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Post by bixaorellana on Mar 19, 2020 21:58:57 GMT
Dumb question, buy why can't they go ahead & be validated & start their terms? Is it because of not wanting to change horses in mid-stream, or because they can't validated or get validated without being in proximity with each other?
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Post by lagatta on Mar 19, 2020 22:47:29 GMT
The system requires a majority; thus a run-off.
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Post by bixaorellana on Mar 19, 2020 23:25:02 GMT
I don't know, LaGatta. He said 30,000 mayors were elected and would ordinarily be validated immediately. He then went on to mention " the second round of the election for all of the cities that need it", which to me would seem to indicate cities other than the 30,000. Also, just looked it up & there are way more than 36,000 communes in France, all of which have mayors.
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Post by kerouac2 on Mar 20, 2020 2:35:21 GMT
Yes, France has too many communes and even hamlets of 20 people have a mayor and a municipal council. There is only one list in most of these places but sometimes a couple of amusing anecdotes like a divorced couple running against each other.
Anyway, there are still 4922 towns and cities that require a second round since nobody got 50% of the vote. If the second round cannot be held in June, there is a debate among constitutionists about whether the first round should be invalidated in those places and the election started over. It is true that the original situation will have changed so much that voters will probably have totally different preoccupations and priorities from the election on March 15th.
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Post by bixaorellana on Mar 25, 2020 5:13:48 GMT
Is Agnès Buzyn attacking Macron about how quickly or not he addressed the coronavirus crisis?
I saw something about this, but it was in what I think is an Italian right-wing rag, so I'm asking for clarification here.
She was appointed by Macron & would seem about as highly qualified as a person could be.
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Post by kerouac2 on Mar 25, 2020 5:29:14 GMT
The story is a bit more complicated and is related to the municipal elections. Two weeks before the first round of the elections, the LREM (Macron's party) candidate for Paris crashed and burned when this "happily married family man" was found to have sent videos of himself masturbating to a mystery woman. LREM had to find a willing candidate to replace him, but absolutely nobody wanted to do that, one of the main reasons being that everybody knows that LREM will not win the election in Paris. Everybody contacted said "no no no" including Agnès Buzyn. But besides being a fabulously competent health minister, she is also a loyal soldier, so she was basically forced into the candidacy.
Mentally, she was kicking and screaming her opposition, but superficially she said it was a great honour etc bla bla bla. And of course the main reason she didn't want to leave the Ministry of Health is because she was right on top of the coronavirus dossier from the start, so to have it ripped from her hands for a totally futile election was a fate worse than death. Luckily, the new health minister is very good too, but that's a small consolation.
Agnès Buzyn has tried to be as supportive as possible, but she is going to hold a grudge for a long time. Obviously the new guy is not doing everything exactly as she would have done it, so particularly in the early days, she was unable to suppress spontaneous critical remarks, but she is not officially "attacking" Macron or anybody else -- as I said: "good soldier."
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Post by bixaorellana on Mar 25, 2020 16:21:28 GMT
Thanks for that very complete answer!
As you say, a good soldier, but it appears that her decency has made her cannon fodder. For one thing, the election has been postponed, which throws her completely into limbo, right? Yes, I suppose some kind of government post could be found for her, but the head of the Ministry of Health would seem to be the one she was born to do, and now she can't have it.
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Post by kerouac2 on Mar 25, 2020 17:16:25 GMT
Since nobody is campaigning until further notice, I just hope that she has been to return to health work for the time being.
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Post by kerouac2 on Apr 2, 2020 17:14:42 GMT
France, like so many other countries, was caught unprepared for the current situation. And it is still not prepared, but it ordered a billion masks from China last week. They started to arrive -- about 6 million per cargo plane -- and then yesterday there was an incident. The United States bought the load that was just about to be put on the French flight -- right on the airport tarmac, according to the news reports -- by offering 3 times the price, so they were not sent to France.
In normal times, this would have caused a diplomatic incident, but I doubt that France can afford a diplomatic incident right now, so they just sucked it up. But will this happen again?
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Post by kerouac2 on Apr 2, 2020 18:00:25 GMT
I may have written too quickly that there was no diplomatic incident. It seems to be brewing.
