French elections 2017: completing the hat-trick?

Yeah, but that's not what Macron was saying. That's what came from doctoring the footage.

However doctored the footage may have been, you're on thin ice when throwing words like "civilisational" about in the abstract.

Yeah, but connecting birth rates and 'civilizational' would mean he also thought trafficking routes was a 'civilizational' problem for Africa, and I don't see people making that argument.

But yeah, fuck using the word in that context anyway. And, just, fuck Macron. But still better than Fillon and Le Pen.

for a supposedly literary people, french politicians use some messed up wording!!

I think Macron meant to say "structural". Clumsy and unfortunate, sure, but missing the forest for the trees

Interesting op-ed (in French) in Le Monde on the subject

It's good, but what does this part mean?

Les travaux du politologue Gaël Brustier permettent de le situer intellectuellement et idéologiquement avec précision. C’est un « intellectuel organique du nouveau capitalisme » perpétuant un système néolibéral qui, à terme, est plus pernicieux pour l’Afrique que sa logorrhée sur la civilisation touchante de vacuité.

"que sa logorrhée sur la civilisation touchante de vacuité"? Neoliberalism is more dangerous to Africa than... something :) Help please?

talking facile shit about "civilisationnel"?

pretty much. empty and self-indulgent talk about civilization

Ok. I thought that last part connected to 'civilisation' rather than 'talk'. Got it. And yeah, I agree with that sentiment.

lol @ the suggestion that ANYWHERE in the world is "under-populated" by humans

many xps

There are places that have small populations for their area. Its not an alien notion.

The fuck at xyzzz not being able to tell Africa and Asia apart, and then just carrying on. every dumb remark to be accounted for right back at you, you insufferable know-nothing.

― Frederik B, Thursday, 13 July 2017 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Look at the desperation of today's young film crits. Fred, dear, I swiftly thought of a difference in the populations of Africa and Asia an an aside.

I can see why you want to pile on with contortions like.

And, just, fuck Macron. But still better than Fillon and Le Pen.

This is the respectable left in one post. The racist is better than er, a racist.

There are places that have small populations for their area.

/= "under-populated"

the logical endpoint of your argument is that the human population would need to be evenly spread over the square footage of the earth for any place to be considered suitably "populated", which is ludicrous from a practical and ecological standpoint

As far as keeping citing populations numbers and crossing it with notions of what might be right and civilized. Couple of examples just over the last couple of days.

This report says to have one less child to save the environment. Never mind actually actual global action to stop emmissions.

This detail in the story over the Viscount offering 5K to kill a hardcore Remainder

He was also convicted over comments he made online in response to a news article about a man called Arnold Sube, who was reported to have turned down a five-bedroom council house for his family of eight children. “I will open the bidding. 2,000 in cash for the first person to carve Arnold Sube into pieces. Piece of shit,” he wrote.

These attitudes are all over Lib and hard-right circles. All to protect their property rights.

the logical endpoint of your argument is that the human population would need to be evenly spread over the square footage of the earth for any place to be considered suitably "populated", which is ludicrous from a practical and ecological standpoint

― Οὖτις, Thursday, 13 July 2017 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

There was a debate over population densities and I am fine to leave it at that. Its more complicated but I don't actually agree that anywhere is under-populated by humans, that's all. To infer is Fred-levels of reading comprehension. Thanks.

*isn't under-populated

To infer *anymore

i know shari vari touched on this

The idea that 'eh, having lots of kids is cultural' and not contexualising the economic drivers that underpin that (including all those stemming from the legacy of imperialism and present-day economic colonialism) is what a lot of people were reacting to.

but i would like to explicitly say: high rates of fertility are sometimes based on the fact that as children in many developing countries can start working and becoming net-contributors to their households at, say 11 or 12 years old, having lots of children, especially considering that there is a good chance some will die in infancy/childhood, sometimes is the most rational economic choice for mothers.

and the amount of people on the earth is not what creates scarcity in a malthusian manner, it's the distribution of wealth

Err depends how finite or not you consider global resources

For fucks sake. Yes, one racist can be better than another racist. Because racism is an actual thing that causes actual damage, and some people cause more damage than others. It's not just a tag to put on people so guys like xyzzz can feel better about themselves. Fucking stupid purity politics.

feels weird to be on Fred's side but here I am

Sorry, everyone, I'll ignore the troll from now on. Clearly that stupid idiot knows nothing about France, Africa, Asia, or anyplace else outside his own rectum. Waste of time to discuss anything with someone that ignorant.

