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International Events VIII: Been living under a rock so long


TheLastWolf

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1 hour ago, Rippounet said:

before we elect a Le Pen (I'm thinking Marion rather than Marine tbh).

Marine's gotta be done after this - at least in terms of running for president again - no?

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2 minutes ago, Winterfell is Burning said:

I doubt it, considering she increased her share of the vote. 

I dunno, a lot of the coverage I've read suggested this may be her last go round -- and particularly that the far right is hungry for new faces.  E.G. this Reuters piece:

Quote

Le Pen will likely be challenged for the title of far-right torch-bearer by the duo of pundit-turned- nationalist politician Eric Zemmour and her own niece, Marion Marechal, who defected to Zemmour's own presidential bid weeks before the election.

Both Le Pen and Zemmour spoke about a possible coalition of anti-Macron, nationalist forces emerging in time for the June parliamentary elections. Neither said who they expected to be in charge of such an alliance.

 

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2 hours ago, Rippounet said:

t's one of the greatest health scandals in French history, but the government hasn't really dealt with it, which explains why people living in Martinique and Guadeloupe are desperate for change - any change.
For anyone interested, here's an official summary: https://www.anses.fr/en/content/assessing-risks-chlordecone-exposure-french-caribbean

Thank you!  I'd actually forgotten about that among all the corruption scandals and fascism and nazi etc. going on all the time everywhere.  And pandemic.  Argh

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38 minutes ago, Clueless Northman said:

It's quite obvious from what I can see that both Melenchon and Le Pen supporters will vote a lot, hoping that at the very least Macron can't have a majority in parliament.

Yes, but it's not quite so simple. Historically, the far-right performs poorly in legislative elections for a number of reasons:
- They don't have the funding and structure to compete in the 577 constituencies. They've tried to develop everywhere, but I don't believe they're there yet.
- They have strong competition from popular "traditional right" (LR) candidates who are just as xenophobic as they are (especially in the South). Zemmour's party should also field a handful of candidates, and their alliance with Le Pen's crowd isn't a sure thing yet (I guess it will happen, but who the fuck knows).
- Their cult of the leader means that their voters are less interested in the legislatives. This could change, admittedly, but the Le Pens have always struggled to make their voters as motivated. Neo-fascists rend to think it's all about becoming president, and Le Pen's party may be too centered around her to do as well as in the presidential election anyway.

The left doesn't have the same problems. Historically, if the left-wing parties can form alliances (i.e. not field competing candidates in key constituencies), they perform very well. And right now, it seems all four major left-wing parties are willing to cooperate. The Communists and LFI are traditional allies, the Greens seem to be joining them, and even the Socialists have voted to ally (though the other three seem lukewarm about it - well, Hidalgo didn't even get 2%).
Another way to put it is that the left's weakness in the presidential election can turn into a strength in the legislatives: with multiple overlapping party structures, it has the ability to be a serious player in all constituencies when it unifies. This basically means a left-wing candidate reaches the second round in most places, thus giving us a traditional right vs left election in the end.

I don't want to be too optimistic right now, but it seems LFI, the Greens and the Communists have already agreed to an alliance and are shooting for nothing less than a parliamentary majority. There's been some serious talk about sending Mélenchon to Matignon (the PM's residence). That's a bit surprising from the Greens tbh (given that Jadot is a moderate), but if they're serious about fighting climate change, betting on Mélenchon is the logical way to do that (and the Greens' radical wing was only narrowly defeated in their primaries after all) ; also, the Greens generally need at least local alliances to win seats in the first place (it's almost impossible for them to compete with both the right and the left, so they need the other left-wing parties to agree to stand down in some constituencies).

It may sound incredible, and yet the media is taking this very seriously. Macron's party (LREM) is still young, its local structures aren't strong, and the government's unpopularity could easily translate into a rout.
But of course, it's absolutely impossible to be sure about anything. French politics has become totally unpredictable, and the legislatives have always been difficult to read, because there's basically 577 separate two-round elections. Local politics tend to be more important than what happens on the national stage, and there are surprises in every cycle.
Oh yeah, btw, to complicate things, national decisions aren't necessarily binding: local candidates sometimes ignore their party's guidelines when it comes to alliances, so everything I've just said may not apply everywhere :rolleyes:.

A president from one side and a PM from the other ("cohabitation") has happened three times before in the last decades. And right now, the left doesn't even necessarily need a majority to force Macron to choose a center-left PM at least: just performing slightly better than LREM and LR could be enough (a 40-35-25 split for example).
Given the numbers in the first round of the presidential election, it's close to a coin toss. Which is why we're already hearing about a center-left PM: Macron knows that may end up being the best he can achieve (he really doesn't want to deal with Mélenchon :P). This in turn gives left-wing candidates more exposure... But there's no way to know whether it can mitigate abstention. It's... nerve-wracking.

34 minutes ago, DMC said:

Marine's gotta be done after this - at least in terms of running for president again - no?

I honestly don't know. French far-right politics is another dimension entirely. I understand Marine purged her party of any dissident voices in the past cycles, meaning she can now rely on loyalists in all key positions.
Marion's challenge is a huge threat of course, but I don't know how fast she can succeed. Can she kick her aunt out in five years? I really don't know. It'll probably come down to what kind of funding she can secure (and we know Marion has some very strong backers, all the way to US conservatives).

