France has laws against racial discrimination
https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/codes/section_lc/LEGITEXT000006070719/LEGISCTA000006165298/
Discrimination as defined in articles 225-1 to 225-1-2, committed against a natural or legal person, is punishable by three years' imprisonment and a fine of 45,000 euros when it consists in:
1° Refusing to supply a good or service;
2° Obstructing the normal exercise of any economic activity;
3° Refusing to hire, punishing or dismissing a person;
4° to subordinate the supply of a good or service to a condition based on one of the elements referred to in article 225-1 or provided for in articles 225-1-1 or 225-1-2;
5° To make an offer of employment, a request for an internship or a period of training in a company subject to a condition based on one of the elements referred to in article 225-1 or provided for in articles 225-1-1 or 225-1-2;
6° To refuse to accept a person for one of the internships referred to in 2° of article L. 412-8 of the Social Security Code.
Where the discriminatory refusal referred to in 1° is committed in a place open to the public or with the aim of preventing access to it, the penalties are increased to five years' imprisonment and a fine of 75,000 euros.
Translated with DeepL.com (free version)
distic
2mo ago
There are "elections" in Russia one month from now. Elections are a dangerous time for the power in place, even in Russia, because people can choose this time to protest. Putin just wanted to make it clear that no opposition will be allowed.
distic
4mo ago
My theory is that if you want to sell to (white) men, you'd better show female on screen. And it's better because if you are subtle enough you can even score feminism point while using women as sex objects
distic
2mo ago
As I've touched upon before I think liberals tend treat the relative peace and prosperity of societies such as the US and EU as though it were a physical law (like gravity), rather than something that has to be actively cultivated and maintained
But that is precisely why losers should be required to provide proofs when they contest an election! Otherwise no peace is possible because the losers will always contest the results because it will always be in their best interest.
distic
2mo ago
Your core point is not clear because it is an anti-analogy. Analogies are not helpful to begin with, but anti-analogies are even worse. It needs to be clarified, but let me help.
I agree that any citizen committed to democracy should make sure that the electoral process is fair. This means, above all, that the legal procedures in place have been respected, and also that nothing has occurred which cannot be codified but which seriously calls into question the sincerity of the ballot. I think you agree, but contradict me if you don't.
However, here's where it gets complicated: questioning the results (in bad faith) is also a way of trying to cheat. So a citizen committed to democracy should also view any accusations of fraud with circumspection.
He or she should therefore demand that anyone making such accusations provides, perhaps not evidence, but factual elements that lead him or her to believe that irregularities have been committed and that they are of such a nature as to call the results into question. Tell me where I'm wrong.
distic
6mo ago
The question is not about the legitimacy of Israel. Israel was founded on blood like any other state in the world. Before that the territory was british, and before that it was ottoman (turkish) for centuries. So do you think Turkey was the legitimate owner of this territory? Anyway they didn't get it peacefully from the crusaders, who took it by force from the arabs. Those arabs took it by force from the byzantine empire. I don't think I need to continue.
Nowadays, Israel is a strong state and a nuclear power. Perhaps it has no right to exist but it will exist anyway. The earlier you accept it, the earlier a more acceptable solution than this awful status quo can be found.
There is always this stupid idea that if only we were a bit kinder with those leaders (be it Hitler, Putin or others), if we had made just one or two small concessions, there would have been no war. But this is a complete misunderstanding of the nature of their regime. Whatever you give them, they see as a sign of weakness, a proof that they can push harder. You negociated with me about Syria, so that I can do anything there? I will also take Ukraine. You give me Danzig? I will also take Alsace. It's a game where they can only win: either you give them what they want, and they are stronger and can push for more, or you don't, and they get a casus belli.
EDIT:
In the wake of the 9/11 Attacks, the Jewish Neocons stampeded America towards the disastrous Iraq War and the resulting destruction of the Middle East, with the talking heads on our television sets endlessly claiming that “Saddam Hussein is another Hitler.”
By the way, I remember quite precisely what happened, and the jews were not responsible of it. All of America wanted this war. The people who opposed it took a ton of shit. You probably wanted this war yourself. But I guess it is easier to blame the stupid choices you made on the jews.
distic
1mo ago
I don't really know. I don't think there is any disparate impact law, you'd have to prove the disparate impact is intentionnal and thus that it falls in the scope of the anti discrimination law.
distic
2mo ago
Most western leaders did not explicitly reference the history of suspicious deaths of opposition leaders (and the fact that Navalny was poisoned once). It's just obvious to everyone
distic
2mo ago
I like your pragmatism. There is a related argument: once there is democracy, the opposition candidate policy doesn't matter much, because you can choose another one if you want to.
distic
6mo ago
Even if you live in the west, China may use informations about you. Do you work for the army? Do you work for a competitor of a chinese company? Do you hold anti chinese views? Are you an obstacle on the way of a chinese agent?
I understand that you don't trust your government, but trusting a foreign government more is something weird...
distic
3mo ago
You are comparing the US to countries were homosexuality is forbidden, sometimes leading to death penalty, while the original comparison was with Europe
distic
2mo ago
Now Dmitri Markov is also dead. The probability thatthey weren't both directly murdered is now very low...
distic
1mo ago
I think it goes against the common morality because:
(1) Old people aren't supposed to need as much money as their children, they typically don't need to pay their mortgage anymore and don't have children to take care of. A couple of pensioners with 80k$/year is a lot richer than a couple of middle age parents with the same revenue.
