The vast majority of homicides are either situations where the victim and perpetrator know each other OR it's relatively small scale. Random murders are uncommon, and it's rare to see someone who commits a lot of random murders.

Mass shootings get attention because they are both seemingly random and they are often mass casualty events. The methods of many perpetrators of mass shootings often resemble terrorism more than what we would consider crime- lots of victims, no intent to escape, motives that are often irrational.

If the perperators of mass shootings were using pistols or other weapons- that would be the focus of legislation. When Columbine happened and other shootings of the 90s took place involving the TEC-9, the pistol was banned by several states (California banned it both by name, and by it's various features). Same deal with the Hi-Point Carbine, which was also used in Columbine- California, Connecticut and New York have all restricted the sale of the weapon at various times.

The AR-15 is what many high profile mass shooters are using, so it is the focus of the legislation. Unlike in the 90s where restrictive legislation passed in many states, it seems like the failure to pass legislation to restrict the AR-15 has caused a loop where more people buy them and then odds of a mass shooter using an AR-15 instead of something else are higher.

No surprises there. This war is going to go on and on until the supply of Iranian weapons is stopped.

The Houthi movement is basically under the total control of the Iranian government by this point- they don’t care how many Yemenis they have to conscript and send to their deaths. Whenever war weary Yemenis have wanted to find a peaceful solution to the conflict rather than an eternal war on behalf of Iran, the Iranians controlling the Houthi organization have usually had them liquidated in internal purges.

These people are sacrificial pawns to Iran, a human resource to be exploited for its holy war against everyone who is an obstacle to the Ayatollah’s delusions of Iranian greatness. Iran is perfectly happy to send every single Yemeni their press gangs can catch to their deaths against Saudi trenches as long as it can take pictures of the dead to produce propaganda against “Saudi brutality”.

It’s more than that- raising the age of the pension (and the extraordinary measures taken to pass it) are just a symptom of a greater problem: the people in office at virtually all levels of French government take the state of the country and its people for granted.

The same things affecting most other developed countries are affecting France. It’s harder for young people to start a family, the quality of life for all people feels as if it is being eroded from all sides In piecemeal ways, and the political system is failing to address these fundamental difficulties- often preferring technical solutions that do nothing to address the long term issue- while politicians themselves increasingly become difficult to differentiate from the wealthy elite.

Most importantly, people are sick of the lack of accountability- you can be incompetent and destructive while in elected office and the worst thing that can befall you is that you will lose the election, no matter how many lives are ruined by your actions. Sound familiar?

Raising the age of the pension is emblematic of the sclerotic mindset of a political class that believes the nation can bear any amount of burdens and continue to exist and prosper. The vast majority of the political class takes the health of the country for granted, doing absolutely nothing to address the underlying demographic problems or to make necessary investments in the economy to remain relevant- especially if it would be inconvenient for the interests of the very wealthy by making them pay taxes.

France (and many other developed countries) need measures to simultaneously crack down on tax evasion in the short term, prioritize positive demographic stability of the country in the long term, and to dramatically increase economic productivity on an individual basis to bridge the gap between the two periods. If you talk to French politicians, they’re likely to be solely interested in making sure their government provided vehicles have a secured parking garage that is nearby their offices.

The war was in 2003, calmed down after 2008, surged again slightly in 2014, and then calmed down again as IS was rolled back. Most Iraqi refugees during these various periods of instability found refuge at displaced persons camps within Iraq or neighboring countries like Jordan.

With the notable exception of Ukraine, there aren't any fresh conflicts on Europe's borders- the vast majority of migrants are going to Europe in search of better opportunities, rather than fleeing immediate danger.

Most of them come from countries where authoritarians and corruption have meant they face limited prospects for improving their lives and any efforts to change their society are likely to be violently opposed by their authoritarian government.

Their only choices are to take their chances opposing their government or take their chances by migrating- which is why many of these people's deportations from the EU are not assisted by the home country, which understands that too many jobless people is a risk to their form of government.

For those unaware, Rwanda after the genocide has largely been dominated by Paul Kagame (a Tutsi guerrilla leader during the genocide). Kagame has been President of Rwanda for over twenty years.

Paul Rusesabagina has been a critic of Kagame and his government since 1996, when he came to see Kagame’s government as very similar to the Hutu dominated government that had carried out the genocide.

Rusesabagina has made statements that border on conspiracy theories involving the RPF (Kagame’s guerrilla movement and later political party) and its responsibility for the genocide.

Short story: Rusesabagina opposed the genocide by his Hutus, but he also opposed militant actions by Tutsi that were aggravating ethnic tensions in Rwanda.

The federal government is likely to be in gridlock for something like 99% of legislation for the next two years, and executive orders have limits. People voted for gridlock when they voted for Republicans, I’ve yet to see any Republican who actually campaigns on a platform of being able to find compromises with Democrats (whereas Biden himself actively campaigned on being eager to work with Republicans in earnest).

I really admire the branding campaign that the Republicans have, they’re like the Harley Davidson of political parties. They’re inferior to the Democrats in performance whether you’re liberal or conservative, but they’ve got a whole bunch of older conservatives voting for them despite the obviousness of them get ripped off.

>The Israeli military said it entered the city to arrest three wanted militants suspected in previous shooting attacks in the West Bank. It said it tracked down the men in a hideout.

Might need to check your math there, unless you’re suggesting that the Israeli military is trying to disguise dead terrorists as civilian bystanders?

