French Politics

That feels like a serious breach of journalistic ethics took place.

To be honest the journalistic inquiry made by the newspaper Ebdo sounds so much floppy that a lot of people including radical feminists themselves truly wonder if it is not going to hurt the global feminist movement of these recent months .

When the victim herself asks you not to give her name and not to shake the mud but you do exactly that because you think it will boost your sales to attack an influent and popular politician you truly need to entirely re-examine your morals as someone who aspires to be a "journalist"...

edited 12th Feb '18 1:36:33 AM by Nuup-Kangerlua

Big news this evening in France.

1) Jawal Bendaoud, the guy who provided a shelter for the terrorists of the 13th of November attacks in Paris has been deemed not guilty by the civil tribunal of Paris in stunning decision that deeply troubled the lawyers of the NG Os and victims that constituted themselves "parties civiles".

Nota bene : In French law, the only "true" plaintiff is the Republic of France itself, that accuses the defendant while the judicial system makes inquiries both against and in favour of him/her. Individuals and corporations or NG Os that wants to "join in the party" to obtain compensations are technically a third party that is called in French "parties civiles".

In other news about Justice, the case of Maëlys's murder came to an end in its phase of investigations with the confession by Nordhal Lelandais that he is indeed the one who killed the poor little girl and that he disposed the body in a little crack inbetween rocks high in mountains close to the house where he lived. He refuses to explain how he killed her, but according to him he did so involuntarily, and he asked the parents to forgive him.

He finally decided to confess after his lawyer strongly suggested to him to make a complete U-Turn in his defense in order to be better prepared for the trial in sight of new elements in this case .

Yesterday, investigators have demonstrated that there was indeed blood drops with Maëlys DNA in the trunk of his very own car, after said car has been completely disassembled to look for the most inner parts that could have been overlooked in the first phase of the investigation .

Other news in Justice, the French equivalent of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gerald Darmanin is now involved in another case for "abuse of weakness" : a woman claims she has been pressured to sexual relations with Darmanin in exchange for his intervention in her favour to obtain a condominium in Tourcoing, a municipality in Northern France of which Darmanin was the Mayor, for about three years from 2014 to last year.

edited 14th Feb '18 9:52:44 AM by Nuup-Kangerlua

Hopefully they'll find the body of the poor girl soon.

I have been following this case for some time now and I am glad that there have been new developments.

"he asked the parents to forgive him"

This reminds me of a scene from Bojack Horseman. This guy did something so, so much worse. He's got no business asking for forgiveness. In fact, I find it outrageous that he dares to.

They have from what I gathered. Now it's on to the other case(s) where he is suspected of murder, with some hints that he might be a rather prolific serial killer.

Double post: here is how the General cursus in lycée (high school) is going to look like in the future◊.

Some notes:

• 4 to 4.5 hours a week for two foreign languages is stupid IMO. It would be far, far smarter to have 4-4.5 hours a week for one foreign language (especially considering the French' natural inclination towards those) and a second one as an option. This way, people at 18 would be more likely to more or less speak one foreign language, instead of barely understanding two.
• Mathematics, Physics-Chemistry & Biology-Geology are optional, and you can only take two of those in Terminale (or whatever the new name of that last year is). People are already screaming, but I don't think it's an issue. I've spent quite some time in biology classes, and teachers can do with students who don't know much about math. Those who don't know about chemistry & physics, however, have a much harder time...I see two possibilities coming up, either Maths + PC, or PC+BG. Also, Ecology & Agronomy are a different specialty (so not included in Biology & Geology) but I assume it is "Applied Biology", so you'll still learn about theoretical ecology in biology class. I hope so at least. I plan to be a SVT teacher, and I fully expect to use ecology to make the kids vaguely interested in whatever I'm saying.
• 2 hours of education towards numeric supports a week it seems (and it's mandatory). It sounds nebulous right now, I hope they explain what it is about soon.
• It is going to be a mess to adapt to those new schedules. I hope it's not used to make good schools even better, and bad schools even worse, even though I'm not holding my breath.
• If it can be the first blow towards the prépa system (like BCPST, which requires you to know about math, physics & biology - you can only have 2 out of 3 now), then I really support it. Fuck that stealthy elitism that calls itself egalitarian. And I say that as someone who went through a prépa.

