International Thread 4

[broken one]

37 minutes ago, Ferocious Veldt Roarer said:

Well, the Supreme Court's response to the challenges to the legality of the electoral process (i.e. holding the election during a de facto state of emergency) was "So we're not gonna dwell on that". And that was the brand new chamber of the Supreme Court.

Meh, it's just a detail against all the lawlessness that has been happening here... I am glad they did not succeed with the original idea of voting by post, on unprotected forms, just thrown by postmen onto the yards (and then flying everywhere around). 

[Winterfell is Burning]

Sadly, Brazil had yesterday what it's probably it's very own George Floyd murder, in which a black man is brutally murdered by white people for no real reason other than racism Here's the link, though of course viewer discretion is strongly advised.

While the murderers were security guards at a Carrefour supermarket, one of them was an off-duty police officer (hell, not even that- a temporary police officer, a position created by a state law Brazil's Supreme Court declared unconstitutional by an unanimous vote last August, but the state of Rio Grande do Sul is trying to delay the decision's enforcement since then).  Some employees of the supermarket tried to intimidate people filming it and trying to stop it, including other employees.

 

 

[Rippounet]

Yesterday's The Atlantic's piece on the situation in France:
 

Quote

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/11/france-about-become-less-free/617195/

France Is About to Become Less Free

In the aftermath of recent terrorist attacks, the French government has introduced new legislation that threatens the very freedoms it vows to defend.

I cannot stress how deeply I hate Macron and his government.

The only reason why Macron was elected in the first place was because a majority did not want the far-right to win.

Turns out that in France, the neo-liberals are just as bad. Pretty much everything we would have feared from a far-right government has in fact come to pass. Seriously, we even have an all-out attack on academic freedom!

I see no reason to be nuanced. Voting on the right, for a party that was supposed to be center-right even, is giving us fascism, just a tiny bit slower than the actual neo-fascists perhaps, and that's not even certain, given the fact that the actual neo-fascists tend to be less efficient than the neo-liberals.
Only the left is providing an alternative. And it's now clear to me that the most radical leftists are the ones who were correct all along.

[Varysblackfyre321]

3 hours ago, Rippounet said:

Yesterday's The Atlantic's piece on the situation in France:
 

I cannot stress how deeply I hate Macron and his government.

The only reason why Macron was elected in the first place was because a majority did not want the far-right to win.

Turns out that in France, the neo-liberals are just as bad. Pretty much everything we would have feared from a far-right government has in fact come to pass. Seriously, we even have an all-out attack on academic freedom!

I see no reason to be nuanced. Voting on the right, for a party that was supposed to be center-right even, is giving us fascism, just a tiny bit slower than the actual neo-fascists perhaps, and that's not even certain, given the fact that the actual neo-fascists tend to be less efficient than the neo-liberals.
Only the left is providing an alternative. And it's now clear to me that the most radical leftists are the ones who were correct all along.

”One criminalizes the publication or sharing via social media of images of police unless all identifying features are blurred, in effect prohibiting live-streaming, investigative reporting, and citizen accountability of police abuses.”

 

It's been disappointment after disappointment.

Schools shouldn't talk about inequality because equality. They have to restrict woman’s rights to protect women's rights.

And now finally:

To protect democracy, they must become delve into a authoritarian state.

Jesus Christ. 

Also, I'm curious to see the uproar this will have on various Anti-sjw pundits who cry about twitter mobs and cancel culture curtailing free-speech.

Surely this would enrage them.

Eh. Joking. Most of them are cheering it on.

[Altherion]

6 hours ago, Rippounet said:

I cannot stress how deeply I hate Macron and his government.

The only reason why Macron was elected in the first place was because a majority did not want the far-right to win.

Turns out that in France, the neo-liberals are just as bad. Pretty much everything we would have feared from a far-right government has in fact come to pass. Seriously, we even have an all-out attack on academic freedom!