Carter’s sin was that he told the American people that they couldn’t have their cake and eat it too. He told people the plain truth, and they didn’t want to hear it.

He won election because the American people were disgusted by all of the lies, deceptions, hypocrisy, and criminal behavior that had characterized at least the past decade of American government before Carter- with the Vietnam War and the Watergate Scandal looming large in the public consciousness.

The problem was that many people who objected to the breaking of eggs still wanted to eat an omelette, and Carter was telling them that omelettes were off the menu. The unchecked consumerism of the 1960s couldn’t be maintained without a host of unpleasant practices that Carter was specifically elected to oppose- which was something that a relatively politically naive public didn’t want to understand. These weren’t the generation which had lived through the depression as teenagers and adults, these were people who’d come of age through the post-WW2 prosperity and never bothered to wonder what ugly things were required to maintain their prosperous lives.

Carter had principles. He was honest with the country- if they weren’t willing to do all the ugly things their predecessors had done to maintain their standard of living (such as maintain American international credibility by going to war on behalf of beleaguered nations like we’d done in Korea and Vietnam), then the country had to live more modestly.

Nobody wants to be told to put on a sweater instead of turning on their heater.

It’s kind of infuriating watching the members of Congress be so indignant that the Architect was not sharing their own peril by being at the Capitol during the unrest, when many of them do a similar thing to the American people by distancing themselves against the dangerous levels of confusion and anger in society they help create with their governance.

When Covid hit, the biggest threat to many of them was that their cocktail parties at expensive DC bars and restaurants were a health risk. While the rest of Americans were struggling with layoffs, reduced orders/demand, the isolation from friends and family, and the dangers of Covid- the biggest challenge for most of Congress was figuring out how to have lunch at exclusive restaurants without the press finding out and exposing them as hypocrites.

When they got a briefing on how bad Covid could be, what was the first thing they did? They adjusted their stock portfolios to profit off of the pandemic, and advised their biggest donors with stock tips. The second thing they did was start putting out dueling press conferences to publicly bicker with each other in front of the media, and drive up the polarization and public fear over Covid. Assistance to the American people took much longer to materialize, and only came after Congress and their rich donors were already in position to profit from the crisis.

Members of Congress don’t have to live on a typical income, they don’t have to pay medical bills, they don’t live among the same neighborhoods as the average American. They don’t experience normal life, they don’t suffer the consequences for their part in creating a dangerous society by the laws they pass and the laws they fail to pass. They’re collectively like a chef that refuses to eat his own cooking, but whose cooking is the only food available to the entire nation.

With such habits of evading responsibility for one’s own actions ingrained in all of the elites, is it really surprising that the Architect didn’t expose himself to the same peril as Congress that he had a hand in creating?

Only because California (and other wealthy states, like NY) tend to assume that homelessness is a problem to be addressed rather than exported.

California doesn’t want the homeless, it just looks “super cool” when compared to poorly run states in the Midwest that constantly export the dregs of their society to California and delude themselves into believing that “small government” is working.

Those states are poorly administered, and they chronically fail to provide enough education, jobs, housing, and other social investments to build a state that can absorb all of the people they produce.

It’s why the entrepreneurs and elites in those states are disproportionately people from places like California and New York- Boise ain’t producing too many people with the education or experience to run a modern industrial enterprise.

In time, the gradual flow of elites from California and New York will probably change the political culture of ineptitude and backwardness in those states but progress isn’t going to happen overnight.

If SBF takes some form of plea deal (which he almost certainly will- Madoff did, and Madoff was smarter than this guy by an order of magnitude), it's basically guaranteed that a condition of his deal will be to disclose where all the money went- he won't be allowed to retain any of it.

That makes tracking down the little amounts worthwhile, because it only takes a tiny amount of money to render his plea deal null if it can be shown that he has broken the terms of the agreement.

Odds are they'll get ahold of his computers, phones, correspondence, and financial records to basically figure out where he stuffed the cash by going through the records.

If it is in a bank account abroad, they can seize it with the proper paperwork and court orders. The reach of the US government is considerable, especially when dealing with people are already incarcerated in US prisons. There are some places that don't play ball with the US, but putting money in those places is a considerable risk.

If he tucked it away in a hard drive or some other form of digital storage, they can probably crack that - either the password is something that is similar to his previous passwords and can be figured out with analysis and time, or has he generated a random character password and stored this password somewhere.

I can see guys who steal tens of millions being able to hide some of it, especially if they worked alone -or at least limited their partners- and have a limited digital trail.

SBF stole billions; enough money to make it worth going through every minute of the last decade of his life with a fine-toothed comb, he worked with a ton of other people who have knowledge on his methods (and are young enough to desperately want to avoid spending decades in prison themselves- so they will testify), and he was basically plugged into one device or another at all times.

To be fair, denial was the order of the day for basically everyone. There is no shortage of historical precedent when it comes to a nation trying to whitewash the uglier pages of its history. It’s kind of amazing that anyone ever thought there would be no attempt to deny or downplay the Holocaust.

Eisenhower was always a superb organizer, and stood out from his contemporaries for having a better sense of his own place in the overall system and the vast responsibility that came with it. Other generals often neglected certain areas of their responsibility, particularly the political aspects (which is understandable, as many had little experience outside traditional military matters). Inviting the press and making the thorough documentation of the Holocaust a key policy set him apart from many contemporaries who essentially waived it off as the usual wartime atrocities one sees in war that quickly gets forgotten about by most people.