French political discussion megathread: Yellow Vest Redux

[Sir John Johns]

Solidarities and autonomy: Damien Abad (ex-LR), the latest guy poached from LR: was deputy for Ain-5 since 2012 and president of the LR group since 2019. Was widely expected to join the government.

Looks like he is already on the way out as Mediapart has revealed two women have accused him of sexual assaults that took place respectively in 2010 and 2011. Two complaints have been filed against him on 2012 and 2017 by one of the women, who also claimed having been drugged during a drink with Abad in a bar. Both complaints were however shelved. A report on Abad’s presumed rape acts has been sent to LR and Renaissance on mid-May by the Observatory for sexist and sexual violence in politics, an organization born out of the French #MeToo. Neither LR nor Renaissance bothered to answer and so was Macron who has, remember, made gender equality a ‘big cause’ of his presidency.

Abad is denying the accusations but the general secretary of LR is now admitting Abad had ‘a strange behavior’ with women and having discussed with him after testimonies of improper behavior with female collaborators.

Suffering from arthrogryposis, Abad is wrongly presented in most French medias as ‘the first disabled deputy’ (Georges Couthon and Élie Bloncourt beg to disagree) but highlights his disability to dismiss the rape accusations.

This came a dozen of days after the criticisms against LFI coming from both LR and Renaissance about the candidacy of Taha Bouhafs who had to withdraw over allegation of sexual assault (in that same constituency, Renaissance however renominated the incumbent deputy, Yves Blein, himself investigated for sexual harassment). Well at least, TV pundits will now something else to discuss than the alleged 'wokism' and 'racialism' of Pap Ndiaye.

[Sir John Johns]

Because everybody is asking for it, the latest days in French politics:

- Caroline Cayeux, the old lady Macron has appointed as minister for Territories’ Cohesion and Relationships with Territorial Collectivities (who has very reluctantly gave up her mayorship of Beauvais she was originally intending to keep while also a minister; meanwhile the Defense Minister, Sébastien Lecornu, is still remaining the president of Eure departmental council), when asked on television about comments she made in 2012 over same-sex marriage (she called it a ‘caprice’ and ‘a design against nature’), unapologetically refused to disown them but, feeling obligated to show how open-minded she is, mentioned having friends chez ces gens-là (‘with those people’, an expression with a particularly disdaining/pejorative connotation, forever associated with Jacques Brel’s famous song containing some of the harshest lines in the history of chanson française delivered by the narrator against the members of a petty bourgeois family).

The controversy is now growing with Cayeux’s declarations having been denounced even by Éric Ciotti (not really a champion of LGBT rights but he will not waste such an occasion to trash the Macron government) with LGBT associations contemplating filing a complaint against the minister and part of Renaissance plotting to get her booted from the government.



- When giving a press conference, a RN deputy, Jean-Baptiste Tanguy, made bizarre declarations about Macron’s past in the business sector: ‘Mister Rothschild said he has hired Macron because he was sympathetic and because he knew how to solicit the homoerotic aspirations of a certain number of cadres who thought Mister Macron would demonstrate interest for their career, at the end of their career’.

The declarations, a nice combo of antisemitism and homophobia, are undermining the whole ‘we’re the only adults in the room, the responsible and not all extremist ones in the opposition ranks unlike the clowns of the NUPES’ strategy followed by the RN. It also overshadowed what Tanguy wanted to denounce: the recent revelations about the very close relationships between Macron and the Uber company when he was an economy minister.

The worst part is that Tanguy is a former member of Dupont-Aignan’s Debout la France, supposedly a Gaullist party considered as a bit more serious and less incline to engage into nasty racist/antisemitic/homophobic controversies (well that was before Dupont-Aignan’s conversion to antivax theories). Also, De Gaulle’s right-hand man and successor served as general director of the Rothschild Bank but don’t expect the far-right to know the history of its own country.



- Macron somehow founds it would be a good idea to dispel any suspicion of favoritism in the Uber case by delivering in front of cameras while in an official trip a line attributed to Chirac (but that Chichi had the good taste to have said in a non public context): ça m'en touche une sans faire bouger l'autre ( ‘it touches one without moving the other’; yeah, referring to his testicles). Such an elegance from a president who had previously lectured a high school student who shouted at him: Ça va Manu?.



- as previously discussed, the RN, the NUPES and LR teamed up to defeat a bill opening the possibility for the government to reintroduce vaccine pass in public transportation, for minors of age over 12 or for travelers coming or going to foreign/overseas destinations (the RN apparently no longer cares about the hordes of contaminated foreigners it said would sweep across France if we’re not totally shut down the borders). Both the RN and the NUPES are celebrating such a victory against Macron. The perspective of other future collaborations? (like on Ukraine-related matters maybe?).

An amendment to reintegrate health employees who have refused to get vaccinated against Covid-19 also pushed hard by both the RN and the NUPES was however rejected. Buy maybe not for long as the new health minister is now contemplating surrendering to such demand. I really can’t wait for people getting diphtheria in the hospitals thanks to non-vaccinated medical staff in the following months (because if you think they will stop with the Covid-19 vaccine...)



- The justice has formally opened an investigation over accusations of sexual harassment and assault (dating back from 2014) against Éric Coquerel (LFI), the recently elected president of the finance commission in the National Assembly. The plaintiff is a former Parti de Gauche member who has been later active in the Yellow Jackets movement and is now very busy spreading anti-vax conspiracies.

Mélenchon (currently in a trip in Mexico to learn about democracy and citizen revolutions with Andrés Manuel López Obrador) who not even two months ago explained that ‘in terms of sexual and sexist violence, we firstly believing in the word of the woman’ (these were in the context of the Taha Bouhafs and Damien Abad cases of alleged sexual assault) has radically changed his rhetoric, explaining now that the accusations against Coquerel are a conspiracy to tarnish the reputation of the new president of the finance commission (surely staged by Macron, the CIA and the Mossad) and that the accuser should not be trusted because she is in cahoots with LFI’s enemies and so are everybody questioning Coquerel’s attitude with women.

https://twitter.com/sychazot/status/1547308535054479360

Sandrine Rousseau is now demanding Coquerel ‘withdrawing’ from the presidency of the finance commission but Quatennens is saying no.

[Sir John Johns]

The declarations, a nice combo of antisemitism and homophobia, are undermining the whole ‘we’re the only adults in the room, the responsible and not all extremist ones in the opposition ranks unlike the clowns of the NUPES’ strategy followed by the RN.

A bold strategy given the typical quality of FN candidates!

This was relatively similar to the (winning) strategy followed during the presidential election when Le Pen let Zemmour discussing the most controversial stuff, making the most extremist proposals and declaration and appearing as the most unsympathetic candidate and the biggest sociopath in the race (not the biggest challenge here as Zemmour decided to pick fights with relatives of victims of Islamist attacks and associations of disabled children’s rights) to look like as the candidate of the bread and butter issues and the one who actually care about ordinary folks. Le Pen went to the runoff and improved her 2017 result while having even less of a platform and a party deserted by most of the half-competent cadres.

Now, Le Pen and co are trying to repeat it in the National Assembly and, if the RN deputies are generally of a particularly low caliber, the ones of the LFI and even of Renaissance aren’t that better and not much less prone to be embroiled into controversies.

The strategy of ‘respectabilization’ of the RN is also greatly helped by the choice made by the NUPES (under the leadership of the LFI) to systematically attack Macron and the government with lots of pretty tiring rants against the failure of the president to win an absolute majority in the parliament and against the supposed ‘illegitimacy’ of the Borne government. The NUPES also started the legislature with a motion of non-confidence that achieved nothing (embarrassingly enough the only non-NUPES deputy to vote in favor was Dupont-Aignan) and has probably not particularly interested French people. When there is an ongoing war in Europe, rising prices in fuel and food sectors, a new wave of Covid-19 and historical heatwaves (this is already the second heat wave here, in Brittany, at temperatures we’re not used to and this is only mid-July), the priority is maybe not to bring the government down and got new elections just few days after the beginning of the legislature and in the middle of summer holidays.

