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On January 28 2018 19:15 opisska wrote:Show nested quote +On January 28 2018 19:13 TheDwf wrote:
Six élections législatives were cancelled by the Conseil constitutionnel, so législatives partielles will occur. Today is the first round for two of those circonscriptions. It's a test for both the majority and the oppositions; though the abstention is usually absurdly high (between 70 to 80%) in those new elections, so it might be read too much from the results. That being said, 8 months ago the abstention already ranged from 50 to 60%, so it might not differ that much... Why were the elections cancelled? There was fraud or something? Or is it some unrelated procedural thing? Hearing about "cancelled elections" is worrysome.
Yes, generally irregularities (not outright fraud though) + a close vote where those irregularities might have changed the result = reelection. In the 95-1 the macronist candidate's substitute was ineligible, so the election was cancelled. In the 90-1 the right-winger narrowly won (50,75% vs 49,25), using faux tracts to make voters believe that both the FI and FN supported him in the second round. The worst thing being that he can actually re-run as a candidate despite this...
Our ex-Prime minister (139 votes ahead of his opponent) most likely cheated, but the Conseil Constitutionnel considered that he had not cheated enough to change the result anyway!
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One more thing to add here.
Western media today write about the victory of a "far-right" Zeman, which is an almost comical misunderstanding. Zeman is not "far-right" in any sense of the word. Hell, he was a leader of Social Democracy for many years and for a while he worked together with the most leftist forces in the country, supporting government bailouts for heavy industry, miners' jobs against environment and free market etc. Sure, some people will say that the "line is a circle" and point out to NSDAP being a workers' party and bla bla ... but the truth is this just shows how absurd the "left-right" labels are these days.
Zeman is just a populist, that's all. He actively seeks (or rather his aides do) out topics to rile up the masses and gain support by standing up to a crafted enemy. The thing that sets Zeman apart from the other populists is how carefully he threads the waters. He manages to be seen as "pro-EU enough" by some while seen as "the last thing that stops the Brussels totality" for others. There isn't really any coherent nationalist ideology behind him; there isn't any ideology at all actually because he frequently does 180 turns on topics based on what he sees as beneficial at any given moment.
The situation in general is honestly puzzling to me. The Zeman-Babis alliance that formed doesn't even make sense, neither does their electorate. Why is the lower class so overwhelmingly convinced that one of the richest businessmen in the country is their best bet? Then yet at least it makes Trump's success so much easier to comprehend. People are just extremely easily manipulated that democracy doesn't make any sense in the age of instant online bullshit.
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On January 28 2018 20:38 opisska wrote:
One more thing to add here.
Western media today write about the victory of a "far-right" Zeman, which is an almost comical misunderstanding. Zeman is not "far-right" in any sense of the word. Hell, he was a leader of Social Democracy for many years and for a while he worked together with the most leftist forces in the country, supporting government bailouts for heavy industry, miners' jobs against environment and free market etc. Sure, some people will say that the "line is a circle" and point out to NSDAP being a workers' party and bla bla ... but the truth is this just shows how absurd the "left-right" labels are these days.
Zeman is just a populist, that's all. He actively seeks (or rather his aides do) out topics to rile up the masses and gain support by standing up to a crafted enemy. The thing that sets Zeman apart from the other populists is how carefully he threads the waters. He manages to be seen as "pro-EU enough" by some while seen as "the last thing that stops the Brussels totality" for others. There isn't really any coherent nationalist ideology behind him; there isn't any ideology at all actually because he frequently does 180 turns on topics based on what he sees as beneficial at any given moment.
The situation in general is honestly puzzling to me. The Zeman-Babis alliance that formed doesn't even make sense, neither does their electorate. Why is the lower class so overwhelmingly convinced that one of the richest businessmen in the country is their best bet? Then yet at least it makes Trump's success so much easier to comprehend. People are just extremely easily manipulated that democracy doesn't make any sense in the age of instant online bullshit.
People want to be told all their problems will go away and that everything will be amazing, even if it doesn't make sense. That is the power of populism.
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@Polish folks: I read that a law passed which basically forbids to mention Polish crimes in the WWII, is it true?
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On January 28 2018 20:51 TheDwf wrote:
@Polish folks: I read that a law passed which basically forbids to mention Polish crimes in the WWII, is it true?
