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Time Reporter "Can't Wait" To Justify Drone Strike On Julian Assange
First time accepted submitter Tuck News writes "A reporter for TIME Magazine sparked a Twitter war when he said that he 'can't wait to write a defense of the drone strike that takes out Julian Assange'. Michael Grunwald deleted his tweet after a follower argued that it would only encourage Assange supporters.Grunwald's employer distanced itself from the tweet, saying 'Michael Grunwald posted an offensive tweet from his personal Twitter account that is in no way representative of TIME's views.'"
Justifying a murder, or in this case glorifying murder by hoping to write a justification for it, must be hate speech.
I hope Michael Grunwald gets to live a world someday where people cheer at firebombing people for non violent crimes they've not even been convicted of. I just hope I don't have to share it with him.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
Is anyone really surprised to see one kissing the drone emperors feet? When can a Nobel prize be revoked exactly?
And we can't wait to justify Time firing him. A man having no respect for human live is not appropriate to work as a reporter.
Wait, what?
Snowden at least stands accused of treason. Assange faces rape-after-the-fact charges in one of the most misandrous countries on the planet. Where the fuck does a drone strike against the latter even become a topic open for discussion?
Make your case for Snowden, dude. I happen to consider him nothing short of a hero, but I can certainly appreciate the opposing POV. Assange ranks right up there with the Kardashians for his overall level of ego-vs-the-good-he-could-do.
Then again - Perhaps I have this backward. Yes, nuke Assange (and Rodman, and the Kardashians, etc) from orbit, so they stop trying to steal the spotlight from real discussions we need to have about security vs privacy vs basic human rights.
You can't be arrested for saying you thought 9/11 was a good idea. Fred Phelps claims 9/11 was God's punishment that America deserved because of its embrace of homosexuality, and he's within his rights to express that opinion.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
For every person you hate hard enough to wish a drone strike upon them...
Someone else in the world hates you just as much...
I can't wait for a drone strike on michael grunwald. That bastard is an anti american piece of shit.
As a former soldier, I find it ethically and morally reprehensible that Mr. Grunwald would advocate and look forward to someone's death. It's clear he has never taken a life, nor lived through the realities of conflict.
If anyone else were advocating the violent death of another, it would be a crime; perhaps it's time for some standards to be applied to all - right, left, far left (journalists). This behaviour is disgusting.
It was not merely offensive. It was incitement to murder.
By a journalist of an international publication.
On another journalist.
Who is being given asylum against prosecution.
Prosecution aimed at unraveling the sources to articles published by various newspapers and magazines.
Regardless of whatever stance or determination might be made about Assange, this is a descent into utter evil, when a so-called journalist incites people through a global medium to murder a whistleblower - basically the most courageous journalistic source on the face of the earth. Well, maybe we have a few of these people in existence now.
Incidentally, the Time readers poll in 2010 voted Assange the Time Person of the Year, though somehow (not enough guts on the editorial board, I guess?) that asshole Zuckerberg got the spot.
http://newsfeed.time.com/2010/12/13/julian-assange-readers-choice-for-times-person-of-the-year-2010/
Of course all of the above still is true even if you don't consider Assange a journalist. Even if you consider him an enemy combatant.
Journalists have lost all their backbone and principles but this takes it to a new ultra-low.
The other dumb bit is how Time said it was just an "offensive" tweet apparently.
If Time and other big media names want to survive in the networked media age, the only thing they have going for them is quality, journalistic integrity, and strong adherence to an ethically unassailable position of trust. Time and other major newspapers and news magazines should take a very strong stance against Grunwald.
I highly recommend a big lashing out at Time but all its competitors in the marketplace, who can have fun climbing all over themselves to be the first to tar and feather that ugly cretin.
But rest assured, if he said it was God's punishment 'cause he was angry with the US worshiping him in the wrong way and not the correct Sharia way, he'd have been silenced SO fast.
Bible thumping = good, Koran thumping = bad. I don't get the logic behind it, why is one mental illness ok while the other one is a nono.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/
There it is. The classic, all time, full bore, scientifically confirmed explanation of what authoritarianism is.