I see no reason to be nuanced. Voting on the right, for a party that was supposed to be center-right even, is giving us fascism, just a tiny bit slower than the actual neo-fascists perhaps, and that's not even certain, given the fact that the actual neo-fascists tend to be less efficient than the neo-liberals.
Only the left is providing an alternative. And it's now clear to me that the most radical leftists are the ones who were correct all along.

What alternative is the left providing? More specifically, how does the left intend to prevent more schoolteachers being decapitated in the streets?

Macron is a fairly typical neo-liberal. As the article says, it's not that he specifically wants these measures, but society demands some response to the various obvious problems at hand and he is not the kind of visionary genius who can come up with some way to actually solve them, so he goes with the usual restrictions which appease the police and make some people feel safer. I have not checked on the French left very often since I left France, but when I last checked, they don't have much in the way of solutions either which means that they'd eventually fall back on something of this sort as well.

As to academic freedom... well, this had to come eventually. There are still parts of academia which are useful to society, but more and more of it is downright toxic and serves no purpose beyond inciting unrest, division and hatred. Since most universities rely heavily on government funding in one way or another, the governments will eventually reign them in. It's a bit surprising that this happened in France before the US as the latter is by far more toxic, but it's only a matter of time.

All of that said, I suspect the laws mentioned in the article will be trimmed back (some of them already have been). Furthermore, some of the provisions are difficult to enforce and enforcement will probably be limited to only the most resonant cases.

[Varysblackfyre321]

1 hour ago, Altherion said:

As to academic freedom... well, this had to come eventually. There are still parts of academia which are useful to society, but more and more of it is downright toxic and serves no purpose beyond inciting unrest, division and hatred.

Attacks on academia don’t result in less division or hatred in a society. It just lambasts any negative attention given to the actual divisions or hatred in a society.
Inciting unrest by itself isn’t bad. Look at any movement to call attention to x social injustice. If they had remained quiet and non-disruptive nothing would have gotten done.

 Segregationists in the US cried about northern agitators sowing, division, hatred, and unrest by coming into their states and saying segregation bad which caused their blacks to get mad.

1 hour ago, Altherion said:

Since most universities rely heavily on government funding in one way or another, the governments will eventually reign them in.

As governments grow more authoritarian they do tend to mandate  universities to only allow messages that speak of  the virtues of the country’s status quo, as well as promote messages that agree with their leadership’s ideological bent.

This is not a good thing.

1 hour ago, Altherion said:

It's a bit surprising that this happened in France before the US as the latter is by far more toxic, but it's only a matter of time.

Yeah the far-right would like to get all that education that shows racism, sexism, homophobia are bad and/ still a problem in the US expunged. 

Trump proposed a patriotic(read nationalist) education plan that will no doubt be adopted more readily by the next republican president.

As we all know nationalism has never ever resulted in any divisions in a country.

1 hour ago, Altherion said:

What alternative is the left providing? More specifically, how does the left intend to prevent more schoolteachers being decapitated in the streets?

How exactly are more curbs to freedom of expression, freedom of assembly, and citizens’ ability to hold police accountable appropriate things to do in the name of protecting freedom of expression and democracy?

[Rippounet]

16 minutes ago, Altherion said:

As the article says, it's not that he specifically wants these measures, but society demands some response to the various obvious problems at hand and he is not the kind of visionary genius who can come up with some way to actually solve them, so he goes with the usual restrictions which appease the police and make some people feel safer.

No, Macron started moving in that direction a while ago. Police brutality started against the yellow vests, remember? And troubling laws were being discussed even when terrorism wasn't on everyone's mind, to target all kinds of activism rather than terrorism.
It's a "fun" fact that a few years ago, when they started voting laws to fight "terrorism" here, the very first people they were actually used against were environmental activists living deep in the French countryside, because they *might* have been planning anti-capitalist demonstrations.
You just can't make that shit up.

16 minutes ago, Altherion said:

As to academic freedom... well, this had to come eventually. There are still parts of academia which are useful to society, but more and more of it is downright toxic and serves no purpose beyond inciting unrest, division and hatred.

