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On June 05 2017 13:05 tomatriedes wrote:It's worrying to me that so many in this thread seem to be unable to see how out of hand the hysteria around Russia is getting in social media. Loony toons like Louise Mensch now have hundreds of thousands and are getting retweeted by influential people like Rob Reiner and Donna Brazile, even though she blatantly makes up shit. They even accused Bernie Sanders of being tied to Russia for fuck's sake. http://redux.slate.com/cover-stories/2017/05/louise-mensch-and-the-rise-of-the-liberal-conspiracy-theorist.htmlRemember all the breathless hysteria about Russia hacking the French election? Turns out that it was all based on nothing: Show nested quote +Guillaume Poupard, director general of the French agency ANSSI, told The Associated Press there was no evidence that the hack leading to those leaks had anything to do with Russia. Poupard said the attack leading to the leaks was so simple "we can imagine that it was a person who did this alone. They could be in any country." http://thehill.com/policy/cybersecurity/336034-no-evidence-of-russia-behind-marcon-leaks-reportSeeing comments in Washington Post comment section claiming that the recent London terrorists were FSB agents makes me realise that some on the left are no better than Alex Jones/Infowars when it comes to this stuff. As soon as you stoop to that level you've already lost.
Yeah, I pointed this out to start this whole argument and I basically get nothing but the shitfest of a blowback over the past 3 pages. The same sensationalistic social media echo chamber polarization that brought us anti-Muslim rhetoric (which in turn brought us Trump & Brexit) is now bringing us anti-Slavism or whatever. Of course, it's justified when it comes to Russia because X and Y. Lets just hope that it dies down a little once Trump gets impeached and Pence knows how to pace himself a little with the (cyber)warmongering.
lol, i just got this message sent to me on reddit:
Tbh, russians are just vermin at this point, the EU just should exclude this shithole from SWIFT and let them fucking starve to death. Dictator Putin's cocksucker nation deserves no less.
And just to be clear: I got my views on Crimea from an American scholar and professor emeritus of Russian studies at Princeton University and New York University. Not from Russia Today or any Russian state-sponsored media.
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Odd situation in Russia/Ukraine. A Ukrainian cruise liner "General Vatutin" was supposed to dock in Odessa but changed course towards a Russian port at Rostov-on-Don. It was denied entry there. FSB reports that it's unclear who is in command of the vessel.
No source in English I could find that was any good, but it may or may not be something of interest.
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Out of curiosity: don't you think there is something disjointed with your quote and your posting? Set aside for a moment that I sincerely doubt Putin would say it, a Russian apparently wishing for the destruction of Europa whilst arguing that Russia isn't a threat to the rest of Europe seems odd to put it mildly.
Edit: Oh I guess it's a joke which I missed in my sleep deprived state. Carry on.
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Well to answer it anyways, my original was:
"The European Union must be destroyed." - Cato the Elder
(in response to how people interpret my thoughts on the EU)
But someone PMed me this suggestion and I thought it was pretty funny, so I'm using this one instead.
Also, I don't think I really spent much time arguing one way or the other on the "is Russia a threat to Europe" debate. For one, Europe isn't a single, unified entity, so that suffers from ambiguity.
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Expected carnage tomorrow for the législatives. If polls are right (~40% abstention, +20 compared with the presidential):
+ Show Spoiler +
+ Show Spoiler +
(Seat projection, can be imprecise of course.)
45-50% of the voters would be represented by 90% of the seats. Rest would get nothing. No opposition in this Chamber. Grotesque situation where the sociological majority is almost completely expelled from the Parliament.
If polls are right:
- The radical left had 10 seats in 2012, could slightly improve their performance but would suffer a lot from demobilization + vote dispersion.
- The PS would be pulverized, dividing their number of députés by 10 or even 15 in the worst scenarii. Possible dead cat bounce thanks to a few figures resisting.
- Absolute majority for Macron, probably even without his allies. Would lose a bit from the presidential but drains 15-20% of some of the other electorates to compensate.
- Probably the worst result in the history of the right (previously 150 députés after Mitterand's victory in 1981), stands thanks to wealthy pensioners never failing to vote.
- The FN could fail to even get a group. Will probably get slaughtered hard by the anti-FN front in the second round.
Macron was clever enough to hide: no interview, mostly smiling in international summits and playing the regalian card so that medias lick him hard (insane degree of complacency). The press wakes up in the last few days to alert about his plans to destroy workers' rights and institutionalize the state of emergency (passing SoE stuff in common law), but it's too late. No national debate, only the radical left tried to campaign to warn about the danger. Ignored as usual.
Heavy demobilization from the youth, the lower classes and the most fragile while the upper classes and the old come to vote. 
Thanks to an absurd voting system, no national campaign and the "centrist" positioning high ground, Macron will very likely get full powers with 8.5 millions of votes.
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Do I read this correctly? Macron is going to get around 70% of seats with around 30% of the votes?
Is this truely how this could work out?
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The French system is designed to produce strong majorities, so yep.
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I won't be voting in this, first round made it so that our choice is now Macron's guy vs Fillon's gal. I guess I could vote blank but whatever.
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On June 11 2017 04:39 Big J wrote:
Do I read this correctly? Macron is going to get around 70% of seats with around 30% of the votes?
Is this truely how this could work out?
It's what happens when you have a multi party, seat-by-seat winner take all system and a reasonably homogeneous country.
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Looks like German and Swiss posters are the only people on this forum who have little reasons to complain about their voting systems. Maybe Scandinavians too, don't remember any of them complaining.