Everyone has a little authoritarian in them, especially at the point of being "fed up" with others, where ever that is. Therefore, everyone needs to check themselves against it. True civil libertarians (non-Ron Paul types) excel us all in this capability and this makes them what they are.
Maybe there are very extreme circumstances in which some aspects of the civil society's foundations work against civil society. Lincoln thought he found some.
One thing we know, The doings of Julian Assange and Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden and Walter Binney and John Kiriakou and Walter Drake and all the rest of the people who acted in accordance with the values all Americans and the Founding Fathers were inculcated with do not represent those circumstances.
It's amazing to me how unsophisticated the response has been from the administration and by proxy the NSA itself. Presumably they have multiple, best-course-of-action for any eventuality all analyzed beforehand and mapped out. Is THIS response what they have on the books? IS this the best unlimited access to the nations best social and cultural thinkers can produce?
Maybe Assange acted with disregard to national security, he claims to have tried to vet the documents with the NSA and CIA and State Dept but they refused to engage him the way they would have WaPo or the Times. Who knows? Anyways, there's a lot conceptual space between THAT and being a drone worthy terrorist or a traitor. Ditto on down the line.
What's the lesson for us in this specific incident? For the sake of your career, don't drink and Twitter ? Read The Authoritarians at least once a year ? Perform a thorough, searching, honest and skeptical self examination of your values and actions at least as often as you get a haircut?
Why must you attack people with mental illnesses to get your point across? People who say shit like this (for example "conservatism is a mental illness") are saying that the people who they disagree with are as bad as the mentally ill. And that is a really fucked up thing to say (making a moral judgement on people that have mental illnesses). It is basically a way to leverage the stigma and taboo of admitting a mental illness as a way to attack somebody.
"Let's see how the population reacts, if they just shrug to it, let's see how much else we can get away with. If it causes an outcry, we can always say it was the idea of a solitary lunatic"
It's not like it would be the first time...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
bullshit. Comparing someone with certain thoughts to someone who has a mental illness, is equating those certain thoughts to a mental illness. It's got nothing personal to do with people suffering from a mental illness. You gotta be insane not to understand that.
I think it was the idea of nuking the Kardashians that made me blue screen with glee, especially in the hopes of bringing more real discourse to the public stage again.
Sounds like you have a Kickstarter project there, dude.
Personally I'd go for Justin Bieber. But only if no innocent, bystander monkeys are hurt in the process.
Yes he would be. People have said just that. It's not at all illegal to say awful things in the US.
Python
Why must you attack shit that is excreted from bovines to get your point across?
My apologies. What is the currently accepted politically correct term for someone who has an invisible friend and follows his orders?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
What will you do when America isn't there to fight your battles for you?
Perhaps then the battles would not be fought in the first place, people wouldn't die, and resources would be directed to positive developments.
Hard to predict. But the outcome of the current policy is pretty clear: more hatred, violence, and destruction.
`echo $[0x853204FA81]|tr 0-9 ionbsdeaml`@gmail.com
He must be a huge asshole. And a horrible human being. Why isn't he already working for Fox?
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Any illness requires a pathology. An idea or a belief is not pathological unless it causes significant distress or impairment in functioning (social, work, personal, etc.). Children who believe in the tooth fairy or Santa don't have mental illnesses. People who are communists don't have mental illnesses. Nor do religious people. The point it becomes a mental illness is the point where you can't function or are in too much pain. Believing you have the Holy Ghost inside of you doesn't do that, but believing you are covered in bedbugs will cause significant distress. And believing that you are always followed and snooped on will impair your ability to function.
A mental illness isn't a judgement, it is a need to fix a behavior that is causing distress or inability to function. Political beliefs don't do that. The Nazis weren't mentally ill--not even the ones in the death camps. What so many people forget is that a mental illness is not distorted thinking--it is pathological thinking.
Don't get me wrong, it's a long path and the US has barely set foot on it (..)
"Barely set foot on it" ?!? The US government is murdering people without due process, trial or anything on a regular basis. Without a declaration of war involved. Violating other countries' sovereignty whenever it's convenient and/or 'doable'. Locking people up indefinitely without those prisoners having access to lawyers, a date for their trial, etc. Mass spying on their own citizens, in violation of its own constitution. Guys heading those 3-letter agencies lying about it to the public - but still stay in office. Silencing critics using a claim of "national security", together with gag orders issued by a secret court, or referring to a secret law.
