Well, actually, hitting the slower children didn't make them smarter, it just made them cry (and you'd probably be better off rewarding kids who refuse to memorise a religious text rather than hitting them).
But carry on, Violet - this is the Internet after all.
Well, I accept a digital conversion of the laserdiscs of sufficient bitrate not to lose any data:-).
Microfiching and read-only digital archiving with regular copying are appropriate for all such cultural artifacts, of course. And the Domesday project was fairly unique in that it collected a lot of data by the method of "having a casual chat with the guy down the road who actually does stuff", rather than the much more sterile and indirect e.g. Wikipedia procedure of finding an article in a "reliable source".
I don't know if you were alive in the '80s but "beating with a stick", aka caning, was fairly standard in regular (almost always Christian, though not necessarily very religious) private schools back then, and in state schools not much earlier. Some of my earliest school memories are of the slower kids being hit with a ruler.
(despite being the linchpin of basically every productive endeavor in every world power right now)
The Internet is "the linchpin of basically every productive endeavor in every world power right now"? You are a sheltered geek and have no idea what you're talking about. Fortunately, your assertion is false, as pinning the hopes and future of 7 billion people on something which is effectively 15 years old and mostly controlled by a dozen private telecommunications firms plus the US government would probably be the most stupid collective move in the whole of humanity.
You also utterly failed to refute the University enrollment,
No, I made it quite clear that most universities in the US are a joke. Saying "I have gone to university in the US" means very little unless you have gone to one of the better ones.
or information access,
This is a horrible problem, as much in Cuba as America. The former operates by silencing, the latter by bombardment. It's clear why it's done in Cuba's case: they're worried that people will be fooled by a huge, powerful enemy just off the shore with far greater power to propagandise. And some probably would be fooled, just as people in the US are fed and swallow crap their news networks publish.
But what to do about this? Can you show to them what happened to the QoL of the average citizen in the USSR after the fall of the Union? Can you point out that, if it's speech freedom (in the American sense) that they crave, Russia's a great example of just how guaranteed that is? IOW, how can you counter the seductive lies based on apparent short-term gain which plagued the last decade of capitalist nations? Parts of Eastern Europe gained because they was being run for the benefit of the USSR, but Cuba is being run for its own sake.
or transportation,
What makes you think there's anything wrong with "even travel 100 miles" of Cuban transportation? You just made an assertion without supporting evidence. Even better, people in Cuba actually know how to fix shit. Life where you know how to fix something is far healthier and more stimulating than life where you're a helpless consumer who only knows how to throw away and spend more.
even though, as you continue to fail to address, our life expectancy exceeds theirs.
They're no different, within any reasonable margin of error. The difference is that there is no huge proportion of uninsured people in Cuba who bring the average down.
Im really not sure what measure of life you think gives Cuba the edge over us.
The guarantees of food, housing, education, work, healthcare and community. But Cuba's not that great. It's very isolated, by virtue of the fall of the USSR and the aggression of the US, and I'm not sure it's chosen the best way to handle this: the luxury tourist resorts, while typical of a capitalist country on the outskirts of a city where people live by far more modest means, are not appropriate in a socialist country. Raul's in NEP mode - although the procedure is nothing like the public service slashing of other Western nations.
The Internet is overrated escapism and Wikipedia is a poor reference.
The latest information on connectivity is from 1996 and almost all the information is based on a single article by a well known ex-pat axe-grinder which provides no sources for a string of allegations. Azel's job is essentially to proselytise about how awful Cuba is and how much better it would be under American capitalism.
Typical of the geek again to think that QoL should be measured by Internet accessibility. It's only 15 fucking years old in its current incarnation and it's horribly unhealthy that so many people have become so reliant/addicted to it. I am confident that we'd do better without the distraction from reality and returning to actually knowing and experiencing real people and places.
False, and much of philosophical capitalism's bullshit stems from this fallacy.
You can steer people to pretty much anything that you want, of course. As mentioned, a good 3/4 of Soviet residents wanted to keep the Union in a referendum just before its collapse. You never heard the Western media talk of the millions who approved of the system or the brilliance of Soviet research; it was all misery and backwardness, right?
, its not going to change the reality that the large majority of US citizens have way more buying power than the majority of Cubans.
