The French

It was funny today to hear about how the French are busting up everything in sight to avoid working two more years before retirement and the Brit govmt are promising to get rid of a half million public sector jobs over five years.

I would love UK/Ire to rise up and start blocking fuel depots and airports but its just not us, is it?

xp yeah lol - always funny to see 16 yo high school kids rebelling for their pension rights

The French romance w/revolution/revolt would be merely risible if it weren't so pathetic.

harsh

I would love UK/Ire to rise up and start blocking fuel depots and airports but its just not us, is it?

― cant believe you sb'd me for that (darraghmac), Wednesday, October 20, 2010 6:07 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

happened in the uk in 2000

It's so superficial, baaderonixx, this glamour of uprising and it betrays an undemocratic spirit one finds at either end of the political spectrum in France. It's also mostly feckless; diverting progressive goals into passionate but irrational demonstrations of what amounts to an essentially impotent tantrum may make people feel empowered but it doesn't really empower them.

I agree that it's undemocratic inasmuch as it eschews the ballot box, but I disagree that that's all democracy boils down to. A precondition of healthy democracy is rational deliberation by would-be voters. In my relations with activism in France (largely amongst academics involved in last year's strikes, but also with less "exalted" people), the people involved spend a lot of time discussing things, & this is what allows for political organization. & political organization through rational deliberation leads to a democracy in which it's not just voting for your team, but because you know the candidate, or have participated in an organization in which she's involved.

have no opinion on this particular fight, but for all the revolt and car-tippings, it seems a much more rule-bound society than the uk

its the scale of it that astounds

yeah, I was blown away when I learned that they have laws regard transport strikes, so that usually when they happen (i.e. every other week) there are limits on how they can go.

holding out for this since I gotta fly to France in 10-ish days.

people involved spend a lot of time discussing things, & this is what allows for political organization. & political organization through rational deliberation leads to a democracy in which it's not just voting for your team, but because you know the candidate, or have participated in an organization in which she's involved.

I agree except for the rational part. My expereince of the French is that they like to think of themselves as so cartesian but they're pretty much like human beings everywhere.

it was funny today to hear about how the French are busting up everything in sight to avoid working two more years before retirement and the Brit govmt are promising to get rid of a half million public sector jobs over five years.

I'm a pretty pro-union, left-leaning guy but I had a similar thought. The French population is aging like the rest of us, right? And they have a comparable life expectancy and health outcomes? Do people really see it as oppressive to have to work past 60? Is there some other context I'm missing? Are they anticipating a whole wave of anti-labour legislation?

To be fair, as is often the case, the majority of the demos are now directed against sarkozy rather than the actual pension reform

I can't think of a single person, off the top of my head, whom I would wish to be President.

*ahem*

slock1, you'd really want to be Presdient of France?!

Eleven people, including several children, were injured when they jumped from the third-story window of a suburban Paris apartment building, an official said.

It wasn't known if they jumped on purpose or were forced, the judicial official said. There was no emergency in the building at the time, such as a fire.

The victims are of African origin, possibly from Angola, and an initial investigation suggested they jumped after one of the women involved became hysterical and started shouting she'd seen the devil, the official said.

Two members of the group - a 30-year-old man and a man with a criminal record who jumped out of the window holding a two-year-old child - have been taken into police custody, the official said.

All 11 victims were taken to hospital with multiple traumas. No life-threatening injuries were reported, although a four-month-old baby has been admitted to a Paris children's hospital in a serious condition, the official said.

The apartment building is located in the Paris suburb of La Verriere.

There's, as the kids say, a LOT going on with this french anti-smoking ad pic.twitter.com/bXddZcH3zN

— 🌎🌵the 🚀🌌cosmist 💣✊insurrection 🏴🚩 (@yungneocon) December 26, 2019

UH

Phenomenal

Been watching some French films lately and I wondered aloud where the directors find these strikingly weird-looking guys to star in their movies, and my partner said that’s just how French guys look. Do French guys really all look like that? Really puts their penchant for caricaturing Jews and Arabs and North Africans in a fresh light.

Never particularly noticed that the French have strikingly weird-looking guys starring in their movies. I think it might be more that Americans have strikingly conventional-looking guys starring in theirs.

^^^ truth bomb

Yup, was gonna say

You'll also have noticed they don't have strikingly weird-looking women starring in their movies. I think the ugly guy/beautiful woman thing is a longstanding cliche of French cinema.

But is it so different from anywhere else? Men are allowed to have 'character'. Lucky men!

An excellent discussion, in English, on laïcité in the wake of Samuel Paty's murder.

Macron wants the children of France’s largest minority to be given ID numbers, he’s dissolved Muslim civil rights groups and wants loyalty vows from religious figures. If you’re silent on this don’t pretend you’re serious about our society learning anything from the last century

— Marcus Barnett (@marcusbarnett_) November 20, 2020

Marshall Petain would be proud of this lad, but at least he defeated Le Pen

this is the point where Fishhook Theory is now an incontrovertible fact

Just so you know, that's a made up 'fact'. See also:

I do unequivocally apologize for the error I made in saying that Macron's bill targets Muslim children.