Plus the NUPES deputies have did some silly happenings like a parodic wedding between a fake Macron and a fake Le Pen, supposedly to denounce an alliance between Renaissance and the RN. This is not very useful and is now looking as hypocrite since the NUPES has joined since voted with the far-right to defeat the government on vaccine passports.

https://twitter.com/2022Elections/status/1544657005352259584

Such attention-seeking attitude is also providing munitions to critics of the RN (but also LR) about the NUPES wanting to turn the National Assembly into university AG (‘general assemblies’ in which students – also sometimes people who aren’t at all students and are totally alien to the university – decided on actions like strikes or blockades of the university and often described as complete mess in which everybody is yelling and votes are decided in conditions not always meeting democratic standards) or ZAD (‘zones to defend’: squats established by ecologist radicals in natural areas to be defended against environmentally unfriendly projects that usually turned into battlefields when the police is coming to evict the squatters).

[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.

[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.

[Sir John Johns]

Edit: I wrote this when Zinneke was posting about Quatennens' resignation.

Adrien Quatennens, a LFI deputy from Nord and a possible successor to Mélenchon, has announced today his resignation from his office of LFI coordinator (but not from his office of deputy) after revelations in the press about domestic violence against his wife who is currently in the process of a divorce. Quatennens’s wife has reported in early September the violent attitude of her husband to a police station but opposed judicial action against her husband as well as the publicity of the report. Nevertheless, a judicial action has still been opened, the consequence of a policy of the Interior Ministry adopted recently to better address and prevent femicides. In a letter he made public, Quatennens has acknowledged having slapped his wife and grabbed her wrist as well as having accidentally hurt her elbow when both were grappling for the mobile phone of the wife. This is the just third case of violence/sexual harassment against women involving a LFI member in six months or so (after Taha Bouhafs and Éric Coquerel).

https://twitter.com/JLMelenchon/status/1571438234064003073

In a post made on Twitter, Mélenchon is denouncing ‘the police malevolence, the media voyeurism and social networks’ and commending the ‘dignity and courage’ of Quatennens while not having a single word for the victim of domestic violence.

This is coming after, just in the two or three last weeks:

- a massive uproar after Ségolène Royal had publicly questioned the reality of the crimes committed by the Russian Army in Ukraine. The LFI hasn’t expressly condemned the declarations of Royal.

- a controversy over a stand of the Chinese Communist Party at the annual L’Humanité festival just as the UN made public the report on crimes against humanity in Xinjiang. Green protesters against the CCP stand were welcomed by Commies shouting ‘down with the CIA!’

- a largely publicized dispute opposing Fabien Roussel and the rest of the NUPES over ‘work value’. Roussel, once again playing the role of the useful idiot of the right and proving once more that he is stuck in the Trente Glorieuses, has criticized what he called the ‘left of the [social] benefits’ and its supposed demand for a ‘right to be lazy’ (not a trivial reference) to what he is describing as ‘the left of the work’ he is standing for (ironic for a man investigated for suspicion of fictive job, I know). On the other side, the ‘right to be lazy’ has been mostly defended by Sandrine Rousseau, the new face of EELV, whose usual holier-than-thou and out-of-touch declarations are routinely exploited by right-wing parties to portray the left as a whole as a bunch of hypocrite pseudo-intellectuals disconnected from working-class and caring only about frivolous political issues.

In any case, the left has won absolutely nothing from that controversy at the time of the Macron government is preparing a reform of the unemployment benefits in order to ‘index’ their amount, the length of the benefit period as well as the conditions to enjoy unemployment benefits on the unemployment rate (this would be however aligned on the unemployment rate on national level, not on local level because, according to the government, this would be ‘too much complicated’; what possibly could go wrong?) All of this has also overshadowed discussions about remote working, the blurring lines between work and personal life or the growing difficulties for poor workers or seasonal workers to find a housing (there have been recently protests in Brittany over the price of rents exploding due to Airbnb, tourists and pensioners coming from other regions making the life impossible for local workers).

- Sandrine Rousseau, again, feeling it was the right time to start a debate about whether meat consumption should be connected to masculinity. Again, a totally useless and counter-productive debate (especially because it is taking place on 24-hour news channels and social networks) that will not advance neither the cause of the fight against climate change nor the one of the animal welfare and will not help French filling up the fridge.

The LFI, the PS and EELV have also called for a ‘march against expensive life and climatic inaction’ for 16 October but the PCF has already indicated it would not participate into it and the main unions aren’t very thrilled to take part of it, considering it as a political gesticulation parasitizing the protests they have already planned (including one on 22 September in the exhausted health sector).

[Sir John Johns]

Caroline Cayeux, the old lady Macron has appointed as minister for Territories’ Cohesion and Relationships with Territorial Collectivities (who has very reluctantly gave up her mayorship of Beauvais she was originally intending to keep while also a minister; meanwhile the Defense Minister, Sébastien Lecornu, is still remaining the president of Eure departmental council), when asked on television about comments she made in 2012 over same-sex marriage (she called it a ‘caprice’ and ‘a design against nature’), unapologetically refused to disown them but, feeling obligated to show how open-minded she is, mentioned having friends chez ces gens-là (‘with those people’, an expression with a particularly disdaining/pejorative connotation, forever associated with Jacques Brel’s famous song containing some of the harshest lines in the history of chanson française delivered by the narrator against the members of a petty bourgeois family).

The controversy is now growing with Cayeux’s declarations having been denounced even by Éric Ciotti (not really a champion of LGBT rights but he will not waste such an occasion to trash the Macron government) with LGBT associations contemplating filing a complaint against the minister and part of Renaissance plotting to get her booted from the government.

Cayeux has been forced to resign after the discovery by the High Authority for Transparency of Public Life (HATVP) she has significantly underestimated in her declaration of interests the financial value of a Parisian apartment she is owning. This is so bad, she is now investigated for a potential case of tax fraud. Really a tremendous success from the beginning to the end. Her portfolio has been attributed to Dominique Faure, the secretary of state for rurality, who will hold concurrently the two jobs because apparently rurality and/or territorial collectivities are just worth a part-time job.

Also an investigation has been formally opened over potential illegal political financing and favoritism in relation with the role played by the McKinsey consulting firm in Macron’s 2017 and 2022 presidential campaigns (in short, McKinsey would have financed the campaigns of Macron in exchange of public contracts). McKinsey is currently also investigated for tax fraud.

And, as Ciotti is mentioned in my original post, he is now also investigated for misuse of public funds after revelations made by Le Canard enchaîné over the suspicious collection of public jobs (at least three) concurrently held his then-wife between 2007 and 2016: parliamentary assistant to Ciotti, press officer for the Nice municipality and a job in the general council of Alpes-Maritimes (which Ciotti has presided since 2008). Additionally, she may have held additional jobs in the urban community of Nice, in the commune of La Colle-sur-Loup (Alpes-Maritimes) and in the diocese of Nice. A case pretty similar to the one that torpedoed Fillon’s candidacy back in 2017. Ciotti is currently running for the presidency of LR (ironically while having made the restoration of the 'work value' and the fight against social welfare dependence a political priority) while also holding an office of quaestor in the National Assembly (in charge of the budget and the administration of the lower house).

[Sir John Johns]

* The LFI has renewed its whole ‘coordination’ (the leadership of the movement) and it turned as well as expected: the position of coordinator, left vacant since the resignation of Adrien Quatennens (whose return into active politics, desired by Mélenchon, appears as uncertain since his wife is now accusing him of repeated violence happening during several years), has been attributed without internal consultation to Manuel Bompard, a loyal supporter of Mélenchon and his successor as deputy for Bouches-du-Rhône fourth constituency.

