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On April 21 2017 14:39 Big J wrote: The Dortmund attack seems to be solved. The police arrested a 28-year who betted against BVB shares, trying to get rich by blowing up the bus.
If it's true then this guy is really unbelievable. An interesting bit is that he is described in papers as "German Russian" and all the local "alt-right" is in arms about this claiming that "when it is a Muslim, they always say he is French, not French Arab, but once it is a Russian, they shovel his nationality down our throats", this is literally the most discussed topic below the news about this. Somebody on facebook has jokingly asked for ban on Russians entering the EU as a mock of the alt-right's demand to ban all Muslims ...
We laugh about this, but it is really scary how many people are trapped in this islamophobia bubble, who hijack any discussion and make it about whether something was reported properly. We are in the middle of a right-wing PC era in which certain groups will vigorously fight anything that is not worded to their liking.
I'm always amused by hard right people that are SO against political correctness and SJW and support the guy who "tells it like it is" (read, says the same biggoted crap they think), but as soon as you say that some Trump voters are deplorable, that Le Pen is a fascist or that the GOP is a party of angry white men, they jump at your throat like a hardcore feminist that just heard a rape joke.
Le Pen is a specialist. Say that her racist xenophobic rethoric is unacceptable? Censorship!! Political corretness from the disconnected elites!!! Say that her voters are racists for the most part? Generalization!! Offensive!!! How dare you insulting so many people!!
On April 21 2017 14:39 Big J wrote: The Dortmund attack seems to be solved. The police arrested a 28-year who betted against BVB shares, trying to get rich by blowing up the bus.
If it's true then this guy is really unbelievable. An interesting bit is that he is described in papers as "German Russian" and all the local "alt-right" is in arms about this claiming that "when it is a Muslim, they always say he is French, not French Arab, but once it is a Russian, they shovel his nationality down our throats", this is literally the most discussed topic below the news about this. Somebody on facebook has jokingly asked for ban on Russians entering the EU as a mock of the alt-right's demand to ban all Muslims ...
We laugh about this, but it is really scary how many people are trapped in this islamophobia bubble, who hijack any discussion and make it about whether something was reported properly. We are in the middle of a right-wing PC era in which certain groups will vigorously fight anything that is not worded to their liking.
I'm always amused by hard right people that are SO against political correctness and SJW and support the guy who "tells it like it is" (read, says the same biggoted crap they think), but as soon as you say that some Trump voters are deplorable, that Le Pen is a fascist or that the GOP is a party of angry white men, they jump at your throat like a hardcore feminist that just heard a rape joke.
Le Pen is a specialist. Say that her racist xenophobic rethoric is unacceptable? Censorship!! Political corretness from the disconnected elites!!! Say that her voters are racists for the most part? Generalization!! Offensive!!! How dare you insulting so many people!!
Consistency, my friends, consistency.
And still, a good margin of the population is voting for her. Trump got elected and Brexit happened. The biggest challenge these days is, in my opinion, to avoid responsing emotionnaly only and by antagony, pointing that it is the "fault" of someone. That there is a villain (EU, immigrants, the euro ...) and that the solution is simple. That is the very definition of populism. And i can understand in that sense how it is appealing to more and more individuals. It is somewhat securing.
Liberals and progressives should admit that Trump/LePen voters are not all uneducated idiots, and that there are ressentments and feelings that make them vote that way.
We cannot dismiss a significant amount of the population, be them immigrants or far-right voters. This rhetoric and the ressentments from either side of the political spectrum only cause further populism and desperate votes.
In that sense, i repeat, only reasonnable debate. And more importantly open and tabooless debates will lead us to a more inclusive society. And a priori safer society. Only Macro, Hamon and Fillon propose pragmatic answers, or at least pragmatic questions. And us, as citizens, must be able to think outside our ideology and be citizens able to debate and make concessions and the best decisions for the future of the society. Let's not be ideologues.
On April 21 2017 14:39 Big J wrote: The Dortmund attack seems to be solved. The police arrested a 28-year who betted against BVB shares, trying to get rich by blowing up the bus.
If it's true then this guy is really unbelievable. An interesting bit is that he is described in papers as "German Russian" and all the local "alt-right" is in arms about this claiming that "when it is a Muslim, they always say he is French, not French Arab, but once it is a Russian, they shovel his nationality down our throats", this is literally the most discussed topic below the news about this. Somebody on facebook has jokingly asked for ban on Russians entering the EU as a mock of the alt-right's demand to ban all Muslims ...
We laugh about this, but it is really scary how many people are trapped in this islamophobia bubble, who hijack any discussion and make it about whether something was reported properly. We are in the middle of a right-wing PC era in which certain groups will vigorously fight anything that is not worded to their liking.
I'm always amused by hard right people that are SO against political correctness and SJW and support the guy who "tells it like it is" (read, says the same biggoted crap they think), but as soon as you say that some Trump voters are deplorable, that Le Pen is a fascist or that the GOP is a party of angry white men, they jump at your throat like a hardcore feminist that just heard a rape joke.
Le Pen is a specialist. Say that her racist xenophobic rethoric is unacceptable? Censorship!! Political corretness from the disconnected elites!!! Say that her voters are racists for the most part? Generalization!! Offensive!!! How dare you insulting so many people!!
Consistency, my friends, consistency.
Why do I keep hearing this? Criticism is not censorship. If you fight against censorship you are not then excluded from criticising other peoples views or statements. Your point only makes sense if they call for those people to be silenced, not if they merely argue against them.
I think that's the thing bardtown. Biff is saying that people who support 'right populists' feel like, and argue, that they are being silenced and not allowed to publicly voice their opinion. But mostly, they're just being vocally disagreed with by others also employing their right to freedom of expression. And then they claim that 'my opinions are being censored' - while that is evidently not happening as the person is in the process of expressing him or herself.
