French Politics

I just finished Guadeloupe, Martinique, Saint Barthélemy and Saint Martin if anyone here wants to add any info to them. I know I skipped a lot of history, since I mostly just wanted to get these done.

edited 2nd Mar '18 10:09:38 PM by Wariolander

Big news in France !

The xenophobic anti-Establishment party formerly named Front National is in a dense brainstorming session to rebrand itself as a new power-grabbing renovated altright party, in a CPAC-like congress in the Northern city of Lille in the Haut de France region .

The FN will now be named ... *Drum beat* Rassemblement National !

National Front => National Gathering ! See ? Totally different ! Brand new ! Smart, huh ?!

And what will be the new logo to go with the new name ? The same old tricolour flame !

You probably understood what I think of it right now... I believe it shows their absolute inability to truly decide in which direction they really want to go, whatever that direction might be. Because of that they are forever sentenced to remain a party of opposition like the GOP in California : it may look great and grab huge minorities of the popular vote in the ballot box with a third or 40 % but because it wants to go in all directions at the same time it will never settle and so it will never be able to pass the threshold of an absolute majority.

Today, the party showed it factually renounced to grabbing the national executive power, in favour of keeping the "mediatic" power, the right to shout "Shame on You" without the inconvenience of actually having to make sure the trains run on time ...

As people have almost immediately pointed out once the new name was announced, "Rassemblement national" isn't exactly a completely original name either. It was also the name of a small far-right party in the 60s that had one Jean-Marie Le Pen as a member but more interestingly, the Rassemblement national populaire was a party made of former socialists who heavily collaborated with the nazis during the occupation.

edited 11th Mar '18 9:44:04 AM by Nithael

Although to be honestly fair, it's hard to come up with a truly original "never seen before" name for a political party nowadays considering how many political parties existed and exist in France and abroad in almost every spoken languages on Earth ... ^^'

From what I read, it seems that this rebranding is being spearheaded by Marine Le Pen and her faction, right? What do the factions that are more in line with her father and/or her niece think about that?

edited 11th Mar '18 11:06:02 AM by Quag15

Right now nothing. They're waiting until the niece comes back to jump ship and hopefully start yet another war.

As a side note, guess who was "American Guest" at that CPAC-like FN congress? None other than Steve Bannon.

It's a shame the media just don't seem very aware of how much a PoS he is and tried to keep it rather neutral-sounding when reporting about that.

Maybe a reminder about Roy Moore is needed.

Bannon wants the whole world order to burn. I am not exaggerating one bit.

I’m kind hoping Bannon crosses a line into hate speech while over in the EU and somebody takes one for the team and puts the fucker in jail.

I hope he does it in Germany...after all the lies Breitbart spread this would be particularly satisfying.

Incoming: some ranting and raving, assume apology.

Didn’t the designation Front National belong to an organisation that was part of La Résistance? I seem to recall the Le Pen ‘family business’ being sued for that very reason some years ago.

Considering that the con-artistry formerly known as FN represents the losing side of WWII (both of persons and ideas), I suppose that Les Losers of Quarante-Cinq (en frangliche dans le texte) would make a fitting name; they could use it un-ironically, sipping chianti, munching on sushi at the Kebab Palace while bemoaning the end of the Hexagon as they knew it.
If history can be any indication, those enemies of the Republic couldn’t manage to take power for more than a century or so without the help of the enemies of France, so I’m guessing they pray for a sucessful invasion (from Russia? China? Da’esh? Vega?) to make them Lackeys-in-Chiefs again.

As for Steven Bannon et consorts, I’m still hearing squeamishness from Stateside along the line of “we no nazis, srs, we got nothing to do with them socialists (but poor Adolf got a bad rap)”.
Why can’t they get over themselves and admit it? Ah, yes, because: Loserville.

I'm surprised he hasn't been refused entrance to an EU country yet, given his rhetoric. Maybe he's just careful enough to avoid crossing certain lines?

He's not an imam, so that's unlikely to happen.

Even though he is equally as toxic as the worst ones.

Ironically, it seems the name "Rassemblement National" was already taken by another (apparently very much on the right itself) party. Who said that the name was not original...

X3 it’s probably to do with the nature of his rhetoric, the only way US based hate preachers tend to get entry refused (at least to the UK) is if they’re anti-LGBT, Bannon tends to focus his hate on Muslims, globalists and the left in general, not LGBT people specifically.

And he's just smart enough to avoid outright calling for violence.

Thierry Mariani (a prominent member of the theoretically center-right party Les Républicains formely called UMP) is calling now for the coalescence of all right-wing parties from the center all the way down to the party of Bruno Mégret to reclaim power, in a "Unite the Right" style ...

Back in the days of Jacques Chirac he would have been shamed and expelled immediately.

Nowadays, with Laurent Wauquiez as Chief-Whip of the Republicans, he gets away with it ...

The times they are a-changin', huh ?

Hey Ho, Hey Ho, Custody for Sarko.

Maybe that's why he was so eager to end Gadhafi.

Casse-toi, pauv'con.

Don't you see it all makes perfect sense ?

Sarko + Gaddafi >> Libya 2011 + Gaddafi Ki A >> Benghazi >> US Congress + Fox News = 2016

=> Donald Trump, 45th President of the United States of America

edited 20th Mar '18 10:48:30 AM by Nuup-Kangerlua

Breaking News !

After two days compiling more than 20 hours of interrogation Nicolas Sarkozy has been indicted for :

- passive corruption

- Illegal financing of Sarkozy's 2007 presidential campaign

- Unlawful possession of embezzled Libyan funds

In French law, you have the concept of "garde à vue" : from the time you have been handcuffed by the cops to the moment you are formally indicted you have to spend a certain amount of time facing cops who are professional interrogators during which they will use each and every legal methods they have to crack you like hazelnuts and traditionally, up to very recently, that was a time during which your lawyer could not be with you ...

This time is generally fixed to multiples of 24 H . For all crimes except terrorism, it is limited to a maximum of 48 H but in cases of terrorism it can be extended if the prosecutor sign a special decree to authorize the cops to keep you in garde à vue longer, up to 144 H...

In the case of Nicolas Sarkozy, it lasted more than 20 Hours spread on two working days.

The judge has been kind enough to let him go back home on Monday evening, but he had to come back early in the morning for the interrogation to resume and these hours spent at home were not counted in the total of hours spent in "Garde à vue".

edited 21st Mar '18 2:36:44 PM by Nuup-Kangerlua

Not having your lawyer with you at a time like this seems like a terrible idea to me, given how likely people are to give false confessions if enough pressure is applied. Good thing that they fixed this.

What kind of sentence is roughly awaiting Sarkozy if he is convicted?

We are still very far from talking about conviction. I guess after years of trial and appeals (assuming we go that far) Sarkozy may find himself faced with a hefty fine, but I sadly would not put my money on it (no pun intended).

Reminds me of the Japanese justice system.