Really, the only step missing is a dictator that rigs an election or sets aside democratic institions. Other than that, the US is a long way down the drain already.
The term for your above statement is hyperbole. You know as well as I do that religious beliefs come in a spectrum, where most people consider them something as general guidance. In this sense, a religion is more a philosophy. In the extreme cases, it is considered a binding ethical doctrine.
When you hear the words "mental illness" think distress and disability. Repeat that, distress and disability. Distress and disability. In a very real sense, a mental illness is a medical condition which is treated to reduce distress and disability. It is not a judgement. Imaginary friends do not mean that you have a mental illness. Nor does talking to yourself or an imaginary friend. When those imaginary friends cause distress or disability, then that is a mental illness. And for 99% of religious people, this does not apply.
SWAT team raids for petty offences
The police holding kids for ransom
I mean F it. Why don't we wear burkas and execute women drivers while we are at it. Shit.
Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, religion destroys spirituality
However, telling inconvenient thruths seems to be illegal there. Even if you're not American and don't even live there (Assange).
When I read the tweet at first, I thought it could be interpreted as sarcasm. As in: "A drone strike is inevitable, and I'm going to have to be one of the guys who justifies it to the public. Great... I can't wait for that."
But then I read his reason for deleting the tweet (in agreement with tweeter rober1236Jua), and it seems more clear that Michael Grunwald really is looking forward to the murder of Assange because he obviously has a problem with him and his supporters:
Fair point. I'll delete. @rober1236Jua my main problem with this is it gives Assange supporters a nice safe persecution complex to hide in
How can you call for someone's murder and simultaneously accuse them of having a persecution complex? It's akin to Orwellian doublethink.
Grunwald and rober1236Jua are both sickening.
Snowden at least stands accused of treason.
Nope. He stands accused of espionage, but that's bullshit, too. Treason has a very specific definition in US law, and whistleblowing isn't making war on the United States.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
I see no issue wishing a drone strike against this traitor. Ass-ange thought it was his own justification for what he has done. In my opinion that makes him a traitor and should be either hung or shot by a firing squad then dumped in the ocean. This is what use to be done to traitors. Not some BS political trial, which is just wasting more money.
You cant be a traitor to a country you hold no allegiance to.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
Ironic that half of Assange's leaks show other countries begging the US to help them police their region of the world.
What will you do when America isn't there to fight your battles for you?
Bullies having friends surprise you?
All valid points though. I guess one may have to pick of having the bad guys run free or having someone looking out and try to catch them. Or whatever.
I guess the reason why we react as we do and why it becomes a problem is that some of us look at our society or on what the government may even tell us and kinda have learned and know what makes society work is in that you let everyone be themself, respect and accept each other, let everyone live a decent life even if that mean you'll have to give up something to help others and so on. If you want a society without conflicts then an equal society is likely a much better choice.
Over here in Sweden we let people in and that lead to some conflict but I guess much of that conflict arrises from them not feeling equal and not having equal chances (read monetary ability), now do you want to open your border and share equal with everyone else? Maybe not. But your society would likely become more friendly and calmer for everyone if you did.
Syria and Egypt goes hard to hard and look where that bring things and how much better everything has become? Similar with say Israel shooting back if someone shot a rocket against them or the old saying an eye for an eye until the whole world goes blind.
If you "know" this create a better society and if your government may even encourage such behavior then it may feel weird when they don't play by the rules or how they preach and just go on the unfriendly route instead.
For whatever reason life is calmer here in Scandinavia. Socialism and all ..
As for guns for everyone or not one facebook group I'm a member of got an admin which seem to be pro guns but this one time he for instance pointed out how many was killed when someone with a gun started a shooting at say a school and the cops ran in vs if someone in the school was equiped with a gun and hence handled the treat himself. He had a point there and I guess he may have a point in that say the risk of being kidnapped if you have a gun yourself may be smaller. On the other hand I can easily see how things go out of control if everyone got a gun and react on their own and I guess that's the reason why we have decided against them. It may work for countries to ..
