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Post by Deleted on Mar 26, 2017 15:04:25 GMT
The anglo-saxon term was first used to be able to englobe Great Britain and Germany in one general reference, usually unfavourable, without specifically naming the countries. Over the years, the "anglo" part of the term has won out and the French use "anglo-saxon" as shorthand to refer to all of the English speaking countries of the world, including ANZ. Most of the negative connotation has drained out of the term except as the underlying sentiment of "we're not like them." After all, you only name the "other" when you have noted the differences from yourself. Anyway, it looks like the term is here to stay, and I will confess that it causes confusion when used in an English speaking context. But since I speak French 98% of the time and think in French about 75% of the time, "anglo-saxon" slips out quite often along with plenty of other French based words than can confuse people.
I certainly did not mean to make you angry, lagatta, and I probably should have analysed more past statements that you and others have made before thinking that saying basically "Québec is becoming more and more like the rest of the continent" -- a statement which is obviously quite open to debate, but which did not seem inflammatory until running through some similar statements like the one by Trump's friend Bob -- "France isn't France anymore." -- that didn't personally enrage me, but of course it enraged many people here while I just thought "what a jerk" and gave a Gallic shrug. As I wrote earlier, France is "insulted" in various ways all the time, often thoughtlessly and unintentionally, and if I got on my high horse every time I heard or read an irritating statement about it, I would have already used up several herds of horses.
I can only hope that you were vexed because you thought I knew better than what I wrote, rather than "my god he's even stupider than I always thought he was." On my part, I will let the "contemptuous machist sadist" bit slide off my back like the morning dew. I have heard worse, but usually not from people as intelligent as you are.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 26, 2017 15:10:17 GMT
Anyway, here is the trailer of the film that led me to mention that everything looked "American" to me in the movie. It has not yet been released in Canada.
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Post by lagatta on Mar 26, 2017 15:45:02 GMT
You mustn't have run into many highly-educated, but mightily annoyed people then. I've certainly been told far worse by people with doctorates in France (I only have a master's degree).
And I certainly don't think of you as either stupid, ignorant or usually cruel.
I certainly got taken to task for careless use of the "Anglo-Saxon world" by a friend from Ontario of Scottish descent. It is rarely used in Québec or Canada, in either official language. I think I had just returned from Europe (precisely, from the Netherlands, but I had been interpreting between French, English and Italian). I have some notions of Dutch, but certainly not enough to translate or interpret it. Less than German, and I'd never attempt a professional translation from the German. I did translate an essay on an ecological subject a German friend had written, but asked another friend (who is Austrian but lives in Basel; her husband is Swiss) to correct it for us.
Now to outsiders, Dutch sounds quite a bit like the German spoken in neighbouring areas across the border, but woe upon anyone who confuses the two!
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Post by Deleted on Mar 27, 2017 6:11:41 GMT
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Post by lagatta on Mar 27, 2017 7:29:54 GMT
There is certainly a rise in right-wing populist parties, and not only throughout Europe and in the US (in the latter case it was not a new party, but a far-right populist movement that took over a traditional conservative party). Look at the Philippines. The question is how to counteract this trend, and nobody has really come up with a solution.
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Post by whatagain on Mar 27, 2017 8:22:28 GMT
'However, substitute France/Belgium/Luxembourg'
NO !
Don't mix Luxos with us please. They don't speak the same language, they are arrogant, they are xenophobists. Not sure they even eat fries.
Good remark Lagatta : I hadn't thought of the native american but they too bleed the same colour as I do. I don't know them very well actually not at all but I have discussed quite a few times with Indians, that I find lovely people. Now when working with them, it can be quite challenging...
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Post by onlyMark on Mar 27, 2017 12:36:43 GMT
'However, substitute France/Belgium/Luxembourg' NO ! Don't mix Luxos with us please. They don't speak the same language, they are arrogant, they are xenophobists. Not sure they even eat fries. You may not mix them because you are inside the fence. I/we aren't. I bet if you ask a Greek, Spanish, or many European nations, never mind the rest of the world and universe, and you are all a bit of a mélange. I doubt many would tell the difference between French, Belgish and Luxemburgish unless particularly exposed to those languages. Arrogance and xenophobia isn't displayed by Belgians then? Of course a Belgian wouldn't put his foot down if he was confused with, horror of horrors, someone from France? Besides the fact that those traits are shared amongst most countries probably, especially the English, but we eat chips, not fries, or french fries. Proper ones as well. And no mayonnaise thankyouverymuch. Just malt vinegar and salt.
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Post by whatagain on Mar 27, 2017 18:45:46 GMT
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Post by bixaorellana on Mar 29, 2017 5:18:00 GMT
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Post by Deleted on Mar 29, 2017 5:35:55 GMT
Trump never pretended to be a choir boy. Fillon, on the other hand, pretended he was Mr. Clean with impeccable moral standards.
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Post by bixaorellana on Mar 29, 2017 5:39:18 GMT
That makes it all the sweeter that the family hands were caught in the cookie jar.
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Post by lagatta on Mar 29, 2017 9:40:50 GMT
Yes Fillon is supposedly a traditional Catholic type. We've always seen Trump with floozies and sleazy men in ties even louder than his.
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Post by mossie on Mar 29, 2017 14:58:15 GMT
'All power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely'
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Post by Deleted on Apr 1, 2017 3:01:16 GMT
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Post by bixaorellana on Apr 1, 2017 4:43:14 GMT
Yeah, that was odd. Maybe a qualifying word or phrase was removed from the sentence?
