French political discussion megathread: Yellow Vest Redux

[LAKISYLVANIA]

https://twitter.com/cosminDZS/status/1546975067812216832

I don't know why this is a bad thing. It is the right thing to do. It's more extremist and authoritarian to be in favour of covid restrictions. The real authoritarians - IN THIS CASE - are located in the center.

It's one of the most overblown things ever, and all restrictions have aged horribly. How can one be a good person AND be in favour of harsh restrictions (which was true in the case of France) as well as continuous fearmongering, even today. Also it fuels distrust & hate towards things we should cherish like democracy.

And when entirely democratic decisions are used to proof that one thing isn't democratic, than that's essentially the bankruptcy of a democacy. A joke/failed/weak democracy like the Weimar Republic.

And eroding democracy isn't just a thing caused by the "extremes", it's sometimes also because the center is failing and allowing the extreme sides to exist and flourish because they honestly have let the people down being ignorant to the issues of common people. Doesn't excuse the hate towards certain demographics now. But if it goes wrong, i will blame the center too for creating this environment in the first place.

A story we've all been very familiar with.

[NewYorkExpress]

Pressure is mounting on Minister for Relations with Local Authorities Caroline Cayeux to resign over old homophobic remarks.

Pressure is mounting on a French government minister to quit over comments stigmatizing homosexuality and LGBTQ people, in the latest challenge to President Emmanuel Macron’s leadership.

Caroline Cayeux’ remarks have hurt and angered many – including her colleagues — and prompted broader discussion around persistent discriminatory attitudes by people in power.

More than 100 prominent figures published an appeal Sunday in the newspaper Journal du dimanche questioning why she's still in government. Signatories included parliament members, senior officials, an Olympic medalist, doctors, artists, an ex-prime minister, a former top Macron adviser and others from within Macron's centrist political camp.

Cayeux was asked in an interview this week about her opposition to France’s 2013 law authorizing gay marriage and adoption, and comments at the time saying they were “against nature.” Speaking Tuesday to broadcaster Public Senat, she said she was being wrongly painted as prejudiced.

“I maintain my remarks. I always said that if the law were voted, I would apply it," she said. "I have a lot of friends among all those people, and I’m being targeted by an unfair trial. This upsets me.”

[NewYorkExpress]

Macron vows to stamp out Holocaust Denial.

French President Emmanuel Macron decried his Nazi-collaborator predecessors and rising antisemitism, vigorously vowing to stamp out Holocaust denial as he paid homage Sunday to thousands of French children sent to death camps 80 years ago for one reason alone: because they were Jewish.

Family by family, house by house, French police rounded up 13,000 people on two terrifying days in July 1942, wresting children from their mothers’ arms and dispatching everyone to Nazi death camps. France honored those victims this weekend, as it tries to keep their memory alive.


For the dwindling number of survivors of France’s wartime crimes, a series of commemoration ceremonies Sunday were especially important. At a time of rising antisemitism and far-right discourse sugarcoating France’s role in the Holocaust, they worry that history’s lessons are being forgotten.

A week of ceremonies marking 80 years since the Vel d’Hiv police roundup on July 16-17, 1942 culminated Sunday with an event led by Macron, who pledged that wouldn’t happen ever again.

“We will continue to teach against ignorance. We will continue to cry out against indifference,” Macron said. “And we will fight, I promise you, at every dawn, because France’s story is written by a combat of resistance and justice that will never be extinguished.”

He denounced former French leaders for their roles in the Holocaust and the Vel d’Hiv raids, among the most shameful acts undertaken by France during World War II.

[NewYorkExpress]

Following wildfires in southwest France, Macron vows to rebuild.

Vast swathes of blackened pine forest in south-west France are to be replanted and homes and businesses rebuilt “according to different rules” dictated by the climate crisis, Emmanuel Macron has said, as he called for a European fleet of planes to fight wildfires.

A week of 40C-plus heat – part of a global trend of rising temperatures that is attributed by scientists largely to human activity – has caused misery from Portugal to the UK, smashing records and fuelling fires that have ravaged tens of thousands of hectares of land.

In France and Spain six times as much forest and heathland has been ravaged by fire this year, and in Portugal three times as much, as the average over the past 15 years, figures show. In Hungary the area burned, though much smaller, is almost 50 times greater than usual.

