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Cake day: June 22nd, 2023

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  • Hello, did not understand everything so sorry in advance if i say anything dumb In France, we have a President, elected by every adult citizen. In theory, he does not lead the country, and chooses a Prime Minister for this task, who then comes up with a government. In practice though, the President (Macron for now) has a lot more power over the PM because he can revoke and name another Prime Minister. And as the Assembly also have the power to revoke PM, President generally chooses someone that the majority in the Assembly will accept, to avoid instability. So currently, Macron is the President and holds practical power over politics, Prime Minister is currently Attal, and is kinda the second in hand of Macron, and as the Assembly seems to change right now, Macron will probably choose someone else as PM, probably someone from the left.


  • I didn’t watch tat much movies, but maybe you’re right and this all is just me being dumb or disconnected from reality. Maybe I’m also biased by my interactions with cops and/or soldiers (which were mostly bad experiences).

    I guess CAF is canadian army ? I think during time of peace, the army does not take that much violent actions against its own population (although cops do). So it’s more about the second part of spreading fear to keep control : if anyone goes against their power, they will be allowed to take these violent actions. I confess that I do not know much about canadian army, so maybe I’m wrong. But I think violence and terror are only clearly visible during periods of tension, and as Canada seems to be quite peaceful, maybe violence and terror are juste dimmed for now.

    I do not consider violence and terror as goals of military : i sincerely believe that most people in armies have no interest in them, and that they are here for other reasons (patriotism, security, a sense of belonging, etc). I think violence and terror are rather aspects or consequences of military : you need them to achieve other goals, which could be positive (control, security, enforcing the State). Good actions (summarized by “capturing hearts and minds” if i understood), are also aspects/consequences/tools armies may use to reach these goals.

    So, to my eyes, making good things remains compatible with using terror, because this one relies on the mere possibility of violence. It also seems compatible with violence itself, if you consider both can affect different targets at the same time. All of these are tools they may need for other goals, positive or not. But I remain quite certain that violence and terror are necessary consequences in the wide panel of actions an army can take, despite the goodwill of every person implied.

    Not sure if this is clear or clever though, sorry if anything sounds dumb and bothers you.


  • Yeah, I can understand the initial trust in law, and maybe debatting it later. This is not my way of thinking but i admit it’s really reasonable.

    For the terror, my reflexion is the following : army/cops try to maintain a specific system in place and have 2 ways to do so. For people who (more or less) actively defy their authority, they take violent actions (kidnapping, pressure, wounding, killing, etc). For people who are not (yet) actively defying their authority, they hope that their violent actions will make people afraid of them, so they do not act against authority. I refer to thz first part as killing (though it’s not only killing but more generally violent actions against people), and the second part as terror.

    So, imho, though war crimes may spray more terror in a single act than usual army stuff, both spray terror in their own way.


  • Yeah, this is what makes one legal and the other one not. I suppose that in your opinion, being legal and following rules of war makes it better and I would agree, it seems reasonably better. But is it good though ? To my eyes, killing and spreading terror remains bad, legally or not. If we add some other parameter, it may even be worse to do it legally : the scale of destruction is far worse when a violent group is legal (and so financed and supported by whole countries).

    The result of the analysis depends on what parameters you choose : is it legal ? Is it big ? What are the motives ? You can choose what you want, and that’s probably why we (I assume this here) have different opinions. My wonder is : why should we focus mostly or entirely on the legal aspect/parameter when analysing things like violence and power ?

    (If i misunderstood what you said, sorry by advance)




  • Okay you now have stated a correct reason. I would add two things that can help you refine your way of seeing things :

    • It’s probably best to say ‘kill Russian invaders’ or even ‘kill invaders’, since the problem is invaders and not Russian (I mean, killing random civilians in Moscow wont help Ukraine, but it’s still what you said is good)
    • Insisting on killing is still weird. Killing soldiers is not the goal of fighting an invasion back, it is one way to achieve the real goal : all Russians soldiers out of Ukraine. If that’s what you’re talking about, i advise you to say ‘fighting’ instead of ‘killing’, so it’s not mistaken for a random bloodlust against a country.

    Now I got to apologize if we agree on all those points, I mistook your shortened thinking for blatant stupidity, which would be my bad




  • I get that there is lot more nuances than russo-ukrainian, but imo there is a lot more similarities than you seem to imply : both Russia and Israel claimed that the land belonged to them before, that they should get it back, and use violence to kill local people who tried to resist or move them. The only difference is that Israel did it with the help of western countries and partially according to their laws, so they get like an aura of legitimity, but the acts remains quite close.