On a more Sweden related note the US recently shut down a bunch of embassys. I assume Sweden didn't in those countries. Similairly I assume Sweden may have had a pretty good reputation in UN forces due to the neutral status and not pissing people off. I assume you're more trusted and people behave kinder to you if you accept them and behave kindly back.
Whatever. My brain isn't totally engaged right now. Anyway I guess the trouble with the US interfering is that some of us got a feeling that harsh reactions won't work long term and what do work is being nice to others and let them live their lifes.
"Believer" is the correct term for someone who has an invisible friend and follows the orders of other humans who claim to represent that friend.
The orders are coming from humans. As are the moral instructions, values admonitions, consolations, and promises for the future. The money offered up to the invisible friend is also going to humans, and quite a lot of that gets distributed to poor humans out of altruism (the rest gets kept, of course, by the agents of the invisible friend).
So, that makes the situation of a believer very different from the situation of, say, a schizophrenic, who takes orders from a hallucination (which may appear to be like another human, but is NOT another human, because it is in fact a figment of the schizophrenic's imagination).
So, there is your word and why the word you would like to use does not fit.
I stopped taking Time magazine seriously when they had Ben Bernanke as Person of the Year.
Button, Button (The Twilight Zone)
I think of this when I consider the whole concept of drones as used to murder inconvenient individuals.
Some day, someone else who does not see you as fully human will have control over the box.
If your children ever found out how lame you are, they'd murder you in your sleep
I see no issue wishing a drone strike against this traitor.
Assange is not American, therefore your claim that Assange is a traitor has no basis in fact.
Given the poor quality of your writing and reasoning , it is glaringly obvious you are an uneducated
idiot, so you need to go hang out on Craigslist Rants & Raves where you will find more of your kind.
Are you confusing Assange for a US citizen? Or the UK for the US?
We're not all as medieval as you yanks, you know.
Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
So you take parts that you like and ignore parts that you do not like? For that you do not have to be religious. You can do that without religion.
Here an interesting read: Even If I DID Believe ...
Part of the text below. Read it all on the link above.
If I had undeniable proof of the existence of Yahweh, aka Jehovah, aka Adonai, aka El Shaddai, aka Yahweh Elohim, the father of Jesus and the ancient leader of the Semitic peoples, I still would not worship the bastard. If an angel appeared to me and removed my appendectomy scar so I could never deny the reality of divine power, I still would not be a Christian. My primary reason for not being a Christian or Jew has nothing to do with my lack of belief in their god. My primary reason is that the Bible is a disgusting book describing the behavior of a god without the morality of an average high school student.
That God does what he wants, when he wants, without even an attempt at self-justification, and all for what reason? According to Paul, all for his own greater glory. Oh, how charming. For his own glory he condemns billions to eternal torment, drowns millions of innocent beasts and thousands of children, orders the slaughter of entire cities down to the last man, woman, and child, creates a race that he knows is flawed and will hurt itself (so that in their pain they can worship him better), refuses to deal with any other god on a friendly basis, restricts the normal expression of the sexual function, rains doom on those who dare to try to be as knowledgable as he is, and so on.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Well, they did manage to bomb the Chinese embassy in Belgrade 14 years ago.
This sounds a bit like some reporter saying "Dammit, it's too boring around here today. I wish there was a grisly fatal multicar pileup so I could write something about it."
Then again, there's the old Hollywood idea that any hype is good hype for a career. Grunwald is certainly getting discussed more now than before this.
I'd love to see this, but not because I wish any harm on Assange (even though I personally think he's a douchebag of the highest order, that's not an offense worthy of capital punishment). No, I'd love to see the boot-lickers TRY to justify the unsanctioned murder of a foreign national on third-party soil. They would be so torn between their supposed progressive ideal of "we shouldn't police the world" and their unabashed devotion to Dear Leader that their heads would probably explode from the contradiction. I honestly don't think they'd know which way to spin it, and would end up just mumbling on air while looking like a deer in headlights.
In the end, they'd still try to justify it because they know it could be the rallying cry for the masses FINALLY waking up and booting every single one of these clowns out of office. If that happens, the media loses their biggest ally and would have to go back to actual journalism instead of repeating whatever the White House Press Office gives them...
