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Cake day: June 22nd, 2023

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  • Hello, did not understand everything so sorry in advance if i say anything dumb In France, we have a President, elected by every adult citizen. In theory, he does not lead the country, and chooses a Prime Minister for this task, who then comes up with a government. In practice though, the President (Macron for now) has a lot more power over the PM because he can revoke and name another Prime Minister. And as the Assembly also have the power to revoke PM, President generally chooses someone that the majority in the Assembly will accept, to avoid instability. So currently, Macron is the President and holds practical power over politics, Prime Minister is currently Attal, and is kinda the second in hand of Macron, and as the Assembly seems to change right now, Macron will probably choose someone else as PM, probably someone from the left.


  • I didn’t watch tat much movies, but maybe you’re right and this all is just me being dumb or disconnected from reality. Maybe I’m also biased by my interactions with cops and/or soldiers (which were mostly bad experiences).

    I guess CAF is canadian army ? I think during time of peace, the army does not take that much violent actions against its own population (although cops do). So it’s more about the second part of spreading fear to keep control : if anyone goes against their power, they will be allowed to take these violent actions. I confess that I do not know much about canadian army, so maybe I’m wrong. But I think violence and terror are only clearly visible during periods of tension, and as Canada seems to be quite peaceful, maybe violence and terror are juste dimmed for now.

    I do not consider violence and terror as goals of military : i sincerely believe that most people in armies have no interest in them, and that they are here for other reasons (patriotism, security, a sense of belonging, etc). I think violence and terror are rather aspects or consequences of military : you need them to achieve other goals, which could be positive (control, security, enforcing the State). Good actions (summarized by “capturing hearts and minds” if i understood), are also aspects/consequences/tools armies may use to reach these goals.

    So, to my eyes, making good things remains compatible with using terror, because this one relies on the mere possibility of violence. It also seems compatible with violence itself, if you consider both can affect different targets at the same time. All of these are tools they may need for other goals, positive or not. But I remain quite certain that violence and terror are necessary consequences in the wide panel of actions an army can take, despite the goodwill of every person implied.

    Not sure if this is clear or clever though, sorry if anything sounds dumb and bothers you.


  • Yeah, I can understand the initial trust in law, and maybe debatting it later. This is not my way of thinking but i admit it’s really reasonable.

    For the terror, my reflexion is the following : army/cops try to maintain a specific system in place and have 2 ways to do so. For people who (more or less) actively defy their authority, they take violent actions (kidnapping, pressure, wounding, killing, etc). For people who are not (yet) actively defying their authority, they hope that their violent actions will make people afraid of them, so they do not act against authority. I refer to thz first part as killing (though it’s not only killing but more generally violent actions against people), and the second part as terror.

    So, imho, though war crimes may spray more terror in a single act than usual army stuff, both spray terror in their own way.


  • Yeah, this is what makes one legal and the other one not. I suppose that in your opinion, being legal and following rules of war makes it better and I would agree, it seems reasonably better. But is it good though ? To my eyes, killing and spreading terror remains bad, legally or not. If we add some other parameter, it may even be worse to do it legally : the scale of destruction is far worse when a violent group is legal (and so financed and supported by whole countries).

    The result of the analysis depends on what parameters you choose : is it legal ? Is it big ? What are the motives ? You can choose what you want, and that’s probably why we (I assume this here) have different opinions. My wonder is : why should we focus mostly or entirely on the legal aspect/parameter when analysing things like violence and power ?

    (If i misunderstood what you said, sorry by advance)




  • Okay you now have stated a correct reason. I would add two things that can help you refine your way of seeing things :

    • It’s probably best to say ‘kill Russian invaders’ or even ‘kill invaders’, since the problem is invaders and not Russian (I mean, killing random civilians in Moscow wont help Ukraine, but it’s still what you said is good)
    • Insisting on killing is still weird. Killing soldiers is not the goal of fighting an invasion back, it is one way to achieve the real goal : all Russians soldiers out of Ukraine. If that’s what you’re talking about, i advise you to say ‘fighting’ instead of ‘killing’, so it’s not mistaken for a random bloodlust against a country.

    Now I got to apologize if we agree on all those points, I mistook your shortened thinking for blatant stupidity, which would be my bad





  • The main problem with this subject is that the abaya is not a religious clothing strictly speaking. It is not enforced by any muslim sacred text, a lot of muslim women do not wear it, whereas non-muslim women wear it. It is rather typical from the arabic culture than from the muslim religion (it originated from bedouin culture in the first place).

    Here in France people are mad about secularism because of an old hate of Christian Church, but nowadays it is rather used to discriminate jews and muslims. (At school, yarmulke and headscarf are banned, but christian crosses are allowed if they’re not too big. Every day i saw people in school with christian crosses around the neck or as earrings, and no one bothered them, while they were harassing girls with a headscarf.)

    Imo here the government is just creating a new debate on a stupid question, just to scare people about muslims and give hard right politicians a bone to chew, as they always do. While everyone talks and is afraid about what teenagers could wear, people talk less about the other laws they are passing, for having more control over Internet or whatever they want.


  • I agree on the point that “they are racist/pedo because of the power they receive” is pretty much false in this situation.

    But i would say that this is not the only meaning behind “Power corrupts”. (What follows is only a personnal opinion, there may be some wrong usage of terms or anything) To me, it also means that power corrupts our ways of thinking : believing in a strong power, even if you do not hold it, tends to makes this power more important than human lives or conditions. Like “Police is important, so it’s okay if some peoples get hurt to protect it”. In other words, the more you believe in power, the more it may become an end rather than a tool. This is were the corruption is to me.

    I think that people get racist because they believe in some kind of great cause that should held power (like Homeland, Historical Background, Race, etc.). Then they consider normal to use power for this cause, even if it is against other people. Maybe it’s not the same thing for getting attracted to young people. But doing pedo crimes always involve some power in the very act of it, and to some extent in the decision making that led to it.

    To sum it up, imo the hate and weird attraction of those cops basically mean that they think they have, or that they should have, a legitimate power over other people (minorities, kids, etc.). Even if it’s not the specific power that they got as cops that corrupted them, it is their belief in power more generally. (and as other said, the power they got as cops probably reinforced all of this, as a vicious circle).



  • Hey, noobie question here, I dont know much about fediverse, so don’t mind correct me :

    Is it a good thing ?

    I first had the feeling that it ain’t, but everybody in the comment section seems happy with it. My knowledge of the Fediverse is this :

    • Federation aims to decentralization
    • The aim beyond decentralization is to prevent one entity (like Reddit) to have too much power over the content created and shared.
    • When Meta said they wanted to connect Threads to the fediverse, people seemed concerned and/or opposed to it. It seemed coherent to me as the federation with Meta was seen as a danger for decentralization, because a big entity could have access to the content. (I feel like I probably misunderstood that part though).

    Now, I (personnally) consider that any state is as a big entity as big companies, and that we should feel as much concerned about their power over content and informations. This is of course debatable and maybe the origin of my misunderstanding.

    So here’s my true question : do i miss any point in this, that could make me understand why you consider it a good thing ?


  • I’m not an expert on how the social media make money, but from what i know it is created upon the information they gather (either personnal information or content, that they can then sell to advertisers or thing like that). So the more data they collect, the more they are able to sell i guess ? And i think that because fediverse already generates data for free (and will do so more and more), people in the business of selling this kind of data are eager to get access it Only my humble opinion, not sure at all if this is theway it works