Even more controversially, most bigwigs of the party (François Ruffin and Clémentine Autain who have always somewhat critical of Mélenchon’s leadership, but also Éric Coquerel, Alexis Corbière and Raquel Garrido) have all been sidelined from the LFI new coordination and its ‘poles’ which is now populated by Jonluk’s loyalist young guard with the likes of Antoine Léaument, Bastien Lachaud, Mathilde Panot, Manon Aubry or Sophia Chikirou (notwithstanding the fact the latter could be formally charged with fraud over the 2017’s LFI presidential campaign finance management). Not many experienced politicians in the LFI’s new coordination raising strong suspicions of Mélenchon taking full control of the movement’s apparatus and finances to prepare yet another presidential bid.

Still didn't prevented Bompard from explaining the absence of an electoral process to designate the coordination by ‘the level of requirement to animate the poles and represent them at regular meetings is high’ and argue that ‘the democracy isn’t going just through votes, we are working by consensus’. You will note the irony of a party that is promoting citizens’ initiative referendum and a more democratic ‘Sixth Republic’ but is in practice EVEN LESS democratic than the RN.


* Meanwhile, Marine Tondelier has been elected yesterday the new national secretary of EELV with 90.8% of the votes after her motion has received 47% of the votes in the internal election of last 26 November against 18% for the motion endorsed by Yannick Jadot and only 13.5% for the motion endorsed by Sandrine Rousseau. In the pure Green/PS tradition, Tondelier was elected after the emergence of a 'synthesis' between the five motions still in contention after the first round.

Tondelier, a 36-year-old regional councilor in Hauts-de-France and an opposition councilor in the RN-led Hénin-Beaumont municipal council, has expressed her reluctance for a broad left-wing alliance with LFI and the PS for the 2024 European elections (an idea strongly lobbied by Mélenchon and co to cement the hegemony of the LFI on the French left) while Rousseau has been opened to it. So, probably a setback for LFI and a victory for the EELV ‘establishment’ which is wanting a greater autonomy of the ecologist party.

* Hervé Marseille, a 68-year-old senator, has been elected the new president of the UDI phone booth (6 deputies), with 93.4% of the votes. Nobody (rightfully) cares because the UDI is a useless party largely redundant with Hervé Morin’s Les Centrists in the overcrowded niche of ‘fake centrist parties that are actually right-wing’ but it is an opportunity to give some news of Jean-Christophe Lagarde.

Atlas’s favorite French centrist has resigned from the UDI presidency on last October because of several judicial problems.

Firstly, he has been charged (and sentenced this week to a ten months suspended prison term, a €60,000 fine and two years of ineligibility) for having give a fictive job of parliamentary assistant to his mother-in-law (Lagarde’s wife has succeeded him as mayor of Drancy).

Secondly, he is also sued in a defamation case against the LFI deputy Rachel Garrido (who defeated him in last June for the fifth seat in Seine-Saint-Denis) and her husband Alexis Corbière after the publication in the Le Point weekly just before the 2022 legislative election runoff of an article accusing Garrido and Corbière of exploiting at home an undocumented migrant as a cleaning lady. The problem is that the totally bogus accusation was based on particularly dodgy proofs (screen captures of a chat between the journalist and the alleged cleaning lady who got in the discussion the actual address of Corbière-Garrido wrong) while the information was communicated to the journalist by Lagarde’s former driver with or without the knowledge of his former employer. Le Point has rapidly acknowledged the article was complete bullsh**t and immediately proceed to fire the journalist responsible of it (he is now also suing Lagarde).

You may add to the mix: Lagarde's 2021 police custody for unlawful detention of firearms against a backdrop of rumors of a suicide attempt, past accusations of connections with former members of the 'gang des barbares' anti-semitic murderer group; and, finally, public comments he made in November 2021 in which he said that if Pasqua would be alive he would fired a bullet in the head of Éric Zemmour. So, yeah, probably time for him to stop politics.

* The NPA is also on the verge of split, torn apart supporters of an alliance with the NUPES (led by Poutou and Besancenot) and supporters of a more classical ‘revolutionary’ alliance with LO.

* And also, today, the results of the runoff for the presidency of LR.

[Sir John Johns]

Still didn't prevented Bompard from explaining the absence of an electoral process to designate the coordination by ‘the level of requirement to animate the poles and represent them at regular meetings is high’ and argue that ‘the democracy isn’t going just through votes, we are working by consensus’. You will note the irony of a party that is promoting citizens’ initiative referendum and a more democratic ‘Sixth Republic’ but is in practice EVEN LESS democratic than the RN.

Another wonderful quote, this time from Mélenchon cultist (manager of his YouTube career) Antoine Léaument: "Le mouvement n'est pas nécessairement un espace dans lequel s'exerce une forme de démocratie au sens du vote."

The cultists going through all kinds of contortions to justify the authoritarian internal workings of their movement is truly quite something.

There is also, this gem from Bompard in a radio interview from yesterday:

https://twitter.com/franceinter/status/1602207366761652225

‘That some persons who wished to be members of this operative direction are not, this is a problem of wealthy people’, answering to Clémentine Autain and François Ruffin who are excluded from the new direction of the France Insoumise.

Internal democracy and pluralism have now become just ‘a problem of wealthy people’. That was worth all the previous attacks against Macron’s Playmobil legislators...

Grumpy Jean-Luc also replied on Facebook on a post of Clémentine Autain in which she shares an interview to Libération criticizing the absence of democracy in LFI, with a short ‘the whole front page to muddy us’, continuing the populist strategy of never acknowledging a mistake and instead attacking the medias, even when it is a rather friendly newspaper.

Anyway, Adrien Quatennens has just been sentenced to a suspended prison term of four months for physical and psychological violence against his wife.

[Sir John Johns]

And the LFI parliamentary group has decided to suspend Quatennens from the group for four months and to condition his reintegration in April 2023 to ‘the commitment to undergo a course of responsibility about violence against women with feminist organizations’. A symbolic and kind of ridiculous sanction (already compared to the courses given to reckless drivers for enabling them to recover their driving license) that is pleasing neither EELV (which is demanding the resignation of Quatennens from his seat) nor the PS (which is ‘only’ demanding his expulsion from the NUPES).

Anyway, Quatennens, who has not spoken in the medias since weeks, has given an interview to La Voix du Nord to be published tomorrow and, from what is known of it, he is totally excluding to resign his seat and is now accusing his wife to have blackmail him destroying his political career. He is additionally talking about ‘media lynching’ and is hinting the whole case may have been remoted-controled from the Interior Ministry.

[Sir John Johns]

Meanwhile, in the Macronist parallel universe, movers, roofers and public works employees are now fully equipped with exoskeletons rendering their jobs less physically demanding and providing a justification for the government to rise retirement age to 65. This is what has seriously explained François Patriat, the 79-year-old head of the Macronist group in the Senate, during an interview on the Senate’s television channel to justify his support to the rising of retirement age while he has voted in 1981 for the reduction of retirement age at 60.

https://twitter.com/paul_denton/status/1602337981653827588

The Macronist François Patriat justifies retirement at 65 by the ‘exoskeletons of the movers’. Even the presenter of Public Sénat has trouble hiding her disbelief.

The worse part may be that this isn’t coming from one of the usual sociopath urban yuppies who are constituting the backbone of Macron’s party but from a former longtime member of the Socialist Party who has served as a minister under Jospin and used to be for decades a local elected politician (general councilor and mayor of a tiny rural commune in Côte-d’Or).

Unbelievable how these people are disconnected from reality and have learned absolutely nothing from the Yellow Jackets’ protests. This is like they are trying to provide as much ammunition as possible to the upcoming social protest movement against the pension reform.

[Sir John Johns]

The LFI deputy Thomas Portes (a despicable man who has been in three or four different parties in less than a decade and is facing allegations of sexual harassment) has been expelled from the National Assembly for fifteen days for having posted a tweet featuring a photo of himself, wearing his deputy sash and the foot on a soccer ball on which are glued photos of Olivier Dussopt, the minister of labor.

https://twitter.com/PernelRichardot/status/1624085822025637890

I’d like to remind to deputy Thomas Portes that the last one who used the false head of an elected official (the one of Catherine Trautmann*) on a plate as a trophy... was named Jean-Marie Le Pen. Finally, Portes, you are in the same league than the far-right. Shameful.