Err depends how finite or not you consider global resources

― licorice oratorio (baaderonixx), Thursday, July 13, 2017 9:53 AM (seven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

the world's resources are finite. the world's poor use a disproportionally small amount of them per capita.

Rich Nations, Poor Nations
20% of the people in developed nations consume 86% of the world’s goods.
12% of the world's population uses 85 percent of its water.
Globally, 20% of the world's people in the highest-income countries account for 86% of total private consumption expenditures - the poorest 20% account for a minuscule 1.3%. Specifically, the richest fifth (1/5):
Consume 45% of all meat and fish, the poorest fifth consume 5%.
Use 58% of the total energy, the poorest fifth use less than 4%.
Have 74% of all telephone lines, the poorest fifth have 1.5%.
Consume 84% of all paper, the poorest fifth use 1.1%.
Own 87% of the world's vehicle fleet, while the poorest fifth own less than 1%.
An analysis of past trends shows that the gap between the richest and poorest countries are increasing:
In 1820, it was 5 to 1.
In 1913, it was 11 to 1.
In the 1950s, it was 35 to 1.
In 1973, it was 44 to 1.
In 1992, it was 72 to 1.
The cost of providing basic health care and nutrition for all people in the world would be less than the annual cost of pet food in Europe and the United States.

"purity politics" -- the respectable left in full flow now..

lots of xps:

could you link to that info?

[quote]Les commissions permanentes, qui compte jusqu'à huit parlementaires, sont composées de membres désignés à la proportionnelle des groupes parlementaires. Les commissions spéciales, elles, peuvent compter jusqu'à 70 députés ou 37 sénateurs, et sont créées pour l'examen d'un texte en particulier. Elles sont également composées de membres à la proportionnelle du poids de chaque groupe. Par conséquent, "voter la loi en commission" consisterait purement et simplement à court-circuiter le vote en séance publique, et par conséquent une disposition constitutionnelle qui garantit la publicité des débats et leur inscription au Journal officiel (article 33), en confiant à une poignée de parlementaires le destin d'un texte législatif.[/quote]

http://www.lci.fr/politique/voter-une-loi-en-commission-la-proposition-d-emmanuel-macron-qui-risque-de-faire-du-bruit-2057475.html

In other news, our PM is an asshole but at least he's more honest than our President:

Macron's prime minister, interviewed in today's FT: pic.twitter.com/ERnvQ3PzYC

— JW Mason (@JWMason1) July 11, 2017

Why an asshole (or is that simply for being right wing)?

Because of the politics he supports (so, yes, just for being right-wing, I guess).

With guns g https://t.co/ak66rfdBcv

— Young Dirty Sprite (@Ludothekid) July 12, 2017

This thread connects the dots between 7/8 children and that piece around the environment:

This line of thinking also leads us to blaming WOC in countries w high birth rates for environmental collapse. "There's not enough for all"

— vero bayetti flores (@veroconplatanos) July 13, 2017

Brainless Libs from Denmark: b-but he is not as bad a racist! Maybe my thoughts are too complex for you please look at a map of the world instead.

Yep, the Jill Filipovic piece kicked off a lot of good commentary. idk how much to read into the fact that she's currently writing from the position of a luxe ex-pat in Nairobi.

"It's not the population growth that is the problem - it's the extreme poverty that is the underlying reason," says Hans Rosling, professor of international health at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden. "If you continue to have extreme poverty areas where women give birth to six children and the population doubles in one generation, then you'll have problems."
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-34732609

Rosling's argument---for which he took heat---was that "fertility is still trending downwards" because of "a powerful combination of female education, access to contraceptives and abortion, and increased child survival." But he recognized that Africa could present exceptions to this, and that this would be a problem for those places.