Who fucking cares? If I have food and housing and education and community and opportunity to apply my talent, I don't care if I don't have the means to buy two Mac Pros or 100Mbps Internet. The very idea that you rate QoL in terms of ephemeral spur-of-the-moment toys which become junk after a couple of years tells me so much. Just because you've been programmed that way, it doesn't mean everyone has.
How many go to University (from the relevant Wiki articles, it looks like the US has 30x the population of Cuba, and 100x the university enrollment)?
In case you've stopped paying attention to your country, most US universities are glorified trade schools in academic standard but missing the step of teaching a trade.
I have not been to a welfare state
Please stop posting and go travelling.
if you go into cardiac arrest and have no money, you will still be treated, and I imagine that you would be even if hospitals were not required to.
If you think that healthcare and resultant quality of life is satisfied by being treated when you have cardiac arrest, you are embarrassingly childlike. Comprehensive healthcare is mostly about treating chronic and progressive conditions which mean many appointments, many drugs, and lots of elective procedures which you may not die tomorrow if you don't receive but which will make your life shorter and much more miserable. Most importantly, comprehensive healthcare means preventative medicine. It is these things which the poor lack in the US and it is agonising to have friends in the US who have chronic conditions which are not life-threatening but which keep them in pain and who cannot afford to have them seen to, even though a state healthcare system such as the one I enjoy in England would improve the person's quality of life and productivity to give a net benefit to everyone.
and if you cant recognize that people will not work without a motivation to do so
The motivation is a desire to be productive and to contribute toward society. Almost every science/mathematics/engineering academic could get paid ten times as much in the commercial world, but prefers to apply his mind in an environment driven by scholarship rather than profit.
You seem to be a very miserable person with a very miserable outlook on humanity. Cheer up. We're not that bad.
I'm trying to understand it, including why acts are selectively labelled as it. But I still don't know why you have such a hard-on for the US military.
Actually, the REALLY funny part about what you just said is that you apparently think Somalia was stable at some point!
Well, imperial Britain was fairly good at taking on the white man's burden, but no, Somalia's never had the chance to be left the fuck alone to prosper over the past century, thanks to Britain, Italy, France, the Soviets and the US, the influence of the last two eventually felt through Ethiopia.
(1) Income per household is not a reasonable comparison with GDP per capita;
(2) Income per household does not translate into better quality of life when moving to a country without a comprehensive state welfare system because people have to pay for decent housing, healthcare, etc. out of their own pocket;
(3) Especially not when the main currency of one of the countries is allocated specifically for accessible price-controlled essentials.
In case it's not clear: $10k/year gives you a comfortable life in Cuba - whether you have the ability and desire to be a doctor or a farmer, your equipment and education is provided and your food and housing is available. In the US, good luck becoming a doctor if your household income is $10k/year. Good luck even having food, shelter and healthcare.
the argument is that 90% of people should go without so that 10% of people can have
Go without? No, the argument of socialism is that workers should control the means of production. But as far as your argument is concerned, it would be more accurate to posit that x% of people should have less so that the remaining (100-x)% don't suffer horribly .
Also, if you think a soup kitchen or a shelter comes up to the quality of a welfare state then I wonder whether you've ever left the USA.
c6gunner, why do you have such a hard-on for the US military?
If you destabilise a country then its residents are going to collect compensation. Somalia loses its government and a chance at internal peace; the US loses a few ships. Baw. Given that the US has enjoyed not one retaliatory attack on its own shore and activity is limited to the seas to which Somalis have been pushed, the US has got off surprisingly well. If Somalia supported, say, another attack by Canada on DC, do you think the US would leave the territory of Somalia alone?
A. Different brains? B. Different culture? C. Favouritism?
Unfortunately, racists on either side are quick to highlight A or C. I'm not so fanatically politically correct that I'm going to dismiss A (we don't really know enough about the brain nor have we devised any suitable tests to determine) and C (it is human nature to support your own group, so if one group is already well established it might foster further success for that same group), but maybe there's quite a lot of B.
I mean, why are such a great proportion of students at Oxbridge from private schools? Could it be because the parents who have given their children a private education have tried to prioritise good education? We're not saying that every parent has the means to do that, but neither does every Jewish family have the means: all you need is significantly more Jewish families to want to prioritise their children's education, some of whom will also have the means to action their want, for them to end up overrepresented in some professional field. This sort of sentiment is cultural, passed down through families and community groups. It is a spirit perhaps to be learnt from, though perhaps not adopted wholesale: a graduate from a top university is just as likely to become a wanker banker as a life-enhancing scientist.