*former PS deputy from Haut-Rhin (1986-88, 1997) and mayor of Strasbourg (1989-97, 2000-01) as well as minister for culture (1997-2000). Noticeable for being one of few if not the only French politician who is graduated in theology.



The same day that Portes posted his tweet, Mélenchon was interviewed on BFM TV and threw a tantrum because the journalist dared to ask him about the case of Adrien Quatennens. This latter, who resumed his job in the National Assembly on 7 February, has been booed by the Macronist bench he tried to speak to defend an amendment during the debate on pension reform. The LFI deputies applauded him while Sandrine Rousseau and other left-wing women deputies left to protest the return of Quatennens. On BFM TV, Mélenchon defended Quatennens (‘Leave him alone’; ‘He was been sufficiently punished. I have been sufficiently punished. The LFI has been sufficiently punished’) then started accusing the journalist to try to find ‘a way to divide the LFI members’. He subsequently went totally mental, hinting the journalist actually wants the death of Quatennens (‘What are you expecting? To kill him? That he has enough and can’t stand this anymore’) before insulting him with violent accusations (‘There is within you a sadistic enjoyment to see people suffering. You love this. To make buzz, you are ready to do anything’ ‘What you did is morally repugnant’). Mélenchon concluded his diatribe with a: ‘I regret having trust you. You are people without principles, with neither faith nor law’. Then, he left the TV studio, even before the end of the interview.


The consequences of Portes’ happening and Mélenchon’s skit on television are that is diverting attention from the ongoing protests against pensions reform, it reinforces the narrative pushed by Macronism about LFI and the RN being the same and finally is making the latter as the respectable and responsible opposition by comparison with hysterical clowns in the LFI: Le Pen called the tweet of Portes 'shameful' and a 'call to hate and violence'.

But this must be understood as part of a deliberate strategy from Mélenchon inspired by the thought of Chantal Mouffe and which is aiming to ‘conflictualize everything’ and to appeal to voters’ emotions rather than to their reflection.

[Sir John Johns]

Any ideas for who Macron will endorse as his successor in 2027? I was thinking Elisabeth Borne or Yael Braun-Pivet.

Macron is term-limited and couldn’t run in 2027. So he is doing what the term-limited Chirac and Mitterrand did, i.e. sabotage the presidential candidacy of his ‘intra-party’ enemy and favored successor (who happens to be also the probable strongest candidate). For Mitterrand it was Rocard, for Chirac it was Sarkozy.

In the case of Macron, it is Édouard Philippe, who has made no mystery of his 2027 presidential ambitions and is trying building a movement around his Horizons party by poaching among the right-wing side of Renaissance and satellite parties/micro-parties. Philippe and Macron are now enjoying pretty bad relations and Macron is reportedly unwilling to see his former prime minister succeeding him. Philippe is a serious candidate (when the head of government he basically sounded as ‘the adult in the room’ compared to Macron) and decently popular but he may be too right-wing on economic matters and has suffered a transformation of his appearance because of alopecia.

Other potential 2027 candidates for Macronism are Bruno Le Maire, the finance minister (possibly too much technocratic and economically right-wing), François Bayrou (probably too old and shiftless) and Gérald Darmanin (possibly too much right-wing on immigration, too much a demagogue and too much unlikable).

I don’t see neither Borne nor Braun-Pivet running (bar further political developments).

Borne is too cold and technocratic, she is theoretically belonging to the left wing of Macronism (a political group that is losing influence, may have problems appealing former LR voters while having to overcome the fact it has accomplished little to please center-left voters) and, finally, she may not survive the pension reform not matter of the outcome: if she manage to get the measure passed, its unpopularity will tainted the rest of her career (at least, this will not be forgotten at the time of the 2027 election) either she fail/has to backtrack under street pressures and appearing weak isn’t a good start for a presidential bid.

As for Braun-Pivet, she isn’t on the best terms with Macron and apparently despised by much of her own Renaissance caucus because she is accused of only caring about advancing her political career. She also has a very limited government experience (one month as overseas minister), is elected in a very bourgeois constituency and frankly isn’t very well-known.

A difference with Mitterrand and Chirac is however that Macron would be young enough to attempt running for a third term in office (so in 2032). And here came a fantasy it is hard to know if this is just speculation from bored pundits or actually a plan of Macron himself (this is what happens when you living under a monarchic presidency): running former prime minister Jean Castex to serve as a placeholder in the Élysée Palace in 2027-32 before the return of Macron. Not sure what is the worse with that theory between the idea that Macronism would still be an unstoppable force able to win a fourth election in a row after fifteen years in office or the theory that Castex would be a formidable presidential candidate: the guy has no charisma, has been the most forgettable and powerless head of government of the Fifth Republic and nobody has a clue where he is exactly standing politically.



The idea that Brigitte Macron would run for president is obviously totally ludicrous: she has zero political or electoral experience (and will have problems gaining some by 2027), isn’t especially popular, is mostly discussed in the pages of women's magazines for frivolous reasons (she is wearing classy dresses, she has the same handbag than the Queen of Jordan, that kind of stuff), is making many quite uncomfortable (because of the difference of age with her husband: she will be 74 in 2027) and the usual suspects totally insane (she had to go to justice to stop the spreading of rumors on the Internet about her being actually a transsexual) and isn’t probably even interested to begin with.

The only two French first ladies to have had a public political role (private role is another thing but remains very speculative) have been Danielle Mitterrand (who headed an anti-colonialist NGOs in the 1980s/90s, causing problems for her husband when she supported Fidel Castro or the Dalai Lama) and Bernadette Chirac (a general councilor in Corrèze between 1979 and 2015): none of them have run for president nor even contemplated to do so.

[Sir John Johns]

Aurélien Pradié has been removed from his post of LR executive vice-president by Éric Ciotti after just one month in office. The reason is the staunch opposition of Pradié to the pension reform proposed by the Macron government and endorsed by Ciotti.

The constitution of the new LR ‘leadership team’ after the victory of Ciotti has previously been criticized by Bruno Retailleau (Ciotti’s main rival in the 2022 leadership race) because it included too many followers of Ciotti. And that despite the hilariously overstaffed ‘leadership team’ which is including two executive vice-presidents, sixteen vice-presidents, three spokespersons, one secretary-general, one first deputy secretary-general, three deputy secretaries-general, eight assistant secretaries-general and even a ‘special adviser in charge of a prefiguration of a foundation for ideas’:

https://twitter.com/lesRepublicains/status/1616006787039391744

Meaning the only two opposition parties which have renewed their leadership after the 2022 electoral period without internal drama and disputes are the Communist Party (where the motion supported by Roussel was approved by 82% of the voting members) and, amazingly enough, Europe Écologie Les Verts.

Conversely:

- the election of Bardella as the head of the RN happened in the middle of accusations of ‘purges’ against members of the ‘social’ wing of the party (in first place Steeve Briois, the mayor of Hénin-Beaumont who has denounced an economically right-wing turn of the party)

- the dedazo of Mélenchon to impose Bompard at the head of the LFI, against the will of the movement’s bigwigs and members, has provoked a rift that is currently remaining unresolved (there have been few days ago two concurrent meetings against pension reform, the one of Mélenchon and the one of Ruffin, Corbière and Autain)

- the designation of the new PS first secretary has ended with a tie in an internal election tainted by accusations of fraud and the reappointment of a weakened Faure at the price of the creation of two posts of ‘deputy first secretaries’: one for his main rival, Nicolas Mayer-Rossignol, and one for Faure’s internal ally, Johanna Rolland

- Reconquête is undermined by a cold war between Zemmour and Marion Maréchal for its leadership while the party (in first place, who should receive the top spot for the 2024 European Parliament election) and has suffered multiple defections, including Jacline Mouraud, a former self-proclaimed leader of the Yellow Jackets, who left in last September after an interview of Zemmour in which, when asked about Jacline Mouraud, the former presidential candidate answered ‘Jacline who?’ (the best part is that the recent publication of the presidential campaign accounts have revealed that Mouraud has been paid €13,000 for public relations advice which are widely suspected of having never existed). Gilbert Collard and Jérôme Rivière (ex-RN) have also expressed their discontent about the autocratic reorganization of the party in last September with Collard being unhappy to be removed from his position of 'honorary president' of Reconquête.

