my experience. They want the US to be more cooperative and less dictorial with its influence. Drone strikes are a good example, you kill one terrorist and create five others.

Beating armies is easy, the problem is when you have a population who doesn't really like you and doesn't share your objectives.

Sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn't. The fact Japan was very homogeneous helped.

You're assuming you had the ability to create the society, Vietnam isn't Japan and the Vietnamese may not have cooperated.

Ummm, ok?

How many true enemies did the US have in Iraq? Not everybody who dies because of US military action is an enemy.

I don't think you like going to war, but I do think you overestimate its effectiveness.

What did the Iraq war actually accomplish? Vietnam? Bosnia probably helped, though that combined with the NATO expansion inspired Russian aggression and Georgia and Ukraine are paying the price now.

Much of Afghanistan is better but in total war is incredibly destructive, it's very rare circumstances that it actually helps.

I don't disagree that the US is generally a positive influence but I don't think you really understand how much hostility that aggressive attitude incurs.

Remember Americans aren't the only ones proud of their country or who think they should have influence, imagine you're not an American but you're an Iranian or Russian cheering for your side. You might hate your government, be all about free speech, democracy, and everything else you associate with the US. But when you see the arrogance that the US acts with on the international state you're going to find it very difficult to cheer for the US.

With your patriotism if you weren't an American I'd very much expect you'd hate the US.

So the soldier who no longer needs to go into battle is better off.

What about the civilians in the country you just invaded because politicians are no longer worried about getting blamed for dead soldiers?

The US already has a big problem with wars, almost all the costs are externalized.

From the Iraq war slightly less than 10,000 non-Iraqi coalition forces died.

But over 100,000 Iraqis died, perhaps over 500,000 or even 1,000,000 and their country is shattered.

These are costs that are barely registered in the US other than the fact that they create entities such as ISIS, and even they barely warrant notice except when they're threatening Americans.

If you're going to start a war you need some skin in the game, soldiers dying is a horrible tragedy but it that restrains the US from perpetrating far grander tragedies on a whim.

In the alternative universe where you have effective killbots they're now roaming the landscape over Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan. But they're also probably in Libya, Lebanon, Iran, and Gaza (Israel gets them too). It probably saves a few Americans (minor a handful from escalated terrorist attacks), but at the cost of many times that.

On the other hand a single nuke is very powerful and easy to conceal, which is why nuclear proliferation treaties are very tough to enforce.

But no one really cares if you have a dozen autonomous weaponized drones, that's not going to give you a decisive military edge and any more than that you won't be able to conceal.

Make it against international law, people will occasionally violate the law but they'll be only small instances. The real cause for concern is a large scale deployment and arms race which a law can stop.

I'm guessing the vast majority of ad benefits come from impressions rather than clicks.

I don't think I've ever clicked on a movie ad, but I'm sure a lot of my movie choices come from movie ads.

Same thing for other products, the ads annoy you, but when you go to buy something the one you've seen the ad for suddenly looks a whole lot more credible and familiar.

I think you've got it backwards.

In Canada the parties are far stronger than they are in the US and the individual MPs are almost irrelevant as they're simply expected to vote with their party, yet we seem to have a lot less of this kind of corruption and I don't think it's a coincidence.

Look at the emails, the guy was so compliant partly because he was relying on the MPAA for fund-raising, he's a state level politician dealing with the representative of the US media industry, of course he was playing ball. Just like if he was some individual legislator with a big group threatening to flood his district with money for his opponent, it's really easy for powerful interests to manipulate the government by picking off individual legislators.

If you make the parties stronger then the interests have to deal with the party instead of the legislator, and the parties are strong enough (and often incentivized) to tell the powerful interests to screw off.

Why aren't the locals buying bed nets themselves?

Supposedly $5 gets you an insecticide treated bed net that's good for 2 years, I know we're talking about very poor people but that sounds like somewhere where'd I'd expect a local industry to pop up.

We don't know how much anything truly costs, we're barely aware of what happens to solar panel waste the moment it's built, much less 10,000 years from now. We're just putting a lot more effort into figuring it out for Nuclear.

So if EDF is losing money that tells me the power might be underpriced, but even rising 30% they'll still be one of the cheaper rates.

Where are the subsidies? The EDF has its own finances. If it goes bankrupt maybe you could say the government subsidized it by losing equity but I'm not sure I'd buy that. Besides, all other power generation including fossil fuel and renewables are heavily subsidized as well.

You're talking about a pretty intense subsidy to justify that price, and other than the fact that the EDF is in financial trouble I'm not really finding any evidence.

It's underway though I don't know how much a full solution would affect cost. And realistically I think we overemphasize Nuclear waste because it's Nuclear, we generate lots of nasty industrial waste that we don't treat with the same paranoia.

Then why does France have some of the lowest energy prices in the developed EU and why are they exporting energy to Britain?

I mean it's not proof that France's electricity generation is fundamentally cheaper, or that Nuclear power has anything to do with it, but I can't find any evidence to back up your claims.