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Post by bjd on Dec 17, 2018 10:19:42 GMT
I just read an article in the NY Times about how the two extremes of French politics National Front on the far right and France Insoumise on the far left are trying to capitalize on the current unrest but most of the people out demonstrating want nothing to do with either of them. The RN (FN) keeps harping on about how it's all the fault of the immigrants, the left on how it's all the fault of the wealthy, but this is just not playing as it used to.
Not to mention that the government is apologizing for not having listened earlier, saying that popular referendums on some topics are a good idea, etc.
I also just heard on the radio that in the southern Iraqi city of Basra,people have been demonstrating for months about power outtages, corruption, etc and have been completely ignored by politicians (22 killed by the police though). So they have put on yellow vests, figuring that they could take lessons from the country of political unrest.
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Post by kerouac2 on Dec 17, 2018 10:39:05 GMT
Yes, the world took notice of yellow vests. They are now illegal to sell to indivisuals in Egypt, apparently.
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Post by bixaorellana on Dec 17, 2018 14:01:49 GMT
Journalists have been interviewing and analyzing a lot of the yellow vest people, and it appears that this 'silent majority' revolt is the most important thing that has ever happened in their lives. They always felt powerless and ignored in the past, and now they have changed the country. Some of them who never watched the news and now watching the news, even though they don't like a lot of the things that are said. Most interesting to hear this kind of information directly from French news, as this kind of insight on participants in the Yellow Vest movement may only show up in bits and pieces in other news outlets. I just read an article in the NY Times about how the two extremes of French politics National Front on the far right and France Insoumise on the far left are trying to capitalize on the current unrest but most of the people out demonstrating want nothing to do with either of them. I thought that was an most interesting article, Bjd, & it seems thoughtful and balanced. Linking it here for those who have not seen it: www.nytimes.com/2018/12/16/world/europe/france-national-front-yellow-vests.html
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Post by fumobici on Dec 17, 2018 19:57:50 GMT
These people who are 40 or 50 or 60 years old basically never did anything with their lives... This is exactly the sort of entitled victim blaming that will fuel and grow the movement. Why shouldn't someone at or near the bottom of the labor market or living in the boonies where they grew up near family and friends be able to support themselves and a family and have to continually be told they don't even deserve that which they already have fought for in order to make some pointless austerity target that the rich are never asked to suffer for? If Paris is the center of this sort of thinking, the the place needs to be brought down a few pegs. And if it takes guillotines and tumbrels because the entitled and credentialed upper 20% won't listen any other way -- well then, so be it.
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Post by fumobici on Dec 17, 2018 20:13:39 GMT
www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/to-exist-in-the-eyes-of-others-an-interview-with-the-novelist-edouard-louis-on-the-gilets-jaunes-movementLiberalism abandoned the working classes, the precarious, the poor, to pursue its globalist neoliberal economic agenda. The result is, wherever in the west one looks, ever increasing wealth and income inequality, pitting workers in wealthy countries against those of the developing world through so-called free trade or chaotic, uncontrolled immigration, endless cutting of the hard-won social safety systems, anti-unionism, and general contempt for organized labor. And elitist disdain for anyone who fails to meet the impossible for most standards of the urban aristocracy (and more pathetically, those who aspire to it or identify with it but who will truly never be part of it).
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Post by kerouac2 on Dec 17, 2018 20:24:08 GMT
These people who are 40 or 50 or 60 years old basically never did anything with their lives... This is exactly the sort of entitled victim blaming that will fuel and grow the movement. Why shouldn't someone at or near the bottom of the labor market or living in the boonies where they grew up near family and friends be able to support themselves and a family and have to continually be told they don't even deserve that which they already have fought for in order to make some pointless austerity target that the rich are never asked to suffer for? If Paris is the center of this sort of thinking, the the place needs to be brought down a few pegs. And if it takes guillotines and tumbrels because the entitled and credentialed upper 20% won't listen any other way -- well then, so be it. I never said such a thing. In fact I said the opposite.