The French president hailed as heroes some of the nearly 2,000 firefighters who battled two huge blazes in south-west France that since last week have destroyed more than 20,000 hectares of forest, forcing the evacuation of 37,000 people from their homes.

Visiting the Gironde département, Macron praised the “tremendous chain of human solidarity assembled to beat the beast that is these wildfires” and he promised a “major national project” of reconstruction.

[NewYorkExpress]

Air Conditioned shops must keep their doors shut or pay a fine of 750 Euros.

Air-conditioned shops throughout France will have to keep their doors shut or risk a fine of €750 (£635), a French minister has announced, after the mayors of several major cities unveiled a similar rule during the country’s heatwave last week.

Agnès Pannier-Runacher, the minister for ecological transition, said leaving doors open with air conditioning on led to “20% more energy consumption and … is absurd”. A decree confirming the decision will be issued in the coming days.

It follows recent announcements by the mayors of Paris, Lyon and other cities. Anne Hidalgo, the Socialist mayor of Paris, last week denounced “an aberration that must cease in the context of the climate emergency and energy crisis”.

[Agafin]

Macron was in my country today, and as expected, something controversial was said.

https://www.francetvinfo.fr/monde/europe/manifestations-en-ukraine/au-cameroun-emmanuel-macron-accuse-l-afrique-d-hypocrisie-au-sujet-de-l-invasion-de-l-ukraine-par-la-russie_5278879.html

Translation:

In Cameroon, Macron accuses Africa of ''hypocrisy'' over Russia's invasion of Ukraine

The French president assures that he is "not fooled" about the "diplomatic pressures" that explain the refusal of some leaders to describe the situation in Ukraine as "war".

Countering Moscow's influence in Africa was one of the objectives of Emmanuel Macron's visit to Cameroon, Benin, and Guinea-Bissau. The French president addressed the subject in his first speech on Tuesday, July 26 in Yaoundé, during a press conference with his Cameroonian counterpart Paul Biya. He criticized the "hypocrisy" of the continent vis-à-vis Russia and its invasion of Ukraine.

"I see too often hypocrisy, especially on the African continent (...) not knowing how to qualify a war, because there are diplomatic pressures, I am not fooled," said the head of state, without directly naming Russia. He sees a contrast between this attitude and that of the Europeans, which "is in no way to participate in this war, but to recognize and name it.

"We need you, because otherwise, this pattern will be repeated over and over again," continued Emmanuel Macron. He assured that France was "the country that is most committed to African states at their request for their security," while Russia is more involved in this area through the group of mercenaries Wagner.

Questioned on Monday by a group of Cameroonian political parties who called on him to recognize the "crimes of colonial France", Emmanuel Macron did not do so. But he expressed the wish that "a joint work of Cameroonian and French historians" be launched to "shed light" on "painful" and "tragic" moments. He made a "solemn commitment to open our archives in full to this group of historians," as François Hollande had already done in 2015.

________________________________________________________________________________

I actually agree with Macron here and I'm absolutely tired of my fellow  countrymen who on one hand support the war on Russia, but then also complain when everything becomes more expensive as a result of it. They complain about french imperialism but are fine with russian imperialism (which will certainly be worse). It's crazy but based on my observation, I believe  something like 80-90% of people in my country are on Russia's side and I assume it's similar in other african countries. Putin's biggest geopolitical win was converting anti-Western sentiment into a pro-Russian sentiment in the global South

[Antonio the Sixth]

He is right, but I don't see how saying it in these terms helps. The only way France can hope to salvage its geopolitical position in Africa is by actually, you know, providing actual material support that makes the relationship beneficial to both parties - something it has rarely been in the past 60 years (although admittedly I doubt Russia or China will be any better in the long run). And yeah, also acknowledging France's colonial crimes might help a bit.

[MaxQue]

He is right, but I don't see how saying it in these terms helps. The only way France can hope to salvage its geopolitical position in Africa is by actually, you know, providing actual material support that makes the relationship beneficial to both parties - something it has rarely been in the past 60 years (although admittedly I doubt Russia or China will be any better in the long run). And yeah, also acknowledging France's colonial crimes might help a bit.

