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
1yr ago
Your post is very interesting, yet I don't fully understand what you mean. It is true that you can learn almost everything there is to know in theory about any religious rite, but it seems to me the most important part is that you cannot live it without taking part of the spiritual journey. You spoke about the catholic communion : you can partake the catholic communion without being a catholic, at least superficially. The catholic church won't allow it, but it's not as if they were asking for your administrative records during the communion. It is not that hard to queue after everyone else and to do as if you were one of them. However, would you really live the catholic communion experience? It seems to me the most important part of it is the faith, the fact that you believe, up to some point, that you are eating the body of God after he sacrificed himself for you. Without this faith, it is just untasteful bread eating and nothing more. It's not really the same experience.
That is the same thing about the wedding. You can make a fake wedding with a girl you met yesterday but the point of the wedding experience is that you really mean that you want to live with this person. For example it is only a catholic wedding if you swear before your friends and family that you will live with your spouse and love him/her for all of your life, and if you mean it. If you don't you didn't get the experience even if you imitated perfectly every step of the rite. It's not about the secrecy of it, but about your commitment to it.
distic
1mo ago
Because it's visible, so it's easy to organize around it. People will know what side you are just by looking at you.
distic
1yr ago
It seems to me you are assuming that the main goal of a secret document is to remain secret, while it is actually to be read by some people (else, there are better ways to avoid leaks, like not having any secret document). So there is some kind of trade off between the security measures, and who will be able to read the document. At some point, you have to decide if it's worse that sometimes documents leak, or that someone doesn't get the information he should get. It seems to me that the incentives are strong enough to avoid leaks most of the time (the guy will spend his life in prison because he wanted to brag on discord...).
What's more worrying in my view is the time spent between the leak and the guy getting caught. If it takes one year to detect a leak from a dumb soldier unable to cover his tracks, you can guess that china has access to most us secret document.
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
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.
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
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
11mo ago
Anecdotally, I feel like even in the tech industry I am seeing a lower quality of college graduates the last few years, though it's hard to say how much of that is them being put through too many woke hoops and how much was Covid laying waste to academic rigor and accountability.
Have you considered that you might have become more competent yourself, and thus those student look more ignorant in comparison? It could explain the phenomenon at least partly.
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
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.
distic
7mo ago
Or because they had the opportunity this way and they took it. Putin isn't a god who can choose the day, the place and the way you will die. There is still a lot of logistics.
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?
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
7mo ago
I'd challenge the claim that he was not stupid. Marching against Putin and then claiming to have reached an agreement was stupid, but setting a foot in Russia was even dumber.
If only those events could serve as a lesson that there is no agreement to be reached with Putin: not for NATO, not for Ukraine, not for Georgia or Moldova. Putin just doesn't respect the agreements he makes.
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
11mo ago
If society has to live a lie, it certainly is at a higher cost than if it is telling the truth. You cannot train everyone to lie everyday and expect no consequences. (1984 is often presented as a book about mass surveillance, it is actually about truth and lies. "Freedom is the freedom to say that two and two make four, everything else follows".)
So it seems that both questions (the truth of the gender theory and the damages to society) are related.
Personaly, I would comply with anyone's desire to be treated as a woman, a man or anything else. I don't see the point in bothering these people about their personal choices. But if someone asks me out of context, what I think about gender theory, it seems to me it is my duty to say that I don't believe in it (or at least in some of its main points).
And I have no problem with society enforcing more kindness toward trans people, but at some point there must be spaces where we forget any kindness requirements and look coldly at the truth.
distic
1yr ago
Now there is a shift, a formation of new nations. Modern France or England are already France and England only in the geographical sense. The brain is American; the body is gradually being mullattized (mixed marriages, mass immigration of Blacks and Arabs). As a result, new ethnicities are gradually emerging, with a new history, a new religion. Already this France resembles France of the 18th century only as much as the «Holy Roman Empire of the German nation» resembled the original Roman Empire.
This is bullshit. Whoever wrote this does not know France at all. Sure, we are closer to America now. Sure, we look less like 18th century France. But does America look like 18th century America? This argument is shitty. Modern France does not look like 18th century France because we have cars, planes, trains and computers. Nothing to do with America by itself.
The relationship to the economy and to the culture is not at all the same in France and in the US. It's not that French people oppose freedom to own weapons, it's that they do not even understand why anyone would not oppose it.
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Currently, there is a strike in refineries that would have created an oil shortage if the government did not react by using strategical reserves. Can you imagine that in the US?
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There is a national ban of headscarves (or actually any kind of religious or political symbols) at public schools in France. Can you imagine that in the US?
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In the last presidential election, we got an actual socialist at 22% (the guy is anti NATO and thinks Taiwan should belong to the US). Macron got 28% and Le Pen 23%. Can you imagine that in the US?
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Healthcare and retirement schemes are state-controlled. Can you imagine that in the US?
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
6mo ago
It can be both. Sometime, a white racist says that black people are racists too, and it means two things: (1) they are racists, because there is no such thing as human rights, equality or whatever, everyone just fights for his own people; (2) they are racists, so it's better for us to be racist against them, because they are dangerous to us. Those two claims are complementary. But there are still holes in that theory, the first one beeing how you establish the boundaries between your people and the rest of the world, and the second one that the existence of bad people is no argument against morality.
distic
6mo ago
What would you do with your statute of limitations anyway? People won't just compensate others or renounce their claims based on that if they didn't intend to. Israeli settlements are against international law, but they still exist. Moreover, it seems that some cases can't be solved by time. Gibraltar has been british for very long, yet the disagreement with Soain will continue for decades.
If you want to have one nonetheless, one important factor would be: how many people living today in the world were alive at the time? Are direct victims still living, or would they still be living if they had not been victims?
distic
1yr ago
As I said somewhere else, there is no reason why monarchy would collapse. There are other european monarchies: Belgium ; Denmark, Spain, Luxembourg, Liechtenstein, Monaco, Norway, Netherlands, and Sweden. None of them has a monarch as "beloved and omni-temporal" as Elisabeth, yet the monarchy survives. It survives because no one has any interest in killing it. You would get a lot of trouble, a constitution to change, and more importantly a president that could be a competitor to the prime minister. It is threatening for the parliamentary nature of the regime, as the personification of politics strengthens the power of presidents everywhere.
The idea of monarchy is based on a popularity contest is as anti-monarchist as you can get. A political regime where the head of state is chosen according to his popularity is called a Republic. In a monarchy, it's the continuity of the institution and the tradition that give the monarch legitimacy. If Charles abdicate, it means that he, or his family, or even worse the people, can actually choose who the monarch will be. Then, just end the monarchy and elect a president, because that is what you are asking for.
distic
6mo ago
A world war is when the war is global. Even 10 local conflicts don't make a world war until there are two sides and japan allies with germany even though they are not fighting on the same continent. And by that, I mean that they declare war and peace together, not that they are allies in that they help each other somehow.
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?
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