Now, I know that there have been instances of actual protests against prominent right wing populists trying to shut them up/not give them a venue to speak at, and I know that there have been instances of people losing jobs because they post some racist drivel on facebook. The former I definitely don't support and the latter I think can be a dangerous slippery slope. Anyway, virtually nobody on the leftist side of the spectrum is arguing that we are being censored, we're just arguing that neither are the right wingers who claim that they are.
Drone has it pretty spot on. The whole problem is that there are people who claim that there is an "official way to talk" and that reporting on events is being massaged to some establishment norms and terminology, yet they are in arms about everyone who doesn't follow their own lingo. It's not even really about censorship and rights, it's mainly just the hypocrisy.
On April 21 2017 19:43 Liquid`Drone wrote: I think that's the thing bardtown. Biff is saying that people who support 'right populists' feel like, and argue, that they are being silenced and not allowed to publicly voice their opinion. But mostly, they're just being vocally disagreed with by others also employing their right to freedom of expression. And then they claim that 'my opinions are being censored' - while that is evidently not happening as the person is in the process of expressing him or herself.
Now, I know that there have been instances of actual protests against prominent right wing populists trying to shut them up/not give them a venue to speak at, and I know that there have been instances of people losing jobs because they post some racist drivel on facebook. The former I definitely don't support and the latter I think can be a dangerous slippery slope. Anyway, virtually nobody on the leftist side of the spectrum is arguing that we are being censored, we're just arguing that neither are the right wingers who claim that they are.
Some have the feeling of being "censored" because the words they try to put on their feelings are being dismissed by the leftist wing, with no discussion or debate possible. Sometimes for a good reason as it is clearly racist, sometimes because they don't have the tools to express it right, and sometimes (and that is worrying) just ideologicaly.
If someone goes on a rent against immigration, it will mostly be categorized as racism and thus reach a point where no debate can be held anymore. And it becomes worse when the argument or feelings expressed are dismissed not for their content, but because of who express them. The "uneducated" or "idiot" words that some use to categorize these citizens are dangerous. It is empty, lead to ressentment and fracturation, and legitimate to their eyes the sentiment that they are being ignored and censored.
That's in this context that populist leaders come to insert their simplistic rhetoric, that is as appealing to the far right and far left equally.
On April 21 2017 19:43 Liquid`Drone wrote: I think that's the thing bardtown. Biff is saying that people who support 'right populists' feel like, and argue, that they are being silenced and not allowed to publicly voice their opinion. But mostly, they're just being vocally disagreed with by others also employing their right to freedom of expression. And then they claim that 'my opinions are being censored' - while that is evidently not happening as the person is in the process of expressing him or herself.
Now, I know that there have been instances of actual protests against prominent right wing populists trying to shut them up/not give them a venue to speak at, and I know that there have been instances of people losing jobs because they post some racist drivel on facebook. The former I definitely don't support and the latter I think can be a dangerous slippery slope. Anyway, virtually nobody on the leftist side of the spectrum is arguing that we are being censored, we're just arguing that neither are the right wingers who claim that they are.
It kind of depends on how you see censorship. If you see it as government stepping in and forbidding them from speaking, they are clearly not being censored. If you see it as private citizens, organizations and companies taking a stance that they do not want to be associated with the opinions being voiced (and hence will not provide a soapbox), it's far trickier. In my view, organizations have the right to invite (or not invite) anybody they want to speak. Media have the freedom to publish (or not) the view of anybody they want. And political parties have the freedom to collaborate with (or not) other parties as they see fit. It's not censorship to say "I am not interested in hearing what you have to say", and it is not undemocratic to say "what you want is so far removed from my values, that I see no way we could collaborate". And that is what is happening.
However, I think it is important to understand that a platform like Twitter, Facebook or Youtube is so universal that it is practically infrastructure, and also that governments are putting a huge amount of pressure on these companies. The right, as well as people who criticise immigration, are definitely more penalised on these platforms, I would say. Same applies to universities which should be completely open.
Yes, she's totally going to win 5 millions of extra votes now! We don't even know what happened, seriously what's the point of this kind of reaction?
Fear, mostly. The French elections have most of the world in a panic in light of the recent past.
Fairly sure people are blasé now, not a week goes by without hearing about terrorist attacks here or abroad in some way, one dead isn't enough to trigger significant moves at this point. I hope nothing happens on the voting day though, don't know what would be done then...
The interchange between aspects of "terrorist attacks are so rare, why care about something that you stand an insignificant chance of dying from?" and "people are blasé now, not a week goes by without hearing about terrorist attacks here or abroad in some way" is one aspect of divided opinion. Too rare and not rare enough.
deaths in traffic are just like that? I don't know anybody who worries particularly about dying in a car accident, yet even in Norway, a country with 5 million inhabitants and one of the lowest rates of fatal car accidents in the world, experience a couple per week.
Obviously terrorist attacks are different in the sense that traffic accidents are considered an unfortunate and inevitable consequence of the massive advantage of being able to quickly travel places by car, while it's much harder to find the positive side of terrorist attacks. But even for something that takes 100+ times as many lives as terrorist attacks, it's still a) something you stand an insignificant chance of dying from and b) something you don't care about when it happens. You'll still hear about a massive car crash killing 60 people, but nobody really cares if two people died.
And if every survivor of car accidents with fatalities got out and yelled "Allahu Ackbar," maybe I'd be here, agreeing with you about these crazy people who think terrorism and traffic aren't just two rare occurances. We weren't talking about Charlie Hebdo, Bataclan, now the Champs-Elysées gunman as recent and deadly events fifteen years ago. You wouldn't be able to remember the last time someone got into a car and plowed down bystanders in Nice. We're talking about three high-profile attacks in two years and a handful of smaller ones.