Any material support should be conditionnal on those countries condemning Russia.

[Agafin]

He is right, but I don't see how saying it in these terms helps. The only way France can hope to salvage its geopolitical position in Africa is by actually, you know, providing actual material support that makes the relationship beneficial to both parties - something it has rarely been in the past 60 years (although admittedly I doubt Russia or China will be any better in the long run). And yeah, also acknowledging France's colonial crimes might help a bit.

Meh, most african leaders are so incredibly corrupt that the only way to meaningfully help the actual population would involve such a tight level of control over any material support (to prevent embezzlement) that it would still end up being construed as neocolonialism by most.

I honestly don't think that there's anything that the West can do to prevent China from dominating the continent. China doesn't really (nor dores it pretend to) care about human rights. All they want is for their interests in any given country to be safe. That means that they will always be the first choice of most leaders in the continent when it comes to investments. They believe China will never try to blackmail them. And the population by and large is also fine with that since they are heavily opposed  to things like gay rights which they believe is being forced upon them by the West. There's just no way to compete with that unless you are willing to become as morally bankrupt.

[NewYorkExpress]

Saint-Gervaix-les-Baines Mayor Jean-Marc Pellex wants climbers of Mont Blanc to pay a 15,000 Euro deposit to cover their rescues/funerals.

https://twitter.com/PEILLEX/status/1554770779719573504

Anyone wanting to summit Europe's tallest peak, Mont Blanc, may soon have to put up a €15,000 (about $15,300) deposit to cover possible rescue and funeral costs under plans announced by a local mayor fed up with the "contempt" of risk-taking climbers.

Jean-Marc Peillex, mayor of Saint-Gervais-les-Bains, a town on the French side, says too many unqualified climbers are gambling with their lives on the mountain, where recent hot weather has made conditions more treacherous.

[Sir John Johns]

https://twitter.com/AmbassadeChine/status/1555291880342028288

The Chinese embassy in France is thanking Jean-Luc Mélenchon for his ‘constant support for a One China policy’ [sic] (they are obviously meaning ‘One China principle’), with an excerpt from the latest post of the LFI leader on his blog.

But more consequential is the provocation of the USA in Taiwan. What is the sense of the trip of Pelosi there?

Taiwan is a tense topic since the liberation of China. But, for French since 1965 and General de Gaulle, there is only one China. It is seating the Security Council. Taiwan is an integral component of China.

He wrote that just after the Chinese ambassador has himself explained on French television that Taiwanese will be ‘reeducated’ once the reunification accomplished. And the same week the LFI had been the only party to vote against Sweden and Finland joining NATO.



This is of course a gift for the Macronists who have already spent the latest weeks painting the LFI as a bunch of antisemitic extremists with some pretty dishonest arguments. Obviously, had the LFI not being, to put it mildly, ambiguous on antisemitism, such things wouldn’t happen.

Criticisms began on early July when Mathilde Panot, the LFI leader in the National Assembly, referred to PM Élisabeth Borne as une rescapée (a survivor), a poor choice of words as Borne is the daughter of a Jewish survivor of Auschwitz. You could have reasonably gave the benefit of the doubt to Panot but this was enough for Macronists to accuse Panot of antisemitism in a seriously overplayed attempt to equate LFI with the RN, if not even worse.

But Panot decided to weaponize the remembrance of the 1942 Vel’ d’Hiv Roundup by posting a tweet where she isn’t even mentioning the some 13,000 Jews (including children) arrested then by the French police and sent to death camps preferring instead to attack Macron and the RN deputies she seems to compare with the collaborationists (with notably some previous official comments of Macron on Pétain as a ‘great soldier’ during WWI immediately followed by he has ‘made nefarious choices’ during WWII). These latter, the most extreme elements among supporters of cooperation with Nazi Germany were incorrectly additionally blamed by Panot for the Vel’ d’Hiv when it was actually the comparatively less pro-German Pétain government and the French administration which ordered and executed the operation.

Controversy was relaunched these latest days after the PCF has proposed a motion, immediately supported by the LFI, to condemn Israel as ‘a state of Apartheid’, with Macronists concentrating their attacks on Mélenchon’s party and sparing Roussel’s one.

