French elections 2017: completing the hat-trick?

I very much doubt UK racists do this btw.

We do that thing where we claim we were the first country in the world to abolish slavery (we were not...) to get away from the fact that we were a big slave trade nation. That is kinda like that.

Of course the French revolution abolished slavery (eventually) only for Napoleon to bring ti back.

I think UK does this as well?

(DK outlawed slave trade in 1793, but from 1803, the 10 years were then spent getting enough slaves to the colonies in the Caribbean so that the trade would not be needed any more)

(the real answer is 1848, and only after a slave revolt)

(and yes, I had to google that. and sorry for spamming this thread)

Yes, the UK, of all countries, we're forever slapping ourselves on the back over William Wilberforce.

The UK is enormously proud of abolishing slavery but neglects to mention that it was replaced with indentured servitude under more or less the same conditions.

Which lasted until WW1.

Oh yeah, "look to the US they're the REAL racists" is a pan-European experience ime, it works particularly well because anti-american sentiment cuts across party and political lines. Often accompanied by "you're importing US ideas that don't belong here" said to ppl w/ social justice concerns.

so turns out he is Sarkozy on steroids who knew

Why do you write that? Up till now he hasn't been doing anything fishy like Sarko. Or has there been something going on I am not aware of?

A lot of ex-PS voters who jumped on the LRM bandwagon are surprised to discover that he's not quite Hollande redux with a supplement of charisma, although when it comes to corruption that has certainly been the case so far (in that sense, Macron and Hollande are Sarkozy's twin antithesis). As far as I can tell, he's been remarkably faithful to the majority of his pre-electoral pronouncements, at least if you look beyond the Rorschach test.

I'm slow to the news and vague but what I meant had more to do with economic policies than anything. The age old dream of the right to have a French Thatcher might be happening, after all.

Would rather have you be specific

This was a good report on the protests - mobilisations, or more likely the lack of them:

https://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2018/05/23/valeria-costa-kostritsky/may-18/

That article indicates why so few care about this mobilisation. Bored people want to play May 68, though tbf May 68 was bored people playing as well. A month ago I thought the cheminots might win this one; I’m not sure anymore. The student movement won’t go anywhere: it’s a small minority of humanities and social science students who care, no one else. When I’m around the marches I see large groups of pro-Palestinian activists, obv relevant to the students and the cheminots.

I'm slow to the news and vague but what I meant had more to do with economic policies than anything. The age old dream of the right to have a French Thatcher might be happening, after all.

so turns out he is Sarkozy on steroids who knew

A better question is how could anyone be surprised by any of this? There's a saying in France about centrists who like to label themselves "neither left nor right", that what they really are are "neither left nor left". He's been smart enough to hide most of his ideas during the campaign but it was quite obvious where his presidency would go to anyone who had been keeping an eye on him since his part in the Hollande governement.

Emmanuel Macron's assistant chief of staff Alexandre Benalla has been caught impersonating a riot cop on May 1st and beating up a protester. Mental. pic.twitter.com/I2L4kcY9Dw

— Ronan Burtenshaw (@ronanburtenshaw) July 19, 2018

wtf

the sensible centrists in action

for every protestor we curbstomp we'll pick up two more in the faubourg saint-germain

Weird story. My daughter was with the prez in the Élysée tonight, she shoulda asked him about it.

whatever happened to those conspiracy stories of cernovich and posobiec being in france before the election? surely they were due to be scooped up by interpol any second

https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-far-right-american-nationalist-who-tweeted-macronleaks

the sensible centrists in action

― Simon H., Thursday, July 19, 2018 2:52 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

No one has ever called Macron 'sensible'.

Yes, this incident single-handedly disqualifies French centrism as a viable political position. Because the US political scene is the sole benchmark according to which we may measure what goes on in the rest of the world.

Anyway, this is a major fuck-up and Macron's almost complete silence thus far only aggravates matters.

There's a whole bunch of incidents at this point that disqualifies the idea of Macron as a centrist, however I agree pom, none of them disqualifies centrism as a viable political position in France.

I don't care a lot about this incident, it's stupid and they've fired the guy. I doubt Manu was like "go stomp some faces" but maybe that doubt is where we differ

my daughter met Manu last night! w/ other bac mtbs. he talked literature for a long time with them, about L'École des femmes in particular. he has a lot of layers...