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Post by kerouac2 on Dec 17, 2018 22:15:25 GMT
I did not judge anybody in what I wrote. I just described the situation. If you a reading extra things into the events, that is entirely your own responsibility based on your own political agenda. Welcome to French politics, but do not think that you have understood everything. If you fail to comprehend rural frustration, it is really a shame. Since my background is totally rural, I understand it fully, but since I have lived in the big city for the last 45 years, I understand precisely the elements of the conflict. I have listened to my country cousins enough to know what they think, what they understand and what they misunderstand.
Spouting political "wisdom" from 50 or more years ago seems to indicate that you don't understand the evolution of society. One would think that living in the land of Trump, you would have perceived that there are many misconceptions on all sides. When Trump is re-elected in 2020, perhaps it will become more clear to you.
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Post by fumobici on Dec 18, 2018 3:56:00 GMT
"These people who are 40 or 50 or 60 years old basically never did anything with their lives"
Who are we to decide what constitutes "making anything of their lives"? I'm not willing to judge others -- people I've never met -- as having failed in their lives so dismissively. What exactly did you mean by that? People play the hands they are dealt, and we can never know what those hands are. I am ridiculously lucky; others, far more, aren't and haven't been. I won't judge them.
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Post by kerouac2 on Dec 18, 2018 4:51:30 GMT
They are the ones who said that in television interviews. I did not decide it for them. "This is the first time I've done anything. I've never voted and never demonstrated." "I never knew it was possble for my opinion to count." "I have found a new family at this roundabout that I never knew existed." Etc. If you dismiss their own opinion of themselves, it is rather tragic.
It is statements like that that made the government finally take notice. I don't know what articles you have been reading or reports that you have seen, but your self satisfaction with your life does not contribute anything to French politics or to these people who are waking up from a long sleep.
www.lemonde.fr/societe/article/2018/12/05/a-gaillon-de-nombreux-gilets-jaunes-s-eveillent-a-la-politique_5392694_3224.html
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Post by bixaorellana on Dec 18, 2018 5:22:47 GMT
I of course cannot speak for Kerouac, but I did not read his comment as a put-down. The way I understood it was that the 40--60 age group participating in this new movement are people who have always kept their heads down, but are finally speaking out because they feel they have taken all they can take and possibly also feel that local circumstances deprived them of opportunities available to their urban compatriots. ... the government is apologizing for not having listened earlier, saying that popular referendums on some topics are a good idea, etc. The fact that their united voices truly caught the attention of those in power to the degree that those powers responded in a way that proved they listened must be a heady feeling after a lifetime of feeling like a squeaky cog that never gets any grease.
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Post by bjd on Dec 18, 2018 6:16:41 GMT
I too read Kerouac's comment as he meant.
I called my mother (in Toronto) yesterday. She was glad to hear from me, since from watching TV she thought there were riots, food shortages and all kinds of violence going on here!
And...France is going to make Google, Facebook, Amazon and Apple pay a lot more taxes.
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Post by kerouac2 on Dec 18, 2018 6:35:37 GMT
Yes, they are not waiting for the EU to get its act together in March 2019. They have announced that they will start taxing GAFA at a much higher level starting January 1st. GAFA and associates have been paying 14% less in business taxes than "normal" companies. Unfortunately, the new tax will only bring in 500 million euros, a drop in the bucket.
Much more controversial are the new university fees that will be applied to students from outside the EU. Annual tuition for them is going to be 2770 euros, which is 15 times more than for French and EU students. This goes against the grain of the French tradition of equality and it is feared that many African students will go elsewhere.
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Post by onlyMark on Dec 18, 2018 6:52:25 GMT
(GAFA? New one on me. Why not FAAG or AGAF/FAGA/GAAF/AGAF etc? GAFA sounds like "gaffer" meaning, boss. Is that intentional?)