Intent and connection matters, even if we delve into darker depths like preventability. I have a sneaking suspicion if radical Christian terrorists killed over eighty people by car, shot a hundred in Paris, and a dozen in a satirist newsroom, we wouldn't be so quickly leaping to car accident and bathtub analogies. The response is essentially the second confirmation, in the same way we talk about murders different from accidental deaths and hijackings different than airline crashes, but islamic terrorism must be a "something" characterized by raw body count per year like cars. Hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue; these verbal sleights of hand are paid to acknowledge the fear and weakness.
Since death kills more people than terrorism, maybe we should consider stop giving birth to any children in the future.
That's a vain rhetoric. Terrorism causes a threat to vivre-ensemble. It just affect the cohesion of any society and should be tackled at its roots. One dead is equally atrocious as 100 deads. We should not be worried about the numbers but about what makes a small proportion of individuals from a particular group or movement act like that.
Concerning french politics, Mélenchon vs Le Pen in the second round would be a nightmare. The first one is not fuelled with hatred, but still would lead to a fracturation of the society as surely as Le Pen would, and would cause France to bankrupt and EU to collapse as surely as his female counterpart (pretty much the same economical program).
Macron, Hamon and Fillon are the only reasonnable choices and still offer a distinct approach economically and socially, but that at least is not total fantasy.
Funny. Literally 50% of the French debt was done while Fillon was governing, including 600 billions when he was Prime minister, yet a basic keynesian program would cause France to bankrupt. Electing a corrupt, lying crook who's now even more rejected/hated than Le Pen and wants a “blitzkrieg” to destroy our social model is a “reasonable choice”. You TINA folks are really a never-ending source of joy.
Yes, she's totally going to win 5 millions of extra votes now! We don't even know what happened, seriously what's the point of this kind of reaction?
Fear, mostly. The French elections have most of the world in a panic in light of the recent past.
Fairly sure people are blasé now, not a week goes by without hearing about terrorist attacks here or abroad in some way, one dead isn't enough to trigger significant moves at this point. I hope nothing happens on the voting day though, don't know what would be done then...
The interchange between aspects of "terrorist attacks are so rare, why care about something that you stand an insignificant chance of dying from?" and "people are blasé now, not a week goes by without hearing about terrorist attacks here or abroad in some way" is one aspect of divided opinion. Too rare and not rare enough.
deaths in traffic are just like that? I don't know anybody who worries particularly about dying in a car accident, yet even in Norway, a country with 5 million inhabitants and one of the lowest rates of fatal car accidents in the world, experience a couple per week.
Obviously terrorist attacks are different in the sense that traffic accidents are considered an unfortunate and inevitable consequence of the massive advantage of being able to quickly travel places by car, while it's much harder to find the positive side of terrorist attacks. But even for something that takes 100+ times as many lives as terrorist attacks, it's still a) something you stand an insignificant chance of dying from and b) something you don't care about when it happens. You'll still hear about a massive car crash killing 60 people, but nobody really cares if two people died.
And if every survivor of car accidents with fatalities got out and yelled "Allahu Ackbar," maybe I'd be here, agreeing with you about these crazy people who think terrorism and traffic aren't just two rare occurances. We weren't talking about Charlie Hebdo, Bataclan, now the Champs-Elysées gunman as recent and deadly events fifteen years ago. You wouldn't be able to remember the last time someone got into a car and plowed down bystanders in Nice. We're talking about three high-profile attacks in two years and a handful of smaller ones.
Intent and connection matters, even if we delve into darker depths like preventability. I have a sneaking suspicion if radical Christian terrorists killed over eighty people by car, shot a hundred in Paris, and a dozen in a satirist newsroom, we wouldn't be so quickly leaping to car accident and bathtub analogies. The response is essentially the second confirmation, in the same way we talk about murders different from accidental deaths and hijackings different than airline crashes, but islamic terrorism must be a "something" characterized by raw body count per year like cars. Hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue; these verbal sleights of hand are paid to acknowledge the fear and weakness.
Since death kills more people than terrorism, maybe we should consider stop giving birth to any children in the future.
That's a vain rhetoric. Terrorism causes a threat to vivre-ensemble. It just affect the cohesion of any society and should be tackled at its roots. One dead is equally atrocious as 100 deads. We should not be worried about the numbers but about what makes a small proportion of individuals from a particular group or movement act like that.
Concerning french politics, Mélenchon vs Le Pen in the second round would be a nightmare. The first one is not fuelled with hatred, but still would lead to a fracturation of the society as surely as Le Pen would, and would cause France to bankrupt and EU to collapse as surely as his female counterpart (pretty much the same economical program).
Macron, Hamon and Fillon are the only reasonnable choices and still offer a distinct approach economically and socially, but that at least is not total fantasy.
Funny. Literally 50% of the French debt was done while Fillon was governing, including 600 billions when he was Prime minister, yet a basic keynesian program would cause France to bankrupt. Electing a corrupt, lying crook who's now even more rejected/hated than Le Pen and wants a “blitzkrieg” to destroy our social model is a “reasonable choice”. You TINA folks are really a never-ending source of joy.
You cannot in the current european system conduct a keynasian policy, while others are still conducting reforms in order to cut their public deficit. And that's the whole point of pragmatism. If you have a monetary union but not an fiscal union, as i mean a harmonized budgetary policy, you have to somewhat not play with fire and go blindly in the spending direction.
I don't support austerity. But i don't think that spending blindly is sustainable in the middle nor long term. It is not. And Mélenchon know that if he wants to avoid bankrupcy with that kind of policy, it is a the cost of the european membership and rules. Just quit the biggest political achievment of the last centuries in european history, for experimenting a dangerous economical and social policy, is pure madness. Or soft utopia. That depends of your point of view but the consequences would be just as hard as reality can be.
Btw i had to google TINA. I am impressed once again that you come directly to this conclusion and try to categorize me. I don't vote Fillon, neither am I ultra liberal. I just make a case for common sense. An economic program, and thus economic policies, must be sustainable. That their orientation is liberal or socialist tainted is another question.
