French Politics

In unrelated news that's Good, Actually, Macron Leads renewed calls to return looted African artifacts.

Fucking finally.

I refer to the point in said article about making sure the museum in question doesn't promptly get looted or keep things in conditions that lead to their deterioration.

I'm sorry if I don't consider 'they might get dinged up' as an excuse to keep cultural artifacts that are the result of colonial violence from the descendants of the people they were looted from.

At least in other hands they might get fucking studied and not paraded around as a war trophy, or stuffed into a crown.

Edited by math792d on Dec 17th 2018 at 2:15:11 PM

A good chance of being stolen or completely destroyed? Once that's not a major threat, sure. Otherwise, you make some people feel better gor a bit but then everyone's worse off.

Returning cultural artefacts does no good if they end up flogged on the black market.

This is quite a valid concern though, especially when we are talking about artifacts that are a) delicate and b) no obvious attractions that will surely receive the needed attention. For example Germany has several years ago given a lot of documents of its' Colonial past to its' former colonies. Due to a lack of ressources many of them have rotted away in extreme heat. Thanks to that African historians must now travel to Germany while doing research about this period (and earlier periods). The only reason this was not a complete catastrophy is thanks to the dedication of a few German historians who copied several documents in their free time before they were given away. Also note that Germany provided the African archives with funds to preserve the documents, but they were apparantly lost to corruption.

In that case, who gets to decide when these people can get their looted artifacts back? The museums that refuse to expropriate them now? Who enforces the standards and decides it's 'time,' aside from the people actively profiting from having looted these artifacts in the first place?

So what you're telling me is the only reason these artifacts were preserved is because of some semi-dedicated German hobbyists? What great stewardship of these priceless cultural artifacts. Really, they should be awarded with some kind of medal for their selfless service to history.

Edited by math792d on Dec 17th 2018 at 3:19:58 PM

Ideally, you could form some sort of international body that enforces a set of standards and procedures. But since the world isn't perfect....

Whoever decides, it shouldn't be the party asking for them. Since, unfortunately, the bargaining party can promise a lot of things without delivering on it.

And what would you have had the German academics do in this situation? Keep the documents? Not copy them? Invent a time machine?

Like, say, UNESCO?

Ideally, if they're going to keep them for the sake of research integrity, they should be used by people who aren't just glorified hobbyists, because otherwise the fact of the artifact being potentially destroyed if brought home is irrelevant - it's not being used anyway.

If your indigenous artifacts are just a glorified imperialist trophy room (hello, British Museum), it literally does not matter unless the British government suddenly decides to seriously study its imperialist history, something which is just as likely to happen as No. 10 being struck by lightning.

Edited by math792d on Dec 17th 2018 at 3:27:54 PM

If it's not being used but is intact, it always has the potential to be used and examined. Which is considerably better than being destroyed so nobody ever has the chance.

And again, what would you have had the historians do in this situation? The documents were returned and they made copies.

Edited by RainehDaze on Dec 17th 2018 at 2:50:56 PM

I used the wrong term in any case. Those historians worked as archivists for the archive that stored the documents. No doubt many present and future historians will appreciate what they did.

One of them attented a lecture at my university, and when I asked him if things should have done differently, he told me yes and no.

Morally and legally speaking the return was the right thing to do. Though it would have been better to look for a solution that would have satisfied those conditions and assured the preservation of the documents. This is something that can easily done if there is enough goodwill. For example the Chinese government agreed that many documents from Germany's colony in China remain in Germany and now we have a group of Chinese researchers travelling to Freiburg every year. Though there are suspicions that they are mostly just blowing the rest of the annuaö budget for a nice holiday since they are always asking for the same documents.

math, don't be polemic about this. The documents were absolutely save until they were given back, but copying all this stuff costs money. It is not like you can just slap it on a copy machine. Be glad that some people were dedicated enough to their craft to preserve what they could for their own archives.

Preserving what is there is a honest concern. Hence the need for a dialogue. We have already lost way too much of our history.

I'll have to disagree in this matter with you math, as someone that comes from a third world country, I can tell that, while indeed it's humilliating to have artifacts of your country far away from home, I'm aware that the budget and the effort to preserve these artifacts here leaves much to be desired.

While it's good news when a foreign museum gives back the artifacts it has their rightful owners, as preservers of history, there must be a standard to which their safety can be ensured.

Edited by raziel365 on Dec 17th 2018 at 8:08:48 AM

Let's start with sorting out which artefacts are actually stolen and which ones ended up in Europe through legal means.

Then look into who the actual owner of the questionable stuff is.

Then start a dialogue with the owner about the future of the artefacts. Even if (if! I don't claim that none of them can) said owner doesn't have a means to preserve it, maybe there can be some sort of arrangement. Ie the Museum creates a fund which can be used to travel to it to study the artefacts.

In any case there is a need to actually talk.

I think many people underestimate the time and ressources needed to preserve those documents. Even after you have "prepared" the documents (taking all the iron out and so on) you need a large ventilated room. The electric bill is usually very high even in a small archive in moderate climate zones. Furthermore you usually have to take extra measures every 50-100 years (using a special bath full of chemicals) which is also very expensive. Never mind copying them. There is a reason why you can end up paying 100€ or more per hour of work if you want copies for scholarly reasons... .

