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Although this thread does not function under the same strict guidelines as the USPMT, it is still a general practice on TL to provide a source with an explanation on why it is relevant and what purpose it adds to the discussion. Failure to do so will result in a mod action. |
Today was held a referendum about the independance of the Kanaky/New Caledonia, a land colonized by France since 1853.
After the quasi-civilian war of the 1980s, the Nouméa Accord of 1998 recognized the existence of the indigenous people (the Kanak people), and promised a referendum 20 years later. Here we are.
The question asked to the population was, "Do you want New Caledonia to access full sovereignty and become independent?"
With a participation rate of 80%, the "no" won with 56% of the votes. The win of the "no" was expected but the "yes" scored better than foreseen.
The Kanak, the descendants of the indigenous people who were colonized, now represent 39% of the population—the settlement colonization made them minority on their own land. More than 70% of the Kanak belong to the lower classes, while people of European background (the descendants of European immigrants, prisoners or settlers), who amount to at least 27% of the population (could be more depending on how you count; some people have mixed origins anyway), mostly occupy the higher classes and ranks. Deep social, economic and racial divides remain in an unequal society, where life is very expensive. Big owners form an oligopoly and milk the rent.
The "yes" to independance won in the few regions where Kanak are majority, and the "no" won elsewhere.
The Nouméa Accord foresees up to two extra independence referendums in the following years.
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Two dilapidated buildings collapsed this morning in Marseille. One was supposed to be empty, but there may have been squatters inside; the other was inhabited. A third building nearby partially collapsed. At least ten persons are missing, with little hope of finding them alive.
Paying hundreds of euros each month for horrible housing, only to have it kill you one day... But the gods of property are merciful: this never happens to bourgeois, only the blood of the poors is claimed.
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Value of the old buildings: 0 euro
Value of the people living inside: 0 euro
Value of the new luxury buildings that are going to be built there: many million euros
The value of life in our societies, as fixed by human rights, anti-murder laws and other regulations is getting more and more in the way of the rich, hence why they are pumping so much money into their new darling parties on the far-right. The worse they can treat people, the cheaper it gets.
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On November 06 2018 06:23 TheDwf wrote:
Two dilapidated buildings collapsed this morning in Marseille. One was supposed to be empty, but there may have been squatters inside; the other was inhabited. A third building nearby partially collapsed. At least ten persons are missing, with little hope of finding them alive.
Paying hundreds of euros each month for horrible housing, only to have it kill you one day... But the gods of property are merciful: this never happens to bourgeois, only the blood of the poors is claimed.
It's like Grenfell tower in the U.K.
Sure a bunch of poor people might die in a fire at any moment, but it's a risk we're willing to take so that when the people-who-matter gaze out the windows of their multi-million pound flats the cladding encasing the tomb-in-waiting isn't ugly.
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On November 04 2018 04:10 Dangermousecatdog wrote:
The entire history of the areas that make up Germany today has the Western and Southern parts of current Germany wealthier than the Eastern part of current Germany. How far back am I talking about? Lets say since...Roman contact. As in the Roman Empire. The iron curtain probably hasn't help either. Seems a bit unfair to blame Merkel for that. Personally I think it is amazing how much South and Western Germans are willing to subsidise for Eastern Germans states.
It's quite shocking how pervasive this idea is. That the wealthy people/places are somehow extra virtuous for not simply abandoning less wealthy people/places. Think about it carefully for a moment and you realise that it's pretty much exactly "wealth is virtue".
Even if this is true, the fact is that, if areas that accumulate capital - whether it's British south vs. north, West Germany vs. East Germany or Germany vs. Greece - don't invest that surplus in areas that have a capital deficit you will get a reduction in demand for goods and the inevitable result is an ever shrinking virtuous oligarchy defending itself from an ever growing ever more angry group of the unvirtuous poor.
There are two ways out.
i. A revolution where it's gently explained to the good, good masters that their goodness results in an increasingly monstrous and ugly result (or, you know, guillotines).
ii. Technology evolves to such an extent that the last rich family can build an army of kill bots activatable with a single flick of a switch.
I chose option i. minus the guillotines.
If you believe in democracy then you believe that it's the duty of the rich to invest in the poor - or if you prefer - the duty of the virtuous to invest in the great mass of terrible sinners.
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I amazed at the willingness considering the cultural divide between the respective cultures of East Germany and West Germany. Those areas are historically only united tenuously by that they Speak German. Perhaps South and West Germans are just a more generous bunch of people.