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Post by kerouac2 on Dec 18, 2018 7:03:46 GMT
AGFA was already taken by the film company.
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Post by kerouac2 on Dec 18, 2018 7:08:04 GMT
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Post by bjd on Dec 18, 2018 9:23:13 GMT
I believe the British government backed off cracking down on wealthy real estate buyers. I hope I'm wrong but it does seem to me I read that recently.
I also heard that 500 million € in tax from the GAFAs, and it seemed like pocket change for each of them.
re higher university tuition fees for foreigners. Well, I think it's justified. French students' parents have been paying taxes to fund education. This is not the case for those coming from abroad. In any case,from my personal experience as a foreign student in France, most of the African students were from families wealthy enough to send them to study in France. These are not the people crossing the desert to Libya. Not to mention that they get favoured treatment for university housing. When I came to France as a student from Canada, I was told I didn't have the right to it because I came from a rich country.
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Post by kerouac2 on Dec 18, 2018 11:06:37 GMT
On the contrary, I am against charging more to foreign students for a variety of reasons. For one thing, accepting them helps to improve the world, not only in their own countries but also it improves the French through contact with different cultures and points of view. In addition, it is partial compensation to a lot of these countries who were grossly mistreated and oppressed by the colonial powers. I have never minded financing education with my taxes whether for local children or students around the globe. For example, France is building a Franco-Senegalese university in the suburbs of Dakar which will open at the end of 2019. French students will be enrolled there as well, not just African students.
Anyway, according to the most recent statistics, the largest number of foreign students in France come from Morocco, followed by China and Algeria. The largest number of EU students come from Italy and Germany, but that's only about 8000 each, compared to 27,000 from Morocco, 25,000 from China and 16,000 from Algeria.
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Post by onlyMark on Dec 18, 2018 12:01:57 GMT
I agree with this - "In 2014, Germany's 16 states abolished tuition fees for undergraduate students at all public German universities. This means that currently both domestic and international undergraduates at public universities in Germany can study for free, with just a small fee to cover administration and other costs per semester." Though one State so far has reintroduced fees for non-EU students. Fees are the reason I didn't go to University. You never know, if I had done, by now I could have been "Ultimate World President".
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Post by fumobici on Dec 19, 2018 16:57:58 GMT
I've never understood why it is broadly agreed that public education should be free to all -- up to university level, but not including that. It not only reinforces existing wealth inequalities, it demeans the post-secondary educational system. People who go into high five and six figure debt to get a Masters degree (which employers often ask for solely to make the pile of applications to deal with smaller) can't think of university as anything but a vocational education to earn enough to repay that huge non-dischargable (in the US leastways) debt. University should not be primarily a vocational education system, it should build better, well-rounded citizens.
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Post by kerouac2 on Dec 21, 2018 21:00:12 GMT
Opinion polls are always as interesting as they are treacherous. For example, most of the polls show that something like 75% of the French support the current gilets jaunes protest movement and simultaneously about 60% think that the protests should stop.
Therefore, it is more useful to ask people how they plan to vote at the next election, which is the EU parliamentary election at the end of May 2019.
There has been talk of a gilets jaunes list. Since it is a proportional election, the percentages are more important than in other French elections. If I am not mistaken, any list that gets at least 5% of the vote will have representatives in the European parliament.
With a gilets jaunes list, the result of the poll is as follows:
21% Rassemblement national (former Front National -- Marine Le Pen) 19% Macron and allies (LREM and MoDem) 10.5% La France Insoumise (far left) 8% Gilets jaunes 8% Les Républicains (right wing party of Sarkozy) 7% Debout la France (anti EU, anti euro right wing party) 6% Socialist Party (former president Hollande) 3.5% New Anticapitalist Party (far left) 3% Generations ( new left wing party, mostly former Socialists) 2% UDI (anti EU right wing party) etc.
Without a gilets jaunes list, the RN goes up to 24%...