[Sir John Johns]

The LFI deputies are no longer the only ones to turn the National Assembly into a circus, now even ministers are doing their parts to achieve such goal:

https://twitter.com/afpfr/status/1633157884518498311

The debates in the National Assembly have been disrupted after the keeper of the seals [justice minister] Éric Dupond-Moretti had gave bras d’honneurs in the parliament’s hemicycle to the president of the LR caucus, Olivier Marleix, who had mentioned just before the minister’s indictment for ‘illegal takings of interest’.

Acknowledging he had gave two bras d’honneurs, Éric Dupond-Moretti has ensured the gesture ‘wasn’t addressed to the deputy Marleix’ but to the infringement ‘to the presumption of innocence’.

The justice minister is investigated since two years and formally indicted since July 2021 for potential conflicts of interest as he is suspected of using his functions of minister to settle accounts with magistrates he previously had conflicted with when a lawyer in various high-profile trials. In any normal democracy, he would have been forced to resign (especially because he is neither a particularly effective minister nor a political heavyweight the president is forced to accommodate) but in Macron’s ‘exemplary republic’ EDM had been able to remain in office and even reappointed after Macron’s reelection.

[Sir John Johns]

In the aftermath of his election as president of the RN, Bardella has appointed in last November a new executive bureau largely made up by his close allies and which includes only one of his internal opponents, Louis Aliot. Meanwhile, Steeve Briois, the mayor of Hénin-Beaumont, and Bruno Bilde, a deputy from Pas-de-Calais and former deputy mayor of Hénin-Beaumont (under Briois who happens to be also his partner), were sidelined from the leadership, leading the two to publicly protest against what they labeled as ‘a purge against those advocating a social line’ and a ‘right-wing shift’ and ‘re-radicalization’ of the RN.

Elected in the deindustrialized, low-income and historically left-wing bassin minier in Pas-de-Calais, Briois and Bilde have warned against the presumed strategy of Bardella to advocate a ‘union of the rights’ with Reconquête and LR over a ‘neither left neither right’ strategy to unite ‘the patriots from the right and the left’. Both also denounced the promotion of persons championing identitarian or arch-conservative social positions as well as the alleged leniency of Bardella towards members who had defected to Zemmour the last year.

While, this can be seen as embittered comments from sore losers (and indeed nothing has been really heard about the RN internal divisions since last November), this is showing several of the big problems faced by the FN/RN since decades: its inability to decide whether it is a party ready to govern or just a receptacle for protest votes (permanently fueled by controversial statements like the ones Panzerdaddy was accustomed to) doomed to remain into opposition until the extinction of the Le Pen dynasty; the ambiguity (to say the least) of its economic platform (which is anyway not very serious, even by French standards) with contradictory proposals between reducing taxes and old poujadism on one hand and more ‘social’ policies and a defense of public services in the middle and small communes on the other; the indecision over incarnating a ‘populist’ catch-all option or appearing as a potential partner for the right-wing ‘responsible’ parties; the permanent turnover among party cadres with frequent purges/departures over personal squabbles, political differences or even financial disputes which has undermined the possibility to establish a strong party infrastructure.

[Sir John Johns]

If anything, the police response has been pretty brutal with, as a few examples, testimonies of violence from policemen against demonstrators and even bystanders, the video of a homeless man being thrown on the floor and insulted by policemen or the video of a protester collapsing unconscious on the ground after having been violently punched in the head by a policeman.

There has been also the massive and indiscriminate arrests of  292 persons during a demonstration on the Place de la Concorde of which only nine may be prosecuted for illegal acts, the rest turning out to be pacific demonstrators, bystanders and even foreign teenager tourists who hence spent a night in custody for having been at the wrong place at the wrong time:

https://twitter.com/libe/status/1638219171421888526

Arrests during the demonstration on the Place de la Concorde: the embassy of Austria intervenes for freeing two teenagers.

Two Austrian minors aged 15 were ‘on a school trip’ and found themselves held in custody on Thursday evening.

Once again, there have also been many criticisms against the systematic use of the ‘kettling’ tactic by the police forces, a tactic previously used during the Yellow Jackets movement (and was blamed for having led to an escalation of violence during protests) and whose legality is unclear.

But now it is clear this is part of a strategy from Macron himself to further ignite the situation with the hope it degenerate to present himself as a bulwark of the bourgeois order against chaos and social upheaval and no matter if this further undermines democracy, trust in public institutions and destroys what remained of the ‘Republican Front’ against the RN.

The interview with two journalists he gave today at lunchtime during the news bulletin on TF1 and France 2 (the hour matters because it is mostly watched by boomer and often rural pensioners, i.e. Macron voting base) is very revealing: his first public intervention since the defeat of the non-confidence motion has been a succession of provocations and an unbelievable display of arrogance. His only regret is to not have convinced French of the necessity of the reform. He blamed the unions for not having tried to seek a compromise. He renewed his support for Borne because there is ‘no alternative majority’ in the National Assembly (but there is no majority at all, especially since the LR caucus is now totally unreliable and bridges have been burnt with the LIOT). He compared the protesters against the pension reform with the Capitol attack participants and the followers of Bolsanaro who stormed Brasilia on last January. He bragged about the power purchase of "smicards" (workers on minimum wage) which has never having increased so much since decades (he is aware about the ongoing inflation???), announced measures to force people on basic income to find a job because apparently they are lazy and made demagogic promises on an immediate replacement of teachers for the next school year (there is currently a shortage of teachers due to the stagnation of salaries and the increasingly harder working conditions).

Shockingly, it seems the presidential interview has totally failed to convince skeptics. Who could have predicted that?

https://twitter.com/LCI/status/1638611995783045120

Meanwhile, the situation is becoming more tense in the streets with blockades of ports and refineries organized by unions and fishermen (who are protesting for different reasons) launching a tractor against a police vehicle in the streets of Rennes in an apparent failed attempt to set the Parlement de Bretagne building on fire like they already did in 1994 (note that the protests of the FNSEA farmer organization usually also involve tractors but also manure and slurry but these one have always benefited from an incredible indulgence from public powers).

Big demonstrations will take place tomorrow, possibly the largest since the beginning of the movement, and there is a serious risk it will turn ugly.

[Sir John Johns]

Is there a chance some protesters will overwhelm the guards of some government buildings or something?

Well, this morning, at the end of the massive demonstration in Lorient (Morbihan, Brittany), a dozen of masked persons have thrown stones at the police station and the adjacent sous-préfecture while also attempting to torch the building by setting fire on trashcans. On one hand, this is the act of a handful of the usual extremists (black blocks from Nantes or Rennes, even if not sure) who manifest themselves at the very end of many demonstrations, as everybody else is leaving, to fight with the police and attack government buildings, banks and shops – the type of people that the unions’ security teams take care and marginalize from the demonstration to avoid things escalating and making a bad publicity for the movement (the head of the CFDT, Laurent Berger, has again called for non-violent protests this morning; the CGT has always had a more ambiguous rapport with violence).