For the rest of it, for me it is an illuminating article in terms of background and overview. From what little I know, Macron seems like an excellent candidate for France in today's world.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 4, 2017 6:05:59 GMT
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Post by Deleted on Apr 5, 2017 15:21:35 GMT
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Post by bixaorellana on Apr 5, 2017 16:40:31 GMT
Kerouac, what would be your (or any other French citizen/voter who is reading this) summation of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, characterized in the linked Guardian article as "the hard-left candidate"?
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Post by Deleted on Apr 5, 2017 17:55:48 GMT
Frankly, if you consider Bernie Sanders to represent the "hard left," I suppose you can say the same about Mélenchon. Mélenchon is an ex-Socialist who left the party because it was getting far too wishy-washy, the same way Sanders felt about Hillary Clinton. He created a sort-of-new party (Front de Gauche) which was allied with the Communist Party for the last presidential election. That in itself is no big deal because in the days of Mitterrand, the Socialists and the Communists almost always reached an agreement for the legislative elections even though they had separate candidates for the first round of the presidential election, just to test their respective strength. This always turned into bargaining chips later when the Socialists would say "okay, you got 10% of the vote; we'll let you have 30 winnable legislative districts to yourselves." But that has broken down in recent years, partly because of Mélenchon and partly because of the Greens -- there have been 4 viable parties on the left in recent years, which has led to much more bickering about who gets what, especially with the decline of the left all though the Hollande administration. Nobody knew how many small crumbs would be left, but they wanted to grab what they could get. We had municipal and regional elections in the meantime to show how much the left was collapsing. But nothing is predictable anymore. For example, in my own district the Socialists and Communists remained allies while the Front de Gauche and the Greens allied to oppose them. It just makes no sense anymore.
For this upcoming election, things are even stranger with Le Pen and Macron almost certain to eliminate the traditional parties in the first round. (Just try to imagine the outrage of the Socialist and Les Républicains -- Sarkozy's party -- when faced with that. They have been in power, one or the other, for the last 60 years and can't imagine not holding the reins anymore.)
Anyway, as to whether or not Mélenchon is "hard left," I would say yes in terms of the American concept, since the European left is always quite a bit more to the left than the American left, but in my own view he is just a "real" Socialist, unlike what the French Socialist party has become. Unfortunately, in the Socialist primary another "real" Socialist won unexpectedly, basically the same sort of thing that happened in the UK when Jeremy Corbyn won control of the Labour Party. That makes one real Socialist too many to have any hope in the presidential election since neither of them will back down to support the other.
This election is going to be quite wild -- and it takes place in just 3 weeks now.
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Post by bixaorellana on Apr 5, 2017 19:12:03 GMT
Great answer -- thanks! Your comparisons really helped me understand, as did the history of party alliances. As for "hard left", you could say that any move toward any sort of social democracy in the US could be called a hard left turn. Your initial remarks on Mélenchon made him sound desirable as a candidate, but the bickering amongst the "good" parties makes it seem they've lost sight of any common objective. As for any green party anywhere, why do they never seem to have any coherent overall plan of government to offer?
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Post by whatagain on Apr 5, 2017 20:35:55 GMT
A star is born!
Philippe Poutou
Exactly. At least we know his name now.
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Post by lagatta on Apr 5, 2017 22:24:00 GMT
Philippe Poutou and Nathalie Arthaud are the "hard-left" candidates. Indeed, Mélenchon is more like Sanders and Corbyn (obviously there are differences between those two, because of different histories and political systems, but easily as many as from Mélenchon. He is an old-school socialist, a bit nationalist and protectionist, in the way Sanders is (which does not mean that either are uninterested in solidaity with other peoples).
I'm pleasantly surprised by Poutou, because he always seemed like a dull non-entity after the charismatic Olivier Besancenot, who was always far more popular than his party. I doubt this will earn him many votes, but it is good to attack the tolerance for corruption and behaviour on the part of élites that would not be acceptable for the average "Pierre, Paul, Jacques" ...
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Post by Deleted on Apr 6, 2017 3:29:21 GMT
The good thing about the debate of the 11 official candidates rather than just the top 5 is that the 'little' candidates had nothing to lose and could say what they really felt, something that the major candidates don't dare ever do.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 9, 2017 5:45:09 GMT
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Post by Deleted on Apr 10, 2017 3:55:59 GMT
People are getting very worried about the volatility of the electorate which might end up making all of the polls inaccurate. For example, it is a well known fact that the traditional conservative wing in France has a solid base of about 35%. It is therefore very difficult to believe that only 18% will vote for François Fillon. At his rally yesterday, he seemed to accept that his image is irreparably tarnished but he said "you don't have to like me to support my programme."
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Post by lagatta on Apr 10, 2017 10:56:21 GMT
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Post by Deleted on Apr 10, 2017 11:11:23 GMT
That was the best news of the weekend.
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Post by lagatta on Apr 10, 2017 13:47:57 GMT
Indeed, I even mentioned it to a friend of mine who lives in the 19th arrondissement close to that Jewish shopping street you photographed some years ago. My friend happens to be Jewish but living there is a coincidence; he happened to find a social housing flat there. If only this news can stop certain French Jews from voting for that !@#$%?&* because she hates "Muslims" more - when it was her dad, he talked mostly about Arabs and Black Africans, now the same people have become Muslims whether they are religious or not.
(Jewish is not quite the same, as it also refers to ethnic and cultural groups, whether or not they are religious).
Of course those aren't Le Pen's core voters, but even a small shift could change the outcome in this volatile election. And no, I don't think traditional French rightwing voters would opt for Macron in the first round, and many would see the FN as far too vulgar...
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Post by bixaorellana on Apr 10, 2017 14:59:22 GMT
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Post by Deleted on Apr 10, 2017 15:05:38 GMT
Yes.
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