France Arrests Telegram CEO Pavel Durov for not adequately moderating Telegram, allowing it to be used for various criminal activities, and for not cooperating with police.
Muskrat's ranting about "free speech" again, which is hilarious both because he can and will try to censor anyone critical of him (like the woman he settled a sexual harassment suit with her having to sign an NDA), and because it is very, very obvious that if France is arresting Russia-aligned billionaires for misuse of social media, his ass is next on the chopping block. Especially with Imane Khelif having an outstanding complaint for criminal cyber-harassment naming him IN FRANCE.
I guess Muskrat and Rowling can't plan any business trips or vacations to France (or any country with an extradition treaty to it). Excuse me while I play the world's smallest violin.
Also, (from a post I saw earlier) apparently Putin's mouthpiece Edward Snowden is accusing France of "taking hostages". Looks like this arrest rattled all the right people.
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lol in france
just for information in france, the general fund for retirement is in deficit of 13 billion euros, today we have just learned of searches at 5 banks including 1 English for tax fraud 130 billion, tax on dividend not paid to the French state
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Discover the 10 Most Expensive Residences in the World and their Current Value
From historic royal palaces to modern architectural marvels, the world’s most expensive homes offer a glimpse into the lavish lifestyles of the wealthiest individuals. These properties surpass ordinary values, showcasing unparalleled architectural grandeur and luxury. Let’s explore ten of the priciest homes globally, where prices reach staggering figures and the lifestyle is nothing short of…
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Monet’s red period
He was the sugar-sweet Tchaikovsky of impressionism. But as the Royal Academy's blockbusting new exhibition will show, Claude Monet was also a radical
By Andrew Mar, Sat 9 Jan 1999 22.19 EST
The Guardian
"...There is not much cachet in liking Monet; rather the reverse. This is art for the easy-on-the-eye brigade, the philistine rich and the know-nothing middle classes. Isn't it? He is soft, luscious and commercial; the Tchaikovsky of the paintbrush, turning out sweet, dancing little Sugar Plum fairies of paintings, isn't he? It's clever, technically brilliant; but eye-candy. No?
Such snobbery tends to drive curators to justify Monet exhibitions by insisting on his political and art-revolutionary relevance. There is a slight embarrassment about the very popularity of Monet shows, as if they were like the 'erotica' section in posh bookshops which keep them in business but are hardly the sort of thing one would wish to be judged on.
So the curators of this show have gone to some lengths to reclaim Monet as a hard-edged artist, just as happened with the 1990 show, 'Monet in the Nineties'. Then, the emphasis was on putting Monet's images of haystacks, poplars and Rouen cathedral in the context of resurgent patriotism, closely connected with the land and traditional art: he was political, see. Now, the catalogue includes an essay on the connections between late Monet and New York abstract expressionism - almost as if Monet has to be excused, or validated, by linking him with Jackson Pollock.
In each case, the arguments are meticulous - the US academic Paul Hayes Tucker worked on both exhibitions and contributes a superb essay to the catalogue. And indeed, these are not only deliriously beautiful but also radical, extreme and sometimes even difficult paintings, created by an artist who might have been old - he was 60 in 1900 - but was a full, wide-eyed observer of the first quarter of our tragic century.
When it opens, he is recovering from the great trauma which ripped French society apart a few years before: the Dreyfus Affair, in which a Jewish captain was wrongly accused of passing military secrets to the Germans, court-martialled, degraded and deported to solitary confinement. It split a worried nation in two, with viciously anti-semitic, Catholic and right-wing forces, against the Left and the liberals.
The anti-semitic, anti-Dreyfus campaign included, to their shame, Degas, Renoir and Cézanne. But when, with huge courage, Emile Zola led the charge for Dreyfus, Monet sprung quickly to his defence. Zola was convicted of libel and sentenced to imprisonment; instead he fled to England in 1898..."
"Zola was not a Marxist, but he was anti-capitalist; almost everything he writes is a denunciation of the greed, brutality, corruption and hypocrisy that characterised French capitalism in his day"
Emilie Zola, A Political Reading
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You are enslaved to money because you can just never have enough to live like you want.
I'm enslaved to money because I don't have enough to get what I need.
We are not the same.
But neither of us is enslaved to money like the billionaires are. They can never have enough. They have more money than God and still cause wars and atrocities and fight every labor law and bust every union and artificially deflate our paychecks and pass on their tax burden and do all sorts of atrocities, banal evil, and outright thievery of their best, most faithful employees. And they just keep hoarding. Always more and more worthless money. Loses are unacceptable. Exceed the performance expectations or else. Just hoarders who can throw pocket change at politicians and get whatever they want. So they don't need it to buy power. They can live like emperors with Jeff Bezos yachts for infinite generations living lavishly as they know how and never ever have to attend to steering the ship themselves while their money does justice as it increases. Instead they are chaotic evil. They not only don't need it but it is utterly worthless to them they won't let us have enough to even live comfortably as Europeans, let alone upper middle class like they easily could.
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