I'm coming around on the view that parcoursup is a disaster & that I should have protested it this spring.

I'd be interested in what you have to say about Parcours Sup, some of my cousins had to go through the horrific process of applications a few years back and they hated it so much any change was welcome to them.

I doubt Manu was like "go stomp some faces" but maybe that doubt is where we differ

The problem lies elsewhere: upon finding out, they merely suspended him for two weeks. You can't just hush this shit up, especially when your goal is to achieve a République exemplaire.

It's more than just a stupid incident. We are talking about an employee of the executive going vigilante and violent on protesting citizens, dunno what amount of cynicism it takes to not feel shivers from such an idea.

he has a lot of layers...

Read this as, he has a lot of lawyers...

well we're in the 2nd half of July & 1/3 of new bacs don't have a "oui" for the rentrée.

rather than technocrat reforms like a new! software! solution! they could just...add more seats to the programs students actually want, without forcing them to move far away (one of my daughter's friends finally got a "oui" in Brest last week, which she accepted, but she's never been to Brest, and it's not like that's a special place for a psychology license).

my unit got like 2000 applications for like 300 seats in L1. I have no problem with sélection, far from it, but they gave us no resources to do the sélection. if you want to do admissions at that level then pay us or better give us teaching reductions for it. there aren't admissions offices here like there are in the usa or canada (thank goodness!) but you can't just stick us with the workload then. I'm not talking about training us, I'm talking about funding the work!

& yes it was obvious going in that everyone was gonna want the same seats and that there would as a result be a lot of people waiting. I mean I know it's hard to solve this but then maybe don't institute a new way of doing it on the fly?

& I know that the French way is to be given a way to do things, then for individual actors to say lol & do it their own way, and somehow things end up working out---I admire this way, we seem like a top-down place but really the bureaucracy is just a sketch & order emerges from the bottom. but we needed more time to make this one work. they gave us like 1 month!

This Macron scandal is taking on a life of its own. Chief of Staff Strzoda taking early retirement, Interior Minister Collomb looking increasingly precarious - and now BFM reporting Macron himself saw assault footage and signed off on a two week suspension for Benalla. Amazing.

— Ronan Burtenshaw (@ronanburtenshaw) July 20, 2018

I feel it is important to point out that the beating happened in the place where the video for "The Bad Touch" was filmed

my daughter met Manu last night! w/ other bac mtbs. he talked literature for a long time with them, about L'École des femmes in particular. he has a lot of layers...

Never mind the right-wing policies and racism and all-round badness of the guy. At least he has read a novel..

lol ok aren’t you british ?

anyway Mélenchon showing his ass today saying the Benalla thing is worse than Watergate

Yes, the focus here should totally be on what Mélenchon has said.

as long as we're all focusing on Benalla's bad touch then I'm cool

hyperbolic of course but imagine being Macron's opponent and not playing up the hell out of this tbh, it's too beautiful a gift

it should literally be illegal and career-ending to compare anything to watergate ever any more: choose other scandals (and suffixes) please

hyperbolic of course but imagine being Macron's opponent and not playing up the hell out of this tbh, it's too beautiful a gift

― wayne trotsky (Simon H.), 21. juli 2018 18:30 (nine minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Dude, aren't you in every American politics thread warning about overplaying the Russia story? Wtf?

This is so much more simple and visceral than anything to come out of russiagate

and so much more minor as well

This is so much more simple and visceral than anything to come out of russiagate

― wayne trotsky (Simon H.), 21. juli 2018 18:55 (one minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Lol. Bullshit.

I mean

president keeps a private thug bodyguard & this guy has some friends in the police trying to save his job by breaking laws

vs

president asks for and receives the help of another country's spy service to get elected

Fred are you packing the pee tape

Don't see what my nationality has to do with what I pointed out.

However I am finishing a novel rn..

kick benalla out of office, invite him onto ILB

ime british people generally have a grudge against france so their perspectives on french politics are clouded by their prejudices. ime.

reading the dumb takes on race & the world cup team this week in english-language media has me a bit grumpy on brits/usa-ers toward france I confess