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Post by kerouac2 on Apr 12, 2020 16:11:48 GMT
Tomorrow, President Macron is making his 4th announcement concerning the coronavirus. Everybody knows that he will not be saying anything that we want to hear. The interesting detail is that normally, presidential announcements are scheduled at 20:00 which is the starting time of the evening news on the principal channels. However, tomorrow's announcement is scheduled for 20:02 because something more important happens every night at 20:00.
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Post by bixaorellana on Apr 12, 2020 19:22:30 GMT
The Clap?
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Post by kerouac2 on Apr 12, 2020 19:28:30 GMT
Ask the British and they will tell you who invented 'French letters' even if they are called 'capotes anglaises' by the French.
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Post by bixaorellana on Apr 12, 2020 19:33:23 GMT
I don't think either of those nationalities can definitively claim credit for the invention, although they may have come up with very similar things at the same times.
Then there is French kissing, which apparently only the French and deviants from other countries do.
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Post by kerouac2 on Apr 12, 2020 19:56:26 GMT
One of our biggest exports!
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Post by kerouac2 on Apr 14, 2020 9:01:14 GMT
Funny how certain subjects can motivate television viewing.
President Macron's speech was broadcast live last night by seven 'normal' channels and all four news channels, not even counting the tiny share of cable and satellite channels like France24 or TV5 Monde or Euronews. Anyway, that was 36.7 million viewers and an audience share of 94.4%, obviously an all time record.
People are always hoping for some sort of miracle, but of course it was just the same old speech than any other national leader (except Trump) would have made in the same situation.
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Post by kerouac2 on Apr 30, 2020 18:11:59 GMT
Some things never seem to change. In spite of major attempts at parity in French politics, during the parliamentary debate about the policies of deconfinement yesterday, not a single woman spoke for the first four hours. However, a woman diligently sanitised the microphone after each speaker.
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Post by bixaorellana on Apr 30, 2020 20:25:47 GMT
Demoralizing, especially since it's France, where one expects better. Macron's speech was bound to be lackluster compared to expectation since, unlike Trump, he prefers to stick to the truth. Still, it's disappointing in the sense that I keep expecting Macron to catch fire with the European public in that healthy way that can encourage people. I realize, given his personality, that it's not realistic to think that he could be a "crush" in the same way that Obama, say, was. But if not Macron as a rallying point now, then who?
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Post by lagatta on May 1, 2020 0:56:51 GMT
It has also been overwhelmingly male here in terms of elected officials, which is strange here, especially in Québec, France's annoying little feminist cousin. Except for the scientists, including a friend who is an immunologist and epidemiologist. The coverage here has been saner than in many other countries (not even counting the madness and necrophilia from the US and Brazil) but it is hard to stake out a road forward.
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Post by bjd on May 1, 2020 6:23:19 GMT
Yes, unfortunately the only female politician grabbing headlines in France is Marine le Pen and the less we see and hear from her, the better.
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Post by kerouac2 on Jun 11, 2020 17:12:00 GMT
Recent events have obviously revived debates about racist police practices and ethnicity. While nobody denies that there are racist police officers (except a lot of the police who claim there is no problem of racism -- same as in so many other countries) I thought it was interesting when the subject moved to the utility of ethnic statistics, which are forbidden in France. A number of minority people thought that France should change its policy and make ethnic statistics, but some of the others minority "authorities" made this pertinent comment: "If ethnic statistics improved the lives of minorities, considering the countries that do it so enthusiastically, I think we would know it by now."
That is definitely food for thought.
Frankly, all we know about the United States, for example, is that far more black people are arrested, get sick from covid and die, and are the first to lose their jobs. Has knowing this helped any of them?
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Post by bixaorellana on Jun 11, 2020 21:04:53 GMT
Those statistics do function to make it harder to blithely believe that there is equality and concord in the US. The world-wide protests are of course about racism and about racism in policing, but also about the entire culture of present-day policing. Too often it seems police are in overdrive combat mode against the very citizens they're supposed to protect. A good example of this is the unrestrained looting that can come in the wake of legitimate protesting. What if the cops focused on being a presence near vulnerable property rather than attacking protesters? Radical, I know.