Fanboyism has the same characteristics whether it's applied to Kirk vs Picard or Libertardianism vs Fascism. Sometimes a point is best made by finding the most extreme example which doesn't cause the audience to have a seizure.
The Internet is not serious business, so people online who "OMG how can you compare that to _____ that's so insensitive!" are either very new, trolls or a bit silly.
The only Godwinning has been done by yourself. Perhaps all geeks are fairly ignorant outside their field and can't think of any dictator except Hitler, so they insultingly simplify the experience of the hundreds of millions who have lived under dictators other than Hitler. Or perhaps it's just you.
By showing how ridiculous the behaviour of fanboys are, akin to cultish followers of an inhumane political philosophy who refuse to see or hear the negative, I appear to have received fairly angry responses. If you really thought my argument was absurd nonsense you'd have just ignored it. But you were annoyed by the suggestion that people leave all sense of balance and reason at the door even when it comes to a particular IT firm, and felt the need to handwave away the possibility without even tackling the accusation directly.
So how about tackling the accusation rather than the person, if you can? Maybe you'll find something about yourself.
While I have no doubt that Google's rapacious desire for information rivals the wildest dreams of Honecker and Goebbels combined, all I was saying was that you can't expect anyone making an honest appraisal to ignore the elephant in the room. To do so brings to mind the sort of ridiculous fanboyism you get for the most extreme ideas, where adherents can't stop mentioning the positives but refuse to acknowledge the negatives.
Also, every few years I've returned to/. and created a new UID. I think I first posted around 1998. It used to be way better, but it's still a passable way of engaging in a minute's downtime every so often in the day.
thugs whose answer to pretty much everything was 'Jihad!' [...] It ain't pretty but then again neither is Islam [...] the islamists would treat it as a holy war.
I can almost taste the prejudice and hatred from here. It's like listening to people talk about Jews 70 years ago.
handing waters crucial to international shipping to a bunch of sharia courts ruled by warlords would have been even worse
Ah, the pre-emptive non-evidence-based strike. The US government is just so good at that.
That doesn't make any sense. Who is being subjugated? Are peace loving non-terrorist Iraqis paying US income tax? Last I heard we're paying for everything, including rebuilding their country.
Argh. Lots of people don't want the US coming in and rebuilding their country in the US image, particularly not after installing US companies to mine the most valuable resources and US-friendly representatives in government. How would you feel if some foreign country overthrew the US government and paid to "rebuild it" as it thought right? You couldn't have illustrated the white man's burden fallacy more succintly.
I'd say the greatest global subjugation today is the plight of religious minorities in Muslim countries.
Woohoo. Let's see what you're referring to here...
When you look at the millions of Copts who are being terrorized in Egypt, that's subjugation.
Do you have one piece of credible evidence that millions are being terrorised, or would you like to adjust each of the italicised words in order to better reflect reality? There are certainly religiously motivated attacks in Egypt which seem to be Muslims vs Copts, and the religious freedom which is(was) supposedly granted in Egypt doesn't always seem to translate into equal treatment of all religions - a common feature of all countries where one religion dominates. The behaviour is indefensible.
But how you can compare this to wholesale invasion and occupation is beyond me.
The path of Native Americans, Irish Republicans, Basque separatists, etc., all possessed a common feature: they stopped attacking the ruling group when the ruling group was prepared to do some redressing for their grievances and allow them a degree of voice and independence rather than total military subjugation.
There's currently no greater global subjugation than by the US neocon movement against "the Islamic threat" (although this includes fairly secular governments ruling a Muslim population, e.g. Iraq), so you can expect certain individuals to make the ultimate sacrifice for their cause. Similarly, freedom fighters / terrorists throughout history have put themselves in harm's way for their cause.
This is what the US is perceived to do already. This is also why suicide bombers exist: because people would rather die than be subject to US domination.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, actually, hitting the slower children didn't make them smarter, it just made them cry (and you'd probably be better off rewarding kids who refuse to memorise a religious text rather than hitting them).
But carry on, Violet - this is the Internet after all.
Well, I accept a digital conversion of the laserdiscs of sufficient bitrate not to lose any data :-).