    I do not like when people basically do not accept violent behavior but accepts them when they are allowed by some law or authority.

    (Also yes Hamas is doing bad things and should be held accountable in some way, just like Ukraine to my eyes. But still, for me it remains obvious who kills more, who steals more, who oppresses more)


  • You are a wonder of pure bad faith. One argument of one part of one point amongst 7 seems off to you, and you stop reading, and you do not even answer what you have already read ? Like “Oh, 7 words of your answer are abusive, so i dont care about the 1000 others”.

    And it’s not abusive. Everyone now admits there were slaughters by the police against arabic populations in france. Not in 2021 you are right, but i think you know there are multiple years in history. France committed series of historical slaughters against arabic people, mostly algerians, both in their countries and on the french ground. The most known about is the paris massacre of 1961. Nowadays, police still kills more people with arabic names than with any else culture. (Source here, at the end of the page, french only)

    Now if you want to be taken seriously, you probably should stop avoiding every point i make by misinterpreting it or by just ignoring it. There is no muslim shill anywhere in this discussion, just some who cares for everyone’s liberty and some who hates on muslim because it is the last thing that make them think they still defend liberty when they just prefer the comfort of an oppressive state over the one of partly oppressive religion.

    Ill try to make it clear one last time, not for you but for anyone passing by, my comments are always too long but i’ll try to make what i believe and defend concise.

    Should women be free to show their hair ? YES. Should we fight against anyone who wants to force them otherwise ? YES. Should women be free to hide their hair ? YES. Should we fight against anyone who wants to force them otherwise ? YES.

    Anyone who goes against their liberty is a bastard. Conservatives muslims are bastards. Conservative republicans are bastards.


  • Okay, point by point

    1. Parallel with slavery : you did not at all understand my statement. I meant that if you say that its illegal for someone to be a slave, slave will go to prison and wont be free. When we say “slavery is prohibited”, we say that HAVING SLAVES is illegal, not BEING A SLAVE. Same with muslim shit, forcing women to wear stuff should be banned, not women wearing stuff. And we agree, slavery ended up when people used violence against slave tarders, not against slave themselves (which is why the parallel with the hijab/abaya situation is absurd, because here people are taking actions against the women they claim to protect, and not the one who are forcing women).

    2. You just misunderstood me again, please think about what i say before writing anything. Here, “That” does not refer to “abolishing slavery”, but to “make slaves illegal people” (which has never been made, on the opposite, they were given legal rights).

    3. So you concede that the true problem comes from morals, and not religion. That is a good point. You can fight both, but they are to be fought in different ways, this is two different things. Religion is less shitty idea when it does not talk abouth enforcing thing on other people (when it does, well it’s morals or politics). Then, you can say that only-spiritual religion is bad too, but that’s your fight, not mine or everyone’s fight. As I care for everyone to be free, I want everyone to be able to choose what spirituality they want, including dumb believings from thousand of years ago. But sure, you can fight their ideologies with your personal bullshit. And to do so, you need them in public places to discuss with them, so they should go in schools to be able to go to university and all common places where citizens can discuss.

    4. Are you seriously asking why arabic and muslim people are oppressed in France ? There litteraly were slaughter by the police, they kill more arabic people than anyone else, they are insulted in the streets, they are criticized for their clothes, there are victims of terrorist attacks from right wing. Plus the same rule for everybody does not mean no oppression. You can say : “No homosexual behavior, no communist action”, and it still is discrimination, even if you add “it’s not forbidden to be homosexual, but it is to act like one, so everyone is equal”. Refusing to see that this kind of shit targets a specific community is just bad faith or dumbness, you choose.

    5. Some girls in highschool are adults (majority is 18 in France, you may reach it while highschool if born before june or if you repeat a year). The rule about clothes also applies to every people who works in the school : teachers, watchers, cooks, etc. Also you may be a kiddo and still make choices, especially in highscool. At that time i joined political and musical cultures, and was not told by my parents to do so. It was my choice and i was proud of it. I have friends who converted to islam when they were at highschool. Your religion may be your choice, and then it’s fine. The big problem is when it’s not. Why is it bad to look like everybody else around ? I dont know about you but at highschool i tried as hard as i could to come out from the mass. It’s okay not to be a sheep you know ? And it’s okay to be. What matters is that truly want to do what you do. Btw, common clothes are also banned if they are used for religious purpose. A girl switched her hijab for a bandana, and still got banned. It was confirmed by the highest juridical institution in the country, making it a case-law. They just want muslim to stop living how they want, that’s just it.