This doesn't seem racist to me.

By no means an expert on this but isn't family planning one of the conditions for the emergence of a middle class? Limited number of children allowing to spend more on them and transmitting an inheritance on which they can build on? Or maybe it is the other way around?

Yep, the Jill Filipovic piece kicked off a lot of good commentary

Am I missing a link to this upthread? Can't find it.

Hans Rosling otm. And rip :(

Am I missing a link to this upthread? Can't find it.

No - it was my mistake, Filipovic tweeted about a piece someone else wrote, rather than writing it herself.

Ah ok.

I'm sorta with the MAHB piece as a good corrective against too much optimism, until I hit this part: The fifth, “The end of extreme poverty is in sight” might be true, but more likely is “In this century extreme poverty will be the lot of most of humanity, after civilization collapses.”

"It's not the population growth that is the problem - it's the extreme poverty that is the underlying reason," says Hans Rosling, professor of international health at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden. "If you continue to have extreme poverty areas where women give birth to six children and the population doubles in one generation, then you'll have problems."

Euler - that quote is dismissed in that twitter thread. The arg is basically that anyone of us in the West consumes more resources than a family in poorer countries.

I'll look more at that link later. Its not so much that the study might or might not be downright racist, but the way these things are deployed in the political sphere from these studies looking at the impact of population tend to be end up as: Africans/the poor in the West (white or otherwise) must do x, y or z. And its not even about 6 or 7 kids, its now going down to if you want to have 3 kids well tough have 2. Cross this with race, and its another layer of toxicity.

Seem to remember a debate here about Melenchon and anti-semitism... https://blogs.mediapart.fr/egalidad/blog/170717/vel-dhiv-melenchon-daccord-avec-lepen

In sum: Melenchon agrees with Le Pen that the French state is not to blame for rounding up Jews in the Vichy era

So your response to all of this is to point out there is anti-semitism on the left. Cool.

This was thread on Macron's latest:

As a Jew, I really enjoy all these goys telling me I can't experience my identity except as it manifests in 20th c settler-colonialism. https://t.co/3nwrbw3MEu

— Sam Adler-Bell (@SamAdlerBell) July 17, 2017

There's a whole chunk of this thread devoted to arguing that it's anti-semitic to deny French culpability in the Vel d'Hiv roundup. And now the standard-bearer for the left has just gone and done that. If you're happy with that, fine. But it's going to tarnish everything else he says.

Okay, so, Macron was fucking with him, yes?

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/19/us/politics/trump-interview-transcript.html

TRUMP: We had dinner at the Eiffel Tower, and the bottom of the Eiffel Tower looked like they could have never had a bigger celebration ever in the history of the Eiffel Tower. I mean, there were thousands and thousands of people, ’cause they heard we were having dinner.

(crosstalk/garbled)

HABERMAN: You must have been so tired at, by that point.

TRUMP: Yeah. It was beautiful. We toured the museum, we went to Napoleon’s tomb …

(crosstalk)

TRUMP: Well, Napoleon finished a little bit bad. But I asked that. So I asked the president, so what about Napoleon? He said: “No, no, no. What he did was incredible. He designed Paris.” (garbled) The street grid, the way they work, you know, the spokes. He did so many things even beyond. And his one problem is he didn’t go to Russia that night because he had extracurricular activities, and they froze to death. How many times has Russia been saved by the weather? (garbled)

(crosstalk/unintelligible)

Doesn't seem out of character for philosopher-king Macron to hold that as a sincere opinion.

It is pretty sweet to see Trump travel the world and parrot whatever he's just been told though.

Just, for those who know nothing about France (Hi, xyzzz!): It was Napoleon III who designed Paris. Which I suspect Macron knows, and if Trump has even the slightest clue there were more than one Napoleon, he probably now wonders what Napoleon II designed.

Liberals always love little facts. Who designed this? Where countries are on a map? Chill out a little. You seem rattled by something.