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On November 07 2018 00:25 Dangermousecatdog wrote:
I amazed at the willingness considering the cultural divide between the respective cultures of East Germany and West Germany. Those areas are historically only united tenuously by that they Speak German. Perhaps South and West Germans are just a more generous bunch of people.
Are you trolling? I can't be sure. East and West Germany have about as much joint history as England and Schotland. And a lot more than many modern nations.
I'll also need a citation for the East always being poorer than the West. Prussia was quite rich and powerful, and I would need to be convinced it was considerably worse off than its Holy Roman neighbour.
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Uhm.. the really powerfull/rich german nations were basically all eastern? (Austria, Preussia...)
Calling "eastern" germany poor troughout history seems very dishonest....
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Prussia was considered powerful because of its army. Its parts like Brandenburg, Pomerania and Eastern Prussia didn't have anything particularly attractive within their borders besides a few cities that got rich from the wheat trade. Prussian economy got better when they took Silesia from Austria, but it became overall richer/more powerful than Western states mostly because of its size, not because Brandenburg was a region richer than Hanover or Bavaria.
Why would you bring Austria up in this context, it's obvious he meant states located above Bavaria on the map.
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It is not quite clear what anyone means with Eastern Germany here.
In modern context half of what you are talking about @Sent is not Germany at all anymore, neither is Austria.
Prussia was quite technologically and industrially advanced (the real reason why they were militarilly dominant, not the romantic tale of the orderly Prussian). E.g. they won the 1871 unification war based on superior guns over Austria.
Before that and before its destruction in the 30-year war Magdeburg (located in the modern East) was probably one of the richest towns in Germany. And there are other examples as @Sent points out.
My point being, without a clear description what is "East Germany" the discussion is quite useless. Much of "it" has historically been under German reign but not exclusively been culturally German and treated as second class territory.
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On November 06 2018 21:14 Big J wrote:
Value of the old buildings: 0 euro
Value of the people living inside: 0 euro
Value of the new luxury buildings that are going to be built there: many million euros
The value of life in our societies, as fixed by human rights, anti-murder laws and other regulations is getting more and more in the way of the rich, hence why they are pumping so much money into their new darling parties on the far-right. The worse they can treat people, the cheaper it gets.
On November 06 2018 22:34 Dapper_Cad wrote:Show nested quote +On November 06 2018 06:23 TheDwf wrote:
Two dilapidated buildings collapsed this morning in Marseille. One was supposed to be empty, but there may have been squatters inside; the other was inhabited. A third building nearby partially collapsed. At least ten persons are missing, with little hope of finding them alive.
Paying hundreds of euros each month for horrible housing, only to have it kill you one day... But the gods of property are merciful: this never happens to bourgeois, only the blood of the poors is claimed. It's like Grenfell tower in the U.K.
Luckily the tower was smaller, so the casualities will be lower. 4 people were found dead so far, and the authorities think 4 other persons were present when the building collapsed.
According to one 2015 report, 100 000 (!) people in Marseille face health or safety problems because of their housing. In the neighbourhood where buildings collapsed, up to one building out of two is in terrible state...
+ Show Spoiler +
One of the buildings was shut since 2008. 10 years and nothing was done... (Buildings are "stuck" together, so any damage can weaken the building nearby.) In the other building, apparently the first flood had partially collapsed a few weeks ago and some people had literally harassed authorities so that something would be done (they were seeing the walls moving...). Still nothing was done. They just cleared what had fallen and said it was ok for people to come back... And now 3 to at least 8 people are dead. Everyone could see that disaster coming, and now all parties will shrug off responsibility onto others. :zzz:
Marseille is one of the rare towns where there are still lower classes living in the centre. In many other cities, the lower classes were chased to the suburbs. But gentrification is going on, and some angry inhabitants of the neighbourhood said to medias that this kind of deep neglect is part of a strategy to make people go away, so that serfs can be replaced with people of a higher social extraction.
Tonight inhabitants gathered near the collapsed buildings and started shouting "Gaudin ! Assassin !" Gaudin is the 79 years old right-wing mayor, elected since... 1995.
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![[image loading]](https://i.redd.it/90d8wakzi5w11.jpg)
Interesting Poll results, Greens are still on the upswing and the AfD seems to plateau for now.
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On November 07 2018 00:25 Dangermousecatdog wrote:
I amazed at the willingness considering the cultural divide between the respective cultures of East Germany and West Germany. Those areas are historically only united tenuously by that they Speak German. Perhaps South and West Germans are just a more generous bunch of people.