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Post by kerouac2 on Dec 30, 2018 19:26:39 GMT
One of the oddest things about France is that it is not starting withholding tax for income until 2019, one of the last Western countries to do so. Canada was the first country in the world in 1917, and Germany started the system in 1926. (US was 1943 and UK was 1944.) Apparently the only "major" countries that have not yet adopted this method are Switzerland and Singapore.
It is an unfortunate time for the system to start since the "yellow vest" movement clamoured for higher income, among other things. Obviously, the payslips in January 2019 will show a lower amount. The display is going to be as clear as possible, but some people are sure to say that they are being robbed by the government.
And yet everybody wins this year in a way. There will be no tax on income earned in 2018, except for "anomalous" amounts, such as a huge bonus paid on December 31st that should have been paid in 2019. Not all of such things will be caught by the authorities, but probably the majority will. I thought it was interesting when one of the government concessions to the yellow vests was to get companies to pay year end bonuses of up to 1000 euros to their employees. And it is rather amazing how many companies were able to do this -- proving they could have done it long ago. But one of the main points that was mentioned was that it would be "tax free" -- well, obviously, since 2018 is a tax free year.
I can't wait to see who will be the first politician to whine about all of this in 2019.
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Post by bjd on Dec 31, 2018 8:09:41 GMT
The son of a friend is doing some temporary jobs these days. His most recent one was at a tax office. He was offered another, answering the phone when people call about the new tax system but he turned it down. Obviously none of the permanent staff at the tax office feel like being yelled at either.
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Post by kerouac2 on Jan 21, 2019 16:28:43 GMT
Okay, this is a French case, but it goes to show how fake news, even when it is wildly improbable, can really go off the wall.
France is returning control of Alsace-Lorraine to Germany through the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle (Aachen to the rest of the world) to be signed between France and Germany tomorrow. Incredible, right?
And yet Marine Le Pen of the Rassemblement National and Nicolas Dupont-Aignan of Debout la France (a fringe right wing party but unfortunately not insignificant) have both claimed that France is accepting to lose control of those regions (regions which do not even exist because they have been merged with other regions into "Grand Est"). Marine Le Pen says that the treaty is treason and is destroying what Charles de Gaulle did (normally she despises de Gaulle), not to mention obliging France to share its permanent seat on the UN security council with Germany (hey, if that were true, it might not be a bad idea). Marine Le Pen also says that the treaty is a secret surprise, even though it was already a promise by President Hollande in 2012. However, let's not forget far left Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who is not necessarily against the treaty but who also complains that it was kept secret.
So what is actually in this treaty? It is intended to update the treaty of Paris signed between Konrad Adenauer and Charles de Gaulle in 1963. That's a hell of a long time ago, so the countries want to bring some of the elements into the 21st century. The basic elements are to ameliorate cooperation between the German regions of Baden-Wurtemberg, Rhineland-Palatinate and Saar and the French region of Grand Est. The treaty wants to increase cultural cooperation, increase teaching of the 'other' language in the schools as well as more school exchanges, and cooperation in health, sustainable development, transportation, energy and social services, among other things.
As an ancestral member of the Grand Est region, the only thing that surprises me is needing to reaffirm all of these goals, but it is never a bad thing to do. I have mentioned the Saar-Lor-Lux cooperation in the past, and it is brilliant. The area did not at all seem to be merged when I lived with my grandparents in 1964-1965, but since the 1980's at least, it has been totally obvious that the people of the area have totally forgotten the existence of any border. I can only imagine that the idiots who are against it are not at all from the region.
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Post by bixaorellana on Jan 21, 2019 18:12:39 GMT
The basic elements [of the Treaty of Paris] are to ameliorate cooperation between the German regions of Baden-Wurtemberg, Rhineland-Palatinate and Saar and the French region of Grand Est. The treaty wants to increase cultural cooperation, increase teaching of the 'other' language in the schools as well as more school exchanges, and cooperation in health, sustainable development, transportation, energy and social services, among other things. As an ancestral member of the Grand Est region, the only thing that surprises me is needing to reaffirm all of these goals ... I would imagine that the reaffirmation is a way to make sure those goals get the funding needed to keep going forward. In other French politics news, I read this morning that the yellow vests are being kept off the traffic circles, which certainly seems prudent in terms of safety. The article didn't say much more other than the usual whither from here sort of thing.