On the other hand, this is happening in a 60,000-inhabitant town not accustomed to such violence and in a region that has been Macron’s second best-one in 2022 and where the Yellow Jackets movement wasn’t particularly strong nor violent and that is now at the spearhead of the protest with once more massive demonstrations even on the tiny islands (350 demonstrators in Groix; 250 in Le Palais; 110 in Ouessant) and blockades of the national roads or railways by protesters in places like Brest, Quimper, Vannes, Morlaix, Ploërmel, Rosporden or Carhaix.

https://twitter.com/OuestFrance_56/status/1638892596360511495

According to Ouest-France a record number of 58,000 persons demonstrated today in the sole Finistère (about 6.3% of the residing population). It seems we are heading to a record number of participants on national level as the youth is now joining the movement (with about 80 universities and high schools being blocked) as well as several unexpected categories of workers like the administrative personnel and the magistrates of the Court of Accounts.

[Sir John Johns]

https://twitter.com/afpfr/status/1638974252140613634

A total of 3.5 million of persons have demonstrated in France according to the CGT union, 1.08 million according to the Interior Ministry, during the ninth mobilization day against the pension reform, characterized by a neat rebound of the participation.

Policemen teargassed peaceful demonstrators, including families with young children, in Prades, a small commune (6,000 inhabitants) whose mayor used to be Jean Castex. There were there between 500 and 700 demonstrators. They were about 1,300 in Lodève, an impressive number for a 7,000 inhabitant commune.

https://twitter.com/mathieugallard/status/1638956775230545921

According to this Odoxa poll, 70% of French are considering the government as the main responsible for the violence that happens at the sidelines of the demonstrations.

Other items of the poll about violence in the demonstrations (agree-disagree)
- was predictable 91% - 9%
- will worsen in the upcoming days 83% - 16%
- worries you 72% - 27%
- is the only mean to be heard as the government isn’t listening to peaceful demonstrations 61% - 39%
- is unacceptable and unjustifiable 56% - 44%
- will force the government to give in like it gave in before the Yellow Jackets 39% - 60%

From the same poll:

https://twitter.com/elestrohan/status/1638884956578410496

Only 23% of the French viewers have judged Emmanuel Macron convincing yesterday.

It is the lowest level measured in regards to a presidential speech since 2018.

The wish for a continuation of the social movement (67%) has gained 6 percent points.

[Sir John Johns]

Indications that the burning of the entrance of the Bordeaux city hall may actually have been the work of far-right activists, possible tied to a nationalist group of admirers of the 6 February 1934 riots and the antisemitic collaborator Robert Brasillach which has been dissolved by the Interior Ministry last month for repeated racist, xenophobic and homophobic acts of violence. The Bordeaux city hall had previously been the target of regular attacks during the Yellow Jackets movement.

Far-right extremists are also suspected of being behind the arson with a Molotov cocktail of the house of the mayor of Saint-Brévin-les-Pins (Loire-Atlantique) two days ago, in a criminal act totally unrelated to the protests against the pension reform. The DVD mayor has previously received death threats from opponents to the installation in the commune of a center for asylum seekers.

Anyway, the threat of new acts of violence during protests has led to the postponement of the visit of King Charles III in France, planned to start next Sunday. I guess the previous disaster of the last Champions’ League finale, then blamed by Gérald Darmanin on Liverpool supporters – a version of the facts now dismissed after a report pointing instead the responsibility of the UEFA and the French Interior Ministry – has led the British government to not trust the guarantees from the French government that everything will be OK. A dinner between Macron and Charles should have take place in the castle of Versailles, surely no longer a good idea considering the current situation.

[Sir John Johns]

https://twitter.com/dumontherium/status/1639723862928547840

Ifop poll for Le JDD in case of early legislative elections:
RN 26% (against 19.2% in June 2022)
NUPES 26% (against 26.3%)
Renaissance 22% (against 26.9%)
LR 10% (against 11.4%)
Reconquête 5% (against 4.3%)

“They [the presidential majority] are left on just one leg: the one of France which doesn’t work”, sums up Frédéric Dabi, general director Opinion de l’Ifop.

What a disillusion for the 2017 ‘candidate of the work’.

The excerpt from the JDD article is also indicating that the Macronist majority would lost between 30 and 40 seats and that the Macronist vote is at just 12% with under 35 and the strongest (31%) with persons aged over 65.

[Sir John Johns]

Also haven't there been a bunch of protesters with guillotines or whatever of Macron? If I was going to arrest someone for what should be legal speech it should at least be those with borderline violent threats.

Well, there has been a protester who has been summoned by the police for this:

https://twitter.com/BFMTV/status/1640684949480112128

[Sir John Johns]

Anyway, there has been actually far more worrying stuff than just a random woman being sued for having insulted the president on the social networks that has happened in the latest weeks/days, to a large extent thanks to a president that international press is still insisting on labeling as ‘liberal’ and ‘centrist’ but the violence committed by moronic far-left groups certainly doesn't help:

* The National Assembly has approved last week the introduction of algorithmic surveillance cameras in public space, becoming the first European country to do so. The provision was part on a bill on the organization of safety for the 2024 Olympics in Paris and is supposed to be only ‘an experiment’ (meaning this is probably become permanent). Biometric identification remains forbidden but for how long? The bill was approved by the far-right, the right and Macronism and opposed by the left-wing parties even if, for the latter, their commitment to civil liberties is unreliable (on a different topic the National Assembly also approved the recognition of the Holodomor as a genocide, with the exception of the PCF which voted against and the LFI which abstained).

* The National Assembly has also voted in first reading a law fixing at 15 the minimum age to be registered on social networks with not much details about how this could be implemented without violating the privacy of citizens; ‘social networks’ are so poorly defined in the bill that it could prevented minors under 15 to register on Wikipedia or any Internet forum. Similar dispositions are under discussions to block access to pornographic websites to minors.

* The recent protest movement against pension reform has been accompanied by various documented cases of police violence, in particular the Motorized Squad for Repression of Violent Action (BRAV-M) which is investigated by the IGPN (the police unit in charge of investigating offenses and crimes committed by policemen) after the publication in Le Monde of audios in which policemen slapped, insulted and humiliated seven people arrested during the protests against pension reform, in particular a Chadian migrant; the arrested people later claimed having also received racist and antisemitic insults on behalf of the BRAV-M.

Also widely diffused were videos of policemen randomly attacking bystanders for no apparent reason:

https://twitter.com/violencespolice/status/1639577660354629632

A policeman of the BRAV-M moves towards a young man and gives him a ‘gratuitous’ punch in the face before going back.

https://twitter.com/violencespolice/status/1639570479844581377

Policemen gratuitously push, teargasse and re-push a young woman in dustbins. Gratuitous violence.

https://twitter.com/violencespolice/status/1638967579388809216

Young people teargassed for taking refuge on the roof of a bus shelter when interviewed by LCI. Non-necessary use of force.

(yes, they did that while aired on live television).

Yet, Darmanin, the Interior Minister, has only acknowledged that it is possible that ‘individually, policemen and gendarmes are committing acts contrary to what they are taught during training and contrary to deontology because of fatigue’. The IGPN investigations will certainly end with no sanction for the accused policemen as the number of sanctions, especially for acts of violence has significantly decreased under Macron in spite of the Yellow Jackets episode, characterized by an important police brutality.

* And coming to the violent clashes that happened last Saturday in Sainte-Soline, a rural commune in Deux-Sèvres between, on one hand the police and the gendarmerie and, on the other, ecologist groups and small farmers’ organizations; Green and LFI deputies but also black bloc-type arch-violent extremists. 28 gendarmes, 200 demonstrators and 2 journalists have been injured while two police vans had been burnt down with Molotov cocktails and some 4,000 gas and anti-riot grenades (officially registered as ‘war material’ by the French authorities in spite of early comments from Darmanin about no ‘war weapons’ having being used by the police). Even more insane, there were policemen on quad bikes firing on protesters with flash-balls, which, according to Darmanin himself, is totally proscribed; few hours before, however, he (again) lied by pretending such thing never happened.

https://twitter.com/laluciolemedia/status/1639616778652327936

The families of two protesters now in a state of coma have announced they have filed a complaint for ‘murder attempt’, ‘violation of professional secret in the framework of an investigation’ (for the leaking in the medias by policemen of the fact one of the protesters is registered on the State Security files [‘fichier S’] which are undisclosed; being included as a fiché S doesn’t required a court order nor having committed criminal acts and is left to the discretion of the domestic intelligence services) and ‘impediment to the rescuers’. Because, yeah, after (again) an initial denial of Darmanin over accusations that the police has hampered rescuers to reach the scene where protesters had been injured, Le Monde has published an audio tending to demonstrate that indeed the emergency service has been prohibited from reaching the scene by the police.