You cannot rule with utopia. Or you can, but history showed you multiple times what could be the cost of it. I am not jumping in this train.
On April 21 2017 20:27 Ppjack wrote: Btw i had to google TINA. I am impressed once again that you come directly to this conclusion and try to categorize me. I don't vote Fillon, neither am I ultra liberal. I just make a case for common sense. An economic program, and thus economic policies, must be sustainable. That their orientation is liberal or socialist tainted is another question.
You cannot rule with utopia. Or you can, but history showed you multiple times what could be the cost of it. I am not jumping in this train.
Then maybe you should get of the liberalist economy utopia train and look at the hard facts that we have more and more people working long hours, multiple jobs, losing out on globalism, losing out on automatization and so on. Analysis that has been closely linked to Trump and Brexit success, but when someone like Melenchon picks up the ball... "Meh, he is an utopist and has no clue about economics".
On April 21 2017 20:27 Ppjack wrote: Btw i had to google TINA. I am impressed once again that you come directly to this conclusion and try to categorize me. I don't vote Fillon, neither am I ultra liberal. I just make a case for common sense. An economic program, and thus economic policies, must be sustainable. That their orientation is liberal or socialist tainted is another question.
You cannot rule with utopia. Or you can, but history showed you multiple times what could be the cost of it. I am not jumping in this train.
Fillon's program is certainly not more sustainable than Hamon's or Macron's. It just happens to target the poor and immigrants. As a PM, he hasn't done particularly well with the question of the debt. In fact he has basically doubled it.
Most serious analysts agree that France has a problem of demand, not of supply. Even the IMF says so. The LR and in a certain extent the socialists have believed for two decades that supply side economics would save us, and made one present after another to corporations, while those same corporations in fact complain they have nobody to sell their shit too. When on top of that, your program will make people even less likely to buy anything because you hammer them by destroying social security and lowering social minimas, you are the one driving us to a wall.
Hollande (and actually Macron) big economics move has been the "pact de responsabilité", which has poored hundred of millions into reducing taxation on businesses and hoping that those would start hiring. Well they haven't, and that money has been lost. You don't hire if there is no demand.
I'm not saying that we should throw money by the window and go full Melenchon. But right wing economic programs can be completely unrealistic when they miss what the problem is and propose to just keep pooring money in a private sector that is starved by low demand while making sure the later doesn't ever get better (actually gets much worse in the case of Fillon).
I don't buy Melenchon's program, but in a way it's probably more realistic than Fillon's. Of the four serious contendents is the most delusional candidate on economics, by very far.
Yes, she's totally going to win 5 millions of extra votes now! We don't even know what happened, seriously what's the point of this kind of reaction?
Fear, mostly. The French elections have most of the world in a panic in light of the recent past.
Fairly sure people are blasé now, not a week goes by without hearing about terrorist attacks here or abroad in some way, one dead isn't enough to trigger significant moves at this point. I hope nothing happens on the voting day though, don't know what would be done then...
The interchange between aspects of "terrorist attacks are so rare, why care about something that you stand an insignificant chance of dying from?" and "people are blasé now, not a week goes by without hearing about terrorist attacks here or abroad in some way" is one aspect of divided opinion. Too rare and not rare enough.
deaths in traffic are just like that? I don't know anybody who worries particularly about dying in a car accident, yet even in Norway, a country with 5 million inhabitants and one of the lowest rates of fatal car accidents in the world, experience a couple per week.
Obviously terrorist attacks are different in the sense that traffic accidents are considered an unfortunate and inevitable consequence of the massive advantage of being able to quickly travel places by car, while it's much harder to find the positive side of terrorist attacks. But even for something that takes 100+ times as many lives as terrorist attacks, it's still a) something you stand an insignificant chance of dying from and b) something you don't care about when it happens. You'll still hear about a massive car crash killing 60 people, but nobody really cares if two people died.
And if every survivor of car accidents with fatalities got out and yelled "Allahu Ackbar," maybe I'd be here, agreeing with you about these crazy people who think terrorism and traffic aren't just two rare occurances. We weren't talking about Charlie Hebdo, Bataclan, now the Champs-Elysées gunman as recent and deadly events fifteen years ago. You wouldn't be able to remember the last time someone got into a car and plowed down bystanders in Nice. We're talking about three high-profile attacks in two years and a handful of smaller ones.
Intent and connection matters, even if we delve into darker depths like preventability. I have a sneaking suspicion if radical Christian terrorists killed over eighty people by car, shot a hundred in Paris, and a dozen in a satirist newsroom, we wouldn't be so quickly leaping to car accident and bathtub analogies. The response is essentially the second confirmation, in the same way we talk about murders different from accidental deaths and hijackings different than airline crashes, but islamic terrorism must be a "something" characterized by raw body count per year like cars. Hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue; these verbal sleights of hand are paid to acknowledge the fear and weakness.
Since death kills more people than terrorism, maybe we should consider stop giving birth to any children in the future.
That's a vain rhetoric. Terrorism causes a threat to vivre-ensemble. It just affect the cohesion of any society and should be tackled at its roots. One dead is equally atrocious as 100 deads. We should not be worried about the numbers but about what makes a small proportion of individuals from a particular group or movement act like that.
Concerning french politics, Mélenchon vs Le Pen in the second round would be a nightmare. The first one is not fuelled with hatred, but still would lead to a fracturation of the society as surely as Le Pen would, and would cause France to bankrupt and EU to collapse as surely as his female counterpart (pretty much the same economical program).
Macron, Hamon and Fillon are the only reasonnable choices and still offer a distinct approach economically and socially, but that at least is not total fantasy.
Funny. Literally 50% of the French debt was done while Fillon was governing, including 600 billions when he was Prime minister, yet a basic keynesian program would cause France to bankrupt. Electing a corrupt, lying crook who's now even more rejected/hated than Le Pen and wants a “blitzkrieg” to destroy our social model is a “reasonable choice”. You TINA folks are really a never-ending source of joy.