41 minutes ago, Padraig said:

I suppose the worry is that Macron is going to run the country into the ground over the next 5 years?  But if parliamentary elections don't go his way, he will at least be quite constrained in what he can do?

Without Parliament, Macron would be a lame duck from day 1. But it also makes the future even harder to predict.

41 minutes ago, Padraig said:

And the whole climate emergency has to become much more relevant over the next 5 years, which wouldn't do Le Pen any favourites either (but people were possibly saying the same thing 5 years ago).

That's the catch: I don't think it does. Which is why I'm terrified of the far-right.
A world in which tens of millions of climate refugees come to Europe is not one in which the far-right will struggle. In fact, I believe that in many ways it is far better prepared for that than the neo-liberal crowd.
I have this idea that, precisely because of climate change, the far-right needs to be prevented from reaching power at all costs, because they could then justify anything. Dystopia is just around the corner.
Another way to put it: if climate change hits us hard (and it's a matter of when, really), the "center" will collapse overnight, and there will only be the left vs the far-right.
Everyone I've discussed with IRL agrees this will happen within ten years. The IPCC reports leave us little doubt, don't they?
 

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1 hour ago, Rippounet said:

It may sound incredible, and yet the media is taking this very seriously. Macron's party (LREM) is still young, its local structures aren't strong, and the government's unpopularity could easily translate into a rout.

Way I see it, it's the last chance of wiping out LREM as a lasting major political party. If it doesn't rule now, odds of a LREM president in 5 years decrease significantly.

 

1 hour ago, Rippounet said:

That's the catch: I don't think it does. Which is why I'm terrified of the far-right.
A world in which tens of millions of climate refugees come to Europe is not one in which the far-right will struggle. In fact, I believe that in many ways it is far better prepared for that than the neo-liberal crowd.
Another way to put it: if climate change hits us hard (and it's a matter of when, really), the "center" will collapse overnight, and there will only be the left vs the far-right.

Yup, things will get bad. Heck, with current inflation and post-pandemic economic hardships, it's already unstable, shifty, dodghy situation. If we add climate refugees and side-effects of climate change / warming in the next 10 years, a lot of political positions will suffer. I think liberalism, first of all economical but possibly, in the long run, even political/social as well, will wane as a political power. Of course that's my own bias: I've been saying since the previous century that capitalism isn't compatible with mankind's survival.

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In other awesome news, Elon Musk now (or will soon) own Twitter outright. I'm sure having one person owning this significant communication space has no downsides at all. As a free speech absolutist I wonder if Twitter will become an enlightened place for quality intellectual discourse, or become riddled with porn, conspiracy theories and hate speech?

Of course he did say Twitter would comply with national laws, so there may be a few constraints on how you can use Twitter in the place you live.

In Musk we trust, right?

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40 minutes ago, The Anti-Targ said:

In other awesome news, Elon Musk now (or will soon) own Twitter outright. I'm sure having one person owning this significant communication space has no downsides at all. As a free speech absolutist I wonder if Twitter will become an enlightened place for quality intellectual discourse, or become riddled with porn, conspiracy theories and hate speech?

Of course he did say Twitter would comply with national laws, so there may be a few constraints on how you can use Twitter in the place you live.

In Musk we trust, right?

Damn now we have two billionaires competing in the privately owned social network space. Let's see who comes out on top  - he or Murdoch's MySpace.

Damn, forgot that Murdoch sold MySpace some time ago.

 

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18 hours ago, Padraig said:

Evil seems a little harsh.  I'm not going to waste my time defending him.  Its a relative thing, so one can make a case.  But my bar would be higher.

Neoliberals are a great evil for people on the financially lower end of society. Just because they don't tend to harm the part of the population that is better off in the early stages does not make them less evil. Usually most people pay the price once they touch pension and health care systems.

I had the same opinion of Gerhard Schröder when he started his crusade against the poor back when most people still respected the guy. You go after the people with a weak lobby first.

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11 hours ago, Rippounet said:

Everyone I've discussed with IRL agrees this will happen within ten years. The IPCC reports leave us little doubt, don't they?
 

Fair point.  10 years seems like the  given timeline.  Last last chance in 5 years then!

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On 4/26/2022 at 1:59 AM, Rippounet said:

That's a bit surprising from the Greens tbh (given that Jadot is a moderate), but if they're serious about fighting climate change, betting on Mélenchon is the logical way to do that

Aaand of course, Jadot being a bloody moderate, he is now making some noise about looking for a "middle-ground" between Mélenchon and Macron (the left and neo-liberalism), and being willing to cooperate with Macron *!*
This may be a French problem, but every single time the left has a shot at achieving something (if only a little unity), the fucking "moderates" betray their own camp. Hollande, Hamon, Jadot... Again and again, the "centrists" or "moderates" or whatever, those who don't want to go "too fast," end up helping neo-liberalism.
It's almost as if it's their actual job. Seriously, fuck these guys.

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On 4/26/2022 at 6:17 AM, The Anti-Targ said:

As a free speech absolutist I wonder if Twitter will become an enlightened place for quality intellectual discourse,

It won’t. But it may not end up being the global inquisition at least. 

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9 minutes ago, Winterfell is Burning said:

Nobody expects the Twitter inquisition!

Then ... they can all be surprised, like they all were last night and today! 

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London  (CNN) - Northern Ireland is on the cusp of having a nationalist leader for the first time in its history after Sinn Fein, once considered the political wing of the IRA, emerged as the largest party in regional elections.

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