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Elizabeth Sheppard Sellam estimated that whenever moderates prevailed, their opponents mobilized. She wrote that common sense, nuance, and compromise seemed unbearable to those who thrived on hate and confrontation, and deemed this intolerance worrying and dangerous for democracy. #Démocratie #Intolérance #Compromis (translated)

Maurits Vande Reyde wrote that the public broadcaster had mostly given a voice to people in recent weeks who were in favor of a larger government and against cuts. A cut of 1 percent in subsidies was proposed as a national disaster, among others in discussions with trade unions and Paul De Grauwe, whom Vande Reyde said had claimed that the government debt would vanish like snow in the sun. He also stated that the broadcaster was actively looking for protesting students to give legitimacy to the riots. Vande Reyde accused the VRT and other traditional media of ignoring issues that people were concerned about or portraying those with such concerns as foolish. According to him, subsidized activist organizations were given ample space, while guests advocating for a smaller government or who were critical of migration were invariably surrounded by additional commentary and counterarguments. Vande Reyde wondered whether this reporting explained the loss of trust in traditional media. He wrote that media subsequently labeled social media as suspicious and presented themselves as the only reliable source, while according to him they were pursuing more subsidies and advertising revenues. #MediaBias #Overheid #VRT (translated)

Actu Foot reported that Omar Da Fonseca had defended Kylian Mbappé, who was criticized in Spain after a bike ride with his girlfriend. In a statement relayed by Rothen s’enflamme, Da Fonseca mentioned that a 28-year-old man could be in love and suggested that José Mourinho had lost his sense of nuance regarding authority. https://t.co/Wik7PTjeoN #Amour #Football #KylianMbappé (translated)

Lors de son vol de retour vers le Vatican, le pape Léon XIV a nuancé ses déclarations sur le caractère systémique des violences sexuelles dans l'Église, en soulignant l'importance des responsabilités individuelles plutôt que d'un système global. #PapeLéonXIV #ViolencesSexuelles #Église

Nederlandse Joden helpen de regering Jetten de rel te sussen. Het zou niet gaan om controles van alle Israëli’s, maar slechts om “een groep van 15 Israëli’s”. Ook haast men zich te benadrukken dat niet alle vluchten uit Israël worden gecontroleerd. Maar dat is volledig bezijden het punt. Dat er extra wordt gecontroleerd op vluchten uit Israël is een feit. Evenals dat specifiek wordt gezocht naar de herkomst van Israëlische producten. Het gaat bovendien niet om commerciële handel, maar om reizigers die simpelweg wat producten hebben meegenomen. Het blijft een grof schandaal dat deze buitenproportionele Nederlandse maatregel wordt gehandhaafd, zonder rekening te houden met de verschillende juridische status van de gebieden waar producten vandaan kunnen komen: Judea en Samaria, Jeruzalem en de Golan. Ook binnen Judea en Samaria is die nuance essentieel. De Oslo-akkoorden maken onderscheid tussen Area A, B en C. In Area C heeft Israël onder de bestaande afspraken vergaande bevoegdheden, waaronder op het gebied van planning en bouw. Je kunt niet simpelweg alle producten uit Judea en Samaria over één juridische kam scheren. De ophef hierover is dan ook volkomen begrijpelijk en terecht. Nederland is hier veel te ver doorgeschoten en heeft zich feitelijk uitsluitend op Israël gericht, terwijl vergelijkbare maatregelen tegen landen waar juist mensenrechtenschendingen en/of illegale bezettingen NIET ter discussie staan, waaronder Iran, Turkije, Marokko en China, uitblijven. Dit gaat allang niet meer over een paar producten in een koffer. Het gaat erom dat Nederland Israël aan een uitzonderlijk regime van controle en beperkingen onderwerpt, zonder de relevante juridische verschillen binnen de betreffende gebieden in acht te nemen en hoogstwaarschijnlijk onrechtmatig handelt. En precies dat is de kern van het probleem. Nederland probeert de imago schade te beperken, en spant daarbij de kleine Joodse gemeenschap voor haar karretje. Wat een schande. #Israël #Joden #Nederland

Le pape Léon XIV a nuancé les accusations de caractère systémique des violences sexuelles au sein de l'Église catholique en affirmant que, bien que certaines organisations aient commis des abus de façon systématique, il préfère exprimer cette problématique différemment, tout en reconnaissant la responsabilité institutionnelle dans ces violences. #violencessexuelles #Eglise #LeonXIV

Le pape Léon XIV a nuancé le caractère systémique des violences sexuelles dans l'Église après avoir rencontré sept victimes en France, soulignant que bien que certains abus aient été commis de manière systématique, il considère que les agresseurs sont des individus et non des représentants d'un système institutionnel. #ViolencesSexuelles #Église #PapeLéonXIV

Le pape Léon XIV a nuancé le caractère systémique des violences sexuelles au sein de l'Église catholique, affirmant qu'il préfère parler d'abus commis par certaines organisations plutôt que de reconnaître un système généralisé de violence, après sa rencontre avec des victimes en France. #ViolencesSexuelles #ÉgliseCatholique #PapeLéonXIV

Reinaldas J., die op 11 juni in Vogelwaarde drie kinderen en een volwassene doodreed, mag na drie maanden gevangenis onder voorwaarden vrij tegen de achtergrond van juridische nuances tussen schulddelicten en opzetdelicten, wat leidde tot woede bij de nabestaanden. #Verkeersongeval #Schulddelict #Rechtsorde

