I am watching with depression the Syrian events & how intractable they are, looking for historical analogs & I just realized that it was only recently that a “civilized” state and one that boast being the paragon of civilization did worse atrocities, with the Algerian war of independence causing 1,000,000 victims mainly Algerians, close to a tenth of the population, 30 times what we have had in so far Syria. By then there was no Youtube to convey the vivid stories the elaborate “gegene” to torture rebels and the radio was controlled by the French state. And, what’s worse, people like Francois Mitterand were in on it, then led careers lecturing the rest of the world on humanitarian values. And, what was remarkable, America sided with the rebels.

via Nassim Nicholas Taleb.