Here's an important information.
If you say "east germany", you are talking about the DDR (or GDR in english). That's how it's colloquially used. The GDR existed from 1945 to 1989 (or 1990, if you want to be pedantic). You know, the entire "soviets get half of germany, allies get the other half" thing. That's east and west germany, and to this date you can find "made in West Germany" stamps on some medical equipment, even here in wales (only saw it recently on a light-up magnifying glass thing, that's why i bring it up). The re-unification reunited west and east germany. More or less. There's a lot more "history" than just speaking german in this case, you have priced pictures of people jumping barbed wire fences to get to their families etc.
That's nothing like "scotland and england", it's like drawing a line through england splitting it in half, to then argue that they have barely anything in common apart from speaking english and drinking tea.
What you probably meant is "former eastern territories of germany". Those are not germany (well, technically they are, but we didn't call "france" germany in WW2 either). Posen, Prussia, Neumark etc. They were part of the german empire.
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For the 100 years of the French "victory" in WWI, there is a ceremony to pay tribute to the victorious marshals. Pétain, who betrayed France and collaborated with nazis during WWII, will be honoured as one of them. Macron justified this by saying that "Pétain was a great soldier during WWI"!
No words for this. Even the far-right would not have dared to honor this antisemitic, criminal and traitor who led the Vichy regime, i.e. what France had closest to fascism during WWII...
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Any idea why Macron would do this? Seems odd to say the least.
On November 07 2018 12:39 m4ini wrote:Show nested quote +On November 07 2018 00:25 Dangermousecatdog wrote:
I amazed at the willingness considering the cultural divide between the respective cultures of East Germany and West Germany. Those areas are historically only united tenuously by that they Speak German. Perhaps South and West Germans are just a more generous bunch of people. Here's an important information. If you say "east germany", you are talking about the DDR (or GDR in english). That's how it's colloquially used. The GDR existed from 1945 to 1989 (or 1990, if you want to be pedantic). You know, the entire "soviets get half of germany, allies get the other half" thing. That's east and west germany, and to this date you can find "made in West Germany" stamps on some medical equipment, even here in wales (only saw it recently on a light-up magnifying glass thing, that's why i bring it up). The re-unification reunited west and east germany. More or less. There's a lot more "history" than just speaking german in this case, you have priced pictures of people jumping barbed wire fences to get to their families etc. That's nothing like "scotland and england", it's like drawing a line through england splitting it in half, to then argue that they have barely anything in common apart from speaking english and drinking tea. What you probably meant is "former eastern territories of germany". Those are not germany (well, technically they are, but we didn't call "france" germany in WW2 either). Posen, Prussia, Neumark etc. They were part of the german empire.
Well technically Germany is built from different German tribes and the BRD (modern German republic) is a new country from 45/89, so I fail to see how eastern Germany shares more with western Germany than f.e. Prussia outside of the last 28 years of common history. Tbf the history of the Prussian German Empire is pretty short as well (47 years), but before that we have roughly a thousand years of common HRE infighting, which is 100% comparable to the relationship between Brits and Welsh or Brits and Scots f.e.
I mean look at Bavaria and their "Freistaat" bullcrap playing semi-independent nation even today.
And yes, we had a nationalistic surge when the GDR collapsed, but we see immigrants nowadays too trying to reunite with their families, doesn't mean they share the culture of the country they are in. Many eastern German families were split either during the cold war when some people tried to escape from GDR persecution or in WW2 when people fled from the Russian army.
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+ Show Spoiler +On November 07 2018 00:45 Acrofales wrote:Show nested quote +On November 07 2018 00:25 Dangermousecatdog wrote:
I amazed at the willingness considering the cultural divide between the respective cultures of East Germany and West Germany. Those areas are historically only united tenuously by that they Speak German. Perhaps South and West Germans are just a more generous bunch of people. Are you trolling? I can't be sure. East and West Germany have about as much joint history as England and Schotland. And a lot more than many modern nations. I'll also need a citation for the East always being poorer than the West. Prussia was quite rich and powerful, and I would need to be convinced it was considerably worse off than its Holy Roman neighbour.
Partially, but England and Scotland had the same Royal family since 1600, whilst German history has what? Eventual Prussian domination after been donated German lands after the Napoleonic wars? Prussia was militarily powerful and centralised but never particularily rich, till it gained the rich East German lands gifted to the after the Napoleonic wars. South and West german had most of the great trading cities, the centres of learning, the manufacturing guilds and eventually industrialied areas. East Germany was always playing catchup in all eareas except centralised command till the manage to annex the whole of Germany.