As for Mélenchon, any doubts over his antisemitism and his insane worldview have been definitely dispelled with comments he made one year ago during a radio interview when he hinted that the deadly attacks committed by Islamist terrorist Mohammed Merah in 2012 against French Muslim policemen and Jewish schoolchildren were staged by ‘the system’ to influence the outcome of the presidential election. A comment that was immediately condemned by the families of the victims (you know who is the only other French politician to have been also strongly criticized by relatives of Merah’s victims: yes, Éric Zemmour).

And, yes, in the blog post quoted by the Chinese embassy, titled Pelosi, aussi (btw a moronic pun on a *check notes* 1939 song of Fernandel about a prostitute who has notably hairs on her legs, how classy Jean-Luc), after a few paragraphs on Pelosi’s trip, Mélenchon go into a rant against the journalists and the medias, compared the accusations of antisemitism with 'lawfare' against Lula and wrote that the behaviors of Meyer Habib (the deputy from the expat constituency covering Israel) and Élisabeth Borne may ended being itself ‘a source of antisemitism’.

So in short: for Mélenchon, Jews should be blamed for antisemitism but not Islamist terrorists.

Absolutely disgusting and indefensible.

[Zinneke]

How are the Méluche/NUPES cultists on here justifying his stance on Taiwan?

Antonio, are you enjoying watching the French hard left wank itself silly to authoritarian regimes invading democratic ones?

[CumbrianLefty]

Surely almost everybody knows that Melenchon is pretty lousy on stuff like that.

It isn't why he wins most of his support, though.

[Antonio the Sixth]

How are the Méluche/NUPES cultists on here justifying his stance on Taiwan?

Antonio, are you enjoying watching the French hard left wank itself silly to authoritarian regimes invading democratic ones?

I am in fact very happy that the pro-democracy left parties continue to have a voice in parliament, which they likely wouldn't if they hadn't joined NUPES, thank you for asking.

Do you have any other idiotic strawman you want to run through or are we done here?

[NewYorkExpress]

Climate Activists in Southern France filled golf holes with cement in protest of golf courses's exemption from watering restrictions

Climate activists affiliated with Extinction Rebellion have targeted golf courses in southern France, filling holes with concrete in protest over exemptions from water restrictions during one of the worst droughts on record.

France has told residents to avoid non-essential water usage like car-washing and watering gardens. However, activists complain that golf courses are allowed to continue watering greens.


The protest action took place at the Vieille-Toulouse club and also at the Garonne des Sept Deniers course.

[CumbrianLefty]

Golf is Satan's "sport" - which makes this as about incrediby based as can be

[Sir John Johns]

France is just exiting its fourth heatwave in only two months with July 2022 being officially the second driest month since records began in 1959. For example, in Brittany, there has been only 2.9 mm of rain last month against 50 mm for a normal July month. Restrictions in water withdrawals of various sorts and extents are currently in effect in every French département but three (Paris, Hauts-de-Seine, Seine-Saint-Denis) with 68 départements currently under crisis mode with, on the paper at least, withdrawals of water being limited to health, provision of drinking water, public safety and hygiene. Last week, the government has announced that over a hundred communes have no longer drinking water and have to be supplied with tanker trucks. Situation is particularly tense in various places like Groix Island (Brittany, where a desalination plant has been put into service as the island is facing acute drought since early June, even before the first heatwave), Haute-Corse (which is expected to lack drinking water by the end of August) or Gérardmer, a 8,000-inhabitant winter sports resort in Vosges, where the municipality has been forced to pump water from the neighboring lake to provide drinking water (well, the Gérardmer Lake has been previously used to dump old weapons and ammunition from WWI and WWII, so I hope there have good water purification units).

This is precisely in Gérardmer that hot tubs in tourist inns have been perforated with a drill by unknowns few days ago to protest waste of water. The controversy over derogation awarded to golf courses (that led to the aforementioned filling of golf holes with cement) is just one of the various public outcries over perceived waste of water: water used to cool down the roads used by the Tour de France cyclists (even if the volume initially reported where exaggerated and the controversy blown out of proportion); 400 cubic meters of water stolen in Ardèche by a motocross club in a tank destined to stock water to be used by firefighters in case of fires (even if water was ultimately not used and gave back); the illegal pumping of water in Vitré (Ille-et-Vilaine) to water a racetrack (leading to an altercation between the mayor who irregularly gave the authorization and outraged inhabitants); cities and villages requesting derogation to water communal green spaces and flower beds; car washes remaining opened and being used for unnecessary motives...