The Return to Feudalism in 21st Century Garb A simple observer's viewpoint, with no claim to hold any absolute truth. The Veneer Cracks There is something strangely archaic about the world unfolding before our eyes, despite its satellites, artificial intelligence, and promises of infinite progress. Here and there, we witness heads of state behaving like feudal lords of another age, patiently nibbling away at the neighboring territory, redrawing borders through force rather than law, as if governing a nation mattered less than expanding one's fiefdom. No names need be mentioned here: current events provide plenty of illustration, and each reader will recognize, according to their own geography and moment of reading, the faces that embody this observation. But this return to the archaic is not confined to grand geopolitical stages. It also permeates the most ordinary daily life—that of social media, where anyone can pour out venom against another without filter, without form, and often without the slightest argument. The verbal jousting of yesteryear, with its codes, its rhetoric, its tacit limits, has given way to raw invective, snap judgment, instant condemnation. We no longer debate: we execute, verbally—and sometimes it doesn't stop at words. The Vanished Inhibition What strikes one, in this dual observation—macro-political and micro-social—is the lifting of an inhibition we thought firmly anchored. Centuries of cultural construction, education, philosophy, sometimes religion, had patiently shaped mechanisms of restraint: politeness as social ritual, argumentation as a mode of resolving disagreement, respect for one's opponent as the very foundation of democratic debate. This civilizational veneer, however fragile it always was, seemed to hold. Today it is cracking, and the question—which for me remains a simple hypothesis, not a certainty—is why. A convenient explanation would blame social media: anonymity, the distance of the screen, the instantaneousness of publication would favor verbal acting-out without the usual mediation of reflection. This is probably true, but likely insufficient. For technology here is only an accelerant, an amplifier—not necessarily a root cause. A Poorly Formatted Neocortex? The more unsettling hypothesis—and I frame it explicitly as hypothesis, not scientifically established fact—is that of a failure in the formation of moral judgment and tolerance toward otherness. The human brain possesses the neural structures enabling empathy, the distancing of impulsive reaction, the acceptance of difference—but these capacities are not innate in their full exercise: they must be built, educated, cultivated, like a muscle that needs patient training from childhood onward. If this education in otherness, nuance, and tolerance of disagreement erodes—for multiple and undoubtedly complex reasons that are not mine to settle here—then older reflexes resurface: instinctive distrust of the stranger outside the clan, the law of the strongest, the logic of territorial or symbolic predation. The other ceases to be a possible interlocutor and becomes once again a potential threat, unless they belong to my tribe, my clan, my party, my digital bubble. Two Scales, One Logic What is striking, in this deliberately provocative reading, is the structural similarity between these two scales. The leader who invades a neighbor in the name of a rediscovered greatness or a reinvented historical right, and the anonymous internet user who insults a stranger in the name of an unnegotiable conviction, may obey the same underlying grammar: that of territory to defend, clan to protect, the other to subdue or exclude rather than understand. The form has changed—satellites instead of horses, tweets instead of heralds—but the substance, in this reading that remains mine alone and commits no one else, seems strangely identical to that of feudal rivalries: the absence of a recognized third party, of an accepted common rule, of a respected arbitrating authority. Everyone becomes judge and party, lord of their own digital or territorial fiefdom. A Civilization on a Knife's Edge Norbert Elias, in his Civilizing Process, showed how Western societies had historically built, with remarkable slowness, an increasing control over impulses and direct violence, in favor of more sublimated forms of social regulation. What we may be observing today—and I stress again the conditional—is a form of regression in this process, or at least a fragilization of the veneer it had patiently laid down. Should we see this as an effect of great technological accelerations, which shake up our cognitive rhythms without leaving education time to adapt? A deeper crisis of the institutions tasked with transmitting these values of tolerance—school, family, religion, the rule of law? Or simply a cyclical movement of human history, where phases of policed civilization alternate with darker backlashes? I have no certain answer, and I would be wary of anyone claiming to hold one. In Conclusion, a Shared Concern This text is only a viewpoint, necessarily partial and subjective, on a world that sometimes seems to replay ancient logics in new clothing. Perhaps I am wrong to perceive a continuity between the feudal lord and the contemporary dictator, between the anonymous online insult and the absence of education in nuance. Perhaps these phenomena are unrelated, or too complex to be thus summarized. But if this reading, even partially, hits the mark, then the question that arises is less one of technological regulation—though necessary—than the far more arduous question of how to rebuild, generation after generation, this capacity to accept the other in their difference, to debate without destroying, to coexist without necessarily dominating. This undertaking, if it exists, will not be resolved by an algorithm nor by an international treaty. It plays out, patiently, in the most elementary education—the one that teaches a child that the other is not a threat, but a possibility. Bibliography Elias, N. (1939). Über den Prozess der Zivilisation [The Civilizing Process]. Oxford: Blackwell (Eng. trans. 1978-1982). Lorenz, K. (1963). Das sogenannte Böse [On Aggression]. London: Methuen (Eng. trans. 1966). Arendt, H. (1970). On Violence. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World. Han, B.-C. (2013). Im Schwarm [In the Swarm: Digital Prospects]. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press (Eng. trans. 2017).

Des experts réunis par l'ONU mettent en garde contre la rhétorique catastrophiste autour de l'intelligence artificielle, soulignant que investir dans la peur n'est pas vraiment efficace et appelant à une discussion plus nuancée sur les risques associés. #IntelligenceArtificielle #RisquesIA #ONU

Le ministre de l'Intérieur, Laurent Nunez, a déclaré que le nombre de personnes tuées par la police et la gendarmerie était stable, voire en baisse, une affirmation à nuancer selon les données qui montrent une augmentation des tirs mortels par la police. #Police #Violence #Manifestation

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