Toms Ācis

Politics | Security | Technology

🇱🇻 PRO PATRIA 🇱🇻

[Toms Ācis @tomsacis]

@E_Stendzenieks Viņš nepareizi uzrakstīja, piedosim viņam. Cilvēks gados tomēr. Pareizi bija jāraksta, ka Francijā notiek sociāl-ekonomiskā apgaismība! Jaunie intelektuāļi nes apgaismību pār Eiropas barbariem - Voltēru, Igo, Dimā u.c.

[Toms Ācis @tomsacis]

@Vinotava @EdvardsRatnieks @SlesersAinars @LA_lv Jā, tur bija ļoti daudz "migrantu". Vai precīzāk sakot - okupācijas laika nelegālie imigranti. Viņi tajā vakarā pat Krievijas karogu pie Saeimas vicināja.

[Donald Tusk @donaldtusk]

Polska nie powtórzy błędów innych europejskich państw, nie będzie też za nie płacić. Twardo bronimy granicy przed nielegalną migracją, mamy własną politykę azylową (nie przyjmujemy wniosków), deportujemy tych, którzy łamią polskie prawo. W kwestii bezpieczeństwa będziemy bezwzględni. To usłyszeli ode mnie liderzy Europy w Brukseli.

[Toms Ācis @tomsacis]

Community note: LPV bija pret austrumu robežas slēgšanu lai ierobežotu nelegālo imigrāciju.

[Ainārs Šlesers @SlesersAinars]

Latvijai ir jācīnās pret nelegālo imigrāciju!
Tas kas notiek patreiz Francijā, ir ārprāts, kuru mēs nedrīkstam pieļaut Latvijā.

[Brivael Le Pogam @brivael]

You've probably seen the video. A young Frenchwoman in Paris, in tears, begging looters to stop. "Why are you doing this? That's not what we stand for."

Some accounts are mocking her. "She voted for it."

I won't. Because what you see on her face is not stupidity. It's a disease that has infected the entire West, and it has a name: suicidal empathy.

The term comes from Gad Saad, an evolutionary behavioral scientist at Concordia University in Montreal. A man who fled the Lebanese civil war as a child, and who knows what it looks like when a society falls apart. His new book, Suicidal Empathy: Dying to Be Kind, is the follow-up to The Parasitic Mind. Here is the thesis, and why it concerns every one of us.

Empathy is one of the best things about us. It evolved for a reason: to care for our children, our kin, our tribe. It was calibrated for a world where the people you felt for were the people around you, and where empathy always came paired with its counterweight: the instinct to protect your own and to recognize a threat.

Suicidal empathy is what happens when that mechanism misfires. When it fires at the wrong targets, in the wrong amounts, with no brake. When we feel more for the criminal than for his victim. More for the stranger who breaks the rules than for the citizen who follows them. More for how compassionate we look than for what our compassion actually produces.

Where does it come from? Four layers.

First, biology. Empathy is a spotlight, as the psychologist Paul Bloom put it. It lights up the one face in front of you and leaves everything else in the dark. The crying migrant on the boat is visible. The thousands of future victims of a broken system are statistics. A spotlight is a terrible tool for running a country.

Second, our own civilization. The West is the civilization that put the victim at the center of its morality. Christianity taught us to care for the stranger, the poor, the weak. It was one of the greatest moral revolutions in history. But cut off from its other half, justice, responsibility, the duty to protect your own, it turns into something else.

Third, ideology. In The Parasitic Mind, Saad described idea pathogens, ideas that hijack our reasoning. Suicidal empathy is the emotional counterpart: an ideology that hijacks our compassion. It sorts the world into oppressors and victims, then demands unlimited empathy for whoever ranks as the victim, whatever they do.

Fourth, status. In the age of social media, empathy has become a display. Posting "refugees welcome" costs nothing and earns applause. The bill goes to someone else: the working class, the suburbs, the women walking home at night.

The results are everywhere. Criminals treated as victims of society. Sexual assaults by migrants met with lenient sentences. Self-defense branded as aggression. Borders treated as cruelty. Saad's conclusion is simple: a society dies when it would rather display infinite tolerance than use its survival instinct.

Now the part I'll add myself, and that few people dare to say.

On average, women score higher than men on measures of empathy. It's one of the most consistent findings in psychology, across cultures, and it makes perfect evolutionary sense: for most of human history, the survival of children depended on it. It's a strength.

But it means an ideology that weaponizes empathy will hit women harder. And the data shows it: in country after country, young women have moved sharply to the left of young men, especially on immigration.