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Post by patricklondon on Jun 12, 2020 3:21:45 GMT
A number of minority people thought that France should change its policy and make ethnic statistics, but some of the others minority "authorities" made this pertinent comment: "If ethnic statistics improved the lives of minorities, considering the countries that do it so enthusiastically, I think we would know it by now." That is definitely food for thought. Frankly, all we know about the United States, for example, is that far more black people are arrested, get sick from covid and die, and are the first to lose their jobs. Has knowing this helped any of them? Collecting statistics isn't a sufficient condition, and there's clearly a risk that too many in power would think it is. But it is a necessary condition: without them, how does anyone begin to get the measure of the problem and where remedial action needs to start? The statistics are a start rather than a solution, but they provide pointers towards a solution.
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Post by kerouac2 on Jun 12, 2020 4:19:12 GMT
France prefers economic and health statistics to ethnic statistics. As the European country with the most mixed marriages/couples, it becomes more and more meaningless to put a racial label on people.
(Of course one might wonder how the data was collected to know that France has the most mixed marriages, along with Germany.)
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Post by bixaorellana on Jun 12, 2020 16:00:01 GMT
Washington Post story re: Black Live Matter movement in France: www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/assa-traore-black-lives-matter-france/2020/06/12/45c0f450-aa87-11ea-a43b-be9f6494a87d_story.htmlIf you can't get past the paywall, the text is in the Spoiler below. {Spoiler} The woman behind France’s Black Lives Matter movement wants a race-blind society to recognize its racism Assa Traoré, whose brother died in police custody in 2016, has been protesting police violence for years. The death of George Floyd in the United States has helped trigger some introspection in France. Assa Traoré, whose brother died in police custody in 2016, has been protesting police violence for years. The death of George Floyd in the United States has helped trigger some introspection in France. (Cyril Zannettacci/Agence VU for The Washington Post) By James McAuley June 12, 2020 at 9:26 a.m. CDT IVRY-SUR-SEINE, France — When she saw the footage of George Floyd's arrest, Assa Traoré thought immediately of her brother.
“The first question I asked myself was: Is he dead? And if he was dead, I wouldn’t watch that.” She was peeling garlic at her dining room table, while her young son kicked a soccer ball around the entryway of their apartment in the Paris suburb of Ivry-sur-Seine. “These were images that made an echo right away with the name ‘Adama Traoré.’ ”
Her brother Adama died in French police custody in July 2016 on his 24th birthday, after an arrest that was not filmed like Floyd’s, but during which Adama was similarly pinned down by three police officers and reportedly said he could not breathe. Conflicting autopsies listed heart failure or asphyxiation as the cause of death.
Assa Traoré and her family have sought to transform Adama’s name into a rallying cry against police violence in France. His death has been referred to as “France’s Ferguson,” and Assa has been credited as the key force behind France’s Black Lives Matter equivalent.
Until now, though, she didn’t feel like they were getting anywhere. There was no acknowledgment from French officials that what happened to her brother was wrong. The police officers involved were neither fired nor disciplined — last month, an expert report exonerated them. And there was no broader reckoning with what activists say is discriminatory police violence or with other structural discrimination.
But some of that may be changing, as frustration in France merges with global outrage over Floyd’s death last month in Minneapolis. “Justice for Adama” and for Floyd have been twinned messages in the massive protests that have overtaken the streets of Paris and other French cities.
At least 15,000 people defied coronavirus rules on June 2 to protest the deaths of Adama Traoré in France and George Floyd in the United States. At least 15,000 people defied coronavirus rules on June 2 to protest the deaths of Adama Traoré in France and George Floyd in the United States. (Cyril Zannettacci/Agence VU) The June 2 protest, and those that followed, have stirred a response from the French government. The June 2 protest, and those that followed, have stirred a response from the French government. (Cyril Zannettacci/Agence VU) Defying a police order banning protests amid the coronavirus pandemic, an estimated 15,000 people marched in Paris in honor of Floyd and Adama Traoré on June 2. On June 7, the total was nearly 23,000 in the capital and other French cities. Another march is planned for Saturday.