I am not really Polish, but I have read that too. Foreign newspaper mainly say that it is forbidden to say "Polish death camps" and not much else, with a potential penalty up to 3 years. However in Polish newspaper I found some more precise formulations, which however I am not sure if I am reading 100% correctly, so someone native in Polish can help me. What I understand is that the law is formulated in a way that it forbids people from assigning the blame to the Polish nation or state for the crimes of the 3rd Reich done on the Polish territory or who tried to diminish the responsibility of the actual perpetrators of the crime. This is a rather general formulation and it would be interesting to see how is it actually applied. It is quite clearly a response to the "Polish death camp" problem which is very sensitive in Poland.
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No, it forbids to use the "Polish death camps" phrase. Since years we have a consensus here that we have to fight against attempts to "rewrite history" in other (mostly Western) countries and this is the prime example of this fight. You'd think everyone knows who built those camps, but some Poles believe a repetitive use of the phrase in foreign media can make some ignorants think that if those camps were "Polish", then it must mean that the Poles were the ones who gassed the Jews. It's like our version of fighting against Holocaust denial (which is also forbidden here). You couldn't say it didn't happen, and now you also can't say we made it happen.
In the past, we just sent letters of protest to foreign media with varying level of success. Sadly it keeps happening, so our subtle government figured making it a crime should solve the problem (it won't).
(He's our PM)
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Well I think I have found a citation of the law:
https://twitter.com/PatrykJaki/status/957340893958365186/photo/1
which doesn't address any specific phrases, only says what I have already somewhat interpreted from the newspaper accounts, that is that it disallows assigning the blame to the Polish state or nation for Nazi war crimes. Whether the phrase "Polish death camps" violates the law would have to be obviously seen in court.
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On January 28 2018 20:42 Gorsameth wrote:Show nested quote +On January 28 2018 20:38 opisska wrote:
One more thing to add here.
Western media today write about the victory of a "far-right" Zeman, which is an almost comical misunderstanding. Zeman is not "far-right" in any sense of the word. Hell, he was a leader of Social Democracy for many years and for a while he worked together with the most leftist forces in the country, supporting government bailouts for heavy industry, miners' jobs against environment and free market etc. Sure, some people will say that the "line is a circle" and point out to NSDAP being a workers' party and bla bla ... but the truth is this just shows how absurd the "left-right" labels are these days.
Zeman is just a populist, that's all. He actively seeks (or rather his aides do) out topics to rile up the masses and gain support by standing up to a crafted enemy. The thing that sets Zeman apart from the other populists is how carefully he threads the waters. He manages to be seen as "pro-EU enough" by some while seen as "the last thing that stops the Brussels totality" for others. There isn't really any coherent nationalist ideology behind him; there isn't any ideology at all actually because he frequently does 180 turns on topics based on what he sees as beneficial at any given moment.
The situation in general is honestly puzzling to me. The Zeman-Babis alliance that formed doesn't even make sense, neither does their electorate. Why is the lower class so overwhelmingly convinced that one of the richest businessmen in the country is their best bet? Then yet at least it makes Trump's success so much easier to comprehend. People are just extremely easily manipulated that democracy doesn't make any sense in the age of instant online bullshit. People want to be told all their problems will go away and that everything will be amazing, even if it doesn't make sense. That is the power of populism.
Which isn't surprising. People have been told for decades that all they need to care for is for the economy to grow and they all will be better off. So now they are voting for people that give them explanations for why they aren't better off, in many cases even worse, despite the economy growing:
- migrants eating up the growth and overstretching social systems
- foreign powers threatening the national economy and sovereignty (EU, China, trade)
- government corruption and regulation threatening the free market
- the young people being too lazy
- the central banks destroying the economy
- the rich taking more than they deserve
- the general economic system not working out
The more of those you can cross while keeping the money from the sponsors flowing the better your chances. (I pretty much ranked them by hardness to achieve that goal from up to down)
Meanwhile the self-proclaimed "liberals", "moderate conservatives" and "social-democrats" just claim that the people are wrong when they believe they should be better off.
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Yes, everybody else is just sitting at home pondering how we can stop people from being better off. Maybe making everybody better off is not that easy of a thing to accomplish. But nope, the elites just sit at home and smoke cigars and polish diamonds or something
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Trying to "make everybody better off" is part of the problem. You simply can't make someone else better off, unless you let them tell you what they want. But such an interaction is not the purpose of a political system.