This is where men have a responsibility.

Not to mock. Not to lecture. Not to say "she deserved it." Empathy has always needed a counterweight, and that counterweight was the protective instinct: the one that draws lines, says no, and stands between the threat and the people it loves.

Men abandoned that role. They were told it was toxic, and many believed it. So they stayed silent at the dinner table, at work, with their partners, sisters, daughters and friends.

That has to end. Men have to have this conversation, honestly and with respect: compassion that cannot say no is not compassion. It's surrender. And the first to pay for it are women.

Many women already understand this better than anyone. Some of the bravest voices in this fight are women, precisely because they are the first to feel the danger in the street.

A civilization rests on a balance: compassion and strength, openness and borders, mercy and justice. When one side swallows the other, the foundations crack. What we are watching in Europe is what happens when empathy has no counterweight left.

Look at that young woman again. She isn't the enemy. She's what this ideology made of a generation that was told kindness would be enough.

Our job is to make sure she's the last generation that has to learn it this way.

[Toms Ācis @tomsacis]

Franču skolēni iegādājas skolas formas nākamajam mācību gadam.

[Patricio Andolini 🇨🇵🇮🇹 🇮🇱 ⚡️PFM Soutien FDO⚡ @Corleone040480]

#France
La nouvelle France selon Jean Luc Mélenchon se prépare ...

[Toms Ācis @tomsacis]

Īsumā, franču skolēni izlaupa Dior veikalus lai varētu atļauties nopirkt Voltēra grāmatas.

[Salvis Lapiņš 🇺🇦 🇦🇷 @SalvisLapins]

Tā kā netiek ziņots, ka Francijā būtu izlaupīts kāds grāmatu veikals, tad šķiet ka ar grāmatu pieejamību skolēni ir apmierināti.

[Toms Ācis @tomsacis]

@JurgisLiepnieks Francijas sociālisms tomēr ir kaut kas īpašs un dziļi iesakņojies franču politikā un kultūrā. Nevajag to novērtēt par zemu.

[Linda Mazure 🎗️ (Vinotava) @Vinotava]

Kā ir, vai Ivars Kalviņš ir jau atkāpies no @LZA_LV vadības? Cik ilgi var melīgi lobēt fiktīvus zinātniekus? Vai Divjai Kananai Višvanatai ir Latvijā atzīts doktora grāds?

[Toms Ācis @tomsacis]

@ansisklintsons Necik. Vajag tikai apprecēt bagātu radžu.

[Toms Ācis @tomsacis]

Ar ko vispār nodarbojas LZA? Kas ir viņu lielākie atklājumi un pētījumi pēdējos 10 gadus? Vai nav tā ka tas vienkārši ir pensionētu profesoru klubiņš kura vienīgais mērķis ir parūpēties pašiem par sevi? Manuprāt valsts apmaksātai zinātnei jābūt koncentrētai pie universitātēm.

[Ben Stiller @BenStiller]

🇺🇦

[Anne Applebaum @anneapplebaum]

Trump is lying again. Putin started the war and has repeatedly refused to negotiate to end it. The US spent nothing like $350 billion. Half the money is not missing. Washington and Moscow are both significantly more corrupt than Kyiv. Putin, not Zelensky, is a dictator who openly steals elections.

[Andris Kulbergs (AS) 🇺🇦🇱🇻 @AndrisKulbergs]

We 🇱🇻 were way too patient, way too tolerant to accept such misleading, Russian agression justification... Independent 🇷🇺 journalism has to be treated with great precaution and triple checking.
Finally the 🇱🇻 government took the right decion, which had to be taken already long time ago. Thanks to @janisdombrava and @Braze_Baiba for executing this.

[Toms Ācis @tomsacis]

Beidzot tas mēsls būs prom!

[Leonid Ragozin @leonidragozin]

I can now confirm that yesterday I was notified of my expulsion from Latvia where I lived for 12 years. This, I believe, is a long-brewing revenge by far right politicians for my investigation into their links to Russian neo-Nazis who found refuge in Kyiv and who circulated the manifesto of Christchurch shooter in 2019. It is also a punishment for my commentary on the Russian aggression in Ukraine and for Pavel Sheremet investigation.

The notification doesn’t point to any specific misdemeanours or statements which prompted the decision. I was declared persona non grata, a status designed for diplomats who enjoy immunity from prosecution, not for ordinary people. This was done - as far right politicians who spearheaded the decision openly admit - in order to deny me justice in the Latvian court system: PNG status cannot be appealed in courts. This makes me conclude that I am facing political persecution.

