French Politics

Just how violent did this fight get?

According to an affidavit published by the offices of the Chief-Prosecutor of Creteil the two gangs have caused with their clashes at the very least about 62'500 euros including 54'000 euros of material damages inside the duty-free shop and 8'500 euros because Air France had to delay several flights which of course they are going to reimburse the passengers for the inconvenience and that is a cost too ! That total cost still doesn't even represents the full real cost of this incident since other airways companies have been affected and they too could file a lawsuit as a "partie civile" to claim compensations and I don't even include the reputation loss for the state-owned corporation that manages the Orly Airport which has been (darkly) shown all around the world because of this mess ...

Meanwhile the eleven persons that have appeared before the judge yesterday evening have all been sentenced to provisional imprisonment until the trial which has been set by the judge for the 6th of September. Until then all of them are under the regime of solitary confinement in the Special Housing Units of two separate prisons in the Southern suburbs of Paris : Booba and his gang are in Fleury-Merogis while Kaaris and his gang are in Fresnes which are more than seventeen kilometers apart from on another.

The legal team of Karis and his posse has openly complained about it and asks for their clients to be freed which could be seen as fair, given that the Police has confirmed and certified that it is Booba himself who gave the first punch that sparked the incident ...

They are of course absolutely prohibited from contacting one another.

Edited by Nuup-Kangerlua on Aug 4th 2018 at 9:15:08 PM

New law criminalizes catcalling and other sexual harassment in France. Basically, sexual harassment will now get you arrested, which is as it should be.

There've been a bunch of complaints against the law. As usual, they range from the incoherent ("sexual freedom means the right to bother people," "this will take away all the romance associated with France") to the coherent ("this will be disproportionately employed against minorities," "this will do nothing to stop harassment by police, since they won't arrest each other").

While France obviously needs to solve the latter problems, I think this law is a step in the right direction.

Here in this rectangle, the law against... I'm not sure if catcalling is the equivalent of 'piropo', but anyway, the 'Lei do Piropo' has been in existance for 3 years, but no fines or arrests have been made (there have been only 15 disciplinary procedings which turned out to have become inconclusive). Magistrates here have said that our law is ineffective.

I'm not sure if the wording of the French law is clearer or more specific, but, while it may cover the sexual harassment bit (assuming the law speaks of things like physical contact), it might turn out to be ineffective in regards to the catcalling bit the same way the Portuguese law turned out to be (and said law here only covers the 'piropo' bit, because instances of physical/sexual harassment are already covered in previous laws, if I'm not mistaken).

Edited by Quag15 on Aug 5th 2018 at 2:06:42 PM

Environment Minister Nicolas Hulot has resigned in a live radio interview.

From what I can tell, he felt isolated in government anyway. I'm a little surprised he held on until now, actually

Dude was really pissed off in that interview. It seems it was a series of escalating situations where he couldn't make himself heard, with Macron almost always prioritizing the interests of businesses, hunters and so forth.

I'm not surprised at all Macron prioritizes business interests over pretty much anything else.

The agriculture lobby in particular, which has always been ridiculously powerful in France under every government. The US have oil tycoons and the NRA, France has farmers. To each their own.

At least farmers aren't contributing to the destruction of current and future generations like those two groups in the USA. And the minister of the environment feeling like he's being sidelined so much he can't help but resign is awful by every metric.

I mean, if they are obstructing measures to combat climate change, they are contributing to the "destruction of current and future generations ".

Yeah that's what I mean, they attempt to block any new legislation regarding the use of pesticides, biodiversity protection, fossil fuels, hunting quotas and so on, and they almost always get their way.

The minister himself was a far greater threat to the worlds climate than farmers. Because he wanted to shut down a very large part of the french reactor fleet for no good reason. Ostensibly to replace it with renewable, but.. that never works. And also, even if it did. Congratulations, you just spent a very large fortune to replace one low carbon source with another low carbon source. Huge boon to the environment, there.

Yeah, right now the nuclear is more of a boogieman than the real problem... if we can keep it safe, 'cause according to my friends, so far there have been more incidents than according to its "theoretical" safety.