You cannot in the current european system conduct a keynasian policy, while others are still conducting reforms in order to cut their public deficit. And that's the whole point of pragmatism. If you have a monetary union but not an fiscal union, as i mean a harmonized budgetary policy, you have to somewhat not play with fire and go blindly in the spending direction.
Hence why he wants social/fiscal harmonization, and the end of concerted austerity. Also even the IMF, hardly known for its “utopian socialist” views, recommends that some countries rise their spending. We all have the ecological transition to do/complete, so it's an opportunity to spend. You can negotiate with investors, not with the planet. Or we can keep going with ““reasonable”” neoliberal policies and wait for the EU to implode, it's already on a good track.
None of the spending is “blind,” unlike the current subventions for big business which end up in useless dividends (Macron's “reasonable” policies...). He wants to spend 10 billions on accessibility for disabled persons. Is it blind? 50 billions on renewable energies. Is it blind? Thermal renovation to decrease energy usage, is it blind?
On April 21 2017 20:27 Ppjack wrote: Btw i had to google TINA. I am impressed once again that you come directly to this conclusion and try to categorize me. I don't vote Fillon, neither am I ultra liberal. I just make a case for common sense. An economic program, and thus economic policies, must be sustainable. That their orientation is liberal or socialist tainted is another question.
You cannot rule with utopia. Or you can, but history showed you multiple times what could be the cost of it. I am not jumping in this train.
Fillon's program is certainly not more sustainable than Hamon's or Macron's. It just happens to target the poor and immigrants. As a PM, he hasn't done particularly well with the question of the debt. In fact he has basically doubled it.
Most serious analysts agree that France has a problem of demand, not of supply. Even the IMF says so. The LR and in a certain extent the socialists have believed for two decades that supply side economics would save us, and made one present after another to corporations, while those same corporations in fact complain they have nobody to sell their shit too. When on top of that, your program will make people even less likely to buy anything because you hammer them by destroying social security and lowering social minimas, you are the one driving us to a wall.
I'm not saying that we should throw money by the window and go full Melenchon. But right wing economic program can be completely unrealistic when they miss what the problem is and propose to just keep pooring money in a private sector that is starved by low demand while making sure the later doesn't ever get better.
I don't buy Melenchon's program, but in a way it's probably more realistic than Fillon's. Of the four serious contendents is the most delusional candidate on economics, by very far.
I agree that Hamon and Macron have a program as sustainable (i mean pragmatic and applicable at least). I made a case for reason and pragmatism and believe Hamon, Macron and Fillon are the three candidates that have proposed something realistic. While I don't support Fillon, it is misguided to think that it does not support demand. In a simplistic way, more jobs equals more demand and less public spending. In that sense the very essence of every economic program stays the same, the creation of jobs (and not at any social cost. not an uberisation of the society). Only the means differ.
I don't want more or less state. I just think that what we take for granted, as social security or public services, have a cost. And if we want to keep what we have and tackling the today problems and unemployment rate, we must in any case be coherent and make reforms to cut the public deficit. If i thought Mélenchon ideal society was realistically atteignable in this today world, i could be appealed by his program. I don't dislike the guy. I just don't think it is reasonnable nor applicable. Or once again, it is, but at the cost of exiting europe union and a good fracturation of the society.
On April 21 2017 20:27 Ppjack wrote: Btw i had to google TINA. I am impressed once again that you come directly to this conclusion and try to categorize me. I don't vote Fillon, neither am I ultra liberal. I just make a case for common sense. An economic program, and thus economic policies, must be sustainable. That their orientation is liberal or socialist tainted is another question.
You cannot rule with utopia. Or you can, but history showed you multiple times what could be the cost of it. I am not jumping in this train.
Then maybe you should get of the liberalist economy utopia train and look at the hard facts that we have more and more people working long hours, multiple jobs, losing out on globalism, losing out on automatization and so on. Analysis that has been closely linked to Trump and Brexit success, but when someone like Melenchon picks up the ball... "Meh, he is an utopist and has no clue about economics".
I don't say the system is perfect. I say that i don't want to experiment a socialist utopia and be lead by any kind of leader or state that would tell me what is good for me. I prefer working in the reality of this world and help create a more peacefull society and better redistribute the wealth we all worked to create. Implying creating wealth is the number one priority of any economy.
Yes, she's totally going to win 5 millions of extra votes now! We don't even know what happened, seriously what's the point of this kind of reaction?
Fear, mostly. The French elections have most of the world in a panic in light of the recent past.
Fairly sure people are blasé now, not a week goes by without hearing about terrorist attacks here or abroad in some way, one dead isn't enough to trigger significant moves at this point. I hope nothing happens on the voting day though, don't know what would be done then...
The interchange between aspects of "terrorist attacks are so rare, why care about something that you stand an insignificant chance of dying from?" and "people are blasé now, not a week goes by without hearing about terrorist attacks here or abroad in some way" is one aspect of divided opinion. Too rare and not rare enough.
deaths in traffic are just like that? I don't know anybody who worries particularly about dying in a car accident, yet even in Norway, a country with 5 million inhabitants and one of the lowest rates of fatal car accidents in the world, experience a couple per week.
Obviously terrorist attacks are different in the sense that traffic accidents are considered an unfortunate and inevitable consequence of the massive advantage of being able to quickly travel places by car, while it's much harder to find the positive side of terrorist attacks. But even for something that takes 100+ times as many lives as terrorist attacks, it's still a) something you stand an insignificant chance of dying from and b) something you don't care about when it happens. You'll still hear about a massive car crash killing 60 people, but nobody really cares if two people died.