(2) When the parents die their money will typically be split evenly and it means that the richest sibling is paying for the others
(3) It's not easy to know what share of the success of the child is a result of the parents' labor and what is the result of the child's own merit. If the children owe something to their parents, it is probably proportional to their average income (because the parents' labor should have been shared evenly among the children and thus any variation between them is supposed to depend only on the individual labor of each child)
distic
6mo ago
It's pretty hypocritical because antisemitism is a major driver of Zionism. When Jews have to flee, they go to Israel. Obviously those antisemits don't care about Palestine (when have they be interested about dead arabs anyway?)
distic
7mo ago
All hypothesis seem somewhat valid, excepted the first. Like, there are a lot of plane flying in Russia. Perhaps less of them now with the sanctions, but still a lot. No civilian plane was downed for months or years if I'm not mistaken. So what is the chance that it happens to the one plane that has Prigozhin on board, just two months (day to day) after his revolt? Moreover, it would be a very weird mistake, because downing a civilian plane is the last thing you do after a long list of others. Seriously if it indeed was a mistake, I wish them luck to prove it because nobody will ever believe it.
distic
9mo ago
In practice, neutrality would have meant that Ukraine will always remain weaker than Russia and can be invaded at any time. Russia would just have to wait for a time where NATO is occupied somewhere else. Russia violated the Budapest memorandum and the Minsk agreement. How could Ukraine trust them to not invade them?
Moreover, the fact that Ukraine is or is not in NATO is not very relevant for the security of Russia. They are American nukes in the baltic countries, so the threat would not be any bigger. On the other side, Russia would still have nukes, so the invasion risks aren't any higher. So if Ukraine joining NATO does not change anything for Russia security, you have to find another reason why it matters to them. The only thing Russia can do if Ukraine is "neutral" but not if it is in NATO is invading them.
has destroyed the country
No, the invasion has.
has cost enormous sums of money
The invasion has. The US are not responsible for it.
has wasted American influence in Ukraine
Are you kidding? American influence is stronger than ever in Ukraine.
has pressured Russia into developing better drone technology
No, their invasion has pressured them to do so.
has finalized the alienation of Russia from the West
Once again, it's their choice to invade Ukraine that has alienated them. Even after 2014 the west was totally OK negotiating with Russia. Have you heard about Nord Stream 2?
has influenced Arab nations into cozying with Russia
They always did... They are not democratic countries, they have an interest in helping authoritarian regimes. It has not much to do with Ukraine.
and all we get in return is some dead Russians
And the reassurance that you won't abandon your allies, which was in doubt after the Afghanistan retreat.
distic
1yr ago
You might be on something. In another message in this CW thread, someone implies that companies want their sector to be as lightly regulated as possible. However, it seems to me it is not always true. Think about children toys: if the regulations remain light, then there is no or less incentive to buy new toys compared to re-use older ones. If the regulations become heavier, then old children toys become dangerous. You should not re-use them. You should buy new ones. Why would the toy industry oppose it? In this case, it might be a win-win situation (children get safer toys, and toy companies get more money).
But you can also have the exact same phenomenon with "social regulation" or with authorship. It might be expensive to compete with the best works of the past. You have to hire talented people, to give them money, and even then you have a high failure risk. So what about lowering the bar? Just use whatever social trend to make the older works worse, out of fashion. And if it makes you free of the authors and their IP, even better, right?
distic
3mo ago
Your example is pretty poor, you cannot tell someone "you don't trust everyone on the internet so no one can be trusted". Moreover, you ca. trust a random person and yet not trust a person arguing that "people just follow incentives"
distic
7mo ago
That was my question too. And also, they should have taken account of the non economical consequences of said removal. Like people beeing sad forbtheir beloved ones. Would they really like to live in a world where their beloved ones can be "removed" if someone thinks they are not productive enough?
distic
9mo ago
The idea that one is not threatened by a neighboring state because there are other neighboring states unaligned with Russia doesn’t make sense. I am not threatened by five enemies because I have four?
Let me rephrase it: Ukraine joining NATO does not improve significantly NATO capabilities regarding Russia. I'm sorry, but the idea of a land invasion through Ukraine is ridiculous. It would mean a nuclear war. We are avoiding to send troops to Ukraine to avoid a nuclear conflict, but somehow we would invade Russia? And even if we wanted to take the risk, it would make more sense to attack from the baltic states as they are a lot closer from Moscow and Saint Petersburg than from Ukraine.
Ukraine is small, it will always be weaker
No, it won't be weaker if it has stronger allies. Russia would never have dared to invade Ukraine if it was a NATO country. And the birth rates mean nothing, as they can change fast. Russia also has declining birthrates, so the population ratio might very well be constant.
NATO violated the promise not to expand east as part of the negotiations involving German reunification.
The Russian propaganda says so, but until "they told us" becomes an international treaty, it's meaningless. If those promises even existed, they were never part of a formally approved treaty. No country has ever felt bound to respect oral promises of former leaders. It is just insane to claim they should. But even assuming that those promises were formally made and broken, I don't see your point. My argument was that Ukraine could not trust Russia security guarantees because Russia violated its security guarantees toward Ukraine twice. Are you claiming that Ukraine should actually believe Russia because NATO also broke some of its promises? It makes no sense at all.
distic
2mo ago
He lived for 41 years and was probably a drug addict for 10 years at least, so the probability that he dies the same week as Navalny is not higher than 1/500. Obviously you would need to count all drug addicts that could have died at the same time and perhaps there are more than 500, but I doubt it.
I admit the elections thing are just a hypothesis. However when three people opposing Putin die the same week, at least one of them is mudered and you can't get the body of the most famous, my basic assumption is that the three of them were actually murdered.
distic
7mo ago
There is also a psychological element in it. It means that supporters of the regime have to tell blatant lies. "No it was just an accident, we didn't do it". It trains them to say just whatever their masters want them to say.
Because it's visible, so it's easy to organize around it. People will know what side you are just by looking at you.
More options
Context Copy link