This is the most nauseating thing you've ever written, and I've seen you write quite a few through the years.
What exactly incites "unrest, division and hatred" in French academia?
I very much doubt you would ever be able to come up with an answer, because of course you don't know anything about it. You're only making assumptions and projections based on your own despicable ideas and hasty generalisations. And as usual, if you are pressed on this you will dodge to avoid showing just how ignorant about it you are.
Since most academic works in France aren't translated in English (a lasting remnant of foolish Gallic pride) and you work in STEM, I'm quite certain you're talking out of your ass.

Academia is just another way of talking about the quest for truth, without which our societies would still be trying to figure out how gravity works. The reason why so many people want to attack it the very opposite of what you say: because for the past decades (centuries?) it has been saying that divisions are absolutely artificial. Religions are bullshit, races and nations are fictions. Academia exposes the fact that humans are one big species with a lot of problems, and that simple truth is making a lot of people very uncomfortable. Many people would rather believe in their fictions, and of course, believe that their fictions are better than those of their neighbors.
Or perhaps it is more accurate to say that some people want to preserve those fictions to preserve their power. Academia is threatened when governments veer toward authoritarianism, because authoritarians do not want anyone to be able to speak truth to power, nor people to learn that the narratives they are being fed are just that, narratives, stories for the simple-minded and the gullible.
When governments target universities, it almost always means that they have a narrative to sell, one that is that very simple and very wrong.

16 minutes ago, Altherion said:

What alternative is the left providing? More specifically, how does the left intend to prevent more schoolteachers being decapitated in the streets?

The usual: social programs, education, healthcare...
Psychiatric care, in this case. This was not a terrorist attack, not the work of any kind of organization, just a deranged individual with bullshit ideas in his head. It's actually quite telling, really, that when people started calling for the death of Paty on the internet, the one person to act was a kid (barely a man) with a history of mental illness.
I despise religion, but seeking to replace it with some glorified nationalism is only trading one type of foolishness for another. Those who would seek comfort in such childish ideas are the idiots and the feeble-minded, on whom Macron is now betting to be reelected.

[Ser Reptitious]

I’m starting to think that Heartofice and Altherion are the same poster. Their views certainly seem eerily similar.

If a left-leaning government were introducing these kind of laws, they’d be screaming bloody murder, bemoaning the obvious attack on freedom of speech (and for once they’d be right) and about “political correctness” gone mad. But hey, if a right-leaning government does it, then obviously it’s all cool (and in fact overdue!).

@Rippounet, now I kind of wish you had first posted about this (without a link) as if it had been a place like Sweden, Canada (under Trudeau), or (heaven forbid) Venezuela that introduced these laws. Then, after the predictable suspects (*cough*Altherion*cough*) had expressed how deeply worrying this is, you could have pulled the “kidding” card, by revealing the true culprit, along with the supporting link. Would have been fun to see the subsequent scrambling to backtrack! 

 

[Varysblackfyre321]

1 hour ago, Rippounet said:

No, Macron started moving in that direction a while ago. Police brutality started against the yellow vests, remember? And troubling laws were being discussed even when terrorism wasn't on everyone's mind, to target all kinds of activism rather than terrorism.

It does behoove the point of how little effect actual terrorism can have on the movement towards authoritarian policies.

The quantity will always be enough to justify the roll back of civil rights and protections.

1 hour ago, Rippounet said:

The reason why so many people want to attack it the very opposite of what you say: because for the past decades (centuries?) it has been saying that divisions are absolutely artificial. Religions are bullshit, races and nations are fictions.

It’s natural to be something other than heterosexual.

Divisions that the far-right drives on.

1 hour ago, Rippounet said:

What exactly incites "unrest, division and hatred" in French academia?

I think an equally valid question is to what end are two of those things automatically bad?

Public shows of unrest are often needed for government to do something that needs to be done.