I do have a responsibility to facts. And I do not want to make anything harder for my colleagues who are doing an amazing job with a difficult story.

— Karen Attiah (@KarenAttiah) November 22, 2020

Doesn’t mean the law will be equally applied, something something rich and poor men sleeping under bridges.

Everyone has a national ID number from birth in France.

Furthermore, collecting ethnic/racial data is illegal since 1978

You don’t have to collect ethnic or racial data to know which neighbourhoods or populations you want to monitor. Nor is the aim of ensuring all children go to school entirely separate from the context previously discussed on the threads.

The worst new policy is the one making it illegal to film police, assuming that’s accurate reporting.

The point is Muslim children aren't being specifically assigned ID numbers. The bill itself provides enough grist for the mill, no need to focus on nonexistent issues.

As for the other policy, it makes it illegal to film police if and only if the video is accompanied by targeted death threats. Sounds like a front.

Thanks for further clearing up/exchanges on this. It's not been that well reported on so I wanted anyone to comment (I do think posting tweets is useful even when inaccurate).

Any time. It's worth remembering that stuff like this does often get lost in translation.

Btw, re: the police bill, I forgot to add that it also prohibits citizens from circulating such material if it is accompanied by death threats. If I were an MC, I'd make a video featuring salient examples of filmed police brutality and rap pointed threats over it. I'd get taken to court, where the case would likely fizzle out as an instance of artistic licence but it would help underscore just how absurd this proposal is in the first place. Oh, and the 'intention of causing harm' clause – whatever the fuck that means from a legal standpoint – was added later, which tells you all you need to know about their intentions.

It's also ridiculous to assume that this bill could in any way shape or form have prevented, say, the 2016 Magnanville stabbing attack.

In other news, Sarkozy's on trial for corruption.

🤞

While it is currently legal to film cops they have no problem pretending otherwise and threaten you or break/steal your gear if you do, so regardless of what this new bill really does I wish good luck to anyone trying to document police misdemeanings after that.

This Onion-like ultimatum from Macron would be hilarious if it didn't convey so much violence pic.twitter.com/Kvwl5Mbucw

— Tarek Younis (@Tarek_Younis_) November 23, 2020

37!

🇨🇵El Ministerio de Interior francés anuncia un balance de 46 detenidos de París, así como 37 policías heridos.pic.twitter.com/bPQDXDaXxR

— Descifrando la Guerra (@descifraguerra) November 28, 2020

French presidential election poll, second round scenario

Macron vs Le Pen

Macron: 52%
Le Pen: 48%

Harris / Jan 19-20th pic.twitter.com/JeMFC3HVli

— Politics For All (@PoliticsForAlI) January 27, 2021

christ

u ok hon hon hon?

Les Républicains are dead and buried since François Fillon's humiliating defeat, and while some of them have become full-blown macronistes in the interim, the others have openly embraced Marine Le Pen, greatly boosting her score in the process. She herself has toned down her anti-EU statements, focusing instead on curbing immigration, which is a far more popular stance, including on the so-called left. Moreover, a year prior to the election is usually when she does best, in no small part because the French get sick of whoever's in power after four years, but also because Le Pen likes to make herself scarce throughout most of the quinquennat, as this has proven to be a winning strategy. Basically you shut up and allow the xenophobic media to do your dirty job, until you're forced to open your mouth once the campaign proper begins, at which point people suddenly claim to be shocked by your statements. Anyhow, I think Marion Maréchal has a much better shot in 2027. Keep in mind that Macron's approval rating is currently 40% and on the upswing, which may not seem like much, but from a French perspective it's not bad at all. The biggest problem here is that the left is typically divided, and doesn't stand a fighting chance at the moment, although that may yet change in the coming months depending on how well the new contenders do, starting with Anne Hidalgo, the current mayor of Paris.

Hidalgo is a terrible mayor. She’s polling at 5% in the presidential at the moment.

I got some news yesterday that means I may already be eligible to vote in that election, though I don’t have the final word yet. I won’t be voting for Macron or Le Pen or Mélenchon in the first round, that much I know.

What I do worry about are voters such as my MIL's partner. Lifelong PS (Parti socialiste) supporter, hates Macron because he's too right-wing and a traitor to his party. I suspect he wouldn't vote at all in the event of another run-off involving Macron and Le Pen. Alternatively, he might vote for the latter out of dégagisme… Or so he would claim. The reality is that he's a jingoistic/openly racist asshole and has only nominally voted on the left his whole life because that's his 'team'. I once asked him to consider the effects a Le Pen presidency would have on French people of colour and immigrants in general and he gave me a horrified look, not because he hadn't thought of the implications but because he felt found out.

Speaking of Mélenchon, he should've stepped down a long time ago – La France insoumise needs new blood or it'll perish altogether. I'd love to see someone like Clémentine Autain leading the charge.