In short, you need a lot of effort to keep those documents save, effort not every country will take (mind you this includes also European countries) so it is no shame if poor countries can not afford it. There are solutions for this, but for them both sides need to be interested in the long-term survival of those historical treasures.

On a side note this might be an opportunity for German archives to increase their efforts to get documents back from France. The French archives have been less helpful regarding this in the past.

Edited by Zarastro on Dec 17th 2018 at 6:13:28 PM

Yes I used the term "coastal elite" in an American and metaphorical way, targeting the low base of the upper class that spends its time writing articles for leftist mainstream medias that want to explain to me the subtleties of the sixty-four and counting genders you can pick from to classify yourself, calling the white impoverished men in their late forties who voted for Trump or the FN/RN morons when they have never seen in their lives a real coal miner, telling me I should cry myself to dehydration every time I eat meat while refusing to admit the reality that if we don't burn trash and do more nuclear energy, we're fucked regarding the global emergency of climate change and pollution ... etc ...

Those criticised in the song "Les Bobos" by Renaud and mocked by Bill Maher.

There are dicks like these both in France and the USA and I kind of like this phrase ...

I consider this fraction of the left to have an underestimated responsibility in our current struggle with fake news and authoritarianism and that brings me to what I actually wanted to address tonight : This truly "marvelous" quote from our Representative for the second district of Paris affiliated with the LAREM parliamentary caucus ...

<< We have been too intelligent - too subtle - too much technocratic ! In the implementation and explanation of our fiscal measures ... >>

That quote is all by itself the tragedy of our lives = Like the comedy club Les Inconnus have theorised in the early nineties "Thou must never take people for idiotic morons even though we know they are". I do believe that of the Yellow Vests who actually are still on the barricades after more or less six weeks including the riots and terror attacks plus the new social measures announced by Emmanuel Macron most have the intelligence level of ten years old (using your children to attack the President on social medias claiming your fridge is empty by the end of the month while there are visibly many bottles of various types of booze in the aforementioned fridge ...) who will never really understand that no : Macron is not going to come to your house to give you a winning Loto ticket and a Bentley with chauffeur. Those who firmly believe in a triple minimum wage and the resignation of the President with the dissolution of the National Assembly are absolutely moronic jerks that you shouldn't try to convince or educate ... But you absolutely must not say it out loud in their faces !

Yes I hold both axis of thoughts to be true and equals at the same time and I may even tend to think that one goes with the other.

Ah, so you're using it as a dumb strawman that only exists for you to rail against? I am not surprised in the slightest, that is after all how everyone else uses the term.

Also, the idea that Trump was supported by "white impoverished men in their late forties" is bullshit. Trump supporters were generally affluent, ironically that 'economic anxiety' nonsense that you're peddling has been heavily pushed by the 'leftist' media that you seem to despise. So uh, good on that.

Also, your criticism that the media has been pushing "sixty-four and counting" genders is not factual. That's not a media creation, that's from actual biologists. But something tells me that you don't actually care about what is or isn't the scientific consensus.

"Liberal coastal elite" is a stupid phrase that has no legitimate use in the US, applying to France makes zero sense.

It is already difficult for me to express myself in my own native language so of course there are severe discrepancies in my choice of words .

Trump base : Oh okay, I will look into that - I was probably more thinking of the average electorate of the far right here in France and I understand it might not apply in the USA .

I refer you to a few videos on nuclear energy, with a few others of Bill Maher, for the rest of your answer.

He express my thoughts on these issues in a much better way than myself.

https://youtu.be/ZNJyDyCocGQ

https://youtu.be/STwSMAeuze8

https://youtu.be/ugLbotr1RuQ

https://youtu.be/ciStnd9Y2ak

https://youtu.be/oTKl5X72NIc

At this point, "Elite" is merely a byword for "Person/Ideology I don't like." Like any overused buzzword, it's lost any meaning it might have had.

All I can say is - tough. If they don't like it, there's the ballot box. If they still don't like it? They can suck it up, it's a free world.

As for the more-or-less affluent (or once-affluent) middle class voting for Trump/Le Pen/Farage/Whichever idiot is in charge of the far-Right, that's disappointing, though not surprising.

Everyone has that streak of I Just Want to Be Special, and seeing a lot of non-whites being as rich as whites takes the sheen off of that position. Same thing happened during the Weimar Era too (pardon the Godwin's Law invocation).

Some comfort can be taken from the fact that this group is slowly becoming irrelevant as time goes by. The people who yelp the loudest generally tend to be on the losing side. Dangerous, but still a losing bet.

Anti-nuclear-power groups seem to generally be a pretty irrelevant fraction of the left.

Oh, the word has a meaning. It means "everyone who disagrees with me and with whose arguments I don't want to engage". Just label someone "elite" and you don't have to listen to him or her because she is naturally too removed from "actual" people to understand the "real" problems of the world.

Alternatively, calling a group an "elite" means that the only reason they could be opposing something is because they are going to lose a privileged position on any matter, therefore it's safe to ignore anything they say and stand against them.

Yeah...Bill Maher's hardly the best source to quote on, well, anything really. Especially science stuff.

Also he’s the closest you can get to an actual member of the liberal costal elite.