This doesn't surprise me that much about Nicolas Hulot, because I've heard of some accusations against him: Namely that he's not actually an environmentalist, he just plays one on TV (I can't confirm or deny, I haven't had the time or energy to dig into that).

Edited by Medinoc on Sep 7th 2018 at 7:16:03 PM

The anti nuclear movement lies constantly. That is one of them.

Uhm. I should probably explain that.

Okay, the important thing about the nuclear incident report system - the official one - The key fact about it that means nobody ever omits things from it is that it is a profit center.

Nuclear reactors have entirely fixed costs. The price of the reactor, and the price of any loans on it. The price of labor. The price of maintainance, even the price of fuel. All of the expenses are fixed numbers. Come hell or high water, you end up paying that amount in expense every year.

Nuclear reactors have variable income. Their income stream varies according to one singular value: "The amount of hours you keep your reactor running every year". This means that systems reliability is everything to a nuclear reactor operator. Anyone suggesting that maintenance should be skipped on is taken out behind the barn by accounting and put down.

Metaphorically speaking.

Because every single day your reactor spends not running because some system broke that could have been fixed before it failed? Cost you over a million euros. In profits.

Part of the way operators stop that form happening is that they share information about things going wrong. And they are extremely honest about this, because doing anything else costs them money. Very directly. This applies especially strongly to an operator like EDF which is running a whole lot of identical reactors under the same ownership. Seriously, there is just no way problems get swept under the rug -there is just too much money at stake.

Looks like now it's Mélenchon's turn to catch Shady Shit Fever.

He's being investigated for possible misuse of European Parliament funds (sound familiar?) and chucked a massive wobbly about it.

Not Helping Your Case much? Give Le Pen some credit, she at least tried to keep her temper...

... did he seriously just say "La république, c'est moi!"?

This may have triggered his dark side— oh, no, wait, that's his only side...

Cue the meme◊.

Yep, he's a real piece of shit. There's a reason he couldn't make it to the second round of elections.

I've been pretty soft on Mélenchon because a lot of my French friends support him, but yeah, he really is a jackass. Which is, honestly, discouraging for France. I had thought that maybe France Insoumise and the mainstream Socialists could arrive at some kind of compromise to rebuild a strong, liberal leftist movement. But Mélenchon's personality and egotism really make that seem like a pipe dream.

I don't much care for Macron at this point, but I can't swear that I wouldn't vote for him again for lack of a better option if I were French. Basically all of France's notable political leaders are either jackasses or totally impotent.

Re: Melenchon channeling the Sun King.

Well, with Macron walking around with a nickname like "Jupiter," I guess Melenchon isn't really that far beyond the pale.

Wow. He...he really did it. I think the mask slipped, guys, that's a Supervillain in the making.

I mean, I guess I'm not surprised that he'd think that type of thing, I'm just surprised he said it out loud where everyone could hear. Because that exact phrase is basically sliding into self-parody.

Edited by AzurePaladin on Oct 18th 2018 at 3:18:05 PM

French leaders always had kind of a tendency to be...dramatic.

Anyway, France taking some of the protection from their agriculture sector is a GOOD thing. It is in fact desperately needed, and not just in France, but if France doesn't move forward, the other EU countries can't follow.

Here is the deal: Every country should have a proper agriculture sector because you should NEVER leave something as basic as food production completely in the hand of someone else. Hence there is a need to protect your farmers from dumping prices.

But in a way, the EU farmers already ARE protected. They are protected due to the high standards the EU demands for food, which makes it very difficult for outside farmers to sell into the marked to dumping prices (it's one of the reasons why the Americans are so angry about EU regulations). Meaning easing a little bit on the subsidies while also encouraging a more sustainable kind of farming is a good thing. But in order to do that, the country with the most protections has to lead the way. And that happens to be France. By a mile. (Plus, doing this would also save money which could than be used to cover the little hole Brexit will create in the budget).

Except that Louis never said that - quite the opposite of it, actually.

The Palpatine meme is even more fitting considering his use of holograms in his campaign.