Things like the Civil rights movements, attempts to roll back the power of monarchies, could not have succeeded without unrest.

And yes hatred for the status quo that was oppressing people.

[The Anti-Targ]

On 11/20/2020 at 10:36 PM, broken one said:

I'am afraid that EU is going to bend. Seems it is all mostly about trade, the values may be shelved.

 

At that level values are always shelved for the sake of money and profit. Mostly govts only stick to values when it happens to align with their economic interests.

[Altherion]

2 hours ago, Rippounet said:

No, Macron started moving in that direction a while ago. Police brutality started against the yellow vests, remember? And troubling laws were being discussed even when terrorism wasn't on everyone's mind, to target all kinds of activism rather than terrorism.
It's a "fun" fact that a few years ago, when they started voting laws to fight "terrorism" here, the very first people they were actually used against were environmental activists living deep in the French countryside, because they *might* have been planning anti-capitalist demonstrations.
You just can't make that shit up.

The yellow vests were (are?) another one of the problems at hand. It's not as bad as people being decapitated in the streets, but a country where the shops of the main thoroughfare of the capital city are being vandalized is going to demand that its leadership do something.

2 hours ago, Rippounet said:

What exactly incites "unrest, division and hatred" in French academia?
I very much doubt you would ever be able to come up with an answer, because of course you don't know anything about it. You're only making assumptions and projections based on your own despicable ideas and hasty generalisations.

It's true that I've never heard anything particularly bad about French academia; this is why I was surprised that this initiative first showed up in France rather than in the US. However, my statement was based not on any generalizations, but on the article you linked:

Quote

Education Minister Jean-Michel Blanquer has bemoaned the influence of American critical race theory on the French social sciences, blaming them for undermining France’s race- and ethnicity-blind universalism, and for giving comfort to “islamo-gauchisme,” or “Islamo-leftism.” That term, coined by the French far right, blames progressive intellectuals for nourishing radical political Islam through their work on structural racism and Islamophobia. “The fish rots from the head,” Blanquer quipped.

As far as I can tell, the ideas being called out as problematic are exactly the same ones as in the US (and in fact are imported from the latter). Of course, it's entirely possible that once the law is passed it will be used against something different.

2 hours ago, Rippounet said:

Academia is just another way of talking about the quest for truth, without which our societies would still be trying to figure out how gravity works. The reason why so many people want to attack it the very opposite of what you say: because for the past decades (centuries?) it has been saying that divisions are absolutely artificial. Religions are bullshit, races and nations are fictions. Academia exposes the fact that humans are one big species with a lot of problems, and that simple truth is making a lot of people very uncomfortable. Many people would rather believe in their fictions, and of course, believe that their fictions are better than those of their neighbors.
Or perhaps it is more accurate to say that some people want to preserve those fictions to preserve their power. Academia is threatened when governments veer toward authoritarianism, because authoritarians do not want anyone to be able to speak truth to power, nor people to learn that the narratives they are being fed are just that, narratives, stories for the simple-minded and the gullible.
When governments target universities, it almost always means that they have a narrative to sell, one that is that very simple and very wrong.

Yes and no. It is indeed nominally a quest for truth, but people figured out early on that absolute truth is hard to come by. This might belong in a separate thread, but the knowledge that comes out of academia can be divided into the easily testable and falsifiable (math, science, engineering, etc.) which leads to technology (in its most general sense) and everything else (the humanities, social sciences, economics, etc.). The falsifiable is rarely censored nowadays because all but the most hidebound authoritarians have caught on to the fact that this kind of knowledge really is power -- nothing is gained from suppressing the knowledge of how to build a better magnet or microscope or whatever. There are still some conflicts at the boundary (e.g. climate change), but those are eventually resolved as more evidence accumulates.

