How about backing up that letter with some lobbyists?

Americans tend to be pushy and, well, stupid in foreign lands.

Unpleasant people stand out, so they’re the ones we notice. They make an impression, so they’re the ones we remember. This is true of tourists from all over the world, from America to China.

I wouldn’t be surprised if it turned out that most are respectful, but end up either unnoticed or forgotten.

• the NSA listed Cavium, an American semiconductor company marketing Central Processing Units (CPUs) - the main processor in a computer which runs the operating system and applications - as a successful example of a “SIGINT enabled” CPU vendor. Cavium, now owned by Marvell said it does not implement back doors for any government.
• the NSA compromised lawful Russian interception infrastructure, SORM. The NSA archive contains slides showing two Russian officers wearing jackets with a slogan written in Cyrillic: “you talk, we listen”. The NSA and/or GCHQ has also compromised "Key European LI [lawful interception] systems.
• among example targets of its mass surveillance program, PRISM, the NSA listed the Tibetan government in exile.

In case anyone here is unfamiliar with Cavium, their chips are used in network routers from well-known brands. For example, some models from Ubiquiti (the company behind EdgeRouter and UniFi).

Phenylephrine.

I wonder why they assume democracy is fueling the problems we face, rather than, say, late-stage capitalism or plain old corruption.

“Democ­ra­cy is the worst form of gov­ern­ment, except for all the oth­ers.”