Microfiching and read-only digital archiving with regular copying are appropriate for all such cultural artifacts, of course. And the Domesday project was fairly unique in that it collected a lot of data by the method of "having a casual chat with the guy down the road who actually does stuff", rather than the much more sterile and indirect e.g. Wikipedia procedure of finding an article in a "reliable source".
I don't know if you were alive in the '80s but "beating with a stick", aka caning, was fairly standard in regular (almost always Christian, though not necessarily very religious) private schools back then, and in state schools not much earlier. Some of my earliest school memories are of the slower kids being hit with a ruler.
Please tell me that it adds rather than replaces. Also, where is the downloadable copy? All I want is a copy of the laserdisc etc.
And the UI is a noisy, muddled pain. There were fewer distractions in 1986.
(despite being the linchpin of basically every productive endeavor in every world power right now)
The Internet is "the linchpin of basically every productive endeavor in every world power right now"? You are a sheltered geek and have no idea what you're talking about. Fortunately, your assertion is false, as pinning the hopes and future of 7 billion people on something which is effectively 15 years old and mostly controlled by a dozen private telecommunications firms plus the US government would probably be the most stupid collective move in the whole of humanity.
You also utterly failed to refute the University enrollment,
No, I made it quite clear that most universities in the US are a joke. Saying "I have gone to university in the US" means very little unless you have gone to one of the better ones.
or information access,
This is a horrible problem, as much in Cuba as America. The former operates by silencing, the latter by bombardment. It's clear why it's done in Cuba's case: they're worried that people will be fooled by a huge, powerful enemy just off the shore with far greater power to propagandise. And some probably would be fooled, just as people in the US are fed and swallow crap their news networks publish.
But what to do about this? Can you show to them what happened to the QoL of the average citizen in the USSR after the fall of the Union? Can you point out that, if it's speech freedom (in the American sense) that they crave, Russia's a great example of just how guaranteed that is? IOW, how can you counter the seductive lies based on apparent short-term gain which plagued the last decade of capitalist nations? Parts of Eastern Europe gained because they was being run for the benefit of the USSR, but Cuba is being run for its own sake.
or transportation,
What makes you think there's anything wrong with "even travel 100 miles" of Cuban transportation? You just made an assertion without supporting evidence. Even better, people in Cuba actually know how to fix shit. Life where you know how to fix something is far healthier and more stimulating than life where you're a helpless consumer who only knows how to throw away and spend more.
even though, as you continue to fail to address, our life expectancy exceeds theirs.
They're no different, within any reasonable margin of error. The difference is that there is no huge proportion of uninsured people in Cuba who bring the average down.
Im really not sure what measure of life you think gives Cuba the edge over us.
The guarantees of food, housing, education, work, healthcare and community. But Cuba's not that great. It's very isolated, by virtue of the fall of the USSR and the aggression of the US, and I'm not sure it's chosen the best way to handle this: the luxury tourist resorts, while typical of a capitalist country on the outskirts of a city where people live by far more modest means, are not appropriate in a socialist country. Raul's in NEP mode - although the procedure is nothing like the public service slashing of other Western nations.
The Internet is overrated escapism and Wikipedia is a poor reference.
The latest information on connectivity is from 1996 and almost all the information is based on a single article by a well known ex-pat axe-grinder which provides no sources for a string of allegations. Azel's job is essentially to proselytise about how awful Cuba is and how much better it would be under American capitalism.
Typical of the geek again to think that QoL should be measured by Internet accessibility. It's only 15 fucking years old in its current incarnation and it's horribly unhealthy that so many people have become so reliant/addicted to it. I am confident that we'd do better without the distraction from reality and returning to actually knowing and experiencing real people and places.
People are greedy and "not good" inherently
False, and much of philosophical capitalism's bullshit stems from this fallacy.
You can steer people to pretty much anything that you want, of course. As mentioned, a good 3/4 of Soviet residents wanted to keep the Union in a referendum just before its collapse. You never heard the Western media talk of the millions who approved of the system or the brilliance of Soviet research; it was all misery and backwardness, right?
, its not going to change the reality that the large majority of US citizens have way more buying power than the majority of Cubans.
Who fucking cares? If I have food and housing and education and community and opportunity to apply my talent, I don't care if I don't have the means to buy two Mac Pros or 100Mbps Internet. The very idea that you rate QoL in terms of ephemeral spur-of-the-moment toys which become junk after a couple of years tells me so much. Just because you've been programmed that way, it doesn't mean everyone has.
