I’m glad to hear it. I guess that the incursion into Kursk made Biden reconsider as Russia’s “red line” has crumbled.

Too many are accusing them already. Where there is smoke, there is fire.

In fairness, it isn’t like banning one social media website (and a purveyor of misinformation and disinformation at that) will have either national security concern or threatening fundamental freedoms in Brazil. It could be why Brazil had been so bold.

I grew up with religious parents. Looking back, they restricted me from doing things, even innocuous, without explicitly stating we to why. But I know that it’s because they are afraid I “might get ideas”. Fortunately, I have been to good schools and got taught about basic sex education. Ironically, my parents sending me to good school taught me better than being “taught” by my parents who don’t want me to “get bad ideas”.

Having spent my childhood in Asia, child abuse is more or less normalised there. The social expectation is that adults are infallible authority figures and children are meant to be obedient at all times (i.e. absolutely quiet).

I also wonder if 20th century social and political turmoil caused many Asian parents to have anger issues and in turn, cause generational trauma. One reason I dislike the idea that Boomers were handed everything to them on a silver platter is because it neglects the fact that much of the world were former colonies. And the post-colonial status of many countries had been very rough-- experiencing inter-ethnic and international wars, proxy wars (Vietnam War and Soviet-Afghan War comes to mind) and corrupt dictatorships that do not invest well in their people causing poverty.

These turmoils and trauma caused many unresolved psychological issues. The victims of these strifes then become parents, who take out their issues to their children. And in turn, these children become parents who believe that hitting their own children constitutes as good parenting, because that was how they were raised.

I didn’t know that, thanks for letting me know. However, it seems Lucie herself had previously rejected forming a coalition with Macron’s group according to the Wikipedia article.

I know. But I mean any political mess in France, riots or not, is seen as severe by outsiders but aren’t aware how things work in France.

However, I admit that the situation in Mayotte is in a completely different context and unprecedented for overseas French territory.

but it seems strange that he doesn’t just appoint the candidate from the left.

From which part of the left? The New Popular Front is actually an amalgamation of broad left wing coalition of various parties. So Macron had to pick from the far-left communist leader Jean Luc Melenchon, or from the centre left Socialist party led by Olivier Faure.

The French legislative assembly works very differently compared to US Congress or the parliamentary system. There isn’t really one, or two, or only five parties getting votes. The French system is much more pluralistic and it is more like a hodge podge of various parties forming a grand coalition that represents an ideology. Even the current French president Emmanuel Macron’s so-called “party”, Ensemble, is a coalition of centrist parties.

If you want to find out more about France’s current deadlock, here is a good succinct video explaining it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5Q5nCCF5ck

I’m amazed that “chaos” there in France is more like “normal”. I remember some riots that happened couple of years ago and one commenter said France might verge into collapsing. I thought to myself that those who think that are not aware how France works, and rioting is a tradition since the French Revolution.

Funny you mentioned, I’ve been thinking about the first Splinter Cell game lately lol.

I see that the St Petersburg Research Centre is still thriving after Prigozhin’s death.

The Russians themselves were also detected to be building up troop numbers in Southern Kursk just opposite of Sumy. The Ukrainians cleverly used that to send troops to Sumy, which the Russians must have thought that it was a countermove to defend against them, to mask their true intentions of going on the offensive. The Ukrainians merely turned the operational table on to the Russians.

That being said, with hindsight, the earlier attacks on Belgorod by anti-Putin Russians could have been probing attacks to identify weakpoints in the Russian border. Or perhaps to distract the Russians and redirect troops away from other areas. Or both. All of these are clever and creative plans by Kyiv; and they played their hands well.

Unfortunately, rules of war state roads and bridges are qualified as legitimate military targets.

Moreover, think about it, there are 140 million Russian people and most are apathetic. I understand that Putin’s regime is brutal, but it is tragic that the Russians have become culturally passive to accept their repression after centuries of authoritarianism, from tsardom, to communism to Putinism. And humans being humans, Russians, like many people really, only complain if it starts to affect them personally. Putin have been killing dissidents and engaging in wanton corruption way before; but only when he tried to implement an unpopular pension reform that people went to the streets en masse, which came close to seriously threatening his power from the public themselves. See, people are not naturally predisposed to yearn for democracy, and so long as their standard of living is sustained, people see authoritarianism as simply a different approach for leading a country.

Unfortunately, the Russian public are just as complicit by keeping mum about the war. Say what you will about the illegal invasion of Iraq, but at the very least thousands of Americans across the United States (and millions across the world) marched and protested against it. In Russia, there are thousands who protested the invasion of Ukraine, but it is only when they become personally affected that they mobilise in significant numbers. The invasion of Kursk is trying to convince the Russians that they are now affected, and Putin’s image of a strongman who could protect them is tarnished.

Given just how badly both the Russian army and the state itself is led, Ukraine holding onto Kursk indefinitely may just work.

Speaking as an armchair general, Russia is like a noob who is playing a real time strategy game for the first time; not knowing what logistics is, morale, intelligence and no doctrine. Russia is throwing bodies at the problem-- like seeing everything as nails and hammering down. Putin did not even have any plans whatsoever after the initial invasion of Ukraine. The invasion plans were actually set by the Russian internal intelligence agency, the FSB; an organisation with no formal military discipline. As we speak, the defense of Kursk is handed to FSB. It is as if Putin had not learnt his lesson! It says more that he is paranoid and trusts his de-facto personal guards to handle things than the army. The whole ordeal is getting desperate for him.

Some people have likened the economic growth that Russia is experiencing like that of the US’ post war boom. So, some analysts believe that Russia will be okay for the foreseeable future. I don’t want to sound coping and I still leave room for imagining other possibilities (the war is still unpredictable after all), but those analysts haven’t considered that 1) USA became the sole major free market economy untouched after World War 2 and the rest of the world became reliant on US as the result. 2) USA has not been sanctioned during and after the war by major Western powers, unlike Russia is today.

The rumour of coups against Xi always comes and goes. There was rumour of Xi being arrested as well during COVID.

Well thanks to Socratic tradition of critical thinking, I’d say that the reason Christianity had self-reflection is precisely because of it. If it so happens that Socrates did not exist or his works weren’t passed down, Western culture would be totally different from the one we know now.

I used to think Putin is Stalin-lite, but he is actually more in line with an incompetent tsar. There is stark resemblance with the Putin’s army and the post-Napoleonic tsarist Russian army. Both bathed themselves in past military glories from defeating Napoleon and Nazi Germany respectively. They paraded themselves with flashy uniforms and spectacles of new technological weaponry. But in the subsequent years and generations after that, tsarist Russia got mauled by the Ottomans, French and British alliance and Japanese. And post-WWII Russia got their assets handed by the Afghans and now Ukrainians.

And having competent generals.

Even as we speak, one of the few good and well respected Russian generals who dared speak out at the poor leadership of the general staff, had been arrested for supposed fraud. https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-arrested-general-ivan-popov-fraud-d8c4d6a7d447ff801b3f15bc540f77b6

Speaking of satellite surveillance, there definitely will be a race to create weapons that could destroy satellites and even create space weapons. This war will be studied in years to come to come up with new weapons; not just take advantage of pre-existing technologies for future warfare.