Even this kind of truth is not necessarily good. Sometimes it can be used both for good and for evil (as with rocketry which can launch satellites, but also ICBMs) and sometimes you have just enough of it to get something you want (e.g. energy) without fully understanding the cost (e.g. climate change). However, this is nothing compared to the other sort of knowledge. Because they're not easily falsifiable or testable but can nevertheless guide policy, ideas from the social sciences and economics can do a great deal of harm before people finally abandon them. Sometimes the problems arise because ideas from academia are misinterpreted, but more often most (though usually not all -- there are dissenters) of academia is a willing and enthusiastic participant in the madness of the day. This has happened multiple times in multiple places and most of the ideas that are taboo now were mainstream as late as the mid-20th century or later.

In other words, there is usually a narrative present, but it either originates from academia or academia joins in quite early and vocally. Once a bad narrative settles in, it's virtually impossible to dislodge except over decades or centuries -- in the past, the main way people have managed to do it quickly is with a war.

4 hours ago, Rippounet said:

The usual: social programs, education, healthcare...

It won't do. France is already better than most of the world in all of these and while this undoubtedly a good thing in general, it does not help in these instances (or not enough, anyway). You are starting from a sufficiently high baseline that substantial improvements are difficult and expensive.

[DMC]

30 minutes ago, Altherion said:

Because they're not easily falsifiable or testable but can nevertheless guide policy, ideas from the social sciences and economics can do a great deal of harm before people finally abandon them.

The bolded claim inarguably demonstrates one of three things:  (1) you've never read a social science paper or study; (2) you've never understood a social science paper or study; or (3) you're lying.

[Varysblackfyre321]

1 hour ago, Altherion said:

The yellow vests were (are?) another one of the problems at hand. It's not as bad as people being decapitated in the streets, but a country where the shops of the main thoroughfare of the capital city are being vandalized is going to demand that its leadership do something.

There will always be those who’d posit authoritarianism as the only real way to protect freedom.

That’s not surprising.

What is disappointing here is that you seem to be positing such curbs to individual rights and protections as response here is justifiable and preferable.

1 hour ago, Altherion said:

As far as I can tell, the ideas being called out as problematic are exactly the same ones as in the US (and in fact are imported from the latter). Of course, it's entirely possible that once the law is passed it will be used against something different.

Yes, so long as no one talks about the bigoted problems in a society then there is no problem is favorite talking point for far right-wingers.

Take Poland. The President there says so long as gays are quiet there isn’t a problem. 
The second they complain for equal rights is when a problem emerges.

1 hour ago, Altherion said:

It won't do. France is already better than most of the world in all of these and while this undoubtedly a good thing in general, it does not help in these instances (or not enough, anyway). You are starting from a sufficiently high baseline that substantial improvements are difficult and expensive.

And so The government and French society should embrace nationalism and a more authoritarian and less accountable government?

I have to ask how you’d feel if instead Macron and the French government proposed banning any depiction of Muhammad from the public square with the punishment being a lengthy jail sentence.
That could have saved the teacher’s head.

Please note you’ve already conceded curbing civil rights and protections are totally appropriate to stop any displays of violence.

2 hours ago, Altherion said:

However, this is nothing compared to the other sort of knowledge. Because they're not easily falsifiable or testable but can nevertheless guide policy, ideas from the social sciences and economics can do a great deal of harm before people finally abandon them. Sometimes the problems arise because ideas from academia are misinterpreted, but more often most (though usually not all -- there are dissenters) of academia is a willing and enthusiastic participant in the madness of the day. This has happened multiple times in multiple places and most of the ideas that are taboo now were mainstream as late as the mid-20th century or later.

The alternatives suggested towards social sciences which delves into actual data, observations and yes tests, seem to be things that don’t involve any of the things I just listed.

And I have to note there have plenty examples of galvanizing around findings in hard sciences that stuck around and hurt a lot people.

The study that showed Vaccines causes things like autism has long been debunked.

But still millions will use its findings to justify not vaccinating their children.