In Paris, thousands defy police orders to protest
The determined crowds have stirred a response from the French government.
On Monday, Interior Minister Christophe Castaner announced a host of changes to police tactics, including abolishing chokeholds. Castaner further vowed to investigate and punish racist comments from police officers — following reports of a police Facebook group that regularly included racist, sexist and homophobic language.
French President Emmanuel Macron also urged Justice Minister Nicole Belloubet to look into the case of Adama Traoré.
The Traoré family is holding out for more.
The family confirmed that the justice minister contacted them but said they would refuse to meet with her until there had been legal progress in their case. The family “has asked for four years that the police in whose hands Adama Traoré died be brought to justice, interrogated and indicted,” read a statement posted on Facebook.
Assa Traoré maintains they are not just fighting for her brother. She said her ultimate goal is to raise awareness of racial discrimination in a society that refuses to recognize race.
Among Western nations, France has a unique relationship to the concept of race. In the name of protecting universal equality, the state does not recognize any racial or ethnic differences among its citizens. This is in part a response to the experience of World War II, when Jewish citizens were classified, denationalized and, in many cases, deported to Nazi concentration camps.
Since 1978, French law has prevented the collection of statistics on race, religion or ethnicity, and in 2013, the French Parliament nearly banned the word “race” from the constitution altogether.
French law prevents the collection of statistics on race, religion or ethnicity. French law prevents the collection of statistics on race, religion or ethnicity. (Cyril Zannettacci/Agence VU) French citizens of color say denial of race as a concept is connected to a denial of racial problems.
“That’s what we are facing today,” Assa Traoré said. “France doesn’t even accept the word. Contrary to the U.S., where the racial cause is very clear, in France people say that ‘no, no, there’s no racism’ — in France, it’s all the ‘social cause.’ But we are saying no.”
Christiane Taubira, a former justice minister and the only black woman to have held that post, said the reality of structural racism was undeniable, even in an officially colorblind society.
“There are mechanisms that make it difficult for young people in the suburbs to assume responsibilities, positions and enter institutions,” she told France’s Journal du Dimanche newspaper on June 6.
Activists say France’s coronavirus lockdown provided further opportunities for discrimination. For eight weeks, national rules permitted people to leave home only once a day, for exercise or essential shopping. But in the Paris suburbs, where many minorities live, people complained that police monitored for infractions more heavily than in the streets of central Paris.
An April incident between police officers and a motorcyclist in the suburb of Villeneuve-la-Garenne prompted a spate of small protests. But it is only now that large numbers of people have joined the demonstrations, triggering a national debate.
Violent protests in Paris suburbs reflect tensions under lockdown
Prominent commentators from the right and left of the political spectrum — who agree about little else — have momentarily joined forces to attack the notion of “white privilege” on the grounds that it threatens universal equality and echoes the noble “privileges” abolished during the French Revolution.
Eugénie Bastié, a conservative columnist for the right-leaning Le Figaro newspaper, dismissed the concept because “a poor white man would be, according to this paradigm, ‘privileged’ compared to his brother of color.”
Caroline Fourest, a feminist writer and filmmaker, said in a recent interview that using the term risked ceding ground to a “left that effectively wants to racialize all debates.”
“And they do not do it to find solution or to reduce discrimination,” she said. “I call them ‘identity war profiteers,’ they are people who live in chaos, who live from victimization and who never want us to move forward together.”
Protesters say France has been denying its racial problems. Protesters say France has been denying its racial problems. (Cyril Zannettacci/Agence VU) Police identity checks have especially come under scrutiny in France. Police identity checks have especially come under scrutiny in France. (Cyril Zannettacci/Agence VU) While the most vehement attacks on “white privilege” have come from white commentators, some voices of color have taken issue with it, too.
“To import the expression ‘white privilege’ into France is to plaster the history of the United States onto the history of France without respecting the one or the other,” argued Corinne Narassiguin, an official in France’s Socialist Party, in Le Monde this week.
But for Assa Traoré, these critiques are examples of gaslighting designed to change the subject. “We denounce the racism against blacks and nonwhites,” she said. “It’s much stronger to put it that way.”