I am still wondering what "Scientific and numeric humanities" is supposed to be exactly, apart from a bunch of buzzwords put together to sound impressive.

Learning about hoaxes, fake news and cyberbullying I guess, among other things. Looking for sources, yadda yadda yadda. The next generations are almost guaranteed to have an even more important virtual life than we do at the moment.

edited 16th Feb '18 4:14:41 AM by Julep

Delete the CPGE system in general and the hypo/khâgne in particular, seriously ?

To me it's "Zettai iada". I'm a product of it myself, just like you and I got to admit that it was the best year, scholarly speaking, of my entire life so far. Never before nor after have I been in such a state of spiritual and intellectual enhancement with great teachers and a great ambiance. I don't understand an ounce of the criticism leveled against it and I hope they at least won't cancel the specific CPGE I've been a part of, which was on the Riviera in a great high school where I felt very much like in an American university.

Also, me too, I don't understand what "numeric humanities" is supposed to encompass or to mean but if it is what Julep suggests then I totally support it because he's totally right in saying that now your virtual presence on the WWW is as much important as your physical presence to school.

edited 16th Feb '18 9:58:13 AM by Nuup-Kangerlua

Oh I liked my CPGE years. But thinking about it, it's just one of the most potent creators of inequality there is in the country, and also an incredibly efficient tool of class recycling, ensuring the upper echelon stays up, while the lower ones are basically certain to stay there.

It is built for people who come from intellectually rich or just plain rich classes. It says that anyone can get in, but actually, it's "anyone can get in...if they are good enough". Now two guesses to what kinds of kids are "good enough" to get a spot (and good working conditions) to be in one of those CPGE.

Social mixity is a complete joke. It's filled with the children of people who were in these CPGE in the first place, plus teachers kids.

So yeah, fuck that system. Take that pedagogy, and actually make it available to everyone, not those who need it the less. Stop pumping an inane amount of money in that imbalanced system (seriously, the budget given for oral interrogations alone is absolutely ludicrous) and use that to improve uni in general.

Latest big uproar around Laurent Wauquiez (article in English):

Recorded without his knowledge, Laurent Wauquiez is loose.

He notably accused Macron's team of orchestrating the scandal that cost François Fillon the election, or revealed that Sarkozy had been controlling the cell phones of his ministers during his presidency, among other things.

This is not going to settle down gently, that at least I can tell.

Does this guy have any evidence that Fillon was framed? Macron pulling off such a stunt sounds pretty unlikely, its too complex.

Wauquiez is eerily similar to a French Trump, if you want to have a vague idea of his reliability.

This conference also had a funny bit of Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking, because he also claimed that Macron stole the idea of a "politician putting his shirt sleeves up" to look more casual from him.

(I wish a student got up and asked him "did President Obama also stole it from you?")

edited 17th Feb '18 11:58:20 AM by Julep

Yeah, this guy seems full of it.

Although I wouldn't be surprised if the part about Sarkozy is true; it sure looks like in-character.

Oh, and of course Wauquiez quickly apologized to Sarko like the spineless worm he is.

And I carefully listened the audio track : it doesn't sound like a joke to me at all, I'm quite convinced the tone of his voice was far from light hearted or joking, contrarily to what they say to try and defend him which confirms to me how shadowy, spineless and Trumpesque he is.

Lol, how I hope it will solidly sink him in the polls for a while...

edited 19th Feb '18 9:04:28 AM by Nuup-Kangerlua

Especially as...drum roll...tonight, Quotidien is broadcasting what Wauquiez said in the next course - last Friday was what he said on Thursday, now is what he said on Friday.

So...

• MP have no power, France is a dictature. "Have you seen the guignols from En Marche?, he said. Basically, complaining that MP always obey to their party (he comes from LR, ex-UMP under Sarkozy, ex-RPR under Chirac)
• Syndicates only care about money, and the worst are the MEDEF (CEOs) and the CGPME (white collars) - two syndicates who tend to pretty much support his party.
• Justin Trudeau is a fake who only thinks what everybody else thinks.
• Valérie Pécresse - rival among LR - does "many stupid things".
• Alain Juppé (also LR) fucked the finances of the city of Bordeaux up.