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I mean, I understand that stuff like this is possible in these kind of systems. That you can easily make 50% of the seats with 40% of the votes and so on. Stuff that I already find highly undemocratic and that get's pressed upon you with "herpderp representative democracy doesn't actually work so you need to give us big parties more power, so that we can rule without compromise despite you not wanting us to rule without compromise".
But this is just... I don't see how this classifies as democracy at all to be honest. If you have 30% of the people and 70% representation, you might as well just reinstate a king and be done with it. Heck, even German kings needed be elected by some nobleguys and needed a real majority amongst those.
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On June 11 2017 05:02 Sent. wrote:
Looks like German and Swiss posters are the only people on this forum who have little reasons to complain about their voting systems. Maybe Scandinavians too, don't remember any of them complaining.
I've said it and I'll say it again, our political system is beyond awesome. And I'm not patriotic so I don't just say it cause I like my country being viewed as the best.
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On June 11 2017 05:05 Big J wrote:
I mean, I understand that stuff like this is possible in these kind of systems. That you can easily make 50% of the seats with 40% of the votes and so on. Stuff that I already find highly undemocratic and that get's pressed upon you with "herpderp representative democracy doesn't actually work so you need to give us big parties more power, so that we can rule without compromise despite you not wanting us to rule without compromise".
But this is just... I don't see how this classifies as democracy at all to be honest. If you have 30% of the people and 70% representation, you might as well just reinstate a king and be done with it. Heck, even German kings needed be elected by some nobleguys and needed a real majority amongst those.
US has issues like that. Virginia democrats win basically every statewide election but the Republican party has supermajorities in the state houses.
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It's kind of funny, but our biggest domestic anti-system organisation (they refuse to call themselves a party) complains about "particracy" (we have a proportional system that slightly empowers bigger parties) and want a system similar to the one in the UK, thinking it's more democratic because it somehow makes the MPs more responsible to their constituents. I guess the grass is always greener on the other side.
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On June 11 2017 05:02 Sent. wrote:
Looks like German and Swiss posters are the only people on this forum who have little reasons to complain about their voting systems. Maybe Scandinavians too, don't remember any of them complaining.
Yep, no complaints here :D
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On June 11 2017 05:34 Neneu wrote:Show nested quote +On June 11 2017 05:02 Sent. wrote:
Looks like German and Swiss posters are the only people on this forum who have little reasons to complain about their voting systems. Maybe Scandinavians too, don't remember any of them complaining. Yep, no complaints here :D
Isnt norway the country where each vote is weighted by the area of the constituency of the voter? xd
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There's a logic to the French system. Imagine Macron not getting a majority, ending up without the ability to act and being a disappointment. Then you'd have Le Pen in five years. At least now he gets the chance to prove whether his ideas work. This is a good thing
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On June 11 2017 05:46 Nyxisto wrote:
There's a logic to the French system. Imagine Macron not getting a majority, ending up without the ability to act and being a disappointment. Then you'd have Le Pen in five years. At least now he gets the chance to prove whether his ideas work. This is a good thing
Then you have something called democracy. A representative parliament that makes the rules. Oh the horrors.
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On June 11 2017 05:05 Big J wrote:
I mean, I understand that stuff like this is possible in these kind of systems. That you can easily make 50% of the seats with 40% of the votes and so on. Stuff that I already find highly undemocratic and that get's pressed upon you with "herpderp representative democracy doesn't actually work so you need to give us big parties more power, so that we can rule without compromise despite you not wanting us to rule without compromise".
But this is just... I don't see how this classifies as democracy at all to be honest. If you have 30% of the people and 70% representation, you might as well just reinstate a king and be done with it. Heck, even German kings needed be elected by some nobleguys and needed a real majority amongst those.
We don't call this a presidential monarchy for nothing... The system is tailored to produce a two-party system which was okayish for the era (1958...) but completely dysfunctions now that the traditional landscape exploded.
On June 11 2017 05:46 Nyxisto wrote:
There's a logic to the French system. Imagine Macron not getting a majority, ending up without the ability to act and being a disappointment. Then you'd have Le Pen in five years. At least now he gets the chance to prove whether his ideas work. This is a good thing
There are tons of systems which would allow him to govern without bulldozing any opposition and leaving 45-55% of the country with crumbs... With a simple "proportional + strong bonus for whoever is ahead" system he could get the 289 députés needed.
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On June 11 2017 05:53 Big J wrote:Show nested quote +On June 11 2017 05:46 Nyxisto wrote:
There's a logic to the French system. Imagine Macron not getting a majority, ending up without the ability to act and being a disappointment. Then you'd have Le Pen in five years. At least now he gets the chance to prove whether his ideas work. This is a good thing Then you have something called democracy. A representative parliament that makes the rules. Oh the horrors.
Pretty much all the oldest, stable democracies on the planet aren't proportional. It's a pretty hefty claim to call them undemocratic. There's a weakness to proportional systems especially if the parliament is fractured. You can easily end up with rapidly switching governments, no way to pass legislation, neglect of some regional minority and so forth. It's not self-evident at all that proportional systems are superior.
There are tons of systems which would allow him to govern without bulldozing any opposition and leaving 45-55% of the country with crumbs... With a simple "proportional + strong bonus for whoever is ahead" system he could get the 289 députés needed.
Sure this particular result is extreme. But it's also fairly untypical to see the two traditional parties implode this heavily, especially the socialists. On a side note I was also happy to see that Villani runs for Macron, hope he wins.
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EPT![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/3qtxDRs.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/TMtomN2.jpg)