The purpose of the political system is to prevent members of your society from limiting or trying to control other members of your society. If you actually believe that there are some "elite politicians" that for some reason or another "know better" what the members of your society want than those members do themselves, then you are taking to the wrong side of history.
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Could you please explain in more detail what you mean by:
The purpose of the political system is to prevent members of your society from limiting or trying to control other members of your society.
Because at face-value it seems a somewhat odd statement to me, but I suspect it may be more sensible when hearing the argument in full.
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On January 28 2018 21:18 Sent. wrote:No, it forbids to use the "Polish death camps" phrase. Since years we have a consensus here that we have to fight against attempts to "rewrite history" in other (mostly Western) countries and this is the prime example of this fight. You'd think everyone knows who built those camps, but some Poles believe a repetitive use of the phrase in foreign media can make some ignorants think that if those camps were "Polish", then it must mean that the Poles were the ones who gassed the Jews. It's like our version of fighting against Holocaust denial (which is also forbidden here). You couldn't say it didn't happen, and now you also can't say we made it happen. In the past, we just sent letters of protest to foreign media with varying level of success. Sadly it keeps happening, so our subtle government figured making it a crime should solve the problem (it won't). https://twitter.com/MorawieckiM/status/957354873133125632(He's our PM)
If it's actually a thing that people are starting to associated the death camps and the holocaust with Poles rather than Germans it totally makes sense for the government to mount a PR response. Though I must say that I find banning the utterance of specific phrases to be like the single most fascist way possible of achieving the desired effect.
Speaking of that, what happened with the WW2 museum in Gdansk? Was the original installation allowed to remain in place or did PIS deem it too "unpatriotic" in the end? Because of course there were Polish crimes during and in the aftermath of ww2. And my worry would be that this new law would be used against people trying to bring attention to that.
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It’s a relic of the trend of Polish nationalism and outrage over that phrase is far from new. This story I’ve linked before covers the background regarding a previous accidental usage of the term by the president of the United States.
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what I find confusing about it is that there's nothing wrong with the semantics, which should be the relevant part. When Obama said 'Polish death camp' he was obviously talking about nazi death camps geographically located in Poland, not literally camps by the Polish people.
Fighting against historical revisionism is fine but just randomly banning a phrase is not. You can't use a swastika to organise a neo-nazi rally in Germany, but you can put it in a textbook or an artpiece. The context and intention are obviously important.
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On January 29 2018 06:11 KlaCkoN wrote:Show nested quote +On January 28 2018 21:18 Sent. wrote:No, it forbids to use the "Polish death camps" phrase. Since years we have a consensus here that we have to fight against attempts to "rewrite history" in other (mostly Western) countries and this is the prime example of this fight. You'd think everyone knows who built those camps, but some Poles believe a repetitive use of the phrase in foreign media can make some ignorants think that if those camps were "Polish", then it must mean that the Poles were the ones who gassed the Jews. It's like our version of fighting against Holocaust denial (which is also forbidden here). You couldn't say it didn't happen, and now you also can't say we made it happen. In the past, we just sent letters of protest to foreign media with varying level of success. Sadly it keeps happening, so our subtle government figured making it a crime should solve the problem (it won't). https://twitter.com/MorawieckiM/status/957354873133125632(He's our PM) If it's actually a thing that people are starting to associated the death camps and the holocaust with Poles rather than Germans it totally makes sense for the government to mount a PR response. Though I must say that I find banning the utterance of specific phrases to be like the single most fascist way possible of achieving the desired effect. Speaking of that, what happened with the WW2 museum in Gdansk? Was the original installation allowed to remain in place or did PIS deem it too "unpatriotic" in the end? Because of course there were Polish crimes during and in the aftermath of ww2. And my worry would be that this new law would be used against people trying to bring attention to that.