Some members of the French government have begun to acknowledge that perhaps white privilege does exist, especially when it comes to police practices.
“Our thesis, our values, our rules — constitutional, etcetera — they are universalist. They do not recognize difference,” said Jacques Toubon, France’s public defender of civil liberties and a former justice minister, in a telephone interview. “But there is a tension between this and the reality.”
He noted the controversial question of police identity checks, which stem from a 1993 law designed to crack down on illegal immigration. A man under 25 who is perceived to be black or Arab is 20 times more likely to be stopped by police than “all other persons,” Toubon said.
In 2012, François Hollande, a Socialist, campaigned for the French presidency promising to overhaul police identity checks and require officers to issue a receipt from each encounter. But that proposal was never implemented.
Toubon said acknowledging racial disparities does not threaten the principle of universal equality by somehow enshrining difference. “The treatment of discrimination according to origin is completely in line with equality. If you want to treat it, you have to address these differences,” he said.
Speaking at an impromptu news conference Tuesday, Assa Traoré said French officials would need to go further.
“Words no longer suffice,” she said. “It’s no longer words we’re asking for, it’s judicial acts.”
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Post by kerouac2 on Jun 12, 2020 16:46:22 GMT
As usual, the American viewpoint of France overlooks the situation here and tries to make its square peg fit into a round hole.
The French do not deny that racism exists (except of course the police who can do no wrong). What is denied is that keeping racial statistics is a solution to the problem. In fact, viewing the United States, it seems to make things even worse.
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Post by bixaorellana on Jun 12, 2020 17:41:42 GMT
Please know that when I post those kinds of articles it's not because I think they're necessarily correct, but because it's good to get your input on what's being presented in the US news. France prefers economic and health statistics to ethnic statistics. As the European country with the most mixed marriages/couples, it becomes more and more meaningless to put a racial label on people. (Of course one might wonder how the data was collected to know that France has the most mixed marriages, along with Germany.) Re: quote from you and Patrick's response: Collecting statistics isn't a sufficient condition, and there's clearly a risk that too many in power would think it is. But it is a necessary condition: without them, how does anyone begin to get the measure of the problem and where remedial action needs to start? The statistics are a start rather than a solution, but they provide pointers towards a solution.I'd say that I, as a US citizen, and Patrick, as a UK citizen, are seeing statistics from the point of view of countries that did not witness citizens rounded up en masse as happened in Europe. Rather, as Patrick points out, we see statistics as a neutral means to a possible benevolent end. Putting that rather broadly, but really, I've never been quite sure that not collecting certain statistics works either.
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Post by lagatta on Jun 13, 2020 1:47:41 GMT
Yes, and the article stated that the aversion to "racial" statistics came out of their use to discriminate against Jewish Frenchpersons (and other groups and categories) eventually condemning many to genocide.
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Post by kerouac2 on Jun 15, 2020 18:13:25 GMT
It has been determined than more than 200 streets in Paris bear the names of famous people who were involved in racist or anti-semitic actions at least one time in their life. So of course a debate has begun about what to do about it. At the moment, the general idea is that additional plaques should be put on the streets to explain the full story of these people. To get a street named after you, you have supposedly also done some very good things in your life. But others say that the names should be banned and use the example of Pétain. He was France's greatest hero from WW1 and now there is absolutely nothing named after him.
Of course, this requires a determination about what is "bad." In the context of the times or in the context of current times? An example which I imagine that Americans can easily understand is the fact that George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were slave owners.
That makes the dilemma easier to understand.
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Post by bjd on Jun 15, 2020 18:33:38 GMT
A lot of streets named after people in France already have a line under the name saying who the person was. At least, certainly for little-known Resistance heroes or scientists, for example. I am not convinced that purging streets of their names will be useful. How often does anyone wonder where a street's name comes from? Also, I don't remember where I saw the headline in the past day or two, but there was an article from Albania saying that removing statues and street names has not helped people come to terms with the past. Erasing the past is not a solution. Putting the statues in a museum with information is more useful. Here is the article: www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jun/14/albania-statues-communist-freedom-history
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