+ Show Spoiler +On November 07 2018 05:06 Big J wrote:
It is not quite clear what anyone means with Eastern Germany here.
In modern context half of what you are talking about @Sent is not Germany at all anymore, neither is Austria.
Prussia was quite technologically and industrially advanced (the real reason why they were militarilly dominant, not the romantic tale of the orderly Prussian). E.g. they won the 1871 unification war based on superior guns over Austria.
Before that and before its destruction in the 30-year war Magdeburg (located in the modern East) was probably one of the richest towns in Germany. And there are other examples as @Sent points out.
My point being, without a clear description what is "East Germany" the discussion is quite useless. Much of "it" has historically been under German reign but not exclusively been culturally German and treated as second class territory.
Anyways, it's all bits and pieces from speaking with random German friends, who might be a bit biased but I'm hapy to read all your opinions and information.
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On November 07 2018 22:34 Archeon wrote:
Any idea why Macron would do this? Seems odd to say the least.
Petain regarding WW1 is always a tricky one.
100 years anniversary of 1918, having a rememberance day for the war heroes of WW1 is just straightforward.
Petain was a WW1 war hero. Regardless of what he did after that, he was recognized as such and praised at the end of 1918, he got to "power" in 1940 mainly based on that status and then headed a 1940-1944 government for which he was blamed, tried and convicted to death in 1945 (sentence then changed to life, died in prison in 1951).
Question is: should the legitimate war hero of WW1 be removed from the list we remember because of the war criminal he was in WW2 ?
Not the first time we get that one. Most Vth republic presidents have praised Petain the WW1 hero, usually by setting flowers on his tomb for the 11th of november. Charles de Gaulle did in 1968 for the 50years anniversary, Georges Pompidou in 1973, Valery Giscard d'Estaing in 1978, François Mitterrand from 1984 to 1994 (did it every year).
Jacques Chirac stopped that tradition in 1995, same year he declared France responsible for the actions of the Vichy government during occupation. I do not remember seeing the polemic since, but not surprised it pops up for a 100years anniversary.
I don't like seeing his name on a list we praise, but removing the name from the WW1 list would be a lie. Better to leave it there and if the polemic gets people to look into history, even better.
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On November 07 2018 22:34 Archeon wrote:
Any idea why Macron would do this? Seems odd to say the least.
His own justification in front of journalists: "It is legitimate that we pay tribute to the marshals who led the army to victory (...). I conceal no part of our history. The Marshal Pétain was, during WWI, a great soldier. It is a reality of our country. Political life, like human nature, is sometimes more complex than one would believe. [Pétain] was a great soldier during WWI and led to disastrous choices during WWII." A journalist then asks him if he understands that this tribute to Pétain can shock people. He answer: "My role is not to understand if it shocks people or to comment, it is to explain things (...) I always looked frontally at our history".
My view: there are two hypothesis, not necessarily conflicting. (1) He's just an illiterate child in history and genuinely does not understand how horrible this symbol is.
(2) Cynically, he wants the next European elections to be a duel between him, self-labelled as "progressist," and the far-right nationalists. This way he can coerce people into voting for him because "me or the chaos". Ergo during the next months, he will make everything to make the far-right a threat so that he can cry wolf. This tribute to Pétain might fall into that category, since he's a figure that some far-right people have been trying to "rehabilitate" for years.
Note that Pétain was hit with national indignity after 1945, thus losing all his titles. He's not even a marshal anymore...
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I must say that i am not the biggest fan of celebrating WW1 in general. I guess celebrating the end of it is kind of ok, but celebrating a victory makes it sound like WW1 was actually a good idea, when in fact it was basically a community suicide of the european great powers.
I think it is really important to repeat again and again just how bad WW1 was for everyone. Millions died, and europe wasted most of its wealth just to murder those millions. There were no winners in europe, just countries that lost slightly less. If there is anything to celebrate about WW1, it is that it eventually ended.
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That's what the celebration is all about, at least from what I've gathered here in Scotland. The end of the war. They call it armistice day, not victory day.
Remembering and honoring the sacrifices, commemorations, taking lessons for the future. Portraying the fate of individuals, common soldiers.
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EPT![[image loading]](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DrRszq6XgAEE88G.jpg)