Or maybe we'll just end up with more reality-tv tripe and things will continue on. Probably this, but I can dream, can't I?
"So after all this, you make my case for me. To end this stalemate, you must die..."
Well we won't know until the USA stops stirring up shit and being the pit bull of the ruling class now will we? i think gen Butler's speech is aproporiate as it shows just how fucking long this shit has been going on. This is a speech from the 1930s based on his experiences AT THE TURN OF THE CENTURY so this shit has been going on for a looooonnnnggg time folks.
"I helped make Mexico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested."
Sound familiar? Change the locations and it could have been written last year, the ONLY thing that changes is the location and which corp profits, that's all.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
So claiming a person is mentally ill because of their ideology and thoughts is not attempting to lower them to some subclass of humans less worthy or desirable than normal people like yourself because they lack the ability to mentally process and function as yourself?
I got ya now. Calling someone retarded is like calling them a dog or wolf or an animal which in no way infers they are less then human. Calling somoene mentally ill in no way infers that they are less then your ideal blue eyed blond hair super race right? Because all people are equal and it's just how they interact with you that makes them less of a person?>
There's a very short distance between what he's advocating and the government-sanctioned murder of journalists, dissidents, conscientious objectors and whistleblowers.
Given that the DOJ is now going against companies that give classes in evading polygraph tests, I can only imagine the number of other things that will be made illegal over the next decade to serve the security state. And this guy seems to be a cheerleader for it.
Does he want children to starve to death because he loves them? Does he want people raped and murdered because he loves them? Did god make hemorrhagic fevers because he loves us? Did god order the Israelites to murder men, women, and children because he loved those men, women, and children? Oh that's right. That's all our fault somehow, and no matter what god decides to do to us for whatever reasons he chooses, it's all good and perfect because god is god Q.E.D. If god can't stand to be around his own creation because they chose to not do everything he wanted, he's not all powerful. The fact is, he can but would rather see us burn eternally than to spend time with someone told a white lie or talked back to their parents or ate a gdamn piece of fruit he arbitrarily decided they couldn't. Most Christians' vision of god is in no way moral. They are battered spouses in an abusive relationship that exists only in their own minds. Which would be fine on its own, but so many of them feel the need to push everyone into the same relationship both through emotional child abuse and legal means.
As I recall, Jesus was pretty specific about what you need to do to be in his good books. Roughly paraphased, it boils down to 'sell all your stuff, give the money to the poor and hit the road spreading the good news, god will look after you'. I don't see many 'christians' doing this part. I don't actually see any, personally. Conservative christians, like many religious people, pick and choose which bits are important to them (marriage seems like one of their favourites). They then criticise and judge people who don't align to their views on the matter (pretty sure Jesus also admonished that, but whatevs). ;)
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
Then there's this thing called consciousness.
This veers close to a god of the gaps argument straight away, e.g. look - something we don't understand. Therefore, God.
Many try to us Occam's Razor to cut out God from this universe by saying based on our current understanding and knowledge our current universe does not "need" a God. But they could use the very same arguments to say that our current universe does not require humans to actually have consciousness - we could behave the exact same way we do without it (we could behave like self-aware creatures without that actual phenomena that we experience). And yet I know consciousness exists. Whether the rest of you are creatures capable of consciousness who really knows? I'd guess most of you are since I doubt I'm something really special.
This is a philosophical zombie argument, which basically boils down to something untestable. A P Zombie 'thinks' it has real thoughts, feelings, and desires, but it 'doesn't really'. We 'think' we have experiences and qualia. It's untestable, much like the God hypothesis itself. This doesn't mean it's wrong, it means it's untestable, and therefore a matter of faith. Which makes arguments such as this largely redundant.
Sure it could be a fluke, Weak Anthropic Principle etc but after a certain point Occam's Razor cuts both ways - the simplest explanation might be there's a God who created our universe that looks simple and yet complicated, beautiful and ugly depending on how you look at it.