How many go to University (from the relevant Wiki articles, it looks like the US has 30x the population of Cuba, and 100x the university enrollment)?
In case you've stopped paying attention to your country, most US universities are glorified trade schools in academic standard but missing the step of teaching a trade.
I have not been to a welfare state
Please stop posting and go travelling.
if you go into cardiac arrest and have no money, you will still be treated, and I imagine that you would be even if hospitals were not required to.
If you think that healthcare and resultant quality of life is satisfied by being treated when you have cardiac arrest, you are embarrassingly childlike. Comprehensive healthcare is mostly about treating chronic and progressive conditions which mean many appointments, many drugs, and lots of elective procedures which you may not die tomorrow if you don't receive but which will make your life shorter and much more miserable. Most importantly, comprehensive healthcare means preventative medicine. It is these things which the poor lack in the US and it is agonising to have friends in the US who have chronic conditions which are not life-threatening but which keep them in pain and who cannot afford to have them seen to, even though a state healthcare system such as the one I enjoy in England would improve the person's quality of life and productivity to give a net benefit to everyone.
and if you cant recognize that people will not work without a motivation to do so
The motivation is a desire to be productive and to contribute toward society. Almost every science/mathematics/engineering academic could get paid ten times as much in the commercial world, but prefers to apply his mind in an environment driven by scholarship rather than profit.
You seem to be a very miserable person with a very miserable outlook on humanity. Cheer up. We're not that bad.
nothing is happening. Sure, more radiation is released
"No but yes". Cs-137.
News 11.
You ought to work for Apple.
Hazel, why do you support terrorism?
I'm trying to understand it, including why acts are selectively labelled as it. But I still don't know why you have such a hard-on for the US military.
Actually, the REALLY funny part about what you just said is that you apparently think Somalia was stable at some point!
Well, imperial Britain was fairly good at taking on the white man's burden, but no, Somalia's never had the chance to be left the fuck alone to prosper over the past century, thanks to Britain, Italy, France, the Soviets and the US, the influence of the last two eventually felt through Ethiopia.
Lets address this RIGHT now.
Lol, Internet anger.
(1) Income per household is not a reasonable comparison with GDP per capita;
(2) Income per household does not translate into better quality of life when moving to a country without a comprehensive state welfare system because people have to pay for decent housing, healthcare, etc. out of their own pocket;
(3) Especially not when the main currency of one of the countries is allocated specifically for accessible price-controlled essentials.
In case it's not clear: $10k/year gives you a comfortable life in Cuba - whether you have the ability and desire to be a doctor or a farmer, your equipment and education is provided and your food and housing is available. In the US, good luck becoming a doctor if your household income is $10k/year. Good luck even having food, shelter and healthcare.
the argument is that 90% of people should go without so that 10% of people can have
Go without? No, the argument of socialism is that workers should control the means of production. But as far as your argument is concerned, it would be more accurate to posit that x% of people should have less so that the remaining (100-x)% don't suffer horribly .
Also, if you think a soup kitchen or a shelter comes up to the quality of a welfare state then I wonder whether you've ever left the USA.
c6gunner, why do you have such a hard-on for the US military?
If you destabilise a country then its residents are going to collect compensation. Somalia loses its government and a chance at internal peace; the US loses a few ships. Baw. Given that the US has enjoyed not one retaliatory attack on its own shore and activity is limited to the seas to which Somalis have been pushed, the US has got off surprisingly well. If Somalia supported, say, another attack by Canada on DC, do you think the US would leave the territory of Somalia alone?
A. Different brains?
B. Different culture?
C. Favouritism?
Unfortunately, racists on either side are quick to highlight A or C. I'm not so fanatically politically correct that I'm going to dismiss A (we don't really know enough about the brain nor have we devised any suitable tests to determine) and C (it is human nature to support your own group, so if one group is already well established it might foster further success for that same group), but maybe there's quite a lot of B.
I mean, why are such a great proportion of students at Oxbridge from private schools? Could it be because the parents who have given their children a private education have tried to prioritise good education? We're not saying that every parent has the means to do that, but neither does every Jewish family have the means: all you need is significantly more Jewish families to want to prioritise their children's education, some of whom will also have the means to action their want, for them to end up overrepresented in some professional field. This sort of sentiment is cultural, passed down through families and community groups. It is a spirit perhaps to be learnt from, though perhaps not adopted wholesale: a graduate from a top university is just as likely to become a wanker banker as a life-enhancing scientist.