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Post by kerouac2 on Jan 26, 2019 15:40:05 GMT
Today is session 11 of the yellow vest demonstrations. The black bloc extremists have reappeared since the yellow vest people were calming down (becoming reasonable?). A number of the demonstrators have decided that revolution is the only solution. Frankly, if they had a programme concerning what would happen next, many of us wouldn't mind listening to them. But it appears that their only mission is to destroy what is in place without replacing it.
At the moment, there is a (quite minor) riot at Place de la Bastille. It won't last long.
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Post by lagatta on Jan 26, 2019 20:29:25 GMT
I get the impression that the movement is running out of steam. Black blocs always appear at the tail end of marches and demos here. But there are far fewer than a decade or two ago.
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Post by bjd on Jan 27, 2019 7:25:16 GMT
I just saw that there are counter movements starting, by people who are not better off than the yellow vests but are fed up with the disruption and violence: red scarves and blue vests.
I also saw in the local paper that the mayor of Toulouse has asked the demonstrators to do so on Sundays. The city has to pay workers to clean up on Saturday nights and Sundays and the shopkeepers downtown are losing money because people are afraid to go there when everything is full of riot police and demonstrators. Especially now that the sales are on and it's a big chunk of stores' annual earnings. Some damage (like torched banks and broken shop windows) will be paid for by insurance, but otherwise, it's local taxpayers who will have to foot the bill.
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Post by kerouac2 on Feb 13, 2019 13:10:13 GMT
The big scandal of the moment is the increase of attacks against Jews in France and Jewish symbols. Nobody would ever directly accuse the gilets jaunes of fomenting this but it has to be admitted that our three months of insurrectional Saturdays emboldened all sorts of unsavoury people to let loose on their basest instincts. "Look at what the gilets jaunes got away with; now it's my turn!"
This week alone, a Jewish bakery got JUDEN spray painted in yellow on its front window, some street art portraits of Simone Veil were covered with swastikas, and a memorial tree planted to honour Ilan Halimi was chopped down. Apparently, antisemitic incidents increased 74% last year. There were 541 incidents in 2018 compared to 311 in 2017. Meanwhile, there were 100 anti-Islamic events. These events are actually considerably lower than at the beginning of the century. In 2004, there were 974 anti-Jewish incidents, but it must be admitted that the second Intifada was in progress in Palestine back then.
In comparison, antisemitic incidents rose "only" 16% in the UK but to a record high of 1652 in 2018 (compared to 1420 in 2017). WTF? France has the largest Jewish population in Europe (600,000), and the UK comes in second with 370,000. The French are constantly flogging themselves about this problem, but I don't recall seeing anything in the mainstream British press worrying about their own problem. I guess it is not a priority.
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Post by mossie on Feb 13, 2019 16:09:07 GMT
The Labour party are currently undergoing all sorts of nonsense in this regard. The current leader Corbyn is as usual favouring both sides against the middle and dithering
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Post by bixaorellana on Feb 13, 2019 23:57:00 GMT
I am horrified by the instances and statistics of anti-Semitism you cite, Kerouac. Really, I suppose it is not surprising, given the ugly face of skinhead attitudes welling up in Italy and the MAGA-ism in the United States. Interesting that the parallel has been drawn between unpunished bad behavior by the yellow vests and the increase in attacks against Jews. The same point has been made in the US, with the hate bluster emanating from the White House giving carte blanche to all kinds of low-lifes to act out their nastiness. I had an inkling there was a certain amount of anti-Semitism in the UK, but had no idea there were actual incidents. Kudos to the French for recognizing the problem, at least.
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