Farmers have warned about probable difficulties to meet the demand for milk as fodder will lack this winter: not only the harvest will be poor but many farmers are already forced to tap into winter forage reserves due to seared grazing pastures. Some have already started selling their cattle because they would not be able to food it. But, as if it wasn't enough, the drought has also consequences on energy production. Reserves of water in the dams are at unusually low levels (filled at 64% when it should be 80%) while several nuclear plants have been forced to reduce their electric production as the water used to cool the reactors and subsequently discharged into the rivers is now too hot and any discharge would further warm river waters, putting the fauna and the flora at risk. But derogation have been awarded to several nuclear plants enabling them to reject waters above the legal temperature limit because 28 out of 56 nuclear reactors are currently at a standstill either awaiting maintenance works delayed by the pandemic, either facing corrosion problems (this is concerning 12 reactors, actually the most recent ones). This is adding to the 2020 shutdown of the aging Fessenheim plant and the delays in the construction of the Flamanville EPR new generation reactor (currently planned to open 'not before the second quarter of 2023' when it was initially supposed to be operating by 2012) with problems with the EPRs already completed in China and Finland raising some doubts over the viability of the whole EPR model. This ironically forced the government to order the re-opening of a coal-fired plant in Saint-Avold which had been closed down on last March.

The heavily indebted EDF electricity public company is now suing the French state before the administrative justice to obtain financial compensations (EDF is demanding no less than €8.34 billion) as it is currently been forced to resell part of its electricity production to competing private companies at a price below the market prices. This is part of a pretty absurd scheme initially design to enable competition on electricity market but now used by the Macron government as a mean to limit the increase of French households' electricity bill and enable it to brag about France being more effective in fighting inflation than other European countries. According to the French economy ministry, the scheme has prevented a 40% increase on the households' electricity bills, so better for the government not losing the case. The problem is that EDF is needing money to fix and upgrade the old plants but also to fulfill Macron's own promise of building between six and fourteen EPRs by 2050 and an unspecified number of SMR 'mini nuclear plants' whose construction is planned to start in 2030.

I really don't see how this could not end with important increases in electricity bills, especially as the production of electricity is supposed to continue increasing in order to meet the demand for new electric cars.

To tackle all these problems which have been for a reasonable part predictable (warnings about a probable drought have been made since months and here, in Brittany, there is a rainfall deficit since last November), the Macron government has been remarkably passive, making mostly empty declarations and silly recommendations (like not sending to friends 'a bit funny emails' with an attached file to save electricity) and creating the obligated free phone number (this government's favorite tool to 'address' absolutely every problem). To tell you how much they are reactive, an inter-ministry crisis unit to coordinate the services of the government and address the drought has been created on...  5 August. Also, as fires were devastating forests, including in areas that have been previously largely preserved from such disasters (Isère, Brocéliande forest in Brittany),  criticisms have been made against Macron's policies of eliminating hundreds of posts in the National Office for Forests (ONF)  and plans to effectively dismantling it.

[NewYorkExpress]

Macron asks for a 10% reduction in energy usage.

French President Emmanuel Macron on Monday pleaded for the country to sharply reduce its energy usage over the coming weeks in an effort to avoid rationing and cuts this winter as tensions with Russia remain.


Macron asked for a 10% reduction, which included asking French businesses and households to tamp down their heating and air conditioning usage.

However, if these efforts aren't sufficient, the French leader warned that forced energy savings might have to be considered.

[NewYorkExpress]

Apparently being President of France isn't enough for Macron, he also has to be Kylian Mpabbe's agent too.

Kylian Mbappe has said French president Emmanuel Macron told him to stay at Paris Saint-Germain rather than move to Real Madrid this summer.

Mbappe, 23, was on the brink of joining Madrid on a free transfer before a last-minute change of heart in May saw him sign a new three-year deal at PSG.


The decision ended -- for the time being -- one of the most high-profile, long-running transfer sagas of recent years, with Mbappe having been Madrid's long-term top target.