For me it is a huge personal tragedy. I am being evicted from my only beloved home, deprived of my circle of friendship and support. I love Latvia, the land of my ethnic Latvian ancestors, and have no sense of revenge. I will always remain pro-Latvian. It makes me immensely sad that high positions in the Latvian government have been captured by forces whose closest political relation is Putin and who are using Putin’s aggression in Ukraine as a pretext for eroding the rule of law and democracy in the European Union.

My stance on the war in Ukraine remains unchanged. I condemn the Russian aggression and support Ukraine’s sovereignty over occupied territories. Ukraine is a wound in my heart, not a source of political gain as it is for my persecutors. But I’ll continue to criticise Western countries for mishandling this conflict and not acting in the best interests of the Ukrainian people. I shall not be gagged.

Shame on those who understand what is happening but look away or buy into smear campaign waged against me by the pro-war lobby and far right info dumps. One day, they’ll come for you, too.

Attn @RSF_inter @ECPMF

[Toms Ācis @tomsacis]

@akberzins @AndrisKulbergs Ja Liepājā saka, ka nav iespējams, tātad nav iespējams.

[Toms Ācis @tomsacis]

@AndrisKulbergs Kā mums iet ar 155mm lādiņu ražošanu?

[Toms Ācis @tomsacis]

@AndrisKulbergs vai taisnība? Liksiet šo veco komjaunieti par Ārlietu ministru?

[Toms Lūsis 🇪🇸🇮🇪🇫🇴 @LusisToms]

Pilsētā runā, ka AS ārlietu ministra amatam vēlas virzīt Māri Riekstiņu - cilvēku, kurš savulaik (2010) kandidējis no viena saraksta ar Šleseru (Par Labu Latviju), bijis premjera Kalvīša biroja vadītājs (2007) un darbojies Šķēles Tautas partijā.
Nē, nu – solīja taču pārmaiņas.

[Peter Girnus 🦅 @gothburz]

I am a member of the Norwegian Nobel Committee.

There are five of us. Five people, appointed by a parliament most of the planet could not find on a map, who decide, once a year, which human being the world has agreed to call good.

I know. I know. I think about it on the tram.

We meet in a building on Henrik Ibsens gate, a street named after a man who wrote almost exclusively about people discovering they are frauds, which nobody on the committee finds funny except me. There is a room with a long table and the portraits of the dead laureates looking down, Mandela, the Dalai Lama, a great many earnest men in spectacles, and one portrait we do not discuss, which is Kissinger, 1973, awarded while the bombs were still falling, after which two of our predecessors resigned and the satirist Tom Lehrer said political satire was now obsolete. We keep him on the wall. A reminder. Every family has the uncle.

It is October in Oslo, which means the sun gives up around four in the afternoon like a civil servant, and it rains the particular Norwegian rain that isn’t quite falling, just hanging there, judging you. I arrive with wet shoes. I always arrive with wet shoes. There is coffee, because this is Norway and there is always coffee, we drink more of it per person than almost anyone alive, and someone’s wife has sent kanelboller, the cinnamon buns, and we sit, five Norwegians, damp, caffeinated, sugared, and we decide the moral standing of the entire species.

Let me tell you how it actually works, because the world imagines a cathedral and it is, I promise you, a book club with a mandate.

287 nominations this year. 208 people, 79 organizations. Anyone can nominate, that’s the secret nobody understands: a professor, a parliamentarian, a former laureate, so the “nominee” list is meaningless, it’s a suggestion box, and every autumn some congressman nominates his own golden retriever and the press writes “SHORTLISTED.” Nobody is shortlisted. There is no short list the public ever sees. There is us, and the coffee, and the rain, and the portraits, and a Norwegian stubbornness that is older than the prize itself.

We read reports. The institute’s advisers write them, thick dull documents, and we argue. Our chairman told the BBC once that in the final meeting “there is a high temperature.” High temperature, for a Norwegian, means someone slightly raised an eyebrow and then apologized for it. We don’t do high temperature. We do a long silence, and then Kristin says “well,” and everyone knows exactly what “well” meant, and it’s settled. That’s our shouting. “Well.” You’d have to be raised here to hear the violence in it.

Now. This year. I will not say the name, because we never say the name, but you know the name.

