French Politics

Yeah, just about every general store I've ever seen sold booze. Heck, every convenience store I've ever seen sold booze.

Again, is there a specialty food store lease a halal store can apply for instead?

Also, is there a list in the actual lease that specifically mentions certain things a general store has to stock to be considered a general store?

edited 7th Dec '17 5:53:30 PM by M84

Why, though? A general stall need only sell a wide selection of things. And, a halal general stall will be selling a wide selection of halal products; from fresh to tins, baked goods and dairy.

Just because halal = no pork or wine doesn't mean it's not selling an eclectic base from a lot of categories. If you go to a halal stall specifically to buy sausage and demand pork over turkey, soya or beef, you're an idiot.

And, yeah: such things as halal sausages and "wines" exist. I quite like halal pepperoni on pizza.

edited 7th Dec '17 6:00:05 PM by Euodiachloris

And this is why specific definitions matter. One side is arguing "general" means "we carry a bunch of different things". Another side is arguing "general" means "you need to carry these things too to be considered a general store".

Also, how long has this store been in business? Why is this only coming up now? Did someone who go to that store whine to the authorities after they found out they couldn't get a sausage and beer there?

edited 7th Dec '17 6:03:49 PM by M84

Didn't know there was a specific type of lease for alimentation générale stores. But unless I ever see the exact text of the lease and appropriate law texts, I do suspect foul play (assuming the store provides alternatives for ham — usually in the form of reconstituted Halal poultry meat; if it doesn't, then I'd say shutting it down was in the right because ham-esque foodstuffs are a vital sandwich ingredient).

edited 8th Dec '17 12:29:16 AM by Medinoc

I’m now trying to think what the Halal stores near me sell, I tend to just go to them at 3am for chocolate and soft drinks.

So after looking more closely, the issue here is that the place was rented to the owner of the shop by a "bailleur HLM", which means that it was low-price public housing.

The owner asked to rent the shop to be an "alimentation générale" store, but apparently sold more than 96% halal or oriental-themed products, arguing that it was what people wanted to buy here.

So he is blamed because he got a low rent from public housing services by saying he would open a general food store, but instead managed a halal store. That's akin to fraud, if not outright fraud. Wine was just used by the court as an example of what should have been there.

So, bottom line: no, it was not a public outrage because a shop did not sell wine.

So it’s similar to the immigrant with a cat thing we and in the UK a few years back, where something used as an example gets spun by the press into being the entire reason when it was jsut a practical example.

Not politics news - even though... - but the second season of TV show Baron Noir is approaching, and announced for "early 2018" without a release date being known. If you want to get a feel of French politics while watching entertaining fiction, it is the show to watch.

The real high point of that article for me was to learn that the Jean-Luc Mélenchon expy was played by none other than François Morel. For that reason only, I think the show will be worth a watch.

Big political news from France !

Former Minister of the Interior under the presidency of Nicolas Sarokzy, Brice Hortefeux is now facing an open inquiry for "embezzlement of public funds" as it has been revealed that one of his assistant has declared over 387 hours of work for the single month of September.

It's typically a French political scandal : grossly exaggerating your needs you declare to the state so that the state has to pay you accordingly, and you put the difference between your paycheck and your true expenses in your pocket or the pocket of your party's treasury.

Nothing new in the method, per se...

What is new is that it concerns a former Minister of the Interior, that is to say the third most highly regarded executive function in the French Republic after the President and his Prime Minister.

It combines the activities of the US Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice into a single entity, which therefore has a huge leverage over the management of the nation from the top in Paris all the way down to the municipalities "on the ground" at the bottom of the hierarchy.

The potentiality of having a former Minister of the Interior under scrutiny for embezzlement of public funds would be a serious earthquake for the whole political spectrum, and a catastrophy in terms of public relations for "The Republicans", that is to say the biggest French right-wing party, of which Brice Hortefeux is a known high-ranking member, and a fervent supporter of...