The Sainte-Soline demonstration, which had been ruled illegal few days prior by the prefect of Deux-Sèvres (just like protests before prefectures to protest the police brutality during Sainte-Soline protests have been ruled illegal today, just few hours before they started), was organized against the controversial construction on public funds of water mega-reservoirs supplied with pumped groundwater during winter to address the worsening drought problem in the spring and summer. The project is decried for its alleged impact on environment (it is located near a protected area), on water resources, for benefiting a handful of big farmers and maize production (probably unsustainable in the long run due to global warming) at the expense of small farmers.

More generally, opposition to the water mega-reservoirs must be understood as part of the long tradition of local resistance against controversial projects in rural France, often decided by the central state and its representatives (prefects), without much if not any local consultation (nuclear reactors in Plogoff or Creys-Malville under Giscard; Sivens dam and Notre-Dame-des-Landes under Hollande), an opposition exacerbated by the heavily centralized political organization in France, the lack of an actual local democracy and the strongly Paris-centered set-up of the media and intellectual world.

Gérald Darmanin, followed by the government, has blamed the violence in Sainte-Soline on ‘the far-left’, announced the dissolution of one of the ecological organizations behind the protests (‘Les Soulèvements de la Terre’) and has refused to acknowledge police and institutions in charge of law enforcing have also a problem with violence.

In one of his rare public appearances since weeks (excepting the televised interview of last week and an interview gave to ‘Pif’ children’s magazine – Jesus Christ, I want so much this has been untrue), Macron went today in Hautes-Alpes to present his plan for water management and decide to throw yet another can of gasoline on the fire by stating that in Sainte-Soline ’thousands of people came to wage war’. Protesters throwing stones, petanque bowls and Molotov cocktails on policeman firing tear-gas grenades from quads is now qualifying as ‘war’; remember that what happened in Algeria sixty years ago was officially only ‘events’.

* On a lighter note, yesterday, we have learned that the McCarthyist inquiry about ‘lslamo-Leftism’ in university research proudly announced on CNews and, two days later, before the National Assembly in February 2021 by Frédérique Vidal, the then-university minister, has never been ordered and remained a dead letter: the minister lied to the national representation. OK.

And also that Marlène Schiappa has wasted the €2 million ‘Marianne Funds’ created in the wake of the beheading of Samuel Paty by an Islamist terrorist with the aim to fight separatism and political radicalization and promote Republican values to paid huge salaries for only two persons (who pretended employing ten persons but actually received sometimes a salary twice or thrice a month), to produce videos on Youtube with less than 50 views, to open an Instragram account with 138 followers and, according to the own words of one of the people in charge, to the production of a ‘counter-discourse’ and ‘trolling’ on the Internet. So glad public money is spent on ‘trolling’. An administrative inquiry has been opened over the awarding and use of the €2 million.

[Sir John Johns]

Looks like the f__cking prefecture of police of Paris didn’t got the memo about the prohibition of using the tilde, spelling the name of the prefect of police (surely a dangerous anti-republican separatist) as Laurent Nuñez and not Laurent Nunez in official documents.

See for example the first tweet from the prefecture I could find:
https://twitter.com/prefpolice/status/1701255485783994812

And this is the exact same people (because Nuñnez has been previously a state secretary in the Interior ministry) who are non-stop talking about 'the one and indivisible French Republic', about the equality of citizens before the law, about 'integration' of the foreigners (Nunez is born in France, from a French Pied-Noir family which left Spain at the end of the nineteenth century; why is he using a 'foreign' spelling then?).

Relatedly, the Finistère commune where I live had its name misspelled by the Interior Ministry and in all official documents of the central government with the missing acute accent on the second ‘e’ suggesting an aberrant pronunciation (the last time the Tour de France passed through it, the TV commentator on France-Télévision had indeed a hard time trying to pronounce it and mispronounced it because he was using the officially misspelled version). Fortunately, all documents of the municipality, the canton and the département council as well as the road signs (as you can see on the photo accompanying the Wikipedia article) are using the correct (and logical) spelling which is matching the correct pronunciation of the name.

[Sir John Johns]

To (lengthily) elaborated on what Zinneke has written, the NUPES alliance is going through very turbulent times since several weeks now, having to deal with LFI-related controversies on a regular basis and with the presidential ambitions of Mélenchon for 2027 because, unlike what he is publicly pretending, he is intending to run again for president and has an interest into letting the LFI and the NUPES slipping into chaos in order to impose himself as the only unifying person.


* Firstly, by now, it seems more and more likely that, contrary to the wishes of the LFI, there will be no NUPES unity list in the 2024 European elections.

Back in late August, Mélenchon came back with the very weird idea of supporting a NUPES list headed by... Ségolène Royal. Now widely seen as an opportunist has-been, Tatie Ségolène is no longer holding a political mandate after her job as an ambassador for the Arctic and Antarctic Poles under Macron hasn’t been renewed and as her attempt to get elected in 2021 a senator for French expats at the helm of a PS dissident list spectacularly failed. Yet, she self-proclaimed the head of a NUPES list for the 2024 European elections and received the support of Mélenchon for some unclear and probably very bad reasons (clearly not to increase the NUPES’ electoral chances because Ségolène isn’t a very popular figure on the left).

Anyway, Ségolène has pissed so much people that the offer was immediately rejected by the PS, EELV and the PCF and even the LFI (where many people inside were unhappy with the choice of Ségolène as top candidate). The latter, a week after the announcement of the candidacy of Royal, clarified it would not ultimately not support her, hence putting an end to that farce. Royal has anyway find a new job in the meantime, being now a panelist in Cyril Hanouna’s utter trash talk show on one of the TV stations of Bolloré.

The PS, EELV and the PCF are now all inclined to run each their own separate list in the European elections, especially because the main reason advanced by the LFI to constitute a joint list is very ludicrous: becoming the most-voted list, a totally useless reward in European elections (because anyway components of the NUPES will seat in different parliamentary groups), even more as polls are predicting the left as a whole would win more seats by running different lists (providing however the four lists cross the threshold) than by running a single list.



* Last month, Sophia Chikirou, a LFI deputy from Paris as well as a communication advisor (and strongly rumored to be the girlfriend of Mélenchon), totally pissed off the PCF by posting on Facebook a text in which she wrote ‘there is some Doriot in Roussel’, hence comparing the current PCF national secretary to Jacques Doriot, a PCF deputy and mayor of Saint-Denis in the 1930s who was excluded from the party in 1934 as part of the Stalinist purges and came to head a Mussolini-financed fascist party before turning into a fervent collaborator during the Nazi occupation, going as far as fighting on the Soviet front wearing the Wehrmacht uniform (and actually, Doriot is hardly an isolated case as there is no less than three former PCF general-secretaries – Louis Sellier, Henri Barbé, Pierre Celor – who ended up embracing fascism and/or collaboration after their exclusion from the party).

The PCF has denounced Chikirou’s text as a ‘call for hate’ and demanded excuses it is still waiting for.



* Anyway, last week, Chikirou again got publicity as the French France 2 public television channel aired a report about her dubious practices when the president of Le Média, a left-wing web television closely aligned on LFI. France 2 notably revealed the toxic management of Chikirou who had disrespected labor laws and displayed a great lack of consideration for her employees, calling them ‘dirty rats [she] will crush’ and making a joke about an employee sent to the hospital after having had a discomfort.

