France wants Electoral Bans on Wrongthinkers

France news:

French President Emmanuel Macron Friday denounced what he described as an "anti-Semitic hydra" that had crept into "every crack" of society as he commemorated Ilan Halimi, a French Jewish man tortured to death in 2006. ...

"In 20 years, and despite the resolute efforts of our police officers, gendarmes, judges, teachers and elected officials, the anti-Semitic hydra has kept advancing," Macron said.

That crime was committed by a gang of Africans. No, there has been no resolute effort to keep Hohammedans or Africans out of Paris.

He also attacked what he described as "far-left antisemitism", saying it "rivals that of the far right", and "anti-Semitism that uses the mask of anti-Zionism to advance quietly".

Macron also said he wanted "mandatory electoral bans" for officials guilty of "anti-Semitic, racist, and discriminatory acts and remarks".

France is being invaded by Mohammedans and Africans, and its response is to abolish free speech.

Suicidal Empathy

Wikipedia:

Suicidal empathy is a purported phenomenon in which excessive, misdirected and pathological forms of empathy are claimed to be destructive for the party that exhibits it. This is often claimed to happen through prioritizing compassion, understanding and empathy over logic, and long-term consequences. There is no support for this concept in psychology, and its proponents are not psychologists or sociologists. This phrase was coined by professor of evolutionary psychology Gad Saad.

The phrase "suicidal empathy" is commonly used by culture warriors, right-wing figures, and Christian nationalists to condemn empathy towards groups such as immigrants and racial minorities, often in association with the Great Replacement conspiracy theory.[1][2] It has been referred to as a "right-wing buzzword" by The Bulwark.[3] ...

In a 2025 interview with podcaster Joe Rogan, Elon Musk uses the phrase "civilizational suicidal empathy" to refer to what he believes is the corrosion of American culture.[8] According to Musk, suicidal empathy refers to "weaponized" empathy to bring about political and policy modifications.[9][10][11]

I guess the editors do not want anyone using the term. It says psychologists do not use the term, and that the term was coined by a psychologist!

This was on display at the Supreme Court yesterday, as it was argued that birth tourists and illegal alien children should automatically become citizen because of some Civil War Reconstruction language.

Bill Maher believes in Space Aliens

Comedian and political pundit Bill Maher made a 2008 movie Religulous, making fun of religion. So he qualifies as a hard-headed atheist.

Last week he gave a tv monologue on how he now believes that we are being visited by space aliens.

If at this point you don’t believe aliens are here and observing us, maybe you’re the conspiracy theorist. They're here, they came in a sphere, get used to it.

The evidence is some of the new UFO/UAP videos that have been released.

Yes, I think a space alien invasion is as ridiculous as the religions he mocks.

Separately, Physicist Sabine Hossenfelder says We pretty much have evidence for life in other solar systems. This is based on finding signatures of non-equilibrium compounds in alien planet atmospheres.

Maybe Maher is just making a joke. Some comments:

It’s clear that Maher, like me, doesn’t believe that these aliens and their craft really exist. He’s just using the notion to criticize what’s wrong with America. If craft and aliens did exist, and we possess crashed ships and alien bodies, then somehow there has been a massive conspiracy to hide it by both Democratic and Republican governments—as well as by the press— to cover up the greatest news story in the history of humanity.

[reply] Bill Maher genuinely seems to believe in aliens—he’s not just entertaining the idea. He appears to be as convinced of their existence as he is that COVID originated from a lab leak. He has interviewed the creator of the documentary Disclosure twice — once on Real Time and once on Club Random — and was very supportive in both conversations. In a previous Overtime segment, he was also asked about Area 51 and suggested that the government is hiding evidence of extraterrestrial life. In my personal opinion Maher has been smoking too much weed.

(The first comment was retracted here.)

I am coming around to a view where it is meaningless to talk about what others believe it. I cannot judge Maher's sincerity, nor can I be sure whether he is joking. And I don't think it makes a difference.

Nor can I say whether Pres. Trump believes in God, or whether Richard Dawkins is really an atheist. It is much better to judge people based on their actions.

Lots of people have weird beliefs. I am inclined to think that if someone has some very wacky belief, like space alien visitors, then all his other opinions should be discounted. But this leaves me discounting everyone.

Another example of this is free will. Many educated people say they do not believe in free will. To me, that reduces them to a mindless automaton, or to a schizophrenic following voices in his head. When they give opinions while denying free will, they are literally saying that the opinions are not their own. But it is also possible that they believe in free will, and only deny it because of some defect in their mental logic.