Laurent Wauquiez, who has just been elected leader of the party a week ago, with the stalinian score of about three quarters of the voters ...

edited 19th Dec '17 8:47:21 AM by Nuup-Kangerlua

Schadenfreude at its best if it goes further. Although on my personal hate scale of French politics, Hortefeux, once the unrivaled leader, has now been dethroned by the likes of Wauquiez, Valls and Ciotti. Hortefeux was a sycophant, but he was a one-man sycophant, he never switched allegiances and always was a Sarkobot (unlike Ciotti who went Sarkozy > Fillon > Wauquiez but always claims to be the most faithful of all).

That's also the reason why I'm not sure it will be that big a news. Sure, it will pollute Wauquiez' mediatic apparitions, and as such is awesome because the man is a grade-A asshole, but Hortefeux is the quintessential Sarkozy's Yes-Man. And Sarkozy has withdrawn from politics at the moment, so its damage potential on the Republicans is limited.

Even my step-father, a solid fan of Sarkozy, says that Ciotti makes him wanna scream his hatred out loud in front of the TV just like me so it doesn't surprise me.

Regarding Laurent Wauquiez, not only do I hate his political agenda and his zany outright media manipulations to prey on the electoral base of the National Front, but he is to me the ultimate incarnation of "unsupportable uncanniness".

I don't even know WHY, but I just can't stand him on TV and radio. He just get me on my nerves .

He has an abnormal ability to sound untrustworthy and wily as fuck : he sounds to me as if he hiss like a snake whenever he talks and he lies through his teeth 24 Hours a day, 7 days a week.

-

I used to consider Marine Le Pen as the closest avatar of Trumpism in France, but now I think that Wauquiez is even more Trumpesque in his style than Le Pen herself, considering his political agenda is getting closer, too, to the ideology of Trumpism .

edited 19th Dec '17 10:10:08 AM by Nuup-Kangerlua

Meanwhile, the "Maëlys Affair" is getting even murkier.

He is now formally indicted for murder in the case of the sudden disappearance of Arthur Noyer, a French corporal who mysteriously disappeared in April 2017. The mobile phones of both men tagged the same telecommunications tower, at the very same time , and Nordhal Lelandais googled "how to fully destroy a cadaver" on his computer, just a few hours after the disappearance of Arthur Noyer...

And the families of 2 other victims of sudden never-explicated disappearances also asked to the Chief Prosecutor of Grenoble for the cold cases of their loved ones to be compared to the Maëlys+Arthur case that is currently investigated in order to search for further evidences .

However, it must be said again that it doesn't necessarily means anything at all at this moment and that right now it is only that the Chief-Prosecutor of Grenoble has concurrent suspiscions, for only two separate affairs which aren't linked one another. Moreover, in French criminal law, he is considered innocent until proven guilty in a trial.

When did they dig up the relevant search history?

While searching for info on Maylis...

Plus it's not exactly "how to destroy a corpse", more "corpse decomposition" - ie how long it takes until it disappears. It has to be noted that they found Noyer's skull in September but only just got the DNA analysis results (they thought it was very old so didn't make a priority of it). Also, it snowed in the area so they cannot search for the body just yet.

It is still circumstantial at the moment but it is pretty freaking damning (they have Noyer & Lelandais' phones following the exact same trajectories the night Noyer disappeared, before both phones are turned off almost simultaneously).

Quick update on French politics:

• After Hortefeux a few days ago, Louis Aliot is now formally under investigation for, eh...breach of trust? Point is, it is is because the FN is suspected of using European funds to pay for non-EU related stuff.

• The PS has sold its HQ at Rue de Solférino - for €45.55M, which is considered to be a good sum. According to a journalist on Quotidien "that's basically the PS' only success this year".

• Macron, who turned 40 a few days ago, has won six points on opinion polls this month, up to 52%. He spent yesterday with soldiers of the Barkane operation in Niger, with the Elysée's chef cooking them all a meal using food that was gifted at the Rungis International Market - and it sounded pretty tasty (unless you are vegan):

• There have been intense debates in the opinion over the way migrants are treated by the services of Interior Minister Gérard Collomb - which includes slashing tents and a plan to go inside retention centers to look at the nationality of people living there, which led to what amounts to the first sign of rebellion from a LRM deputy, Sonia Krimi - who got congratulated by LFI's deputies for her speech.