Such practices are sadly widespread among anti-capitalist and left-wing medias which are ironically absolutely no better than the mainstream medias when it comes to workers’ rights as demonstrated by recent revelations about the union-busting practices in the tankie Le Monde diplomatique newspaper or about the abusive labor practices in the Blast web television (founded by a former editor-in-chief of Le Média, fired from that outlet precisely because of his toxic management) as well by the sentencing last year of the founder of the Là-bas si j’y suis left-wing news website (for which François Ruffin had previously worked when it was on a public radio station) for moral harassment after the website's staff had went on strike.

But the most widely publicized part of the report was when Chikirou sent a homophobic message after journalists from Le Média had demanded a public apology for the diffusion of fake news. Well, yes, because there is also that: Le Média has been criticized for his outrageously pro-Assad coverage of the Syrian Civil War, refusing to diffuse a video showing the bombing of the rebels by the Syrian Army because it would be ‘sensationalist’ while at same time diffusing the testimony of a student about the French police having sent another student into a coma, a testimony which quickly turned as totally false. It also invited various conspiracy theorists, including one who claimed that the Islamic State has been created by Israel.

Anyway, the LFI bigwigs were quite a bit embarrassed by the homophobic slur of Chikirou with Mathilde Panot explained that, while the slur is indeed homophobic, Chikirou is absolutely not a homophobic person. Several LFI deputies attempted to present the France 2 report as a sexist and classist attack against Chikirou, notwithstanding the fact that the same Chikirou has been one of the strongest supporter of Quatennens (the one who slapped his wife remember) and even advised his communication. For her part, Danielle Simonnet, a LFI deputy from Paris no longer in good terms with Mélenchon, has demanded explanations to Chikirou she is still waiting for.

To end with Chikirou, an obvious fraud (she used to be part of that utter joke that was ‘left-wing Sarkozyism’), she is also facing investigations over irregular financial practices and suspicions of over-invoicing during the Mélenchon 2017 campaign and may be indicted for ‘serious fraud’ in the next weeks, another thorn in the side of the LFI.



* Last week, to show you how much his anti-imperialism is bogus, Mélenchon went to a long trip to Morocco during which he had a private meeting with Fouad Ali El Himma, a very close adviser to King Muhammad VI who had previously served as an interior minister and is the founder of the Makhzen’s sponsored corrupt and non-ideological Authenticity and Modernity Party. During the trip, Mélenchon also pissed up the Polisario and its supporters with declarations considered as favorable to Rabat, saying notably that LFI has only relationships with 'parties of the Moroccan democracy' and that 'loving Morocco is maintaining the continuity of the Green March' (apparently, there are stateless Arabs not worth defending the cause). Mélenchon also praised the Moroccan government, even posting a tweet to denounce the poverty among French students, contrasting it with the situation in Morocco, where ‘students aren’t hungry’.



* The icing on the cake has obviously been the abject response of Mélenchon and the LFI to the ongoing situation in Israel.

In the first statement it issued, the LFI is describing the terrorist attacks as ‘the armed offensive of Palestinian forces led by the Hamas’, hinting it is considering the Islamist group as a legit military force. It also blamed the sole ‘context of intensification of the Israeli policy of occupation in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem’ for the outbreak of violence while ‘regretting the Israeli and Palestinian deaths’. At the time of the publication of the message, no Palestinian death had been reported.

In spite of criticisms, the LFI leadership, in first place Bompard and Panot, has carefully avoided to label the Hamas attacks as acts of terrorism, preferring describing them as ‘war crimes’.

Mélenchon’s attitude has been absolutely disgusting accusing the Representative Council of French Jewish Institutions (CRIF) of aligning French politicians on the positions of the Israeli government and preventing the solidarity of the French people with the wish for peace and demand for an immediate cease-fire (this was the same CRIF that Mélenchon blamed for the defeat of Corbyn in 2019 by the way), attacking his PS and EELV allies lumped together with Macron and the RN for allegedly having displayed ‘a unilateral support to the Israeli far-right government' and calling ‘disgraceful’ the reaction of Anne Hidalgo because she expressed her total support for the Israeli people, a move Mélenchon is labeling as a ‘clientelist declaration’ while also accusing the mayor of Paris to prefer ‘the war to LFI rather than the fight for peace’. The worse (and the most revealing one) tweet may be however the one where he is accusing the prime minister, Élisabeth Borne (whose father, remember, was a Polish Jew), of supporting ‘a foreign point of view’ and pretending she is exploiting the war in Israel to led her own war against LFI (the prime minister criticizing LFI is the same that Hamas murdering thousands of civilians, you see).

At this point, Mélenchon is just indefensible. This is a reuse of the old ‘Jewish warmonger’ antisemitic trope and, as Mélenchon had himself mentioned the figure of Marcel Déat in an article on last July to criticize the Danish Social Democrats, I want to remember the 'Jewish warmonger' accusation has been used by a whole segment of the 1930s French left – the one defending pacifist views like the aforementioned Déat (SFIO deputy who was expelled from the party for his planist and authoritarian views), Paul Faure (the general-secretary of the SFIO from 1920 to 1940), René Belin (secretary of the CGT union between 1933 and 1940), Charles Spinasse (economy minister in the Popular Front government) or Ludovic Zoretti (head of the CGT education federation) – to disqualify Léon Blum’s willingness to intervene in the Spanish Civil War on the Republican side or to oppose the appeasement policy with Hitler’s Germany by using his Jewish origins which supposedly explained Blum’s alleged bellicosity and strong hostility towards the Nazi regime. Blum who, of course, already faced very nasty antisemitic attacks from the right-wing politicians and newspapers.

Déat, Faure, Belin, Spinasse and Zoretti like many left-wing and not left-wing pacifists logically ended up collaborating with the Nazis during the occupation: Belin served as a labor minister in the Vichy regime; Spinasse made on 10 July 1940 a powerful discourse calling for an authoritarian regime and supporting awarding the full powers to Pétain; Faure led most of his supporters in parliament to vote in favor of the end of the Third Republic and the full powers to Pétain (while the Blum-led SFIO faction overwhelmingly voted against); Déat wrote the infamous ‘Why Die for Danzig?’ article in May 1939 before founding an über-collabo party and becoming in 1944 a member of the Sigmaringen puppet French government-in-exile; Zoretti joined Déat’s party and wrote in 1940 a pamphlet denouncing the control of the ‘bellicose Jewry’ over the SFIO. If you can read French, this article ('Pacifism as a vector of antisemitism on the left in the 1930s') is particularly interesting and, sadly, still strongly resonates today.

Anyway, the indulgence displayed by LFI towards the Hamas has led even some of the most ardent supporters of the NUPES alliance in the PS, like Jérôme Guedj, to publicly question what Guedj is calling ‘the strategic line of the LFI of conflictualization of the society’ as well as the continuation of the alliance with LFI. Ruffin also publicly criticized the stance of LFI on the Hamas terrorist attacks, stating that the answer of the left-wing populist movement ‘isn’t in line with the importance of the events’ and labeled the Islamist group ‘a fanatic and terrorist organization’.



* All of this have political consequences. This is where Mélenchon is leading the left:

https://twitter.com/franceinfo/status/1711767316306768143

LFI considered as more dangerous for democracy than the RN, according to a poll.

Indeed, according to that Ipsos poll made before the Hamas terrorist attacks, 57% of the surveyed are saying that LFI is dangerous for democracy against 52% for the RN. 60% agree that LFI is a party ‘which is fueling violence’ against 52% for the RN. Finally, 44% are thinking the RN is ready to govern the country against only 28% for the LFI.

Mélenchon is paving the way for a victory of the RN in 2027 by making the main left-wing party more toxic than the far-right and is helping to the normalization of the RN by making Le Pen’s party looking like more constructive and serious and less extremist than LFI. The contrast between the LFI’s holier-than-thou discourse and the reality of its disgusting practices, leading to the (totally accurate in my view) assumption they are a bunch of massive hypocrites, as well as its absence of a half-realist economic platform also aren’t helping.