Quick translation
Who publicly and against the facts attributes to the Polish Nation or the Polish State the blame or partial blame for nazi crimes committed by III German Reich or for other crimes against peace, humanity or war crimes, or in other way grossly plays down the responsibility of actual perpetrators of those crimes shall be liable to a fine or imprisonment up to three years
The phrase isn't explicitly mentioned, it will be up to courts to determine if using it in a certain context will be a crime. I think it's going to be a dead law since nobody is going to use that phrase in Poland anyway.
there were Polish crimes during and in the aftermath of ww2
There were and for some reason they tend to get more attention than stuff like French police catching thousands of Jews and handing them over to Germans, so naturally some of us feel like we're being treated unfairly and call for action against that kind of selective presentation of history.
There is absolutely no way this new law is going to be used against people talking about Polish crimes like Jedwabne pogrom where ~40 Poles murdered ~340 Polish Jews.
what happened with the WW2 museum in Gdansk?
Don't know, didn't pay attention to that. Seemed like another conflict between PiS and people rooted in the old system. Last news I found in google were that the courts ruled that the government was in the right.
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On January 29 2018 06:05 Ghostcom wrote:Could you please explain in more detail what you mean by: Show nested quote +The purpose of the political system is to prevent members of your society from limiting or trying to control other members of your society. Because at face-value it seems a somewhat odd statement to me, but I suspect it may be more sensible when hearing the argument in full.
The physical reality is that we are living in a material anarchy. You can always go out and kill somebody, there is no physical law preventing you from doing so. There are people that may prevent you from doing so or scare you away from doing so, based on social conventions.
All people have different ideas and thoughts. There is no general judgement that would tell us what another person actually seeks in life, no general "purpose of life" + Show Spoiler +that everyone of us would know off at least - which I can say with certainty because I don't know of it, hence not everyone knows of it and can act accordingly
The fundamental question we have to ask when creating a society (of any kind; whether it is a football club, a Gamer Forum or a state) is to what purpose we create it and subsequently who may share that society's values and may therefore participate in it. + Show Spoiler + which is the reason why migration is always such a hot topic; there is no fundamental reasoning that would allow access to an existing society; vis-verca there is also no fundamental right to force someone into your society, e.g. by claiming someone belongs to "a nation by birth" and therefore has to participate in one way or another. The fundamental trait of a society is that you are always free to leave, but you can only enter on acceptance.
For the political sovereign, the society of all societies (and individuals not belonging to any of these societies) so to speak, that purpose can only be to prevent non-consensual interactions between its members and societies.
Or in other words: If you were to be assigned one random person in your state and you wouldn't know which one you would be, what is the most fundamental thing you would ask of your state? The freedom to live your live by your choices (whatever they would be) as freely as possible, with the limit being where your choices start to interfere with other people's choices.
There are many technical/legal solutions that try to provide for this fundamental ideal. "One man, one vote" to guarantee that the power in the state is represented by social convention, private property as the principal that fundamentally guarantees you your individual space (against societies that may claim it), state education and information to guarantee that you know about your choices, money to give you an interaction tool that can weight one decision against another (the way prices are created), contract and product regulations so that one person may not acquire consent on something that the other person wouldn't want to consent on, refugee rights so that even if you are not a member of a national society, you may at least be provided with the least to survive and so on. The problem with all of them are, they are technical solutions. A technical solution tends to diverge from its original purpose the longer it runs its cause and the people that created it tend to be not-so-alive at some point anymore. That is when the technical solutions get turned into moral standards themselves and states start to split into fiercer and fiercer opposing groups that defend or attack technical solutions because they use them as tools to fullfill their needs against the freedom of others.
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On January 29 2018 07:29 Sent. wrote:There were and for some reason they tend to get more attention than stuff like French police catching thousands of Jews and handing them over to Germans, so naturally some of us feel like we're being treated unfairly and call for action against that kind of selective presentation of history.
?? What makes you write that? We even have a day of commemoration for that, how could there be no attention to those crimes with an official day each year...
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I meant only that our crimes get disproportionate amount of attention in international media, not that French (or any other) crimes are ignored in France or by people from other countries.
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On January 29 2018 07:54 Sent. wrote:
I meant only that our crimes get disproportionate amount of attention in international media, not that French (or any other) crimes are ignored in France or by people from other countries.
I really don't think they do. This discussion is the first time i have ever heard someone talk about specifically polish crimes during WW2. German, of course. Soviet, yes. French stuff i have also heard about before, and even some romanian things. But i don't think a lot of people outside of poland really care about crimes committed by polish people during WW2.
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EPT