    6. I did not say it should be ignored because it is a minority. I said the way of resolving the problem are not the same, and that the clothes ban was not a solution in France. In Egypt, the massive problem may require temporary massive solution, because helping each victim individually would be very long, and it is even harder to help them when being a victim is “normal” way of life. In France, the problem is very precise, so we could manage each case individually, and the fact that there is another “normal” way of life makes it easier to leave the one where you are forced to wear something.

    7. Why a false equivalence ? My argument is “giving someone freedom to do X does not mean banning them from doing nonX”. You can replace X with aborting, wearing pants, showing your hairs, it’s always the same. If you missed this, well you missed a basic logical inference. All the rules you mentionned seems dumb to me, but they are made for specific places, run by specific people. It’s why they are ok, as long as their consequences are not serious. You can avoid entering in a church, in a mosque, in a factory, you can do pretty much the same in other places. But being banned from entering a school is a serious disadvantage, and that is precisely why we made a public school for everyone to come in. “But not if you’re a muslim girl (or arabic, we do not make a difference), because then you are of course indoctrinated by some man in your family, so we should have revenge on you instead of him” (at least that is still the only reason i can see to ban abaya which is still not a religious clothe but a cultural one, worn by non-muslims and not worn by all muslims).

    You just make claim of back pedalling and false equivalence, without pointing to any of them appart from a basic and concrete logical equivalence, and then misunderstand half of my points, except the one you end up agreeing to. And then you are the one saying that it is boring. Come on, i dont ask you to start caring for muslims, i just want you to show you this is not protection but oppresion, it is not hard to conceive.


  • Okay, my bad, i did not think it would be necessary for me to add “it is dumb to think you can free someone by prohibiting things that they do”. In the case of slavery, you cannot free a slave by prohibiting him from being a slave. He would just be under control of his master AND illegal. That’s dumb. You need to change the mind and the power of the master, that’s where the problem lies. Here it is exactly the same : we need to change the mind of the men that force women to do anything, including wearing specific clothes, including all the “muslim” bullshit. You do not help drug addict by banning them from hospitals, you do not help a bleeding person by opening the wound even more, you do not help any victim of domestic abuse by banning them from school and public administration. You do not fight criminality by fighting the victims, you fight it by fighting the criminals. If you cannot understand that, i dont know what to say anymore.

    I maintain that the domestic abuse violence IS beyond religion, even though very very strongly linked with it. Because, very simply, some muslim do not do this hijab bullshit, and leave people free. So it’s not the essence of this religion to control women. Religion is a part of the problem, but it does not mean you can solve it all by erasing religion. Because even if you manage to prevent religious bullshit (which has always meant violence against people from this religion), you did not solve the moral part, which will live onf and still force women to wear some piece of cloth. BUT, if you manage to solve the moral part by changing the mind of people and help everyone make a conscious choice, the religion will continue without this moral rule of “women should cover their hair”. That is why it seems dumb and dangerous to me to fight a religion when you should fight morals.

    Egypt and France are also very different examples. In one, almost every girl is concerned by the forced hijab problem, while in France it’s only a minority. More than that, they are subject to hard discriminations and harassment in France, and hateful speech from 2/3 of the political spectrum. So while it may be a correct replacement of true freedom in specific countries, it is still less than true liberty, and still a way of oppressing muslim people in france.

    On the last part, you did not understand me. You say “Muslim put the blame on the victim”, and at the same time, you put the blame on the victim of forced hijab, by saying they should not be able to wear it. I say both islamist and french republican talk the same way. They pretend to fight for women dignity, and then force them to do thing they dont want to (put their hijab on/off). Both are bastards to fight against, because liberty should be in the hand of women on this matter, not of some random male politician pretending to fight for them.

    If there is a real problem is some women, forced by his father to wear a hijab, and it is banned in school, she will be twice as much a slave. Slave of his fucker of a father when at home, slave of his fucker of a state when at school. I maintain : this is not how you free people.

    By the way, we have only spoke of women that are actually forced by someone to wear it. But there are a lot of women who wear it by choice, and banning it is bad for them. It may be okay in Egypt or any other country where women are not harassed because they wear it in everyday life, but in France it’s just more discrimination against them, and they already get enough.

    And an extra thought, if you think that a woman cannot at the same time wear a hijab AND be a free woman, you may have a problem with what “free” means. When we allowed abortion, we did not prohibit giving birth. When we allowed women to have their own bank account, we did not prohibit common bank account in a couple. When we allowed women to wear pants, we did not prohibit dresses and skirts. It should be the same here : true freedom is to choose, not to be forced in any way.