"I never imagined I'm gonna talk with the president [Macron] about my future," Mbappe told the New York Times. "It's something crazy, really something crazy."

"He told me: 'I want you to stay," Mbappe said. "I don't want you to leave now. You are so important for the country... Of course when the president says that to you, that counts."

[Isaak]

Apparently being President of France isn't enough for Macron, he also has to be Kylian Mpabbe's agent too.

Kylian Mbappe has said French president Emmanuel Macron told him to stay at Paris Saint-Germain rather than move to Real Madrid this summer.

Mbappe, 23, was on the brink of joining Madrid on a free transfer before a last-minute change of heart in May saw him sign a new three-year deal at PSG.


The decision ended -- for the time being -- one of the most high-profile, long-running transfer sagas of recent years, with Mbappe having been Madrid's long-term top target.

"I never imagined I'm gonna talk with the president [Macron] about my future," Mbappe told the New York Times. "It's something crazy, really something crazy."

"He told me: 'I want you to stay," Mbappe said. "I don't want you to leave now. You are so important for the country... Of course when the president says that to you, that counts."

Nothing wrong with that though. Mbappé is THE Ligue 1 player and an idol of the (immigrant) youth – and Macron's remark seems more like an appreciative gesture.

However, I think that the 50 million per year that PSG pays him now were the stronger argument.

[Zinneke]

Mbappe is a spoiled rich kid.

If you're trying to be a contrarian Isaak you're failing. I should know.

[Isaak]

Mbappe is a spoiled rich kid.

1) He is rich, I give you that. 2) Don't know if he's spoiled. Don't have the impression but perhaps you know him in person? 3) He's 23 (will turn 24 in December), so definitely no kid.

-> 1,5/3. You can do better, I believe

If you're trying to be a contrarian Isaak you're failing. I should know.

Contrarian? Just because I think it's no big issue that Macron made an encouraging comment regarding Mbappé's contract situation? This is probably the least controversial thing he has done over the past year. Mbappé is an absolute hero to many, regardless of whether you like it or not.

[parochial boy]

Zinneke is of course refering to the recent outrage over PSG's recent private jet flight to Nantes. A city less than two hours from Paris by train. When asked by a journalist about this, Mbappé's response was a disdainful laugh and his coach commented that they were planning on travelling by "Land yacht", which shoes you just the level of contempt that those people have for us normal human beings.

Remember that Mbappé was already at Clairefontaine at the age of 13, like most footballing superstars he has lived an exceptionally cloistered life and has essentially no real understanding of the real world.

And more sarcastically, Jul is also a hero for les jeunes des cités. And is an exceptionally hard working and productuve auto-entrepreneur at that. But for some reason you don't often see people on the right acclaiming him as such.

[Zinneke]

His family are not as poor as he makes out either. They're professional athletes themselves.

He's a massive female sexual organ and I never understood those who thought that because he could actually string a sentence together and not do weird sh**t like Pogbas witchcraft or Mendy's serial rapist act he was an "intelligent footballer".

[NewYorkExpress]

The Government is cracking down on food depots being used for instant deliveries.

France has taken steps to outlaw so-called dark stores - city-centre food depots used for instant home deliveries ordered over the internet.

Faced by growing protests from local people as well as city authorities, President Emmanuel Macron's government has decreed that the stores be classified as warehouses, rather than as shops - meaning that in Paris and other cities most will probably be forced to close.

Run by half a dozen competing companies such as Gorillas, Cajoo, Getir, Flink and Gopuff, "dark stores" have proliferated in France as elsewhere over the last two years after Covid confinement popularised internet food shopping.

Advertising in Paris urges householders to get their food delivered in less than 10 minutes - or "quicker than a double by Benzema", referring to the French football star. A campaign by Cajoo shows "Alex" doing his shopping by smartphone while sitting on the lavatory.

But residents of buildings where "dark stores" have replaced pre-existing grocery shops are angry about noise from early morning lorries and the disruption caused by squads of deliverers on electric bicycles and scooters.

City officials - who spent millions to safeguard the high street against out-of-town shopping centres - are worried that the new threat from "quick commerce" will drain life from public spaces and hasten the trend to an "atomised" society of solitary consumers.