[Varysblackfyre321]

2 hours ago, Altherion said:

As far as I can tell, the ideas being called out as problematic are exactly the same ones as in the US (and in fact are imported from the latter). Of course, it's entirely possible that once the law is passed it will be used against something different.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outside_agitators

”If only those northerners stayed home then everything would be fine!”

You get this is an old idea right? You know blame outside forces forces  x marginalized group isn’t as quiet/subservient as it used to be.

[Altherion]

1 hour ago, DMC said:

The bolded claim inarguably demonstrates one of three things:  (1) you've never read a social science paper or study; (2) you've never understood a social science paper or study; or (3) you're lying.

You will notice I did not say "papers", I said "ideas". Modern social science papers are generally quite careful about being scientific, but it's very rare for one to come up with a falsifiable claim that directly leads to policy. The things that lead to policy are not the limited claims in papers, but ideas which appear to be at least partially supported by a set of such paper, but are not actually testable except by implementing them. For example, if, around the turn of the millennium, one had asked (as many American politicians did) whether outsourcing American manufacturing and other jobs is something the US as a whole ought to discourage or encourage, there would be a variety of reasonably rigorous papers that address various aspects of this, but they wouldn't answer the question. What happens in practice is that policy takes some course (in this case, towards outsourcing) and the consequences only become much later.

[DMC]

18 minutes ago, Altherion said:

Modern social science papers are generally quite careful about being scientific, but it's very rare for one to come up with a falsifiable claim that directly leads to policy. The things that lead to policy are not the limited claims in papers, but ideas which appear to be at least partially supported by a set of such paper, but are not actually testable except by implementing them.

Except for, ya know, the entire disciplines of public policy and public administration.  That entail researching the development and implementation of policy, respectively, by positing falsifiable expectations then testing such (in part) through examining real life policy outcomes.  Is such an endeavor able to anticipate all the effects of, say, globalization at the turn of the millennium?  No, of course not, social science can't predict the future.  Neither, by the way, can the hard sciences.  But it is invaluable to the building of knowledge in order to make the most informed policy decisions possible at the time.  Seems a much better method to policymaking than nihilistically shrugging your shoulders and saying since we can't know for sure the outcome of a particular policy we shouldn't even try to craft the best possible form of it by evaluating the heaps of information already available.

[broken one]

4 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

Mostly govts only stick to values when it happens to align with their economic interests.

This may be the case. Imagine litigation in Polish court, controlled by Polish govt (or rather ruling party). Sides are Polish state owned company and any foreign EU company. Kaczynski phones minister of unjustice... The example may be blocky and yet not very realistic, but it is all going in this direction.

[Rippounet]

11 hours ago, Altherion said:

It's true that I've never heard anything particularly bad about French academia; this is why I was surprised that this initiative first showed up in France rather than in the US. However, my statement was based not on any generalizations, but on the article you linked:

As far as I can tell, the ideas being called out as problematic are exactly the same ones as in the US (and in fact are imported from the latter).

On some level it isn't your fault. The Macron government is in fact using discourses and strategies borrowed from abroad.

Except of course, French academia is nothing like its US counterpart. By tradition, French academics are more critical of religion than any of their foreign colleagues. There isn't the equivalent of "racial studies" in France, where "race" is seen as a social construct (pretty much by law) ; the closest thing to that is "post-colonial studies" which cover many topics, most of them outside the borders of Metropolitan/European France.
The idea of French academics somehow condoning Islamism is bizarre, if not absurd. Most people I've discussed this with (both inside and outside academia) have chuckled at this idea of "islamo-leftism" because it makes no sense.
Before the government started using it, it was exclusively used by the far-right to attack left-wing intellectuals.

It's not the first time Macron's government has tried to use American paradigms in France. Macron famously declared that "liberalism is on the left" although in France "libéralisme" refers to economic liberalism and to the neo-classical school of economics specifically.
In this case though, it's political genius of the darkest kind. There's no such thing as "islamo-leftism" in French academia, but the accusation is enough to hurt both the left and academia. Two dangerous birds with one stone.