Largely unsatisfying because it raises the question of who made the maker. And even then, which potential maker do you choose? If there is a real God, it seems safe to imagine that all human theories about him/her/it are speculation dressed up as something more concrete.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
I'm religious because St. Paul gave a good evidence based argument for belief in life after death in Corinthians
Presumably you're not referring to
because the only evidence (in the sense of "something connected with the real world as observed through the senses and extensions thereof") is that "is preached that Christ has been raised from the dead" (there are certainly enough people preaching that, so it's hard to deny that it is so preached). Presumably "you" in "some of you" refers to Christians, so "because we're not Christians and don't believe Christ has been raised from the dead" is not an answer.
Now, "Christ was raised, but he's a special case" is, in the context of that translation, a valid answer; it doesn't say "it is preached that we shall all be raised from the dead", it just says "Christ has been raised from the dead".
As for the rest of the if-then statements, well, perhaps the "then" statements he makes are true; maybe the people to whom he wrote those letters wouldn't have wanted to hear that, but that just leaves them with a choice - if you hear "if A, then B", and don't like hearing "B", you can either grit your teeth and accept "B" or abandon "A".
As for verses 35 on, I see no evidence, I just see a bunch of assumptions, such as "If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body."
I'm religious because there's a mathematical proof of the existence of God, by Kurt Godel none-the-less, and his math looks good.
"His math looks good" just means "if the axioms are held true, then the conclusions are also true". Another if-then there, and be very careful about saying "the axioms must be true, they're self-evident". Some might think the parallel postulate self-evident, but we don't live on a flat sheet, so it's not true for the geometry of the surface on which we live.
Which do you prefer: A dictator who generally confines his killing to political opponents and threats to his power, or several competing factions divided on religious and ethnic groups each bent on exterminating all the others? Because right now, scarcely a week can go by without another car bombing in Baghdad - and they've even managed to rig explosives on chlorine tankers for improvised chemical weapons.
I've had experiences much like your appendectomy example, but I'm still not religious for pretty much the reasons you describe. I require my god to be at least as moral as I am, and even then I don't see why it would be appropriate for me to kiss his ass. Furthermore man's theologies have more to do with men, and with the power that men wish to exercise over other men, than with God. To the extent that scripture to be taken seriously, making shit up, even inspired shit, then calling it God's Word, is blasphemy anyway. And I agree that a non-religious person can love the Golden Rule, I think its a great principle.
That said, the caricatured view that people on this site often have about conservatives and Christians is often grossly unfair. Though there is a lot of truth in the caricature, the motivations and general outlook of people in both groups is also often a lot more intelligent, nuanced, and compassionate than they're given credit for. And despite all of their stupidity, dishonesty, and cognitive dissonance, there are a few things that conservatives and Christians often understand better and act on more sincerely than atheists or people on the left do. Not everybody is cut out to question everything and invent a custom philosophical outlook for themselves. If they feel helped the general characteristics of a particular religion, they get out of it what they can, while glossing over whatever aspects of it don't seem to make as much sense. I'm not one of those people, I can't shackle my intellect that way, or let a priest or guru tell me how I should live. But most other people are not like me in that regard. They're going to buy into something, and no matter what they buy into its going to have skews and limitations, because people aren't honest enough for it to be otherwise.
Part of the problem, as I see it, is that some of the realities of life can be pretty difficult to take psychologically if you feel and think deeply about them. So people suppress their emotions, or logic, or deny some part of the picture that makes the remaining part more palatable. But different people see different things clearly, and fudge their worldviews in different ways. Most people, for instance, want to think of themselves as being a part of a large group which sees the world the 'right' way, with the problems being the fault of some other group. Actually all political groups, as I see it, including the minority 'aternative' factions like libertarianism, are f-ed up in important ways if you look for it. Seeing that while still maintaining a healthy optimism and love of life isn't a trick that very many people can pull off. And maybe nobody pulls if off very well, everyone wrestles with it one way or another.
According to this - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_net_migration_rate
The net migration rate for the US is much higher than it is for Sweden.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
You've never lived or spent much time in Sweden, have you?
It's true that relations between the sexes are rather different here than most places I've been. The difference is that women here are brought up to believe that they're fully equal to men, and they're not obligated in any way to do whatever men tell them to do simply because they're women.
It might not be what you're used to (and it took me a few years to adjust to it, myself), but to dismiss it as "misandry" is a complete mischaracterisation.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.