And if every survivor of car accidents with fatalities got out and yelled "Allahu Ackbar," maybe I'd be here, agreeing with you about these crazy people who think terrorism and traffic aren't just two rare occurances. We weren't talking about Charlie Hebdo, Bataclan, now the Champs-Elysées gunman as recent and deadly events fifteen years ago. You wouldn't be able to remember the last time someone got into a car and plowed down bystanders in Nice. We're talking about three high-profile attacks in two years and a handful of smaller ones.
Intent and connection matters, even if we delve into darker depths like preventability. I have a sneaking suspicion if radical Christian terrorists killed over eighty people by car, shot a hundred in Paris, and a dozen in a satirist newsroom, we wouldn't be so quickly leaping to car accident and bathtub analogies. The response is essentially the second confirmation, in the same way we talk about murders different from accidental deaths and hijackings different than airline crashes, but islamic terrorism must be a "something" characterized by raw body count per year like cars. Hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue; these verbal sleights of hand are paid to acknowledge the fear and weakness.
That's just you being selective. There was ETA, IRA and more recently Breivik. Collectively, they have killed more than those attributed to ISIS, and their period of activity far longer. Yet somehow Basque people, catholic Irish and people who talk like Breivik aren't talked about in the same way as you do. So what is the difference?
On April 21 2017 05:15 TheDwf wrote: [quote] Yes, she's totally going to win 5 millions of extra votes now! We don't even know what happened, seriously what's the point of this kind of reaction?
Fear, mostly. The French elections have most of the world in a panic in light of the recent past.
Fairly sure people are blasé now, not a week goes by without hearing about terrorist attacks here or abroad in some way, one dead isn't enough to trigger significant moves at this point. I hope nothing happens on the voting day though, don't know what would be done then...
The interchange between aspects of "terrorist attacks are so rare, why care about something that you stand an insignificant chance of dying from?" and "people are blasé now, not a week goes by without hearing about terrorist attacks here or abroad in some way" is one aspect of divided opinion. Too rare and not rare enough.
deaths in traffic are just like that? I don't know anybody who worries particularly about dying in a car accident, yet even in Norway, a country with 5 million inhabitants and one of the lowest rates of fatal car accidents in the world, experience a couple per week.
Obviously terrorist attacks are different in the sense that traffic accidents are considered an unfortunate and inevitable consequence of the massive advantage of being able to quickly travel places by car, while it's much harder to find the positive side of terrorist attacks. But even for something that takes 100+ times as many lives as terrorist attacks, it's still a) something you stand an insignificant chance of dying from and b) something you don't care about when it happens. You'll still hear about a massive car crash killing 60 people, but nobody really cares if two people died.
And if every survivor of car accidents with fatalities got out and yelled "Allahu Ackbar," maybe I'd be here, agreeing with you about these crazy people who think terrorism and traffic aren't just two rare occurances. We weren't talking about Charlie Hebdo, Bataclan, now the Champs-Elysées gunman as recent and deadly events fifteen years ago. You wouldn't be able to remember the last time someone got into a car and plowed down bystanders in Nice. We're talking about three high-profile attacks in two years and a handful of smaller ones.
Intent and connection matters, even if we delve into darker depths like preventability. I have a sneaking suspicion if radical Christian terrorists killed over eighty people by car, shot a hundred in Paris, and a dozen in a satirist newsroom, we wouldn't be so quickly leaping to car accident and bathtub analogies. The response is essentially the second confirmation, in the same way we talk about murders different from accidental deaths and hijackings different than airline crashes, but islamic terrorism must be a "something" characterized by raw body count per year like cars. Hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue; these verbal sleights of hand are paid to acknowledge the fear and weakness.
Since death kills more people than terrorism, maybe we should consider stop giving birth to any children in the future.
That's a vain rhetoric. Terrorism causes a threat to vivre-ensemble. It just affect the cohesion of any society and should be tackled at its roots. One dead is equally atrocious as 100 deads. We should not be worried about the numbers but about what makes a small proportion of individuals from a particular group or movement act like that.
Concerning french politics, Mélenchon vs Le Pen in the second round would be a nightmare. The first one is not fuelled with hatred, but still would lead to a fracturation of the society as surely as Le Pen would, and would cause France to bankrupt and EU to collapse as surely as his female counterpart (pretty much the same economical program).
Macron, Hamon and Fillon are the only reasonnable choices and still offer a distinct approach economically and socially, but that at least is not total fantasy.
Funny. Literally 50% of the French debt was done while Fillon was governing, including 600 billions when he was Prime minister, yet a basic keynesian program would cause France to bankrupt. Electing a corrupt, lying crook who's now even more rejected/hated than Le Pen and wants a “blitzkrieg” to destroy our social model is a “reasonable choice”. You TINA folks are really a never-ending source of joy.
You cannot in the current european system conduct a keynasian policy, while others are still conducting reforms in order to cut their public deficit. And that's the whole point of pragmatism. If you have a monetary union but not an fiscal union, as i mean a harmonized budgetary policy, you have to somewhat not play with fire and go blindly in the spending direction.
Hence why he wants social/fiscal harmonization, and the end of concerted austerity. Also even the IMF, hardly known for its “utopian socialist” views, recommends that some countries rise their spending. We all have the ecological transition to do/complete, so it's an opportunity to spend. You can negotiate with investors, not with the planet. Or we can keep going with ““reasonable”” neoliberal policies and wait for the EU to implode, it's already on a good track.
None of the spending is “blind,” unlike the current subventions for big business which end up in useless dividends (Macron's “reasonable” policies...). He wants to spend 10 billions on accessibility for disabled persons. Is it blind? 50 billions on renewable energies. Is it blind? Thermal renovation to decrease energy usage, is it blind?
That is why more Europe is the solution. But more Europe would come from a political willingness only. What is obviously stucked in this time of doubt. Exiting the EU because it does not answer the immediate window of opportunity of someone ideology is dangerous. Resoring faith, reworking the link between Europe and its citizens, and the trust betweens states is what every citizen should work on. We have seen the flaws of the EU. It is not because it is flawed that we must leave it. It is because it is flawed that we must better cooperate together to make it work better.