Fanboyism has the same characteristics whether it's applied to Kirk vs Picard or Libertardianism vs Fascism. Sometimes a point is best made by finding the most extreme example which doesn't cause the audience to have a seizure.
The Internet is not serious business, so people online who "OMG how can you compare that to _____ that's so insensitive!" are either very new, trolls or a bit silly.
And someone taking this to the logical conclusion would notice that a politician...
The only Godwinning has been done by yourself. Perhaps all geeks are fairly ignorant outside their field and can't think of any dictator except Hitler, so they insultingly simplify the experience of the hundreds of millions who have lived under dictators other than Hitler. Or perhaps it's just you.
By showing how ridiculous the behaviour of fanboys are, akin to cultish followers of an inhumane political philosophy who refuse to see or hear the negative, I appear to have received fairly angry responses. If you really thought my argument was absurd nonsense you'd have just ignored it. But you were annoyed by the suggestion that people leave all sense of balance and reason at the door even when it comes to a particular IT firm, and felt the need to handwave away the possibility without even tackling the accusation directly.
So how about tackling the accusation rather than the person, if you can? Maybe you'll find something about yourself.
While I have no doubt that Google's rapacious desire for information rivals the wildest dreams of Honecker and Goebbels combined, all I was saying was that you can't expect anyone making an honest appraisal to ignore the elephant in the room. To do so brings to mind the sort of ridiculous fanboyism you get for the most extreme ideas, where adherents can't stop mentioning the positives but refuse to acknowledge the negatives.
Also, every few years I've returned to /. and created a new UID. I think I first posted around 1998. It used to be way better, but it's still a passable way of engaging in a minute's downtime every so often in the day.
Can't we have a discussion about [dictator] without [deaths] being raised?
We can, but expect any positive points about [dictator] to be put in the context of [deaths].
Asian culture is far more like European than African.
Next.
thugs whose answer to pretty much everything was 'Jihad!' [...] It ain't pretty but then again neither is Islam [...] the islamists would treat it as a holy war.
I can almost taste the prejudice and hatred from here. It's like listening to people talk about Jews 70 years ago.
handing waters crucial to international shipping to a bunch of sharia courts ruled by warlords would have been even worse
Ah, the pre-emptive non-evidence-based strike. The US government is just so good at that.
That doesn't make any sense. Who is being subjugated? Are peace loving non-terrorist Iraqis paying US income tax? Last I heard we're paying for everything, including rebuilding their country.
Argh. Lots of people don't want the US coming in and rebuilding their country in the US image, particularly not after installing US companies to mine the most valuable resources and US-friendly representatives in government. How would you feel if some foreign country overthrew the US government and paid to "rebuild it" as it thought right? You couldn't have illustrated the white man's burden fallacy more succintly.
I'd say the greatest global subjugation today is the plight of religious minorities in Muslim countries.
Woohoo. Let's see what you're referring to here...
When you look at the millions of Copts who are being terrorized in Egypt, that's subjugation.
Do you have one piece of credible evidence that millions are being terrorised, or would you like to adjust each of the italicised words in order to better reflect reality? There are certainly religiously motivated attacks in Egypt which seem to be Muslims vs Copts, and the religious freedom which is(was) supposedly granted in Egypt doesn't always seem to translate into equal treatment of all religions - a common feature of all countries where one religion dominates. The behaviour is indefensible.
But how you can compare this to wholesale invasion and occupation is beyond me.
The path of Native Americans, Irish Republicans, Basque separatists, etc., all possessed a common feature: they stopped attacking the ruling group when the ruling group was prepared to do some redressing for their grievances and allow them a degree of voice and independence rather than total military subjugation.
There's currently no greater global subjugation than by the US neocon movement against "the Islamic threat" (although this includes fairly secular governments ruling a Muslim population, e.g. Iraq), so you can expect certain individuals to make the ultimate sacrifice for their cause. Similarly, freedom fighters / terrorists throughout history have put themselves in harm's way for their cause.
(1) "I was only following orders". The Navy is a tool of the US government and cannot legitimately act without context.
(2) I have no problem with a country not wanting to be a policeman for the world.
This is what the US is perceived to do already. This is also why suicide bombers exist: because people would rather die than be subject to US domination.