French elections 2017: completing the hat-trick?

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

English people, not British. Get it right.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auld_Alliance

floddengate

https://www.mccaskiebutcher.co.uk/ashet-pie-serves-1

lots of the English centre right/centrist types think Macron is c'est marvelous, even if they hold grudges against the French.

the most embarrassing example was Tristam Hunt, who recently seemed to lose all sense of decorum when waxing lyrical about Manu.

They love the centrist bad boy. The resistance of the French to the doctrine of the Blessed Margaret irritates them more than any historical rivalry.

sorry yes it’s the English not the British.

Feels like a lot of people here forget that there is a larger context of police brutality in France that has been going on at least since Hollande and that the Benalla scandal is the final straw for lots of people. It's not just Benalla himself punching an innocent protester.

Also absolutely loved how Trevor Noah just schooled Araud on multiculturalism and the cultural identity of the french national football team.

Our minister of Foreign Affairs could do with some schooling of his own too

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2018/07/18/the-dutch-foreign-minister-says-multicultural-societies-breed-violence/

The Trevor Noah thing yes, that’s one of the horrible shit things my American friends were sharing this week. Typical American drivel (yes I read that the guy is South African, another great place from which to be lectured on race).

Well as someone who was born in Canada from Périgord parents, am I not french? Would you be bold as to cancel my french heritage?

You know what it is to be French, then. It’s these Americans who want to deny our players their French identities, like the FN.

So wait, am I not Canadian then?

Trevor Noah has not denied anyone anything, you can celebrate both a heritage and a citizenship, where you are and where you come from. This is what Noah is saying. This is what Araud and countless of french don't understand. There shouldn't be any need for Pogba to erase his africanité to be a french citizen, just like I was never asked to shed my french heritage to be a 100% Canadian.

These aren’t metaphysical questions. You tell me, are you Canadian?

Pogba knows his heritage. It’s just that, a heritage. You never lose your bled. If you want to be French, join the République. We don’t erase our histories in doing so. Being French is a political act, nothing more.

Well if you don't erase the history then there should be no problem celebrating Kanté's african origins.

Why should we, with the FN, draw attention to it? If Kanté wants to do so, he can. But why should we do what the FN does?

Because fuck what the FN does, let's not let them determine what we do at all in any way?

What the FN does is so obviously different I don't know where to start.

On one side you have a group of xenophobic numbskulls who want to deny Kanté's frenchness, while constantly reminding us of their africanité.

On the other you have a bunch of black people from all over the world who want to celebrate Kanté's africanité, without ever denying his frenchness.

If you can't extract one ideology from the other than perhaps yeah, the FN has won the cultural battle in France.

Plus the idea that Noah's heritage as a South African wouldn't give him any authority to discuss race relations is a serious wtf. I don't want that to go unnnoticed.

Why is Kanté’s heritage in Africa anyone else’s to celebrate, if he’s not doing it? Or Mendy’s? These are private things. What is public is that they are French. They can choose to make their heritages public, but it is their choice. Your motivation might be different from the FN’s, but the effect is the same: to rob them of their choice on how to relate their heritage and their nationality, for your own purposes.

These questions are ones we can, and should, disagree about. There are a variety of perspectives at play here. A South African perspective will carry baggage that may obscure the French situation—-just as my French immigrant’s perspective does. I am denying privilege here to any perspective; Noah and others I read judged their perspective sovereign. Let us listen to individuals rather proclaim authoritatively which read on identity is “correct”. Let’s engage this politically then, not metaphysically.