• PM Edouard Philippe was in a hurry to come back to France after visiting Polynesia, which led to him rentng a luxury A340 plane in Tokyo. Time gained: two hours. Cost: €350k. Understandably, people were really mad, especially as a military (but not as comfy) plane that he was supposed to use did the same travel, except, obviously, empty and two hours later. The official reason given for that was Macron's departure for Algeria on the same day, and the tacit rule that one of the two heads of the executive power should always be on national soil at any given time.

...That meal does sound pretty good.

I'm a vegan and lactose intolerant and still...

Am I wrong to feel ambivalent about Macron's success? It seems a large part of it is coming from winning over the FN, and combined with his Interior Minister displaying increasing signs of contamination...

Not to mention the relief of having an actually intelligent president in comparison to Trump.

Not only Trump, he looks like the Only Sane Man in Europe. Germany still has no government, Spain has a large dick in charge, Britain is violently stabbing itself with the Brexit, Putin is still the closest equivalent to The Emperor on Earth...

You have every right to feel ambivalent. I am satisfied by the way he represents France and how he behaves, because I think this is how a President should do. That does not mean a tacit agreement of his policies.

The bar has sunken so low, we should send Cousteau after it. Nowadays all we ask of a President is that they don't act like a fucking buffoon.

edited 24th Dec '17 6:40:16 AM by TheHandle

Yeah, looking at France's other candidates at the time...Macron for all his faults really seemed like (and still does) the only one who wouldn't be a constant source of embarrassment for France.

Though TBF, my bar of judgement is very low thanks to my POS President.

edited 24th Dec '17 7:02:05 AM by M84

Also, the "airplanegate" is just sheer idiotic forgetfulness : I am Macron's most fervent and open supporter, and even I reproach it to them because it is just plain dumb !

Not because I am offended : I don't give a flying fok about the money, I'm just glad we have such a great president but because I know, being a human born at the bottom of the social pyramid, that there are many poor and/or dumb persons in this country, enough to make a scandal for every spent penny and even more so in our context of tight cash supplies !

They should know that , for damn sake !

Today, you HAVE to be careful when you're a key political figure of your country about every penny you spend because now with Wikileaks and Russia Today, any and all valuable informations that can be turned into a mediatic weapon will eventually leak to the public and/or be weaponised as kompromat against you by your ennemies ...

Gone are the days when you could send a private luxury jet with an assistant of the Elysée Palace to the opposite corner of the country to go and get some cheese from the hinterland just because you wanted it for dinner that night !

To those wondering about the suspiciously specific details of my example : it is because it's true.

Our former Socialist President , François Mitterand , who ruled France for 14 years and is by the way also very largely responsible in my humble opinion for the downfall of our economy, would do that quite often throughout his 14 years of reign ...

How could they not see this scandal coming in the hour before they made that decision ?

Because, just as you said, that was a habit for a very long time, and they haven't fully integrated that times have changed. Not that I am entirely against giving politicians a hard time whenever they waste public money, when it is deserved.

This is mostly what made Fillon sunk at the presidentials; the right was so used to have their affairs being just swept under the rug, he probably believed his would just be a storm in a teacup and not jeopardize his candidature, not realizing French people were more that sick of this. Realizing that times have changed can be harder than it seems.

It is normal to be careful concerning political leaders, especially those which go by with a lot of "dynamic" and "charm" (I tend to prefer those who lack both but still manage to raise in the ranks, because that is usually an indicator of competence, unless they have "connections", than I am doubly careful). I personally am still hopeful when it comes to Macron. I might not agree with everything he does, but at least he is DOING something. France had a string of leaders who were way too concerned to avoid confrontation. But you can't be a good leader without pushing through an unpopular decision once in a while.

Plus, I would feel more comfortable if France replaces Germany on the hot seat for a while. I think we need a break.