A certain head of state wanted this prize the way a child wants a thing in a shop window, which is to say loudly, and in public, and with the full belief that wanting it was itself the argument. He said he deserved it. He said he’d ended eight wars, a number that grew most times he said it, like a fish. He had other heads of state phone us. Israel’s prime minister posted it on the internet, “Give him the Nobel.” The leaders of Cambodia and Pakistan announced they’d nominated him, as though announcing it were part of it, as though we tally mentions. A man flew around the globe collecting endorsements for a Norwegian committee the way you’d collect signatures for a petition to the council about a noisy dog.

And here, uff da, is the detail I treasure, the one that makes me smile into my coffee. The nomination deadline is the 31st of January. He took office on the 20th. So for all the phone calls, all the posts, all the gilded lobbying, the only nominations that could possibly count for this year’s prize were filed in the first eleven days of his term, before he had, by his own arithmetic, ended a single one of the eight wars. He campaigned all year for a prize whose window had shut while he was still hanging up his coat. We didn’t have to reject him. The calendar did. We just watched. Norwegians are very good at watching. We have long winters.

People think we sit there weighing his deeds. We don’t. That’s the thing I can’t make the world understand. We’re not grading his homework. We don’t owe anyone the prize for a ceasefire, however real, however loud the announcement. “He made peace” is not a sentence that ends in a medal, the way he believes it does, the way he believes every good thing ends in his name on it. The will of a dead Swede says the prize goes to whoever did the most for fraternity between nations. A dead Swede, I should add, who made his entire fortune inventing dynamite and selling arms, and spent his last years horrified at his own obituary, which called him a merchant of death, and so bought his way to immortality as a man of peace. The whole prize is one guilty arms dealer’s attempt to launder his name. We are, all of us, administering a dead man’s public relations. I find this clarifying. It keeps me humble. It should keep everyone humble, and it keeps, by my count, no one humble at all.

So who did we give it to?

An eighty-five-year-old woman. A judge. Born in Durban, under apartheid, granddaughter of a Tamil man who came to South Africa as indentured labor, a bus driver’s daughter from the poor Indian quarter, who became the first non-white woman to run a law practice in her province, who defended Mandela’s people when defending them was dangerous, who sat on the Rwanda tribunal and the court at the Hague, and who, at eighty-five, is right now a judge weighing whether a genocide is a genocide. When we told the world, our chairman said the rule of law “underpins the system we have set up to ensure peace,” and that “peace requires justice.” She wasn’t even in Oslo. She was in Nuremberg. In courtroom 600. The actual room where they tried the Nazis. You cannot stage that. God staged that, and God, it turns out, is a better satirist than any of us.

She did not phone us. She did not post. No prime minister demanded it for her on the internet. She had, as far as our deliberations are concerned, the one qualification the loud man could never manufacture, which is that she wanted the work and not the medal. The medal finds those people. It flees the ones who chase it. This is not a rule we wrote. It’s just the only pattern the hundred-odd years of our mistakes has ever shown.

The reaction from across the ocean was immediate. His spokesman posted that we “place politics over peace.” Ja. Perhaps. We’re five damp pensioners in a rainy city; of course it’s political, it was always political, it was political when we gave it to a sitting American president nine months into his first term for the promise of things he had not yet done, and we have been quietly embarrassed about that one for fifteen years, so believe me, we had a particular reason this year to prefer a woman with fifty years of verdicts behind her over a man with eight wars in front of him and a deadline already behind him.

Here is what he will never understand, the thing I’d tell him on the tram if he ever took one. We are the one prize he cannot buy, cannot post his way to, cannot have a friendly dictator phone in for him. Not because we’re incorruptible, nei, we’re as vain and wrong and human as the portraits on our wall. But because the entire point of the thing, the only power a small cold country’s book club has ever held, is that it goes to the person not performing the wanting. The moment you demand it, you’ve proven you don’t understand what it’s for, and proving that is itself the disqualification. He ran the most expensive campaign in the history of the prize and the campaign was the reason. He was never losing to Navi Pillay. He was losing to the concept.

It’s dark now. Four o’clock dark. The buns are gone. Kristin said “well” an hour ago and we all went home. I’m on the tram with my wet shoes, and somewhere across the water a very powerful man is explaining to a camera that the prize is rigged, that we’re corrupt, that he’ll win it next year, and he genuinely might, we’re only five idiots and we’ve been wrong before, Kissinger is still on the wall.

But not this year. This year an old woman in Nuremberg, in the room where the law once stared down the exact kind of man who thinks wanting a thing loudly enough should make it his, got a phone call she didn’t ask for.

That’s the job. We don’t reward the man who ends the war and announces it.

We reward the woman who spent fifty years deciding what a war was.

He’ll never see the difference. That’s rather the whole point of him.

Takk for i dag. I have to change trams.