11 hours ago, Altherion said:

It won't do. France is already better than most of the world in all of these and while this undoubtedly a good thing in general, it does not help in these instances (or not enough, anyway). You are starting from a sufficiently high baseline that substantial improvements are difficult and expensive.

1) France was better at all of these. Neo-liberal attacks on the French welfare state really took off under the Chirac presidency in 1995, 25 years ago. Now, our hospitals and schools are in ruins and everyone is fighting for funding scraps.

2) The bolded is flat out wrong. All studies have demonstrated the very opposite.
To be clear, sociological studies have demonstrated that radicalism thrives in situations i) of poverty with ii) little hope of socio-economic mobility and with iii) visible inequality or injustice.
And in fact, the explosion of radicalism (and drug trafficking, not to mention prostitution) in French suburbs can directly be traced to right-wing governments putting an end to the funding of specific programs that benefited those suburbs immensely.
In fact, even this shit-government was forced to acknowledge the fact to and promised to give some of that funding back... except of course we already know that the promised 100 million euros will be given to "préfets," i.e. the officials in charge of... the police*.

Let me translate that for you: over several decades, right-wing governments took away educational programs in the suburbs, waited for radicalism to explode, and are now injecting back that money through increased forces of national police**, the same police that have been implicated in numerous cases of brutality***, to the point that the police and the gangs are now at each other's throats.

This is what French academia has been explaining for some time, though I don't think it takes a sociologist to understand that replacing social workers with policement leads to violence.
And this is no doubt the academics targetted by accusations of "islamo-leftism."
Except of course, no French sociologist worked on those studies to condone islamism but to offer explanations and solutions, precisely because they despise Islamism.

*Despite the original report recommending such funding coming from a -somehow decent- right-wing politician who stressed the importance of education rather than repression.
**France used to have more "municipal" (local) police who were trained to defuse tensions rather than exacerbate them.
***see: 2017 French riots and their causes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_French_riots

11 hours ago, Altherion said:

The yellow vests were (are?) another one of the problems at hand. It's not as bad as people being decapitated in the streets, but a country where the shops of the main thoroughfare of the capital city are being vandalized is going to demand that its leadership do something.

Here too you have it backwards. There's an entire wikipedia page showing just how wrong you are:

https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sondages_d%27opinion_sur_le_mouvement_des_Gilets_jaunes

Some key facts here:
- Though it declined over time, support for the yellow vests never ever went below the 45% approval rating.
- Only at the very end did more people possibly oppose than support the movement, and then only by small margins (53-44 being the largest margin recorded) in a small number of polls. Many still showed high levels of support a year after the movement began. For instance LCI (which is rather right-wing) had it at 55% last year:
https://www.lci.fr/social/en-direct-gilets-jaunes-sondage-un-an-apres-en-novembre-2019-55-des-francais-approuvent-le-mouvement-2103673.html
- People very clearly did want the movement to end, but that is not the same as being opposed to it.

Opposition to the yellow vests was strong... among right-wing voters. OTOH, after a year, it still got a whopping 62-16 in favor among "employees and workers," i.e. the most numerous socio-economic category of the French population.

What the French clearly wanted was for the government to answer the demands of the yellow vests.
Which it did, to some extent, precisely because at least half of the population continued to support the movement.

11 hours ago, Altherion said:

This might belong in a separate thread, but the knowledge that comes out of academia can be divided into the easily testable and falsifiable (math, science, engineering, etc.) which leads to technology (in its most general sense) and everything else (the humanities, social sciences, economics, etc.).

DMC already addressed this, but I'll underline the fact that, like most of the time, you have no clue what you're talking about.

[The Anti-Targ]

Putting this in the international thread as it's probably of more interest to those outside the USA than inside it

https://www.newsroom.co.nz/what-the-biden-doctrine-may-mean-for-the-world

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What the ‘Biden doctrine’ may mean for the world

Joe Biden has already announced key members of his national security and foreign policy team - so what can we deduce about how his administration will approach the wider world?