In that sense Mélenchon knows he won't achieve fiscal federalism next year. So he knows if he wants to conduct any heavily protectionnist plus keynesian policy he must be freed of the Union.
You can have progressive ideas (revenu universel, ethic taxation, ecological sustainabilty, ...) and still lead realistic policies, like Hamon. You don't have to join the bolivarian union to make it work. Mélenchon is in that sense dangerous to any liberal democracy. Liberal as in freedom of indivudals, not as in deregulated jungle market.
Yes, she's totally going to win 5 millions of extra votes now! We don't even know what happened, seriously what's the point of this kind of reaction?
Fear, mostly. The French elections have most of the world in a panic in light of the recent past.
Fairly sure people are blasé now, not a week goes by without hearing about terrorist attacks here or abroad in some way, one dead isn't enough to trigger significant moves at this point. I hope nothing happens on the voting day though, don't know what would be done then...
The interchange between aspects of "terrorist attacks are so rare, why care about something that you stand an insignificant chance of dying from?" and "people are blasé now, not a week goes by without hearing about terrorist attacks here or abroad in some way" is one aspect of divided opinion. Too rare and not rare enough.
deaths in traffic are just like that? I don't know anybody who worries particularly about dying in a car accident, yet even in Norway, a country with 5 million inhabitants and one of the lowest rates of fatal car accidents in the world, experience a couple per week.
Obviously terrorist attacks are different in the sense that traffic accidents are considered an unfortunate and inevitable consequence of the massive advantage of being able to quickly travel places by car, while it's much harder to find the positive side of terrorist attacks. But even for something that takes 100+ times as many lives as terrorist attacks, it's still a) something you stand an insignificant chance of dying from and b) something you don't care about when it happens. You'll still hear about a massive car crash killing 60 people, but nobody really cares if two people died.
And if every survivor of car accidents with fatalities got out and yelled "Allahu Ackbar," maybe I'd be here, agreeing with you about these crazy people who think terrorism and traffic aren't just two rare occurances. We weren't talking about Charlie Hebdo, Bataclan, now the Champs-Elysées gunman as recent and deadly events fifteen years ago. You wouldn't be able to remember the last time someone got into a car and plowed down bystanders in Nice. We're talking about three high-profile attacks in two years and a handful of smaller ones.
Intent and connection matters, even if we delve into darker depths like preventability. I have a sneaking suspicion if radical Christian terrorists killed over eighty people by car, shot a hundred in Paris, and a dozen in a satirist newsroom, we wouldn't be so quickly leaping to car accident and bathtub analogies. The response is essentially the second confirmation, in the same way we talk about murders different from accidental deaths and hijackings different than airline crashes, but islamic terrorism must be a "something" characterized by raw body count per year like cars. Hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue; these verbal sleights of hand are paid to acknowledge the fear and weakness.
That's just you being selective. There was ETA, IRA and more recently Breivik. Collectively, they have killed more than those attributed to ISIS, and their period of activity far longer. Yet somehow Basque people, catholic Irish and people who talk like Breivik aren't talked about in the same way as you do. So what is the difference?
I picked three prominent French examples, and one recent, because the backdrop was France and French elections. It's rather telling that you want to generalize unrelated bulk Euro body counts. I suppose next we say how insignificant they stand worldwide--9/11 numbered in the thousands. I talked about verbal sleights of hand, and lo and behold you delivered. Because in your mind collecting The Troubles in Ireland and a single far-right terrorist in Norway is a useful collection for comparison. Absolutely fatuous and really illustrating the point better than I could ever have made it.
On April 21 2017 05:19 LegalLord wrote: [quote] Fear, mostly. The French elections have most of the world in a panic in light of the recent past.
Fairly sure people are blasé now, not a week goes by without hearing about terrorist attacks here or abroad in some way, one dead isn't enough to trigger significant moves at this point. I hope nothing happens on the voting day though, don't know what would be done then...
The interchange between aspects of "terrorist attacks are so rare, why care about something that you stand an insignificant chance of dying from?" and "people are blasé now, not a week goes by without hearing about terrorist attacks here or abroad in some way" is one aspect of divided opinion. Too rare and not rare enough.
deaths in traffic are just like that? I don't know anybody who worries particularly about dying in a car accident, yet even in Norway, a country with 5 million inhabitants and one of the lowest rates of fatal car accidents in the world, experience a couple per week.
Obviously terrorist attacks are different in the sense that traffic accidents are considered an unfortunate and inevitable consequence of the massive advantage of being able to quickly travel places by car, while it's much harder to find the positive side of terrorist attacks. But even for something that takes 100+ times as many lives as terrorist attacks, it's still a) something you stand an insignificant chance of dying from and b) something you don't care about when it happens. You'll still hear about a massive car crash killing 60 people, but nobody really cares if two people died.
And if every survivor of car accidents with fatalities got out and yelled "Allahu Ackbar," maybe I'd be here, agreeing with you about these crazy people who think terrorism and traffic aren't just two rare occurances. We weren't talking about Charlie Hebdo, Bataclan, now the Champs-Elysées gunman as recent and deadly events fifteen years ago. You wouldn't be able to remember the last time someone got into a car and plowed down bystanders in Nice. We're talking about three high-profile attacks in two years and a handful of smaller ones.
Intent and connection matters, even if we delve into darker depths like preventability. I have a sneaking suspicion if radical Christian terrorists killed over eighty people by car, shot a hundred in Paris, and a dozen in a satirist newsroom, we wouldn't be so quickly leaping to car accident and bathtub analogies. The response is essentially the second confirmation, in the same way we talk about murders different from accidental deaths and hijackings different than airline crashes, but islamic terrorism must be a "something" characterized by raw body count per year like cars. Hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue; these verbal sleights of hand are paid to acknowledge the fear and weakness.