And the icing on the cake - "today, when I meet more than two people, I know that what I say might become public". NO SHIT SHERLOCK.

And the icing on the icing on the cake is one of LR's spokespersons who said that what Quotidien did was "du niveau CAP ajusteur monteur" - basically they did a crappy job, which he compared to the level required to become a fitter-assembler. So to defend LR's boss, who is trying really hard (that would deserve an entire post altogether) to appear like a blue-collar person, he insulted the intelligence of blue collars.

edited 19th Feb '18 10:56:41 AM by Julep

Shadefreude.

Ohloh ... It makes about as much sense as shooting the pianist in the middle of a recital ...

To be serious though, I think it is apocalyptic for Wauquiez in so many ways he's not going to get out of it soon.

There are only two ways to explain such a kaboom :

1) He knew it would eventually pop out in the mainstream medias one way or another, so he deliberately did it to kick an indirect blow to his enemies, emptying a large circle around him and to appear as the saviour of the nation in a Trumpesque way. It is damaging, cruel, egoistical but at the very least it somewhat makes sense on the long run ...

2) He sincerely believed nothing will come out of it and dropped it all because he mistook the students in front of him for some kind of a psychiatrist's couch .

What troubles me the most is that on a first level of interpretation, he can't gain anything of it.

He just stupidly blew out his image of gravitas and imposing-yet-discreet humble rural "notable".

So he is either strategically evil on a level we earthlings can't understand, with that mess being a controlled slip in a gigantic Xanatos Gambit running on a very long timeline with a clear target in sight which is absolutely terrifying... Or, he is stupidly dumb, naive and psychotic .

Sincerely can't tell which option is the most dreadful to me.

Seriously, everything in this audio track is damaging to him !

Now everytime he will speak to journalists we will "know", or at least suspect, he is lying through his teeth at the same time the people wants absolute openness and sincerity from political figures which he used to upheld in public against his enemies such as Macron and Mélenchon !

I could go on and on and on to explain why this is a catastrophe for him. He just had a jump of ten points in major political polls and reinstated himself as the true leader of the opposition, ousting a silent ghastly Mélenchon of the mediatic political scene : now he's back to square one, with his credibility ruined and the already cracking facade of unity of his party now shattered on the ground.

I think that on the long run, he just either ruined his career, or found a new breath as a French avatar of Trump.

Your choice.

For better or worse, Trump had an image before starting spouting hateful nonsense in politics. Without it he would never have succeeded. Wauquiez is nothing aside from a politician, he can't hope to rely on an outside image/success to fall back on if suddenly everyone considers him a shitty, dumb, untrustworthy politician (or at least now that they can publicly claim he is that, after what he said).

One French comedian (Nicolas Canteloup) is starting to depict Laurent Wauquiez as a crazy conspiracy theorist, who thinks not only the Arabs were responsible for 9/11, but also the Jews and the Chinese caretakers.

Methinks his public image might have started taking a dive.

More popcorn in view as W just announced he would file a complaint against Quotidien (who used "thuggish methods" to "illegally obtain" his recordings). I wonder which lawyer is going to try to find proof that there were illegal methods used here. Maybe Saul Goodman.

Not enough popcorn? Well, W said that he called Sarkozy to apologize, and Sarkozy declared in the media (through his entourage) that he "took note". According to the ever reliable Canard Enchaîné, the conversation was slightly more interesting than that between the two, with Sarkozy saying: "I smashed him. He apologized. He was pitiful. Then, I didn't let him have a word." Or: "Many people were telling me you were a big shit. Today, I have no other choice than to think like them." Or: "Apparently you have Presidential ambitions. If I were you I would look for another job." Or "You pretend that Darmanin has no political future, but when I see that, as soon as you are the head of the party, you start like this, I think you won't go far. The Republican electorate is going to be mad at you and without it you don't weigh much."

edited 20th Feb '18 3:01:27 PM by Julep

So much shade was thrown that day.

I'm not often agreeing with Sarkozy, but for once his analysis is rather relevant.

edited 21st Feb '18 12:46:41 PM by StFan