And to be clear - I'm not 'blaming' anyone, I spent some time in Tunisia a couple of years ago. I'm just indicating that 'cultures' and 'centers of activity' and 'relationships' are important.
So 'I hear you' on that.
Still though - Tunisians tend to be great people, much more open minded and educated than, for example Algerians or Moroccans ... and the Tunisian government is not nearly as bad as others ... so it's still a paradox :)
Though it could actually be literacy, access to information, and basic financing which enables them to head out to war ... ironically. Certainly, Al Queda members were actually quite well educated, way more so than the average street Arab.
And indeed, I personally don't understand that paradox as well.
And some people would like that - which is sort of the problem with Xenophobia-with-added-statistics.
The trouble with using statistics to discriminate is that it gives people some sort of plausible deniability which they can offload into opaque computer programs ("Did my race give me a higher interest rate? Did my zipcode raise the rates for an educational loan?" ... and we can't know easily).
I'm pondering over how much of "Extreme Vetting" is black boxes like those - whether I'll even know if my code gets used in one.
FYI - the US and every country on the planet discriminates against every other nation by way of visas.
Why do you think Americans can travel to Canada without a visa and Venezuelans and Turks cannot?
Do you think Canada is just going to up and allow Turks to come to Canada without paperwork? No. Why? Because it's Turkey. Very different place than America.
By 'xenophobia' do you actually mean to say 'diversity'? :)
I do what I can to post international news and I try hard to mot make it just about negative things going on out in the larger world. Sometimes, those stories do get some small attention, but there is a serious diversity issue on many discussion boards in terms of what kinds of topics get attention, if that makes sense.
And I don't know if I am making myself clear, but I mean to say that there is a lot of prejudice, basically, often rooted in ignorance (and that ignorance is to some degree happenstance, but is also to some degree by choice). So thank you for commenting.
Well, it is called "Hacker News," after all. Perhaps this just isn't the right venue for discussion of that particular story. If so, that's OK. There are plenty of others.
That's true. But it is not called "American Hacker News." I do try to post international tech news when I can find a good article on the subject. They tend to get not anywhere near as much attention as American subjects.
Please don't try to justify this to me. The number three guy on the leaderboard is Dutch. The number four guy is Australian and lives in Great Britain. The number two guy is an American living in Japan. (And I think the current lead mod is Canadian in origin and Paul Graham himself is an immigrant from England.)
Programming does not only happen in the U.S. There is absolutely no justification whatsoever for the degree of bias on this forum in terms of what people are willing to read and discuss.
1- Yes, there is a number of Tunisians that went to Syria. As you have said per/capita it is a large number. There are around 10 Million Tunisians and from 3000 to 8000 fighting in Syria (depending on the source).
2- This is due to several factors: Post-revolution politics, poverty, mistrust in the state institutions and the police, and -most importantly- a previous government that is (allegedly) complicit.
3- There are no official numbers, the Tunisian government said that they have no idea on the exact number. Some Syrian/Turkish parties gave estimates (the numbers you read in the press) but they are not to be trusted to be objective or impartial.
4- If this "database" checks for first and second degree connections, then the entire country would be flagged.