  • I agree that any philosophy that aims to control other’s people life is wrong to me. Based on that, a state philosophy which says “You cannot dress like this or like this” is a wrong one too. I do not like religion, i do not like muslims religion. But i do not hate on muslim people either. I do not support their -generally and imo- fucked up morals, but i support their right to live, their right to dress how they want, even if it is to respect a tradition, their right to access education and knowledge. I also acknowledge that they are historically and currently being repressed by the government and our allegedly secular society, which has just found in muslims what they had found in jews past century. I think the place where muslim people have the most chances to experience liberty and critical thinking is in a free school, not in one which represses their way of life without any further reflection than “Religion bad”. I also think that where non-muslim people have the best chance to undo their prejudices against muslims is in a school where muslim folks can come and dress freely.


  • Okay, so i 100% percent agree that religion are wrong when they are forced upon anyone, and that religious state, and muslim state first, are worse oppresions than state alone. I also agree that abaya is not banned in universities, mb on this one (though we could argue that if you ban someone from highschool, they most likely wont be able to go to university).

    I am against anyone who prohibits women to show their hair, and i’m against anyone who prohibits women to hide them. Both are bad, and both are worse when endorsed by oppressives systems that are states and morals. In Egypt, muslim state is worse than atheists. In France, “atheist” and islamophobic state is worse than muslims. (all of this is strictly my point of view) I strongly believe that it is dumb to think that you can free someone by prohibiting things, like you can free someone from drugs addictions by jailing them, free someone of war by invading them.

    You say “Muslim bad because they blame women who do not wear hijab instead of blaming killer”, and i agree. But this argument sounds illogical here, because you would blame women who wear hijab instead of blaming people who force them.


  • Well it is not that simple. I agree on the point education and religion should be separated, but just on what children learn, not how they just dress.

    But i maintain that catholic common folks do not have any specific attire. In christian cultures, people just wore basic attire, like long skirts or dress for women. But it was not specifically religious, it just was a blend of habits, morals and fashion, so cultural things. At some point, religious people, who tend to be conservative on those subjects, did advocate those clothes because they matched some vague ideal of decency of their religion. That’s why now conservative catholics still ask their daugther to were those clothes. And it is exactly the same thing with the abaya : a cultural fact only slightly mixed with religion, and in both case people who tend to wear just long dress to cover their body. It is not proselytism, it’s just cultural .

    On a second note, i do not understand how anyone could support such a ban and still think they are doing a favor to these people. Do you think it will really help indoctrinated people to ban them from school and universities ? I mean, either

    • the person wear it by choice, and then there’s no problem
    • the person was told to, and then they should be welcomed in schools and universities more than other, to make them see other options exist.

    It’s also very weird that religion should not tell people how to dress, but a state can. It’s weird that people say “you can be religious and do whatever you like”, but at the same time they consider that “you cannot be democratic/republican and do whatever you like, there are rules to follow”.

    Muslims do not want to force women to dress in a certain way, it’s beyond religion, it’s included in morals, cultures. Some muslims do not give a fuck the way women dress. Some atheist do force the women in their lives to dress in specific ways (and this includes people of the conservative tradition). This is not something you change by hating on a religion which is just a medium for this, and which is already discriminated a lot, this is something you change by including people in a free society and help them make a real choice about it. It’s absurd to ban people of a free society because they’re not free.

    Btw it’s a common thing in france to want to control how kids dress. Religious, culturals outfits are banned, but also “indecent” clothes like crop-top. I even remember talks about forcing girls to wear bras, so their nipples are not visible (though i did not remember any political consequence for the bra part, but the crop top was explicitly banned). In some schools, coming disguised on specific days could be banned, and punished. I experienced that, along with critics against outfits like torn pants. It’s just people disliking some clothes, but some of those people become headmaster, and they ban what they dont like. And some of them become minister, and they ban what they dont like in every schools. “Secularism” and “Republican values” are always mentionned then, like they are absolute truth that enable you to prohibit things and still think you’re fighting for liberty.

    But yeah sure. Religion bad. Muslim bad. What muslim wear bad. Ban bad. When done, only good.



  • Well that’s a 50/50 on the “not targeting any single religion/group” since they accept crosses that are not too big, meaning necklaces and earrings (at least in my experience). And since christian people tend not to wear specific attire except for cross-shaped jewelry, it’s like a whole exception just for them. I also think that the abaya thing is a sign that they really fight against Muslims, since it is more cultural than religious,. But yeah, you’re kinda right in the sens that they just harass every other religions than cristians in general, and would probably ban a christian with a huge cross on a shirt too.