But while talk of re-engagement in multilateral frameworks has been widely welcomed in New Zealand, we may not like everything we see from the Biden administration, as pointed out by the speakers at an event hosted by the Centre for Strategic Studies at Victoria University of Wellington.

Van Jackson, a senior lecturer in international relations at Victoria University of Wellington and Defence and Strategy Fellow with the Centre for Strategic Studies, said while Biden would have to deal with the “gnarly set of circumstances” within the United States after assuming office, that did not mean his administration would turn inwards.

“In some ways, it might even mean the opposite in part, because the people around Biden ... believe and have expressed that one of the reasons the United States has found itself in this position is because it has proven to be too erratic, too incompetent.”

But Jackson was sceptical of any suggestion Biden’s foreign policy approach would be akin to “Obama 2.0”, citing the broader global changes caused by China, Russia and the pandemic among other issues, as well as the growing fractures within the US compared to the time of Barack Obama’s presidency.

Coupled with increased division within the Democratic Party about its foreign policy objectives, “what you get is a presidency that has every intention of making the United States a more responsible player on the global stage, but with limited means to do so in a much more constraining context than Obama had”.

While more regular diplomacy and an emphasis on alliances were likely to be a priority, Jackson said there were several areas where Biden could disappoint the Asia-Pacific region.

It was unlikely the US would rush back into trade deals like the CPTPP given bipartisan concerns about the free trade agenda, while it was possible Biden would place too much emphasis on military presence within Asia rather than softer forms of power - “just not a sustainable basis for American engagement in the region”.

Tensions between the US economic reliance on China and political concerns about its approach to human rights were likely to grow, while specific pressure for closer US-Taiwan relations could also lead to a flashpoint.

Southeast Asia squeezed

Natasha Hamilton-Hart, director of the New Zealand Asia Institute at the University of Auckland, said while the “fireworks” of China hawks under Trump were likely to make way for a more civil approach, it was possible the American view of China as a strategic rival in need of containment could in fact grow, reducing the opportunities for win-win gains.

While some countries in Southeast Asia had grown to appreciate the harder line on China over issues like the South China Sea, they also did not want to be forced to choose between the US and China.

The suggestion that the US could come back and assume its place at the head of the table might strike a jarring note in the region, Hamilton-Hart said, with any emphasis on human rights not necessarily meshing well with how countries there viewed the issue.

I guess the general thinking is there will be improvement in terms of engagement, but the direction of travel on actual policy may not change and could possibly be even less to the liking of some in the international community, because the Biden administration might actually be competent in achieving foreign policy goals. 

[DMC]

1 hour ago, The Anti-Targ said:

Putting this in the international thread as it's probably of more interest to those outside the USA than inside it

Well, on rejoining (CP)TPP, I do think it's true that while Biden certainly would like to immediately do so, politically he's more likely to enter into "negotiations" so as to not piss off the left.  Who knows how that goes, it's complicated by a number of things - like, for instance, the fact Trump reached a bilateral agreement with Japan, so what do you do with that?

However, I do have to chuckle at this notion that the Biden regime won't essentially be "Obama 2.0" when it comes to foreign policy.  Obviously it's facing different circumstances, but his foreign affairs/national security teams most certainly will have the same approach.  Reminds me of how amusing Biden's justification was that it wasn't gonna be Obama 2.0 during his interview with Lester Holt the other day:

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“This is not a third Obama term because we face a totally different world than we faced in the Obama-Biden administration,” Biden said when Holt asked if his upcoming tenure as commander-in-chief would largely be an extension of the 44th president’s. 

“President Trump has changed the landscape. It’s become ‘America First’; it’s been ‘America Alone.’ We find ourselves in a position where our alliances are being frayed. ... That’s why I’ve found people who joined the administration and keep points that represent the spectrum of the American people as well as the spectrum of the Democratic Party.”

LOL.  The bolded is exactly what Obama was saying in regards to Dubya's administration upon entering office.