Since death kills more people than terrorism, maybe we should consider stop giving birth to any children in the future.
That's a vain rhetoric. Terrorism causes a threat to vivre-ensemble. It just affect the cohesion of any society and should be tackled at its roots. One dead is equally atrocious as 100 deads. We should not be worried about the numbers but about what makes a small proportion of individuals from a particular group or movement act like that.
Concerning french politics, Mélenchon vs Le Pen in the second round would be a nightmare. The first one is not fuelled with hatred, but still would lead to a fracturation of the society as surely as Le Pen would, and would cause France to bankrupt and EU to collapse as surely as his female counterpart (pretty much the same economical program).
Macron, Hamon and Fillon are the only reasonnable choices and still offer a distinct approach economically and socially, but that at least is not total fantasy.
Funny. Literally 50% of the French debt was done while Fillon was governing, including 600 billions when he was Prime minister, yet a basic keynesian program would cause France to bankrupt. Electing a corrupt, lying crook who's now even more rejected/hated than Le Pen and wants a “blitzkrieg” to destroy our social model is a “reasonable choice”. You TINA folks are really a never-ending source of joy.
You cannot in the current european system conduct a keynasian policy, while others are still conducting reforms in order to cut their public deficit. And that's the whole point of pragmatism. If you have a monetary union but not an fiscal union, as i mean a harmonized budgetary policy, you have to somewhat not play with fire and go blindly in the spending direction.
Hence why he wants social/fiscal harmonization, and the end of concerted austerity. Also even the IMF, hardly known for its “utopian socialist” views, recommends that some countries rise their spending. We all have the ecological transition to do/complete, so it's an opportunity to spend. You can negotiate with investors, not with the planet. Or we can keep going with ““reasonable”” neoliberal policies and wait for the EU to implode, it's already on a good track.
None of the spending is “blind,” unlike the current subventions for big business which end up in useless dividends (Macron's “reasonable” policies...). He wants to spend 10 billions on accessibility for disabled persons. Is it blind? 50 billions on renewable energies. Is it blind? Thermal renovation to decrease energy usage, is it blind?
That is why more Europe is the solution. But more Europe would come for a political willness. What is obviously stucked in this time of doubt. Exiting the EU because it does not answer the immediate window of opportunity of someone ideology is dangerous. Resoring faith, reworking the link between Europe and its citizens, and the trust betweens states is what every citizen should work on. We have seen the flaws of the EU. It is not because it is flawed that we must leave it. It is because it is flawed that we must better cooperate together to make it work better.
In that sense Mélenchon knows he won't achieve fiscal federalism next year. So he knows if he wants to conduct any heavily protectionnist plus keynesian policy he must be freed of the Union.
You can have progressive ideas (revenu universel, ethic taxation, ecological sustainabilty, ...) and still lead realistic policies, like Hamon. You don't have to join the bolivarian union to make it work. Mélenchon is in that sense dangerous to any liberal democracy. Liberal as in freedom of indivudals, not as in deregulated jungle market.
LOL. Media propaganda works so well, no wonder why billionaires all buy newspapers; best ideological investment ever.
Fillon and Macron want to dismantle workers' rights bypassing the Parliament, with no debate, but naturally this is no threat to “liberal democracy”: only, what was the word for it? Ah yes, pragmatism...
Mélenchon got the best rating from Amnesty International when it comes to fundamental liberties. Fillon and Macron want permanent state of emergency (520+ days as of now, with of course little to no result). Threats to liberal democracy? They signed contracts with authoritarian/dictatorial regimes—Egypt, Iran, Qatar, Saudi Arabia... and now they lecture Mélenchon about some random point of his program? Oh the irony...
Hollande shaking hands with Fidel Castro. Threat to liberal democracy?
Fillon's program would result in recession and hundreds of thousands of extra unemployed persons. Macron's plan is to multiply precarious workers with low wages who self-exploit with a terrible status (Uber drivers are his model). Poverty and inequalities will rise or skyrocket with them.
If you speak French you should listen to Mélenchon's speech about liberty in Toulouse. Beautiful refutation of those abstract, ethereal conceptions of liberty.
Enough with bombastic words about liberty if, after that, you don't precise what you mean exactly with this word and how you will achieve it. (...) To all of you who lecture us, I ask you: what is the liberty of the 100 000 families whose water is cut because they cannot pay the bill?
What is the liberty of the 600 000 families whose electricity or gas is cut?
What is the liberty of the one who sleeps and dies in the street?
What is the liberty of the one in a wheeling chair when buildings are not accessible, whereas we have the means to make everything accessible?
What is the liberty of the families and children affected by autism when no public school can welcome them, and when parents are offered the abomination of the exile of their children?
What is the liberty to choose one's physician when one lives in a medical desert?
What is the liberty of the worker threatened with layoff if he doesn't accept to work on Sundays?
What is the liberty of those who endure the labour bill, which now applies and results in one labor law per company?
What is the liberty of the dozen of trade unionists condemned and jailed while they only defended the common good?
What was the liberty of the Conti [name of a company (Continental) in which a famous social conflict happened], when they were asked to be paid less, to work more, and yet when they did it their factory was still shut down afterwards, illegally, and their trade unionists were persecuted?
What is the liberty of the woman who rises alone her children, juggling with her work schedule?
What is the liberty of the Uber driver who has no sick leave rights?
What is the liberty of the small boss against his ordering customer?
What is the liberty of this people, who said several times NO to your austeritarian European treaties, and to whom you still forcibly imposed them?
There is no liberty when you're slave to material necessities.
EPT
![[image loading]](http://s2.lemde.fr/image2x/2016/11/26/534x0/5038539_6_2323_francois-hollande-et-fidel-castro-le-11-mai_b4875c709cd4eccf6b7b927b790df344.jpg)
